Friday, July 30, 2010

Who, me? Apologize?

Yesterday, my son spent the latter half of the morning playing with his model train set, out in the garage.  It provides a quieter home for the rest of us when he does that.

(I realize that I've used this photo before, but he's wearing the same shirt as he did yesterday and he is playing with the trains!)










So at lunch time, I fixed their chicken burger sandwiches and set the lunch on the table.  I called out to the garage to let the young engineer know that his lunch was ready.  Normally, he'd say, "coming" and be at the table in no time.  Not this time.  No, this time I was told, "I'll be there in awhile".  So I said that he needed to come to the table right now, before his lunch is cold (which would bring on complaining if that happened).  So he reluctantly comes in and sits down, and then asks me, "Mom, have you apologized for interrupting what I was doing?"

Uh, no, I make no apologies for refusing to starve my kid!

Lp

Friday, July 23, 2010

My Girl is Home!!!

I'm sorry that I didn't take a picture of her getting off of the bus.  By the time I arrived at the church, she was off of the bus and had her luggage and was ready to go home.  She had a touch of sunburn on her face, and she'd had a long week.  She wound up being sick off and on at camp all week.  This was also the first year that she had a cell phone with her, so we were texting back and forth all week.  If the week was rough for her, the one benefit from camp is that she was so glad to come home and see her brother, and us. 

Lp

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Summer...........So Far........

So now that the "protesting season" is over, there have been several other things keeping our summer busy.




So one of the first things that I did, and I was in the mood to do until my muscles needed to recover, was to pull weeds in the flowerbed.  Then I found some perennials (and a few annuals) and a bag of bark, and made a 3 foot section look pretty.  There are many more weeds to pull, and flowers to plant, and I'll take care of them, a section at a time. 

Then, there was a trip to see my grandma and celebrate her 92nd birthday, in the area where I grew up.  Before I left, I went to the site where my grandparents used to have a dairy. and took some pictures.  There used to be another building on this site in front of the white building where the machinery and the cooler were located.    One of the most prominent memories from when I was little was being told to wear shoes (red top/ black rubber boots....year round) and being told to watch out for wet areas or puddles as it could be caustic soda, which was acidic and could burn the skin.  My dad came home a few times with some nasty burns from that stuff.  Yikes!  To describe it would just not please the imagination of the reader!


Then, there is the summer ritual for kids everywhere......camp!  Our church is having camp this month and my girl has been looking forward to this since June.  Thanks to us being busy with the road renaming business, there were many opportunities for her to watch her brother, so she earned most of her money that way, and a donation from her grandparents helped too.  We did all of the summer camp shopping (Do we have enough t-shirts & shorts?  Does she need a new swimsuit? etc).  I bought snacks for her to take with her to give out as "bribes" to the cabin inspectors there.    When the day came for her to leave for camp, I think that I received one hug good bye and she was on the bus, anxious to leave (however, this is our first year of her being at camp with her own phone, and I've been getting a lot of text messages from her all week). 

So with her being gone all week, we only had one child at home.  What does a younger brother at home do with his time, without his sister at home to play with, or tick him off?

Well there's time in the garage with model trains...........












Videogame time.........

(and a little "Phineas & Ferb" to fill in the rest of the time)













Swinging and burning some energy at the park...












I think that the park made him the happiest.  He was able to run all over.  Then about a half hour after I took this picture, someone was smoking pot nearby and the smell was rather strong.  So we thought that it was time to go before the boy started to say something out loud like "People shouldn't be smoking!". 

So we then went to the store and restocked our Oreo and chip supply (no, the smell from the park didn't give us the "Munchies", we just all have a sweet tooth and like salty food) and took the boy home.






More on our summer, as it progresses...............stay tuned

Saturday, July 10, 2010

The Protester's Follow-up........and other things..........

A few months ago, I posted a blog about how our governor had decided to change a state highway, after a friend who had donated to his campaign, at the taxpayer's expense (during a time when he was telling our state lawmakers that we had to cut back on everything else during this recession).   Since then, my husband and the other co-founders of a group to stop it, started gathering signatures to get approval to put an initiative on the November ballot (they had no problem getting the 1,000 signatures for that.......especially if you go to a Tea Party rally on Tax Day).    Then, came a 30 day waiting period while the signatures are verified, and the Attorney general approves the ballot initiative, and then the 10 day period for anyone to complain about it.  When all was said and done, and we were given the green light to collect the 83,000 signatures, we had one day to do it.   We were given the "okay" to collect, one day before the deadline to have them in.    So, Mr. P. (my husband) and the other organizers, really had to be creative with how they could collect so many in such a short time. 

So in the time leading up to "the day", they:
~bought a banner featuring the name of their group and web address, as well as the date of the signature drive.
~spent a few days, holding that banner on the overpass that crossed over the highway in question, waiving & yelling. 
~were interviewed on the morning radio program several times.

~because this was a statewide signature drive, and because they did have an online petition option (print it out, sign it and send it in), they rented post office boxes in 5 cities where those closest to them could mail them to us faster.
~also had volunteers (including me) gathering signatures in front of post offices all around town. 

After a full day of signature gathering, and making trips to the post office boxes, we only had 1,117 signatures.  So Mr. P and company, took those signatures to the Secretary of State's office (they couldn't accept them as there obviously weren't enough) and then to the Governor's office with a handwritten note, so that he could see, just how many  people were opposed to this idea. 

So, what do we do now?  Well, Mr. P, and his co-organizers are now running for office (two of them are running for State Representative and one is running for State Senator). 

It's interesting, in that we had no idea, when this started, that the road we were fighting for, would lead to this.