When I casually mentioned to my friend that I had been asked to teach a preschool gardening class, she nearly fell of of her chair.  When she finally stopped laughing long enough to breath, she gasped out, “YOU! Do they know about you? Did you tell them??” 

Obviously, my friend knows me too well. (And she can’t be content to just make a non-committal sound like Shaun has gotten so good at)  Sadly, it’s true.  I have what’s known as a black thumb.  In fact, I am always in awe of a plant that can survive my well-meant nurturing.  So, of course, I told them that I wasn’t really a gardener before I accepted the job.  But I think they must have been desperate as they wanted me anyways. 

Besides, I really didn’t think that how well I could (or rather couldn’t) garden should matter  with this class.  After all, my only guideline was a paragraph written by someone else a few months ago. It said the class was to be “a hands-on exploration of how seeds grown, the work of bugs and much more”.  Easy Peasy.   It also mentioned something about crafting and  simple planting.  I’m really good at planting things…it’s just keeping them alive that gives me problems.

Thanks to my good friend Google, I was completely prepared for the first day of three back to back classes.   What I wasn’t quite prepared for was for these preschoolers to bring along their moms…and their dads…and their grandparents…not to mention all the cameras and camcorders!   I suddenly realized that in addition to teaching the kids, I had to impress the adults with my…um…vast knowledge…of gardening.  Yeah.

Fortunately for me, I have no problems with talking to a crowd or with being silly enough to grab and keep the attention of young children.  I got laughs from the parents when I told the kids that I pulled up the best plant in my garden to show them all the parts of a plant.  I really wasn’t joking when I showed off my magnificent weed.

I did mention that I was in awe of anything I could grow!

We talked a bit, did a small project, then went for a walk to a patch of dirt the park had provided for us.  We were going to plant nasturtiums (and boy was I glad I had looked up the proper way to pronounce it before I came!)  because they are fast growers.  It turned out that the kids had no interest in planting seeds.  At least not while there were much more exciting things to do with the dirt…like play with worms.

To my relief  no surprise, everyone had a great time and may even have learned something.  As they were leaving, one of the grandpas turned to me and told me  that I wasn’t a teacher…I was a saint.  Now all I have to do is figure out what I can do to top the worms next week!

I’m also wondering if I should tell my friend that I’ve been asked to help out with the preschool cooking class…

“Don’t you think Buddy looks exactly like Morris?”  my husband asked me as he sat stroking our enormous purring  orange fur ball.

“Huh?” Was my response.  (I’m verbose like that)

“You remember…Morris the Cat?”

Of course I remembered Morris the Cat.  The World’s Most Finicky Cat seemed to have a bit of an impact on my generation.  (For anyone that happens to be young enough that you don’t remember…there’s always YouTube) Yet, I couldn’t see any resemblance (other than the fact that they are both cats) between our sweet Buddy and grumpy ol’ Morris.  I had to come up with a gentle way to tell My Beloved that he was off his rocker.

So I bluntly told Shaun that he was nuts and that those two cats  looked nothing alike.  Buddy was much more handsome and besides, they weren’t even the same color, Morris was a gray cat!

Shaun looked at me in bewilderment.  He was just as convinced that Morris was an orange tabby as I was that he was gray. We stared at each other in consternation over how our memories of this cultural icon could be so completely different. 

Suddenly Shaun had a flash of inspiration…”You had a black and white television!” he shouted out triumphantly.  That certainly explained things for us.

It’s nice when we  can both be right…

When Shaun and I got married about a zillion years ago, we made certain vows to each other.  One of those vows was to nurture and wait on each other hand and foot in case of sickness. (At least I’m pretty sure that’s  how they went…those vows were made sooo long ago) 

For the most part, we are very good about taking care of each other when one of us is sick.  We only run into trouble on those rare occasions when we are both under the weather at the same time.  That’s when things can get a little dicey. 

I imagine that normal couples would work together to help each other through nasty colds.  Obviously we aren’t a normal couple as we seem to have it in our minds that only the sickliest and most pathetic person deserves any sort of sympathy. 

When I mentioned to Shaun that my throat was getting sore and scratchy earlier this week, he looked at me in horror.   It turned out that his throat had been feeling sore and scratchy too…only I mentioned it first so I got the sympathy points. 

We took turns moaning, groaning and exaggerating our symptoms  (Well, Shaun exaggerated…mine were all real) in hopes of winning that elusive sympathy reserved only for the truly ill in our home.  My sweet girls decided that I was that one that needed to be taken care of the most.  (All those years of taking care of them were finally paying off!) After a day or two  about an hour of devoted attention, I caught my children rolling their eyes at yet another one of my their father’s pathetic sickbed requests.  It wasn’t too long before they quietly disappeared and wouldn’t come back…no matter how hard we rang that little crystal bell.

It took us all week, but Shaun and I have finally managed to regain our health.  The better we felt, the more our competitive spirit faded away and we are once again speaking to each other without inserting a few fake coughs. 

Only I still have the sniffles, so I win…

For a variety of reasons, it’s been a long time since I’ve played Fun Monday.  (Some of those reasons might possibly include because I haven’t been blogging, but we won’t mention that!)  I signed up at Mariposa’s without really paying attention to what the topic was. 

It turns out, she wanted to know all about our collections.  Piece of cake, right? Hmmm….maybe not. 

When I was a young girl, I collected dolls.  I’m not sure where they all came from, but I ended up with a really nice collection.  Then one day, I decided it was too babyish for me and I got rid of them all.  Well…all except my very favorite one, which I still have today.

My new collection became owls.  How I adored owls of every sort.  (It makes me smile to think that they are becoming an “in” thing).  After that, it was geese.  I lost my interest in them when I started noticing them everywhere.  (I have a thing about not wanting to be like everyone else) So, I ditched the geese.

Over the years, I realized that I had really started to love frogs.  (Is it weird that I wanted “I’m in Love with a Big Blue Frog” played for the first dance at our wedding? Sadly, our DJ couldn’t find a copy of it and we had to settle for Mozart). 

My collection of sweet little froggies wasn’t one that I could easily give up… even when they got to be trendy.  I’ve loved frogs steadily for over twenty years now (Geez, I must be getting old!)   It seemed as though everyone I knew was aware of my enjoyment of frogs and often surprised me with little frogs they had come across. As much as I treasured each and every one of these thoughtful treasures, it had gotten to the point that frogs had taken over our home.

So, I took a deep breath and started casually mentioning that I was so over the whole frog thing.  I told everyone that I had finally grown out of them and was going to box my collection up and give it to Good Will.  Slowly, the steady steam of amphibian gifts slowed down and we were able to walk through a house free of frog pillows, frog door stops, frog wall hangings, frog figurines, frog…well you get the picture.

Sometimes…late at night…when no one is around….I go out in the garage and quietly pry open the lid of a huge cardboard box.  It seems as though this particular box still hasn’t quite made it out to the curb when the donation truck comes by.  Those poor little froggies, they get lonely and need me to visit them sometimes. 

They know I still love them…

For the past month or so, I’ve been having a lot of trouble with my computer.  I haven’t said much about it (but in all fairness, I haven’t said much about anything lately!) but it has really stressed me out. 

When I did mentioned my computer woes,  Jay suggested, from personal experience,  that the problem might be with the power cord.  Still not having prepared myself for the thought of sending off my computer for several weeks,  I was more that willing  to grasp at any straw.  I asked Shaun if the problem could possibly be the power cord. 

My Beloved thought I was brilliant for coming up with such an astute diagnosis.  (Naturally, I went ahead and let him think that it was all my idea.  I’m sure I’ll be falling off my pedestal just as soon as he reads this) and went rummaging through his huge collection of power cords and other…stuff. (which resulted in him doing a bit of Spring Cleaning and bringing in three huge boxes of electronics for his co-workers to scavenge through)

I was thrilled when we plugged the new cord in and my computer once again worked…at least for a very short time.  I had made the tragic mistake of turning my computer off.  (Apparently, something one should never do!)  To my horror, it refused to reboot. 

it had done this a few times before, so I knew that if I tried over and over and over again (We’re talking hours here) it would finally stop hanging..  Only this time, something odd happened.  A blue screen filled with white words flashed by so quickly that I had no chance to read it, then the computer went into some strange loop where it would try to reboot then flash the blue screen at me.  KT and I made it a game to see if we could make out any of the words. 

We finally came up with a phrase (I’ve forgotten what it was) that told us that  my hard disk had died.   A new hard drive didn’t fix anything, nor did new memory chips.  (You do realize that I wasn’t the one doing this fixing, don’t you?  I think it’s already been established that I’m not the brilliant one!)

We had pretty much given up hope when the nice man in brown shorts brought us the new battery we had ordered.  Despite knowing it was useless, Shaun put the battery in anyways.  To our amazement it worked. 

Shaun fully expected me to start jumping up and down for joy.  I couldn’t do it.  I was just cringing….waiting for the next Bad Thing to happen to this poor computer.  It baffles my mind to think that these troubles have come down to a failing power supply.

I’m almost ready to do the Happy Dance…

This was one of those extremely rare mornings that my youngest daughter cheerfully hopped out of bed the first time I called her.  She quickly dressed, did all of her chores and then at down to eat a leisurely breakfast.  The entire time she was chattering on about this and that…and mostly marveling at how much time she had.  She was so amazed at how much nicer her morning was going when she didn’t have to rush.  (My caffeine starved brain was simply marveling at how much more pleasant she was!)

I had to laugh when my girl calmly informed me that I only had four more minutes until I needed to be ready to go.  When those four minutes were up, I was dutifully ready to go with my keys in hand.  Mimi, however, started frantically running around trying to remember where she had left a certain pair of shoes. (Mimi considers herself quite fashionable and wasn’t willing to wear any of those other shoes neatly lined up on the shoe rack)

I just shook my head and told her that I was going to warm up the car and that she had better hurry.  It wasn’t too long until she breathlessly plopped into the passenger seat of the MomMobile.  I quickly (but safety) drove her down to the bus stop…just in time to see it drive away. 

It wasn’t a big deal to follow the big yellow bus to the next stop.  It was a big deal for Mimi though.  She just knew that everyone was watching her get on at the wrong stop.  (Don’t you just miss those teen years????)

After such a tragic ending to such a wonderful start, I can’t help but wonder how long it will be until my girl will eagerly hop out of bed the first time I call her. Sigh…

When I met up with Carol the other day, she had a special gift for me.  I had been one of the “winners” of her Pay It  Forward post from about a thousand years ago and she thought it was time to award me my wonderful gift. 

I’d love to be able to say that I’m one of those people that is always winning something.  Sadly, I’m not…  I’m one of those people that wins something wonderful every once in a while.  (And by something wonderful, I do not mean  A Major Award.)

In this instance, I won two beautiful sets of handmade earrings.  Thanks Carol!

 (These photos don’t even begin to do them justice)

Now if you aren’t aware of the Pay it Forward blog movement, it’s a fun little meme that instead of answering some questions, you give three lucky recipients some sort of gift.

So here are the official “rules” of this meme (Of course there are rules…why would you doubt that?)

If you’d like to participate, leave me a comment. I will pick 3 commenters and send them….um….something.  It won’t be earrings and it won’t be a Major Award (unless, of course, Jay wins because he would probably like a Major Award!)  It might even be store bought… (I’m posting the rules,  I can make them up as I go along.  So there!) If I know you well enough, I’ll try to pick something based on what I know about you.

You do need to be willing to send me your have to send me your “snail mail” address. (BWWAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!) Then, you’ll need to make a similar post on your own blog, offering to pay it forward to 3 more bloggers who comment on your site. (You don’t have to do this until you receive the scary charming gift that I am sending to you)

On the other hand, if you decide to leave a comment, gushing about Carol’s beautiful workmanship, but you do not want to play, please tell me so in your comment.

I’ll give you until…oh Monday at midnight? Then I will pick three random numbers and see who wins!

Good luck!

I don’t know if I mentioned it or not, but my Beloved Laptop has been giving my some major trouble lately. It started innocently enough when the battery started to die. I could no longer happily sit using my laptop while the girls were doing their late afternoon activities. I could understand that, it was a pain, but I knew that batteries are not known for their longevity.

I think the batteries started talking to the power cord, because suddenly, the computer no longer wanted to charge with the power cord. My Inhouse Tech Support (who is quite grumpy when asked to trouble shoot these types of problems…ok any type of computer problems) was convinced that I had broken off the little thingy that sticks out inside the power hole (see, I can be techie too!) When I showed him that it wasn’t broken off, he just shrugged his shoulders and told me to send it to the factory. (WHAT factory????) I managed to figure out a way to very delicately place the plug in so that it would charge my laptop. Of course, this very delicate way seems to changed often.

I wasn’t real thrilled when the screen started going black on me for no particular reason. I managed to fix this by swearing at it a bit (because that always helps!) and clicking on random spots until it cleared up. Emails that I had sent disappeared with no record of being sent and certainly not received. (My apologies to anyone that thinks I’m ignoring them) Then my computer decided that it would be fun to start turning itself off at random times…and then refuse to reboot for hours.

Yesterday, it occurred to me that perhaps my computer wasn’t just being difficult, but was in fact, quite ill. Late yesterday, it fell into a deeeeep coma. (I refuse to say it died..I’m just not ready for that)

My Inhouse Tech Support graciously took a few moments out from playing WoW to set up an account for me on the girls’ computer. (Thank you!) Yep, I have to share a computer with my children. My children that firmly believe that they shouldn’t have to share a computer…that they totally deserve to each have a laptop of their very own. (I think it’s going to be fun kicking them off just to mess with them. Oh wait…it that bad?)

So this morning, I have been reacquainting myself with this old desktop computer. I’ve learned that I can get email, but I can’t send it. (Queen of the Workaround, I realized that I can used my Hotmail account that I kinda forgot about to email people with) All of my pictures are trapped inside the Sleeping Dragon that used to be my Beloved Laptop so I’m still not going to be able to show off our South Carolina adventure. And well…there are lots of little things that are frustrating me (have I ever mentioned how much I dislike change???)

At least now, I should have a stable computer to work with (and blog on!) even if I can’t tuck it under my arm and haul it around with me…