Odds and Ends

We are finally finished acquiring stuff for youngest child.  Her clothes are all washed, and she has begun deciding what goes with her, what stays here, and what is going to the thrift shop.  The large pile of stuff that she's had spread all over the house is slowly being combined down into just a few boxes and bags.  The rest of the house looks like a clothing and paper bomb went off and spread a fine layer of stuff everywhere.

A Different Kind of Birth Control
Daughter was at her boyfriends' house a couple of weeks ago.  She and her boyfriend were sitting in the living room, getting a little snuggly and cozy.  His mom walked in, sat down with them, and began talking to them.  "So, did I ever tell you about when he was born?  I was in labor for 26 hours with him.  He did so much damage to my vagina when he was born, I had to have 6 stitches in my vagina.  Did you know they can put stitches there?"  Daughter's boyfriend was mortified, and kept asking "Can we please stop talking about this mom?  I don't want to know anything more about your vagina"....  Daughter thought it was great, and kept asking questions.  Boyfriend asked her "How can you keep talking about this?"  Daughter started laughing and said "She was trying to kill the mood, and she killed the mood!  I admire the way she did it, and figured it was worth asking her to tell more of her story!"

I've got to admit, I've had 3 kids, and I never thought about sharing the kids' birth stories as a way to help with birth control!  It's a stroke of genius, if you ask me!


Adopt an Animal
Just below this post,  I have shared the video from the Carroll County Animal Shelter about animal adoption weekend.  You know, the ultimate goal of an animal shelter is to get animals into a forever home, and save their lives.  Even if you live nowhere near Carroll County, your local animal shelter has animals that are in desperate need of a forever home!

Not My Girl Friend

Middle child has a friend, who is a girl, who goes to college with him and went to high school with him. They spend a lot of time together, and they seem to know more about what's going on in each other's lives than their respective parents do.  I stopped by middle child's school on the way home today to work on some paperwork.  We were walking back to the car, talking, when all of a sudden, he was gone.  I looked around, and saw him waving at his "not girlfriend" as he walked over to her.
I looked at the two of them, and then said "So, I guess we're done here?"  He jumped, looked at me a little guilty and said "uummm...."   I told them both to enjoy their weekend and walked away.

Not my girlfriend.  Right.

Baby Panda at the National Zoo!
Do you want to see pictures from the Baby Panda?  You can see the pictures from the National Zoo on Flickr here: https://www.flickr.com/groups/pandastory/.

The Zoo has an Instagram Account, which you can find here: https://instagram.com/smithsonianzoo/

They've also set updates on their website, which you can find here: https://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas/PandaUpdates/default.cfm

Gotta admit it, I'm a panda freak!  I love the pandas, and I do check in on them a couple of times a day!


Lightly Used Quarterback for Trade
Have you seen this ad circulating on social media?
You can find the original post on Craig's List here: http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/bar/5199637176.html -
But, I'm going to cut and paste the text below, because this ad will eventually disappear.

I am looking to barter a EUC QB. There is nothing wrong with the QB as stated by numerous doctors. Interested in all offers. O-line, D-line, linebacker, safety, corners, anyone that can tackle. Got a gift certificate to Ruby Tuesday? Let's talk. Anything here people. All I can do is say no. (I won't.) Take this QB off my hands before I have to cut him.

I will not respond to texts. No "tire kickers" please, these legs have been put through the wringer, but are perfectly capable of playing in the NFL if you get him out of our Charlie Foxtrot organization. I will respond to e-mails daily with a little bit of a smirk and a short answer that may change tomorrow morning if management tells me what I said was wrong.

Also, see my other ad in the jobs section titled "Head Coach looking for football related job with stable organization." Or visit my website at: www.getmetheheckoutofdc.com

Please, I'm begging here.


Stay safe and enjoy the weekend! 

Odds and Ends

This has been an exhausting week.  Everyone keeps telling me "it'll be okay, I know you miss the kids."  It's not emotional exhaustion that's hitting me.  It's physical exhaustion.  I really, really need a week to do nothing but sleep and catch up on chores around the house!  We moved middle child in on Monday.  I don't know how he's settling in, because I haven't been back since Monday, but I have a textbook to deliver tomorrow, so I should get a fantastic opportunity to see how things are going for him then.  His classes started on Weds.

The geese at work have gotten very aggressive over this past week.  Do you see the sidewalk, just to the left of them?  That is the door I take to get into the building.  When I started to walk around them, they came after me with wings and beaks open, and they were hissing at me.  I decided that I needed to go the other way - as in around the parking lot and into the OTHER side of the building to get in.  

The entire flock of them had a stand off with the trash truck this week.  This is the back end of the lot here in the picture, and the dumpster is off to the right, by about 500 feet.  The geese were all sitting on the road in front of the dumpster, and refused to move when the trash truck came in.  He honked at them, and the most aggressive goose of them all got up and charged the trash truck, wings wide open and hissing.  At a trash truck.  The driver sat in the cab and laughed and shook his head.  Slowly, he inched his way forward, and kept honking the horn, and eventually the geese got up and moved out of the way of the truck, but not before several more geese decided to charge at the truck.  (It's a weird summer for wild animals, have you noticed?)

I've also spent much of the week processing 25 pounds of tomatoes.  I've been posting about it on and off this week.  I'm working on another batch of oven roasted tomatoes right now.  That post should be up later today!  I still have 5 more pounds of tomatoes to contend with.  I'm thinking I might try to make some ketchup from scratch.  I've never done that before.  How hard could it be? (I know, famous last words, right?)

Lest you think the life of a librarian is all the glamour of working with books, here is the ugly truth.  We don't actually get to read all of those books!  I work in an academic library, and our semester break ends Sunday.  Classes start up again on Monday morning.  We spent this week shelf reading.  (Yuck)  If you're never shelf read before, you don't know what you're missing. You start at the first shelf, and work your way down, reading every single call number to make certain that they are in order.  You start going cross-eyed as you get to the right of the decimal place.  Our library is a Library of Congress system, which is great because it contains letters of the alphabet at the beginning of the call number which in some ways makes it easier to read.  It's bad, because the decimal places can extend several digits, which can give you a headache.  We read every shelf this week. 

We also replaced signage.  You can see the flotsam above.  We wanted a fresh look, and several of the signs were backed with pages of colored copy paper that had been taped together.  They looked messy.  They are all lovely and cohesive now, with black foam core board backing on them all.

I even got to remake the bulletin board in the hallway outside of the library.   I replaced the paper backing and the letters.  The paper was a couple of years old, and was looking faded.   I keep saying "I", but every librarian contributed to the shelf reading, and while I was working on signage, someone else got the fun job of cleaning off all of the shelves behind the information desk, dusting everything, wiping down the shelves, and putting everything back.  She also pulled everything off of the information desk and wiped everything down.

Cicada on the side of the house.

Velvet fist.  I love the understated strength of a cats paw.

Tiger has had a very rough week!

This and That

Formatting Issues...

Thanks so much for your patience with the blog format this week.  Blogger stopped supporting the template design that I was using, and I've been playing with the customized settings, attempting to get something that I like and that works for me.  For now, this is the format I'm sticking with.  I like to have a break in between my posts, and the template that Blogger handed me wasn't putting enough of a break between posts to make me happy. Unfortunately, all the posts from the same day are included in the same text box, but it's not a "run on" look like the last template was.   I like some white space in between posts - I'm a visual person, after all - and their template looked too cluttered to me.  I am still debating the color scheme... that might change again.  So, if the blog looks different every time you come back for a while, this is why.  Thanks for sticking with me!

Also, I've added a couple of new tabs on the side.  One for recipes and one for pictures.  I'm going back through old posts that contain recipes, and I'm adding the links in one at a time.  You might not use them, but I'm finding that I post a lot of recipes that I like here, and it's very easy for me to come back here than it is for me to browse through my cookbooks to find the one recipe that I want.  In the meantime, I'm still playing with the format, attempting to add pictures and work on the links.  It's going to take a little while, and I'm going to have to dust off my HTML skills to get it to look the way I want.

Tomato Season
I bought a 25 pound box of tomatoes yesterday.  I'm making lots of sauce today!  Since there's only going to be 2 of us this fall, we're freezing this into smaller serving sizes that will cover us for 1 meal without a lot of leftovers.  There's nothing like fresh tomato sauce in the middle of winter!  In addition to the tomato sauce that is currently simmering on the stove, I canned 8 pints of salsa early this morning, and now I'm getting ready to roast some more tomatoes.  Last night, we had a Margherita style pizza - we made pizza dough, cut up a tomato, and spread that all over the pizza crust instead of sauce.  We then added oregano, basil, and garlic along with our favorite toppings and mozarella cheese.  Awesome dinner!

These tomatoes are DELICIOUS!

Moving Days
Knock on wood, I think we've finally found everything we need for daughter's dorm room.  Something has occurred to me over the last month.  The boys were not nearly as particular about their rooms as she is.  Granted, she's paid for everything herself, but there's so much MORE stuff than the boys had when they went off.  (She's also going further away from home, so there's no swinging by for a quick weekend trip with stuff during the semester.)  String lights?  check.  Pictures in frames? check.  Removable wall art?  check.  Decorative twine and clothespins to hold stuff up?  check.  Extra plastic drawers with scrapbook paper taped inside to look pretty?  check.  Book shelves to go next to her bed?  check.  Computer?  what?  computer?  Yeah, we're going to pick that up next weekend.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute on that...Just days before she goes to school.  I sure hope nothing goes wrong with it!

We're moving middle child into his dorm room on Monday.  He doesn't have nearly as big a pile as his brother did, but then again, he only goes to school an hour away from home an can come back to pick stuff up as needed throughout the year.  He's enjoyed his summer at home, but he's ready to go back to school and start learning again!

Baltimore's Batman
And on a last note, the national news highlighted the work of Route 29 Batman this week, who was killed in an accident on Highway 70.   Leonard Robinson, age 51 was killed when his Batmobile was struck by another car after he stopped to check a problem with the engine.  Robinson made children all over the Baltimore Region smile.  He'd show up at hospitals, dressed in costume and visit the sickest young people, smiling, joking, and sharing his love of life with them.  Spending his own money to make others happy, Robinson is nothing short of a legend here in Baltimore.   I heard that at his funeral, mourners were wearing Yarmulkes with the Batman logo emblazoned on the back. 

To be remembered for bringing joy to others and the difference you made in the world... his legacy will live on for a long time.

RIP Leonard Robinson.  My condolences and prayers to your family.  You truly were an exceptional human being.  I wish there were more people in the world like you.

source: Washington Post