Little Orange Wildflowers

I love these dainty little flowers, I just discovered them last year!!

Day One: Autism is no fun.

I can do puzzles.

I cannot recognize the word that is my name. I do not know that it starts with a 'C.'
Sometimes I can say my colors but not red. I hate red and you can't make me say it ever.

I will walk down the long hall with you and follow the colored tiles but I don't know where I 'm going. I don't even know this place is school.
My special friend is a squishy, yellow duck and I like to squeeze him with my fingers.
Somedays I will say a word over and over again.
Peepeeaboda peepeeaboda peepeeaboda.
It's up in my head and it just has to come out.

I can do puzzles.

Carmelite Monastery

Located across the street from the park, the monastery has always been a mysterious place for me. You aren't allowed in and the nuns who live there aren't allowed out. Packages have to be passed through a little porthole in the door. Do they ever gaze out and see the wonderful park they have so close? Do they ever get the urge to walk the trails and enjoy the trees and the grass and the squirrels and the birds? Does it make them feel closer to God to be stuck up in a monastery? I'd rather be out enjoying nature, God's wonderful gift to us!

Walking Track: The Park

This is one of the older parks in our city. I love walking here because of the trees. I've learned to identify quite a few because of the little brass plates in front of the different species. On week-ends, the park is filled with families and kids. Also, a definite smell of grilled hamburgers and hot dogs; which makes it difficult for fitness walking!!

The House Next Door

As I have mentioned in a previous posting, we are getting new neighbors. Here is a pic of what it looks like coming down our street. I thought it would be kind of fun to post a picture every so often to capture the progression from "under construction" to "finished house." I don't feel like I'm being intrusive because nobody lives there yet. On another note, I am saddened by the loss of so many trees, after all, they were my non-human neighbors. Such is life!

A Sub's Prayer

I just realized that if the baby comes early, I might find myself in front of a classroom full of first graders tomorrow. In order to prepare myself, I've composed a little prayer:

Dear Jesus,
Thank you for keeping me safe and allowing me to enjoy another wonderful, carefree summer. As this school year has started, help me to motivate my students to work diligently and to respect those around them as they gradually grow into strong citizens of this world. Give me enough patience to deal with a classroom of little children "telling me how to do it," and the humor and fortitude it takes to make it through the day.

What is hot weather good for?

Growing roses of course!! As you can see, my Henry Fonda is thriving!!

A New Season

The first signs that Autumn is upon us!!

Do people really save these?

Yes they do!! Each little Box Top is worth a whopping 10 cents and schools purchase things like playground equipment and stage curtains and mats that go under water fountains. Start a little collection of your own and when you feel you have enough, drop them by your neighborhood school. Or give them to a school-age niece or nephew. It takes a lot of money to equip a school!!

A Student's Prayer

Dear Jesus,
Please help me with the hard stuff.
Amen.

Glasgow, Missouri

The "oldest" family owned drugstore in the U.S. This was an enjoyable daytrip. And the pie was to die for!!

Book Review

I finished "Bobby and Jackie" by C. David Heymann over the weekend. Nasty!! I always thought Jackie Kennedy was such a classy first lady. Let's just say she had pretty loose morals, it was an eye-opener and an easy read for a history buff.

I started "Throw Out Fifty Things, Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life" by Gail Blanke. I lost interest. Unless you're a "hoarder," it's nothing new. I can skim through and read the "Green Tips."

"One Hundred Essential Things you Didn't Know You Didn't Know" by John D. Barrow is fascinating. My favorite chapter so far, 100 monkeys typing randomly produced a line from Shakespeare's 'Henry IV,' RUMOUR. Open your Ears;' This was after 2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years of typing.

Smalltown, USA

City Stickers Are Now Delinquent $2.25 per Vehicle

Lewis & Clark

My photo just does not do them justice. Quite a gang of explorers they were!!

Phlox

I started these flowers in little seed pots last spring. They love full sun and have been quite showy all summer without get leggy like petunias. Phlox, my new favorite annual.

Eddie

Little boys used to wear flannel shirts to school. You know the kind that buttoned up the front and also at the cuffs. Eddie was a little kid I had in class, maybe my very first class, and I remember him for two particular reasons.

No one ever told me to be prepared for fathers in handle-bar mustaches. Yes, Eddie's father came to parent conference sporting this huge mustache curled up at the ends. I was a young thing at the time, twenty-two at the most. I was so taken off-guard that I spent the entire conference looking down at my desk.

One morning I heard whimpering. Eddie was sitting in the back of the classroom obviously in distress but I couldn't tell why until I walked to his seat. Somehow he had worked both of his bony little arms through one of his shirt cuffs and it was buttoned so tightly that he couldn't get loose. He was literally hand-cuffed, sitting there at his desk. I asked Eddie if he wanted me to try to get the cuff unbuttoned but I couldn't budge it. The school nurse had to come and cut the button off. Poor Eddie, two very awkward situations!!

Book Review

I am halfway through the book, The Indifferent Stars Above, the depressing but fascinating,well-written account of a new bride, twenty-one year old Sarah Graves, a member of the wagon train led by George Donner in 1847. Here's an excerpt from page 80:

Increasingly, the emigrants' worries and arguments concerned grass. Grass was the gasoline of the mid-nineteenth century. It fueled the engines that propelled them forward, their oxen. As the country dried out, it was harder and harder to find sufficient grass for pasturage every night. As the grass grew sparser, it became ever more important to conserve what energy the oxen had, and the only way to do that was to lighten the loads they had to pull. All along the trail, people started to throw things overboard--things they had thought essential when they'd packed their wagons back home or in St. Joe or Independence. Among the first to go were the heaviest things--cook stoves, extra pots and pans, iron tools, and hardware. Then furniture was thrown overboard--chest of drawers, rocking chairs, bed frames, and tables. Finally, as the oxen began to heave and strain on the longest, driest hills approaching the South Pass, even smaller items had to go--extra clothes, books, linens, nonessential food items.

The sacrifices were often hard to make, not always logical, and not always voluntary. An Oregon-bound emigrant of that year, eleven-year-old Lucy Ann Henderson, watched in amused astonishment as one of the adults in her party was told he had to part with a rolling pin.

I shall never forget how that big man stood there with tears streaming down his face as he said, "Do I have to throw this away? It was my mother's. I remember she always used it to roll our her biscuits, and they were awfully good biscuits." He had to leave it, and they christened him Rolling Pin Smith, a name he carried to the day of his death.

Walking Track Three: Water Element

This is one of our city's oldest walking tracks. As a teenager, I lived nearby so I have logged many miles here, probably more than a thousand. The temperature was in the mid 80's earlier while I was walking but there was a breeze coming off the water so it wasn't that bad. Many years ago, the city dumped truckloads of sand along the shore and swimming was allowed. Now it's just for walking, in-line skating and fishing as they have stocked the lake with trout.

Back to School

I accepted a six-week teaching assignment for a first grade teacher who is having a baby. The baby is due September 3 and could come earlier. Whoa, I've got to go shopping for new clothes!!

Craft Day

Every so often I get the urge to create something, Martha Stewart-wise. I started felting last fall when I discovered I had an abundance of out-dated wool sweaters. What to do? Shrink them down by laundering them in hot water. Cut them apart and using a pattern from Betz White's " Warm Fuzzies" book, I stitched up a bunch of mittens. Everyone who graced my doorway during December and January got a pair and I saved a pair or two for recess duty.