Sunday Morning Bloggadoodle

And THIS would be why I carry that camera of mine around with me wherever I go.

Yesterday, I walked into a local nail salon for some selfish Debbie doings, and I saw a young mother from my church. She had brought her little girl and a little friend to have their little toes painted as a treat. The little ones sat in the teddy bear chairs and giggled together as Mommy watched, a baby sister perched on her lap. I, of course, was delighted and launched into a yakkity yak about the precious moment.

She gave me “that” look of great distress and reported that she had left the house without her camera… She had even forgotten her cell phone. How well I could relate.

Not to fear. I whipped the shiny red Kodak out of the purse and handed it to her. Then, I offered to hold baby sister while she chronicled her princess diaries. (Magnanimous gesture? Or selfish ploy for some baby holding time? You be the judge…)

At any rate, Young Mommy got pictures of the moment.

Now, here’s my question: Does she get to keep the Mommy Points, or do I? I think at the very least, we ought to share them...

Now, that's just cute.

Have a happy Sunday!

Last things...

I’ve traveled Senior Road to graduation before. It was three years ago, when we walked it with The Practical One. Familiarity doesn’t make it any easier this time around. In fact, since Miss Whimsy is number two out of two… which translates to last… I think it makes it even harder.


The road to graduation is filled with “lasts”. I snapped this picture of Miss Whimsy in August as she whizzed out the driveway on her last first day of school. She smiled and waved as she always does. I smiled and waved back… glad that she couldn’t see the tears on the porch from her place on the road.

I cried because it was the last, the very last, time that I would line up a daughter by the fireplace for our traditional first day of school picture. I cried because I had a decent kid, a kid who still let me carry on my sentimental traditions though she was 17… and not 7. I cried because I knew that the next “first” day of school would be a day she walked alone. No hovering photo op mom… no fireplace photo… no breakfast basket full of Mommy Points to nibble along the way.

I cried because the goofy little girl who wore hair bows larger than her peanut head was leaving my nest. And I knew that my world was never going to be the same.








The journey down Senior Road is lined with little historical markers. We passed the last first day of school…and then the last cross country meet. Today, she left for her last trip to the State German Convention. Gratefully, Super Dad was home to oversee the project as we loaded Vera and company into the car, substituting the Vera large duffel, pillow, and blanket for the 50 pound book bag. More gratefully, he was there to hug me after she left. And I could see in his face that he understood.

I remember when this little girl whooshing off to her last German Convention was a baby. A friend, one who had daughters just a little older than my girls, talked of rocking her babies to sleep. She said that with her older daughter, she hadn’t realized that one night would be the last night for the rocking. She said that the last rocking night always came without warning, that your child never looks at you and says, “Mom, enjoy this tonight….because tomorrow, I’m putting myself to bed.” Thinking back to my previous rocking days with The Practical One, I knew that my friend was right. It had, indeed, come without warning.

So with little sister, I savored each night just a little bit longer. I treated each night as if it could, potentially, be my last rocking night.

And one night, it was. And I was so glad that I had cherished the moment.

So forgive me if I’m less than witty this morning. I’m having a Mommy Moment. It, like time, will pass.

Kodak Moments

So while I was snapping pictures in the den closet yesterday, I bumped into these:

I’m not a scrapbooker. Actually, I would love to be one. It looks fun to me, but I never have taken that particular plunge. I’m not a photo album gal either. Oh, I own them. I just never put my pictures in them. Instead, my old pictures live in that little colorful mountain of photo boxes… behind that door in that den closet. They are boxed by year and further filed by season, sometimes by event.

And I have a ton of them.

Because even in the pre digital era, I was that annoying photo op mom with a camera super glued to her fingers. You know the type. Of course, those were the pose- freeze - hold it days… the let me take another shot just in case your eyes were closed days… the days when you weren’t sure how a photo would turn out until you had it developed. I wonder if this new generation of digital moms knows just how blessed they are. They get to capture their children in candid, real life moments and not worry about wasting a shot to do it. I envy them.

Way back when, I never wasted a shot by taking a picture of an object or a landscape. Instead, I posed the girls in front of said object or landscape. No matter how grand the canyon, it was really nothing more than the setting of that chapter in the Princess Chronicles anyway.

Here's the Great Smokey Mountains.... behind my girls...

And that's the Mighty Mississippi River... behind my girls...

Some random water wheel in Florida.... behind my girls.... during the prairie bonnet phase...

Look! An entire century.... behind my girls...

And back then, I kept the one hour photo mart in business. When I hit that 24th exposure, regardless of whether it had taken me a month to reach that point, I simply could not contain myself for more than an hour before seeing my masterpieces developed.

So I would drive (because back then, photo developing actually involved legwork…) to the photo mart, leave my film, and then fritter away an hour somewhere in town waiting to pay entirely too much money for the big reveal. Apparently, frugality and photography were diametrically opposed on Debbie Drive...back then.

What a difference technology makes! Now, I snap a few (hundred) pictures, plug the shiny red Kodak into my laptop, and voila, instant gratification and mass production. It doesn’t get any better than that.

That’s why when Cinderella went to the ball last year, I was able to shoot and upload 52 photos of the event and turn 20 of them into a slideshow, complete with witty captions… which I then sent through cyber space to various locations around the globe. All before the clock struck midnight.

It was grand.

Nowadays, I store my pictures in this little computer… in folders, of course. I’m not sure how much memory I have in this little laptop, but I’m pretty sure that at some point it will develop dementia from the overload. Until that time, I will continue to point, click, and hoard.

Because I’m still a hovering, card carrying member of the parental paparazzi.

Obsessive Innieism

I’ve been cleaning this morning. I’m talking deep spring cleaning in serious super purge mode.

And the sad fact is I haven’t left this spot.

As I’ve mentioned, I'm an innie. I like my schtuff secured neatly away behind a door, curtain, or screen. If that’s the case for my large items, it is doubly the case for my paperwork and other such small items. I am a serious fan of the file system. In my mind, I have addressed the mess if it is neatly organized in a folder. And then in a file.

And I like my files color coded. I have a huge pile of old folders in various colors on stand- by, waiting to be called up into active duty.

Brown files are used for the house… green for all things financial…gray for all things auto… red is insurance. (Come to think of it, since we currently use Blue Cross, those files ought to be reassigned to blue…) The girls are filed in purple unless it relates to college. Then, it would be orange. Can anyone relate?

I have a massive four drawer filing cabinet on The List, but I have no decent place to keep it in the house proper. Instead, I have mini files in various places around this house. My favorite file spot is behind a door in the den closet. Not only do I have a two drawer filing cabinet full of files in there, but I also keep a standing file on top of it for those items that I want at my fingertips.

I know that if I have to take the extra millisecond to actually open a filing cabinet drawer, I will probably just leave said item in the horizontal waiting room. And that would be a mess magnet.

 A VERTICAL waiting room, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable to me. That would be the reason that I created this…

It’s my little magnetic “to be filed” nook. Seriously, I’m pretty sure this inniesim is a psychological disorder. Perhaps The Practical One will do her masters thesis on it.

And that leads me to my Wednesday morning purge session.

This morning, as I was trying to locate a recent email, I discovered that my obsessive innieism has now entered the computer age. In my inbox alone, I had PAGES of emails. To deal with my emails, I have set up a variety of e- folders for the messages that I feel the need to save hoard. I have a Sunday school e-folder, a DAR e-folder, a school e-folder… Most oddball of all is the e-folder I set up for emails that I just can’t seem to delete. This would include emails that are funny, informative, or sentimental. Appropriately, I have named that folder The Attic.

So this morning, I sat with my coffee for a few HOURS and tried to do a little purge of my e- hoarding. I purged email folders. Then, I headed over to Favorites Paradise, where I have also utilized the e- folder system. That would be the reason that I had to scroll past 29 folders before I could reach the link to the aforementioned email to begin with.

See?

I have e-folders for Bible study, for blogs, for message boards, for recipes, for decorating, for crafts… I have one folder simply named “orange”. Good grief. Within each folder is a neatly stashed bundle of links.

 In Bible study alone, I counted 55.

Now, for a compulsive meanderer  like me, any purge presents the dangerous risk of wandering. If I’m not careful, clicking a saved link will lead me on a cyber adventure road through google land. Therefore, I had to preset my purge to a specific block of time. Tomorrow morning, I’ll set aside just 15 minutes to do some more. At this rate, I might complete the job by the new year.

If I knew how to delete in bulk, I would do it. In fact, if anyone knows how, please share the e- instructions. HOWEVER, if there is a way to color code e- folders,

please… please…just don’t tell me.

When Vera Rides Shotgun

Life is what you make of it. And what I have made of mine is often a hectic frenzy. I say this because my hectic mornings are a direct result of the choice that I made to live 30 country miles from our school, job, and church.

So on a usual hectic morning, we load the car with the breakfast basket, the travel mug, the purse, and the 50 pound book bag, kiss the daughter, and she’s on her way. But there are some mornings which rise beyond the hectic level to manic morning status. Those would be the days when, for one reason or another, the daughter decides to spend the night with the Duchess. This necessitates the addition of Vera Bradley into the hectic routine.

Vera, of course, is the designer of those fabric girly bags in a variety of patterns. Manic mornings include the Vera Toggle Tote, the Vera Cosmetic Bag, the Vera eyeglass Case, and the Vera flat iron holder all combined in a neat little Vera pile which must make it down the stairs and into the front seat of the car along with hanging clothes for the next day…



… in addition to the breakfast basket, the travel mug, the purse, and the 50 pound book bag. Inevitably, these mornings occur on the days when Super Dad is not there to oversee the project.

Such was the scenario the other morning as Miss Whimsy  left for school with plans to go Winter Jam and spend that night with the Duchess. So before sunrise, we lugged the travel mug, the basket, the book bag, the purse, the Vera pile, and the hanging clothes for the next day toward the door.

And I asked, “Do you have your jacket?”

“I have this…” She gestured to her hoodie. Was that what I asked? No, it wasn’t.

So I said again, “But do you have a jacket?”

“No… I have this”. She gestured again.

Now, I was getting a little testy.

“But you might need a jacket.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes, you might. I’ll get it.” And I balanced the breakfast basket in the crook of the arm and opened the closet door…

“It’s not there. It’s up on my bed. And I don’t need it.”

“Yes, you might.” And I marched up the stairs to the beat of the mommy cadence. You know the one. “You are spending the night with Grandma… You do not know what the weather will be like…. You may keep it in the car… but you need to be prepared….wok wok wok wok wokkkkkkkk.”

And I distinctly heard a muffled titch. Oh, yes, I did. And it was followed with the, “Why?...”

Don’t tell me about multi tasking. I’ve got that thing down to a science. Only a veteran mom can juggle Vera Bradley in one hand, a breakfast basket in the other, dangle hanging clothes from her thumb hookie and a jacket from her armpit, yet STILL manage to reach into her bag of Mommyisms and retrieve that worn out “Because I said so” from the bottom.

And that was the final word. Motherhood is not for wimps.

And she and Vera headed for school. I have no idea whether the jacket ever made it out of the back seat of the car. It probably stayed there, if for no other reason than pure stubbornness. I, however, got Mommy Points for sending it.

Collecting Mommy Points

I’ve been collecting Mommy Points for years.


Mommy Points are those points you earn when you follow the Mommy Rules. You know...when you do what Donna Reed would do whether your kids notice or appreciate that you do it.

I first learned about Mommy Points when The Practical One was in the fourth grade. A small group of fellow room mothers was meeting to plan a school day Thanksgiving dinner. One of the mothers offered to bring “the” green beans.  Another mom, the bossy type, poo- pooed the offering on the basis that the kids wouldn’t eat it anyway.  Green Bean Mom replied that maybe they wouldn’t, but we would get Mommy Points regardless. She went on to explain with a grin that kids don’t have to actually EAT the green things. You still earn Mommy Points whenever something green is offered on the plate.

If they eat it, you get extra credit.

Now, that just made me giggle.

Bossy Mom didn’t get it, but I did, and I have been collecting Mommy Points ever since.

I earn Mommy Points every morning when I send the daughter off to school. Because we live so far from school, and because I have this thing about tardiness, there isn’t time for breakfast at home. So every morning for the past 9 years, I have packed a breakfast basket for the meal on wheels. Yes, I know the overkill is unnecessary, but I get Mommy Points for presentation. Usually, it consists of some muffins and a little bowl of fruit. Now, they don’t always eat that fruit, but I still get points for sending it. That's the way the game works.

And it’s always covered with a linen napkin.
I’m pretty sure I get extra credit for that.

Oh yes, there are some manic mornings when all I can muster is one of these breakfast bars of questionable great value...

but by gum, that breakfast bar is in a linen lined basket with a little bowl of fruit.

Because I’m collecting Mommy Points.

Salad with that soup? (point)

Raw carrots with that sandwich? (point) on whole grain? (one more)

I collect points for all sorts of things, not necessarily food related. You can be the judge of whether I add or subtract them because my girls don't wear white shoes before Easter. My sister collects them too. Often, she’ll look at me in one of our collective Super Mom moments and whisper, “I think we get points for this.”

You may be wondering what we actually do with all of these Mommy Points that we’ve collected over the years. Well, periodically, we redeem them, but mostly, we just save them.

So we can spend them on our grandchildren.

A Different Drum

If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears however measured or far away.
                                                                                                                   Henry David Thoreau


I love to watch the world meander through the calendar color wheel as we dutifully follow those preset color rules. The reds and greens of December give way to happy white snowmen on backgrounds of blue for January. July is colored with red, white, and blue. March is dyed green. February, of course, bursts forth in one huge scarlet explosion created by the domination of red with hints of pink here and there for contrast. It’s everywhere: red cards at the Hallmark, red hearts of candy, red balloons, bouquets of red roses, or red carnations, or red tulips arranged in their whimsical little red vases and tied with their red bows.

So I wonder what the florist thought when the husband ordered my valentine flowers this year. I wonder if he had to repeat himself for clarity…or if he was gently nudged by the order taker that he must have missed the memo… or if he was warned with a condescending smirk that he was making some sort of garish valentine faux pas.

Because in the midst of that beautiful scarlet explosion,

 my valentine flowers looked like this.

They arrived with a card that simply said, “I got that clue”.

"I got that clue” is familyspeak birthed when Miss Whimsy was a little girl. In the middle of a frustrated mommy rant over some chaos I’ve long forgotten, I looked at her and said, “Get… a… clue.” She schlumped off to attend to whatever had caused the commotion and muttered, “I got that clue. I didn’t like that clue.” The cuteness of the moment diffused the situation, as The Practical One and I fell into giggles. From that point on, “I got that clue” is our family’s way of saying, “I get it.”

Oddball though I might be, the husband gets me completely, and he knows what makes me smile. So he asked them to add a little yellow to the red and make it orange.

How pretty is that?

I got that clue too. Here’s my gift to him, which included, among other things, some dried orange fruit dipped in chocolate. (I gave him some dipped strawberries too, but they don’t fit with this post so...)

So we danced through Valentines Day to the beat of a different drummer. Next on deck is St. Patrick’s Day. I plan on following the rules then, though. After all, I work in an elementary school. And I don’t want to get pinched.

Pictures in Pajamas

Enjoying this song as I post pictures of our little Georgia snowfall this morning. Nothing much to the snowbird world, but for those of us in Dixie who rarely get more than a flurry, it is a winter wonderland.  I woke up early and went out... in the pajamas, heavy coat, and scarf hoodie no less... to snap pictures before the Georgia sunshine melted our little fairyland. Met a new neighbor in that outfit, too. Serves me right for putting off a more hospitable welcome.

With no further fanfare:

OK, maybe a bit too anxious...

Finally, the dawn began to break...


on the road...

on the trees...

and on the lawns...

and on the piney stick forest...

and on the Proverbs 25:24 husband...

Finally, pear trees by the daylight

That same spot will be white with pear tree blossoms about a  month from now.

What a difference a month makes.

After this exhausting megabloggadoodle, it is seriously time for some hot chocolate.

Tales of the Traveling Teacher Box

Have I mentioned that I love being back in the classroom? It’s exhausting, but it gives me that sense of part time purpose without the full time frustration. The one frustration that I DO have about being back in the classroom would be that confounded teacher mess that follows me around my house like toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

When you teach part time out of a glorified bookroom, all the planning and creative teachery must be done at home. Usually, I carve out time one day a week to do mine. That means that the rest of the time, all the stuff which I had stashed in a tote, behind a door, in Innie Paradise has to be flopped out front and center for me to use.

The problem is that I don’t really have a space to spread out and work. So it travels. It meanders down from the attic to the den closet where it escapes out into the den and creeps into the kitchen. Inevitably, it takes root in the dining room, spreading across the table, to the chairs, down to the floor, and eventually going to seed in the dining room carpet. Oh, I try to prune it back a little, but it just grows in another direction. The teaching mess to this house is like the kudzu vine that ate the south. I don’t control it; it controls me. This causes irritation and frustration when I want to actually use the dining room for its intended purpose and a sense of panic and apology preparation every time I hear the front door bell ring.

Because when a guest drops by, this is what he might see:

On the table

On the chairs

On the floor

So last week, I decided to go on kudzu offensive. I planted a better garden on my dining room table. I figured, if I set a lovely table, my teaching kudzu would not propagate. So, I added two more orange chargers to match Grama's table cloth and set the table for four. Not only is it prettier, but it’s ready for the weekend meal to boot.

Mission accomplished.

Now, when a guest comes to the front door and looks to his right, he sees this:

Of course, when he looks to his left, he sees this.

To be continued…obviously...

Hallway Humor

As I’ve mentioned, I currently teach two days a week in an elementary school. My room is a converted bookroom on the fifth grade hall. Every time I walk out of the door from my little makeshift classroom, I see this sign:

And I giggle a little. And I think of how the mighty have fallen. Decades ago when I began teaching, we used to tell our students to set lofty goals… to aim for the stars…

Now, we count it all joy if they will just aim for the toilet…

Top Ten Tuesday Challenge

I’m flying solo these days because the man of the house is out of town. That’s not an oddity in this family. Since he's in sales, he often travels during the week and has done so for the 25 years of our marriage. Now, one would think that after a quarter of a century, I would be used to his absence. I’m not. I still miss him every moment that he’s gone, pester him incessantly by cell phone, and get excited when I see him pull in the driveway. Maybe that’s a hidden blessing of marrying a traveling man. Absence makes the heart grow fonder… and fonder… and fonder. So, in honor of the upcoming Valentines Day holiday, and to practice the art of the edit, I have compiled a short list of ten things that I love about that man. A finite list, I have discovered, is very difficult for the chronically verbose. At the risk of being a nauseating, I will say that 101 things would have been easier…

Here’s a challenge: Try it yourself between now and the Big Day. I have a hunch that you will find it more difficult than you think to limit your I LOVE reasons to a meager ten.

Without further rambling, I’ll give it a whirl.

Ten Things I Love About That Man…

1. He loves the LORD and is a wonderful spiritual head of our household.

2. He notices. If you know him, no further explanation necessary.

3. In his business itinerary, all roads lead through Macon…

4. He peels the apples, sieves the pulp, and never tells Miss Whimsy that 17 years is more than enough time to grow out of idiosyncrasies.

5. He believes a book bag, which has been lugged from car to school and class to class is far too heavy to be carried between the car and the house. And he acts upon that belief.

6. He would still rather have a child-centered photo gift than anything else in the world... and the children are 17 and 20.

Ghosts of Christmas Past...

...and present

And he decorates his office with them.

No matter how old or broken they become.

7. He is a strong enough man to love strong women... yet enough of a gentleman to treat even a strong woman like a lady.

8. He brings me coffee in bed when he’s home. That one really ought to be # 1B...

9. He has a servant’s heart.

10. For 25 years, he has vicariously experienced PMS, post partum depression, insecurities, weight watchers, Akins, sugar busters, the rotation diet, counting points, counting fat grams, counting calories, counting carbs, counting points again... working mom guilt, stay-at-home mom guilt, part time teacher guilt, monsters in the closet, brontophobia, carcinophobia, aviophobia, musophobia…

…yet for some oddball reason, he loves me back.

The Duchess and the Quaker Oats Man

If my life were a novel, my mother would be one of its most colorful characters.

We dubbed my mother The Duchess. Technically, her heraldry name is The Duchess of Do More because my mom is a whirling dervish of activity. Mom does everything at Duchess Speed and had mastered the art of the multi- task long before the baby boomers thought that they had invented it. That’s why she was recently named volunteer of the year for our state.

Mom got the nickname The Duchess when her only grandson was a baby. Frustrated by the fact that he had identified his “Pa” by name and had yet to syllabicate anything that sounded remotely close to “Grandma”, she began listening intently to his baby babble in an effort to prove that he did, indeed, have a special name for her.  One day, he pointed his chubby little finger in her direction and babbled something like “dtsstssss…”  Aha! She pounced on the moment and proclaimed that he was calling her the “Duchess”. We laughed. And the name stuck.

My nephew never did actually call her Duchess by the way. He eventually called her Grama just like all the other grandkids. The possible exception would be The Practical One, whose personal pet name for Mom, particularly in her Polish moments, is Grammooski. To the rest of us, Mom is very affectionately called either The Old Woman… or The Duchess.

Some Random Duchess Facts:

 1. It is impossible for The Duchess to sit on the passenger side of a car without sizzling. If you have a mother like The Duchess, you know without explanation that I am referring to the s-s-s-s-s-s-s sound made by sucking air over the teeth. The car sizzle is generally accompanied by the doorknob clutch, the foot thrust, and the two syllable name.

2. If you tether her hands, you tie her tongue.

3. The Duchess is loud and expressive. She has always been loud and expressive, but she is doubly so now that she has lost a good part of her hearing. Once, one of the girls’ favorite teachers mentioned that he knew how The Duchess felt about a particular hot button topic. When asked how he knew, he replied with a laugh, “Her windows were open.”

4. And regarding that hearing loss? Everyone mumbles around The Duchess. She doesn’t know why people can’t speak up anymore. And that fancy sound system at church is absolutely worthless and a waste of good money…

5. Don’t ask The Duchess for her opinion if what you really want is affirmation. After all, she was planning to give that opinion whether or not you asked…. And then you asked.

6. If there is one thing that The Duchess saves as much as the Polish Tupperware, it’s the empty coffee can.

At any given time, she will have dozens of them stashed in her utility shed. The coffee cans are multi purpose do-mores, but her favorite reincarnation is as whimsical centerpieces. She offered the use of her coffee cans as we were planning my niece’s recent wedding. She was kidding. We think.

7. The Duchess loves holidays, especially Christmas. Her 15 Christmas trees will have to be fodder for a post all their own…

And finally…

8. When The Duchess started to gray, we observed that she bore a striking resemblance to this guy:

And we told her so. We have teased her unmercifully ever since. She always laughs.

By the way, that part's not nearly as funny to me as it used to be…

Life on Debbie Drive

Sometimes, when I read over my own blog, I cringe. I cringe because the Little Red Pen who lives inside of me wants to leap out and bleed all over my own musings. Now, one would think that that a meandering motor mouth’s writing style would be replete with long, run- on sentences, spliced with repeated commas to allow the fingers a breath or two.

But that’s not the problem. In this little glorified journal, I tend to write the way that I speak. And I don’t speak in run–ons; I speak in fragments. OK... technically fragments which tend to run on, but I digress...

If a former student happened upon this blog, he would be shocked and indignant at the permission I have given myself that I never gave my class. When my students wrote a paper, part of the editing process included squaring off every AND, BUT, OR, NOR, or FOR and making sure that they had punctuated the surrounding sentences correctly. Never, under any circumstance, were those offending conjunctions allowed to reside at the beginning of a sentence. I will spare you the related grammarbabble.

Whether or not it is sound syntax, it is the way that I speak. In my little world, periods of silence, whether long or short, are most often interrupted by AND, BUT, OR, or SO. Folks are rarely privy to what transpires before those connecting words -- I’ve had that part of the conversation with the Little Debbie who lives inside my head. Can anyone relate?

Too often, when the man and I are walking, he’ll stop and stand stock still - head cocked, eyebrow raised, a big smirk splattered across his face. I’ll know that I have been caught, once again, having a private conversation with Little Debbie.

Which he did not follow…
Because he’s a man…
And verbal fragmentation is a female thing.

One of the best things about having a sister (whether by blood or heart) is that she instinctively knows your silent head speak. She can meet your motor mouth at conjunction junction and ride down Debbie Drive without skipping a beat. Depending on her closeness, she also knows exactly HOW Little Debbie made the mental quantum leap from general conversation to this new, disconnected thought.

That’s why, when we gather with other couples to play games like Taboo or Pictionary, the husbands always protest if we want to play MALE vs. FEMALE. They can’t win. We get to share a brain. They don’t.

See? I just took a detour to game night with the boys.
And all the girls followed it completely, didn’t you?

So I make my apologies to the other grammar mavens out there. I’m a red penner too. It would drive me crazy, but I’m going continue to write that way. I shall call it literary license.

After all, what is a BLOG anyway but a random collection of life fragments? Surely, there is more to my life than Polish Tupperware and Princess Diaries. Those were merely the fragments I chose to share, albeit in my very fragmented way.

By the way, I actually drove out in the rain to snap that picture to decorate this post. The husband even rode with me. Apparently, he's pleased with the increased amount of quiet  around the home since I found a place for some of my words to light. He thanks you.

Shameless Bloggadoodle

At the risk of decorating my silent spaces with yet another electronic quarter note or loopity-loop, I wanted to share this happy sight which has greeted me at school throughout the month of January.

Only an elementary teacher would see this:

And think this:

How cute is that?  Cottonball Frosty had lost his stick arms by the time I snapped my picture, but if you look closely, you can still see the corn cob pipe, button eyes, and carrot nose. He was built by a preschool class where I'm currently teaching a few days a week. If  this doesn't warm your heart on a cold winter day,  well.... as we say here in the Land O' Cotton, you must have a thumpin' gizzard.