A scene from my life

Scene: hot playground, red dust stirring in the air, sweaty kids running around. Two Kindergarten kids sitting at a picnic table, back to it, and heads resting on the table, legs swinging, looking up to the blue sky and clouds. I sit down.

How are you?
Girl: I'm tired and sleepy.
What ya doing?
Girl: "Looking at clouds. See, that one's a mouse!"
"No," says the boy, "It's a camel with one hump."

They went on, admiring the dragon, the cat, and the eagle as the cumulus marched across the sky. Just in case you thought kids didn't do that anymore.

Never forget

Never forget that evil is in the world, and that evil is the world. Never forget the author of evil, satan, is the destroyer. Never forget that Jesus is the Creator. He is Life and the Light. May God rest those souls who died on September 11, 2001.

source/credit

Labor Day without labor

I have today off. It's Labor Day and I celebrate all the people who work at dirty jobs, menial jobs, and unfulfilling jobs. I am blessed.. I have a demanding job as a kindergarten para-professional (always on the GO) but it is fulfilling to work with kids. I have worked at unfulfilling jobs before and it is mentally and emotionally draining to spend a third of your day or more rented out to The Man doing work you hate.

So, loving my time off, I woke up extra early, 5:45am. Ironically this is earlier than I usually get up on weekdays. I can't claim any extra motivation or special diligence...I have a wicked cold (Maine-ism there, "wicked") and I simply could not breathe.

But I put the time to good use. I cleaned the bathroom, did the dishes, vacuumed, and completed 2 loads of laundry before 8am. With the rest of the day 'free' I sat at my lovely computer, since it is my favorite place in the world (aside from Italy) and I started writing.

There is so much end time news happening, I got three blog entries done! The news keeps popping. But though I was diligently busy searching out scriptures, writing the news, and intently focused on the laptop screen, my cats were driving me crazy. They sleep next to me, they sleep ON me, they kiss and lick my fingers or toes all night, tromp on me in pursuit of moths or invisible lint, in effect, have total command of the bed all night long, they STILL want to cuddle next to me after I get up. ("She's UP, she's UP go see her, go get her..."). It takes a while to get them calmed down so I can write in peace.

It is the 4th week of school and I didn't think I would escape the mucus and germ factory that is the Kindergarten wing of Danielsville Elementary School, I was hoping I wouldn't kick in with a cold quite so early. No such luck. I am sure the germs see me coming from a long way off. ("She's UP, she's UP go see her, go get her...") So I am sniffling my way through Labor Day. Thus this is the scene here at tiny apartment on Clover Avenue:. To my left, we have...

BERT

To my right we have...

KLEENEX

Behind me we have one of the day's two labors cooling. One was a great pan of roasted veggies. I'll steam up some rice later and those will be my lunches for the week. I also tried my hand at pear bread.  My pear bread...oy. I had to cut back from baking 7 loaves to baking 2 because I ran out of vanilla. Even then, I forgot the wet ingredients in one of the loaves, put them both in the oven, realized the bowl of wet ingredients was sitting there, but already forgot which loaf was the dry one. I guessed. Either they'll come out even, or one will be a swamp and the other will be a brick.

So  I took them out and one looked normal and the other looked...lumpy. Like a choppy sea after Hurricane Earl. I cut into the normal one and it was pretty crumbly but tasty, so maybe it'll be OK, I probably just cut it too soon. I hope. Because the other one is frankly, scaring me a little.

So that's my day, and the kitties' day and the waning of the lovely time at home I treasure so much. Back to the workweek tomorrow.

Maine photos

New Gloucester Maine

New Gloucester Maine

Gray Maine

Gray Maine

 Campobello Park, New Brunswick Canada the carnivorous pitcher plant

Of all the photos to pick...

I've taken lots of photos. Lighthouses, oceans, flowers, rural scenes, art shots. I haven't done much promotion, but I do get contacted from time to time to use one or two. A major magazine emailed today. Yay! Visions of beautiful layouts danced through my head. Which one do they like? The Poppies? Beach sunset? Lupines By The River? No. It's for a story called "Most Painful Insect Bites" and they want the fire ants. LOL!

Flower loveliness

Dusk in my yard this evening

Restoring Honor rally a huge success

I love America! Go Glenn Beck! Here is an aerial view, no matter how the liberals try to downplay the significance of yet another grassroots rally/statement, here is proof:

In a demonstration of the overwhelming support of mainstream America for conservative principles, Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Honor' rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. is drawing 'hundreds of thousands,' according to McClatchy Newspapers.

At points, Politico wrote, it felt like a mixture of old-fashioned tent revival and a special (tamer than normal) episode of Beck’s show. Thank you Americans, for the prayers. We surely need them now and will need them more in the future!

Egg recall: journalists can't resist yolky headlines

The egg recall is no laughing matter. The recall is up to half a billion eggs in 22 states. That's 'b' as in BILLION. I am particularly aggravated because I gave up meat and practically do not eat anything except eggs.

However, as a former journalist, I enjoy seeing the headline writers take liberties with puns. Here's some:

--US scrambles to recall 500 million eggs - ABC News

--It's a case calling for some hard-boiled detectives RT

--Bart goes after bad eggs

--DeLauro and Waxman, Leaving No Shell Unturned, Ask for Egg Recall Info

Ok, enough with the fun, guys!

As for the egg recall, it is very serious. More information here

Egg In A Basket for dinner

Ever since I saw Olympia Dukakis making this egg dish in the movie Moonstruck, I have been intrigued. It looked good. It looked kind of exotic. It looked easy. Bingo, we have a triple hit! So I was chatting with a person I know on Twitter about how to make it and it really is as easy as it looks. You cut a hole in a piece of bread, butter it on both sides, and toast it on a griddle or flat pan. When it is toasted and sturdy, you crack an egg into the hole. Cook the egg over medium. If you use a thicker piece of bread and a smaller egg the white will not run out under the toast. Toast the bread you cut our from the hole and use that to sop up some yolk. Put on plate, eat, slurp, enjoy!

Working the polls

I mentioned that I worked the polls in the primary races this July. The district in which I worked, only 4 miles from my place, has a whopping 199 registered voters in it. We rent the old fellowship hall of an even older church as the polling place. New Hope Presbyterian Church, established in 1788, is Georgia's third oldest church and the area around it is still likely as rural (almost) as the day it was established in 1788. I arrived at the polling station at 6 am to crowing roosters and dewy mist.

And because it was a fellowship hall, the picture of Jesus dominates the view, even over the polling station :)