Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Spring Random

Yesterday, the boy was sick.  He had a horrible cough, runny nose, and just enough of a fever to keep him home.  Except he wasn't sick enough to actually BE sick--where he's miserable, and sleeps all day, and needs lots of pampering. This was just a garden variety cold.  No, Zane was sick enough to have to be kept inside, where he was a little Tasmanian Devil, a veritable whirling dervish of mayhem and mischief.  Now I need two days off just to recover, I think!  I spent most of the day cleaning up Legos, toy cars, stuffed animals, etc.  It did not help that we had a fairly significant windstorm happening--it knocked out the sweet distraction that might have been cable.  Good times.

As you can see, the Mountain Laurel trees are blooming here, unless this freak wind storm kills all the blooms.  The great thing about Mountain Laurel is that the flowers smell like grape kool-aid.  Very delicious!  Plus, purple is my favorite color.   The appearance of the purple flowers means that the barn swallows who visit us every year aren't too far from arrival.  I think that it is interesting that the same family of barn swallows shows up like clockwork--how do those guys know which house is ours?  Did they memorize the address or something?  I know that it probably has something to do with complex biology and following magnetic fields and such, but I prefer a simpler answer.  Maybe they just like us. Maybe our yard has all the tasty bugs, like this one:
Yeah, I have no idea what this is, but it is not a bug I've ever seen before.  It did not appear to be interested in attacking me; it was just hanging out.  I'm okay with hanging out; it's the eating everything in sight or biting me that will get a bug squished.  I tend to leave bugs to their own devices, as they tend to leave me to mine.  It's all about karma, I think.  Some day I could be the metaphorical equivalent of the bug, after all!
This may be a weed, but it looks colorful and springy, so it gets to live.
I finished up our taxes this weekend, thanks to TurboTax.   We actually got a refund this time.  Not a big one, but enough so that we can do a couple of things around the house, like maybe grab some mulch and plant some grass/sod in the backyard.  Larry wants the sod, but I don't enjoy the scorpions that tend to hang out in the sod.  However, Larry has pointed out that we have cats, who love to play with scorpions, so I guess that we are getting sod.  Or maybe we will just blow our largesse on a night at the movies for three.      

Maisy the pup is getting BIG!!!  She's close to forty pounds, which means that she's passing up Zane in weight.  She is starting to have a little attitude, as well, and will sometimes get sassy and bark at me when I am getting her a treat.  Larry says that she's entered the teen years, at least as far as dogs go.  She has not chewed on any more sheetrock, but she has been chewing on her toy basket, dismantling it one section at a time. Instead, she and Zane have been racing all over the house and generally driving each other nuts.  I don't care how they get their energy out, as long as it does not involve fisticuffs. Bedtime is much easier for both when they get to run a little amok. 

Last Friday, some idiot decided to shoot a police officer here in San Antonio for no particular reason. (He didn't kill him, thank goodness!)  Needless to say, this did not go over well, and there was a chase. The car chase ended nearly in my brother's backyard, with the bad guy crashing a stolen SUV.  After the car chase there was a foot chase.   As a precaution, a number of schools in the surrounding area were placed on lockdown, just in case the man happened to gain access to a school building. In the Judson Independent School District where we live, this meant that their emergency system kicked into gear; doors were locked, children and adults were located and secured, and several automatic phone calls went out to all of the parents letting them know what was going on.  My child attends a private school, and while they did put the school on lockdown, closing all the doors, turning off the lights, and covering the windows, they did not call any parents.  By the time we actually heard about the incident, it was when we went to pick Zane up.  When my husband asked why we hadn't been contacted, he was essentially told, to paraphrase:  "Ain't nobody got time for that!"   This annoyed me.  Since Larry and I work in another town, I at least want to know when something is happening that might affect my child's safety, and I think that kind of a blase' attitude is unprofessional.  St. Monica is going to get a firm talking to at some point this week.

I'm visiting Stacy today.  Go check her out and maybe show her some comment love!

Stacy

1 comment:

  1. I have never seen those beautiful flowers before, and grape kool-aid scented...so envious! Nooooooo, not barn swallows. Winter here is just long enough for me to forget the threat spring brings!

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