Is June finally over??

Talk about exhausted. It has been a combustible month of emotions. My oldest son turned 18 and graduated from high school.

A lovely ceremony where I had the privilege of learning, at 48 years old, how to coax my 83 year old mother and her new hip up and down football stands in order to flee the rain. I did this in heels. She, as always, wore something more practical. Why would anyone wear heels at an outdoor ceremony? I don't know, I guess by the time I finally got to graduation day after having survived midterms, finals, prom, 18th birthday, selective service (%$%^# war), and the first college tuition payment - you have to pay in advance - I had officially lost my mind.

My mother didn't look any worse for the wear. She is truly a tough lady and wasn't going to let a few lightening bolts and buckets of rain ruin her day with her 4th grandchild! That smile is pure genuine grandmotherly love. My smile, on the other hand, is brought to you by Zoloft - nah just joking, but it would have helped!



So what was graduation day really like?

Well, it started really dumb. I volunteered to assist with the 'after party' preparations at 9:30 in the morning. Why I did this I'll have to undergo hypnosis to figure that out. I had a zillion relatives on their way and dummy me is in a gym monitoring the 'baby picture wall.

There were millions of these all over the halls leading to the gymnasium.


I'll spare you the details to the rest of the day but suffice it to say NOTHING went as planned starting with a frantic SOS I get from the soon-to-be graduate that he owes over $300 in book fines and his graduation admission tickets would not be released until more of his mother's anguish is extracted.

Then, this guys shows up.

It's my pool guy. I've only been asking for them to come for weeks but because I didn't make an "official" appointment back in February for pool service in early June, I was made to pay the penalty by having them show up exactly when I least had the time to deal with it.



This is what they left me with. That was on June 21st. Today, June 30, the last day of the month and a billion dollars in chemicals and mommy hours later, I just may have a picture of a clean pool by the 4th of July. If any of you ever dream about putting in a pool, CALL ME. I will send you my pool bills.

Meanwhile, my working-and-soon-to-be-16 year old is out stalking our backyard hawk.

This guy is literally littering my backyard with animal parts.

Then, my son discovers that this is a "baby" hawk. Look who took a dive at my son -

She be the mamma and she don't play!

And that's when this momma told her 6 foot son to stop playing with predatory animals, I didn't have time to go to the emergency room.

He did get some good shots though

The day continued to wear me out but some good things did happen. My pal Phyllis lent me her driveway to park for graduation; I remembered my tickets (yes I paid the fines); my husband arrived to the ceremony from work with time to spare and I got to be a proud and thankful mamma.

Priceless!

Community Gardening

I enjoy growing vegetables. Unfortunately, my backyard is considered one big salad bar to any transient critter passing through. I've spotted rabbits (see below), raccoons, deer, moles, woodchucks, ground hogs, ducks, skunks - just to name a few. They eat everything and anything - they also lounge on MY lounge furniture in the overnight hours. The ones who tried to take a dip in the pool - well, let's just say that I managed to fish them out after freaking out.

My town hosts community garden plots where I get to grow my vegies. It really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do this because the time and expense involved doesn't offset the easier trip to the farmer's market. But I do this each year mostly because I get a lot of joy watching seeds grow into food, it is a miracle that never ceases to amaze me. I also feel that it is important for me to do this while it is still legal. Why would community farming ever be outlawed you ask? Well, seeds have become a major political and economic barrier to family and subsistence farmers because seeds are patented. Many seeds now are sterile. This tactic prevents farmers from harvesting viable seeds - some patented seeds DON'T REPRODUCE. Farmers are forced to buy seeds every year and, even worse, we eat this frankinfood! But, I digress...

The field is plowed in early May and thick, rich composted soil is brought in.

Beautiful virgin dirt!

This is what happens when you don't get your plot prepared in late May, WEEDS!

It took me two days to clear my plot of all the weeds. Finally, progress after the first day...

...and the second day after I got the tomatoes in.

My newly employed, soon to be 16 year old stopped by to lend me a hand.

If all goes well, I'll have a bumper crop of tomatoes, peppers, string beans and cucumbers by early August. Until then, I'll be visiting the local Farmer's Market. Not only do I get the best non supermarket produce around, I get loads of tips and talk on farming!

Farmer's Market circa 2006

UPDATE

This morning, after I finished adding today's post, I go outside to work in my garden. I notice this little clump of fur in the grass -

... where there's fur-

there's usually a body... I didn't expect a headless bunny though. The local hawk must have had him for breakfast. I guess hawks don't do head.... And this was suppose to be such a nice post :(

DESTASH FOR CASH closes

When I went to visit one of my favorite sites, this is what was posted:

Susan and I have decided to close the DeStash blog as of 10:00 p.m. today, 13 June 2007. The unending maintenance, problems with Blogger and constant sending of reminder email to members to follow the established guidelines set out on the blog have been more work than we anticipated, and frankly we are burned out and ready for the site to close.

That's right folks, Destash for Cash site is now closed. Wouldn't you know it. Just when I considered unloading hoards of yarn, they close. Yeah, yeah, I know that I only put up a few balls of dishcloth yarn but I was at least "thinking" about doing more - like my bags of Koigu and Debbie Bliss or even the 20 skeins of Lionbrand something that I bought when Treasure Island went out of business - I was seriously considering putting it all on the Destash site. Anyway, I guess I'll just have to continue with my yarn diet until I knit up all of that stuff. Thanks to Susan and Terri for providing such a great blog for all of us compulsive knitters!

Pathetic

I threatened to sell off some yarn to help pay for the quarter of a zillion dollars I'm shelling out for my high school senior. I pulled out all of my stash and had it piled high in the middle of my bedroom. Then, I went through yarn books and piled that high. I organized all of my loose patterns and piled that high. After all of those piles, this was the only thing I could bring myself to feature on the Destash for Cash site.


It sold in less than 1 minute.

Maybe I should consider running a Sugar 'n Cream outlet on ebay...

Prom Night survival guide

If you want to survive your child's high school prom, my first advice is not to have a daughter. The stories I heard from my friends about wardrobe woes for daughters was scary. Because of this, I thought I had it soooo easy. I mean, I have 3 sons. You rent a black tux, you buy a corsage and you're done. Right? Wrong! I won't tell you all that I've learned, why ruin the fun for you? I will tell you that you will pay for every little thing that you did to your mother when you were a teenager - compounded and with interest!

Don't let these smiling, adorable faces fool you. It was hell!








The long and short of it is, I'm broke and I haven't even written the college tuition check yet. Anyone want to buy some yarn?

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UGH....

Police drummer rips band's "lame" concert
06/01/2007 2:00 AM, Reuters

Dean Goodman The singer in the Police jumps like a "petulant pansy," the drummer is making a "complete hash," and who knows what the guitarist is doing?

Notes from a bitter critic? Actually, it's a disarmingly frank concert review from the aforementioned drummer of the newly reunited rock trio.

A philosophical Stewart Copeland unleashed his vitriol in a posting on his Web site on Thursday, a day after the band played its second show in Vancouver, the Canadian city where it began its first world tour in more than 20 years on Monday.

"This is unbelievably lame," Copeland wrote of Wednesday's show at the GM Place arena. "We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea."

Most of the 20,000 fans at the venue might not have noticed a series of small flubs, but Copeland, singer/bassist Sting, and guitarist were painfully aware of them.
Copeland started the show off on the wrong foot, literally. He tripped as he took to the stage, and then banged his gong at the wrong time so that "the big pompous opening to the show is a damp squib."

He did not hear Summers' opening riff to "Message In a Bottle," and Sting in turn misheard Copeland's drum intro -- "so we are half a bar out of sync with each other. Andy is in Idaho."
They quickly recovered, but then Sting got his footwork wrong as he leapt into the air to signal the end to a shambolic version of their rat-race rant "Synchronicity II."

"The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock," Copeland reported.

"And so it goes, for song after song," he wrote, with tunes such as "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" and "Don't Stand So Close To Me" reduced to ruin.

"It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we're
The Police so we are a little ahead of schedule," he said.

Fortunately, no fists flew backstage as they did back in the Police's heyday. The threesome fell into each other's arms laughing hysterically, Copeland said.

"Screw it, it's only music. What are you gonna do? But maybe it's time to get out of Vancouver."

The band's next show is set for Saturday in Edmonton.

Reuters