The Rain Clouds Part and It's SUNNY!

It rained all last week, which didn’t help my mood much. It cleared up yesterday and I have been feeling a lot better since then. It helps that the weekend was mostly very pleasant, and that the work week has started out with a bang, too! And look, even the birds are cheerier (taken from my vantage point on the front porch, watching the finches eat seeds off the rosemary bushes. I didn't even know they had seeds on them.)

There was lots of teen fun all weekend—almost always there was someone under 21 hanging around who wasn’t my child. They are really enjoying spring break! I broke out the dehydrator Friday evening and started cutting up fruit. The next time I looked up there were 7 sets of eyes on me—five kids and two dogs’ worth! All four original Triskelion members were there, plus a bonus boy, and they all seem to like fruit. It was fun chatting with them and tossing them bits of food as I loaded up the dehydrator. Later that night, we (and Parker) went to Mesa Rosa, which made a chilly evening much happier.

The dehydrator remained popular the next night, when it was Tuba Boy’s turn to have a bunch of friends over ( he also had ONE girl—must be the thing to do, and I do say they are less screechy when there is just one of them). As they played the Zombies board game, I chatted with Debate King (the one who won his specialty in the tournament last week) about the dehydrator for at least a half hour. He really, really liked it. He even asked me if you can dehydrate lunch meat. Hmm. Why not ham jerky? All the while this kid (a very tall, big-boned person with a beard, so it’s hard to call him a “kid” really) was playing Beccano’s acoustic guitar beautifully. He serenaded the other kids with hilarious blues songs all night.

It was so darned damp in the house that the dried fruit started to un-dry rather quickly, so we know we need to get better storage for it. But it is delicious and very nice in oatmeal, as I had hoped! I did strawberries, pineapple, kiwi fruit, bananas and oranges. Next: jerky!

I had my share of grown-up fun this weekend. I detailed a lot of it in the knitting blog, but I want to say how much I enjoyed entertaining Katie, who is overdue with her first child, little Abigail. I dragged her off to the JoAnn’s Fabrics store, and the next day went over and visited her at her new house, which they just got all unpacked and ready in time for the birth. It was nice talking to her and reassuring her it would be OK. I also went to a baby shower for Jen, a very traditional one with games and stuff. Wow, all my knitting pals are competitive. The organizers are scrapbookers, which meant all the decorations were very, very detailed and cute. I got tired just looking at them, but they did a really nice job.

It was just a fun, good weekend. I even got to spend some time with Lee—we made a trip to Fry’s, and we enjoyed a nice quiet evening last night. He hasn’t been feeling well—back issues, so he needs to take it easy for a while. I made dinner last night, but it wasn’t very good beans and rice. I’ll try to make something better next time!

Today at work was great. I had some good stuff to do show up, which I liked. And I got three job-related phone calls. They ranged from yet another call about my own job, to a call about a marginal possibility that is sort of far away, to a guy calling me up and offering exactly what I’d love to do and had hoped to do at 3M—using that fun e-learning software to create training modules. This guy had some good ideas and the place sounds great. I have an interview there next week, so we’ll see how it goes! At least that’s all encouraging!

But wait, there's more! When I came home, there was a request for an interview in my email. Turns out to be another of the places they contract with at work. I sure know that stuff. Wow, this was not a bad day to be in the job market, considering!

When I got home from work, there was another surprise: Parker had straightened Beccano's hair. It wasn't straight, but it was straighter. I put it in a nice thick braid, which is what you see here. Wow, that boy has thick hair!

Tomorrow Tuba Boy and I are taking the afternoon off to go look at Southwestern University, where he might go to college. That sounds like fun! I guess I'll be missing a few hours of work over the next few days. But for all good reasons!