School's Out!

Coolest album cover ever, just about. The top opens up like an old fashioned school desk, the kind I grew up with and was forever being sent to the hallway to clean. (It was such a messy nest that the lid wouldn't shut, and the teacher would exile me + desk to hallway while other people were at recess...) Anyway, I actually owned this album, one of my first- I didn't really like any of the songs (other than school's out) but the album was the most interesting thing to look at...

So today was the last student day, not so bad. One minor morning meltdown in my room (a senior's girlfriend's mum washed the pants he left on the girlfriend's bedroom floor and ruined his sign out sheet. She apologized, but he was telling the story at school and the girlfriend got upset and then meltdown for both of them. I got it sorted out, another sign out sheet and all is well. Still, if I were the mum, I would of KILLED him for leaving his pants on my daughter's bedroom floor. Any self-respecting boyfriend could of at least hung them on the door.... -my how times have changed!) Anyway, the movie we were supposed to watch was 'Remember the Titans' (again) so we ditched it for season one of the Xfiles (surprising- the majority of the kids had never heard of the Xfiles, and happily fell in love with it) The principal came in- brief fear of being in trouble for not watching the Titan move- but instead he was "ooooohhhh Which one is this? Season one? I haven't seen that for a long time.... Oh, must get back to work....to distracted" So life is good.

Tomorrow work, then doctor, Friday Raleigh, Saturday Penderlea Museum antique sale, then graduation, then auction.... Monday school and my screen test (maybe) for the International Academy (it's an online teaching gig), Tuesday/Wednesday the last teacher days... then freedom! Yay!

This years recap:

School was good, and not just because of my #1 parking spot (the reward for being teacher of the year- that and my shiny gold star). We only had one principal shift, when Claire King finished her internship (it was fun having her here, because they would mix up our phone numbers. Her husband always said "Hi Gorgeous!".... and I'd have baffled in-trouble kids showing up at the art room wondering why their teacher sent them here.....

But that all changed in December when I got married (YAY!) and became Mrs. Owens, or Rowens as it has become (R. Owens). The kids met and adopted Charles (Mr. Fuzzy) and lived in envy of my tales of hot breakfast, tasty dinners, and lunch surprises. Phone calls every afternoon, and everyone noticed I was greatly more cheerfuller (as they put it).

Anyhoo, I will miss these seniors- Sneaky, Neena and Ariel (with their lama fur hair) all the others. And I will miss school at ECU (even though I am going on with other things, they won't have the studio classes that were fun fun)...but I am proud of me for finishing, and for finishing my National Board Renewal. We get to the places we need to go.

So, summer time and summer goals for me:

1. get healthy

2. Texas trip to visit Mother and everyone!

3. go to the beach some.... I know tarballs are evil, but I also know that tar balls that have been in the water for a bit get hard and carveable. I can make stuff out of them....

4. Make lots of art things, write lots

5. Play with the house and yarden

7. Work on our Morninglory project (the store and selling things)

8. Spend time with the doggies

9. Not stress out about this online job, even if I get it.

10. ENJOY the manz, the boy, friends, family, adventures, the doggies and kitty, summer (heat! Hooray for heat!) and all the good things.

Basically, I just want to relax and be 'in the moment' for a change. I spent all year focused on deadlines- it was like running a race. I'm good at that, but I need some 'out to pasture time'......sugar.

Work is goooooood for boys!

Saturday is sale day, and Kyle spent the night, so he was drafted to help. Here is the manz directing placement of a mattress to his happy helpers- they then hid from the sun behind the mattress until it was sold.

It is so nice to have the boy home- he can help lift and carry all the furniture so we can make multiple trips to get sellable stuff, plus he is starting on his selling skills. Saturday was an excellent day as we sold a dining set, bed and mattress set, assorted other things including chairs, dressers, small stuff, all the fishing rods (yay! I am always afraid of the hooks) and just did well overall. I love doing this- we are all together outside, get to meet people and talk, our friends stop by and I paint the whole time (and get the ego stroked by compliments- even though my skills are rusty at the moment...I painted the lighthouse this weekend, not quite finished but it isn't quite right....) Anyway, a good (and profitable) time is had by all. And the boys get to be outside in the sun, and we have excellent unpaid labor (evil mummy). Seriously, Grendel seems to like helping Charles, and they have (so far) come back smiling from their 'workbonding' experiences. Which is a good thing-

Go to Work with Dad Day!

Today was go-to-work-with-Dad-day! Charles had to go to Jacksonville to pack up and load a house-of-stuff for the auction, and there was a lack of usual help...so the monster got to go. I admit, I was wondering how it would work out- it's physical, obviously dirty, and lots and lots of lifting and carrying. But they came home with smiles on their faces, job well done and boy tuckered out (fell asleep in the truck on the way home, of course- car + boy = nap).

Work is a good thing- and physical work is good for a Grendel, plus profitable...and the whole male bonding (well, male bonding plus Ada and antiques). I'm a happy camper, and soon pizza will be here and everyone will be full and happy and snugged in on a rainy night.

I do love my men-folk!

Memorial Day

Memorial day weekend was busy beyond busy- Thursday I went down to Savannah to fetch the boy, he is home safe- we took a quick detour to the campus bookstore (ExLibris) to return books and find treasures, then to my favorite Asian place- a tiny hole-in-the-wall that he discovered, so that I could have krispy fish for lunch.... long trip home, then school Friday, then the Manz and I headed down to Charleston to see Barbie and Tom. I was surprised by a Celebration cake! (with a pink rose- yay!) chocolate and raspberry.... the next day we went up to Loanstar for bluegrass and BBQ. Endless music (the lady with the accordion was amazing- she even yodeled), lots of good pictures of old stuff, I got to sit in the sun and paint and listen to bluegrass and Charles and Barbie talking to everyone around us. Mr. Thomas is like me- a good listener and observer- Barbie and Charles never met a stranger and become instant 'life of the party types'. They were cutting up so hard at dinner that Barbie's friend Sue could hardly eat for laughing.... we all had a blast. Sunday we headed back early- the AC in the car is on the fritz- but still stopped at a few yard sales (nothing), I talked the manz into looking at an abandoned house with me, and we found a lovely abandoned train car. It is in Conway, and is a passenger coach on the Louisville and Nashville lines. High ceilings, wooden cabinets, lovely milk-glass light fixtures (only one remained the rest had been smashed by vandals- shame). While I love abandoned things, I hate to see them go to waste- especially something so graceful as this- big enough for a store, or to live in, or a diner- or........ it could have another life. Then we visited the elephant (the abandoned one I found years ago and am still trying to figure out how to acquire), and headed home with our cargo of plants. Tom loaded us up with all sorts of things, including beautiful lacetop hydrangeas.

Memorial day itself was quiet- Charles was supposed to work but that had been changed (they didn't call! we could of stayed an extra day! boohiss!) so we all took it easy and watched tv all day. (I took lots of naps) I remember other Memorial Days though, how we would prepare by sprucing up the cemetery plot at Grandview, I would ride my bike or march with Girl scouts in the parade down Luzerne street to Grandview (funny, lots of things centered around that cemetery- maybe that's why I like them so very much). We would have cookouts and invite Old Mr. Benson next door- Karen and I would make him desserts and Daddy always grilled burgers, had homemade potato salad. Every house had a flag, all the bikes had streamers and we would play badminton until dark. The first fireflies would come out, school would be over and the long summer would begin. Hello summer, I'm ready!

I'm lazy

Most people don't think so, but truth is that I'm lazy. I haven't gotten grendel's room ready yet- and he is due home Thursday.... that is a big example. A little example is watermelons. Truth is, I like watermelons. And cantaloupes, honeydew, crenshaw...most melons... but I'm lazy. I don't know why but tackling a whole melon, cutting it up and wrapping the leftovers, dealing with the seeds and all that is just overpowering to me- too much work. The precut melons at the grocers always are mushy, and you can tell they have been trimmed from melons almost ready for the great melon graveyard in the sky. I like bites of melon at the stockyards where they are cut with machetes and offered in chunks on the tip of a knife. But I rarely take them because then I feel guilty for not buying one and if I do... it takes over the refrigerator because I am too lazy to cut it up and use it. I go for easy fruits, like peaches or berries.... they take zero work to eat, even less work than oranges and bananas. (I don't like bananas much, especially if they are at all spotty. If I have to eat a banana, make it frozen and chocolate covered please.... or in chunky monkey ice cream).... back to the melons. I don't know why it is- as much as I love to eat, some foods just seem to difficult to think about. Melons. Turkeys, whole Cabbages, Recipes-requiring-many-steps. I've given up on cooking except for baking, and that is limited to cake-box cookies- I don't mind the washing up and I love grocery shopping, but my cooking skills have packed their bags and left town. (The manz cooks way better than me, so that is a good thing-)

Perhaps I'm just tired, but I have always felt this way about melons. That's why as a kid I was in love with melon balls- they were super good and easy to deal with- no giant slippery wedge full of seeds, or puddle of juice, and the melon had to be fresh in order to make successful melon balls. I think they would be awesome frozen...if the melon ball fairy left some in the fridge....

Creativity on the Loose!

This is awesome. There is just no other adjective that applies to the crochet poodle bottle cover. If I was judging this as a project, it would have an A++ seriously. The craftsmanship is perfect- crochet stitches tight, the pompoms handmade and secure, the nose shaped perfectly. Not a loose string to be seen. But the cincher is the expression on the poodle's face- priceless! It's gazing down on it's unicorn admirers as if to say "Don't worry- we may of found ourselves in reduced circumstances (boxlots at the auction) but I am certain that someone will see our true worth and we shall be restored to our place of splendor in a well-appointed home." I don't know who acquired this treasure, but I hope the poodle has a good home~

I get empathic with the handmade things that show up at auction- I know how much time, effort and love has to go into making something... in order to make anything you end up caring about it deeply. The caring could be the pride of accomplishment, the struggle with the technical, the hope that it really will be 'just perfect' for the recipient, the hope that someone will love it enough to part with money for it. Some of my creations I find very easy to let go- for sale or gifties or whatever- but that doesn't mean that I don't care about it when I'm making it, and hope that it will be loved for a long time.

I had to say 'no' to the poodle- I can't rescue everything and I really truly have no place for it (or desire to have it- not my style *at all*)... and some of the handmade stuff we get in is truly hideous. (I can imagine someone unwrapping it and saying 'uh.....gee... Thank you for the...ah, um, did you make this yourself? wow.) (and yes, that has happened to me before!) but sometimes there are things that we can't resist. The manz bought a stack of afgans at another auction- $3.00 for the lot of 7- they were beautifully made, clean, good colors (solid dusty roses, mossy greens, and a cream) We had them at spring fest and one of my student's mothers bought two for her older daughter's college apartment. That daughter actually sent me a thank-you note on facebook- she loved them (and... I must confess... is under the illusion that I made them.) Confession again, I didn't make them (I cannot crochet despite Mother's best efforts to teach me- she taught my best friend Karen and I when we were in 5th grade....Karen caught right on and was soon whipping out scarves, afghans, blankets...I was soooo jealous!) Anyway, I chose to not spoil the illusion that I had made them, for the magic of them is enhanced by the thought. And that's ok.

Cookie Monster!

Charles's dad is incredibly generous. He also apparently has connections to the Keebler Elves, because he gave us- among other things like Honeydew melons and potatoes sweet and white- a 50 pound box of Hydrox meal. Hydrox's are like Oreo's- and the meal is the chocolate part, not the white part- crumbled up. Excellent for cheesecake crust, mixed into ice cream and milkshakes, in other things.....but I'm not quite sure what to do with 50lbs of it. That's allot of cookie dust.

Of course, the manz made marvelous milk-shakes right off.... ice cream, peanut butter and cookie dust. Chocolate peanut butter heaven. (Diet? What diet? I know nothing of diet) but WOW were they worth it. So last night- the first night in a week that I was feeling human and awake past 8pm, we had milkshakes and watched movies, just relaxed. It was nice- today we were up early (but someone got our selling spot!) so we found another and sold more furniture, a trolling motor and one of my painted milk cans- the one with cats and geraniums on it. Wish we had more milk cans as they are quite popular, everyone seems to like them. I also worked on a boat painting but I can't quite get the boat to sit in the water right- it's just a rowboat in a stream. Now we are home for lunch and showers, cooling off and perhaps a nap before auction time. Tomorrow is my time to tackle the Monster's lair!

I was teasing Charles that we should just save the box of cookie dust and give it, some milk and a spoon to grendel when he gets home.... Happy boy-food! Seriously- any cookie-dust suggestions would be welcome! Happy Days!