Preference

The soldier has requested the following for her first care package: mattress pad, cheap twin size sheets, dust masks because she prefers to run and not breathe unfiltered air, eye cover so she can sleep in the tent even if the lights are on, and a scalpel for her callouses. She also prefers the same salad day after day over the plates of curly fries and other "circus food" the soldiers are eating. (Perfect name, "circus food." Her husband came up with that.)

The young giant home for the summer is much improved in guitar skills. And I prefer the bass part to this over the bass parts to drone metal. I'm just sayin.

I also prefer this cooler weather to the hot weather that took my last scrap of inner energy and fried it to a crisp and then blew away the ashes. Tomorrow's my birthday. God gave me my present already. He knew I wanted clouds.

Achingly beautiful, Artistically exquisite

I have no words for this - because she placed them perfectly in this interview. And she sings.

Yes, it's actually a professional (British!) ukelele orchestra

So here's my theory. If you live close enough to large bodies of moving water (like in the maritime Northwest, where I live), you have a certain kind of crazy. Apparently, if you live surrounded by water, like they do in Great Britain, you have this kind of crazy in a particularly virulent strain. I just saw this at Susan's blog, and then showed it to a family member who responded, "So ... Woodhouse didn't really have to make anything up, did he? The Brits are just like that." Yep. It looks like it. Britain's Got Talent, all right. Here are the pros!

Women's Work

Well, shoot. Looks like The Great Husband wins this debate -- I AM the one who has to get out there and garden. (But no one has ever accused me of speaking in dulcet tones. Never. Not once.)

The Brits are famous gardeners, of course. And my grandmother on my mother's side and my grandfather on my father's side did not possess merely a thumb in the color of growing things - their whole upper torsos and all fourteen hand phalanges were quite green. But I, myself, have had one and a half successful gardens. The best one ever was so researched and planned you'd have thought I was putting a space launch or a new subdivision into my summer schedule - and then the tomato forest that ensued gave gorgeous results - most of which turned into compost because I'm not so good with the harvest/put up for the winter/use it at every opportunity part of gardening.

And why?

Because harvest happens in the heat, in case you didn't know, and the heat, my friend, is a little foretaste of what happens to evil in the next life. And Brits don't have heat. They don't allow it. It's not polite.

Still ... there are plants out there again this year, and my poor husband has had to do women's work once more because his wife didn't do it. He planted some tomatoes, and some ... um ... (oh crap! I've forgotten what else!). I think I'd better go water the garden today. And speak to the goats while I'm out there. I feel very silly talking to the plants.

Talking to plants makes them grow, especially if you are a woman, according to an experiment by the Royal Horticultural Society.

Women gardeners' voices speed up growth of tomato plants much more than men's, it found.

In an experiment run over a month, they found that tomato plants grew up to two inches taller if they were serenaded by the dulcet tones of a female rather than a male.

Hope this doesn't jinx it ...

This feels pretty good. I hope posting it doesn't jinx it. And the 19 attempted credits doesn't count all the PLA writing I've done - 21 credits worth so far, all with recommendations for full credit. It took me most of my unaccredited college career to get to this level of stress-control, which leads to this level of grades.

(Hope this doesn't jinx it.)

(Did I say that already?)

UNDERGRADUATE

Course Title Final Grade Repeat Attempted Credits Earned Credits GPA Credits Quality Points GPA CHS 382 E 19th-Century Literature & Culture A - 3.00 3.00 3.00 12.00 LRN 311 F Portfolio Development Studies P - 2.00 2.00 0 0 SCI 366 A Problem Solving A - 1.00 1.00 1.00 4.00 Term Totals: 6.00 6.00 4.00 16.00 4.0000 Career Totals: 19.00 19.00 7.00 28.00 4.0000

Deployment ceremony

See them? (Click on the pictures for larger views.) There were that many more to the other side of the flag bearers, who were in the middle of the ranks of soldiers. Our soldier wasn't out there though. She got the day off, so she joined us, a little behind the platform and the band. That's Uncle Mark, younger young giant, our soldier the big sister, and her other "little" brother. The day was mostly cloudy for most of the time, although just at the right moment in the ceremony, Major Curtis commanded the sun to shine and it did. Apparently, there were also matters needing commiserative and disbelieving debriefing, because this was the conversation as she brought him to meet us. And grandma and grandpa were there too. Like the magnets they are, they were on a first-name basis (much to our soldier's chagrin) with the Commander - whom they spoke to before they even got out of their car! "How will we know which one is our soldier?" "Well, ma'am, what is your soldier's name? .... Oh! She's my woman! When we want something done, she's the one who gets it done. Her unit is right over there." --- And then later, "We can't find you. Where are you sitting? ... uh-huh ... uh-huh ... What? You were talking to who???"

We looked at the scary machines in the yard at the museum,And we decided that the best pose with a dictator is one you pick yourself,And we stood in truly horrible lighting for a "siblings" shot,And outdoors for a family shot (proof that at 5'9" I really am the shortest one in the family - and proof that it's been too long since my last haircut ... and notice the bunching up? the posing for the camera? nah - me neither)And then we waited around a bit (that's the little brother ... waiting around ...)because the soldier's husband called from Iraq, and everyone gave her some privacy in the other car. Now it's his turn to worry, and he wishes she weren't leaving their cute little house and the base and everything else to go off to the danger zone.

For my part, I'm glad we met her superior officers - because now I see the reality of who she is in her job, and the respect she has earned. They know her. See her. She will be as safe as it is possible to be in such a situation, and we are fiercely proud of her. --- Next year for my birthday, she should be home again.

If only I could put the chill in a box and ship it

This is a re-post of a poem I posted in January -- I post it now because tomorrow is the day.

Tomorrow we travel up to Fort Lewis for the Brigade Deployment Ceremony. At this time next week, she will be gone. She will be in the developing powder keg that is the Everything-istan part of the world. May she be "defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul." And may she keep cold.

Good-bye, and Keep Cold
by Robert Frost

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark
And cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.
If certain it wouldn't be idle to call
I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall
And warn them away with a stick for a gun.
I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.
We made it secure against being, I hope,
By setting it out on a northerly slope.
No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.
"How often already you've had to be told,
Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.
Dread fifty above more than fifty below."
I have to be gone for a season or so.
My business awhile is with different trees,
Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,
And such as is done to their wood with an axe --
Maples and birches and tamaracks.
I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard's arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.
But something has to be left to God.

Cookie Bowl!

Very few good ideas as good as this good idea, wouldn't you say? Go over to see what Michael Ruhlman did in response to his son's question, "Dad, what if you made a bowl out of cookie dough?"

Clean up, toss out, find, file, and label

End of the school year, and naughty, naughty, neglectful me -- I've got PLA essays to get into their large notebook, properly labeled and arranged for their final trip to the folks who'll put my credits into my transcript one of these days. PLA students are supposed to do this bit of business each time an essay comes back, but ... uh ... well, anyway, I need to do that. All that Prior Learning has been Assessed, and needs to be arranged.

My office, too. Yeesh! What a mess the move from autumn, through winter and spring, and now into summer has made in here. It's not just books, files, papers, notes, and course work. This room is a defacto storage room, and it is starting to look like someone picked up the house and shook everything into this corner. Time to dig out again and put everything in a nice home of its own.

I'm going to do the same thing with this blog as well. A new season is dawning. I'm no longer "returning" to school. I'm IN school. So the label that used to say "return to school" is going to say "Student." That's me. Artist, Christian, Cinemaphile, Cogitator, Cook, Educator, Health Hunger, Home Maker, Laugher, Library Assistant, Metamorph, Mother, Pacific Northwesterner, Poet, Reader, STUDENT, Walker, Wife, Writer. And for the next few days, Reorganizer - quick - before I have to add Lunatic to the list.

Just push play --- you'll smile for an hour!