being thrifty

my nephew just moved his business to a new place and requested a wreath for the wall. since i needed to have a display for the music conference of young students, i decided to combine the two projects. so first i used all of the flowers for the music program.... i got minus points from my distance employers for not doing anything last year. it was a matter of money. since i am using these for another project it didn't cost my close or distant employers anything.

just about when i was going to weld them into a wreath, i found out there was a big board meeting. so reconfigured everything, took out the flags and the gold stars.

no it is all at home and i have about 2 days to make a wreath before i travel northwest...... and do my taxes.

going to work

my trip home was slowed frist by snow in the sierra's...the train was 5 hours late. but it plugged along pretty good afterwards. but when i reached hastings a blizzard had settled in. and it took my ride a little while to get to the station.
it was so snowy that the bus drive to the east to pick up students was delayed until the next day. but i postholed it to the office to do some work. and the next day also. it cleared enough by tuesday night that the principal drove the bus east and picked up students in the night and brought them back in time for classes on wednesday morning. walking in the snow can be quite a challange...no walks shoveled and only part of the roads cleared. couldn't drive the jeep! a 5 foot drift in front of the garage and this old lady does not do shoveling of big drifts anymore. the tractor was late doing driveways because the milk truck...a big semi...got stuck down on the farm. but a week and a half later almost all the snow is gone. yesterday was rain, hail and watch for tornado day. i just want it to be nice tomorrow so i can go crane watching.

lolita in tehran & bad dirt

over spring break my daughter and i traded books. i love annie p and bad dirt. i think i read it in two days. i traded it to my daughter for reading lolita in tehran, much different in temperment, but very revealing. both reveal culture of a specific time and place but one with wry humor and the other with a wistfulness for better times.

this is the suggested reading list for reading lolita in tehran compliled by the author.

nuha al-radi, baghdad diaries
margaret atwood, the blind assassin
jane austen, emma, mansfield park, & pride and prejudice*
saul bellow, the dean's december & more die of heartbreak
emily bronte, wuthering heights* (read only once-too dark, now that i am older, want more cheerful items)
lewis carroll, alice's adventures in wonderland* (if only i could figure out the math stuff)
jaseph conrad, under western eyes
henry fielding, shamela & tome jones* (:))
gustave flaubert, madame bovary
anne frank, the diary of anne frank (hasn't everybody read this is grade school or high school)
henry james, the ambassadors, daisy miller*, & washington square
franz kafka, in the penal colony & the trial*
katherine kressman talor, address unkown
herman melville, the confidence man
vladimir nabokov, lotita (don't think i can read that one), invitation to a beheading, & pnin
sarah orne jewett, the country of the pointed firs
iraj pezeshkzad, my uncle napoleon
diane ravitch, the language poice
julie slamon, the net of dreams
marjane satrapi, persepolis
scheherazade, a thousand and one tales* (loved this book when i was in high school)
f scott fitzgerald, the great gatsby (never read because it just seemed to decadent)
*ones i have read

picture worth a thou....

monday was twin day....that's all i am going to say

free acrobatic show

as i was driving home this evening ...close to sunset...i saw a swarm of birds performing acrobatics. group acrobtics. the snow geese are flying overhead now in their typical raggedy v shapes, but i am pretty sure the swarm was not snow geese. they were tightly packed and performed as one, it seemed as if they had one mind or were connected like the borg. the maintain a tight group that folded over and over on itself making them appear like a black cloud one minute and nearly invisable the next. sometimes they were in an oval shape and sometimes they stretched out into a pencil shape. i had my camera but they were to far away. they would have been like pencil dots.

acrobats

There are some pictures online, but they do not do justice to the actual visual image of birds swarming. The snow geese have been overhead in their typical intertwined v shapes, but the birds i saw coming home this evening were more acrobatic than geese. they were quite far away and it was almost sunset, but they formed a black cloud that twisted to darkness and then to almost complete transparency. they stayed in an aemebic shape that changed from almost a perfect oval to a worm shape all the time folding over and over on themselves. it was as if their minds were connected in some fashion a la borg.

i don't like cloudy overcast days, but there is something about low laying fog that is interesting. maybe because it softens the harshness of the world around us. distances become a mystery. paths lead into unknown places. there is a little bit of scary, too. who knows what is lurking in the mist.

monday morning

after mumbling about it being a melt down weekend last weekend, i found 8 beautiful red roses on my desk on monday. i got a personal thanks for the sabbath school lesson from an adult and one of the students said it was the best so far this year. unfortunately one of the students sort of gave it away during one of the exercises. ... the student was to walk across a mine field of raw eggs blindfolded with the help of two friends ( one pretending to be the good angel and one the bad angel only the blindfolded person wasn't supposed to know that). No eggs were broken even though i kept rearranging them ( the kids didn't think it quite fair, but i said the devil cheats all the time) because of the careless words of one student the blindfolded student knew who to listen to. but it was okay. the students still got the point. so the roses sat beautifully on my desk for one week and then i took them home to dry. this monday is the monday after board meeting so it will be interesting to hear what transpired. time to go to work.

why i don't make lots of money

i absolutely know that i could not handle a leadership role in any circumstance. i was asked once if i wanted to be a principal and without even blinking, i said no. i cannot handle conflict or stress. this week has been rather stressful....behind on yearbook, missed one deadline...behind on getting restricted list published...forgot to send out reminder cards for a meeting...responsible for a faculty family dinner....have to teach a sabbath school lesson to teens and keep them interested...get the house sort of clean for the faculty family dinner...on top of the usual classes and supervison duties. so, i sort of lost my phone again...left it at home instead of bringing it with me.... caught the lid of the powder creamer on a shelf and had to clean up the counter and the floor....had a lid on a paper cup of coffee and heated it the microwave too long, it blew up and had to clean the microwave out completely....turned the oven on to heat the lasagna and the pie filling that i forgot i spilled caught on fire.... then i had a cover loosely on a container of rosemary butter i was melting for making non-garlic bread and it blew up in the microwave and i had to clean it all up. i think i'll go to bed.

oxymoron

retired hippy~ barbie phone

ghost

i really did want to find my phone. i didn't want to spend the big bucks for replacement. i didn't want to have the contract renewed. so now in the middle of the night i sort of wake up like people do - not quite awake, not quite asleep- and i see a flashing red light. i think, my phone. the thing is, it appears in the same place. when i look in the morning, moving furniture and everything there is no phone. my phone has come back to haunt and harassess me. hahahaha you can't find me. actually i am beginning to think it is one of those big coal trains rumbling by that wakes me and that the red light is from the rail crossings or the light on the caboose. Or maybe it my phone calling me.

phone trap

the phone is lost. i let the battery die before i realized it was missing. since i don't have a land line, i went to the local dispenser of cells and got a new one. the nifty prices are for first time users. then they pull you into a longer contract by "giving" you a discount on the phone. contrary to my sister's opinion, i bought the cheapest one i could get that was a flip phone. the only one they had in stock was PINK. can you imagine me and pink.

i am going to make a little purse with a snap handle --for jean belt loops -- the ones in the stores are all glittery or 50's prints. i didn't like the prints then and they have not aged well.

the big thing is recollecting all the phone numbers and entering them. since i have the same number, i am hoping people will call and then i can just save the number.

i cut down the number of hours but added some roaming hours because this particular provider does not cover western nebraska and the black hills. when i move i will have to change. then i can get a cheap phone with lots of stuff :)

what they need to invent is a little long powered gadget of some kind that starts beeping when the power is almost gone. beeping loudly for people like myself. or i could train my cats to be search cats, like they have search dogs for people and drugs, i will train dennis to find my phone. right.

getting old

getting old magnifies all the faults of yesteryears. once i was able to write a menu for the week down on a piece of paper to take to the grocery store. after one look in cupboard and fridge i was able to go to the store and pick up the items i needed. now i have to write down all the items needed to complete the menu.

now under stress i often misplace my keys. i have one set of car keys lost right now.

and i have lost my cell phone. it has been gone for a week, but i called the phone company and nobody is using it so it is in the house someplace.

my eyesight is worse, i am going deaf, my joints and feet creak, walks are shorter, and i almost fall asleep in church.

and you know the old ladies who wear so much perfume it knocks you out....yeah. well, now i know why. they can't smell it unless it is turn up. i try not to do that to my coworkers.

but what about the good things, do they get accentuated too. am i going to draw better, be more patient? be more sure of myself? hmmmmm

keeping up

From a distance you will see tall silos and some metal buildings and it looks pretty nice. as you drive closer however you see that there is a struggle to keep things in order. it seems as soon as something is new it starts deteriating. it is just a few magical moments that something is almost perfect. this door had been minorly attacked by students driving a little front end loader carrying feed to the cows, but nothing like the attack by the feed truck delivering the feed to the building. you can understand 14 and 15 year olds not quite making it through the door, but a licensed driver? what was he thinking?

the next question is how long will the door look like this? will it ever get fixed. there may have been an actual door that could close the opening, but that was long gone by the time i arrived. i wonder how it disappeared? there are so many things that need fixing around here. windows replace, roofs fixed. the art room roof finally is fixed so it doesn't make lakes in the room when it rains or the snow melts. needs more loving care though. mice can come in in droves under the front door. sometimes when we are working i will see one race along the wall, very fat--actually it is a waddle run. once we made paper machie masks and set them out to dry and when we came back the next day the mice had eaten all the paper off the wire structure used to shape the masks. buggers.

artic freeze and never say never

some old sayings are just old sayings, but some old sayings have some truth. red sky at night sailor's delight~
red sky at morning sailor's take warning.

after this hazy red prairie sunrise, we have had, it seems like, ages of cold, snow, and no sun. i had to go out and buy a parka so i wouldn't freeze on the two block walk to work.

for a person who needs the sun to be cheery it is dreadful.

i said i was never going to retire where it was cold....so what did i do... i bought a house 100 miles farther north than i live now that generates it own little storms and weather patterns. .... just north of the black hills.

isolation

where? a warm pot of chocolate in a french window? a forgotten crock in a miner's cabin? too white..the clues ambiguous..the window rain scared. the frame metal so not old... a new alone pot
but on the inside i know there are kids making there hands as nimble as possible polishing holes in fishing weights...piece work.
hopefully it is an electric kettle for warm tea to cheer the task in a room with metal air

view point

if i have my camera with me, i am more likely to see the beauty around me and also the details of the ordinary. one evening as i was walking to the cafeteria ...with my camera... i saw the sunlight reflecting through the wings of a small crowd of insects. they would have probably been unnoticable if the light had been different. the LIGHT makes many things beautiful and many things seeable.

design crash

when two strong personalities get together, well, there is some adjusting to do. like opposites on the color wheel...for example. red and green. my sister has beautiful green glasses...a lot of them. i have dark red plates plus some blue things and cream, and yellow. so the the question is can they go together.. i think so, if those strong colors can make it together, so can we.

i found this pressed glass pitcher at pier one . it has no handle only the the pinched top which works and just a little tiny pour spout. it goes with the glasses. sort of ... same color only they are plain.

black and white

who can resist the rays of warm sun on cold day espescially when your owner keeps the house in the 60's. and if there is someone else in the basket even if it is really only big enough for one fat cat, well, somehow you can sort of fit in with your friend.

what to do with stuff in small space

just stopped in builder's warehouse to pick up plastic to cover windows. they had a little display of unfinished furniture in the very front. something new for them. anyway,, there was a cart like the small one pictured here with a side addition that was a cupboard with a door. i like that it is on wheels. i thought it might fit at the end of our island in the kitchen. kind of hard to remember the space. it is 14 inches deep, 30 inches wide and 34 inches tall. could use it to hold kitchen linen and little used utensils. could even roll it in the closet. well maybe.