The baby daughter received the call she was waiting for from the nursing home she worked in last summer and will again be employed as a recreation assistant, so she was delighted. It will be a good experience for her as she heads off to nursing school and they’ll have someone already broken in. Was a nice boost during the stress of exam writing, prom and grad planning etc.
Today at work I received an email about lawnmower safety and it caused me to ruminate on a lawnmower story from about 15 years ago. I had gone to town with the kids for something and was expecting that their father would have the lawn mowed when I returned. When we got back and I released the little ones from their car/booster seats I noticed the grass was the same height as when I left. When I ambled over to the barn to ask why there was no mowing I noticed a smoldering pile of plastic emitting a pungent odor with a metal handle sticking out of it in front of the barn door. Now since spontaneous combustion wasn’t very likely I asked the obvious question of “what happened?” A very sheepish husband finally admitted that he had been attempting to ‘fix’ the mower. “You sure did that” I agreed. He had poured gas into the carburetor and a short while after pulled the starter cord. The flames were apparently record setting in height. He returned with the fire extinguisher and this molten mess is what remained after the flame suppression. Moral of the story ‘gas lawnmowers are not fire retardant’ The son was disappointed to have missed the show and asked many questions about it, I told him that his time would soon come for such things. And it has.
Can you believe that as I was searching for a snap of a lawnmower to insert here I found + + websites about lawnmower racing? I thought it was just something folks in the country did when they thought they wouldn’t get caught.Also today at work I was arranging for a routine floor sweep - which doesn’t involved cleaners but nurses doing screening swabs for antibiotic resistant organisms - for Monday. When one of the staff discovered this event was AGAIN on a day she was scheduled to work she said (only half jokingly) “I should take off my shoe and slap you over the head with it” I told her she was just plain lucky.
When discussing the difficulty in finding a pig to roast this summer for the Moncada Day pig roast I told a former co-worker and she said “oh just get 3 or 4 pork roasts and jam them on the spit, it’s about getting together not the pig” Now I’m not so sure my Cuban friend will approve of that line of thinking but it is preferable to doing without the get together.
I have been attempting to put together a biography for my ‘speaking on cruise ships’ profile and it’s not that easy to promote yourself in 250 words. When I asked various family members for suggestions, I was told everything from “vividly descriptive” to “entertaining when you’re not being mean / a big tool” Now can you guess which of those quotes came from the stressed soon to be grad? I’ve been leaving a list accessible and ’clustering’ ideas by occasionally jotting down thoughts. I am getting my publicity info all together first, then working on the presentations.
Tomorrow morning is a writing workshop which I’m looking forward to. It seems if I have a deadline I’m better about getting something written. My writing buddy and I are heading out by 7:30 a.m. and there isn’t much that will get me out at that hour on a weekend, so you can tell we’re keen. And to quote from the Writers Federation newsletter which my writing buddy faithfully forwards to me weekly:
Daniel Pinkwater's three rules for writerly success: "Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun." Thanks we plan to.
Daughter #2 is coming tomorrow night for supper and to do laundry - two good reasons for students to be sociable with their family. They are escaping the city to the cottage for the weekend, pretending they are yuppies already. Yeehaw it’s the weekend.
