Sightseeing adventure at the airport.  Yup.  I have come to this.  Because I have an awesome phone (which I found out this weekend has even more totally awesome features- you’ll probably hear more about that later. lucky you), I now take pictures wherever I go.  I happen to think BWI is a gorgeous airport anyhow. 

I love this picture.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t care, I think it’s awesome.

@lanney and I tried to figure out what this is.  Oh, did I mention that I picked her up at the airport?   Whatever it is, it’s cool.

I dig the birds. 

I forget why I took this picture, but I sorta like it with the blurry reflectiony window action.

There you go.  My kids’ first visit to an airport (I think?) and we didn’t have to fly anywhere.

Lots of background noise here since I was with a herd of children at the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum on campus.  This cool thing is on the ceiling.  It had lots of displays, but this was my favorite.  The red dot is Pennsylvania.  I think the dude said each second is 10 million years. I have a very short attention span and worse memory, so that may not be correct information.  Still it’s fun stuff, yes?

a quest.

i have rose of sharon all over the place in my yard. at least i used to.  i’ve seen it blooming in other people’s yards. so now i have rose of sharon blooming envy.  this morning i went on a quest. in my socks and jammies (my poor neighbors)

the first thing i found was the moon

then i found some buds.  yay!

and then i found 3 whole blooms.  and i was happy.

and now i get on with my day.

Is it really only Tuesday?  I feel like this week has already lasted about a month.  I tried to write something but I’m worn out.  I have nothing left. So you get a report or maybe a list.  Whatever falls out of my head.

Summer reading camp is kinda hellish.  The guidelines are fuzzy.  I personally have no problem flying by the seat of my pants in a summer camp- do that all the time.  But when I have to fly with two other people and I have people watching me fly, it’s a different situation.  If I just had to make sure the kids had fun or learned something, no problemo.  The good news is one of the young chickies said her out of state tuition for this adventure was $7000.  I’m pretty darn grateful that I’m not paying anything like that. (or I couldn’t do it.  the end.)  Incidentally, since several of the younguns were talking this morning about how they hadn’t paid their tuition yet, I’m all the more stunned, flabbergasted and delighted that the prof recommended me for a gift thing.  At the time, I thought I was the only one who hadn’t paid yet and that’s why I got the scholarship thing.  Anyhow. I’m blathering.  It’s not fun yet.  Bottom line.  Next week, there’s clay.  I love clay.  So maybe there’s hope.  And if there isn’t clay next week, there’s at least paint, I think.  I’m ok with paint too.

I had a most excellent lunch meeting with my crazy friend today.  She had genius idea for our joint adventure.  Genius.  And I’m completely stoked for that. (A month away, so I shall reserve some stokage for later.)  And I talked to the research lady again today and she was more positive that I could get the permissions I need to use that as the study for the enormous freaking paper I have to write by October so I can graduate, hallelujah.  However, she made it pretty darn clear I needed to get my butt in gear to get the approval and I can’t read the freaking paperwork right now.  It looks like hieroglyphics at this point (because me brain is toast.)  Not sure what good it does me that there’s a great idea out there and still a possibility of it being possible (see how tired I am?) if I can’t possibly get the idea on paper.  In any case, THAT camp is going to be fun. (and I get paid for teaching it.)  And my crazy friend gave me a ride home, which was lovely.

Both of my children are speaking to me today.  Or were.  That was nice.  They were both angry with me yesterday, especially Spawn who didn’t speak to me for somewhere close to 24 hours.  I should be glad because the child has been cranky.  However, I was not.  I do not have to worry about this problem with LLO.  I do not think she could go without speaking for 24 minutes, let alone hours.

The My Little Pony obsession has been replaced by DVD’s of Remington Steele.  I think I’m ok with that.  Even though it may not be appropriate, I do not care.  The theme song to Remington Steele does not make me want to go postal. 

I’m very pleased that I have only one thing to do tomorrow.  At least I think that’s true.  I’m going to go with that plan.  Whatever I miss will be better in the long run anyhow.

My Twizzlers are gone.  This is bad. 

I put myself to sleep.  If I don’t have something exciting to say later this week, I’ll make something up. 

BIG week in the land of sunshine.

First week of working with a group.  I’m not so good with teamwork.  Ever notice that the time it takes to plan something is exponentially related to how many people are involved in the planning?  Anyhow enough complaining about that.  (for now) We get to meet our kids today. 

Two swim meets this week.  After none last week.  I gotta remember to make cookies tomorrow afternoon.

hmm.  Also have a lunch date tomorrow afternoon.  Maybe I’d better make the cookies today. Lunch date is with a crazy friend.  We’re going to talk about our Author/Illustrator camp.  How cool is that?  Especially since she’s been thinking about it. (I have not.)

Arts Fest is this week.  For the first time in 7 years, Spawn isn’t involved in Kids’ Day.  I think I’m glad about this.

We’re taking a road trip.  Heading to our nation’s museum.  We have to figure out how to get all the museums we want to see jammed into one day.  Ha.

And then Sunday wraps up with

who we go to see every year.  Outside on the lawn at Old Main. We have to walk past the streudel booth to get to.  (ok, we don’t walk past it.)

Now you are fully apprised of my every happening.

As an extra added bonus, you get this fine photo of Mountain Laurel that I snapped last weekend.

Sometimes I have the emotional maturity of a 12 year old.

I have this good old ex-friend who is just kinda in my face.  Not that I ever see her up close.  But she is friends with a lot of the same people I’m friends with (or used to be).  She is all the freak over Facebook spouting her drivel, nonsense and self-absorbed woe is me bad attitude.  And I just occasionally would like to make some snarky comment or smack the shit out of her.

Not that I wanna be spouting the 4 part harmony because it’s ugly.  We became kinda close friends a while back when we had similar social needs.  She infiltrated herself into a situation I was dealing with that I shouldn’t have been in in the first place but I can assure you she was happy to be in the middle egging it on.  And when the shit hit the fan on that she jumped so fast out of the middle and firmly on the side of the other team that my head spun.  And whatever. Social user that she is, I get that the other team had more to offer.  And she said words like “friendships ebb” and I was awfully darn hurt.  And then she started looking through me and saying hurtful things (not to me, because she stopped speaking TO me a very long time ago) in my presence.  So I stopped hanging out with people I knew she hung out with, because who needs that stuff.  If those other people wondered why, they never asked. 

After she defriended me on Facebook (GASP!), I realized that I didn’t miss her one bit.  That I really didn’t like her.  That she is the most negative person I have ever met.  That she’s fake and two-faced and very, very ugly. (I maintain that one of the reasons that she tossed me to the curb is that I recognized just how very unhappy she is.  She’s a miserable human being.) Anyhow good riddance to bad rubbish.  Not just sour grapes.  Pretty sure.

But all these people don’t seem to recognize this.  So she is everywhere.  I just want to shout “Bitch!”  And I see her on the stage (she’s in community theater as is practically everyone I know) and I want to stick my tongue out at her.  And tell her that she sucks- because she does.  I just want to say rude things.  And when other friends who know the score tell me things she’s said or done and how much it pissed someone off, I get a big smile on my face.  Because I am 12.

I don’t want to be 12 anymore.  I want to be a grown-up.

I’ve been in rant mode for days now.  I’m going to decide not to be frustrated/annoyed/angry about one of my rant issues.  I can’t think or talk about it anymore.  I need to be done.  I’ve discovered that I’m not exactly rational about it anymore.  I can’t see other sides or points of view and so I need to be done with it.  Whew. Thank goodness.

I could easily start another rant subject because some people appear to be completely off their nut.  But I can’t do anything about that either, and so I think I’ll just skip that as well.

And talk instead of completely unimportant things.  I took Spawn to Barnes and Noble today.  Mostly because I wanted just a few minutes in comfortable air conditioning and I wanted an overpriced Starbucks deliciousness.  I took her along because.. I have no idea.  Probably because she has become antisocial or the fact that I haven’t spoken with her in days (except for yesterday and that doesn’t count because she was cranky too). Or maybe I wanted to buy her an overpriced Starbucks deliciousness and her love.  In any case, I was on a quest for a book I don’t have time to read for a book discussion I don’t have the brain power for.  I decided to look for it on my very own, since I actually know where the Psychology department is in my B & N.  Unfortunately, there is a very comfy chair right by those books.  Uncomfortably close to those books.  Like if a person is sitting in the chair, it is awkward to look in that department.  And if the person sitting in that chair suddenly gets a phone call… it’s pretty much impossible to avoid eavesdropping because she’s practically talking directly into the shopper’s ear.  I just wanted to find my book and get the heck out of there.  But no, all I can concentrate on is how she wouldn’t trust the convicts who are applying to work with autistic children in the middle of nowhere.  I do not want to know this.  Why do I have to know this???  Anyhow so I finally found my book and might have exclaimed something out loud.  Then went in search of Spawn who is a prize winning dawdler.  I remembered why I don’t take her shopping with me.  It’s not good for me to have extra time at the book store and I’m an impatient shopper anyhow.  (hurry up, kid so I can get my overpriced Starbucks deliciousness.)  Anyhow, so you can clearly see that the following rant is her fault.

I happened to run across this book.

This book was probably the best book I read last year.  (I think it was last year.  In any case, it was an excellent book.)  And I saw a bunch of other books by Markus Zuzak and I kinda pondered the idea of trying out another one.  (again, I should not have extra time in the book store)  So I picked up this book.

And it sounded pretty interesting.  Now I think I over-reacted.  Because the reason I decided not to get it was that I looked at those two covers in Barnes and Noble and thought that the newer book cover was very similar to The Book Thief.  (It doesn’t seem quite so similar now. Sigh.)  This bothered me because it seems to me the only reason to have a similar cover on a book is to ride on the success of the previous book.  The other book by this author had a completely different style of cover.  Oh well. I didn’t buy it.  Maybe it’s wonderful as well and I’ve kept this young man from making his fortune. 

And speaking of fortune, on the opposite aisle was a book I’ve been eyeballing for a while.  This one.

Jodi Picoult is one of my favorite authors.  I wondered why she was collaborating.  Turns out Samantha Van Leer is her daughter.  Also turns out that Spawn thought this book sounded pretty great.  I’m perfectly happy to spend too much on a book for her.  So we snagged it.  (Now we’re negotiating who gets to read it first, but since we both are in the middle of other things, we’ve both been very polite about it.  Unlike the last time we shared a book- Twilight.  )  In any case, we had a discussion about this cover too.  Spawn wanted to know why Jodi Picoult’s name is so much larger than the title of the book.  We had a lovely chitchat about what sells and who has power and an author like that could probably tell her publisher than her daughter’s name needs to be pretty big as well even though she is probably not a big name in writing.

Then we did the quiz of Picoult’s other books in which she named the book and I had to identify something about the plot.  I did pretty good for an old lady. 

And then she wanted to tell me all about some show on tv and my brain shut down.

Rant mode.  It’s not good.

By the way, I chose not to order the frothy chocolate cookie concoction that god himself would come down from heaven to get and instead got an iced tea which was delightful the last time i got it, but not so much today.  Probably because I said sweetened and she didn’t hear that.  I guess.  It was dullsville.  Next time I’m going for the cookies.

This was one of the early ones.  The sky is still blue.  I do so like to play with my phone.  The guy right behind us was snapping photos like crazy.  I was satisfied to just catch a few.  My timing was pretty bad most of the time.  Sigh.

Negative.  I think it’s wild.

I think I have the only child in the US who can’t focus on fireworks.  Then she says the whole walk to the car how this was the BEST 4TH OF JULY EVER.  When I go missing, it will be because LLO has sent me to the funny farm.

Anyhow. The idea of posting fireworkies made a lot of sense before I got distracted reading all those fun posts tonight.

the sun streams into my window
I’m ready- ready to greet
the day full of promise and
to enjoy the kiss of the sun.
yet
I already miss the night.
for in the night my eyes are closed
my heart free and open.
you come to me with your touch
and I know what you are thinking
and I feel what you are feeling
and it seems that there is no distance
between reality and dreams.
in the day the distance is as stark
as the sun burning at already dry grass.

bluemooncat enormousthing #30.  aubade

in other news, i think i burned my retinas taking that picture.  also, i’m going to have my first ever xanga meet.  and i’m only completely excited about it.  third, have you ever noticed that what you think you are going to write is so often not what you actually write?  what is up with that? fourth, happy that.  i have a hundred and one things to do today and can’t decide which ones to do first.

it’s so annoying when i forget to title.

Rant alert.

I did my undergrad at Penn State.  I live here.  I’m doing a grad at Penn State.  And to a point I was Penn State Proud.  I think I went to exactly one Penn State game.  (football, I mean.  That goes without saying really because what is Penn State except for football? ha)  When people say “We are…”, I might say “Penn State”, but it’s not a guarantee.  But I can assure you I have a different answer right now. 

Because I spent 1 1/2 hours of my life this afternoon listening to a presentation about mandatory child abuse reporting (as part of my grad school deal this summer).  One and half hours of my life that I can’t get back.  Yes, it was important info.  But it was unpleasant.  I’ve been a mandatory reporter for many, many years because of jobs and volunteer work.  I never had to sit through a presentation like that.  And I dislike the title “mandatory” anyhow.  Call me naive, and it’s probably true, but I’d like to think that people in education would want to do what’s best for children without it being “mandatory.”  But anyhow the point is that I had to listen, watch, participate, endure an unpleasant conversation (on stuff I know but don’t want to think about much) so that I could get a badge that I have to wear to work with kids for the next 4 weeks. 

This badge:

I absolutely agree with protecting children.  I agree with trainings that help us protect children.  But that badge needs to say, “We are…”  “galled” to be Penn State.  Where the (insert appropriate yet inappropriate word) was this badge and training when that (insert another appropriate yet inappropriate word) was coaching football.

It’s like my shadow is saying “ok” there.  It’s not, boys and girls.

On the other hand, my happy hibiscus is happy.

And I like to see the symbolism there of the happy children who are protected now.  The buds of the future children who are protected.  I don’t like to see the sad, wilted blooms of the children who were failed.

End of rant.