Home and Catching up!

Came home from Florida and jumped right back to work, BOOOO, not my favorite! Not like! But pays the  bills. Meanwhile, the laundry mounts… Thankfully though, something has happened to my husband lately… He’s been on the afternoon shift, so he’s home for a few hours after we all leave for school… He’s been getting up and doing up the dishes, folding the blankets, tidying the livingroom, remembering the litter boxes, AND the garbage on Tuesdays… The list goes on and on… Well, no, actually that’s it, but ya’ll, that is HUGE! It’s so, just, it’s… I’m getting all verclempt… it’s  just wonderful to walk into the house after school, and everything’s neat and tidy… sigh… tear… sniff…  You know, it’s the little things…

Am feeling so great at work too lately, they are really, I don’t know, reaching out to me, I guess.. they’re so nice in the building I usually work, even after the Big Tourettes Incident of Ought-Ten… har…  Yesterday I picked up my substitute report sheet in the office, and was walking out to go to my classroom, and the secretary, Rose, she runs out and drags me back inside and makes me take a Friday donut! I never take a Friday donut, because they are for staff… and I’m shy… but I LOOOOVE donuts,  for donuts are made of sugar and magic, and there was a JELLY FRIGGIN DONUT sitting there, singing its siren song to me… So, you know, I’m part of the donut crew now… yep… those donuts are for me too! SaaWEET!!!  I love a good donut metaphor…

Here’s my little home away from home in FLA:

It was so neat and tidy and all mine! You know, when you live with 5 other people, plus 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 horses, a frog, and 2 fish, you REALLY ALOT APPRECIATE coming home on occasion to a tiny little space you can call your own, even if it’s only for a few days…  sigh… Oh how I loved getting “home” and putting away my clothes, and my shoes and putting on my little jammies and my slippers… I felt like Mr. Rogers! With his sweater and his tennies!

I was about a mile from a shopping center,  and a Wendy’s… so I would walk or ride the bike down, there was even a thrift shop in the plaze! Not a great one, but still… And a Tuesday Morning store, which, I don’t know if you have them, but they’re like an upscale BigLots, on crack, or something… It’s a fun store… and lucky for me, as I didn’t do so well with my packing… Zen packing again, meaning, I didn’t sweat over what I was gonna take, I didn’t make endless lists, and do up all the laundry in the house and pack DAYS beforehand… Instead, I packed at 6:30 a.m. on the morning of my 8:30 a.m. flight!  How’d that work out for ya, is what Dr. Phil would say… Well,  I forgot PAJAMAS, as mentioned. And I packed 2 shirts for 5 days as mentioned. And I forgot shampoo, hair conditioner, and DEODORANT. Which, I remembered the shampoo n conditioner at the airport, so I was all proud of myself, I found a Rite Aid at the gate, and bought some travel sized bottles. Except I didn’t read them too closely and bought myself some shampoo and some… SHAMPOO! Both were shampoo! So I had fried, ratty, unmanageable, downright demented and BERSERK hair for 5 days! Onaccounta I kept forgetting to pick up conditioner at the little plaze too… But I did get jammies, leopard print, HAR! , totally out of character, but what the heck, when in Rome…

More about the lack of deodorant later…

My workshop was sooo fun, ya’ll, Laughter Yoga is the most… it’s just fun and beneficial, with endless applications, and I am… well… it’s… GARSH!!! And GOOO-OOOO-LLY!! As Gomer Pile would say… You know, a couple weeks ago, I ended up watching some old Gomer Piles on the utoobz, and I’ll tellya, that show still stands! It’s funny and it’s so darn cute, you gotta watch the one where Gomer stands up to a bully:

Make sure you watch the part where he asks the bully to step outside, around 2:30-3:30…

My ”fren” Mary just texted me, apparently her son told her  that MY SON won an award yesterday at school… I had to drag him in here and say, “Why I gotta hear from Mary Powls you got an award, boy?!” And it’s not just any award, it’s a Show Your Viking Colors award, for “Caring, Organized, Leadership, On Time, On Task, Responsibility, and Safety”!  Mamma pajama!! Am proud!  

Had a lovely burrowing owl adventure in Florida, with my new little mini-fren, Brigitte, who is from Germany, and is just a little tiny POCKET FRIEND, she came up to my chin, and her hands, I would just stare for hours and hours at her tiny little child-hands!!! She was so cute! and she had a car, so she offered to drive me across the causeway to Cape Coral, in search of burrowing owls… I was planning on riding the bike across to find them, I had a little map of where their nesting sites were (Zack’s class was reading “Holes”, so I was trying to get him some extra credit pictures of the actual little owls. I honestly, honestly did not think I would actually find them… but I was half-heartedly hoping…). Thank goodness she offered to take me around, because it would’ve been nearly 25 miles roundtrip on the bike! After 6  hours of Laughter Yoga practice… um… I would’ve been a mess!

Oh, we had a wonderful time, trying to find those tiny tiny owls! We ended up in a mangrove park, walking out on a loooong pier, through the stinking rotting vegetation (nature is beautiful, but stinky!),  ending at a slow moving river, where we saw flying fish, crashing up out of the water and practically landing on our FEET! It was an awesome display! And then walking back through the mangroves, where a group of white herons decided to launch themselves across our paths, practically across our FACES, they were so close! And Brigitte and I just looked at each other and LAUGHED!!! It was like… wow. THAT happened. HAR!  It was magic!

This is  the pier/deck through the mangroves:

Stinky!

Here’s Brigitte:

Tiny!

She brought a bag of cookies, and we munched down, and then she shared with a beautiful family who wandered out… See that coffee cup? That there is a MEDIUM coffee down in Fort Myers! It’s bigger’n Brigitte!  and I drank that mofo! Har!

And then the fish flew, and the herons brushed our faces, and as if that weren’t magical enough, we found a bonified Florida YARD SALE on the way to the owls!

It was so bad, ya’ll! I couldnt find even a trinket to save my life!

But we were in for some real magic, because two blocks away from this nasty yard sale, we found this: