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.

Baby sweater for Jack just needs to be seamed up

Of course, I forgot my seaming needles, so I will be forced to go out today to ONLY buy the needles. Well, and maybe some lace curtains for the kitchen and the hallway door. If I can find the lace with the lighthouses on it. While I'm out, I'm stopping for fish and chips at this dive over by the Coast Guard station.

Swatching Darling's cardigan this morning, while all the cleaning spray in the bathroom does it's job. Looking quite forward to getting this knitted up, since I bought the yarn three entire years ago. It's a pretty blue cashmere and I'm using a Sarah James pattern.

I did laundry here at the coast and left it pegged on the line overnight, so it is still damp. Won't need it until tonight anyway. I really don't LIKE having to do laundry here (or clean or cook). I want the beach house to be more like a hotel, where no one bothers me. Unfortunately, that is not the way the world works.

I brought my extra vacuum cleaner and forgot the hose part at home. Forgot the sheets. Forgot the towels. Brought the carpet cleaner but THAT does me no good, since I can't vacuum before hand. My plan, since I have three days, was to vac the whole house, drapes, everything. Maybe by next week, I'll have decided to change out the drapes (which I hate.) I'm thinking some tab topped ones, with a thermal backing. I have three big windows in the living room and they came with icky cheap white blinds. Hate 'em.

Tomorrow, if it is warm, I'm going to work in the yard. Once it warms up, that will take about 10 minutes. I need to remember to load some bricks in the car so I can enlarge my little patio AND buy some stepping stones, so I can put in a little sidewalk around the back. The ground is soft there and not especially level, so that is an afternoon's worth of project. I have a little storage shed that I want to move up against the house because it blocks my view of the water. (Was that dumb or what? Whose idea was that?)

That little spot is where I'm putting my little herb garden-it is the sunniest little bit. I have a huge box of bulbs I'm putting in the the little front garden, along with poppy seeds. Something pretty for the long mild spring we have here. It starts in March and stretches out thru November. Then there is summer, from December to February. My kind of weather.

Took the kayak out to just past the rock. Choppy, choppy, choppy. When the weather is like that, I KNOW that the sharks come in past the breakwater and are swimming RIGHT UNDER ME.

I know it.
So that sorta takes the fun out of it. And the older I get, the lest chances I feel like taking.
And just in case you think I am crazy about the sharks? Some gal got EATEN in Avila, which is just on the other side of the point. Eaten. Like, eaten up DEAD. People on the shore saw the attack but her body was never recovered.

Yeah, I know.

I am SO allergic to alpaca

The recently completed Alpaca Dirt was left on the back of my chair last night. I was working on Peggy'sRuthie'sJack's sweater and got itchier and itchier....took a benydryl or six and then I started to hive up. It was that damn alpaca!

I've been cranky and itchy all day and cranky and itchy all the way over here to the beach and damn! I forgot my sheets...which really won;t make that big of a difference, since Darling has started to snore like a bull moose or a train or (last night) mooing like a cow. I end up in the front room. I imagine that's where I'll be tonight.

And I forgot the towels. Damndamndamn.

Damn.

They're at the top of the stairs.

I guess a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond is in the works for me tomorrow. OR a thrift shop.

On the other hand, I am just loving this lofty roving type of wool. Compared to the alpaca, it feels like butter. Finishing up PRJ's sweater while watching Snakes on a Plane. So far, it is sorta like a day at work. Scary, violent guys and I'm only six minutes into it.

Okay. This movie is so full of holes, from the computer plane in the computer sky to the computer snakes. There's a yapping dog and I guess my hearing is failing, since the screaming baby sure doesn't sound like MY screaming babies. No wonder I'm deaf. Then there's the hairspray and cigarette lighter flamethrower. I had one of those. Some days, I wish I carried one in my handbag. In fact, when they start implanting tasers in your hand? I'm totally going.

Oh, geeze, now they're at the illegal venomous snake dealer's place. Glass snaketeriums and guns. Did you know that the Feeb's and the Secret Service and school teachers make about the same amount of money? Now THAT'S scary.

A day with my best friend

Marji and I have been friends since we were 12. I will be retiring in 2.91 years, so that is one long time. And we still can talk all day and NOT run out of things to say.

Because of our schedules, we can email every day, but we manage to actually see each other maybe twice a year...and even THAT is a major scheduling production.

But today, we got to spend the entire day (along with daughters Miss B and Girlie), with a 75% knitting ratio (Girlie doesn't knit). We exchange presents because we always do. I got a loverly skein of smooshy sock yarn in colorway Pansy Golightly, mainly because I have been griping at great length at the alpaca dirt afghan.

We talked and talked and talked. Once upon a time we drove to SF for a Britex fix and by the time we go home, we were totally hoarse. Of course, just the road part of the trip was 8 hours.

So Miss B fixed us a lovely light lunch, Mr. T came out of his internet cave to say hello and the four of us yap-yap-yapped the day away. I can't tell you how much I treasure out multi decade connection; if you've never had a close friend for over 40 years--there is nothing like it. There is not much that we don't know about one another's histories that so there isn't that pesky learning curve. When we were in high school, I think we had probably 90% of our classes together.

And there is no one I would rather have know me so well. She gets me and I get her.
And that is a rare commodity in this world.

So here's to you, Catwoman! I had a great time. Let's not let it take so long to get together again. You are funny and smart and totally entertaining and I love you like a sister.

It is POURING Rain

We spent most of the day on the patio, barefoot in the mild spring weather. Jeans and a light sweatshirt kind of weather. The sky was so blue and clear; neighbors were strolling by and doing the little hand-raise kind of wave, which is more than friendly enough for me. Then I went to the market for pie makings and bok choy and the sky on the other side of town was just black. So I'm thinking, poor people at home (100 miles away) getting rained out. Too bad.

And just now, the sky got black and the heavens just opened up. Sheets of rain. Great gusts of wind. I'm looking out to the ocean and it looks all quiet-ish....so it's not a big Pacific storm. Just pouring down hard enough so that I probably won't
have to wash the car. Seriously. It is pouring hard enough to make me say "Wow".

And I've got corned beef, new potatoes and new carrots from my little garden and bok choy (I need to plant some of this stuff) on the stove. Whacked up some pot pie stuff for tomorrow...and since I had the dough out, I made a peach and apricot pie.

Spring and the alpaca

The drive over to Morro Bay was an absolute gift from the daylight savings time gods.

It is as green as Ireland and the sun was just at the exact right angle to give every green thing perfect lighting. The incandescent greens are scattered with literally miles of wildflowers, rioting on the hillsides. Brilliant orange california poppies, dense mats of blue and yellow lupines, lemondrops, and daisies.

The hills are also loaded with herds of sheep with new lambs frolicking. The Basque herders are (unusually) located in adjoining fields, so I actually saw more than the usual solitary man. They all had dogs, so even the border collies were getting a little socialization. I've always thought that job was exceptionally lonely.

Here in the Central Valley, there are herds of sheep that roam the fields and hills, "sheeping" off weeds or the leftovers of a harvest. Each herd has a shepherd who lives in a little gypsy caravan, called a sheep camp. It's a little like a travel trailer, but outfitted a little differently. The guys cook outside, live alone except for their dog. When I was little, they were, without exception young Basque men, in their late teens or early twenties. They came over here, worked for three or four years and went back home.

The Central Valley has a large Basque population, so it is sort of a chain immigration, without the idea of staying forever. I'm not sure who or how all this is arranged-I just know that it is. I've never even seen the herds being moved.

So it was fun, seeing the little lambs, so new and tiny that their tails haven't been docked yet. They are still white and bouncy and quite entertaining to watch. It made me think that I'd like to get a couple of sheep to keep the weeds down in my huge backyard. There is MORE than plenty of grass for them!

Now about the alpaca. I am still trying to cast off with an elastic edge. The first time, it was too stiff. The next time, I added a stitch every three--too ruffly. Then I did one every ten stiches--not stretchy enough. Then during Fight Club last night (man, I do not like Brad Pitt), I tried an extra stitch every eight--still not stretchy enough. So now, I have a row with an extra stitch every eight stitches and another row of an extra stitch every five stitches. When I'm done, I'll cast off and see if I get an elastic edge.

This is what makes knitting interesting for me. It's just mindless enough (I am very fond of miles of stockinette) but then there is always just the tiniest of challenges.

Granted, trying to figure out how to make a straight cast off a little bit stretchy isn;t brain surgery but it is hard enough for me.

And I even brought along RuthieJack's Sweater to start.

Rocket

Is she not the cutest thing? She was chasing Tank. Tonight she is playing Tough Dog, trying to rip Tank's ears off. She will just launch herself at him.

When she was little, she would leap off the arms of the chairs, like Rocket J. Squirrel, hence the name Rocket.
She is not the smartest dog I have ever had...she knows her name and she knows "get home", but that is about it. She still chases her tail. Endlessly.

She has just learned how to jump up on the bed, so she can sleep under the covers. Until just recently, she slept under the bed in a little nest.

Me and my head

I'm on an eight day cycle. That means every eight days, my head will bring me to my knees. And as much as I hatehatehate the ER, at 0330, that is where you'll find me about twice a month. I'm at the clinic about that often. It just depends on the time and the day of the week.

The upside---and there is an upside---is that I rarely have to wait for hours. The other day, I was in and on my way home in 15 minutes. I have a little recipe that works and I don;t get any flack for the amount of drugs I want.

The down side is missing work. I manage to make four days, reliably. I might even manage five days in a row, but my supervisor's are very understanding about the time I miss. They never give me any flack. Of course, when I am there, I drive my students like a herd of cows. My paperwork is perfect and on time. Need some new teachers trained? Send them to me. Need someone to get john's order put together and sent in? Say no more. So what I can do, I do. And when I can't do it, I don't worry about it.

So the pills from San Francisco have helped. A lot. They aren't miracle drugs, by a long shot, but that is what Dr. Nagy and the Migraine Clinic is for.

I still have trouble sleeping. It is better when I can spend part of the evening in the hot tub, but I'm waiting for the new top. The old one lasted ten years and then this winter, it just fell apart on the inside. So sitting for hours, neck deep in steaming hot water isn't an option right now.

I try to stay busy. Work is that. Just work. And it stays there. I don't drag it home. So I have a lot of time at home to do things....right now, with the good weather, it is gardening and cleaning up the outside so that when the weather is SO HOT that I can just let it go. There are always chores to do in the house and my children--Boy-O and Girlie--are really good about helping me with projects I have no hope of finishing.

I knit. I sew. I write.
And I hope I don't wake up with a headache.

Weekend photos

I went out to the country about three years ago and dragged back to entire heaping pickup loads of unknown bulbs, notched and planted them. Most of them were daffodils and paper whites, which I have since dug up and planted in the front. I have a little over an acre of yard and it is humungous to tend to. I like to mess about when the weather is fair and the weeds are few.

I love gardening in the spring and fall, when the weather is nice. I like gardening year round over in Morro Bay. It is the winter and summer in Kings County I don't like. In the summer, we hit murderous triple digits....like weeks of +110. The winters? Cold, wet, foggy. Miserable. So icky that we go to the coast every chance we can. The weather there is an absolute flip of the weather here, except with mild temps.

Here's the honeysuckle that I'm planting in the beds that surround the front of the house. I need something that will fill up the beds and not crawl into the stonework.


Here are samples of my shade garden. Hostas, snowdrops, violets, ferns and camellias. It is always shady alongside this walkway, so these take care of themselves. They are a welcome sight in February, when looks everything else is dead and overgrown.

I tried to keep everything in the shade garden white, green and violet...I have wild violets running wild and am trying to get them to take over most of that bed. The shade garden is right next to the koi pond.













Then I have the big vegetable garden..winter weeding, of course. All the fish pond water goes into the garden. I'm moving my potting table to underneath the old clothes line....grapes vines go on that this week. (I need SOME shade!)

I had it fixed for automatic watering this winter...I can never remember when to water and end up forgetting and letting the whole garden burn up. So weeding is still to be done there and then the tidy planting. Home grown vegetables are so much better and handy...no rushing off to the market to try to find something.

Spring here today...photos tomorrow

We get about 16 days of spring here....today was one of them. Tomorrow, photos, I promise! I think a little before and after would be appropriate, since I'm weeding and cleaning. I would prefer to weed, since it is one of those chores that has a beginning and ending. UNLIKE cleaning, which has no end in sight.

I'm going to the nursery tomorrow for honeysuckle to go in the middle flowerbeds. My yard is so huge that I have front flowerbeds, side flowerbeds, the driveway bed and middle beds that wrap around the house.

Then there is the side and back yards.
Shade beds, plantings around the outbuildings and then my vegetable garden. Tomorrow, I put in asparagus and tomatoes, as well as some grapes on my old clothesline. That's where I have my big potting table and I'd like a little shade in the afternoon.

This house is going on the market in two years. I have to get the outside ready because NO ONE in their right mind will buy it if it looks like as much work as it is. But i know that there is someone out there who would like a huge Victorian with an equally huge yard, huge vegetable garden, guest house, pool house and pool and a koi pond. It is really lovely but a LOT of work....when I wasn;t working, it didn;t seem to be so much but now that I'm working again, it is A. LOT.

Prison is an odd place

I never read my students jackets. I don't need to read a student's past; I never have. Even when I taught on the street, I tried to wait until Christmas to read the comments from the previous teachers.

So I rarely know what has brought my students to prison. I don't need to know. Suffice to say that my prison houses what is called "the worst of the worst". And I have read hundreds of files, so I know what men in my prison have done to get here. I just don't want to know what crimes my students have committed because if I did, I'm not sure I could stand to have them breathing my air.

My yard is particularly violent. Another yard is filled with "skin offenders"---sex crimes of the worst imaginable magnitude. I couldn't teach there. But my own bunch of violent guys are okay. I guess I'm used to it; to them. Today, the weather has turned and it was particularly nice and since it was a Friday, my students were particularly noisy. Loud.

I tried my usual "Gentlemen! Too noisy!" and they were so noisy that they couldn't hear me, so I raised my voice and tried again. Two of my particularly touchy students took offense at me "yelling" at them and tried to tell me to back down. I have been teaching longer than they have been alive, so I jumped right on them. I don't need help in running my class. I do just fine. And if I have to raise my voice, perhaps it is because it needed to be raised.

So one of them got all jacked and was going to leave my class. Fine with me. I don't care.

What some of my students don't realize is that I am not interested in saving them. I'm not going to be going to any PTA meetings or having any parent conferences. I present the work. I prepare lessons. I have an overhead and any number of ways to teach a concept. I can teach people right into the ground.

But if there is a student who is a reluctant learner--hey, that's on him. I don't cajole. Don't try to manipulate me because I. Don't Care. There are plenty of guys who WANT to learn. I expend my energies on those students.

I don't care if W ever figures out how to do fractions. I teach it but if W is staring out the window, I'm not going to redirect his attention. And when I've worked on apostrophes and quotation marks for two weeks and it is test time, I don't plan on walking W thru it so he can feel successful.

You know how a guy in prison can feel successful?
He LEARNS. He works on it. He actually LOOKS at the things we are doing on the board.
He watches the videos that illustrates Mr. Apostrophe and the Quotation Twins.
He pays attention to the worksheets when I have them up on the overhead. Then when I give them a test that I have lifted right off prior work (and I mean the questions are the exact same ones we've done a dozen times), he makes an attempt to do them. He doesn;t spend time whining about how easy it is or what baby work it is or what an insult it is to even be expected to do the work. He just does it.

Out of my 28 students, there are only three guys who resent the work I do and the way I do it. They want the answers handed to them and to get someone to write them down. Those three? They can remain ignorant. They can write illiterate letters. They can complain all they want. Write me up. Refuse to attend. I. Don't Care. They are the knuckleheads who have managed to manipulate the system right into prison; they have managed to get mommy and girlfriend to intercede at every junction....and by abdicating adulthood, they have ended up in prison.

I have one student who is working on a first grade level. He reads his little "Jed in the Jet Bed" books and does his first grade math and first grade spelling. I think he might test up to mid second grade, because he is really successful in the work he is doing. Does he think it's baby work? Evidently not, because this is the first time he has been successful in school.

THAT'S the student I'll work with....and the others in class who have a concept that perhaps they don;t know everything.

Those other goofs? They are never getting out, so I guess puffing up their chests and wailing about being insulted works for them. They aren't fooling anyone, least of all me.