Status Report & Follow-up

Status on knitting: I've finished socks number 4 and 5 (socks nos 3 & 4 shown). Number five was the toe cover for AM's new cast. It looks a lot like a preemy cap found in a NICU. Silly me, I forgot to photograph it before I sent it off for delivery.

I want to get started on the socks for Christmas presents so I don't run out of steam on this knitting frenzy, but I don't know how big to make them given the recipients have size 13 boats for feet. So, I could start on another pair for myself out of this new yarn that I bought (see above, pink for me, brown for gift) or wait to get foot measurements and run the risk of running out of steam with the socks. Or, I could go back to my sweater I had been working on, or the pair of hibiscus-colored corn fiber socks waiting for my attention and forget about the Christmas stockings altogether. Or I could work on the challenge quilt. Or I could sew on Girl Scout badges.

Status on Kitchen Remodeling: nothing new to report, still waiting for a space in the painter's schedule. He's going to rebuild the wall around the fridge so it fits better and so I'll be able to open and close everything nearby, like drawers and doors. The living room still looks like a yard sale. The longer I wait to move stuff back into the kitchen, the more evident it becomes: which things I need and use and which things I can get rid of. But therein lies the problem, I can't wait that long to finish the living room.

So now we come to that portion of our show where you get to vote via comment.

1. What should I work on next? (knitting, quilting, or sewing, etc.)
2. Do you want to see another memory game photo taken of the left-overs in the livingroom?

Not counting the Hibiscus socks I'm making for myself, I've finished 3 socks in the last week and have 6" of the cuff done on number 4, the second of the pair for Fern. Hers are shades of tweedy green. I make a lot of progress knitting during our weekly staff meeting, it tends to be boring when the boys are talking systems stuff so I knit to stay awake. When we get around to the stuff I work I'm ready to spout off the status of my assignments. (When I have client meetings, I leave the yarn at my desk, in case you were wondering.)

I finally got some clients for my home business last night. A fellow Girl Scout mom brought two vests to me for my sewing service for her daughters and a check for $50. (Yay!) She also brought large bags of badges to sew on, of course, it'd be silly not to, but it's several years worth! For each daughter! I'm not complaining, I like to have paid work to do, but this is seriously going to cut into my knitting time.

My husband called home on Saturday from Colorado, evidently having read my last blog entry, "Did she really say that?" (Referring to the last bit.) I think he thinks my readers will think he does nothing while I'm gone. But in reality, my girl just misses me and there is nothing to worry about. I've gone many days without touching the dishes or laundry. And she'll start a load of her own clothes.

Husband got away to Denver for the weekend to hang with some high school buddies and play golf. It was pretty uneventful while he was gone. Well, there were plenty of events, but none bad.
The girl had a sleep-over Friday, the boy went to an open house at the community center.


I took myself out to the new restaurant in town for supper. Saturday, the boy went to Swim-n-Gym and the girl had practice at church for Youth Sunday. Which went well, by the way. She did the opening announcements and the call to worship. The boy handed out bulletins.


He did fine, but there were a lot of kids at the doors too. I was secretly disappointed he didn't get to shine more than he did. Saturday afternoon was the neighborhood block party and Sunday afternoon I vacuumed the garage.

Somewhere in the mix I bought another gallon of whole milk with the hopes of making another batch of cheese, but kept myself busy knitting instead.



I finished the regular sized socks for AM and I'll make a cast sock for her when she gets her new cast tomorrow. My ADD kicked in again and I found myself thinking I could make more pairs of socks for Christmas presents since they work up so quickly. Let's just see how many pairs I can actually get done before I get bored.



I also got my hand-dyed fabrics rinsed out, washed and dried and I've been trying to work out a pattern for the challenge quilt to use them. I have six weeks to get the quilt done.

Socks. Quilt. Quilt. Socks. Kids. Kitchen. Laundry. Socks. Quilt.

sheesh.

I promised more stories about my weekend in Ft Lauderdale, so I'll take time to backtrack from my current day-to-day and recall them.

After I left the Holiday Inn Express (you know, you get a lot of services there that other place charge for, like free local calls and free breakfast) I headed down to Miami Lakes and Don Shula's Hotel and Golf Club. My husband found a weekend package there for me: two nights lodging, three rounds of golf, $50 voucher for Shula's Steak House and $20 voucher for Shula's2 all for about $260. I just had to pay the cart fees for golf. I booked the package anyway after I found out the course was closed on Mondays in September for maintenance which meant only two rounds of golf.



My first round of golf was pleasant. I played by myself, which I like, no one to get exasperated with my game. The front nine was nice, the back nine was wet and soggy, had to keep the cart on the path. The course was more difficult than my "home course" so my scores were higher than at home. I saw lots of critters, even iguanas. Did you know they swim?

Then I checked into my room and got the day's humid golf game off my body. Next stop: cash in my $50 voucher for dinner.

Pros and cons of printing your menu on a football: it's fun and different for sure, but what about storage? a whole pile of footballs take a lot more space than the flat folder kind of menu. The walls around the entrance to the restaurant are lined with plaques listing members of the 48oz club, those hungry folks consuming 3 pounds of steak in one sitting. Current price: $85. yikes. I opted for the petite filet, only 8oz. Only $35. Good steak. Very beautiful space, dark woods and fireplace but the walls are lined with pictures of football. I guess I'd be more enthralled if I knew who Don Shula is.

Sunday I woke up to more rain, ate breakfast with my $20 voucher, and it finally cleared up enough to play my second round of golf around 2:00, again by myself. This time I played the front 9 twice. If you take all my best scores from the front it's a 56, but in reality they were 64, 64, & 62 (and another 62 from the back 9 on Saturday.)

If I'm going to travel a lot with golf clubs, I need a travel cover with wheels, those dern things are heavy! I got checked in to the airport without any problems, found my gate and settled in. After a while I got thirsty, asked a fellow passenger to keep an eye on my bag and headed off for a bottle of water. When I came back there was a young guy sitting in the seat next to mine. I plopped back in my seat and resumed my knitting.
"Do you sew much?" This is knitting, you moron.
"Yes, I'm making a sweater."
"What's it gonna look like?"
I pull out the pattern and show him.
The conversation goes on for a while. He's probably under 30, wears his cap backwards and never takes his sunglasses off even though it's dark out. I didn't look for heavy gold chains, but wouldn't be surprised if there some under his over-sized gangsta shirt. He tells me about clubbing in South Beach for the weekend. I have strain to understand his mumbles over the din of travelers and then:
"You go clubbin' in DC?"
"No."
"How old are you, about 35?" Quite the "playa," this guy.
"No, but thank you."
And later still he leans in close to my ear. I can smell his last smoke was not a legal variety.
"If I give you my number, will you call me?"
"No. I'm happy with my husband."
"Tell your husband I can take his place."

Seeing that I was a lost cause, this guy proceeded to hit on and fail with at least 4 or 5 other women over the course of the evening, even walking out of the terminal with one chick before coming back to baggage claim empty-armed. Poor guy.

Tuesday morning when Fern got up she was mad. "Don't abandon me like that again. No one did the laundry, no one did the dishes."

Obviously I wasn't gone long enough.

Knitting with ADD

This is what happens when you have a hobby and ADD. (Compare this with last Thursday's picture.) As with my quilting, I start lots of projects and bounce around between them a lot before I finish anything. The second sock of the red pair is two inches along the length of the foot out of six inches total before I start to work the toe. The sweater body is about seven inches done out of about 14. And now I've started the new pair of socks. The cuff is almost done and in a few more rows I'll start to work the ankle and heel. I could write a litany of unfinished quilting projects, too. Remember the quilt for Fern I wanted to finish in June. Still not done. That's the tip of the iceberg.

I had been seeing a psychiatrist for my ADD, but she left that practice, which didn't take my insurance any more so I was paying out of pocket, and I never went in to see her replacement, nor did I follow through with a new doctor referral from my primary care doctor. So, I've been off my meds for a while now, maybe two years, I've lost track. And my primary care doctor won't prescribe the psych drugs.

I should probably think about going back on the meds. Trying to think without them is sometimes like waiting for a sticky bicycle chain to engage when you're shifting gears. It takes a while for the message to click through, to comprehend it, form a reply, and actually speak the reply. I lose my train of thought easily. I often grasp for words that were just on the tip of my brain. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, I can picture the process in my head, the gears clicking, but I can't get the words out in a timely manner. I know it irritates the people around me and without meds conversations can be hard. Are hard. Maybe that's why for any given conversation with my friends, I do about 80-85% listening and only 15-20% of the talking.

It's 7:00 am I'm sitting here at the laptop in the TV room, home finally, after getting in late last night (this morning) after a 2 hour delay flying home from Ft. Lauderdale. I'm not munching on any breakfast (yet) and I need to wake up the kids to get their day going.

(It's 4:05 pm now when I add more to this post.) OK, I'm obviously back from my trip south to rain country, USA. It rained on and off so much yesterday I didn't even try to get a round of golf in. I ended up trying out some drivers at a golf shop and hit the equivalent of an extra large bucket of balls under the swing monitor. When I hit the ball well it was going about 140-150 yards and my swing speed was over 60 mph. (slow, compared to the pros, but I'm not Tiger.) I don't normally hit the driver in my bag that well at all. When I hit it poorly in the monitor, well, um,lets just say I didn't memorize those stats. I could definitely see differences in the results of each driver after hitting 30 or more balls with each. I had fun, even though I was tired after a while. I probably ingrained a bad swing pattern into muscle memory. Oh well. I hope I'll get to try out my new club soon.

Then I hung out at a yarn shop for a couple hours and knit and chatted with the wonderful women there. I showed off my socks (they were impressed) and bought yarn for a toe cover for AM whose toes are getting cold sticking out of that cast.

Then I headed back up to the airport for my flight home. Instead of dragging this post on forever, I'll post the rest of my adventures tomorrow.



Ft Lauderdale airport at sunset.

I'm sitting in the lobby of a Holiday Inn Express in Ft. Lauderdale, munching on my free breakfast. My husband found an incredible fare on Spirit Air and here I am. By myself. It's kinda cool, and a bit scary traveling alone. I've got a tee time later this afternoon and tomorrow at 2:00 at a golf resort (I'll be checking in there later today, too). I've been told it rains every afternoon so maybe I'll try to move tomorrow's tee time up in the day.

The flight down yesterday was two and a half hours and of course I checked in early like a good traveler, so I knit (knitted?) a lot. I got the heel done on the sock and now I'm working down the foot. I also got another inch or two done on the sweater.

The hotel is a block away from many restaurants so I walked over to a Thai place for dinner. There was lightening in the distance, but it wasn't raining. Right as I paid my check the skies opened up and poured. And poured. I sat on the bench outside the restaurant (talking to my mom on my cell) and waited. The waiter from the dinner came out several times and walked people to their cars with umbrellas and offered to take me to mine, but I told him I walked over from the hotel. Ten more minutes go by still pouring and he comes out again. On his way back in he offers me the umbrella. Yay! Now I just have to get it back to them. Maybe I should drive it over there instead of walking.

Art & Craft

Art

Common Buckeye Butterfly

Craft

The first sock is finished, the second sock is started. I found this pattern and fell in love with it, then found the perfect yarn for it. So I had to order some.
From England.
The price was good, so why not, right?
I'll just finish the second sock and maybe the yarn will have arrived by then and I can start on my sweater.
Ha! My package came from across the pond on Monday, less than a week after I ordered it and you can see my priorities:



I've got about 3" of the sweater done and maybe 3 rows of the sock done since Tuesday. Oh well. Well, maybe not even 5 rows, I've got to rip back several rows because I have to fix an error I can't fix now on the fly. Grrr.

I've posted before about our new office building and moving out of the old one. Today is the official ceremony to demolish it. The old one, not the new one, although given the problems here, it wouldn't be such a bad idea. The ceremony started at 10:00 and at 10:40 nothing has happened, so I'm back at my desk. I didn't go out for it, but went to watch from windows down the hall where the view is pretty good. But I had no idea what's going on because nothing is happening that we can see, so I called a colleague who went to watch from the adjacent garage and he can't tell what's going on, either. I guess you can hear the speeches if you are closer.
—
Finally, an hour later, they sent Stanley the Steamshovel into the side of FOB 3, wing 7 room 2755.



The exterior of this new building is still under construction, landscaping and such. This week they are pouring sidewalks over what had been for the last year a field of mud for what we can only guess to be a park-like green space. I so want to carve my initials into the wet cement every time I look out the window.




I took video with my digital camera, but, silly me, I take a LOT of vertical photos, so I naturally took the video in vertical mode, except now what you see is sideways. Enjoy it anyway, it's my first attempt at posting video, next time I'll keep it horizontal.

Added at 1:15: After an hour and a half, this video has still not finished uploading. I'm canceling and either will try later or not, we'll see.
Added at 3:25: I finally got a message blogger couldn't upload my video. drat.

Ever have one of those days where you're standing in yoga class in the triangle position after having done your warm-ups in the table position and moved on to the seated spinal twist and hero (my favorites) and your feet are stretched out pretty wide and you hate this position because it hurts your feet and you're facing the folks across the room facing you and your arms are up, stretching, reaching, and you realize the woman across the room in looking in your direction but you continue to gaze at your own spot on the wall and then you start wondering what she is looking at?, and ohmigosh, when was the last time I shaved, think, think, not this morning, not yesterday, oh and I can't very well check right then and there, can I?
Yeah, that was my Friday in Yoga at lunch at the gym at work.


Oh, and on a creative note, here are my batch of hand-dyed fabric I did when I had my quilting bee over on Tuesday. It's a set of fuchsia to black. Today I did a dark to light set of one of those middle purple colors. I'll post a picture of those when I have time to rinse them out, hopefully sometime this week.

I have several things about autism rolling around in my head, not quite fully formed, but I wanted to post about this before I forget.

Last night Husband and I were lying in bed trying to fall asleep. Kevin is in the adjacent bathroom taking a long time with his evening routine. So I try to urge him on towards finishing.

I holler into the bathroom:
"Kevin, time to get in bed."
"No, Mommy"
"Do you want to go to the circus on Friday?" Yes, we bribe our son to persuade him to do as we desire. Don't you?
"Yes"
"It's time to go to bed."
"No, Mommy."
"What are you doing?"
"Washing. Washing. I am washing yourself."

He is trying so hard to use pronouns. A couple days ago the answer would have been just "Washing." Now he has two pronouns in one sentence, not quite the correct one, but still! We both were amazed and pleased with his new accomplishments in speech. It's great to see new developments, sometimes they get lost among the everyday.

And the Winner is...

I just got back from the fairgrounds to pick up my quilts. I didn't get to so see any of the exhibits over the weekend so I have no idea about the quality of the other quilts entered. Generally, if you're an accomplished quilter, you enter your stuff in juried shows or the state fair, the county fair is kinda like playing double A ball. I still enjoy it, and right now, it's a great place for me. If I ever have time and desire to get lots better, then I'll raise my standards. Now, quilting is a hobby and so is the county fair.

So, based on the comment cards for my pieces from the judge(s) and the ribbons attached, I can assume I've done OK this year. I entered 3 quilts, here's what was written:


It looks like the mariner's compass quilt was considered for best of show by the "Did well in final competition" comment. :)

 

Tonight is quilt bee night. We're meeting at my house this month and we're hand dyeing fabric. I'm looking forward to it. I have almost nothing ready, though. I got my box of dye out and have two jugs ready for dye activator solution, but the solution is not made and I don't have the family room vacuumed and I don't have my muslin washed. I did get the kitchen mostly cleaned up this morning, so that's something. I plan on dyeing some fabric for this year's guild challenge so I will be aiming for magentas and blacks. I'll post pictures when it's rinsed out.

 

The first sock of the pair I'm working on is coming along. I work a couple rounds in the morning at work while my machine is booting up. They have so much security stuff loaded on our PC's and networks, it can take up to 15 minutes just to log in to where you can start to work. You can't go anywhere because you still need to key in passwords, so I knit. Ta-da:

Working on my sewing badge....

I have officially started my business. It's a small business I run out of a plastic Sterlite tote box which sits on my front porch.

Fern's been a Girl Scout for several years now and I'm a perfectionist when it comes to getting her badges on her vest or sash in the correct place. It's gotta be perfect. It would drive me absolutely nuts to see other girls' vests with the badges all caddywumpus and in the completely wrong place. I never said anything to the other parents, but, boy, I wanted to. I've even held myself back from ripping the offending vest off the poor child.

Then, sometime ago, AM asked me to sew Suzy's badges on her Brownie vest and gave me $20 to do it. So, I got to thinking: they don't teach Home-Ec anymore, I bet a lot of parents don't know their way around a sewing machine, and those plastic-backed patches are murder on your fingers to sew through by hand, so they'd need help, too.

So I made up a flier and emailed it to some troop leaders and parents and put my drop-off box on my porch and I'm ready. I'm charging $1 per badge or $25 per year. It's the start of a school year, the troops are forming, money should just start rolling in now!

Wish me luck

I drove 3 of my quilts over to the fairgrounds yesterday, our county fair is this weekend. Earlier on in my married life I entered a lot of things, in a lot of classes, sewing, gardening, photography, even won a ribbon for relish. I entered every year. Then I went cold and went a couple years with no real "meaty" entries, just some cuttings for the horticulture division.

So I stripped off the quilt on my bed, took the Autism quilt off Kevin's wall, and took the mariner's compass quilt off my husband's office wall and trotted them in to the entry table. I'm not sure what to expect, I hope they fare well, ribbons even, but you never know what you'll be up against. I like showing off, it's fun, even better when the ribbon is blue or purple. But, on the other hand, if everyone in my quilt guild had an entry, I'd have no hope, a lot of talent there. I'm humbled looking at some of their work!

I'll post pictures and results next week.

In the mean time, I have no exciting news about the kitchen or homwork or any other mundane aspects of my life. But there is a new episode of Top Chef on in 10 minutes.

Spice Cabinet (Quiz of the Day)

One shelf of the spice cabinet before I put it back in the new kitchen.
Click to enlarge and study this picture for 30 seconds. Then go to the comments and answer the questions. Have fun!

And the winner is...

A few days ago I posted a photo and a memory game-type challenge. Props to Mark for coming closest by identifying the two thermometers which didn't belong in the kitchen, a lab thermometer —useful for various science fair projects— and an aquarium thermometer, I was wondering where that went....

I'm still putting stuff back in the new kitchen, this evening it was a bin of food from the dry-goods cabinet. I have a whole row of boxes of stuff to get rid of because the average "best by" date is January 2006. Tomorrow: the spice cabinet.

I'd like to have a kitchen warming party when it's done but that might be a while because my painter is booked until November unless it rains when he has outside jobs scheduled, then he can fit us in. At least it's a functional kitchen without paint, I just don't have a functional livingroom, it still looks like a yard sale in there.

Sheesh.

Compilation of Failures

Yesterday is over. Thank goodness.

I volunteered to coordinate my office picnic, sorry, summer off-site staff development meeting. Two years ago I planned it, it went well, but decided to hand over the reins to someone else. It never got off the ground.

My boss asked me to coordinate the outing again this year and I agreed. One reason for me to do it is because I am a member of a pool club which has a nice place for a group gathering.

In the beginning I polled office mates as to whether they'd like a planned menu or potluck. The results were split. I took the diplomatic approach, those who wanted to bring potluck could and the rest could just give me $5 each and I'd purchase extra food for the group. Good plan, yes?

The pool club opens at 11:00 am in the summer and noon when school is in session, so the plan was to have everyone start arriving around noon and we'll start the grills at 12:30. Instead of going into the office, I stayed home bought and prepared the food from the monetary contributions. I bought brownie mix, chicken to grill, chicken to make my curried chicken salad, cucumbers, and a gallon of milk to make another batch of mozzarella to go with the tomatoes someone else was bringing.

The batch of cheese completely failed, didn't come together at all, the curds never formed solidly enough to create the cheese. I think it was too hot when I put the rennet in.

I ran out of my favorite curry powder for the chicken salad. My neighbor was visiting and ran to the store to get some for me, thank you.

Do you need anything else while I'm there? "No, thanks, I think I have everything." Out the door and down the driveway and I remember I need tablecloths for the picnic tables. Darn, now I have to make another stop on the way to the pool.

I arrive at the pool at 5 till 12:00 and the gates are still closed so I run over to the grocery first. I'm back at 10 after 12:00 and the parking lot is still empty, whew, nobody is there yet. and the gates are still locked. Uh oh. The club opens at 1:00 pm when school is in session, not noon. D'oh!

On the bright side, no one showed up until about 25 minutes till 1 and I remembered the printout of the guest list to give the gate guard and remembered to bring the grill tools.

Forgot to have someone bring napkins with other paper goods, and forgot to write down the person bringing hamburgers so I forgot burgers would be on the menu.

Then there's the whole part when I left the picnic —and Kevin—to pick up Daughter so she can attend, but her bus was late, thus I abandoned my guests for much longer than intended. And most were gone when I got back. Argh.

I hope everyone had a good time despite my oversights and failures.

Can't wait till next year!

Right now I'm on the brink of a full blown headache, it's waxing and waning at the moment. I might have to search out a coke for relief. I hate having a headache.

 

Ever since I bought the yarn in Minneapolis a couple weeks ago, I've been on the fence as to where my creativity is taking me. I hadn't planned on going back to knitting, and I have plenty of quilting projects that need my attention. Daughter still wants her quilt finished, all I have to do is quilt the border and bind it off, and I have a John Flynn laser cut Storm At Sea kit I've been working on since March. The blocks are in a sewing-order stack ready to go. Sheesh. Then there's the next bee meeting. It'll be at my house, we're dyeing fabrics. I love that, it's so much fun to play with color. And I really like sharing fabric dyeing with others.

But the knitting. I've made at least 4 attempts at starting a sock, different pattern, different needles, with the new yarn. It's be knitted, ripped and rewound so many times, it's splitting very easily when I work with it. And I want to keep going on this project, I'm not to the exasperation point yet.

So on one side of the fence, I have a cool new quilting bee with cool new bee friends and on the other side I have cool new yarn and a cool new sock pattern book and I just ordered two new sets of birch double point sock needles because I can't find my others.



Maybe I just need to get off the fence and mow the grass.
 

Thanks to me all the local fire trucks and some from the next town over were parked in front of the grocery store last night.


You're thinking, I know she's klutzy, but the fire department?

Daughter and I rounded the corner down the milk aisle and we saw a blue-white light flickering on the lighting power cord for one of the shelves. So I went down to check-out and told them they had a fire back there. A friend from church was also shopping so we chatted about our respective kitchen renovations, picked our selections, speculated whether the boys would walk over from the fire station which is across the street from the grocery, or arrive with lights and sirens.

By the time we were finished shopping and all paid up there were at least 4 trucks outside, lights flashing. But nobody inside was really in a panic, the calm in the store didn't balance out with glaring scene outside. It was kind of aerie.

Measuring Spoons, Thermometers and Paintbrushes

I've been slowly getting the yardsale in my living room (contents of the old kitchen) back into the new cabinets. This morning I started on the utility drawer next to the stove. I haven't dug back in the depths of that pit since Clinton was in office. Beyond the spatulas and basters and the ice cream scoops I collected all the measuring spoons, thermometers and paintbrushes (what?) for a picture.



Click to enlarge and study this picture for 30 seconds then go to the comments and play along.

Meet My Brother

My little brother, sorry, younger brother is the taller of the two, about 6' 7" and today is his birthday. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of him when we got together earlier this month to show him off properly. He is heavily involved in a church-based youth soccer league and loves it, he really likes working with the kids and seeing their skills improve.

Many years ago he married a woman who shares my first name so her married name is the same as my maiden name. I like my sister-in-law so it's OK, but you can imagine the confusion it causes. Like the time my dad never called me to tell me my Grandma was ill. Mom: Did you call Anne? Dad: Yes. Actually she had gotten sick in October and at Thanksgiving I was told "...we won't be going to the beach at Christmas if Grandmother doesn't get better..." Huh? What are you talking about? Boy, was I mad.

Anyway, this is not supposed to be about my parents, it's to wish Happy Birthday, Little Brother! I love you, have a good day.

I'm mourning the loss of Target for a source of clothing for my 14 year old son. He keeps growing and is now about 5'8" (taller'n me!) so he'd wear a size 18 or 30" inseam pants. Except he's the approximate diameter Nicole Richie, so his waist would be about a double slim or 26 inches. The boys' section in Target goes to size 16 and the men's department starts at 28x30.

JC Penny's has sizes 18 and 20 in boys with slim and adjustable waists so I just have to adjust my thinking and put Penny's on my radar. But they are not convenient to get to. Argh. What do you do when a source for something dries up?

Kitchen Renovation Week 5

It's getting there. The painters will come in next week. You can see the seams on the back splash tile and they are wider than I'd like in places. And I selected off-white grout, so, of course, the mismatched seams stand out. Argh. I'm going to try to live with it for a while and go with my back-up plan if I can't stand it. That would be to grout over the existing "Silk" with "Cinnamon," a color that is closer to the tile color. Then the seams should nearly vanish. Why I didn't think of that after I saw the seams is killing me.



For the most part my husband has left all the decisions to me, which is usually fine. The other day Husband and I were at Target and I picked out and bought two stools for the counter while he was off window shopping with the kids. The stools match pretty well with the cabinets. Modest, nothing crazy (lower right in photo). Yesterday, he and I were in the Target close to the office at lunch to buy pants for our ever-growing son—another story entirely. He sees these (in a dark red): and wonders why we couldn't have had these instead. Sheesh. I say the ones I bought still have the tags on them, we can exchange them. No, that's alright. Criminey, I like these, but didn't pick them because I thought the others went better and were less expensive, but if you like them, then why not? You just can't win.

First Day of School

I'm back to an almost normal schedule now. I can leave for work as soon as my son is on the bus. He's been sleeping later and later all summer, and sometimes staying up until 4:45. Yes, in the morning.

This morning he came down at about 10 till 8 and made himself chocolate milk while I scrambled up one and a half eggs. (I take one of the yolks out.) Yesterday I bought two new bar stools for the new kitchen counter, at which he sat and ate his breakfast. Then he went out and set up the folding chair and waited for the bus, scheduled to come at 8:15, but came at 8:25. Not bad for the first day.

Daughter got picked up at 7:45 for school. She's carpooling with two neighborhood boys for an early class before school officially starts at 9:30. There was a change in scheduling this year, which necessitated the odd time for her and the rest of the kids taking band or chorus and Spanish I. If you're confused, just think about how us moms are, only some of us got called by guidance, others of us called them ourselves. Oh, didn't I call you with the start time information?

I fell asleep last night stressing about how much homework the girl will be getting. Last year there were two sections of honors kids. One got a lot of homework, the other got off easy. Fern's class was on the easy side. Her gaggle of friends got split up into the two classes this year, so I'm hoping she'll win the homework lottery again and get off easy. I hate homework, it stresses our family out too much when there's a lot to be done. And there's not that much time in the evenings since she doesn't get home until close to 5:00 and I'd love for her to have time for fun things and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

sheesh.

Another shot from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden; it reminded me of my husband's blog photo.

I'm back from my business trip to Minneapolis. I'd never been there, except for going through to other destinations. The bridge disaster is still very much on the minds there, every time I heard the news, it was mentioned. We stayed at the Holiday Inn which overlooks the void of the 35W bridge. This is the view to the north from the pool deck on 14th floor.


Monday after our meetings my collegue and I checked out the Lake area west of town and walked around Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles.

Tuesday, we had time between meetings to walk around the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.


Metrodome at sunset.


I was looking for 15th. Oops, maybe I went a little too far.


I found a cool yarn shop a few blocks from the hotel called Depth of Field. I bought two balls of yarn made of corn fiber! It's called 'Maizy' and is very soft and cotton-y. I haven't knitted in a while, but I bought them anyway. I also found a quilt shop and had to get some fabric. On the flight back I got my checkbook caught up, verifying statements from back to January. I just need to get all the recent items since the last statement accounted for. I'm so bad at balancing my checkbook. I mean, I can do the math, it's just that I'll go through spurts of keeping it ultra balanced and then periods of six to eight months of not. It's the check card purchases that do me in, I never remember to log them.

I came back home to progress in the kitchen. We now have a working dishwasher, sink and faucet (Yay!), and the backsplash tile has been put up. for the most part it looks OK, but some of the seams between sheets are too wide and it looks like an amateur put it up. It's going to bug me, but I don't know what to do about it. Oh, and the dishwasher won't open fully, or if it does, the drawer beside it doesn't. Sheesh.

Oops!

I mistyped in my previous post, I didn't get granite counter tops, I got quartz. Grantite is so easy to say, and it's so popular now.

Quartz, not so easy to say or type. Drives me nuts to hear people leave out the 'u' in quartz and quarts, and quarters, as in "This week korts of Valvoline are on sale for $1.29," or "in the forth korter the Redskins failed to score." I'm not a football fan so the last one doesn't bother me that much. We don't live in Qatar, folks, it's not that hard.

I never got the extension piece for the hot water dispenser, drat, and I'm on an early flight in the morning for Minneapolis. I'm not taking my lap top so this will be my last post until I get back.

I've just spent the afternoon inhaling epoxy fumes while my countertops were installed. It's starting to look a lot like a kitchen!

My instant hot water dispenser needs an extension piece, drat, it wasn't built for a thick slab of granite. I mounted the faucet and soap dispenser this afternoon, just need to get the plumbing attached.

Hopefully, Monday I'll have the dishwasher installed and we'll be good to go. After that it's just the backsplash and finishing work. I think.

Breaking Point

I reached the breaking point.
It's all got to end.
I can't take it anymore.
I can't do anything with it.
I can't stand the way it looks.
It's all got to go.
I was going along just fine, no problems, everything is under control, then, BAM! Outta control, like it happened over night. And it happened at a most inconvenient time. I've been tolerating it as it is but I am going on a business trip next week to Minneapolis for a couple days. (It's the first trip I've been on in, oh jeez, has it been two years now?) So I'll just have to live with this mess until I get back. Then I'll have to make some calls and work out a schedule, obtain the necessary funds to correct the situation. But still I fear this won't get it resolved until, oh maybe October. However will I live with this current state until then? It's time I got a hair cut.

This is my 204th post. I went and missed my 200th. I posted it all right, I just didn't know it at the time. Oh well.

I updated my sidebar today. I had bookmarked a lot of blogs as I found them and today just decided to list them all on my page instead or continuing to bookmark them, and sort them into groups while I was at it.

As some of the categories fell into place, I realized I need to do more of my interests, not just read about them. I have several quilting projects hanging around and while I love to go to my bee meetings, it's not inspiration enough to get anything done or worked on.

Well, there is the kitchen thing. It's hard to feel motivated to get anything done when the heart of the household is on hold. The counter top is due for installation on Friday, but I'm not sure I'll have a working sink and dishwasher by the weekend. Living in limbo zaps all enthusiasm right out of me. I hope I'll be rejuvenated creatively when I have my kitchen back. Besides, of course, getting everything back in there. I plan to purge extraneous cookware, but I may be so tired of all this when the time comes, who knows what'll happen.

And now I leave you with the picture of the day: A kid in Curaçao

Family Time

My husband comes from a large family, he has five brothers and two sisters. This weekend all eight siblings got together in Richmond for a reunion. I like his family, they are so different from mine. They are loud and because there are so many of them, there are lots opinions about lots of different subjects, mostly education and sports: baseball, hockey, and playing golf (where I join in).

I have two brothers with whom I hardly ever speak, not because we're not on speaking terms, but because we forget. Well, that's my excuse, I don't know about them. I really ought to try harder to talk to them more often. We do our communicating through Mom and Dad. Yesterday was Dad's birthday so I called to wish him a happy one. Oh and please tell the short brother (6'5") the tee time next weekend is 1:32, no, better make that 1:00. He's invariably late. We're playing golf next weekend at my family's get-together. I hope my tall brother (6'7") can play, his back's been bothering him. (Dad's 6'7" too, if you were wondering, and I'm only 5'7".)

I haven't pulled out my camera at all (yet) so I have no record of this reunion, maybe later today I'll get a chance before everyone goes separate ways.

Friday

Today I took off work and played golf with my husband at a course that's new to us. I didn't do too well over all but did have some good shots. I just need to string together some of those good shot into a full good-shot game. I have completely lost the ability of using a driver, or any wood for that matter, so most of my tee shots were with a 3-iron.

The thermometer in the car showed 101° when we finished playing. Whew. toasty!

Today is day twelve with no sink or dishwasher. I got a call from the Counter top contractor, they received our slab of (forest green Caesarstone) quartz and are starting to cut it now. Installation will be on Friday, next week. So, another full week of no sink or dishwasher.

sheesh.

My eyelashes are sticky with dried tears.

I've finished Harry Potter.

Kitchen Renovation Week 2

Last week the cabinets came out and the floor was finished. Now the new cabinets are in and the new lighting has been installed. The guys removed the old bulkhead and replaced it with a shorter one so the cabinets are about 2 inches higher. They removed part of the wall next to the fridge so it will fit. They will finish that later in the week.

The backsplash tile has been ordered and the cabinet door knobs have been purchased. I have to remember to call the painter and get on his schedule. The countertops were templated yesterday and I should have a working kitchen next week when the new tops are installed. These will be the longest three weeks in my life. I hate washing dishes in the bathtub.

More news from the kitchen in progress

The new 'fridge was scheduled to be delivered Saturday morning, between 10 and 2. Don'cha love delivery windows like that?

The fun started when I pulled the old fridge away from the wall to make room for the new one. I was greeted by a lovely spray of water in my face. The copper water supply line to the icemaker had gotten kinked and finally gave out when I moved the 'fridge. I turned off the water supply and took off the old tubing. Luckily I had another coil of 1/4" OD tubing in my tool box in the garage for this very moment. But I didn't have any more compression nuts, and I couldn't go anywhere until the delivery guys came.

When my new fridge did arrive, it didn't fit. It's supposed to, it's 35 5/8" wide going into a space 36" wide. The shoe moulding was in the way and I don't have a thin enough pry bar to get it off the wall. And the base cabinet next to the fridge wasn't over against the far wall, so I had to take out the cabinet B put in on Friday.

Well, I really couldn't do anything else about it then, I did get compression nuts and hooked up the icemaker to get it going, we've been too long without the ability to make iced tea. I also moved over the food. I won't bore you with what I found, but it is safely in the garbage can waiting for collection on Tuesday.

Until a few hours ago I had two refrigerators in my kitchen, neither in the cubby where they'd fit, both plugged in. Try walking around in there like that! I advertised the old one on freecycle to get rid of it, got a taker, and a very nice couple who just moved to our town came and took it away. I didn't even clean it out.

My copy of Harry Potter from Amazon.UK come on Wednesday, sooner than expected. I finished reading HP6 Thursday morning and have been slowly reading thru the new book. I found a phrase in the UK version I not familiar with: like baize over a budgerigar. I looked it up in our American copy and found it translates to blanket over a birdcage. Would you have known that?

Another bunch of pictures

This past weekend was my husband's high school reunion. The family part was a picnic at the New River, second oldest river in the world. The park is split into two parts, the top, where you park and enter the river if you're tubing or canoing, and the bottom, where you get out and take the bus back up to the top to do it over again. The picnic area was set up at the bottom.

My husband and son rented tubes and tubed down the river. I went the dryer and seemingly safer route: canoe. The river looked pretty flat so my plan was to go down solo to the picnic area and get my daughter so she could canoe too. On the way down I start to panic with visions of the times I got thrown out of a raft on the Lower Youghiogheny. But then I got the canoe unstuck from the rocks without tipping over and I was fine the rest of the way.

My next time down the river was uneventful, except Fern was in the back steering. And we almost went over some rapids backwards. Rapids being kind of flat given the low river level.



A view over the bow.

 

Kitchen renovations started Monday. I'm doing OK with some decisions, but I have two kinda big ones left: chrome or satin stainless faucets and the color of backsplash tile. I wanted to go with chrome, but the instant hot water dispenser only comes in the satin finish. Which means either it won't match the other chrome pieces, or I change everything. Again.

This the the "before" picture.



This is what we came home to after day one.



A very large box was waiting for me when I got home yesterday. My husband greeted me (before I saw it) and said he thought it was my new Harry Potter book. It was the kitchen sink.

 

The last picture today is of my son in the pool at the hotel at twilight.

I heard an ad on the radio this morning for a new service from OnStar: step-by-step directions. With the gaining popularity of GPS devices and now this new service, I wonder what happened to maps.

My dad tells a story of me reading a USGS 24K quad sheet (topography map) at age 3. I love maps, my college degree was in geography. I'm a visual-spatial person, I need to see where I am on a map and how it relates to everywhere else.

A couple springs ago we took a cruise out of Florida. The traffic getting down there was horrible, standstill traffic the whole length of Georgia. Checked the map and hopped over to the state route that parallels the Interstate. The state route was empty. What? don't people know this road is here? Not that I minded it being empty, but still, our van could not have been the only vehicle taking the alternate route.

It baffles me why the sudden need for a service to help you get somewhere, how did you get there before? Maps. Every utility/repair van had a map book of the metro area on the front dash. (Yay maps!)

I just can't get that lady's voice on the OnStar step-by-step directions commercial out of my head, "I use it all the time." Are there that many carto-illiterate people out there who need this service? Are people that lazy?

Do you use a GPS for directions everywhere you go? How do you feel about being dumber than a computer?

On the way back from my husband's high school reunion, —I'll post pictures later—my daughter announces she has finished reading HP7. It was 2:13 pm. Less than 30 seconds later my husband starts reading the book. (I was driving.)

I'm waiting for my preordered (February!) my copy from Amazon.uk, but it has yet to arrive.

Now it's almost 10:30 and 400 some pages later my husband says to me, "I'm not giving away anything from the story, but the the witches could benefit from the Internet."

If you can't stand the heat...

Stuff is finally starting to happen on the kitchen front. The deadlines are forcing me to make the decisions I've been having trouble making. (Maybe I should go back to therapy for this indecisiveness, I really don't know why it's so hard for me. Maybe because I've been burned by bad color choices before, maybe I'm afraid I have a longevity—will it look dated in ten years—fear, maybe I want to make sure everyone else likes what I pick, maybe I don't have a clear vision of what I want my kitchen to look like or feel like or the mood it should exude so I can't pick things to go with this absent vision.) I finally picked a sink and ordered it. I finally picked a faucet and ordered it. I'm very close to picking a counter top color. I going with glass tile as a backsplash, I just don't know what color yet.

B, my builder is coming on Monday to take the base cabinets out. Then the floor guy comes on Tuesday to repair the floor and put down new tile where the old cabinets were. There's no turning back now.

My living room is starting to look like a yard sale. I've started emptying out the base cabinets into boxes. I know I'm going to get overwhelmed and I hate that. Too much in there, and too much stuff we never use, I know I'll have to be make more decisions, this time about what to purge. And, I'm not looking forward to not having a kitchen for a couple weeks.

On top of all this, I haven't lost the 10 pounds to get down to trophy wife status for my husband's thirty year high school reunion this weekend. (So I won't be at home emptying out cabinets! Argh!) I'm kidding (really!) about being a trophy wife, I'm a little too old, and I think I look pretty good as it is. But I gotta figure out what outfit to pack. Sheesh, another decision....

Ever have one of those weeks?

You just don't feel in top shape,
you're still feeling sluggish from having eaten too much party food from the weekend and the scale still reads several pounds up,
you're able to sneak in a rare nap, and you still feel tired and try to go to bed early,
you think about making an appointment at your doctors office,
you hardly laugh during a comedy on TV,
you make it through a day of work but you're not sure how,
then you go to the bathroom and when you turn to flush you notice the liquid in the bowl is not the usual color, but is now twinged brightly with pink, and you're really panicking now, should I go straight to the emergency room, make arrangements myself with the funeral home,
then you remember you had beets for dinner last night?

Interesting thing happened today when I gave my son a pair of swim goggles. He put them on.

For most of his life he's had issues with anything on his face, the most prevalent thing: water. Shampooing was a big problem for a long time. Within the last two years he's gotten over having water on his face and has started going under the water voluntarily. His swimming has gotten better, evident by his medal at the Special Olympics this past winter.

This afternoon the three of us were playing in the pool, my daughter and I are trying to teach my son how to do a handstand in the water. He puts his hands on the bottom, but can't get his feet straight up, keeping his knees bent. After a while he lost interest so I got out to get my daughter's goggles for her. I grabbed a second pair and handed them to my son just to see what he would do. Much to my surprise, he put them on and headed straight for the lap lane, (thank goodness there wasn't anyone already using it,) and he swam several laps, obviously very proud of the goggles on his face and of himself.

I'm still recovering from Fern's Birthday party. Friday she had a gaggle of friends over for a pool party at our club, then to the theater for the late showing of Harry Potter 5, followed by a sleepover.

Kevin doesn't like to go to bed until every one else is in bed, then will come and check on us. thus, at 3 in the morning I was greeted with"Hi," and he won't go away until you say "Hi" back, thus waking you up.

Saturday night I went with AM to the adult party at our pool club, featuring the local rock (cover) band, the Crayfish. One of the members lives in our neighborhood, so there were a lot of neighbors at the party.

My husband took Fern to the Orioles game for her birthday, complete with her name on the scoreboard.

I got to sleep in a little late, but still the bad eating all weekend from party food is making me feel sluggish. Argh.

Now it's back on the straight and narrow...

But, darn it, I can't walk in the morning, I've been called for Jury Duty and I have to be there at 7:30. yikes.

Fave Five

I'm just curious, how many times do you visit a blog before you blogroll them, if they are just a few clicks away?

Kate commented on my blog the other day. I sometimes wander over to her blog from Greeny's. The other day I wandered over and clicked on one of her 'rolled blogs, 25 Year Plan. He had been visited by Michele who does a blog of the day. A couple clicks later I found some new and interesting reads. Blogs I'd go back to, blogs worth going back to.

So, do I follow the chain of links every time I want to visit or just blogroll them myself? If you bring a new blog into your life, how long do you date this new read until you invite it to stay, as it were.

I don't want to list any old blog I've read once or twice. I guess I want to be careful about the fiends I pick. I kinda think your list of regularly read blogs reflects on you, or does it?

If a blog you like is just one click away, if it is listed on a tried-and-true friend's blog, do you need to list it yourself? What if that friend "breaks up" with that blog, no longer reads it and removes it from their list?

I've recently added VariantE to my list and 1000 Days at Sea is listed there, which I read sometimes. How many times do I visit before I list them, too?

Do you wait for them to add you before you'll add them?

Or, is having a long list of blog friends like a badge of honor? But wouldn't it be the other way round, having a lot of friends who list you, be the honor?

Who's in your fave five?

Curried Chicken Salad

This is what I took to AM's pool party last week, I got a request for the recipe, so here goes.

I'm not into measuring, I just eyeball it.

• drain two 12 oz. cans of cooked chicken, (mine came from Costco) reserving some liquid (of course you can cook your own chicken, but I didn't for this party)


• Put the chicken in a mixing bowl and use your fingers to mush the chicken hunks into smaller pieces, you can chop it up with a knife if you really want to, but it takes longer.


• add
  
  
  • a large handful or two of golden raisins and/or grapes cut in half, champagne grapes are good, too, for this if they are in season
  
  
  • a very large handful coarsely chopped pecans
  
  
  • a chopped crunchy apple or two
  
  (other fruit could include chopped dates and pineapple, add to your taste, I think I used dried cranberries last week, too)
  


• put about 1/4 cup of the reserved chicken stock in a pan and stir in 2 or 3 teaspoons curry powder, I used sweet curry.


• bring to a boil and simmer, stirring, until you have a thick paste remove from the heat and let it cool for a bit.


• when you can stick your finger in there without burning yourself, add about a cup of mayo and stir until smooth


• add the mayo to the chicken & fruit mix and stir thoroughly


• refrigerate for about an hour to let the flavor intensify before serving

let me know how it turns out!

More Photos

These were waiting for me at the restaurant last night at dinner...

Fern's cousin, Rose, came to visit last week. One evening we went to the pool. Not only did Rose work up the courage to dive face first off the high-dive during the time, she'd gotten pretty good at flips.

This is the Rt. 17 bridge going into Charleston, SC shot through the car windshield.

The entrance Camp David

Seventeen years ago, today, I married Dan.

I love you, Hon! Thanks for all these wonderful years.

I'm a bit overwhelmed about the kitchen right now, and I need to vent. I hate being overwhelmed. The cabinets are sitting on the back porch, in huge massive boxes. Waiting to be installed. Haunting me, mocking me.

B, my builder has been on vacation this week, so I've been unable to contact him to discuss the procedures. I'd opted to save $12k by going with him, rather than a independant contracting company, but that meant I'm doing my own general contracting, coordinating all the pieces to this puzzle. All those project management classes I took last year should be coming in handy.

The tile on the kitchen floor was put down two years ago and sometime later it developed a crack that runs the width of the cooking area, right over a joint of subflooring. So, I'd like that fixed. And the best time to have it fixed is when the base cabinets are removed. However, I need to coordinate the tile company's availability with B so they can work together, and B is on vacation. Furthermore, I'm having quartz counters put in. Can the floor structure handle the extra weight if it cracks under normal walking? B will have to put supports in the ceiling downstairs, but he doesn't know that, because he's on vacation this week.

I picked the backsplash tile. It's a beautiful blue mottled pattern. I look at other choices and keep coming back to this blue. So, if I'm so stuck on this blue, I need to pick my countertop color accordingly, but I don't have all the samples form all my available choices, just pictures on the web. I want to be happy with the countertop for a long time. I've made color choices in the past on other things (permanent things, like bathroom tile and floor tile) that I regret, and I don't want to do that again. I want to make sure the countertop goes with the backsplash, and the cabinet color, and the color doesn't overwhelm the room, make it too dated, trendy, or institutional looking.

I need to pick out, order and buy a sink, a faucet, instant hot water dispenser, and under cabinet lighting, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a thing or two, oh, like the knobs (how many and I going to need?). I'd really like a new fridge and a new over-the-stove microwave, too.

And during all of this, the construction time, the time when we have no sink, or cabinets, or counter space, for who knows how long, I'll need to live in my house. With my family. And eat decent meals. Sheesh.

Overwhelmed, just a bit. Thanks for letting me vent.

I'm home right now, in the middle of the day, bread in the toaster for a sandwich, waiting for the delivery guys with my cabinets. They should be here soon, my window was noon to 6, now it's 11:30 to 12:30.

I need to clean up the kitchen a bit, empty the dishwasher, etc., and get some before pictures taken before my builder starts the work next week (I think that's when he's coming, he's on vacation this week). I'm not looking forward to a week or two without a kitchen. I wish he could have done with work while we were out of town, but the timing didn't work out that way.

Mmm, good sandwich, peanut butter on wheat toast. need some chocolate milk with this. Ah, that's better.

I was thinking about making more chicken salad for lunch today, but decided it was too much work. I made some for Miss Kingsfield's Independence Day Pool Party yesterday. I make it curried with raisins, apples, and pecans. It disappeared in a heartbeat and I got complements on it, so that made me feel good.

The party was fun, and my kids seemed to have a good time, for the most part. Thanks CG!

I fell prey to an infomercial. I bought stuff that is supposed to get rid of fine lines better than anything else because of the super antioxidants it contains. OK. Why not?

The box came in the mail the other day. Here's the before picture of my eye (self portrait). Remind me to post a 30-days later picture. Or not.

I'm back to work after a two-week vacation and I have a boatload of email to catch up on. I had checked it a couple of times while I was away, just in case there were any disasters. Most was boring stuff, except this. One email was from a collegue who had photos of what happened in our office garage.

Apparently someone forgot the difference between "Drive" and "Reverse."

I got a birdie! I got a birdie!

I got a 2 on #11 at Tupelo Bay with a beautiful newsreel chip from off the green.

Yay me!

Ah, the quiet. Once again I've got hard-to-come-by quiet computer time, The kids are still asleep and Dan's off at the first day of a two-day golf school I gave him for his birthday. I copied the Christmas present he had given me. It was a great gift, so I had to copy. I hope he gets a lot out of the lessons.

Yesterday we loaded the kids into the car for a drive down to Charleston. I tried to take artsy pictures that didn't turn out as well as I hoped. I'll post them in a separate blog entry so I don't have to fiddle with editing the code now.

When we got back, Dan went off to play 9 holes of golf and I took the kids to the beach. We're renting a house in a "village" where the beach is about a half mile away, but there is a private parking lot at the beach, which is handy. This is also a golf cart village, where a lot of tenants/residents have carts. What do you think when you're following a golf cart that pulls way over to the right? It's ok to pass, right? That's what I thought until I almost hit the guy when he started to turn left!
Aye yai yai! Use hand signals for goodness sake. sheesh. The guy glared at me like I did something wrong.

Well, I better get these kids up and fed so I can get a parking spot at the beach.

Polly and Molly just left for the pool, Wally had already taken Ollie so I finally have some computer time to myself. I'm sitting in our rented beach cottage in the south Myrtle Beach area. We got here yesterday, Dan and the girls got here about an hour ahead of me, I had to go to Camp David to pick up Kevin from camp.

It's really Camp Greentop which is about a half mile down the road from Camp David up in the Maryland Mountains. Camp Greentop is a camp run by The League for People with Disabilities. Kevin has been going for about 6 years now and loves it. When you first drive into the parking area you are met by a staff member whom you tell what camper you have. Then you drive around to the next "station" where a large group of staff wave and cheer at the arrival of your child. My eyes always well up when I see them standing there, then manage to steady my voice before I have to speak to the next person, it takes about 10 seconds for this drive. It gets me every year. The staff all seem to love having the campers there, very enthusiastic and caring.

Kevin had a great time, so the staff told me when I picked him up yesterday, ate well, particiapated in activities, and had fun. Then we hit the road for the drive to South Carolina. I tried to get him to tell me his needs on the drive, but he never says anything about his needs on his own, just answers "Are you hungry? Do you want to eat?" questions.

We left Curaçao Thursday and picked Fern up from her camp on Friday. Wow, we've done a lot of driving. Now we get to relax in one place for a while. Except for the drives to mini golf, the batting cage, the movies, Charelston, golf, and where ever else the kids want to go.

Another boring day in paradise. We went to Playa PortoMari again, but this time I rented a snorkel set and got to see a lot of cool fish. PortoMari is also a dive site. The water is about 3 meters deep at the end of the swimming area, then just drops off into oblivion. I was paddling around in the "shallow" part looking around and saw some divers and freaked out a bit thinking I'd gone too far from shore, but I hadn't.

This little guy was haning out on the rock wall behind the sun bathing area.

Then we went back to Jaanchi's for Dinner, but this time I had the shrimp and the grouper. And this time I got pictures. This is Jaanchi.

And this is my dinner.

There are a lot of churches here, all brightly painted, even the cemetaries were painted.