The Farmstead

Mother's Day was very laid back. Scott took over doing the laundry, so I didn't have to do it. They tried to let me sleep in, but I had to get up to take my meds, and there was no way I was getting back to sleep.

We went out for bubble tea, and we had dinner at Blue Nile, an Ethiopian restaurant. We had the vegetarian meal at Blue Nile. We don't eat enough of the meat when we're there to justify the extra $2 a person. After dinner, we picked up dessert. I put off eating my dessert for a while because I was so full.

Monday, it was back to the every day. I finished the laundry that Scott hadn't completed, and I did the dishes (I'd cleaned out the fridge a few days before. Some of the stuff in the sink was kind of nasty).

Tuesday is my normal day for volunteering at the school library. There was a substitute. She was improvising wildly because the librarian hadn't originally intended to be out in the afternoon and hadn't left any sort of lesson plan. It didn't help that there was an assembly that started midway through the class time. The substitute seemed not to understand (English was not her first language) what was going on with the assembly, even when the fourth grade teacher explained it to her three times. She had the kids get out their laptops only to have to tell them to put them away three minutes later. The kids were confused and didn't do a good job putting away the laptops. I had to go in and check to make sure they were all turned off (several weren't), and there was one laptop that didn't make it back to the cart. The substitute and I had an anxious few minutes while we searched for it. We found it on top of one of the bookshelves.

Thursday evening, the PTO sponsored bowling in the gym. They had six lanes set up. I'd been afraid that it wouldn't happen because pretty much nobody signed up to do anything in advance (they use spreadsheets in Google docs to track volunteer shifts). I signed up to run a lane of bowling for half an hour and to do the bowling sales for forty-five minutes. Cordelia ended up doing the lane instead of me. She spent most of her evening doing that, just taking a couple of breaks to play games of bowling when one of her friends showed up.

There was supposed to be someone else at the table with me when I was handling the cash, but she was busy keeping other things running. Fortunately, it wasn't hard. I just collected $2 per person per game and made change. The hardest part was counting the money up at the end. There were so many ones, and I had to wait for somebody else to show up to confirm my count (It's supposed to be verified by three people, two volunteers and the PTO treasurer).

Scott worked 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. today. Because of his employer's bookkeeping practices, that was a Thursday shift. They count each day as starting and ending at 7 a.m. Scott got home in time to shower before walking Cordelia to school. She told me to stay home once it was clear that Scott was available to go.

Scott got started on wrapping Cordelia's presents while we waited for his parents to arrive. His father helped him put up a basketball hoop on our garage so that Cordelia can play basketball in our driveway. His mother helped me with my raised beds. We pulled weeds for a while. Then we went to the Produce Station for more plants. The Produce Station is fairly expensive, but they've got a wide variety of plants. I bought some dill, a pineapple sage, a lemon verbena and more coleus (the coleus I got from the PTO sale was almost all red, and I wanted some more variety).

When we got back, we dragged the guys off for lunch. That was Subway because we didn't have time for a sit down place. We got the plants into the ground and arranged for Scott's sister to take the extra coleus. I still need to get the two grape tomato plants into pots. I have one pot that's usable but probably too small. I have one pot that's big enough but full of clay soil that Scott dug out of our backyard when Cordelia brought a tree seedling home last year. The clay soil needs to go. It won't absorb water at all. I also still need tomato cages. Scott's rosebush went in the smallest raised bed with some thyme and coleus. I need more dirt to put in that bed, though.

At three, Scott's mother and I took a bunch of pudding cups to Cordelia's school and took them into her class. The kids seemed to enjoy the pudding. They sang happy birthday with great (almost savage) enthusiasm. A girl who moved away last fall (when her mother finished her graduate program) is back in town for the weekend and was at school with her parents. Her mother and I arranged for the girls to get together tomorrow afternoon.

When Cordelia got home from school, Scott's mother took her shopping for clothes. They've found a resale shop they really like, and I think they also went to TJ Maxx. Cordelia came back with three or four shirts, a pair of shorts and two dresses. She did a little fashion show for us.

We all went to dinner at Joe's Crab Shack. We sat outside because Cordelia was interested in the play structure. She didn't play much, however. She was more interested in food. Sitting outside was kind of chilly, so I wish we'd been inside. Cordelia, for the first time ever, managed her own crab. I'm so used to having to handle the extraction of the meat for her. It was pleasant not to have to.

Ten years ago today, I found myself with a baby. We'd been expecting her for months, but she wasn't officially due for another three weeks. The pregnancy, at least in the last trimester, was miserable. I couldn't keep food down, and I had to use a walker because my pelvis hurt so much. Seeing Cordelia was worth it all.

She's ten years old today. It seems like no time has passed, but she's undeniably bigger. She's a fourth grader now (which means middle school is just a little over a year away. Eep!).

Ten years. It doesn't seem possible.