I just canceled my Club Scrap membership. Even though I rarely make layouts and I'm always complaining about how everything is geared around people who use photos in their layouts, I've really come to love this company and the community it lovingly fosters.
The last thing I want to do is panic about the economy and make it worse by not spending a little fun money on things that make me happy and keep people employed, but - despite all greeting card advice - when life is uncertain, you don't eat dessert first.
But, looking back on times of greater prosperity, which is to say Tuesday or so, I was at Sam's Club and indulged in this for $19:
That's a lot of bath loot! (Made in China! Contributing to all our problems! LA LA LA LA ican'thearyou!) I can't even name everything in the photo. Nor I have tried it; it's all still on display on the kitchen counter. The shoeboxes alone (with their jeweled fabric covers) are a whack upside the happy bone!
This set is accented in green with a Rosemary Mint scent. They also had Blackberry Amber, Cranberry Something, Winterberry, and maybe something else.
Oh, here's a list of all the stuff: exfoliating hand and foot cream, foot soak, moisture hand and foot balm, bubbling bath creme, body wash, bath salts, shower gel, body lotion, bath salts (soothing), body powder, fizzing bath tablets, hand cream (soothing), bath caviar, decorative ceramic pump, ceramic canister, terrycloth bath pillow, terrycloth headband, ceramic soap dish, nail brush, and the boxes as mentioned.
Even if it smells bad, the containers and nail brush alone will be worth it.
Other news: Cricket finished her 10-day course of antibiotics. She seems fine and frisky physically, as pert as she ever was. I think she's lost weight, but sometimes that just happens with age anyway.
Mentally... she is much better. She's definitely interested again in what we're doing. She gets into the hand, more or less. But she's still not quite the ham she was. She runs into the hand but then runs away, like she doesn't quite trust me. Instead of softly biting/tugging as part of play, she has gone back to biting hard, and I can't make myself speak sharply to her like I did when she was little. Instead, I disengage and deny her the hand until she settles down, but since she's a little nervous, the hand isn't the great prize it once was.
She wants to be picked up, but instead of sitting still while I nuzzle her soft fur, she's skittish. It's like she remembers that these things are good, but it's a distant memory.
But I'm glad she's feeling better and is enjoying herself. It's more than I was hoping for, and if I never see the old puppy-some Clicky again, well, she is still my girl.
I know. I'm a soft goof.
Had a weird experience with an interlibrary loan book this past weekend. It was just a genealogy book about a surname in Louisiana. When I went to pick it up, it wasn't on the usual shelves, so I asked a librarian. She said it was marked as "library use only" and I'd have to see the reference librarian. Fair enough. It's not like another copy can be easily ordered off Amazon. I handed over my ID and took the book.
But then the librarian told me that I could only look at the book for two hours at a time (fine, the library was closing in an hour), and I couldn't look at it for more than six hours total.
Okay, that's just weird.
There were no prohibitions against photocopying, and I could have taken it to the other end of the library, well out of sight of the librarian, but I couldn't look at it for more than six hours total. A huge genealogy book that was sent to me from the other side of the country at taxpayer expense. (I tell myself it came out of my taxes. Still, I do wonder whether interlibrary loan requests of hard copy materials should be limited. I wonder what the usage statistics are...)
As it turned out, my people didn't appear to be in the book. If there's one thing I hate about genealogy, it's how you'll have some resource like "The X Family of Louisiana," and X will be some common name (Wells, in this case), but it will end up being just this one guy's family. Hey! You are not the X family. You can be the (First Name) X family of Louisiana, fine, but don't get my hopes up.
I think the library should make it up to me by letting me wirelessly borrow books directly to my Kindle. This would be the Kindle that I don't actually have, but could perhaps get this summer if the pay cut doesn't happen after all, what with having saved all of that Club Scrap money. That's just good library science, if you ask me.
Today is the last day of semester exams. I'm not even excited yet about the three-day weekend (I will be on the drive home, believe me) because it seems like forever since I've taught. Snow day madness, winter break, lab time, review time, a week of testing... at least the paperwork end is mostly finished.
Tuesday will be the start of the back half of the year, that beautiful slide toward summer, and I re-mapped everything in anticipation of the (glee! joy! hop!) student teacher. (I also replanned because I found at last week that, due to a miscommunication, I can't teach the novel I've been planning to teach since summer because it now belongs to another grade level. So, I moved poetry up, refurbished the poetry research project to replace the big tolerance/Holocaust research project, and bought some time to plan for a new novel. I think I'll do An*mal F*rm again with Honors, but I want to try something fresh for the regular kids. S*mething W*cked Th*s W*y C*mes?)
I guess I better finish making some handouts for Tuesday. And lesson plans. With new semester comes "observation season," so it's time to make sure all the state "power standards" are written out for every lesson along with everything else we do to prove that we don't just make up lessons in the car on the way to work. (Which, of course, I totally do, since further reflection always leads to last-minute killer ideas.) It's just another way to make sure we have plenty of paperwork and don't spend too much time doing something more useful and energizing, like really preparing to teach.
(Will stop whinging for Kindle.)
(Don't any bored Arabian shieks with itchy shopping fingers read this blog?)
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