Long Weekend -- No Plans

Another busy week gone down the tubes.

Lab has been filled with people. Made corrections to my powerpoint projects, burned 6 copies of 7 presentations only to find out later that there were a couple typos so I need to fix them and burn them again.... Grrrrrrrrrrr. I am taking everything home again and going over them with a fine tooth comb before I do a final burn.

Wednesday was the formal retirement party for the district. I was one of only a few of the middle school personel who attended even though our principal and band director were both leaving. It irritates me that more of our staff were not there. I didn't want to go either, but heck these are people we have worked with for years. Off my soap box I go. It was fun and I had my one tequila sunrise.

Most of the retiring people had worked over 30 years in our district and two had grown up in our district and gone to school here. The high school art teacher had been teaching here 35 years and the kindergarten teacher 39 years. So many years of dedicated service. It will be a very different year next year in all our schools.

That party lasted quite late and next day was the eighth grade dinner, a sort of send off of the eighth grade students with a talent show and potluck. I was drafted to help with makeup and costume changes for the M.C.'s who were spoofing several of our 8th grade teachers. This required some very quick changes including the final one where I put a bald wig and sponged a makeup beard on a kid in only a few seconds. It was weird, he looking like a mini me of the big German teacher he was spoofing. It was hectic, but fun. I helped earlier with decorations as well. Last year we lost a couple of our main stays for this dinner and next year another will retire. I fear I may have to step in and take over parts of it. I think it is a great way to say farewell and have a final party just for those kids and their parents. They also get their language arts booklet with writing samples from all their school years along with a water bottle with their graduation year imprinted on it.

Today I am exhausted. I have been replying to flurry of e-mails from a couple different problems. Our union is changing our insurance plan in order to gain a raise next year and we had to get everyone to vote in a span of 24 hours. We were not terribly well informed, but managed to get a vote in anyhow. I was put in charge of collecting votes and answering questions. I hope I did not steer anyone wrong, but we were pretty well backed into a corner because of the way the teachers voted and the outrageous increase in insurance costs for next year.

I also am involved in the storage issue at the theater. Not enough room to hold all the set pieces props and costumes that we really need to be able to store. The powers that be are reluctant to let us store things if it looks at all messy (but we store things in places that only we will be looking at) It frustrates me to have to deal with storage along with everything else. I just want a building that we can call our own to keep some things in. Our budgets are too small to keep making things new for every play and some things cannot be made or are dissapearing too quickly like telephones and appliances that set an era. Ah well enough griping

I am going to try to clean my house this weekend and sleep in as much as I can.

rotary gardens

Prom pics

Nightmare and Prom

I finished up my power point project last week and sent it off to the woman along with my bill. There was quite a bit of scanning that needed to be done along with multiple edits to previous presentations. Apparently I got mixed up and negeletec to make some of the changes. I do not think this happened, but that is what is claimed.

On Friday I got three emails the first congratulating me on a great job, the second two bascially asking what the hell had gone wrong. Unfortunately I had returned all her materials to her. I saved all the scans and revisions of course, but had neglected to copy all her little post-its and messages. (who knew?) Thus I had no way of figuring out what might have gone wrong and what actually I had done.

We must have emailed back and forth 15 times on friday trying to figure out what was going on. she is not very computer literate and thought the disc I burned for her might have different stuff on it than the handouts I printed directly from them. I don't think she ever believed that they were the same until she later was able to view the disc and confirm that I was not a freaking idiot.

By the end of the day I was totally second guessing my work and wondering if I had blown the whole thing. I brought all the jump drives discs and handouts I had printed home to look through them. All I could find is that I missed inserting three scans. they were saved and had been edited by me so I did do work on them. They even were titled as to which power point they went to. I just do not know where.

She is leaving for Europe for 6 weeks and I saw my paycheck flying out the window for almost two months. I had been counting on that to help pay for this dang computer. I finally convinced her to pay me for the ones that I know were correct and she agreed. She is re sending me the information so I can order the slides properly. Hopefully she has not added more changes. It was a very stressful day.

We all went to see DaVinci Code, which was a lovely diversion. I enjoyed the movie. Of course the book was better, but I was entertained by the film and that is all I really need. Oh and the popcorn was good too.

Saturday was prom. Maddie wrote out a detailed schedule and we got started at noon. I drove her to get her flower for Tyler and we stopped at the dollar store and bought some fake toenails. She had seen them there a while ago. She has struggled with a nail fungus on big toe almost her whole life and the nail is not pretty. She was going to paint them like she usually does, but we thought these might be fun.

All they had were french tips so I snagged a set and a couple bottles of glue and we were back home. I was off the hook until hair time while she applied her nails. The were a little long, but looked really cool, especially in the shoes.

Nails accomplished we moved on to hair. I do not do hair! We alotted and hour and a half for me to screw her hair up and hopefully fix it. It turned out pretty good and I sprayed the hell out of it with my expensive Freeze hair spray that the beauty supply place reccomended. I got all the little rhinestone doodads placed pretty well too. I sprayed the whole thing with glitter spray and she looked very pretty and sparkly. While I had her out on the porch spraying her hair that dang Tyler showed up. He was just making sure that she knew when he was coming to pick her up and that she had packed clothes for the after prom party. He is such a panic.

I went to the basement to get the dress... sucked up a couple gallons of water off the floor, somthing we have had to do three or four times a day for over a week now. I grabbed the dress and brought it upstairs. Thank goodness I had ironed the thing earlier. I don't think that was alloted for in the schedule.

She finished her makeup early and I cautioned her not to get into the dress too soon. She didn't listen of course. We had not tried the jewelry with the dress and the necklace that she made was too long. I grabbed the beautiful colored rhineston collar that Puck had suggested and that looked beautiful with the dress.

Now that she was finished I hauled her outside to take pictures. Much grumbling ensued :) Their plan was to have pictures taken at the Rotary Gardens in Janesville. I went online to find out how to get there and found that they closed at six. This meant if they wanted to do pictures there they would really have to hustle.

Tyler showed up and the pinning of the flowers ensued. His mom drove up to take more pictures and we both annoyed the hell out of the two of them for a while. Then they were off. Maddie called to tell me that the limo was on its way to the garden and that we better leave quick.

I talked Puck into going since I had no clue where it was. He grumbled and finally came with. We only got lost a couple times and finally found the place. It is a really beautiful garden and I think evey prom on the planet was there taking pictures. It looked like a prom convention LOL We had too many mothers orchestrating the photos... there are multiple pathways through the garden and little reflecting ponds you have manuver around and then there are the bridges... we would shuffle our group onto a bridge, dodging the people on the path that had just stopped to take thier own perfect shot under a willow. As soon as our group left another group padded out. It really was pretty fun.

One of her middle toenails snagged her dress and fell off. She gave it to me to put in my pocket. That was pretty silly.

I did not see one dress that was pretty than Maddie's though :)

I got tired of the pictures about the same time that the kids did so I took some pictures of the park and the guy out in the lake who needed a belt, talking on his cell phone. The peonies were lovely and I got a good shot of those too.

Finally that was over and the kids went off in their limo. The driver was a cute old guy named Charlie of course. He helped me get a last good pic in the limo.

There was a grand march at the High School at 9:30. I wasnt going to bother, but I think this will probably be her only prom so I toddled off through the rain up to the high school. The decorations were totally awful. I could not distinguish any kind of a theme at all. I did notice that they used the columns our middle school drama club built for The Birds 3 years ago that we had to fight to keep (they have been used some way or another ever since)

The crowd was huge. We had to pay two dollars to get in for the march. Each couple paraded out through a nasty looking arch. I shouldn't complain since I did not volunteer to be on any commitees, but for goodness sake.

After the march they announced that they would turn on the lights for more pictures and I saw my daughter roll her eyes, the poor thing. I had only taken one. I called her over and she was assuming I wanted to take a picture. I managed to get down the bleachers and whispered to her. "honey do you need your toenail and glue, I brought the glue and the other toenail just in case" A huge look of relief came over her face. "thanks mom, my ugly toenail just came off"

Tylers mom had just come over and wanted to take a picture of the two of them by some butt ugly decoration and Maddie had just had too much by then. She looked at me and gave a weary shake of her head. I know that Cathy was disapointed, but I took Maddie away to give her the toenail stuff, kissed her and bid her have a wonderful night and stay safe. I watched her disappear to the bathroom.

I walked home in the rain. It was actually a lovely walk. this morning both Puck and I woke up early to see if she had made it home safely. He found her wrist corsage on the kitchen table and put it in the fridge. I panicked a little until he told me she probably was in. I went back in the kitchen and saw the plastic bag with her dress and shawl (that we worked so hard on) crammed into along with all her hair doodads. I took them out of the bag and hung them all up :)

New Shoes fake toenails Mom hairdo

The Dress with wings

Maddie and Mom

Maddie is "Too Darn Hot"
Mom is not :)

New Computer --Idiot owner

Well we got the new computer.... If I knew more about the dang things I could tell you all what we got, it is an HP with a dvd and cd burner. that is cool and is the first time I have had a burner here at home. I have not used it yet though.

It was very reasonably priced and I got a new moniter too since we are giving Maddie the old one and her moniter is shot... She showed me her solitaire game and all the cards were black LOL

We might even hook her up to the internet... She turns 17 on Wednesday and I suppose we should start trusting her sooner or later.

The idiot part comes from negelecting to save any of my favorites... I now need to rebuild that whole mess. If anyone has any fabulous places out on the web send them to me I am feeling a little naked. I lost all my trivia links and Strike a Match and scrabble (I didn't play for quite a while, but it was nice knowing it was there anyhow)

Happy Mothers day to all you Mothers :)

Taking a Personal Day

I was running out of time to take my personal day at school and I would have lost it if I did not take it soon so today was the day.

This past week has been a bit of a headache. Out Middle School administrative secretary lost her father last thursday. She is a pretty good friend and related to everyone in town by either her family or her husbands. The visitation was Sunday and although we got there early the place was completely packed with the line stretching way into the parking lot. We fulfilled our obligations and came home. I am not terribly crazy about funeral stuff, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Lisa (the secretary) stayed out of school most of the week which slowed down a lot of the office procedures. I was a little worried about even asking for time off with things so messy, but I did anyhow.

That was the start of a pretty crappy week. I found out that my friend Carla has resigned from Drama at the High School. She also left her position as advisor for the Drama Club. I am really bummed. We had a good working relationship and the kids love her, but her husband works in Green Bay and after her almost son-in-law had that terrible fall her world has changed along with her perspective on what she wants in life. What she really wants is to live closer to her husband. I cannot blame her for that, but it is hard.

Then we got news that due to the 20.6% cost increase in insurance we all would be taking a dollar an hour cut in salary next year. It just sucks!...

Along with this has been an intense week in the labs with lots of different projects going on and the labor intensive 8th grade booklets. All through their careers writing samples are kept in folders from kindergarten on. These are eventually compliled into a booklet which is spiral bound and presented to parents at a big pot-luck at the end of the year. It is the one time I let the kids go crazy with color printing and creativity (most of them had a hard time believing that I am letting them print so much lol) The covers get laminatied and the booklets are very nice and very special. It is a very cool tradition. It also requires a great deal of proofing by me so I am up and down a lot checking things.

Thursday felt like day 8 of the week and I was very glad that it was my friday :)

It would have been great to sleep in, but one of my tasks to accomplish was getting blood drawn so my drug and cholesteral levels can be checked... got there at 8:30 I got right in and amazingly she hit the vein on the first try. Ran into Maddie's boyfriend at the doctors (weird) talked to him a little about prom and cleared some things up.

Next stop was the bank to transfer money to buy the new computer, which should be coming tonight. Then I drove to Janesville. Of course stopped at Goodwill and found a great black rotary phone...way cool!!!! That give me two black rotarys which should be plenty for props. I found a very nice navy felt hat 60's style, but quite nice. A wide tooled leather belt. If Maddie doesn't want it it will go to props. I also found a tall candle holder that will make a great display for my wool balls.

Next to the dry cleaners to drop off my winter coat that is long overdue for a cleaning. Next stop Shopko to look for hair stuff for Maddie's hair, then to the Beauty supply place for more hair stuff. We are practicing the up-do tomorrow... wish me luck!! I found some cute little rhinestone clips and pins

Last place was the resale place here in town. Found a couple movies including the first tape of Dark Shadows. I loved that show when I was a kid and I am curious to see if it still has appeal. I got the Crying game and Chaplin too. I found two albums Billy Joel and "How to Succeed in Business" the original cast recording. Maddie will be excited... she picks up original cast recordings whenever she cans and that is pretty much all the music she listens to. She has a nice portable record player that the school got rid of a couple years ago.

It is cold and rainy out today and a nice day to stay inside. I think I am in for the rest of the day.

Rejected

I am rather bummed. I got rejected by one of my better shows. I didn't do real well last year, but heck I have been doing that show for almost 10 years. It is always hard when you have no clue as to what was wrong with your slides or your application. It comes with the territory. Better artists than I have been rejected by shows, but I usually fill a nice little niche without a great deal of competition. Boo Hoo.

The rest of my week has been filled with prom stuff. Four years ago Maddie bought a dress at Goodwill (of course) for 10 dollars. it is a floor length sheath covered with a gray green chifon shot with purple so that when it hits the light a certain way it shimmers purple or gray green. The bodice is sprinkled with rhinestones (sort of irridescent type) It was strapless and had these two really long chifon wings that came off the back of it just under the bustline. They trailed out about 3 feet and although the dress is quite pretty and exotic looking we never have been able to figure out how to properly get the dang wings to work.

I tried tieing it up in the back and that looked idiotic. When they drag they are too long to dance in. It pretty much seemed like a standing around look pretty kind of dress. I talked to one of my coworkers who do alterations about taking a look at it finally since Maddie really wanted to wear it to Prom. She said she thought she might be able to do something with it. This was a few weeks ago. That night I came home and Maddie came down the stairs wearing the dress. She had taken ponytail ties and tied up the wings, slipping the ties over her wrists. It looked fabulous... she looked like a fairy. Well that solved that problem. Of course I was not going to send my daughter to prom with hair ties around her wrists.

I decided that beaded wristlets would work. She also was concerned about the strapless part of the dress. It had two sets of spaghetti straps that tied in the back to close it. I had a brilliant brainstorm and took the top two, crossed them at the back and put hooks and eyes on them to hold the bodice up. Now she won't be hitching up her dress every five minutes like most girls at dances.

We found some pretty glass beads, but they really didn't match. It is a tough green to match. Looked around another day and found better ones. She strung up the beads on elastic and I sewed them to the dress. I had found a length of heavy satin at Goodwill that was an almost perfect match to the underdress (very fortuitous) That only cost me a dollar and was long enough to make into a shawl. I got some crystal irridescent beads to use as fringe and it turned out quite pretty. The dang beads for the shawl cost more than the dress LOL.

Our big outing was shoe shopping. My daughter is not used to buying fancy shoes. Only her tennis shoes have been purchased brand new so she was griping about the horribly high cost of footwear at the mall. I think is our 6th trip to the mall in the 7 years we have lived here. It is not my favorite place to shop. We ended up finding a cute little pair of strappy sandals with irridescent jewels on sale for 40 dollars.

Maddie made a necklace and matching earrings using the leftover beads

So so far the prom has cost us a little over 60 dollars. Now all I need to worry about is the hair

Otherwise I have been working hard on my powerpoints and have been considering purchasing a new computer so that I can to work at home. I think I could deduct it from my taxes too if I keep working for this lady and hopefully get a webpage going for my rug business

Puck and Maddie spent yesterday getting the garden ready for planting. Mad cleaned out all the dead raspberry canes and found a little more asparagus to pick. It was delicious. Our cherry tree is not blooming very well, but hopefully we will have enough for a pie.... I should make a rhubarb pie soon.

We heard from our good friend Jodi who lives in Renton Washington. She used to live with us when we lived in River Falls, but we have not seen her for over 10 years. She is coming out for a visit in June. I am so excited. It will be like having a long lost sister come home. I love that girl. We will be making cheesecake that is for sure :)

and that is my life

my best hat which I made from scratch