My husband and I are a weird couple. We agree on little (we don’t even use the same salt) and to say it makes life together interesting is quite an understatement.
The latest example of that is my husband got a jury duty summons in the mail last week. He WANTS to do it. “I” REALLY don’t.
I wrote down on my desk calendar that he is supposed to appear at the court house in Greenwood at 9am on September 5th. I left the filling out of the two-page form to him.
He actually filled it out and we mailed it back. He gave MY phone number for any communication since he won’t answer his phone, only using it to get the occasional code when he is online.
I’m secretly hoping that the form he filled out will indicate that he might not be the best candidate, though he won’t admit to any health problems (Type II diabetes, 2 strokes, high blood pressure, etc.) He also will not admit having to go to the bathroom urgently or taking several naps daily because he doesn’t sleep well at night.
The reason he wants to do this is that he wants to throw a wrench in the system. He will listen to what is presented, make up his own mind, and then vote that way, dying on his sword if he has to. He would love to be the only vote that keeps a person from being convicted, or making it so the person IS convicted when the rest of the jury wants to let the person go. He loves being perverse and has great confidence in his ability to judge. He won’t tell the truth when asked questions that he knows would cause them to knock him off their list of jurors. It should be interesting.
I really have no room to talk, though. I was called for jury duty YEARS ago here in Greenwood. I sat through two days of routine court stuff. Finally they asked me directly if I would follow the judge’s instructions. I said honestly that I would if they made sense to me. Otherwise, no. Then they asked point blank, if I believed in the judicial system. I answered, again honestly, that I thought it was MEANT to insure fairness, but that it failed miserably in practice, and that I had little faith in it.
I was then invited to leave, and I guess they not only marked my name off the list, but probably BURNED it off. They haven’t contacted me since. I’m definitely not what they are looking for. :0)
SO – two attitudes about serving on a jury. What do you bet my husband sails through with flying colors and is chosen to serve on a jury?
I tried to get up to my art room yesterday, but ended up trying to find Jet (aka Monster Cat) OUTSIDE. I looked and looked inside, but couldn’t find her. When I asked my husband, he said, off-handedly, that she MIGHT be outside, since he found the door from the utility room to the garage standing wide open.
I quit listening at that point and ran outside to walk around and around the house, calling for Jet, getting more and more upset as I searched.
Finally, the third time around, she was at the steps in the garage. I brought her in, checked to make sure she was okay, and gave her some food in her bathroom. I then read my husband the riot act, and went into the office to try to calm down before poisoning his dinner.
Right now it’s 77 degrees and quite dark and rainy. This is a huge relief this morning, so I’m grinning as I type. Bring it!
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However, we got SO much rain overnight, with accompanying thunder, that we’re under both a ‘flood warning,’ and a ‘flash flood warning’ until around lunchtime.
To round things out, once the rain stops today, we’re under an ‘intense heat warning,’ with a heat index of up to 115 until 9pm this evening. It could be REALLY interesting if snow were added to the forecast for the day…
I don’t want to BRAG, but I am now championship level on this particular skill. I can do it without conscious thought, with my eyes closed, as if it were nothing. Just in CASE you were thinking of challenging me, think about reconsidering tomorrow, or the next day… :0)
Actual temperature forecast to be 101 this afternoon with a heat index of 110 to 115. Too hot for old folks to be outside, for sure. We are letting Amber out over and over. She goes outside, takes one look, and barks to come back inside. I guess as long as she has several chances to do what she needs to out there, all will be well.
There is just too much heat and not enough water to do justice to my tomato plants. The main plants have some green tomatoes, but also dead parts of the plants and the tomatoes are not ripening. I’m beginning to think I’ll have to pull them out for the season, but my husband doesn’t want me to pull the plug yet. As you can see in the pic above, my tomato sucker plants aren’t doing well, either. I have ONE plant that seems to be okay, so there is still hope.
Today’s cleaning and organizing project is the table beside my recliner. I’m embarrassed to show it to you, but you already KNOW I’m a slob and the worse housekeeper EVER.
Between my cramming it with more and more ‘stuff,’ and Monster Cat walking all over it trying to sample my drinks and chew cords, it’s a mess. I’m going to see if I can relocate at least half of what is currently on there. Wish me luck?
I also found a recipe for keto fried chicken. We haven’t had fried chicken in at LEAST 3 or 4 years, so I’m excited to try this one. It uses avocado oil and the coating is almond flour, so I’m hopeful it’ll be good. The recipe is from Arman Liew of The Big Man’s World. Fingers crossed.
Oh, an update on my excitement regarding low carb ice cream – after further research, opinions seem to differ on what constitutes ‘low carb.’ The one I had found, “Breyer’s Carb Smart” actually has 16 carbs per serving plus has 4 grams of sugar. Since my limit on carbs for the day is 20 or under, this won’t be included in my diet for the foreseeable future. Oh, well. When I reach my goal – if I still have teeth – I’ll splurge and try some. :0)
I’ve been dreaming of a new wood-burned and painted piece that I’ll try to get started today. It’s funny, though, to be ‘tired,’ from painting all night. My sleeping self couldn’t decide whether to use alcohol inks or paint it with acrylics –
Yesterday my husband went with me for my haircut, since he wanted to get a large banana shake. We got to the salon, only to find out my haircut is supposed to be TODAY. I’m losing it.
I always use the appointment card to write it down on my desk calendar, enter it on my computer calendar, and add it to my kitchen wipe-off calendar. All were in agreement, and all were wrong. :0(
I asked Michael if he would give me a call if he happened to find my brain lying around anywhere. It’s not as sharp as it might have been in the past, but it’s better than nothing.
So – my search for Breyer’s Smart Carb Ice Cream at the local grocery was a bust, as well. They carried the brand, but not the Carb Smart. I’ll check at Walmart the next time we go there.
We will leave in a bit to try again on the haircut and banana shake. Hopefully, we’ll have better luck today.
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Heat index is supposed to be 113 for our area. I’m beginning to feel as if I’m a frog in a big pot of water. Needless to say, I won’t be dancing around the yard much today.
My husband is feeling antsy this morning, so he’ll go with me to my haircut and a couple of errands this morning.
I’ll check my tomato plants when we get home, get ‘Bacon-wrapped Cheesy Chicken’ by Suzanne Ryan of Simply Keto ready to put in the oven for our dinner tonight, and then work on the painting part of my latest wood burned sign.
I had a really nice chat with our son online yesterday. He’s excited about several difficult projects he and his friend are working on lately, any one of which could make them a lot of money – something that’s always handy. He’s enjoying life and feeling good, so I couldn’t ask for more.
Monster Cat actually walked up my front and curled up on my shoulder in the recliner to sleep for a few minutes last night – another first.
Our wonderful bug spray guy sprayed for everything excluding snakes and elephants yesterday. I told him about our sudden gnat population and he pulled a spray can out of his truck just for that. He explained it as a kind of ‘sticky spray’ (as far as the gnats are concerned.) The gnats are attracted, but can’t leave. Sounds great to me. I forgot to ask him about walruses… :0)
I’m trying to tackle at least one area daily that I’ve been ignoring and clean it thoroughly. Yesterday it was vacuuming a grate we installed low in the wall in the living room. We put in a fan years ago between the two rooms that pulls warm air out of the office and blows it into the living room, increasing good air flow. The grate gets full of dust, dirt, and dog hair, but it’s in the corner, kind of hidden from view unless you actually GO into the corner. Yesterday I finally gave it the attention it’s due and took care of it. While I had the handheld vacuum with brush attachment out, I also cleaned the one on the wall high up in the kitchen.
I wish you a Wonderful Wednesday, full of alliteration and joy.
Everything in me melts when I look at the image above. I’m not sure who the artist is, but I thank Ruth Josephson for putting it on Pinterest.
The rain is gone for the foreseeable future, replaced by ‘Intense Heat Warnings’ again. (Heat index of 108 today.) We’ll probably be living under those the rest of the summer. I’ll try to do yard work in the mornings and encourage my husband to do the mowing as late in the evening as possible. I’m thankful for our good air conditioning!
This afternoon the wonderful bug spray man comes to spray for every kind of bug possible, plus the dreaded centipedes and scorpions that have found their way into the house in the past. I don’t think the spray covers snakes (we found the shed skin of one in the well house), though I’ve asked him to spray for EVERYTHING, including elephants, inside and out.
This time we have lots of annoying gnats. I found a stuff at Walmart yesterday that is supposed to kill them ‘on contact,’ but it’s difficult-to-impossible to spray them when they’re trying to climb into my coffee cup without getting the spray into my coffee… I’m cleaning extra well, starting in the kitchen and working my way out, removing things from counters and then spraying the ‘stuff’ on the counters and wiping them down carefully. The spray says it’s safe around children and pets, so I’m hoping that’s true.
Yesterday was the first day of school. My husband decided he wanted to go grocery shopping when the rain stopped yesterday afternoon. We almost got stuck trying to get to town, with lots and lots of “Mommy Traffic” at the two schools on the road between us and town, backed way up from the closer school to us all the way to the end of the road and around the corner on the larger highway, waiting to turn in. I suggested we take the long way around on the way home, but of course my husband scoffed.
We DID get stuck a couple of years ago with stock still traffic in both directions. I was afraid we would end up in the slammer with my husband throwing a fit and threatening to simply run INTO the car in front of us and try to push the whole line ahead so he could reach the road where we could bypass the problem. I wrote a letter to the school, pointing out the problem, emphasizing emergency vehicles wouldn’t have been able to get through, either. The schools decided to change the start and end time on one of the schools, allowing an easing of the problem. We still avoid the area at those times, since my husband is such a nut. Thankfully, by the time we had replenished our groceries and were on the way home, the traffic was manageable.
I’m almost finished with the wood burning part of a new sign. I’ll try to get that done today so I can start the painting part.
I love this drawing. I found this on Pinterest, and I’m researching to see if I can find more of his work.
It’s the first day of school here in Arkansas. It seems REALLY EARLY in the year to start school, but it’s happening. In the 1970’s, I was an elementary school teacher in Tulsa on the north side. I taught in the public schools for eight years. The students in my classes were all black. I fell in love every year, wanting to take them all home with me. I loved the kids and loved the job, but felt really frustrated with the rules that just didn’t jibe with what I felt needed to be done in my classroom.
Freepik
I’ve never really thought of myself as a ‘troublemaker.’ I tend to follow whatever rules there are, not wanting to cause a scene or get into problems.
My kids’ lives were challenging. Some of them were dealing with really harsh conditions or hurtful situations. One of my kids actually lost a brother overnight because the police came to the door and the family inside didn’t respond to their orders. His brother was shot and killed before his eyes, his family devastated, and all he could do was hide while it was happening and then try to live through the aftermath the best he could.
Youth Today
My 1st grade kids felt that school, reading, math, etc., were all useless. They were in school because the police would pick them up if they missed too many classes and then they might be taken out of their homes. So it was a ‘heavy, heavy hangs over your head’ situation. I worked on various ways to get them interested in what I was trying to teach them.
We started with a ‘What do you call this?” game so that we could build a broader vocabulary and better communication. ‘Sharing Time’ was where the kids could tell us what was happening in their lives if they wanted to. Our ‘book sharing’ session enabled the kids to choose a book and I would read part of it aloud each day and we would discuss it. We started writing our OWN book about our class. I used a humongous lined pad of chart paper. The kids discussed what they thought belonged in the book each day and then each child had a turn dictating what I recorded in our growing book. Once a week I started at the beginning and we read what we had written so far. Until I established a base that reading was the reception of ideas, feelings, and we shared a common vocabulary, trying to teach ‘reading skills’ was pointless.
Adobe Stock
I got called into the principal’s office because I brought my guitar and taught the kids a silly phonics song I had come up with that brought home the fact that letters stood for sounds, and that sounds and letters put together formed words, and that words could communicate things. The kids really got into the song, getting up and dancing, singing along with the sounds and words. I was told, “Ms. Lewis, this is NOT a music class!” PLUS we were making too much noise…
Vecteezy
I also got called in because I took my class outside each Friday afternoon – to sit under a tree – weather permitting, of course – to present paper certificates of good stuff for the week. Since behavior was a challenge, I gave certificates for sitting in seats, completing assignments, listening well, keeping ‘lips zipped,’ improving in the subjects, of course, etc. The kids really tried and were proud to be given recognition, that someone NOTICED and APPRECIATED the fact they were trying.
When the principal and the superintendent of schools walked into my classroom unannounced one afternoon, I was standing on the waist-high heat register under the windows with the Weekly Readers for the class rolled up in my hand, trying to smash an errant wasp. When I managed to kill the wasp, the class erupted in cheers. I saw who ELSE was watching and almost died of embarrassment. I climbed down from the register, smiled at my two visitors as I asked one of the kids to pass out the newsletters, and said, “This is the best use of the Weekly Reader I’ve found yet!”
ar.inspiredpencil.com
I taught for 8 years in that school, moving from 1st grade self-contained to a team-teaching experiment where I taught reading, writing and spelling to grades 1-6. I earned my Master’s Degree as a Reading Specialist. The whole time I taught in the public schools, we had to supply our classrooms with the basics, like paper, pens, pencils, erasers, art supplies, etc out of our pockets. We were under strict orders not to mention the lack of supplies to the parents at PTA meetings. We had a hard time requisitioning supplies, but did get a chance to get a limited supply of things at the beginning of each year. Back then, teaching on the north side in Tulsa was challenging, to say the least. I hope that things are much better now.
123RF
I stopped working in the public schools and opened my own reading clinic, also in Tulsa, but that’s a subject for another day.
I hope that this school year is a good one for all the students, parents, and teachers.
BREAD BASKET: Monster Cat (aka Jet) just jumped into her bread basket that lives on the counter beside my computer. She jumps in, sharpens her claws a bit on the bottom, then walks over to play with, or try to chew on, my headphones cord, then walks over my keyboard, then back again, pausing in case I want to pet her before she returns to the basket.
BIG TEST: This is ‘the big test,’ a trial to see if I will AGAIN give her a spritz from the cosmetic bottle of water on the counter on my right. She does – I do – rinse, repeat.
REACHING OUT: Yesterday she did something she hasn’t done before. She jumps up on my recliner whenever I’m in it, saying ‘hello’ quickly and then settles beside my left leg to sleep until I get up, dumping her on the floor in the process. Yesterday, she said, ‘hello,’ went to the foot rest, but instead of settling, she turned and walked up my body, settling on my stomach! This is a first. She only stayed a minute or two, but she ‘allowed me to pet her’ -without biting me – and THEN went down to her regular spot, settling beside my leg.
BOX GAME: We’re playing a game with the open box we now keep in the living room for her. I’m moving it each day to see what she does. Yesterday it was on the couch. There was no hesitation. She jumped up into the box and settled for a bit. When I put it on the hearth later, she jumped right into it. She seems to enjoy the movement of her ‘toy.’ When it’s in the middle of the room, she gets in and crouches down, hoping you’ll forget she’s there. When any of us pass by (including our dog, Amber) she leaps out, acting like she’s attacking. At first I was a bit worried how Amber would react, but she just looked at me with a pained expression as she continued to go to get a drink of water. We’re all adapting to live with Monster Cat, who shows a new side of her burgeoning personality on almost a daily basis.
CATNIP ON CAT TOWER: I keep 2 catnip ‘mice’ on the top part of the cat tower in the corner of the living room. The tower also has a ball on a string hanging from one of the top levels and another toward the bottom, each swaying in the air a bit to attract her attention. She doesn’t play on the tower often, but it’s quite the show when she does, Olympic-style hanging from one level to reach and play tether ball with one of the hanging balls, while managing not to fall on her head. She reaches the top, finds the two catnip mice, and the race begins, with her batting the mice from level to level til they all finally reach the floor.
PING PONG BALL BATTING: I find a ball in a corner somewhere and take it where I can let it bounce on the floor. Wherever she is, Monster Cat comes bounding to catch or bat the ball. She recognizes the sound now and LOVES to chase it. Woe betide anyone who gets in her way in this game. She has no interest in playing or sharing with anyone else. That ball belongs to HER!
CRAZY CAT: We’re quietly reading, watching TV, or napping in the living room. Suddenly, ‘Crazy Cat’ appears, running at full speed across the living room, stopping on a dime, turning and running the other way as fast as she can, eyes wild, leaping, pouncing, jumping on the furniture, bouncing off the walls. We just look at her in amazement. Yesterday she landed beside Amber’s large bed next to the Entertainment Center. She just stopped. She looked at Amber. Motionless. Then she jumped at Amber. My heart was in my throat. Amber jumped up, then calmly went into the office, leaving the bed for Monster Cat, who calmly walked across it and plopped down in the exact middle, regally surveying her domain…
I posted this mug on a post recently because I grinned from ear to ear when I found it. My SIL loved it, and told me she had found and ordered a mug and a T-shirt! I hope she’ll take a pic when she gets them.
I thought about the wonderful things that people put on mugs and tees and decided I would look for the latest that is being offered. Mug Wisdom makes us smile, taking the edge off any tension and maybe even allowing us to smirk at current problems a bit.
Aviento Blanco
This is the Mug of the Day. I’m trying to send my smile in your direction. :0)
I’m tired today. The day before yesterday I spent two full hours weeding in the flower planters in the hot sun. I did two sessions, resting in-between, but it was more than this old lady can handle with grace. I woke up really stiff and sore yesterday.
I took Tylenol, then finished the weeding, then did a session of old lady yoga stretches in the afternoon, and finished that off with a hot shower before bed last night.
Though I’m better this morning, a “Rinse-repeat” session today of the yoga and hot shower should get me back to normal.
The sky is almost black now with a pretty good rain. This is supposed to last essentially all day – until 5 pm, so no outside work, which is why I was pushing so hard to get the weeding finished the last two days.
My husband just came downstairs, having caught up on some of the sleep he’s been missing lately. We’ll enjoy being in a nice dry house, looking out at all the rain from time to time, having a quiet day.
Vacuuming and art room time are in my future this afternoon.
I hope that you’re safe from whatever weather is surrounding you today, enjoying a nice Sunday.
creativeartworksblog 