I'm a Groupie

I've mentioned it a time or two, I think, but I'm not sure. The Man's an avid bass player. He's played in multiple bands over the years, a few of which have found good success. In college he was in a band called Volare which put out a few CD's and toured the progressive rock scene for a while before life got in the way for the guys. It's very interesting "music for the thinking man." If you're interested in a clip check out this link or this one that shows their second album. Google them if you like. They never met with a bad review.

Now he's in a few others including a classic rock cover band that plays out fairly regularly, a cover band that's just getting started and the one that really has some great potential, Velvet City Mercy. They had a gig this last weekend and my in-laws graciously kept the kids for us so I could go. They packed the house! I had never had so much of a good time.

Here are a couple of grainy pictures of the stage:

and here's the man doing his thing:
He was really very happy and had a great time doing it. If you want to check out one of their songs, click here. They also have a Facebook page, so if you're there, stop by and give them a 'like' as we've been hearing the local clubs book people by the number of 'likes' they have on their Facebook etc. pages. They're very, very good, IMHO.

Hopefully they'll get a chance to play again really soon. I found myself wanting to yell, "I want to have your babies!!!!" but I've already done that. Oh well. Such is life for a groupie.

The morning comes early. Sweet music loving dreams.

Just Call Me Erin!

One of the counselors at school came to my room a few days ago with something that looked like it was in a war zone for quite a long time. She needed my help, she said. I needed to make something for her. It had to be impervious to assault. It had to be unyielding. The gravity in her voice emphasized the seriousness of the situation. I began to panic and viewed the ravaged object in her hand with trepidation.

"What's that," I asked?

"My dog's bed," she hissed.

"You lie," I responded before I could stop myself. The thing was in shreds with thin strands holding it together in places while others were completely ravaged.


I accepted the challenge with the knowledge failure was inevitable. The fabric stores offered all sorts of heavy canvass, but the nails of that dachshund could easily pick at and snag even the tightest weave. Kevlar was my first choice. Carbon fiber my second. Then, I found a heavy faux suede. It had to work. It just had to. I allowed myself to bask in the glory that victory may in fact be mine; then grounded myself becoming reminded that I didn't know how to sew a dog bed. Straight lines? I got those down. Actually making something...that's another story. So, what do you do when you've got no direction? Grab a glass of wine and wing it, baby!


I toyed with several ideas. I couldn't leave it open on one end like a pillow case and I couldn't sew it completely shut because I wanted them to be able to take it off to wash it. I settled on making it like a pillow sham cover that overlaps in back, so I folded over the rough ends, pinned and sewed them down.
Then I lay it upside down, folded it over the pillow, overlapped the ends a bit, removed the pillow, pinned the whole thing together and sewed the edges shut. I used a zigzag stitch to hopefully give it some more staying power.
Actually, before I sewed it shut, I added this little fancy pants stitching to the top fold of the flap in back to hold it flat a bit better.

After flipping it back right side out, I stuffed the pillow back in and now have a fancy pants dog bed!

I'm pretty excited. It surprisingly turned out just like it was supposed to, which usually doesn't happen around here. I'm confident the pillow cover will last a good week. Maybe even a week and a half. That's why I made two. ;)

The morning comes early. Sweet dog bed dreams.

Blogging Monotony

Anyone here go to camp? You remember those terrible camp songs that went on and on and on with no end in sight only to have your irritation and ire exacerbated by the sentence "Same song, second verse. (Fill in the blank) style and a whole lot worse!" Subsequently the tedious song continued to repeat itself in some god-forsaken accent or worse, Pig Latin. I'm feeling that way about garden blogging at the moment. This would be the third spring for The Corner Yard and honestly, the trials and tribulations are much the same year after year and I'm worried that people, assuming people actually frequent this diatribe, are getting bored seeing yet another picture of a squash bug. However, I assume I'll keep on keepin' on until I get some sort of sign like an anonymous post from God saying, "Dude. Enough is enough already," or someone accuses me of plagiarizing my own previous posts.

Keeping all that in mind - here are seed starting pictures! Tomorrow these lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, and celery seeds will find themselves in the basement under my fancy pants light set up.

Ok. It's the same light set up and rather more ghetto than sanctified, but it gets the job done.

But in the spirit of monotonous blog posts - let me throw in a few anecdotes. This weekend the girl here decided to dress herself. Please note the grey, neon swirled pants, pink and white sun dress and the neighbor's Halloween shirt.
Thank goodness we were staying home that day.

On the way home from school this morning there was a dead skunk in the road. It was unmistakable. The boy said, "Thank goodness that skunk's sleeping. They're nocturnal, you know, so he'll need his rest, but I wish he had found a safer place to do it than in the road." I didn't have the heart to point out the skunk had a rather one dimensional quality to it.

And now, for your entertainment pleasure, I present to you: The Girl who came home from school today with a poem memorized. I caught her preening in front of the mirror after her bath and took the film. Speech therapy is in our future.

That's all folks!

Seed Starting and Apologies

During the snow last week I went back and looked through last January's posts and realized I was about two weeks late in starting my fall seeds in comparison to last year. WOW! I cant' believe that time has flown by so fast. I haven't even taken the last of the fall broccoli out of the garden yet. Last year we lucked out in that spring weather came pretty early, but I'm not as hopeful this year, but we'll see.

Today I started some bib lettuce, a lettuce variety mix, rainbow chard, broccoli and those small Gonzalez cabbages I tried last year. They worked out really well in the SFG, so I did some more of those as well as a savoy leaf one. I'm excited for those. I also planted one more thing - something I haven't tried before- but I need to first offer an apology to the lettuce seeds I berated last year for being too small. I now know their superiority and gigantic size for I have met the true fiend of the veggie seed world: the celery seed.

Yes, I'm trying celery for the first time and have no idea what I'm doing. I started them inside since I'm thinking they, like everything else on this planet, will not grow well at all in the GA summer and as much of a head start I can give them, the better. I'd love any and all suggestions you can offer on growing celery, however....

Leaving the House

Whenever I think about it, I'm still in awe over how poorly we fared during the recent snow. I had no idea things were going to be as bad as they were. Whereas in the past, we've never missed more than one or two days for snow in a row, this time we missed five straight days which was unheard of.

Saturday was the first time I had left the house in a week. I was never so pathetically grateful to go to a baby shower in my life. Yesterday we went to the grocery and even though the temps had been above freezing for two days, there was till a ton of ice in turning lanes or anywhere where there was abundant shade. Today we're out of school again for MLK day and they'd better get out there and scrape the bus turning lanes because we went by some schools yesterday that would still be considered inaccessible!

The big news here now is on the boy's front. Saturday night we went to watch football at a friend's house and the couple was so, so, so kind enough to give the boy all of their teenage son's old legos...however, the weren't legos, but the Mega Blocks Dragon sets....a LOT of sets. We took home one large wooden box and another monster tub full of broken down sets. Luckily, they had all of the instruction books with them. It took me 6.5 hours yesterday. Yes, 6.5 hours to put all of the sets together, and amazingly we were only missing 4 pieces. Two we were able to borrow from the real Legos we have and that left only two major pieces missing which wasn't a bad deal at all. Here's what we have:

This castle was the first an most difficult of all we built. Things got easier as we had fewer pieces to dig through.
I suppose this is an outpost of some sort...

The ship that almost killed me.

And finally the bad guy's stronghold.

My thumbs are blistered, my hip hurts from sitting on the floor and I'm generally stiff this morning, but once we got the red castle together I wasn't going to stop since I'd never hear the end of the prodding until we'd finished everything. The stuff certainly isn't Lego quality - the pieces don't always snap nicely together and I'm sure more of it's going to fall apart easily than not, but it was so nice and generous for them to give the sets to the boy. They came with a bunch of people and all of those dragons also. The boy couldn't be happier.

However, I'm realizing we're slowly losing our house to toys. The dining room table is already Lego Land and now these have occupied the front room since there's no furniture in there and they take up so much floor space because if they were in the play room, they'd be busted in seconds. I told the boy I'd earned a day of reading and respite and if I ever hear the sentence, "I'm bored" for the next several weeks I'm going to have an apoplexy.

The morning comes early...and thank goodness that means school for all of us. Sweet ice free, dragon slaying dreams.

Stick a Fork in Me

I'm done.

We were back in school for four days when this happened. Now, we have the weekend and Monday off as well. I wonder what the school calendar is going to look like now.....

Could There Possilby Be Enough Fodder For Yet ANOTHER Snow Post?

Yes. Yes there is.

Why?

Because we're out of school for a fourth day and I'm about to go nuts. It's gotten to the point where I can't even send the kids to play in the snow. It's too dangerous. We'll get there in a minute. But first, my sister and brother-in-law braved the ice yesterday to bring their kids over to play. The day before, we took the skim board out on the snow and it worked great, so we thought to do it again. Doesn't the boy look excited...note the pittiful snow gear that's non existant.
Skim board? Bad, bad, bad idea. The snow had frozen to an ice layer of at least 1-1.5 inches thick. If my brother-in-law hadn't booted the boy off of the board, he would have gone half way down the street with it. I never thought that board would stop. Bad, bad, bad idea.

So, instead, they just all lay on their backs and flew down the hill. Look at the girl go!
The ice was so thick that the kids couldn't walk on it because they couldn't break through it. I had to stomp heal first two times to break through in places. The girl's trying to get up here but can't, and here comes her cousin down the hill. They wiped out.
Here was her favorite position coming down the hill - tongue first.
Then, she gave up and just grabbed a block and started chomping.
Sunny day, yes, but not quite the white beach sand. I just love this picture she took, but look at the wet road behind. That's not wet. It's a sheet of ice.
Still can't believe we're out of school today. I wonder what they'll call for tomorrow. They say we won't thaw out until then, so I wonder if they'll keep us out or if they'll delay openings. This is all very surreal and to think, it's only the start of January. We usually don't get snow until Feb or March!

Stay warm and safe!