Thursday, April 28, 2011

Funny kid comments- redux

Kindergartener asked his life's goal:
"When I grow up I want to be an animal."
Uh, ok!

In math, a boy was asked, "Can you count by fives?"
"Sure! Five, Five, Five, Five..."
Well, he did what was asked!

Girl dancing during indoor recess in the classroom.
"What are you doing?"
"Spanish dancing in outer space."

Now, there's a creative kid!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Peeps On A Stick, the newest culinary creation

I had a lovely dinner of spinach lasagna, light salad of Boston lettuce and vine ripe tomatoes, and fresh strawberries with whipped cream. And lest you think me too fru-fru, I am now eating PEEPS ON A STICK! booo-yah!

Peeps on a Stick, for those who do not know,are the famous marshmallow Peeps, but arranged on a stick, likely so that more can be consumed at once. Yes, I am a Peeps fan, and I follow the Washington Post annual Peep Show Diorama. This year's winner was: "Chilean CoPeepapo Mine Rescue"
"This year's winning diorama, which depicts the dramatic rescue of 33 mine workers in Copiapo, Chile, last October, is the work of Mary Jo Ondrejka from Reston; Bryn Metzdorf from Fairfax; and Margaret Hartka from Parkton, Md. A Peep version of miner Ariel Ticona meets his newborn daughter for the first time, while Peep Johnny Barrios Rojas is greeted by both his wife and mistress."



Check out the other entries, always a blast to look at the fun and creativity.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

The Poky Little Egg Hunt

The beginning of the egg hunt:



The end of the egg hunt:

I am all for kids having fun, and I had fun the day I took these shots for the Athens Banner Herald. I mean, look at those precious babies in the photos! So sweet.

I recall my own Easters. My mother did take great care to create special Easter baskets each year. She delighted in stocking them with our favorite candies, and a sweet stuffed animal or two. She loved making them look pretty. I appreciated the baskets and the lengths she went to on our behalf.

The Easter Egg Hunts...not so much a fond memory.  Actually, I hated the Easter Egg Hunts. I am not athletic, see. I am slow. I contemplate actions before taking them. I am not competitive. When I was a child, I stressed easily. I like peace and quiet, a tree perhaps, to recline under and read "The Poky Little Puppy." I could really relate to the Poky Little Puppy.

But the Egg Hunt is filled with tension as the kids line up. There's high competitiveness. Me, a slow mover, always got creamed at the start. I was run over, tripped, or just fell due to clumsiness. I always got to where the eggs just were. While everyone was screaming in giddy glee, I was crushed at the one or two measly eggs rolling around in my basket. The whole egg thing was torture, and embarrassment. It was not fun.

Well. Ahem. I'm over all that now, and I have the privilege of working with children in our church. This week I got to share with them the real meaning of Easter. I read to them directly from the bible, the story from Matthew. I got to explain to them the wonder of resurrection. I shared the glory of salvation through Jesus. I never got an egg treasure on one of those Egg Hunts, but I brought the true meaning of Easter alive to a room full of 7 year olds. Now that's the treasure I was looking for all along!

Friday, April 22, 2011

Some photos I like

Beauty...

Villa D'Este, Lake Como, Italy

And the beast


Green eggs:
Cooking green eggs for Dr. Seuss day at school

And ham:


Bert:

And Luke:

Easter outfit, age three

Me at age three, waiting to go to Easter Dinner with my grandparents. I loved the outfit. I really loved the Mary Janes! Back then, 47 years ago, Easter meant grandparents, Easter Basket (loved that!) Easter Egg Hunts (Hated those) and a ham dinner.

I am grateful that though it took another forty years from that moment on the swing, I eventually came to understand - and love- the true meaning of Easter.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Puddling my curtains

The new chic thing for upscale homes is ‘curtains that puddle’. This means that the curtain length is deliberately long, and the bottom portion of the fabric puddles on the floor. It is supposed to evoke the feeling of a long wedding train, and therefore is romantic.

I hate it.

I am not a fan of curtains anyway, and yes, I’ve been blessed with not having to have any in most of the places I’ve lived. Either my property lot has been large, or set back from the road, or there have been no neighbors. I don’t like feeling hemmed in. I love light and I love the breeze at night.

But recently neighbors moved in right next door and I bought some curtains. (I do not live in a drapery kind of home.) I like symmetry. I like order. I like clean lines. The curtains I’d bought were simple and neutral colored. The TV design show hosts would balk at my design scheme, no doubt. I’d be on the show for “Color Intervention” or “Design Faux Pas” if they had shows like that. But I live in a two room apartment and excess fabric weighs down the room and too much color distracts. I like it the way I like it.

One set of the curtains I bought fell to the floor exactly. I had not measured prior to going to the store, thinking that the curtains at the thrift store were so inexpensive I would not mind simply cutting them if I needed to, but likely I would not because the windows are standard.

On the window at the front door, I put up a long curtain that has big pleats. It falls to the floor perfectly. However, I discovered that I obsess over making sure the pleats are equidistant from one another and perfectly in alignment. At one point I thought about getting a measuring tape to make sure the pleats are separated evenly but I had seen an episode of Law & Order last year where the wife had measured each shirt in the closet to make sure they were exactly separated from one another and one day she just snapped and shot her husband, so I left the measuring tape in the drawer and now I just eyeball the pleats.

The bedroom curtain, though, is satin and a little fancier, coming to a Vee with a tassel. It is long. It puddles. All that means is, it lays on the floor and gets in the way. When I open and close the curtain, it drags the dust from the floor (if there is any, ha ha).

I think puddling curtains are not romantic. They are simply impractical, messy, and unsymmetrical. And in my world, symmetry is everything.

Monday, April 04, 2011

Old car, nice scene

Yesterday was a beautiful day. As I waited at a stop sign in Comer, I saw this old car turn up a drive, park, and an equally older gentleman step out. The tree lined driveway and the greenery along with the old car made me grab my camera and...SNAP

Friday, April 01, 2011

But son, I had a dream...

So, my friends in Maine got a dose of April Fools...a heavy snowstorm!! I am so glad I moved to Georgia. I feel for those guys. By April you're really sick of winter. I mean, it's been going on since October! Here's what it looked like this morning up there.




This is what I awoke to:




I had a good day. I cleaned the apartment, and it looks good. I like it when it looks good in here. I went grocery shopping, and got more strawberries, among other things. I'm on my third tray of strawberries this week. Can you tell I love them?!

While I was walking across the parking lot a mom had taken her three year old out of the car and as she walked up to the carts his little face peeked out over her shoulder. He waved at me and smiled. You know how kids do that...they look straight at you, guileless, unabashed. He smiled while looking straight into my eyes, and he waved or the longest time. I looked back and waved at him and his smile broadened. What a nice way to walk into a store.

It wasn't crowded and I enjoyed picking up the few things I needed. At the checkout, there was another mom with a child about the same age, maybe slightly younger. He was obedient but since he was a kid the moment she put him down he started touching everything, the candy, the register at the next station over, the things on the floor. By that time she had gotten the money out of her wallet and picked him up again. She was telling the checkout lady that she has 6 kids under the age of ten, all boys. "The Lord didn't bless me with girls, but I love every one of them very much." The boy was noodling around with her ring of car keys, lost in play. After a pause she laughed and said, "As the only woman at my house it's like I'm Cinderella in my castle!"

The boy immediately perked up, looked at her and shouted, "Bwaaah! Mom, you don't have a castle!"

I burst out laughing. Kids. You can't even have a pretend dream, before they puncture it with pure pragmatism, lol.

With new neighbors, one of the goals for this week was to purchase and then install curtains. The purchase was a major ordeal because I hate curtains and also because I hate spending money. Installing them was an ordeal because I don't have a stool to step on and I have to tiptoe on tottery things like stack of books or a tippy folding chair. Accident waiting to happen.

My windows are big but half of the light is obscured because of the old fashioned metal awnings. I hated to lose more light. I also didn't want to weigh down the room with more fabric. It's small enough as it is.

I was satisfied with getting two long white cotton curtains with loops on top. I got a third curtain of sand color in a kind of silk nylon. After much huffing and curtain rods falling on my head, missed threaded loops...I finally got them up and they look pretty good.

My cats are sleeping on the couch on the freshly laundered throw, and someone next door is cutting the grass in the sunset evening. It's windy and cool, which is great because humid and warm in spring in Georgia means thunderstorms and tornadoes. It is a nice evening and I plan to study for the Faith Group meeting on Sunday. I can only count this evening and tomorrow as the remaining free days of vacation, and it sure has been a great one.