I always feel happy

...when someone says thank you.

The other two recipients also said thank you in emails. Maybe I should go bake some more cookies.

Farewell, blue car

As soon as D. left home, we decided to get rid of the blue car. We had a family from church that was in need so we gave it to them. They, unlike us, are a family that knows how to fix cars, so when the blue car would hiccup, they knew what to do. Just last Sunday we were walking across the church parking lot and R. said, "Oh look, there's our car!" To which we said, "Yes, that actually is our car. Or was our car. Yay, it is still working well enough that they drove it to church." Sadly, when their teenage daughter was driving home from church Sunday night (in the rain), she hit another car and wrecked it. Only minor human injuries, but it is doubtful if the blue car will be drivable again.

When R. gets her own car, we'd like to find one that has as good of visibility as this blue car (a 1989 Plymouth Reliant K). We had to put a block on the accelerator so her short legs could reach, but it was an easy car to look out of and get a good view.

Moon gazing

At the moment, a total lunar eclipse has just begun. It was raining earlier today, but when the eclipse began at 8:14pm, the clouds had pretty much cleared, and stayed away for the most part until now, 9:23pm. I tried to get someone to watch with me, but without success. G. is legally blind, so he can't see much of the moon so far away. I talked with R. on the phone and sent her outside to look, but it was cloudy in OKC. So the cat and I watched it. I used G.'s binoculars and monocular, and got a pretty good look. I tried several live webcasts on the internet, but they were all clogged up with traffic and I couldn't get through. G. told me that they showed a TV shot of it at from St. Louis where the Red Sox are trying to sweep the Cards in the 4th game of the World Series.

Believe it or not, there was a time in my young life when I wanted to be an astronomer. I think I was in 3rd or 4th grade. I remember one Christmas my parents bought me some kind of kit to build a cardboard telescope, but one crucial piece was missing. 40+ years later I still remember the disappointment of that. (Time to get over it, huh?)

Two more jobs?

I talked to child #3 yesterday and he said he was going to try to get a paid tutoring job since he was bored and didn't have anything to do in the evenings. That and he might join a community band, and he's tutoring an 8th grader up on Capitol Hill, and Bible study on Wednesdays, ...

Then today he said he got the 2nd job and might take a 3rd. Seasonal help at Best Buy would give him something to do on the weekends. And some more cash. And maybe an employee discount? I wonder.

So I said, "You need some friends to hang out with. What about the guys you live with?" He replied, "Well, they are cool and all, but they're so old--like 24 or 25." Do you see my eyes rolling??

I hope he likes the cookies I sent. I hope R. likes the cookies I sent. I hope one of the M.O.C.K.ees likes the cookies I sent.

Crisis averted

When child #3 called last night and asked me to send cookies, what could I say? So today I went to find my favorite cookie recipe and IT WAS MISSING! I nearly panicked until my neighbor invited me over for a cup of tea and dug the recipe out of her box--which she had gotten from me some years ago. So now cookies are baking and starving child #3 will soon get his package.

And while I'm on a kitchen theme, here are some little known facts about kitchen colors:

• Split green peas will fade to yellow if left in the sunlight.
  
• Cut green apples turn brown slower than cut red apples.
  
• The bleach stain on my apron is not a color nor a stain.
  
• White meat starts brown and ends up white.
  
• Red meat starts red and ends up brown.
  
• No food should be gray.
  

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow...

Last night we went to the local theater's production of Annie, and now I've got that song stuck in my head. It was lots of fun. They did a professional job, the little girl who played Annie was great, and it was especially fun because a number of folks in the cast are from our church. G. took us out to eat at a great Mexican restaurant just before the performance, so that was nice too.

We had a good weekend with R. home. She got a bunch of homework done and some other things too: haircut, trip to the bank, unsuccessful shoe-shopping trip, and she voted. We had a laugh before voting because she said she was tempted to write in a friend's name* for president. She planned to do this until she learned that you could only put in declared write-in candidates.

We and R. have begun a discussion of where she might live next year. Of course, that is likely to depend on where she ends up getting a job. But one plan is that she would move back in with us, and take over the apartment end of our house (for a price, of course :-) A friend of mine, who has been a teacher herself, reminded me that the first year of teaching is very hard, and it is good to have some friendly ear at home to "dump" on when you get home from teaching each day. If R. got an apartment by herself, that would be difficult. If she had a roommate, it might work, but my friend thought for her first year, living at home might be the least stress to add to the first year of teaching. Of course, that all assumes that she would come back to Texas instead of staying in Oklahoma, which isn't a given. We will just have to see what doors the Lord opens as we carry on a discussion on the topic.

In the meantime, the song says, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow, you're always a day away."

*I'm not sure he's presidential material. He's more the dictator type.