ok, so we are having a classic book crisis at our house.......we cannot find our hardback and only copy of the grapes of wrath...which scw has exactly 7 days to finish..........

ok, so mm's garden is just lovely........most roses are beginning to bloom, and the affect is so special i got up early just so i could walk about clutching my coffee while i took it all in.....dew and all.........the trellis rose may be having it's best year yet........each creamey bloom has a faint scent of lemon......

ok, so we have heard today from someone we hope to meet up with near yellowstone......and being mother's day she addressed me with kudos......so tragic, in that she is someone unable to conceive..........our minister today focused on that subgroup.......those who are unable to become mothers........i talked today briefly with my child's birth mother, who was unable to parent affectively...........she also has a hard time on mother's day........i have a hard time on moher's day, because i miss my grandmothers...clara stephan broughton and helen kreager crown........both believed in me implicitly..........everyone should have such cheerleaders.......

as it is, i am getting up tomorrow at 4:30, and starting work at 5 to cook breakfast for 13 people who want scrambled eggs an hashbrowns...but they are good customers..........nighty-night.............

ok, so i called my brother, on mother's day, to check up on him....i assume he has been working nonstop due to the war......but i do not know this directly.......he is moving to somewhere else......also unnamed,...by personal request of someone else unnamed.......and he is delighted...........he asked about my middle child, who he believes would be an excellent prospect to work with all these unnamed entities......i think he is overlooking another great mind in the family, and i tell him so.......so many great minds, so many unnamed entities.........as a liberal democrat i have hard time with all of this secrecy..........in fact, i had a hard time with my sunday school lesson today.......1 and 2 timothy...and the parts about teaching of untruths.....it sounded to me like someone early on questioned paul's teachings..........and this was judged heresy......we had quite a discussion about the current baptist contraversy re; women in the clergy.......... i personally would leave my church if a consensus came about against women in the clergy......as it is. 43 baptist missionaries have quit after refusing to sign a doctrine against women in the clergy.........so sad that willing workers are excluded because they are women.......uncomprehensible.....of course, i also do not understand baptists thinking that they can convert muslims, jews, hindus, etc..........

i am approaching 22 years of hyphenated bliss......hard to imagine that that much time has elasped.......i can still recall the standoff in the social security office....when the clerk contended that she could not put a hyphen in our name, even though ss # have hyphens........we stood her down and she backed off...........i have no hope that my children will hyphate.....i picked up a history of alexander the great today...his big mistake was in failing to name an heir...no one designated to carry on the dynasty...... i believe that the hyphren thing will end with 2 midwestern liberals........and that our failure to name heirs will be our downfall...............

ok, so mm is going to disclose the bacon grease story,but just this once.........saturday, we at trc had multiple reservations......in house...for 23 and for 14 and for several groups of 5...for lunch.....and a big group of 52 at constitution square....the carryout group of tandem bicycle riders ordered ky burgoo.....a stew made from chickien, lamb, beef and whatever vegetables........i simmered mine for 3 days..........i had their salads, their cookies and bread, the works in my van when tragedy struck.....my helper, scottie, was carrying a pan on which he had cooked bacon, when he stumbled, and poured the hot grease over my head.....and my arm....i screamed....which didn't phase him as he is deaf......and iced down my arm......but thought nothing of my head..........by the time i had set up the burgoo buffet at constitution square, with sweet tea, pink lemonade, and a vegetarian version of the concoction........it occured to me that scottie had caught more than my arm with the grease......my entire head was coated with bacon grease.......my hair stuck to my head like a helmet....luckily these people were from out-of-town...........

ok, so i enjoyed reading about the guy in georgia who painted his house lime green with purple polka dots..........the 6-person historical preservation board turned down his request to add a rounded stoop at his front door............so in protest he has repainted his home to really standout in this historically correct neighborhood, which does not happen to have a specfic code re: house paint...........he has announced plans to redo his landscaping around a porcelin(sp) toilet theme......

ok, so today is mother's day.......my idea of a great mother's day involves ommission .......i would apreciate 24 hours of bitch-free bliss............if you want to complain about something today.....like how i write gramatically errored blogs..just keep these thoughts to yourself, thanks...............

ok, so mm is so very tired.........you have no idea how it feels to be this old.........lots in the news today....the gunman at case western reserve, who shot up the frank gehry building (the one built for $62 million.........) eminem won't let weird al parody his 8-mile song into couch potato, at least on a video.......i guess em has to maintain his serious persona....weird al has been allowed to parady avril...my, i bet that one will be quite special.........the judge has ruled that the disabled girl who sued to be lone validictorian could be so.....even though her disability allowed her to skip gym, study with tutors at home, and otherwise enjoy advantages that able-bodied students were not privy to.......the politicla cartoon in today lexheraldleader is amusing.......an aide is holding the mccarthy hearing transcripts, and says...maybe we should learn a lesson from these.....while john ashcroft standing close scoffs.......mccarthy was an amateur........the southern baptists have kicked out and/or accepted resignations from scores of missionaries.....because they refused to sign an oath stating that women are not fit to be ministers and women must obey their husbands...........this is scary stuff.....the text of my sunday school lesson actually includes references to this issue in 1 and 2 timothy...but the commentary literally does not go there, focuses instead on more positive lessons that can be gleaned from the bible.....as long as there are voices of reason in my own church, i can remain a baptist........a girl who waitressed for us last summer is leaving for the near east next month to be a missionary in a muslim country....she stopped by yesterday....and she was so excited about going that i didn't have the heart to ask her why she thought that trying to convert muslims from their doctrine to her doctrine made any sense.......at least they have a doctrine.....why not try to inspire those who have no spiritual life.......if one must do mission work at all.......

enough of this rant.......my roses are blooming, and the day is lovely, and i am going to pick herbs to put in my omelet before i go to work.........

ok, so last night after i left, the cook that quit last week came by, trashed/drunk/high......take your pick.......saying something about how they let him out of rehab for the weekend with the requirement that he go around to everyone he has offended to make restitution........the kitchen crew didn't believe him, and they forcefully told him to just leave.........he started arguing that he wasn't drunk...that he was sober......how bizarre..................they should have called the police

ok, so mm is listening to joni mitchell...california.......i just love that song........makes me want to go to paris, greece and spain....not california.............

ok, so mm is listening to supergrass...'grace'...i really like this song , having heard it on world cafe coming home from work one night........quite peppy............twas good to see nayef in trc today.......sheldon was wasting away to nothing without his regular lunch partner........my trellis rose is just beginning to bloom...by sunday it should be spectacular........other roses will also be in bloom...the old pink rose from the stellar homestead in independence, ohio....the house that was on the underground railroad.....also constance spry, aloha, eglantine rose, ballerina, ginny(bred by henry mitchell, late of the washington post gardening column), and many others........i have seen a snake in the same spot 2 days running......a good sign of a healthy ecosystem....a bad sign because i am afraid of snakes.......the rose that fell over is still fallen (i have fallen and i can't get up........) it so big and prickly and wet that it will just have to wait.........

ok, so the l.o. has some pretty major-league precedence.......the following is from the wm.edu website:
'Thomas Jefferson enrolled in the College of William and Mary on March 25, 1760, at the age of sixteen. ........'

ok, so in martha stewart's maazine-based calender for may, today may 6, she was scheduled to switch all of her bedding from flannel sheets to cotton...............presumably she doesn';t actually do this herself any longer.........just hollers out for someone on her staff to do it..........it must be good to be queen.........

ok, so mean mamma has just had 45 minutes of unprotected......sun......yessserie......i had such a bad day at work that unprotected sun was the only answer, that and 2 glasses of wine on the back deck........for starts, the first burst of rain flooded our side dining room...........which was cleaned up by mr. mudge and the bill sent to our landlord by the time we opened......around 1:15 i decided that business had calmed enough to allow me to get my hair cut....and a heinous cut it is, by the way......on the way back from the bypass the tornado warning was announced........and i made it into trc before the hail started and the siren began wailing.......we have little liability experience with tornado sirens and customers, so i asked each table if they would prefer to move away from the plate glass windows into the cement block portion of the restaurant.........no one would move...they all wanted a window view of the hail and wind and rain..........some even ordered drinks.........back at home, one of my bgiger roses is completely knocked over, and will take quite an effort to lift it up and stabilize it with ropes.....but not today, after 2 glasses of wine........

ok ,so a new descriptive has emerged in the cw household........whoo-worthy...........which has a slightly mocking tone to it.......gentle readers...be aware that the whoo-thing dates back to the 1st harrypotter movie.....at some point in the action, i reacted in awe with an audible 'whooooo', and my precious middle child has run with that line.........he has added hand and body motions to dramatize the verbal portions.....he claims to be re-inacting the original context but that is not how i remember it.......

ok, so i spent far too much money on bedding plants today (durhams in stanford) but now every pot is filled and many empty spots are filled with blue salvia, yellow marigolds, pink snapdragons, white stock and cleome, and pink petunias.....the trellis rose should bloom in a week or two...it must have 1000 blooms.......i also bought a small obelisk to hold up a droopy rose (constance spry) that is about to bloom...it is a nicely shaped wrought iron piece that would have been far more if i had ordered it online.......(or so i tell myself.....)

ok, so congrats are in order to the l.o. for her acceptance to centre college, an institution of renown.....but there are lingering questions......as this is a major life milestone....will there be a secession party where secession-appropriate gifts will be bestowed? as there are no lines of secessionist greeting cards, l.o. could design them herself...and market them to peeps like walmart, and start an empire.......the dissatisfied will no longer quit, they will simply seceed...it has an 'old-is-new-again' feel to it........anyway, given centre's schedule, the lo.o would not have to miss classes to travel this winter, should i, in my meanness, decide to go ahead and book that paris apartment.........

ok, so there has been a strange shift in the balance of things.......i have spent the week collecting stray rolls of film from drawers, etc....they all turned out to to be scw's......from the 7th grade trip to france, from spain, and from the bike trip through colorado last summer.....on the france trip rolls there was a picture of charlotte asleep on the train back from chartre......nothing odd there.......but on the bike trip roll, there was a series of pictures of charlotte, charlotte with friends i had never seen (friends from camp?) as well as caroline and jean.......truly bizarre, like a twilight zone moment....like charlotte had somehow taken possession of scw's camera and then snuck it back into his backpack........

ok, so the news today is filled with bizarre episodes.....such as the church in maine where 1 man has died and 15 other church members are hospitalized after ingesting arsenic in their church committe meeting coffee.......turns out there was no arsenic in the coffee grounds, nor in the cream nor sugar...which means that someone had to have put the arsenic directly into cups, or tainted the cups prior to filling them........further, a man comitted suicide in the same town yesterday, so everybody is wondering whether he 1) belonged to the church 2) somehow did the deed even though he wasn't at the church at the time of the meeting...........this will surely be a fall sitcom.............

the other sad story is about the hiker who was pinned by a boulder somewhere in the desert/wilds of the west.......for 5 days before he amputated his own arm with his pocketknife to free himself.....he is in hospital in serious condition.........i cannot even think about that scnario.........and have no plans to hike in the desert wilds of the west with or without my pocketknife.........

and strangest still is the ongoing saga of the cook who quit abruptly on tuesday.........he had told us all that his wife had left him for a rich guy, who promptly took her off to see the world after the divorce was final, and that she was now in china and had sars.........he also told us that he had converted to judiaism at her request and even told us about his seder menu......well, the dishwasher saw him with this girl monday, in a car, stopped at a light...........who makes up stuff about a wife leaving you and having sars whilst living in china? this guy struck me as psychotic.....i am glad he doesn't really know where i live.........let's see, if i was goign to make up stories to entertain my coworkers, i believe i would be more creative...............

ok, so mm is going flying to denver and driving 10 hours into the wilds of wyoming to hook up with the bikers for the last leg of their across america tour.......just have to be there for the finale

in more personal news, ecw and i spent a painful hour with a lawyer yesterday working out wills.......i have had a signed will for many years....but this will did not include a third child.....ecw had no signed will, because the lawyer-friend who prepared mine and his pro bono could not locate his when he came to sign it....and he never got around to coming back, and our friendship with said lawyer has since waned.......you might say that you get what you pay for.........anyway.....it is quite painful to contemplate the actions you wish taken at your death........especially when it comes to belongings.......we have furniture that came over to america from mainz......but do i designate a specific child to caretake this heirloom....oldest child???????, most interested in geneology child?????????/i have this piece because my grandmother put my name on a piece of tape and affixed it to the bottom......i may have to just rely on tape and markers for the distribution of family pieces........there are crown pieces of furniture, stephan furniture, and ernst furniture....oh my........i think the most painful part was deciding who would raise our children.......acw is beyond this...so that leaves a 16 year old and a 10 year old.........this has all been worked out with people we are close to.....but we of course hope that this is never to become public because we will live long enough to see them all reach adulthood.......i will admit to eating crow during this session.......when asked if one of our children should have a spouse and children at the time of our demise, did i want my estate to pass to the spouse should my child predecease me........gentle readers, understand that i have been in a snit for 1 full year because my sainted mother-in-law specifically excluded in-laws as heirs in her will.........inlaws that had put up with her for 20+ years ....and i ended up doing the same thing.........i have an ex-sister-in-law who i despise....and i didn't want to chance that one of my children made a similar error in judgement........we did not put in the will about burial plans....be it known that i want to be cremated, the ultimate in recycling.........and my ashes spread about in the roses.........now, having unloaded great burdens from mymind, i will go back to work...........