I need another weekend to recover from my weekend.  Lucky for me, I pretty soon have that.  In a way.

Also, I’ve already screwed up at WordPress.  Don’t make me learn new stuff, Xanga.

Save me from old women.  Warning. I might be offensive.  The odds are good.  Although old is not an age, it’s an attitude.  Right? Right.

Yesterday, Spawn and I went out for a treat at Panera (because I had an errand I didn’t want to do and wanted company).  As we’re sitting there this older couple came in.  The guy had that spacey look that men out with their wives sometimes have.  It became very clear within seconds, why he had that look.  Because she was so clearly dissatisfied with the condition of the table she wanted to sit at.  Vocally.  So vocal, that a very patient worker came over to take care of it.  Then she was dissatisfied with the seat.  And dissatisfied with how the seat was wiped.  And that it was wet.  And she just went on and on.  And then she noticed that her husband didn’t get exactly what he ordered and wanted him to complain about it.  He declined.  Apparently she does all the complaining in that union.  Made our little treat a little less enjoyable, I have to say. 

This morning, I had the pleasure of being “in charge” of the prep work for this ridiculous strawberry social at church tomorrow.  I don’t want to be in charge, let’s keep that in mind.  I must have been asleep or drugged when I agreed to this.  I might not have even actually agreed to it.  But there it is.  So there I am, showing up on time with the berries.  The whole crew was there already waiting on me.  I was on time, I didn’t apologize. Anyhow.  This one lady.  Holy crap. She needs to sit. So I bring her a chair.  The chair is too low, so I searched out a stool.  She needs help getting on the stool, so I helped her get on. She’s too far away from the counter, so I pushed her in.  She needs paper towels, so I hand her paper towels.  She needs another paper towel, so I hand her another paper towel.  She got strawberry juice on her pants and was having a cow.  I did not help her clean her pants.  I did not even feel sorry for her.  Because, hello! we’re cleaning strawberries, did you expect to stay clean?  I handed and helped and only rolled my eyes inside my head instead of outside.  Dear old lady. You are not helping. Next time just stay home. I’m just glad I got someone else to transport her. Because being her personal nursemaid used up all my nice.  The other older ladies got their own chairs and didn’t whinge about everything.  They are sweet.

Also, I hate “BBQ” aka sloppy joe.  It’s disgusting. 

In other news, my beloved children are still sleeping. It’s a beautiful thing. Perhaps they will be nice when they get up.

I think I might be able to paint now.  How cool is that.

I have had enough of this day.

I don’t like the end of school.  It frazzles me.  I don’t like people leaving me.  I don’t like finishing projects that I’ve put off. I don’t like cleaning up with any children, let alone the 1st grade crowd.  First graders (frankly, any child) love spray bottles.  They will spray until the cleaning solution is gone.  I nearly choked and died with the fumes today.  First graders get all excited and don’t follow directions so you have to repeat things. Once or twice. Or a million times. First graders suck at filing.  They think it makes sense to put papers all over the floor willy nilly and slip and fall on them.  Cleaning and organizing with first graders (frankly, any child) basically means that you have 100 times the noise and it will take 3 times as long to accomplish what needs to happen.  Of course the real problem is that I’m going to miss them.

I just talked to my mother.  She had shoulder surgery this week and I haven’t been able to see her because I got another freaking summer cold. I was worried about this surgery because she had the other shoulder done last March and very soon afterwards had a mini stroke.  I have it stuck in my mind that the anesthesia is the cause of the stroke.  Don’t spew facts at me, I won’t listen.  I was doubly worried because in one of her x-rays or something before the surgery some doctor of hers claimed there was a spot on her lung.  Well, apparently the doctor looked at it again and now says there’s no spot.  I want to wring that doctor’s neck.  Because maybe you ought to have looked twice or thrice or a bazillion times before you scared the shit out of us.  How can doctors not know what their words do.  I could make a whole long kvetch about dumb shit doctors have said that maybe they should have thought again about saying.  But it looks like I won’t.  Today anyhow.

LLO has already had the conversation with her sister moaning about how Spawn is so much better than her at _____.  Fill in blank with every thing under the sun.  Frankly my eyes just roll out of my head and down the street.  Because I have to wonder why we need to go there.  Again. 

And now Spawn is pissed at me. In the space of 7 hours she has discussed dropping out of two commitments that she voluntarily committed herself to.  Big ones.  Ones that don’t surprise me.  Her excuses would pass muster perhaps with someone with a less finely tuned bullshitometer. However, this mother is keenly aware of the main motivation for ditching stuff that takes effort and time.  And it’s not going to fly.  I don’t care if she goes through her retaliatory litany of my flaws as mother, family member, human bean. Yea, whatevs, baby.

On the flip side. I got a Tootsie Pop at lunch.  Spawn and I went on a mother/daughter voyage (before our unpleasant conversation) that included an errand I didn’t want to do and some laughing. LLO got an award at school for good grades and being just super.  She was pleased.  For a minute or two.  Hmm. Can’t seem to think of any others.  The coffee was fresh. It’s Friday. I have a bag of Twizzlers.

Crap. Just remembered I have another errand for today. 

Oh whatever. I’m blah and I know it. Here’s #1 baby quilt just about done or possibly all the way done depending on if I just run out of time or don’t give a rip anymore. 

I don’t appear to have anything else to say.

Peace out.

I was going to write some words, like I used to.   

On Spawn and showers:
The child is a teenager.  So she takes these epic showers.  We’re talking like 30 minutes- so you know there is no hot water left when she is done.  It’s sometimes questionable whether there will be any water in the county when she is done.  Imagine my frustration as the last showerer.  I’ve been noticing recently that the water pressure, by the time I get to it, is pretty pathetic.  And it’s aggravating because I figured it meant that something annoying and expensive was happening.  Anyhow I suppose it was Friday, I go to get my beloved shower.  As usual I turned on the water, pulled the little bath to shower hickey, and wait for the blessed intervention of hot water into my morning. No water.  I figured I made a mistake. Anything is possible early on a Friday morning with lower than the usual caffeine blood content.  Anyhow. So I turned off the water and tried again.  There was water down there.   There was no water up there.  I kept looking to be sure.  Down. Up.  Definitely water. Definitely not water.  I panicked.  What else could I do?  Spouseman came to the rescue.  And turned the switch I didn’t know existed that makes the water stop and go.  Up there on the shower head.  All kinds of stuff I didn’t know.  Because Spawn turned down the pressure with that shower head stuff to conserve water.  Some (like me) might suggest she take shorter showers.  But no, she turns the pressure down.  So I’m getting drip drip showers for days because she’s saving the Earth.  And I would have never known if she hadn’t completely turned it off.  There was water down there.  There wasn’t water up there.  It was a disturbing situation.  You have no idea.  I haven’t recovered yet.  I may never recover.  Until she moves out and quits screwing with the shower nozzle. 

Here’s the JT you were looking for.

And the latest experiment with acrylics.

Yes. The hand is green.  Yes, it has eyeballs.  I’ve been notified.  It is fully open to your interpretation.  But I have to say that I wasn’t thinking of aliens zapping rays. I’m still not sure if it’s done.  But I think it might be. ?

I’m a little bummed that this long weekend is over.  I had a lot more of nothing to do.

During sharing last week, a kid was talking about a baseball game.  Then he mentioned that his dad took him to the concussion stand.  I giggled.  At the time.  And I just remembered and started giggling again.  Because these people amuse me.

You just never know what is going to come out of their mouths.  I shouldn’t say that, because I have to eat with children and that’s a different issue entirely.  Anyhow, I meant that the things they say can be so entertaining. 

A 2nd grade boy, interesting child that he is, from China (I think) found a bag of well-heated dog deposit on the playground the other day.  He walked it over to his teacher and said “did you lose your animal feces?”  Disgusting, true, but the options for conversation were so different than what was produced.

Then the other day, equally disgusting, sorry, our walking talking band-aid was explaining the word “flesh” to the class. I don’t know why, don’t ask.  Well, his explanation of picking scabs and such was clearly spoken from his vast experience.  I had to smile if only in an “oh. my. god.” kind of way.

Anyhow.  I’m working on baby quilts for teacher’s twins.  This is where we are with that. Pretty darn cute?

The other one which isn’t quite so far along- missing a couple squares yet and pretty sloppy too.

And there we are. Another day disappearing in a flash.

men in pink jumpsuits
wait for falling bananas
because they are there

I really had quite the weekend.  On top of quite the week. But we’re ignoring the week.  Blah blah blah.  I was the purge queen yesterday and a little bit today.  I filled an entire trashcan, a bag for goodwill, and the fire pit with hoo hoo from the basement.  Quite a lot of it projects that have been cluttering my world for possibly a decade.  B’bye stuff.

It was pretty close to bedtime when I started a new painting and LLO wanted to join in.  Here’s hers.

Today was my last day teaching Sunday School this year. And next. And for a long damn time after that.  Because I’ve had enough of that action for a while.  This year was not fun.  And I went to church after to hear my neighbor (who is actually an obnoxious stuck up girl) sing “Hallelujah”.  She did a great job and I told her so.  But I fail to see how this song classifies as Sunday goodness in spite of its title.  But nobody asked my opinion, which is fine.  And I do really like the song anyhow.

I was a little cranky this morning.  Then I had a meeting I didn’t want to go to which turned into a conversation about art history, which was also fine since I sat there crocheting like I always do and let people drone on in their conversation I might have enjoyed in a different situation.

Then I came home and purged some more stuff.  Books I won’t read or reread and boring colors of nail polish I’ve had since I was boring.  Now the dullest color I own is the metallic red that is currently decorating my toesies.

And finally, I decided that I was finishing my painting and just screw everything else.

And when I was done it took me a good long while and an exhausting walk to bring myself back from my trip to the Milky Way.  Because THAT was fun.  (i’m calling it an artistic orgasm)

The ways that today was better than yesterday:

1. more poppies popping

2. played with paint

3. power nap

Tomorrow is another day.  I do say that often enough. It also happens to be raining.

saw somewhere that *p* makes a peace sign.  big lie.

Not my best day ever.

Tried to go to the clinic for some good drugs (since I most certainly have a lovely sinus infection yahoo), but forgot my insurance card and they wouldn’t take me.  Frustrating.  But fine because I bought a paint palette and some itty bitty paint brushes instead- a much longer lasting use of my time and money.

Put creamer in my tea.  Gross.  I do not like my Earl Grey sullied with creamer.  It looked like coffee and I have that whole short attention span thing.

Definitely the worst part was my fitting this afternoon.  I worked a very, very long time on a prom dress doing my least favorite thing, adding panels in to make it bigger, in my least favorite fabric, chiffon (which was invented by Satan himself).  She put it on and it completely fell off. Which was fine, I can take in.  Except that as I was pinning it I discovered that everything in the bodice that I had added needed to be taken out.  Two weeks ago I swear this thing couldn’t zip -had a huge gap of not zipping.  Instead apparently it just needed a little add in the skirt. A simple fix.  This was a big mistake.  Because now I gotta undo and redo and I still haven’t pinned her hem, all of which takes lots of time.  Her dance is on Saturday. 

Spawn’s dance is on Friday.  As I’m bawling my eyeses out, Spawn says to me “you could have avoided this by getting my dress done in a timely manner.”  I admit it. I flipped her the bird.  She deserved it, don’t you think?  And she will also deserve when that particular poorly chosen sentence gets reused at some future time. 

Because I’m a nice mother (and because I don’t want to look at or think about the freaking chiffon nightmare), I’m working on Spawn’s frou frou princess dress.  I believe that I have redeemed myself today.  It is gorgeous. 

I have been insanely busy and I’m tired.  I’m looking forward to Saturday when I can do absolutely nothing. Except try out my new paintbrush.