(Frozen) chicks!

There's a new boat in town... all that down time hub's had with the Achilles snafu gave him time to shop online for this. He claimed it was necessary for bub's new fishing venture- he joined the Youth BASS Circuit. I don't really know what that even means yet except entrance fees, traveling all warm season weekends and well lots of mom duty fixing food for fisherMEN. 

I am slowly stepping into spring with bare ankles while clinging to my leather jacket. I love this new Knitted & Knotted dress from a recent consignment trip north. 

I finally remembered to snap this pic of the Book Worm necklace Yo gave me for Christmas. I wore it Monday to the book club meeting.  

 The Easter basket made their entrance to spring this morning. My mom gives bub a Longerberger Easter basket each year. Somehow we don't have a 1999 one? I think maybe we started in 2000 and she later found the 1998 so BE ON THE LOOKOUT!

 Hard to find a way to photo the whole collection.

I do the announcements at a small rural school. Often little reminders come along that make me smile that could only happen in a farm community. One of my first years I took a phone message for a student telling her to come straight home after school her pig had piglets. Another happened Thursday when I took a phone message from a mother saying her daughter would be late if there at all. Her cow had a calf and it wasn't doing well. They were tracking down some medicine and she would be nursing it back to health. Hopefully.

Also this week a student brought me in some frozen chickens. I like chicken but I started reading about the whole 1000 mile meal and local eating a few years back and chicken hasn't been an option. I'm not totally reformed but I made some changes. I buy my eggs from a farm on the way home from work. We buy a half a cow each year.  Our garden has steadily grown and we put up corn, tomatoes and berries. I am very excited about my frozen chickens!

Spring is on its way so I started cleaning off the back porch. It's looking a little sad. So I need porch inspiration.

For the last few days I've been having a huge spinach salad with a carrot, peas, pine nuts, chicken, croutons and anything else I can throw in there with a tad bit of dressing. It is yummy and has helped me drop down the poundage. I am officially down - 6 lbs from the start of the year. I've been looking for a new bathing suit online lately. Something that covers more but still not too much. Besides the fact they are outrageous for such a small amount of fabric I can't seem to find what I am looking for. Wednesday while Hub's was at therapy for the tendon Bub's and I moseyed around the mall and I stumbled upon this... well gosh darn it it sold out! Well here are the bottoms anyway!

For our staff and friends book club we are reading Didion's My Year of Magical Thinking and Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt. Since I listened to Didion's on CD last year I suggested it and threw out Making Toast to see if anyone else had read it yet. Being a very well read group of course several had so we paired the two together.   I heard Rosenblatt on NPR last year and the story, although devastating, was touching. It is hard to explain how it makes me feel. The story is so sad but the way R. tells the story is amazingly familiar and warm. Check it out at Amazon.com

Also still reading Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Ford and Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Hoose. Interesting piece of serendipity when I was reading Making Toast this week he references Claudette Colvin. I'm struck how we construe our own history here. Colvin was a teenager when she decided not to move on a bus in the south. But she was not from a stable family and she had some spunk that turned people off. She made friends with Rosa Parks and eventually Parks followed suit and started a revolution. Interesting. 

Also still making my way through the following:

The Quest Study Bible

Life is Meals: A Food Lover’s Book of Days- James and Kay Salter 

A Year in Poetry- Foster and Guthrie 

The American Book of Days- Christianson 

Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People- Covey 

Making the Most of Today: Daily Readings for Young People on Self-Awareness, Creativity,

and Self-Esteem- Espeland and Wallner

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die- Ed. Boxall 

Raising Cain: Saving the Emotional Lives of Boys

Men are from Mars Women Are From Venus- Gray 

Home Comforts 

Teach Me Lord in 28 Days

The Millionaire Next Door- Stanley 

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance- Pirsig 

A Harry Potter marathon on today makes a nice background soundtrack to my catching up in the studio.

I am saddened by the recent events concerning National Public Radio. It enhances my life every single day. My alarm is set to it, I listen while getting ready in the morning, sometimes when I can trick the boys I listen to it on the way to work, I talk about it with my coworkers and share it with my students, I listen on the way home, and in the evening I walk my dog while listening to podcasts. Honestly it touches me many times during the day so I wrote the following to my Congress representatives in support of it...

Once again we are attacking the middle class. We need free information that is tested and reliable. Public broadcasting does that. I didn't know about NPR growing up. When I discovered public broadcasting my world was expanded. Do we believe in educating our citizens? In informing our community members? Then why are we attacking PUBLIC broadcasting, and PUBLIC education these days. Attack those who do not work or those who do little work and make outrageous salaries. Stop and consider what you are doing to the working middle class. Public broadcasting is an essential service to the American people. I strongly urge you to oppose this flawed bill that would have a devastating effect on our nation's public radio system.

I hope you can find time the next few days to contact those who represent you.

Funny how all the sudden I hear the same word over and over again and it takes me a week to look it up. Via Wikipedia Purim (Hebrew:  פּוּרִים (help·info) Pûrîm "lots", from the word pur,^[2] related to Akkadian pūru) is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the ancient Persian Empire from destruction in the wake of a plot by Haman, a story recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther(Megillat Esther).
I should know this but alas I had forgotten. I'm not Jewish but I've attended church my whole life so at some point I'm sure this was covered.