Pictures from camp

Andy(Red Bear) the Booshway of the camp (head guy and owner of the land) and his co-Booshway

The cabin is permanent up there and I helped put it up long ago.

Andy and Olivia... she won the children's hawk throw and could give some of those men a run for their money

Puck and Tammy... Puck runs the Hawk throw and Tammy had won third prize I think. She is one of the biggest flirts up there, but a nice girl and always happy and cute

Maddie is accepting her prize for 2nd place in the mini tipi decorating contest from last year. She won a beautiful mug made at Cambridge pottery works (fairly well renowned here in Wisconsin) that reads "#2 prize for mini tipi decoration 2007" done in slip on the mug. It is really cool. The other winners were adults that have been doing this for longer than Maddie has been alive. The Native American judge liked Maddie's choices of native symbols (her's was one of the few painted tipis) so that was cool.

Pictures from camp

Maddie then Matt in his new rendezvous duds some miscellaneous buck skinners looking cute with flowers and Puck and Matt and Maddie at the frying pan toss

Rendezvous

Well we got home safe and relatively sound from Rendezvous about 4:00 pm on Sunday.

We went up Friday right after work. Puck was subbing but we had packed the cooler that morning and got things pretty well organized. We had been packing all week and were ready to go. We have a bit of a bald tire so were a little apprehensive but decided to go ahead. Got on the road and heard some weird whistling sounds. I figured it was a strap on the pod and it seemed to get quieter when we were driving. Puck turned up the radio so it wouldn't bother him so much.

We got about a half hour past Madison when someone drove past us and frantically gestured that something was wrong up top of our van. We happened to be right at the rest stop exit and pulled in. Sure enough the top to the pod had come loose and was ready to fly off. thank goodness for the good Samaritan. The pins that were holding it were gone so we frantically searched for some paper clips. Thank goodness the bank clips your money together and we throw them in the cup holders. Got that all clipped and checked our water (the tank runs dry sometimes) it was good and we were back on the road.

Got up to camp (Puck had set up the lodge on Monday so that was ready to go) at about 6:00 unloaded everything and set to putting things right. I set up the cook box wrong and when we went to fix it I conked Puck in the head quite hard with one of the legs I was flipping around. That was not good. Eventually we got things put right and got a fire going. Unfortunately when we opened up the cook box we found rust and water issues in much of the stuff. It took a while to clean things off which was a hassle. We had washed all the dishes ahead of time, but my wooden salt and pepper shakers never did get dry. Had a few mouse chews on the wooden spoons too, but I washed them in bleach and oiled them.

ok back to the camp. Puck went off to the bathroom and didn't come back for an hour. I was waiting for Maddie and Matt to come. They had said they were leaving at 5:00 and they are only 3 hours away at the most. I accounted for dilly dallying and she said she would be up around 10:00. Well at 9:30 I started to get concerned. Unfortunately the campsite is a deadzone as far as cell phone signals and I had no bars at all. Puck finally came back from his travels and visiting around 10:30. I saw a car come in and thought it was the kids, but no. I was starting to get quite worried, but didn't know what to do. Finally for my own piece of mind I decided to drive somewhere I could get a signal and call. We hiked down the hill and pulled out at around 11:30. We stopped a couple places, but no signal. Finally we drove all the way into Lyndon Station and called. Did Maddie have her cell phone on? Of course not!

I left three panicked messages and we drove back to camp. By this time I figured their plans had changed and they had no way of letting us know. At least I knew they weren't stranded in the middle of nowhere. The rest of their route is interstate where they could find help if they needed it.

Puck and I went to bed. Once I thought I heard Maddie's voice and hollered out but is wasn't her.

Later in the night I woke up to rustling (Mom ears) and there they were. It was 2:00 am but they were safe and sound. They had gotten off to a late start, but Maddie knew I would panic so they left anyhow. Then they got quite lost because they were not paying attention, but alls well that ends well. We went to sleep and got up in the morning a little later than usual.


The weather was a little too beautiful. The nights were very pleasant but the days were a tad warm. I threw tomahawk poorly, but did not totally embarrass myself. Maddie didn't do too well either, but neither of us has thrown in a while. Puck did better than usual,but unfortunately so did a lot of other guys.

Played my banjo with the hammered dulcimer player and bass player. Sherrie even brought her guitar over and a guy with an Irish drum beat along. It was great fun and the highlight of my weekend. We played together three times. I did a little visiting with people, but mostly just sort of vegged with Maddie and Matt when they were around.

I made my famous caraway beets for the camp potluck. I was playing in the band so had Maddie peel the beets. I hollered over to her to ask if she needed help and she quipped "You keep your beats mom and I'll take care of mine" that was funny.

Camp supper was fabulous. We had chicken over biscuits and the table just groaned with all the cast iron.

It was a great good time, but that shower was fabulous to get home to.

I finally took pictures of the stairs to hell. Believe me you time your bathroom breaks at that place. Last year they finally put up a porta potty up on the hill, but it really is for the infirm and I am not quite willing to bend to that yet. My knees are feeling it today though

The staircase to hell (well the privy anyhow)

Here you can finally see the top of the hill. One year a group of bees decided to make a home at the top of the stairs which made things even more challenging.













This is taken about half way up the hill (I was resting for the third time)
















here is the next step closer to the stairs




























This is the bottom of the hill looking up. A few feet behind me is the permanent privy at camp. Four stall cement outhouse. It is impossible to describe how painful it is to climb those stairs. You can just barely see the bottom of the stairs from here

Oh I forgot one more thing that I am "a copy cat" :)

10 things I am

1. Creative
2. Musical
3. Selfish
4. Green
5. Empathetic
6. Strict
7. Melancholy
8. Liberal
9. Intelligent
10. Shy

10 Things I am not.

1. Conservative
2. Tidy
3. Outgoing
4. Athletic
5. Sexual
6. Perfect
7. Gardner
8. Religious
9. Mathematical
10. Yellow

Memories

Maddie needs family pictures for her makeup class and so I was scanning some pictures of my grandma. Being too lazy to do real digging I remembered that the small pics from our wedding had some good pics of my mom and grandma, and puck's mom and grandma.




I think out of all my wedding pictures I like this one the best. A harried Lori with veil and dress, giant purse and camera and what appears to be lipstick, trying to balance her shoes and some weird briefcase thing. Oh I see my makeup mirror in that. probably there was a brush and stuff











This one is my grandma and Puck's paternal grandmother. I wish I had gotten to know her better









Three generations. It sure doesn't look like my mom is dying of cancer. It has been so long and I still miss her every day.










I sort of like this one too although my mother in law was irritated with me for things I had no control over. We ended up having a very good relationship although we never really got each other.
















and last but not least my handsome husband and his cronies (and my little brother) They really did look great





















It all made me very sad. My mom died two years after we were married, Puck's grandmother fairly soon after that, His mother passed away about 10 years ago and my grandmother 5 years ago I think. I do not keep track of death dates very well. I see all those smiling faces celebrating our marriage... well mostly just celebrating that we were finally getting married after living together for so long LOL. Well that is enough melancholy for one night.

We got the van packed up for rendezvous and I made Hard tack and did some shopping. I am hoping to get a vest finished by the end of the week. busy busy busy.

SP

Ok this is a little funny

Yippee

I actually sold a rug online to a complete stranger. I am so relieved! Puck is walking it down to the post office as I write. Gosh I hope she likes it.

oh and work was work. First time the kids have to type in their newly changed passwords is very stressful to me. most of them forget or have typed in something other than what they wrote on their little password changing cards. If only life were simple!

I am starting to feel the pressure of wondering about people taking my job again. That whole bumping thing is going to start soon!

And I just remembered that I still had some miniature rugs hanging out in my studio so I put those up on Etsy too. I think I am going a little wild

I suppose I am due for an update

Not too much going on here. Survived the first week of school with a multitude of headaches. The read 180 computer software was not updated. Or rather I should say the students were not entered into the system so we could not use that aspect of the program. We were supposed to get teacher editions of the main program since we switched to accommodate those students who are taking it for the second year. Those did not even get ordered until the day before school started. Then there was no software for the new books. There is supposed to be an introductory dvd presentation for each new unit and we didn't find out that needed to be separately ordered until this week.

Now I loosely say "we" because I mentioned all of this at the end of last school year to the reading supervisor and she was supposed to have taken care of that. If I had been in charge of it it would have been in place right away.

We changed servers at the school again and I lost all my programs. That has been a hassle to fix. One day I lost everything and freaked, but it came back after harassing our tech guys. I hate having to be the big f'ing pest, but if you are not a squeaky wheel nothing gets done. They just have too many other wheels to fix.

Hopefully by Monday things will be better organized. The eighth grade has a new teacher since our old one jumped ship to find a real job that was not being cut. Smart girl!. Anyhow the new girl is very young. This is her first teaching job and I doubt she was prepared for this degree of frustration. She knows nothing of Read 180 and expects me to show her how it works. The only problem with that is that each teacher I worked with did it completely differently and I really do not have an opinion as to which, if any, of those method was more effective than another. Also there is still much for me to learn about the program. Oh well it will be an interesting year. She is a very nice girl and quite the go-getter :)

The day after we brought Maddie back to school Puck went nuts about all the crap she had left lying about. I told him he could not throw anything out of hers until he checked with her. I would be furious if I was planning something and the materials I thought I had were gone. Granted it was not very responsible for her to leave them lying about, but after some strong conversation he backed down a little.

When I came home from school the next day the entire living room was covered with clothing and stuff. I asked what the hell was going on? Puck told me that the neighbors had called to ask him if we would want any of Ruth"s (our neighbor lady who has gone into a rest home) clothing for drama. Puck told them that there was no storage at the school and that anything we thought we could use would be kept with us and the rest we would take to the outreach. They were good with that. I had my doubts about the clothing. I know what era she was buying in.

Sure enough almost all of it was polyester double knit with the tags still on them. My goodness that woman bought a lot of clothing she never wore. I did find a couple nice old lady quilted robes and slips and a great old black bra still in the box. I was creeped out by a pair of granny panties in sheer black lace (tags still on) and a couple other personal items.

I kept about a quarter of the stuff and the rest got bagged up. He had brought over some boxes of kleenex, some pictures, and a rug too. The oddest and most telling thing happened when I picked up the Kleenex box and it had an advertisement for Bicentennial Pens on it. She was quite a hoarder.

Yesterday I went hunting for pants for Maddie's friend to wear at Rendezvous just in case he can drive her down. I had not realized that was coming up so quickly. I took the discarded clothes to the Outreach and shopped there for a bit. Found a nice pair of black pants and some lovely old perfume bottles for Maddie.

I then went to Goodwill where they have kicked off their Halloween season. I was awfully good though and only purchased a few things. I did find a wonderful pair of railroad striped flairs, button fly with the tags still on them from the early 70's. I cut the pockets off them and they should work well for rendezvous. I felt bad taking the vintage pants apart, but I needed them. I also found a great little fur vest for my lion in the play.

Spent the latter part of the day photographing more rugs, processing pics and getting them up on ETSY. I now have some shorter rugs and a few of my longest rugs up.

I finished putting up pictures this morning... It does take some time.

Maddie's hat

Maddie takes after her mother in being a scrounger and when the costume shop at River Falls was tossing out hats she came home with a large garbage bag full of them along with many bits of fabric.

the prize of the bunch was a rather shabby, but vintage 1800's beaver top hat. The crown was off and the side was caved in. The lining was pretty bad as well and the brim needed some work, but I still cannot imagine any shop getting rid of a genuine vintage top hat. Well I was not certain how to restore it, but knew that Michael (her Godfather and theatrical milliner) would be able to help. She took the hat to him and they spent a wonderful afternoon bonding in the costume shop. He gave her all sorts of tips and techniques and a mess of curved needles and appropriate thread. She brought it home and spent many hours hand sewing all the pieces back together.

Then she dressed it up in Steam Punk fashion. I found the little bird which she dyed a copper color. She added tiny hinges to his wings and clockwork eyes.
She carefully painted seams on the bird. A mainspring went into his tail. The ostrich plumes were left over from My Fair Lady and the lace was just hanging around the house. Oh and the little picture frame she found at Goodwill.

It turned out very nice and it fits her wonderfully. I can hardly wait to see the whole costume once she finishes it. She spent much of the summer learning to sew. Oh and the pictures were taken in her dorm room.

Empty Nest (Well sort of)

The chick may be gone, but the nest is still full of her crap.

Sunday we finally got the van all packed and headed up to River Falls. Here is the status of our van. No Air conditioning is number one in the heat!. We no longer can open the sliding side door so if you want to sit in the back seat you need to climb through the front. And last but not least something is causing water to leak from the cooling system. You can go about an hour then you need to put water in. Over the course of the summer going two and fro from art fairs I discovered that you can drive two hours before checking, but after that amount of time you need to check every hour.

Maddie had the van packed to the gills. I should have taken a picture of that. Anyhow she hauled the last minute stuff like her pillow and blanket down and stuffed them in corners. Then she crawled into her tiny hole and I blocked her in with our duffel, which needed to sit between the seats. I drove the first leg because Puck had bartended the night before and was sleepy.

We don't have a tape player in the van so we propped up the small boom box on our duffel and listened to "American Gods" Maddie had just finished reading it and had wanted to listen to it to get the pronunciations and I just wanted to listen to it after she had stopped every few pages to ask questions or share some humor during her reading of it at Shows.

We made pretty good time and finally stopped for lunch. Puck has developed a tremor which runs in his family. It usually shows up when he is not eating or sleeping too well and shortly after he started driving I noticed that his hands were shaking badly. We pulled over and I took over driving again. It was a long trip and it was good to get to our friends house in New Richmond (just a half hour from River Falls) We were spending the night there and setting Maddie up in her dorm on Monday morning.

Had a wonderful visit with Vicki and Bill and a delicious dinner of BBQ and corn on the cob. Best of all were Vicki's mom's watermelon pickles. We talked till late into the night and finally went to bed.

Got up early and set off to the college. Was expecting crowds and were pleasantly surprised to find a parking space right in front. I unloaded the van while Maddie and Puck hauled things up to her room. Last year they had a billion people helping move things in, but upperclassmen get nothing! My knees just cannot go up and down that many stairs so I stuck with the flat area, besides someone had to guard all the stuff.

Finally the last of it was out and I grabbed up the remainders and carried them up to the room. She is on the second floor rather than third and her roommate had already set up the lofted bed. Maddie had given her free-rein on setting up the room and it looked pretty good. I thought her bunk was a little close to the ceiling, but it was pretty close last year too and Maddie didn't seem to mind.

I didn't think she would be able to find a place for all the stuff she brought, but we started hanging up clothes and putting things in drawers and low and behold stuff started to vanish. Puck started to get a little antsy waiting around so he and I worked on moving her shelving up on crates and sorting out the electronics. Finally it looked presentable and I mentioned to him that we still needed to go shopping for last minute stuff and some food for her. He gave me a look of complete desperation and said "Drop me off at Emma's" That would be the bar we theatre folk used to hang out in. We dropped him off and went shopping. Picked him back up and headed back to the dorm for our final goodbyes. Maddie needed her dad's help getting her back board fixed to the bed and they worked a little on that. Meanwhile several of her friends showed up overjoyed to reconnect. That was good for my heart. One of them was looking to go to lunch, as was Maddie and they were ready to head out. Our cue to say goodbye.

Hugs all round, but no tears this year. It felt like she was in good hands. Puck and I headed for the oven of a van and could almost hear it's sigh of relief to be unburdened. We drove for home and listened to more of the tapes. Switched drivers and Puck ended up in most of the Labor Day traffic.

Got home about 7:00 and went to check my e-mail. Danged if I hadn't made a sale in Etsy. That was a great thing to come home to even though it was a friend of mine who lives up near River Falls of all places.

Today was the first day of school and most of it was spent in confusion. They changed the server again for the school system and now nothing seems to work. None of my kid's computers have any read 180 icons anymore. I did not have any. There is no photoshop and the grade book program was down completely. There was much grumbling about the place.

I finally found out who my kids will be for the year and many of them are returns from last year. There a couple who really should not still be in the program, but I am just the help. Tomorrow should be interesting. We may have to skip the computer part of the rotations for a while.

Now to start cleaning the house. Well maybe tomorrow I will get to that