Just Another Random Wednesday.....

We're in the home stretch with sock number one. 3 more inches of foot, and the toe, some finishing work.. and one of my feet will be toasty next winter. The great thing about knitting socks, is that you can pick them up when you have say 15 minutes, and knit a few rounds, and then put it down until you can steal some more time away. Obviously my goal of a pair by the end of the month isn't going to happen. Being it's 10pm-ish on the last day, I'm thinking it's safe to bet that one sock isn't going to be done. That's the way it goes. I'm trying not to think of the other unfinished projects I have lying around either.. (not one word about that prayer shawl.. I have such guilt that it's not finished yet, and my MIL is back in the hospital..it really is more like a small blanket than a shall. Next time I think I'll crochet it.).

I Love a Parade!

(sigh) I know ya'll. I. KNOW. I'm sorry. I'm doing my best. I try to remember that in December I posted every day until Christmas. December is so much easier than May/June. I might need to nap the first weekend after school gets out. The whole weekend. YES. That tired.

I have a special place in my heart for Memorial Day. Some of it stems from having my birthday around the same time (this year it was actually on the day, yesterday. Thank you, it was nice.).. some of it, trivially so.. stems from the parade and the day off, and part of it has to do with never really observing it until we moved here.

For Whom the Bell Tolls...

One of my favorite things about summer.. (ok, so it's not summer yet.. but bare with me) is that unlike winter, it stays lighter longer. Like, way longer.

One of the things I hate most about winter, is that it gets dark so early. When it's dark less than an hour after I get home from school... by 6:30 I'm ready for bed. It's depressing. I don't know how people in places like Alaska do it. I admire their perseverance. I would not last one single day.

As winter winds down, I get excited with each new "milestone" time that it's still light out. "Ohhhhhhhh look, it's 4:45 and it's not dark yet!" or "Hey.. look.. it's 5:30 and I can still see down the street!" My brother and his mother in law started having a party each time they hit another hour on the "sunset is at: xx:xx" watch. I think they might be on to something.

Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.....

This came as no suprise to me.

You Belong in 1983

If you scored... 1950 - 1959: You're fun loving, romantic, and more than a little innocent. See you at the drive in! 1960 - 1969: You are a free spirit with a huge heart. Love, peace, and happiness rule - oh, and drugs too. 1970 - 1979: Bold and brash, you take life by the horns. Whether you're partying or protesting, you give it your all! 1980 - 1989: Wild, over the top, and just a little bit cheesy. You're colorful at night - and successful during the day. 1990 - 1999: With you anything goes! You're grunge one day, ghetto fabulous the next. It's all good!

What Year Do You Belong In?

M is for....

"Boston, you know we love you madly
Hear the crowd roar to your sound
Don't blame us if we ever doubt you
You know we couldn't live without you"

*Dropkick Murphy's

Yes, I know. It's Friday. I was thinking hard about M, and how it's Memorial Day weekend, and I should blog about being born and all that hoopla. But I think I'll wait until Monday. So then I was thinking... what else in my life is significant enough to post that starts with M. Y'all. It's the end of the school year. I'm lucky I know what letter comes before M, forget drum up any words that start with M. So instead.. I give you ...

In Which we Find Wednesday....

1. I know earlier in the month I promised that I would submit a new photo and a post each day in honor of it being my Birthday month. Y'all, I'm sorry. I should know better than to undertake such a task in May. July would probably be much better. May, not so good. How is it possible for so many things to be happening in month? We have school and drumming and library things and maybe beer. Defiantly busy though. I'll try to do better.

2. That photo for today.. was taken by the boy (I would embarrassed to admit how many of his great photos I've scoffed this month for my blog.) on Sunday afternoon. We were minding our own business, spring cleaning the dining room, when all of a sudden it got dark. And it thundered.. and then it started to pour. The boy hollered out to the kids something about hail, and I was like.. no way. So I wandered over to now my now shiny clean window.. and sure enough hail was pelting down from the sky. It was so wacky. 10 short miles to our north.. they only got rain. 10 more miles away to our south.. no hail either. In fact, a lady I work with who lives right around the common from me.. about 2 min walk away.. said she never noticed hail at her house. I think maybe it just hailed over my house. I have that kind of luck.

And the Award Goes to......

Fess Up. Who all watched the Academy of Country Music Awards tonight??

I used to not like country music. I take that back. I can't be lying on the blog. I hated country music. I hated the depressing, whiny, drawling songs that I thought were country music. I would always laugh at the jokes.. you know.. "What happens if you play a country song backwards? Your dog comes back to life, your truck gets fixed, your wife comes back..." blah blah blah. I wouldn't even listen to it. When people asked me what kind of music I liked, I would tell them.. Oh I like most everything. Except heavy metal, rap and country music. (Kenny Rogers didn't count. I've loved Kenny since I was a little girl).

Then in early spring of 2002 the boy lost his job. The dot.bomb company he was working for finally realized that they weren't making any money and closed their doors. And suddenly he was home, in my space. And even though it came with all kinds of stress and worry and no sleeping.. I enjoyed him being home. We'd never had together time like in the 9 years we'd been together as a couple, before and after marriage. I learned some things about him that I didn't know. For instance, when starting a big home project, "oh this will be easy" is boy-eese for "this is going to be a huge frikken disaster that will take 4 times longer, cost twice as much and make a huge damn mess."

Just Another Manic Monday...

I never used to mind Monday's. I would listen to people piss and whine about how they hated Monday and how awful it was and blah blah blah... and I never got it. Monday. The first day of the work week (for most.) A day to start fresh, a clean slate. No different really than Tuesday or Wednesday. Or so I thought.

For some reason, lately I have come to loathe Monday's. Today, I actually felt vile and pissy. What for? Because it was a new week? A day to come back after a busy weekend? I talked to my pal about this, and she said she feels the same way about Monday's. She tries hard not to act all snarky on Monday's but it's not working for her. Me either, it would seem.

I'm Blue....

Because I feel a little Blue:

You are Ocean Blue

You're both warm and practical. You're very driven, but you're also very well rounded. You tend to see both sides to every issue, and people consider you a natural diplomat.

What Color Blue Are You?

A Few Letters....

Dear Weather Dudes,
I read the 10 day forecast at Weather.com, and I see that it will be in the low 80's this weekend. IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME! What kind of spring is this?? I am tired of being cold. I am tired of the rain. I don't mean to be whiney, but I want to go out and enjoy my yard. I want to swing on my swing, and hang out my laundry. I want to sit on my porch and knit and watch the birds play in the yard. I want to put my screen down and take out my warm weather clothes. I shouldn't be wearing wool sweaters in May. Whatever happened to global warming? By the time the warm weather gets here, spring will be officially over and summer will have started. So if you wouldn't mind, when the warm gets here next weekend, could you keep it here a while? Maybe just a week or so. Long enough to rejuvenate the soul please. Please?

Saturday Night's All Right For.....

What?!?! I missed Friday?!?! How could that be??!

(are you buying into this?)

I know I did. After eleventeen hundred hours of a really sucky week... I was exhausted. So tired, that when I sat down last night to read my email, it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. Even the Red Sox weren't enough to keep me awake. I shut my laptop and .34 seconds later I was fast asleep on the couch. I apologize. I know all four of you were chomping at the bit for a new post. I can't promise that I will do better, but I can promise that I will try. We are entering the last month of school, and it's going to be a bit crazy here. On top of that, and all that the end of the school year brings, we have MAP testing.

It's Begining to Look a Lot Like... Spring

Apparently all my lilacs needed was a little bit of sun. Which we had all day long today. Forget that it's supposed to rain again tonight, and there is a chance of rain all weekend. Today.. the sun was out. And the world dried up enough that when I got home from school I was able to mow my lawn. I won't tell you how tall the grass out in the backyard by where the dog's run is was. Let's just say that I had to mow over it twice. That's some long grass. We got a lot of rain. So anyhow, when I came around the corner of my hedges to mow near the sidewalk, I discovered that my lilacs over on that side of the house bloomed today. These ones get the most sun. The other ones are near my barn, and have grown up so high that they reach the bottom of the roof. They are mostly in the shade, and not only do they take longer to bloom, they mostly bloom up near the roof and are hard to pick. The bad thing about having lilacs near the sidewalk is, that other people like to pick them. Tomorrow I am hoping to get out there after school and cut some for my kitchen before they are all snatched away.

In Which we Find Some Random Things

It's Wednesday. You know the drill.

1. For the first time in 10 days, the sun made an appearance today. Not for the whole day. And not even for the whole time that it was here.. but it was enough. The weather guy did a little blurb on what sunshine was this morning on the news. You know we are all feeling a bit waterlogged when the weather guy is trying to be funny.

2. Thanks to this lucky break in the weather, we were able to hold our Vehicle Day at school. Every other year we host this day, as part of the school to career grant that we have. It gives the kids an opportunity to talk to people about what kind of vehicles they use in their jobs, and how they got to where they are now. Plus, they get to see some really cool vehicles (like a hummer limo, and a hearse, and that awesome helicopter) and what kid doesn't like that???

Let the Sun Shine.....

See that??? Are you looking real close??? That my faithful readers (all 4 of you) is the sky. It may not seem like a big deal to some, but where I live it's huge. We haven't seen the sky since last Monday. May the 8th. Half the days in this month have been grey and rainy. Half of my state is underwater right now. Fortunately for us, we were spared the heaviest of the rain. After the washout we had in October, we couldn't really handle too much rain. So instead of a foot like some other parts of the state, we got almost 5 inches. Granted an inch and a half of that fell since last night... but 5 inches of rain still beats 12.5. In case you care, each inch of rain that falls is equal to a foot of snow. If it had been a month ago that all this rain came... (shudders). Not a pretty thing to think about.

In Which we Find Some Thoughts on Mothers...

I remember when I was a little girl, and my mother was my hero. I watched her raise 5 kids, pretty much on her own when all was said and done for as much as my father helped out, work a full time job and manage a household. And I used to think that when I grew up I wanted to be just like her.

Enter the teen years. There is something about two stubborn headstrong females that doesn't quite click. We fought over the dumbest things. We would get into pissing matches, and the next day I would let it go, and she would hold onto it for a week, pissing and snarking the whole time. It was a long, miserable time before we were on friendly terms again.

Build Me a Floating Zoo....

I took this photo Monday morning before school. You'll notice it's dry. There is a bit of a sun-thing going on, and it looks to be a lovely day in the making. It got dreary later on, and has been so ever since.

It has rained and rained and rained, and been grey and dreary and drizzly... and buckets of rain have fallen from the sky.

I know I have gone on about this already this week... but when you have to turn your heat back on because it's so damp and cold in your house, and it's half-way through May.. it consumes your thinking. All I can think is that it's May... and I need the sun. Especially after winter has just ended. When you live in New England, and especially northern New England like I do... the only thing that gets you through the last dreary months is the promise of spring.

L is for....

L is for Lesson's I've Learned.

1. You can't always get what you want....

My list of wants is a mile long. Mostly it consists of things that need to be done to my house. When we first bought our house we were all gung ho about things we could do and get done, and where to start. Our house needed a lot of work. We quickly realized that it was going to take more time and money than we had. And so we've been slowly chipping away at it for the past 4 and a half-ish years. Slooooooooooowly... it's getting there. I love my house. I love that it's a work in progress, as I enjoy the work. Different things have played out over the past few years and we've been able to get some work done that we never thought we'd be able to manage. I am grateful and humbled.

A little black rain cloud....

The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops.
Eventually.
 - Eeyore

It started Monday. A light rain. A bit of drizzle. Dreary, grey skies. Today is Thursday, and it's still raining. I checked the 10 day forecast. 50's and 60's with rain, heaviest will be Saturday and Sunday.

Not what I wanted to read. I have herbs to be planted. I have windows to wash. My car needs a good cleaning. I need to spend 20 minutes sitting in the warm afternoon sunshine... my soul needs recharging.

The only thing all this rain has going for it.. is that the fire danger has decreased. And my grass is finally getting greener and growing, although it might need to be mowed after all this is said and done. There seems to be no happy medium this spring. Either we are dry or drowning. My county has a flood watch for tomorrow night into Saturday night. Last time we had a flood watch half the county washed away.

At least the Red Sox are winning.

Random Wednesday

Ok, so I have a few more trip photos, and some random things. Hopefully blogger will cooperate tonight.

On the way home, we took the kids to see where the Old Man of the Mountain used to reside. On May 3rd of 2003, he tragically plummeted to his demise off the side of the hill. According to the display they now have at the site, he was made up of 5 slabs of granite that spent hundreds of years balancing on a chin that had a cavern behind it. Pretty amazing that it stayed there as long as it did.

After we left there, we were be-bopping down (and yes, I mean down also.. descending) rt. 93, when all of sudden, there were a bunch of cars off the road. The boy said, "Oh there must be an accident." And I'm thinking.. no there are people looking in the woods.. it must be a MOOSE! So we pulled over, and the kids saw their first moose. (well, Mr. Man saw 5 when he was little but he doesn't remember). He was a mangy looking thing, all the fur on one part of his side was rubbed off. A big rig came by when we were there and blasted his horn and scared him off into the woods. My brother Scott tells me this is normal. It just pissed me off. Why be like that, and ruin someone elses good memory? He said cars do it too. Some people just suck.

Homeward Bound...pt. 1

The best part of going away, is coming home. We decided to take a different route out to the highway than we had taken from the highway on the way up. Change of scenery and all that. Besides, where were a few places we wanted the kids to see. The photo to the left, is the Mount Washington Observatory. Mount Washington has the worst weather in the state. There are people up working in that building 24/7, and you know what.. you couldn't pay me enough. Anyhow, the boys camera has a kick arse zoom, and he got right in there and you can see the top.

While You Were Out...

This is the post I intended to make yesterday. I didn't have it in me. I got home, after a long busy day, and had eleven hundred things to take care of. Boring stuff like laundry, and unpacking and paying bills. And then I went to bed. To say I was exhausted would be a gross understatement. I was exhausted Saturday. Come 10ish.. I was ready for bed. I was out like a light by 10:30. At appx. 3:30, Mr. Man got up to pee. Of course I woke up. And then I couldn't fall back asleep! For an hour. The boy was snoring, the pillow wasn't mine, I couldn't get comfortable, I missed my bed.. it was too light.. a million different things. Around 4:30 I fell back asleep to have to get up 2 hours later. The bags under my eyes Sunday morning were enough to make me wish I had some of that magic eye goop. Fortunately they went away after a few hours. That exhaustion however..yah.. hasn't gone away yet. It was a long day at school.

Wish You Were Here

Before you do anymore reading, click that photo to the left. The boy took that with his camera, and I think it came out awesome! How can you have a bad trip when you get views like that? I love being in the White Mts. We haven't been here in almost 7 years, which makes me a little sad. Ms. Thang doesn't even remember out last trip. Once we got up here, we took the scenic route to our final destination. 32 miles of the Kancamangus Highway, one of the most scenic routes in the state. We played tourists and stopped at every "scenic view" sign. Well, maybe we skipped 3. We do that every time. The view is always different depending on what time of the year you are up here.

K is for....

(note, I had forgotten that I did J last week, and I had a great post all set to go about the hardest journey I've ever taken.. I'll blog it next week.)

K is for Knitting

(it's all I've got, I'm exhausted)

I don't think it's any secret that I am a knitter. There. I said it out loud. I am a knitter. I didn't used to be a knitter. In fact, for years I fought it. My mother offered countless times to teach me. I always claimed klutziness. I couldn't possibly knit. You had to use TWO needles in order to knit, and I'm lucky I can walk up the stairs on a good day and not trip. She wouldn't say anything, but kept quiet, with that look on her face. If I was more observant, I would've realized that the look said, " It's ok, you'll come around."

The time has come..

The Walrus said, to talk of many things....

Actually, if the Walrus lived in the great Northeast, he'd realize what we were talking about in fact, was the ceremonial shutting off of the heat.

You'll remember, that there are 4 season's in NH. Almost Winter, Winter, some more winter, and construction. Actually, it's more like: Almost Winter, Winter, mud season, black fly season, 3 days of spring, a few weeks of summer, and back to almost winter.

We didn't have much of a winter this year, and mud season was cut short due to warmer than normal temps accompanied by stronger than usual winds. Everything dried up pretty quick. Not that I'm complaining.. I hate mud season.

Speaking of ...

Speaking of Pan Fest...

I just Googled and found this little blurb...

The 17^th annual New England Pan Festival. Day 2: Performances by fifteen community, school and college bands from throughout New England including - Blueberry PANcakes; Drum Wave; FLASH! In The Pans; Hopkinton Steel; Mango Groove; Mad Anthony's Panhandlers; PANUnited Steel Orchestra of Boston; Planet Pan; Rhythm Rockets; Steel Dreams; Steel Industry; Steel Magnolias; Steelin' Thunder; Tinpanic; Tropical Sensations and The Vermont Panhandlers. Venue: the Ham Arena, West Main Street, Conway, New Hampshire, USA. For more info contact - music@mountaintopmusic.org
That's US! The Steel Magnolia's. We also are bringing Drum Wave (5th and 6th graders) and Tropical Sensations (the original group that has been playing the longest.. (oh, and did I mention that I'm joining them to play the 6-drum basses?)..)

This guy, is who we get our drums from. He also comes out here twice a year and tunes them. His band will be playing at the fest, and I believe that he organizes the whole thing. I don't agree with the site that he's got the BEST steel band in NH.. but I guess they are pretty good.

Random Wednesday

OK kiddies, it's that time of the week again. A random hodgepodge of what's going on in my little world. It's May, and if you live in my chilly neck of the woods, May means nothing to you. You can't plant in May, because once you have your plants in the ground.. there will be a frost. And they will die. Ask me how I know this. I tempted the god's ONE year, because I was convinced I knew better than them. I wasn't. That doesn't stop me from buying plants. I have an enclosed porch, and as long as I don't open the windows or put the screen in the door, it stays warm out there. Even at night. To the left we have some rosemary and lemon thyme that are going to go in my herb garden. Actually.. herbs you can plant in may, so long as it's not Basil or parsley and there isn't going to be a frost for a week. Once they get settled herbs are pretty hardy. I was going to plan these Monday after school, and I forgot. I am in no rush, I'll plant them next week.

Drip.... Drip..... Drip.....

For over a year, I had to put up with a faucet in my bathroom dripping. Dripping faucets seem to be an issue with our house. In fact, once we started useing them, most of the faucets in our house started dripping right after we bought it.

We replaced our kitchen faucet with a cheap-o faucet that we got at the local discount store.. because we didn't know any better. Let me clue you into what we learned. Cheap faucets eventually break. Even if they are a good and well known brand. It's kind of like buying yarn. Buy the best quality faucet you can afford. And if you can wait a bit longer, save up until you can buy a good one. It's worth the investment.

A post a day.. In May

In honor of my birthday month.... I'm going to take a photo each day, and then post..about it, or something totally non-related. Being it's 11:00pm and I just decided this..for today, and today only.. I offer you a photo that I didn't take today. In fact, I didn't take it at all. The boy took it on Easter. It's a shot of the Forsythia bushes his parents have growing in their back yard. The best part of him taking this photo, is that my BIL was wearing a Corona shirt, that matched it perfectly. What would've rocked, was if he had a photo of him standing in front of the bushes. I hate Forsythia... so y'all should be impressed that I even posted that picture here. I wanted something springy, and it was the best I could find. Tomorrow I'll do better.