On the needles

No photos , of course. When do I ever HAVE photos? Well, I actually do, but they just look like a hot mess of knitting.

So...on the circs, I am picking up stitches on the bottom of Peggy's Ruthie's Jack's baby sweater so I can add about 3 inches of ribbing. That one is in the living room.

My smooshy purple-from-Marji socks are my Wednesday knit, over at Mom's house. Gives me something to do besides whine.

Out by the pool? Corn fiber socks. I'm not all that crazy about the feel of this stuff while I'm working with it, but I like the way it looks once it is worked up. I saw some soy-and-CRAB yarn...euwww. Didn't like the way it felt at all. Worse than alpaca. (Alpaca feels like hemp to me, It makes me itch, too.)

I have some sari silk in my handbag that I am messing with at work. I am thinking about making a sweatshirt styled cardigan, but I am thinking it is going to be way too heavy. I'm doing one sleeve and if it just too heavy, then I'll figure out something. Else, I guess.

I just looked down because I could hear snoring--all three dogs are conked out on the floor. I guess I am pretty good company!

Lisi has decided to move down the hall from her old pink bedroom. She'll be in the guest room that I have been using as an office-not that I do much office work anymore. We have a real office across town. I just keep dead files here, so I can fetch back dated stuff. We went looking for new bedding and picked out two really pretty chocolate brown and cinnabar red coverlets. The cinnabar had some really modern throw pillows, plus some tailored shams. Now she just has to get stuff moved. And the animal heads? Into storage. (Hey! They are vintage taxidermy that I recused from yard sales. At least they have had a nice home, out of the weather, vaccumed regularly and not moth-eaten.)

What movie was that?

You know the rules. Guess from what movie these quotes come---and remember, I really like movies where stuff gets blown up.

1. "Nah... I mean, I'm already pregnant, so what other kind of shenanigans could I get into? "Juno/Donna

2. "They're gonna need some more FBI guys, I guess. " Die Hard/Marji

3."Oh man, I can't f***ing believe this. Another basement, another elevator. How can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?"(Come to the coast, have a few drinks....)

4. "Yeah, Zeus! As in, father of Apollo? Mt. Olympus? Don't fuck with me or I'll shove a lightning bolt up your ass? Zeus! You got a problem with that?" Die Hard with a Vengence/edbteach

5."So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don't you know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it." Fargo/susan/sc

6."Cause Chevy didn't make a 327 in '55, the 327 didn't come out till '62. And it wasn't offered in the Bel Air with a four-barrel carb till '64. However, in 1964, the correct ignition timing would be four degrees before top-dead-center." My Cousin Vinny/ susan/sc

8.He's from out of town and don't tell me that doesn't curl your toes because I know it does. (Filmed in American Fork, Utah. The final scene take place in the Nephi Flour Mill) Footloose/Novel (I STILL love this movie! I worked in the area it was filmed and I always just a kick out of how Mid-Western it looks! And really? Utah is the dancing-est place on the face of the Earth!)

9."Dunbar, not Dumb Bear. "Dances With Wolves/Novel. I just love the way it sounds.

---

10 "Nothing gave Buttercup as much pleasure as ordering Westley around." The Princess Bride/Marji

11."So, Mr. Tipton, how could it take you 5 minutes to cook your grits when it takes the entire grit eating world 20 minutes?" This New Yawker cousin didn't have a lot of experience with grits OR with the law.) Me? I am not all that crazy about grits---I live in the part of the world where we eat biscuits and gravy for our morning shot of lard and carbs.

12."Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go shopping now." Pretty Woman/edbteach

If your guess right, I color code the quote and give you the credit.

A photo of my class!

I need to download some photos

This is on a rebar wire trellis, stapled onto the old fence between our yard and the Turkey lady's place. She hates me and doens;t care much for the dogs. Any time I'm out in the yard, she comes out and mutters unkind things. Poor thing. She doesn't have a lot of visitors and if she thinks that making unkind comments is the way to get me to trot over to make friends....well, she has misjudged me.

I really do take pictures of all of this stuff. I just have a hard time getting them monkeyed with and downloaded.

Today, I'm working on the yard. There is so much of it, that no matter how much time I spend, not much looks like it was touched. This is the year where I actually hire someone who knows the difference between weeds and not-weeds and clears out the corners, plants some things that work with what I have existing. I have some roses that I'm pulling out of my mom's old house and putting over here. How many renters want to mess with roses, anyway?

I have a lamb (Lambchop) out in the back, trimming up all the weeds there.

I want to get the hill sheeped off before the seedheads develop--since all those burrs and foxtails end up in the dogs.
Lambchop is a working sheep. She is not a pet. She is meat. I picked her because she is small enough to tote in the back of my truck.

I have decided that I'll take a year to get the yard together and then if the market has come up, I can sell this house. If not, another year here. My friend, Day, has inspired me to get things started AND COMPLETED. She is an amazing woman, She is a great mum, great daughter, wonderfully understanding wife and an unfailing friend. She even does charity work!! If she lived in the US, she would have her own TV show.

It is a great place for a family. Lots of room for kids. Too bad there is just the two of us now! Mike has no love of digging in the dirt and I just run out of energy too early in the day. But it will be a great find for a family.

Fighting and mayhem

Had a huge fight break out in class today. Out of nowhere. Everyone was working away and then BAM!!

It never ceases to amaze me when this happens. Nothing seems to start it---no words are exchanges, fists just start to fly. Blood every where.

Hit my alarm, stepped out into the hall and pointed into the class. The squad responded about as fast as it takes to read those words. Everyone hits the floor--except the fighter guys, who are still swinging. Closed class so I could write m y report---all I knew what the who, when and where---no idea why. Never do. Never will.

In my past life, I thought that with enough digging and prying, I could find out the who, when when, where and all important why. Not any more. Most of the time I don't even CARE why and just chalk it up to my felons=morons theory.

Upcoming changes in the air. My whole class was unassigned and then reassigned, which caused me a ton of paperwork. Exit reports. Close out the entire month. Open up a new class. Retype every piece of information--which is a lot--their ID numbers, housing, reading scores, birth dates, entry dates....and none of this stuff can be cut and pasted. It all has to be keyed in. And I'm a teacher, not a typist, so it is slow going. I have now 30 weeks of packets, to be done in class and 150 individual homework assignments, to be done in-cell. Working on getting my aide classifies as a clerk, so he can make a little more money. (Clerks make 2-5 cents more than an aide does.

Mom is in the nursing home now--she is still moving in and getting things put away. Well, I'm getting things put away! We have all tried to drop by for a little while every day. Yesterday was my big visit. She doesn't much like it, but then change is always hard for her. She never likes anything new in the beginning.

They leave their inside doors open--another thing Mom doesn't like. Neither would I.
It is that gradual loss of personal space that would bother me-although she seems much more rested, without all of the responsibilities of the house, cooking, yard and trash to fret about.

Girlie and Boy-o went to Riverside to visit Jackson yesterday and then will spend the morning with Mom's, hauling out empty boxes. Lisi has finished her final interviews with the new probation officer job, so she is hoping to get the call pretty soon.

Me? Well, today, I'm working on draining the pond and hoping to be able to talk Ben into helping me bucket the goop up and put on the flowerbeds. My daughter, Keri, is coming out in mid June and I'd like the outside to look nice--since that is probably where we will spend most of our time.
All I can hope for for the inside is that it is clean!

Dexter

Have you SEEN this yet? O.M.G.
It is seriously good.

I evidently watched it on Sunday, right after I went to the ER. My kids tell me I laughed in the same places and made the same comments. I don't remember anything about Sunday, past the part when they put the little ER bracelet on me. I vaguely remember that I thought my head was going to blow up. And I remember writing DPTB on my hand. I don't remember what that was for, just that it was really important.

Whatever they gave me, I want again.
That stuff was wonderful.

Yeah. Captain Tightpants.

Pick a dozen favorite movies.
Head over to IMDb and find corresponding quotes.
Post them on your blog for everyone to guess.
Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
And no fair googling the quotes, don't be a cheater!

1. “Only don't tell me that you're innocent. Because it insults my intelligence and it makes me very angry” The Godfather/liz/ak Michael says this to Connie's husband, right after Michael had stood godfather for their child. To make things worse, he tells Carlo "What, you think I'd make my only sister a widow?" I love that movie!

2. “Ladies and gentlemen, either you are closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge, or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community!” The Music Man/Novel. Good job!

3. “Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?” Serenity/sioux. I loved the series and I loved the movie! The writing was clever and funny and very Marshal Dillon meets Captain Kirk.

4. “We should call the cops” The Punisher...you can see this on late night tv. John Travolta at his really evil, violent scary, wife tossing onto the train tracks self. I could watch this movie every night for the rest of my life. I wish JT had his own channel that was JT 24/7. Okay, JT and Nic Cage. I will and have watched them in pretty much everything (expect that one with the dreadlocks. Didn;t care for that.)

5. “Finest kind.” M*A*S*H/Marji. We saw this on a trip to Salt Lake City the summer between our junior and senior year in high school. Did you know that you can turn two Conestoga wagons end to end on the downtown streets of Salt Lake City?

6. “I don't know about you, but I intend on writing a strongly worded letter to the White Star Line about all of this” Titanic/Novel. We watch this every year on our anniversary.

7. “You're gonna need a bigger boat.” Jaws/Novel. I couldn't go into the water for a whole summer because of this movie!

8. “Uh oh, fifteen minutes to Judge Wapner” Rainman/Katney. I used to love watching the Wap!

9. “Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming..” Lost World-Jurrassic Park/Novel I could watch this one over and over, too. Love the whole chaos theory.

10.“Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!” Serenity/Novel. I love the series
and the movie, too. I wish it had lasted longer.

11.“You can’t handle the truth!” A Few Good Men/Novel. I saw this accidently in the middle of the night with mi cunada (my sister in law). We were driving around LA with screaming babies, who fell asleep after we had walked the deck of the Queen Mary for hours. So naturally, we went to the movies!

12.“I couldn't do that. Could you do that? Why can they do it? Who are those guys? “ Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid/Marji. We drove over to Tulare and saw this accidently at one of those beautiful old theaters with stars on the ceiling, a balcony and velvet curtains. When the movie opened and it was sorta sepia 9instead of in COLOR) we both looked at each other and I know we were both thinking, "A western? In sepia? I think not!" Needless to say, it has not only been a favorite of mine since I was 16, it brings back great memories.

Clues:

4. I'll watch John Travolta in ANYTHING, even when he is the very bad GUY dealing drugs in Miami. Even if it went straight to video. Even if the movie is named after a comic book.

*Welcome susan/sc , sioux and Katney!

liz/ak--welcome to you, too!

Here is Rocket, running from Tank

Is that the cutest face?

I added a stitch...and I got distracted

I've been steadily knitting on the back of this sweater for oh, about 24 hours now and JUST NOW noticed that I randomly added a stich and purled 27 of 104 knit stitches.

I patiently dropped each stitch, let it run down and then carefully picked the whole thing back up with a crochet hook. In my usual OCD way, I dropped the stitch on that added stitch and now have this huge wide mess. I guess what I'll do is pick that line up, leaving the little mistake for fixing when I fix all of my mistakes. I have these little orange plastic safety pin type things that I use to mark every mistake, so I can fix it/them later. I, in a moment of foolishness, bought eight packages of these little darlings, thinking that they would last a lifetime.

That would be just one more misjudgment of mine. I use all of them up on every single project.

Going through my sister's keepsakes

Marnie was killed when she was 4, right before kindergarten started. Packed away was her first day of school dress and little Maryjane's and a hanky with a dime knotted in the corner for her milk money.

She was a terrible color-er and loved the color orange. She has a little steno book where she had spent probably six months wavering between printing her name and doing that pre-writing scribble.

My mother packed away her little toothbrush, her little nightgown and the little jeans she was wearing, along with the little treasures she kept in her pocket---a Bazooka comic from some bubble gum, a button and a pretty rock.

Of all the cards that touched me, the one from her Sunday School teacher just brought me to tears. Miss Lili wrote several pages, talking about the little girl that was here all too briefly.

We are still locked down

Maybe next week. Or not.
I have several guys who have been locked up for 90 (not to be confused with being locked down. Locked up is sort of like being in the corner. Locked down involves knives, physical violence and handcuffs.) So I called this morning, trying to find out if these guys were coming back or what.

What was the answer. No one knows what's up with these two. So when lockdown is over, these guys will have to come to class. They won't, so then the clock starts up all over again. I write more paper and they get in trouble all over again. (The last two guys who pulled this nonsense on me got five and SEVEN extra years tacked onto their sentences. And not only was it a surprise to me, it was a total surprise to them.)

Prison is a really odd place, with odd but regular rules. The only thing to do is to rat yourself out, apologize and pray that when the tornado is all over and soon. I'm not sure what is going to happen to these two but in my experience, something will.

I had an educational visit today, too. One would think that the term "educational" would somehow mean that it would would have something to do with...well, books or plans or something.

Au contraire.
It was about counting chairs and telling me to rearrange my room and have these five big tables taken out of my room. Three of them won't fit. I've tried a dozen times. They won't go. My boss says yes they will, so I guess they will. However, I can;t drag all of this stuff out into the all to leave, nor can I leave all this junk out in the loading bay, since someone might try to hide in the big mess, escape and throw our count off. (A very bad thing).

So tomorrow, I have to post all of the paperwork in the ed files (sort of like the permanent record in real schools) and move furniture around. In case we ever get students again. Right now, I have 56 guys on lockdown, with no release date for any of them.

And I am still not happy at home. But that will blow over. I won't forget it, but it will blow over. Sometimes I think it is a bad thing that I remember this stuff. Then other times, I think it is a good think that I can remember the crap that goes on. Otherwise, I'd think everything was hunky-dory.