Author: Mom

Well, there she is!

Alpha child has been after us for riding lessons for years. We broke down a couple of years ago, got the helmet and boots. She lost the helmet, and we decided it was going to be a while before we tried again.

Well, here she is:

Alpha on Chester

She is so proud of herself (and well she should be). She payed attention to the horse and her instructor. She backed Chester up (right on cue). And then she insisted on helping out with the barn work afterwards. She got to help take off the saddle, bridle, brush him down, and then (wonder of wonders) CLEAN THE BRIDLE.

Happiest kid on earth. Yup.

Shrimp scampi the heathans will eat

Take a chunk of butter and some olive oil. Heat it up in a frying pan. Toss in a pile of minced garlic. Mix of around until its a little brown (careful – this stuff turns to sludge in seconds!). Toss in some shrimp (maybe a pound). Add some cilantro and lemon juice (not too much or the kids won’t eat it. I kept going until they started yelling at me to stop). Cook until the shrimp are pink. Serve over pasta.

Bask in the glow of creating a dinner the stinkers will eat.

Open Letter to Adobe

Dear Adobe,

I was up all stinking night arguing with InDesign. The indexing feature is just a pitiful waste of code. Granted it was a 950 page book, with 4000 (plus or minus) index entries, but taking 35 seconds to remove a dash from an index entry? Really?

Please, Adobe, should you read this, take this into account:

1. Please give the option to default the range settings to whatever was last used (Current Page, To Next Use of Style, etc).

2. Allow me to copy index entries, preferably groups of them, but even one at a time would be nice. I do not understand why this is not already possible.

3. How about an auto-fill feature in the heading fields while I’m dreaming? That would be super awesome.

4. What is up with the algorithm?!? 35 seconds to update a single entry? A full minute to delete 5 entries? That should have been 1 second, and 5 seconds, at most. I cannot conceive of the implementation that would give such horrible performance, no matter the size of the document.

5. Your tech support guys are wonderful. Give them raises. They couldn’t help me, but they really tried.

Thank you,

Jonesling Central

The last few days

Well, things have been crazy the last couple of days!

Last Monday, we went to the Hampton Memorial Day Parade. Its funny that everyone comes back from everywhere to be at the parade. Saw people from high school. Saw people who babysat me. Saw people who were at the baby shower that was thrown for Mom two weeks after I was born (the last time I was early for anything).

That afternoon, we went to the old house in Willimantic. I wanted to get some of the plants and bring them home with me. Weird to think that plants have sentimental value, but these did. The garden is in full bloom. Irises are everywhere. The evening primroses are thriving (they’ll bloom in a couple of weeks), and the day lilies are going gangbusters! I got a shovel full of both irises (they came from Mrs. Hardistay), an alium from Mrs. Holbrook, some poppies from the back, and some of the blanket flowers that Brownie loves.

So, Tuesday saw me putting in a new half to the Secret Garden (its in the back). Did pretty good, if I do say so myself. Wednesday just hurt. 🙂

Thursday was Adele’s spring concert. She did great! The whole fourth grade sang for every song, so she was up there for 20 minutes. After that, Mom and I went out to lunch, and then to the Boston Museum of Science to see the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scroll exhibit needs its own post. It was fantastic. They gave so much historical context, spent a great deal of time explaining the times when the scrolls were written, and the scrolls themselves are beautiful. The writing was so precise and tiny, the skill that went into them was just … yeah. There aren’t words.

And then there was Friday. Friday, we sold the house in Willimantic. Sold. I cried walking around in it on Monday. But now it is just sweet relief to know that the burden of maintaining it is no longer ours. No more two mortgages. No more two sets of property taxes. We’ll actually be able to pay down the other debt, and start saving up for a new car/vacations/college/retirement.

So yesterday, We went out and got clothes for me, sandals for Adele, a duster for the ceiling fans, and Quinn and I went to the Cheesecake Factory (yum!).

Today, we’re going to the Christmas Tree Shoppes to get a table and chairs for the back deck, along with an umbrella. We’re also going to get a tent. The kids want to go camping. So a nice cheap tent will do nicely.

And then we pay Mom back for the amazing loan she gave us, and we go back to being house-poor. There are worse things in the world. All in all, its been a fantastic week.

Ice Cream!

We found a great ice cream place last night! School House Ice Cream is in Burlington, about 10 minutes from here. They are in a little hole-in-the-wall store front in the middle of an ugly brick building, but inside the place is awesome! The massive wall of trivia was my favorite. The ice cream was very good (their peppermint is seriously peppermint, not some mickey-mosey swirl thing).

So, now we have our pizza place to replace Fred’s Brick Oven, and our ice cream place for We-Lik-It. Still working a bagel place and grocery store.

Lacrosse

imageBeta decided she wanted to try lacrosse. So, with help from Mom, we got her signed up for the kids’ league here in town. She was super excited (counting the hours for three days).

We got there nice and early, so she could get her helmet fitted (they provide the helmets for this age-group). Most kids had their pads and everything, but they weren’t required for this get-together. We’re going to have to get set for her, though.

You see, there is a difference between girl and boy lacrosse (if you mated the two together, you would get another game altogether). So, Beta needs pads, and guards. And does anyone elbronse feel bad for the other kids on this team? She can scoop the ball, throw the ball (over anyone’s heads), and put the stick in the right general vicinity to catch the ball. Which is a huge improvement over how she did before the practice. She was so frustrated she hid in a corner.

In the end – she loved loved loved lacrosse. And the coaches were awesome. I was quite happy.