catching up, as usual

Some things never change, like neglecting my blog, for instance. It's a good thing you all love me so much that you keep coming back despite my lack of posting.

Two weekends ago I was invited to go camping with some people I know from school. They've asked me to do things with them before, but I hadn't up til this point. When I asked Phil505 if I should go, he told me I should and to go have fun with the girls. We went about an hour away toward Mt. St. Helens and camped at Lake Merwin. The weather was beautiful for early September and we spent nearly the whole day Saturday sitting at the lake, soaking up the sun, and eating M&M's. We even got up at like 2 in the morning and walked back down to the beach because it was supposed to be prime viewing that night for the aurora borealis. Darn it, all we saw were stars and thankfully, no bears. Oh well, I had a great time and it was fun to get to know these gals better. 

I'm going on week #4 with my half time library sub job. It's at the same school where I worked the last half of this past school year and I have to say, it's really been fun. Well, processing and distributing a big huge pallet of new curriculum wasn't fun, but seeing the kids for a half hour a week and yapping about the library and books is fun. That, and I know most of them - at least their first names, which is half the battle when subbing. This bulletin board is kind of beside and behind the desk and it sat empty for almost two weeks until I couldn't stand looking at it anymore. So off to pinterest I went for library decorating inspiration. And here we have the finished product. I'm only working half days which is a bummer because I need to work full days. So all you praying people can add afternoon jobs for Mrs. B. to your prayer lists. The library gig could go on indefinitely because no one has applied for the position and there is another elementary building in the district that has a full time library position that no one has applied for either.

Last weekend our church hosted the Fall Festival of Missions for all the ladies in our church conference. I am on the planning committee for this event now and one of my jobs was to get some decorations in the sanctuary. I knew I was going to make a banner with the theme on it and I wanted to include globes, burlap, sunflowers, mums, and pumpkins. I went to Trader Joe's and got the cut flowers, brought in pumpkins from my garden (not all of them are mine) and my friend Barbara met me at the church and we put this all together. I kinda liked it. A lot.

On Thursday we had a planned lockdown drill at 9:00. It went well, or so I thought. I stayed in the library like I was told to do and logged in to the computer and typed in where I was. At 11:20 the alarms went off again. The first thing that crossed my mind was, "Hmmm. . . somebody must've really screwed up the first one." Then I saw one of the staff assistants running down the hall with a bunch of kids following her. I kind of stood there for a minute soaking it all in. Then I saw one of the kindergarten teachers running to her room and I said, "Is this the real deal?" And she said, "Yes, get in here. I'm locking the door." That was a good thing because the library is totally open and anyone behind the desk would be like a sitting duck. We had a little update on the automated system a few minutes later that the police were looking in the area for a murder suspect and three schools were in lockdown. It happened right at the beginning of lunch, and I was thinking this was going to be a big mess if kids weren't allowed to leave the rooms to go eat. About 30 minutes later, they resumed lunches, but we stayed on lockdown all afternoon. I ended up being there til about 2:30, just hanging out in the staff room. I was allowed to leave during the lockdown, but only because one of the district security guards escorted several of us out to our cars. The weird thing about this one, other than we had practiced a drill earlier in the morning, was that they were covering all the outside glass doors with butcher paper. I hadn't ever seen them do that before. It kind of freaked me out. The police ended up catching the guy that evening and everyone stayed safe. Thank goodness.

The last few days I've seen evidence of a gigantic spider taking up residency behind my piano. I had thought about sucking it up with the vacuum, but then I thought, "What if that thing lives through the suction and decides to get back at me when I'm emptying the canister?" So I left it there. Today I decided to pull the piano out a little bit and see if I could get rid of it. It was still there. I called in the special forces. Well, force. And this guy came to my rescue. He caught it in a container and took it to its new home, the great outdoors. I kind of went a little crazy at his idea of flushing it because. . . well, what if it somehow crawled back up?

Wilson had a puppy play date with his cousin Baker today. They wore each other out which is always a good thing.

And last, but certainly not least, this week I made it though 50 pounds of tomatoes. That's two 5-gallon buckets full. I canned about 17 quarts of salsa, froze 4 full quart bags of diced tomatoes for soups or stews, and made two batches of marinara sauce that yielded me four full quart bags. I'm slowly ridding my kitchen of the army of fruit flies that took up residence here (long live the apple cider and dish soap trick!) and my shelves are full of pretty jars.

And that, my friends, is what's been going on in Wendy's world.