Cookies Goooood!

Eler Beth as she's spooning chocolate chip cookie dough onto the cookie sheet:
"I'm glad we got this big tub of cookie dough. We should always keep some on hand. Whenever I'm craving something sweet and I'm out of candy I can eat cookies. When I'm out of candy I get irritated." Pause. "By the way, I'm out of candy."

"Are you getting irritated?" I asked with interest.

"No," she said, with a 'duh' inflection to her tone. "I've got cookies!"


On a side note:
With a feeling of panic, my mind spinning trying to catch on the right gear, I turned to Eler Beth this evening and said, "Did I just turn 44 or 45?!?" (I swear for the life of me I couldn't immediately recall!)

She smiled and just rolled her eyes!

{shh...the correct answer is 45}

Spring Formal 2011, Before the Big Event

I was allowed to take some photos before they left, and I hope they don't mind if I go ahead and post these before they get the chance to post their own. They are under orders to take lots of pics at the dance, so I'll be back with more!


This is old hat for Andrew, but it's Eler Beth's first "grown-up" party!





















There was a plane going over.








My cutie-pie!

















My other cutie-pie!


























I sat on a wasp first thing this morning, so I told her, "Don't sniff a bee up your nose!"
























"My heels are sticking in the ground!"

April Closes With Sunshine

We have had such horrible weather this April. It has rained, and rained, and stormed, and stormed. What terrible devastation from those tornadoes earlier this week, leaving more than a hundred dead and many homeless.

We have had two clear and sunny days in a row now, and it has been a welcome relief. The rains and thunderstorms are returning tomorrow, but the forecast for next week is looking a bit better than recent previous weeks. I'm hoping that May will be a good month.

Eler Beth is looking forward to her first formal dance on Saturday, so I really hope the weather holds out for them, as it is going to be outdoors. She hasn't bought her dress yet, so we are looking forward to some fun shopping next week.

I hope this post finds all well.

Continuing My Education

I think I'll send March 2011 off with a post. Don't anyone faint.

We've had a busy month. Thomas' work is getting back to normal, thankfully. And although we had a little rerun of winter last week, I think spring is coming back this weekend.

Miss Eler Beth has been busy setting personal goals for herself, and I've set a few of my own. I had the urge this year to go back to school. I have found that when I am planning El's lessons, especially something like her algebra lessons -- something I have to re-learn myself before helping her -- my brain really appreciates the stretching I give it. I have always liked to learn new things just for the sake of learning, and I have come to realize that my brain actually releases endorphins (or, at least, that's how it feels) when I am learning something new. You all know I love literature and grammar. I also love history. I love research. I love geography. I don't love math, but I do love the feeling I get when I have mastered something new in math. I have kept myself sane and out of the dark hole this winter by giving myself lessons in various subjects. So...how to make all that work for me....

Well we have an excellent two-year school here called Ivy Tech. It's inexpensive, and only a few minutes away. Credits and degrees received there can be transferred to Indiana University Southeast (IUS), which is also very close to me. So I gave it a lot of thought and discussed it with Thomas, and I have enrolled at Ivy Tech for the fall semester. I figured I'd be pushing it if I tried for the summer semester. I'm fairly certain I can handle it and everything else in my life, including Eler Beth's schooling. More on what classes I'll be taking later.

My 86-year-old mother had cataracts removed from both eyes this month, and she is doing very well. She had one eye done on the 21st and the other one was done this past Monday, the 28th. When I called her on Tuesday to see how she was doing, she asked me, "Now why did I have to sit in the waiting room for a while before we could leave?" (They put a drop or two of, as the nurse said, "something to relax her" under her tongue, and I think this second time they gave her a bit more because she was a little wobbly and sleepy when the surgery was done.)

I told her, "Because the doctor wanted to check the pressure before you left because you wouldn't be able to see your regular eye doctor before Thursday."

"O...kay," she said slowly. "I remember Eler Beth nudging me to wake me up...So did the doctor see me?"

I had to laugh. "Yes, Mom, don't you remember Lois and Phyllis helping you walk back there?"

"I kind of remember someone helping me walk somewhere. So... What did the doctor say?"

She really was a bit loopy! lol

She'd awakened with a nice appetite by the time we got to Olive Garden.

So, I guess that's about it for now. I was going to revisit some other March posts before the end of the month because I really enjoyed revisiting the ones from 2005, but maybe I'll do March and April next month.

So long for now!

Blogaversary!!

Today is the SIXTH anniversary of Dusty Pages. When I began I had absolutely no idea what I would do with a blog. I had come upon AOL Journals accidentally and thought it might be fun. As I was not a blog reader, it was a totally new concept to me, but I soon started reading a few blogs regularly and then found myself in J-Land! lol

I don't post very often now, but I still manage to visit a few blogs each week and to make a post now and then. My first post wasn't much of one, but it garnered a cute comment from Eler Beth, whose screen name was "PrincessElerBeth" at that time. Her comment below:

princesselerbeth said...

I think you should plant patatos.

March 13, 2005 10:23 AM

I made six posts in March of 2005, and three of them featured Eler Beth in their main themes. We're not surprised, are we? She was nine at the time, and in my second post I described her this way (and I don't believe she's changed at all):

My daughter is such an exuberant little thing. She is up for anything, happy just to be "doing"! I wish I had that energy. It isn't just energy, though. She has such pure joy in everything, and when she has a "particular" interest in something she goes all out to learn everything she can about it and to participate fully in the enjoyment of it.

She has a particular love of fossils and is her class' authority on the subject! She also loves to fish, garden, take care of her dog (who just had puppies) and a number of other things. When she grows up she says she is going to be a paleontologist, an archaeologist, a geologist, a farmer, a teacher, an artist, and, according to her, in her spare time she will raise horses. Oh to be a nine year old girl again!...I hope nothing ever happens to dim her enjoyment of life. She has the persistence, toughness, the never-say-die attitude that can see her through a lot, but she is also sweet, kind-hearted and trusting.

In my fourth post I listed the good and bad things that had happend during the previous week. That was a good idea, and I wish I'd done that sort of post more often. The good things:

The good things that happened this week: Our four puppies born March 10th opened their eyes Thursday, March 24; Monday was the first day of Spring; I talked to my Mom on the phone and everyone is fine at home; didn't have to call from work to make sure the kids were up because it was Spring Break; I have grape hyacinths coming up in my front plant bed; I was off work Friday,so I was able to be sick at home without wasting any PTO time; Thomas hasn't caught the bug yet!

In my fifth post Eler Beth drew on the powers of "Super Nanny:"

My nine-year old daughter is addicted to these nanny shows! I have to admit they are kind of fun to watch. For me they're fun because I can watch in fascination and say to myself, "Wow, glad my kids aren't that bad." My daughter watches in a kind of fascinated horror. She makes comments like, "That kid is a brat! I'm glad I don't act like that!" Occasionally, though, she slides me a side-long look with a little half-smile on her face that says, "oh-oh, I kinda do that, too." But today she apologized to me for something and after the "I'm sorry, mom," she went on to state exactly what she'd done to be sorry for. Then she said, "Notice what I did? I did what the Super Nanny says to do. I said what I was sorry for." Way to go Super Nanny!

And in my fifth post I reported that Eler Beth wished the word "grounded" had never been invented (and don't worry -- I seem to remember that she didn't miss out on anything special that next night; she just had a little tv taken away):

"I WISH THE WORD 'GROUNDED' WAS NEVER INVENTED!"
Those were the words my daughter muttered on her way to bed -- at 11:00!!!

She had kept putting off doing an assignment all week that is due tomorrow, therefore the late night. And while I was trying to help her AND do her hair at the same time I got a little bit of attitude. The attitude didn't improve after a warning, but got worse, therefore the grounding. Now that the hair is done, the assignment complete and in the backpack, and frayed nerves have been smoothed somewhat, regret has set in. Suddenly someone remembers what she's going to be missing out on tomorrow evening if she is grounded. And now she wishes the word had never been invented.

Happy Anniversary Dusty Pages!

I hope you guys enjoyed a bit of a stroll down Memory Lane.

Sorry!!!

Eler Beth's friend, Heather, reminded me a few nights ago that I hadn't made a blog post in ages -- and actually I had been feeling guilty about that. And I'm sorry for leaving the catfish story hanging. However, in truth, my previous post is probably going to prove more amusing than the story behind the catfish on the porch!


My father stepped out onto the front porch one day in March of 2000 and discovered a still-breathing, 7-inch-long catfish on the front porch. There are ponds on neighboring properties, so everyone assumed that one of the cats had caught it, brought it home, and then left it on the front porch. It was a 7-minute-marvel, shall we say.

But the really funny part was that note on the envelope from Barbara telling me about it. "Daddy found a live catfish on the front porch this morning" is, you must admit, a very funny thing to read on the back of an envelope you just got out of your mailbox. I hope the mail carrier got a chuckle out of it too.

In other news, we had quite a storm last evening with marble-sized hail, and then at about 3 a.m. the winds picked up, and we had some rather scary lightning, long, loud rumblings of thunder, and then a torrential downpour. I'm hoping the rest of the week is dryer and mild. I'd love to get out and work in my yard some.

Hope everyone is well out there, and I'll try to do better in March!

Catfish on the Porch?

I was de-cluttering recently and came upon a letter from my sister, Barbara, from March of 2000. I almost always keep Barbara's letters because they are usually funny, besides being filled with the sort of mundane family info that keeps me close to my Mom's and sisters' day-to-day lives. For some reason this letter never got put away with the rest.

It was, for Barbara, a fairly tame sample of her letter-writing, except for one thing. She'd thought of something she'd meant to tell me after she'd sealed the letter, so she wrote it on the back of the envelope. And I can remember that when I got the letter I wondered how many U.S. Mail-people had read it and wondered about it.

Just below the seal she'd written: "Daddy found a live catfish on the front porch this morning."

And for the life of me I can't remember the story behind that spectacular statement! I'm going to have to make a phone call and have my memory jogged!!