Randomness Run Rampant

None of my thoughts are even remotely connected today. It's sort of an ADD Hump Day...

For Your Enjoy-MINT: Here's a picture of the graduation mints I made. You can't really see the detail on the diploma in the photo, but that's what the mints look like. Not that big so you really can't eat just one!

Lovely Lilacs: I just love the smell of lilacs! Normally, I have to steal some from the neighbors but this year, the lilac bush on the property line is blooming nicely. So I can take some flowers from "our" side and fill the house up with that lovely lilac fragrance! Combine it with the freshly cut grass and it's heaven. (See, I'm not high maintenance at all!)

Magnetic Attraction: Sometimes weird things happen at work and you just have to go with it. Today, a friend showed me her fancy fingernails. She said it was "magnetic nail polish." Say what?? Sure enough, another co-worker brought it to work. I went to her desk and jokingly asked for a manicure -- and got one. This doesn't happen every day, that's for sure. Anyway, you put this magnetic polish on one nail, then hold this special magnet with a design on it (note the stripes) over the nail and it takes on that design. But it is smooth, not ridged. Then you move onto the next nail and repeat. Is that not the coolest thing? Naturally, I got the website link and ordered my own on Amazon right away. Six colors and the magnet with 3 designs. How could I not? (And no, I'm still not high maintenance!)

Shady Character: As long as I was shopping on Amazon, I ordered 2 more things -- something for hubby for Father's Day and a book for myself. Remember how I bought into the hype of the Hunger Games trilogy and it turned out I enjoyed the books, too? Well, sometime next week an unmarked brown package will appear on my doorstep with 50 Shades of Grey inside. Forgive me for falling victim to the hype again, but my curiosity is killing me. And who knew -- this is a trilogy, too? I only ordered Book One, I swear, and I'm sure that's all I'll need, er, read.

See, I really am not high maintenance. I'm just plain wicked!

Finals

It's that time of year when everyone is talking about finals. Today, Carter had his first final for the end of the school year while our nephew Colin had his last final for high school. Ever.

Last week, Casey finished up his third year at UW-Eau Claire. Wow, he technically is now a senior in college! Where has the time gone?? He'll be staying up in Eau Claire for the summer, working full-time at his pizza delivery job. Tonight, since he is home for a few days, he cruised on out in his Caddy and joined us for supper.

Yes, this is a sweet ride. Yes, it is unfair that we have the high-mileage Honda and a college kid drives a Cadillac. And no, he does not use this to deliver pizzas. He uses his high-mileage Neon!

We took him out to Anchor Bay, a nearby restaurant overlooking the Wisconsin River, for dinner. It was so good to see him and Carter was especially thrilled. He worships his older brother and hopes to grow up to be as cool as him someday.

One of these days, he might be as tall as Casey but I don't know about cool. And I definitely don't think a Caddy is in the cards. He'll most likely be driving our high-mileage Honda when we're done with it. But I think he'll make that work.

As for my finals this week... Glee is coming up in 3 minutes. Gotta get to the "graduation" ceremony!

Back-Up Plan

Everyone talks about Plan B -- but it sure helps to have one!

Today, in an ironic scheduling challenge, it appeared none of the 5, yes 5, coaches for the middle school baseball team were going to get to the game before the first at bat. That included hubby, who realized when we were at work that all of the team equipment was in our garage.

As it turned out, we drove separately today so I could start early and finish early enough to pick Carter up after school and get him to an appointment (he was not in the rotation to play today). So I left a few minutes early to pick up three big duffel bags of helmets (and other gear) and a ball bucket on my way into town. After dropping Carter off at his appointment, I headed over to the ball field to drop it off.

Brenda, one of the other coach's wives, was there and she knew her hubby was one of the only ones who were going to make it later. In the meantime, we realized that we were the backup plan. We were Plan B.

Good thing we've hung around ballparks a good chunk of our lives. She got the lineup in order and I kept the scorebook for the first few innings. Her husband got there to coach in time for the game and another one showed up in the second inning or so. So I did the books for 3 innings and got out of there.

I had shopping to do, steps to take and someone has a final tomorrow... along with plenty of other homework. We still beat Jim home from work. He worked pretty late and got home in time to mow the back yard while it was still light out. Poor guy.

At least Carter doesn't have practice the next 2 nights so he can come home on the bus and we can work as late as we need to. Sad. I think we are all looking forward to this three-day weekend like you wouldn't believe.

We plan to relax and we won't need a backup plan for that. Definitely not.

In the Merry, Merry Month of May...

There is no shortage of things to do as we wind down the school year and spring sports schedule and look ahead to a typical busy summer.

Today was the Royal Event at Assumption High School. It's our annual fundraiser that features food, games, beverages, bingo, baskets raffles, auctions, crafts and more. Our main commitment was the 5K walk now named after our friends' scholarship fund.

We got lucky that the rain held off for the walk -- and all day. In fact, it was surprisingly warm. Thankfully, there was a solid breeze to cool us off. When we were almost done and walking past the bank in downtown Rapids, it said 81 degrees!

All three of us survived just fine. It helps to know that waiting for us back at the finish line is ice cold water, good food and, oh yes, cheesecake for dessert... and cream puffs... and ice cream. So many choices. I actually had cheesecake since that's a rare treat for me! Ended up hanging around a couple hours with our friends. That was fun.

Came home and Carter basically spent the afternoon in his room, finishing a book and moving onto other homework he "forgot" about. So he'll be up a few hours yet.

My goal was to finish my mints. Not a problem. I had less than 200 to go and finished those. So I ended up with 100 diplomas, 60+ blue roses and 60+ white roses. A few leftover crappy ones, too, that had to be eaten right away!

When we first got home, it was so hot and muggy we decided to turn the air on. By the time Jim left for 6 o'clock church, the outside temp had dropped 20 degrees. Seriously! So we opened the house back up to 63 degrees and cool breezes. Very strange.

But also part of the reason the month of May is so merry.... Good sleeping weather!

In the Game

After being married to a coach for nearly 10 years, I have come to appreciate the value of a good strategy in every game. You always have to anticipate what's going to happen. Then, when it happens, know immediately what you're going to do next or where you're going next. This is true for any kind of game.

It's even true for garage sale-ing.

Seriously.

When we are faced with a village-wide sale, you gotta have a strategy to hit the most places in the least amount of time and possibly find something you really like or need or just want. Then you're a winner.

Today, Carter and I went to the village-wide sale in Port Edwards (on the south side of Rapids). First we had to stop at the walk-in clinic so they could check out the cough he's been dealing with this week. There is a Whooping Cough scare in the area and it has gone around his school, so I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. When you walk in and tell them it's something related to a cough, though, they quickly hand you a surgical mask (ala Michael Jackson) to wear. Just to be safe.

Turns out Carter just has allergies. So we got medicine and it's not a big whoop. (pun intended)

We were free to head to Port. We did park and walk a lot. Making lots of stops and really not having a strategy of what we hoped to find. I knew I'd probably find a few books and Carter said he just wanted to find "some good junk." Uh-oh. And he did. He begged and pleaded to buy a bar stool for $5 -- just to have down in the basement when he's playing video games or something. I finally talked him out of it when he found something better and far more useful -- a nice left-handed putter. Now that was a worthy $4 purchase.

But not as good as my big find. Ladies, feast your eyes on this...

For a mere dime, I got this collectible issue of Dynamite magazine ... well, collectible to Ponch fans like me! After that, there was no need to shop further! I won that "game"!

We had a real game to get to anyway. The kids Carter babysat for last summer were playing during the youth sports Opening Day today at the Kellner fields. Since hubby is a board member, he had to work it all day and evening -- selling concessions, helping with field maintenance and whatever else was needed. With games going on at all 5 fields, there was plenty happening.

We watched Aaron play at 2 p.m. and then went back to see Allie play at 6 p.m. In between there, I came across these guys at the park...

Yes, we had the Miller Park sausages (their twins, anyway) visiting our fields while my Twins were down at Miller Park beating the Brewers for a second day. Whoot!

Normally, I wouldn't pose with one but since our neighbor's son was working under cover, he humored me. I would not have wanted his job today. It officially got up to 89 degrees! Uff da.

That's one of the reasons Carter and I came home between those 2 games. Also, he had some reading to do and I had to start my mints. I learned I can make them at 65 MPH -- that's Mints Per Hour. I got one pan of 65 done and some laundry, then it was back to the park.

Came home and kept tabs on our nephew Colin's super stock race. He is racing over in Minnesota tonight at the Elko Speedway. I would have loved to have gone but we have a commitment tomorrow and I know I couldn't have driven back tonight. So through texts with my sister-in-law, we learned Colin qualified 6th, took 5th in the heat race and was slated to start on the pole for the 40-lap feature. Right now they are in a rain delay so I will just have to cross my fingers that he gets his "game" tonight!

In the meantime, this girl's gonna go hit the showers!

Capture the Moment

I seriously wasn't planning to take any nature photos today but this guy literally plopped down right in front of me. OK, I might have been daydreaming out my window at work, but I couldn't resist trying to capture the moment.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my "big" camera with me. I just had what I call my Black Friday "purse camera." So I really couldn't zoom in and they are a bit fuzzy being taken through a window. But I'm OK with them.

I am not surprised to see the Monarch likes lilacs. Who doesn't?

That was close to the highlight of the day. The other biggie was that summer -- you know, what we had back in March -- has returned! It was 80+ degrees today!

Probably a bit hot for baseball, but the boys played a double-header in Almond. As it turned out, only the 6th- and 7th-graders played today because Carter and the rest of the 8th-graders were on a class retreat. So I ran Jim down to Almond (about 40 minutes from Iola), dropped him off (he got a ride back) and headed home (about 40 minutes to our house). I changed into shorts and headed into town to meet Carter's bus at 5:30 p.m. It's all clockwork.

The retreat was sort of a tour of chapels and cathedrals in the La Crosse Diocese. Carter said the architecture was unique and the artwork everywhere was fascinating. I asked if anyone was smart enough to take a camera. He said, "No. And you really couldn't even capture how amazing it was." So that's cool. Glad he had a worthwhile day.

We came straight home to eat supper and give me time to take a short walk. Yes, even though my pedometer officially died and I had to wait for a new one, I found a replacement to use a few days this week and am still on pace for 5 miles of steps a day. Yay, iPad dream!

After my walk (in the shade, thankfully), I mixed up some mints that I will be "forming" into graduation diplomas and flowers. They are putzy but yummy. The only ingredients, seriously, are 8 ounces cream cheese, a teaspoon mint extract and oh, about 2 pounds of powder sugar. I will start the putzy part tomorrow.

I am making these for a friend whose son is graduating with our nephew Colin. Then will make them again in a few weeks for Colin's party. If you've never seen them or tasted them, you're missing out. If I think of it, when I'm done I'll take a picture of them.

Because obviously, that's what I do!

Garden Variety

It's not that Carter and I are in some sort of competition to see who gets better nature photos in our backyard. But we sort of are. Ha. Here's a garden variety of recent photos from our non-garden areas...

This isn't what I had in mind when I wanted to see the Chippendales for Mother's Day. Not sure if this is Chip or Dale.
(Photo by Carter; rest by Robyn)

This is about the only flower / plant I haven't killed since we moved out to the "country" 10 years ago. Purple power prevails!

When the red, red robin comes bob-bob-bobbin' along...

Honeysuckles bring back memories of walks in the woods as a child. When we'd come upon honeysuckles, we'd tear the little red "bulbs" off the ends and eat them. They were sweet and, I guess, non-poisonous. Good thing.

Now I see who enjoys the other end of the flower!

Different angle. Kind of cool.

Wedding bells? They are really tiny, but pretty.

And here is the other plant I managed not to kill. Yet. Pretty in pink!

Knee deep in pollination.

My favorite photo of the day... A chance of ice cream on Saturday?? Now that's MY kind of forecast!