Charming


Rachel Cute
Originally uploaded by thepracticalscot.

Rachel and I are in the middle of the 2nd week on the bus. We have our routine down now — the trigger song on the radio that means it’s time to put on coats and gather purses. How I repeat the intro of our favorite radio show, The Rachel Maddow Show, as we walk the four blocks to the bus. Rachel scouting seats for us as I pay the fare.

So far, it is going pretty smoothly. We enjoy this time together — it’s very different from our car rides downtown. We walk, check out the flowers and critters of St. Paul. We sit side-by-side on the bus. She colors while I hold her markers. It is all very peaceful, very serene. Not what you’d expect on a city bus.

Rachel is charming everyone we see. I’m teaching her to say “Good Morning” or “Thank you” to the drivers. As we walk the three blocks downtown to work/daycare, she zooms through the skyways with the same sense of ownership that she has with the Mall of America. Have big hallway, will run and be cute. It’s fun to see the smiles that come over people’s faces — even the homeless folks in the skyway — as she goes by.

She is darn cute. And I had absolutely nothing to do with it.

A Prairie Home Parade


Girl Sandwich
Originally uploaded by thepracticalscot.

Last Wednesday was the Premier of “A Prairie Home Companion – The Movie”. I know that’s not the official title, but around here, you need to differentiate between the movie and the weekly radio program!

Sarah, Rachel, and I took the bus into downtown St. Paul, and waited for the parade to start. It was 25 minutes late starting. As brief as it was, it was worth the wait.

It was a little chilly, so the girls and I huddled together. Another parade watcher took this photo for me.


Lily and Meryl
Originally uploaded by thepracticalscot.

We were able to stand near the curb, so even the girls had a great view of the parade.

The parade was brief, starting with the Highland Park High School band (Sarah and Rachel’s future high school). Then various celebrities went by in horse-drawn carriages.

Near the end of the parade came Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep — two ladies I have admired for years. I am so tickled that this picture came out so well. I didn’t know that Lily was making a face! I don’t know who the other woman is with them. I assume it’s another actress from the movie (it’s an ensemble cast).

The girls and I hopped back on the bus about 10 minutes later, to finish the adventure. We had a blast!

I’d Like to Thank CluelessCarolinaGirl…

If you look to the right of this entry, you’ll notice this … thing showing thumbnails of photos. That’s a Flickr link, and is another way for me to get photos into the blog.

I’d like to thank my cyberfriend, CluelessCarolinaGirl, for putting this cool thing on her blog, and then pushing me in the general direction. It took me a while to hack it out, and for a few minutes, Clueless’s girls were showing up on my blog — but I figured it out!

It helps to follow an old crafting principle: CASE (Copy And Steal Everything). Going along with this principle is this: give credit where credit is due. A tip of the hat and a pan of virtual lasagne to you, Clueless!

I want to make some other changes to the blog — and bugged another cyberfriend, Miss Cellania, for tips on what she did.

So, after I finish grading the last papers of the semester and help my mom with her upgrade to a better computer (almost done, right Mom?), I can play with my blog formatting. As Homer would say: WooHoo!

Give it up for the Budget

As of May 1st, I will no longer drive my car to work. I can’t afford to pay to park at work anymore. I pay more than twice as much to park my car than I would pay for Rachel and I to take the bus every day. Our budget just can’t handle such luxuries anymore.

I’ll have some gas money as well — 8 miles a day x 22 workdays a month. About 7 gallons of gas a month. Plus I’ll cut down on my lunch time “I have to get out of here” getaways to Target. All road trips will need to be carefully planned.

Rachel is very excited at the prospect that we will be riding the bus together, until she starts school in September. She’s a good travel companion, and goes more with the flow than her big sister at this age. The two of us will be leaving the house at 6 am so I can get to work in time, and give me the right amount of work hours so I can be home just as Sarah gets home from school. Provided the afternoon bus runs on time.

Instant Relative Swap

Here’s the ATC I made for the Instant Relative Swap on the CS list:

For those of you who don’t know who “instant relatives” are, they are those vintage photos/images you find on things these days. People you don’t know about. You just claim them as “instant relatives”.

I figure I get to wonder about my Chinese “instant relatives”, too. I think my kids’ birth parents are about as “instant” as the family you marry into. And just as mysterious. This card reflects my thoughts on those unknown members of the family tree.

Thoughts of Spring

I’m participating in an Easter/Spring swap on the Nihao Stampers list. While I don’t have cute bunny or chick stamps, I do have a number of flower stamps that I could have used for this swap. But, I decided my card theme should be based on what I think of when I think “Spring”…

Tornadoes.

Perverse? Odd? A stormspotter gone mad?

How about this — I purchased these tornado and tornado-related stamps years ago and this is the first time I’ve been able to use ’em.

And I had fun. I hope my fellow swap participants enjoy them.

The card with the blue background is a stamp collage. The tornado, gate, and ladybug are all separate images. I’m thinking about sending a .jpg to some Yahoo!Groups listowners I know. I’m sure at least one of them might consider it worthy of being on their group home page.

Donna’s Class – Week 15

I really waffled about doing this project — altering a frame. I just couldn’t think of a frame that was in need of a face lift. Plus I didn’t know if I could pull it off.

Then, Sunday night, I turned around from my computer and found it: the frame that holds a small cardinal print. It was a dollar doo-dad from Target with a 3 x 3 opening that I had modified into a picture frame. It didn’t look that good.

What did I have to lose? I knew I had to re-do it sometime.

Pulled out the paint, crackle medium, brushes, ribbon, CS paper, Sizzix, Distress Inks, ruler, and Xacto knife. A couple hours later, here’s what I came up with:

It’s looking MUCH better now!

Excitement in the ‘Hood

As Rachel and I came home from work-and-school, a squad car backed out of our alley. It is followed by one of those big tow trucks with an SUV on the back. The windows of the SUV are all broken out.

I come home, and the house is wide open. No dogs. Nothing missing except husband and dogs.

Husband reappears in 15 minutes to tell me there was a police chase and a drug bust in our alley. Apparently the SUV was being chased by the police. It swerved into our alley on two wheels, and hit two garages before it stopped. The estimated speed was 80-90 mph, according to one of the guys who owns one of the garages. The SUV had many bags of cocaine in it.

No word on the driver, if he (we know it was a he) was injured or not.

Here’s what I saw when I walked to the alley.


And the condition of the garages:




This looks like the damage of a small(er) tornado. As one of the neighbors said, “an SUV tornado”.

By the way, all this happened while John was in the basement. He never heard a thing. He came upstairs and saw a bunch of cars and people in our street. Went out back, and there was the mess.

The very fortunate thing is that school hadn’t let out yet. We live 1/2 block from Sarah’s school. That could have been a terrible mess if kids were around.

No explanation from the husband on why he left the house wide open…

30 Minutes…

The biggest scrapbooking problem I’ve had, now that I have two kids, is getting something into the second kid’s album. I now understand the old joke about the oldest child has the fully complete baby book, and each child has fewer and fewer photos, until the last child is lucky to have their first picture taken at age 12.

So for Rachel’s album, I’m not going chronological right now, and just scrapping whatever hits me. Whatever I can get done right now, in this next 1/2 hour. I’ll go back and do the chronological thing when I know I’ll have 5 or 6 hours of uninterrupted time. But if I can only grab a few minutes, I’ll keep it simple, and inspired.

Therefore, today’s blog posting. It was a monochrome challenge on the Club Scrap list. But I really wanted to document as many of Rachel’s names for herself as I could. It also gave me the opportunity to play with changing a color photo to black and white with PaintShop Pro. It was pretty darn simple.

And now, it’s time to rest. As Scarlett said, “tomorrow is another day”. And my new words of wisdom are: “If you can’t do it all, do what you can do in 30 minutes”.