Wonder if I can post pictures today?

Hey!  That was pretty painless this morning.  They must have worked some of the bugs out.

This is a picture of the food for the brunch last Saturday.  You can see my pickled eggs in the center.  The hot cross buns were really yummy too.  Everything was.  You can't see the ham or the potatoes or the cake!

I had a really good past three days subbing in geometry.  The kids were great and I always enjoy the interaction with them.  No subbing today - teachers aren't supposed to take the day before a holiday off.  I'd like to sub the day before spring vacation just to experience the beach party that the math and science staff always have in the morning before school starts.   Oh well.  It was nice to sleep in until 7:30.  I would have slept in longer, but Wilma was insistent that I get up. NOW!

Dave arrived home safe and sound at 1:00 a.m. Thursday morning.  Peter picked him up at the airport.  He's up that late anyway, so it worked out well.  I woke up just long enough to grunt a greeting, then fell back into dreamland.

Today I'll use my $10 coupon at Kohls, go to Sams club and generally do stuff on the homefront.  I was really hoping for some garden time, but it's raining now so that looks doubtful.  Oh well.  Maybe tomorrow or Sunday.  If I'd been home yesterday.....  

I got an autographed copy of "Who is Killing Doah's Deer?" and read it this week.  It's written by our fellow blogger, doahsdeer.  He can write.  It's an intriguing tale with a good central character.  I had a difficult time with the sex, which I felt was gratuitous.  My personal opinion is that you don't need sex scenes to tell a good story.  I think it would be a better book without it.  I personally thought the articles that Cassie wrote for her magazine were the highlight of the book.

I also finished a few more books while subbing.  I'll blog about those another day.  Can you believe it's the last day of March?

PS - What kind of spell check doesn't contain the contraction "I'd"???????

No luck with downloading photos tonight.  Is anyone else having troubles?

I'm trying to upload a picture using their new text editor again.  So far, it's been 10 minutes and they've only uploaded 2%.  What's up with that?

I had a very busy day.  I was at school close to 7:30 this morning to meet with the geometry teacher so we could go over some last minute things.  I got to take the investigative geometry class outside to use mirrors and tape measures to measure the height of the building and of the flag pole.  Really cool.  I do it again tomorrow and Thursday.

Now the photo is at 7 %.  Good grief.  And this is an improvement how?

Tonight I had a meeting over dinner, followed by a related business meeting at St Mary's College.  We had a tour of their church - some incredible mosaics in there - very impressive.  On a different scale than the bassilica at Notre Dame, but wonderful in it's own way.

I'm going to try to upload this great picture of Peter and Barney the old way.

I can't believe that Kaden is due in just seven short weeks.  I thought we'd be in the emergency room again last night - Michelle found some blood, but the doctor on duty said it's probably from the cervix, stretching.  She seems to be OK now.  I told Sam when he called today that he has to get that baby car seat this week - that was my first thought last night - the baby can't come yet, we don't even have a car seat for him!  Dave pointed out that we wouldn't need it for at least a few days and I had to laugh.

I didn't sub at all last week.  I was too busy with all my other responsibilities.  LOL.  I did block a few days due to Michelle's childbirth class and doctor appointment.  This week I'm subbing 3 days for a geometry teacher, Tues - Thur.  Tomorrow I'm going to help Michelle again, this time making sure she gets to WIC to change her county of residence, to the unemployment office and to the BABE office to cash in her coupons on some merchandise.  They really do a lot for these unwed mothers.

Thursday night was the first meeting of our new red hat group.  We had a dessert potluck.  Can you say yummy?  I made a one layer carrot cake from scratch.  They were my guinea pigs and it did turn out great.

Saturday my creative cooking group had a brunch.  I was the coordinator for that, so I've been looking at a lot of recipes lately.  Now I'm concentrating on finger food for the shower in two weeks.  Do any of you have a recipe you'd recommend I try for that?  I don't want to worry about people having to balance their plate and cup and fork, so I'd like to keep it to finger food only. 

Saturday afternoon I sat and gave gardening advice at the county ag days fair.  I have to confess, I'd never in my life gone to an "ag" event.  Other than the county fair, and since I've lived in the following very rural counties, even that consisted of mostly imported goats, pigs, cows, etc.  I've attended county fairs in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, DuPage County, Ill, and St Joseph County, IN.  The later was probably the closest to rural in tone.  I love a good county fair!

Both of my menfolk headed out today - Ken back to college and Dave to a American Chemical Society meeting in Atlanta.  So we're on our own until very late Wed. night.  Peter is around, which is nice.  Michelle usually behaves if Peter is around.  She has been much better.  You can probably tell that because my blog isn't as full of stories.  Although there are quite a few I didn't share.  I'm sure you'll get over that!

Choir practice is tonight - 4 more until Easter.  One of the members is bringing in a chocolate fountain so she can test out a recipe for a shower she's hosting.  We are all willing guinea pigs!

I read this autobiography of Sandy Patty.  It is an incredibly moving story of God's forgiveness and grace.  If God can forgive someone of their sins once they repent, why can't we?  She's had a tougher time with some Christian churches than with just about anybody else.  Although she does tell an awful tale of the national news media. 

This was an experiment.  Is anyone else having trouble downloading a picture using the new rich editor?  I tried downloading this using their new way.  It told me it had put it in my downloaded files folder, yet couldn't find it when I wanted to post it.  So this was posted using the old editor, which did find the photo in their folder.  Good grief.  At least they didn't tell me to reconfigure my computer like they told my mom.  Come on xanga.  Get your act together and keep this easy for all of us.  It's not fun if we have to struggle with it and things that always worked don't anymore.

btw, this is a file copy of perovskiadrift, also known as Russian Sage.  It was the perennial plant of the year a few years back so I used this picture in my slide show for my talk.

There was no point to this entry other than seeing if the new picture download works right.  It doesn't.

I have to try out this new editor.

I made a terrific roast in the crock pot for dinner last night and I'm sure that all of you want the recipe.

 Crock-pot pork tenderloin

small pork tenderloin

1/3 cup french dressing

1 can cranberry sauce

1 cup chopped onions

Mix together the last three ingredients.  Put pork in crock pot and pour the sauce over the pork.  Cook on low all day until tender and falls apart. 

Devour!  (I just ran spell check and this word is not in their dictionary.  So I figured I mis-spelled it, since I do that, but it's in my dictionary!  What gives with that?)

Busy morning already.  Last night good friends of ours stopped over as they began their vacation to visit Civil War sights.  We weren't one of those, but we did offer them dinner, good conversation, lots of laughs, brownies, a bed for the night, a 24 hour pharmacy, and waffles for breakfast.   A full service stop!

Poor Jim discovered an abscessed tooth once he arrived.  He called his dentist back home and they were able to phone in a script for him to pick up locally.  Poor guy.  He kept biting down on the wrong side of his mouth this morning.  Each time he did that he'd say "Ah" in such a way that Dave and I both thought something enlightening and intelligent was about to leave his brain.  Which, since that's usually the case, was totally in character.  But this morning it was just because of the pain.  So he was going to rest while his wife drove to their first battlefield.

This morning I passed out while working at the kitchen sink.  No, it was nothing serious.  But my poor heart just couldn't take seeing both Michelle AND Peter up and out before 9:00 a.m.!  They both smelled the sausage and waffles and that woke them up!  Dave said it was a good thing Ken was still in Chicago because I would have landed in the basement if he'd shown up too!  Having young adults in the house means that you usually have your mornings to yourself!

This afternoon I'll take Michelle to visit the doctor.  I'm hoping she schedules the ultrasound so we can see how the placenta is doing.  Then tonight I'm going to an inaugural meeting for a new red hat chapter that I'm going to be queen of.  It's going to be a dessert potluck so I'll make a carrot cake today.  I have to go to the store first since somebody has eaten all the carrots and not bothered to let me know.  I was going to make it yesterday, but there was only 1/2 a carrot left in the bag.  Who leaves 1/2 a carrot?  I guess Peter does!

Michelle, Sam and I walked through the birthing rooms at the hospital yesterday with the rest of the childbirth class.  Wow!  Things have changed a lot in the past 22 years!  The birthing room was big enough to hold all 17 of us comfortably.  Plus there was a big Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom.  It was very inviting.  We'll be spending a large chunk of time there in a couple months!

Just finished a funny Arly Hanks mystery.  The town of Maggody, Arkansas has to win the title of most dysfunctional fictional towns.  They put the fun in dysfunctional!

Guess I need to update.  We have been enjoying having Ken home.  Today he heads to Illinois to visit with his friends there.  Since we moved here the summer after he graduated high school, he doesn't have a friend base here and usually heads "home" for a few days each break.  We can't begrudge him that!  I'm happy that he's home for a few days.  He'll be back again at the end of the week and return to college on Sunday.

Michelle worked her last day at Marshall Fields on Sunday.  They closed their doors for good here today.  She was already bored yesterday, so I'm afraid we're in for a long two months, or however long it takes for Kaden to arrive.  At least she'll now have time to do her chores every day!  Will she do them though?  This waits to be seen.

The shower plans are progressing.  Some of the people from her work approached her, wanting to throw her a shower.  She told them that she was already having a shower and they could all come here.  So I asked her if the person who wanted to give the shower could bring the cake and I think that's what's happening.  The girl who supposedly is giving the shower (here, at our house) finally called me this weekend to see what she could do.  I delegated all the games and prizes to here.  She was happy with that. 

And the big news is that my mom is going to fly here in order to attend the shower!  Whoot!  Whoot!  Mom hates to fly, so this is quite the event for her.  She'll come on the Thursday and leave on Monday so she'll be here on Palm Sunday too.  I'm happy.

Now I'll go and visit all of you.  School was off yesterday (they schedule snow days, then if they're not used, the district has days off - they only used one day - it was while we were in Hawaii - so they had Monday as a vacation.  Teachers aren't supposed to get a sub the day before or after a vacation, so no calls today.  Guess I'll have to do some cleaning!  Maybe some scrapbooking?

Tendonitis.  So he gave me a corisone shot.   Will the cure be worse than the problem?   Silent scream .    ARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!  Owee.

Lets just hope this works!