-choke- -gasp- -bleargh-

Loathe
this
time
of
year
when
teaching.

Ugh!

Revive me in 2 weeks.



(Until then, keep praying for Jill and girls, especially Alexa!)

Hush

The air, the silence is heavy today.
As if the cosmos is waiting, just waiting...
for something

The air is still
The birds are still
The bugs are still

Even the neighbors are quiet
And the traffic is practically non-existent.

And so we wait.
The grey sky,
The green trees,
The brown and black and golden pets,
The denim-clad children,
The hubby and me.

We wait.

Sh.

Because Virginia is great like that.

Just in case the pollen story wasn't enough for you....

The scene: 6:30. Exterior of an elementary school. Mom arrives to pickup her 9-yr-old son from a day-long field trip to historic Petersburg.

Mom: So, how'd it go?
Son: Great!!!!
Mom: What'd you do?
Son: I learned how to load and fire a gun!!!


Awesome. Just awesome.



He was "drafted" into the army and was preparing for battle. Here are the fighting instructions he explained. I would include the loading instructions, but it was mostly a lot of him saying, "First you took the stuff and then the thing and you put it in the other thing and then you pushed on it...." I got lost.

Where was I? Oh, yes. How to fight:
Ready - hold it like a guitar.
Aim - hold it up to your shoulder and aim.
Fire - shoot the gun.

Don't eat it!

Every year when Spring comes barreling in, we see this little green box on our weather page for a week or so...

...and they're not kidding. Every car in the county looks like this one:


Every flat surface gets a coat, like a dusting of fresh snow. If we get no rain, it builds and builds and builds in the air until you can see it hovering in the stillness, like dust motes in a sunbeam.


This is the table on our deck out back.


At first glance, it may seem like a nice frosted-glass table with a few leaves scattered on it. But, sadly, no. That's a clear-topped table; the "frost" is 2 days-worth of pollen.


You can see it built up along the edge of the glass, and I wiped away a spot so you can see how clear it should be without the pollen.

On second thought, I probably shouldn't have used my hand.


Of course, the owner of this mini-van probably thought the same thing about her kids.


There is pollen on literally EVERYTHING. Even my dog. I rubbed a line down her side, too, so you could see it in her fur. She was out running around the back yard for about ten minutes or so, and came back in with a golden sheen.

I do like the way my neighborhood and my state look with all of the trees, and I love the freshness of the air, too, but my goodness, I could do without the pollen!

(and if you think that was bad: Wait until acorn season. I have seven 70 foot oak trees on my 1/3 acre lot.)

And the winner is...

So, I almost forgot to post my winners! (I'm kinda new to this whole contest thingy)

If you remember, the challenge was to identify what was in this picture:

Well, I had a variety of water-based guesses, but only two people who mentioned pools, and that is the closest guess, because this is a photo of something that took place in a pool.

It's a picture of Jimmy's baptism! During the summers, our church often held baptism services at a local pool.

So the two winners are my Uncle Chuck at Secondary Roads and Shanda at A Teachable Heart.
Enjoy your award and feel free to pass it on!