Ain't no Eagle like a Fort Knox Eagle!*

OK, one more and then I swear I'm done for tonight. I just wanted to share a story I read about on a friend's Facebook page. Her son is one of Mike's friends from the swim team, and he also plays soccer. They had an away game last night against one of the county schools, and when it came time to play the national anthem, there was an announcement that due to a missing CD, there would be no star-spangled bannering that night. According to my friend: "The North Hardin players turned to take their positions on the field and the refs entered the field for play. The Fort Knox Boys did not move from line, but instead began singing the national anthem. As the crowd and the North Hardin players realized what was going on, they all stopped and joined in. WAY TO GO, FORT KNOX!!!!!" Doesn't that just make you feel a little tingly?

*with apologies to Auburn University

And this doesn't stink at all

I'm feeling posty tonight, so I thought I would share the following pic from last week's Turret:



Way to go, Mike!

Well, this is going to stink

No, really. Remember Mr. Stinky, the strange and exotic plant I brought back from Hawaii? It relies on flies for pollination, and it attracts these flies by producing large flowers that mimic rotting flesh. I have waited years, YEARS, for Mr. Stinky to bloom and so far nada. But here I am getting ready to go out of town, and he has a bloom:



At first I wasn't sure what to do. It's not like I can put him outside, you know? It's COLD out there at night, especially for a plant from Hawaii. But I can't really let him stink up the whole house either, and as excited as I am about this trip (we'll be seeing Fred for a week in Charlottesville), I'm kind of bummed to be missing the blossom. I thought for a moment about nipping it in the bud, so to speak, but I just can't. So Mr. Stinky is now going to have exclusive rights to our downstairs bathroom. I just hope the process takes a while and that I get to see the plant in full bloom.

Happy 45th!

Today is my parents' 45th anniversary, and I had planned on posting a few pictures in honor of the occasion. Then Annabelle and I were talking one day as we walked the dog, and we thought of the perfect song for a slideshow, a song that Mom and Dad had introduced us to in the first place. Of course, the problem was that I needed more photos to use than just my own. I made a few phone calls, and my sister, my grandmother, and my Aunt Suzie came through with more photos, some of which I had never even seen before:



Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad! I love you!

Crunch

Time crunch, that is. I have a paper due in my class Tuesday night, and I need to be ready to transport us all from here to Charlottesville by way of northern VA sometime shortly thereafter. Our departure details are up in the air right now as we wait for Fred to get his travel plans finalized, figure out whether or not the kids can/should miss the last day of school before fall break, etc. Meanwhile, the kids and I all have hair appointments within the next 2 days. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it is 2 round trips to Louisville. And then on Sunday I'll be spending the morning in L'ville taking Mike to a swim clinic and the afternoon in E'town taking Annabelle to a party for her musical theater group. If Monday comes and I STILL have this stupid paper hanging over my head, I am going to be a nervous wreck.

So I'm trying to work around that by knocking out as much as I can today, but here it is almost the end of the day, and I'm disappointed with what I've got. Moreover, as I mentioned a couple days ago, I have thought on more than one occasion about dropping this (my only) class. My most recent thoughts were yesterday when the professor posted a quiz that is due, according to the assignment, "February 29 at 5:30 p.m." Really? February 29? He mentioned in class that that was an error, but so far the error is still sitting there. So is Quiz 2 due on October 6, like it says elsewhere on the class website, or is that also an error and the quiz is in fact due on Wednesday, which is our next class day with Quiz THREE (not 2) due on October 6? Good freakin' question. It is really hard to muster any level of enthusiasm for this assignment when I am gritting my teeth to make it through the class in general.

Back to the salt mine . . .

Digging around in the photo vault

I just realized that I never got around to posting the photos that the newspaper reporter took at the high-school ribbon cutting last month.





Come to think of it, I never shared the newspaper article either, did I?



I've also got a few photos that Fred has sent from Afghanistan. I'll try to get those up soon.

Back to normal?

We've been fighting bugs here for the past few days. Annabelle woke up sick Saturday morning, and by Sunday night Mike wasn't feeling too hot either. Mike managed to push on and get past it, but poor Annabelle has been out of school for the past 2 days. The one downside to her more challenging schedule is that she hasn't been able to just kick back and do nothing but rest; instead she has kept plugging away as best she can so as not to get behind. She seems much perkier tonight though and just finished off a big pile of history homework. Looks like she'll be returning to school tomorrow.

Catching up

I can't decide how I feel about blogging every day versus NOT blogging every day. On the one hand, making it a daily habit sometimes feels like pressure, and it also pushes more blogworthy items down and off the front page sooner than they might otherwise go. On the other hand, it saves me from having to decide whether or not something is worth blogging about in the first place. I think I'll try blogging each day this week and see how it feels.

We're boringly busy these days:

• Fred is working like a dog but will be coming to Charlottesville, VA, next month for a conference. We are going to go over to spend the week with him, which will be fun.


• I have been dividing my time among indexing, editing, Pilates, my one class (that I actually contemplated dropping last week but think that I will gut out anyway), and keeping the kids on the straight and narrow. I am finally getting used to and even liking my contacts (this might have something to do with starting Restasis last week).


• Mike is trying to get his college applications submitted before fall break next month. He is also gearing up for the start of swim season by alternating visits to the gym with time in the pool. He's doing an internship with the video production department here on post and likes that a lot.


• Annabelle is doing something a little unconventional this year. She is taking 6 classes instead of the normal 8, but 2 of them are pretty heavily accelerated. She has to work much harder than she's used to in order to stay on top of things, but she seems happy with school in a way that I haven't seen from her in several years.

Spa day

Fred has always been in charge of dog bathing around here, and even last year when he wasn't here most of the time, he got home often enough to keep Ginger fairly tidy. Annabelle and I tried to give her a bath once since he deployed, but it wasn't very successful, and she was starting to look pretty scruffy. I didn't take a before picture, but if I had, she would have looked something like this:



Today I took her to a professional groomer for a shampoo, haircut, and nail trim and got back this:



It seems to have re-puppified her, and her fur feels much softer. The only negative that I can see is that from behind she looks like a victim of overzealous bikini waxing. You know the joke about how if I had a dog who looked like you, I'd shave its butt and teach it to walk backwards? Let's just say that now we know what that would look like.

Contact sports

You might recall that I got contact lenses (multifocal rigid gas permeable ones) a little over a week ago. As of Wednesday, I was feeling like quite the contact lens failure. My eye doctor expected me to start with them in for 5 hours a day, increasing 2 hours each consecutive day until--somewhere around the 12 hours a day mark, which I should have hit in just a few days--I could expect an increase in comfort. I. just. couldn't. do. it.

By last weekend, I couldn't even stand the thought of putting them anywhere near my eyes let alone sticking them in for 5 hours, 7 hours, 9 hours, and so on. I heard from several friends, however, who said that a week just isn't enough adjustment time, so I decided to be patient with myself. I wore them for 3 hours on Wednesday, 4 hours yesterday, and 6 (SIX!) today. Of course that last hour today was just because I was too busy to stop and rip them out of my head.

Oh, and speaking of ripping them out of my head. I am getting better at getting them in with only 3 or 4 tries, but I am supposed to be able to blink them out to remove them, and it just doesn't work for me. I have a little suction tool though that I call my eye plunger, and I am getting quite handy with it. It's tiny though, and I'm terrified that I'm going to lose it, so when I go back for my re-check on Monday, I'm going to ask for several spares.

I am amazed at the difference in vision. I took them out tonight before making a run to Walmart with Annabelle, and I was marveling at the difference. Things just aren't as crisp with my glasses as they are with the lenses. So I am committed to making them work, but I'm going to make them work ssslllooowwwlllyyy.

Herstory

Fred's Grammy Taylor was born 110 years ago today: 9/9/99. Here's a picture of Grammy as a two-year-old:



Belle Thomas Taylor didn't live long enough to meet Annabelle (Thomas Taylor--get it?) or our nieces and nephews, but she did get to meet Mike when he was just a few weeks old:

Saturday night live

Annabelle attended her friend Amanda's Quinceañera tonight. It was a very lavish dinner-dance held at the Leaders' Club, and she had a lovely time. (Maybe if we get lucky, she'll blog about it.) Here she is on her way to the club:

Sidewalk signs

Last week these placards started appearing on street corners in my neighborhood:



I'm not sure where they came from or why they're there. I'm not aware of us having a fire problem here in the historical district. I think the posters bear a startling resemblance to Soviet propaganda:

I'm still around

I just haven't felt particularly bloggy lately. For one thing, I've been busy, busy, busy, and none of it is especially blog-worthy.

Harvey is getting big. Here he is tonight, enjoying a snooze while I attend my class:



Compare that with this picture, taken June 20:



He's a big boy!