New favorite thing!

Did you know you can take a package to Target (the SuperTarget on Abrams - maybe others) and mail a package? It's the NEW POST OFFICE!

Take your package, put in on the scale, tell the machine the size, put in the zip of the destination, swipe your credit card, print the postage and VOILA! No standing in line watching clerks chew gum!

What a concept!

I love it!

Texas v. Nebraska

We went to the game expecting the worst.

After all, we'd suffered through Texas - OU.

But 1) Omaha is nice. We toured Boys Town (remember the Spencer Tracy/Andy Rooney flick? If not, watch it when you can) and the Durham Museum, which is in the old Union Pacific Train Station, when they knew how to build a train staion.

2) the fans before and after the game were unbelievably nice. "Welcome to Lincoln!" "I hope everyone is nice to you while you are here." "Great game!" "Was everyone nice?" "Glad you came"

3) We won!

Shopping

I remember reading years ago about how French women shop every day for food for that night's meal and thinking - that's just insane. I had a weekly calendar of every child's schedule and shopped once a week, planning for leftovers.

Some days, with soccer, volleyball or gymnastics practices, I just planned for McDonald's or Wendy's - knowing I couldn't get home to cook those nights - and if I did go to the effort, it was wasted.

Now, however, I find that shopping every day seems to be my pattern. Since there are just two of us, I tend to just go pick up a salmon dish from Eatzi's or Whole Foods and that's that. Or, like tonight, I go get two steaks, two potatoes and some lettuce. Tomorrow, I'll think of something else and go find it.

Maybe Bubba's.

Wimped out

OK - I wimped out on my trip back from seeing Katherine, et al in Virginia. My AA flight from DCA to DFW was about 3 hours 40 minutes and every minute was marred by two children in 8 DEF (I was in 10 A) talking, laughing, screeching, shrieking, sobbing and playing games at top volume. I should have called the flight attendant at the beginning of the flight ans asked her to ask the children and their adult companion (who never said shhhh or shush or "use your inside voices") to calm them down.

I wondered if perhaps they were hard of hearing and needed to converse at decibels beyond normal speech.

I even put on my defensive CD player earphones and listened to the end of "The Shape Shifter" - Tony Hillerman (highly recommended) and still couldn't block out the sounds of these two demons. At one time they played some sort of game that utilized slapping the tray tables at intervals. I couldn't have been the only wimp in the front of the plane! And they were close enough to First Class to be heard as well.

Next time I won't be so nice....

PS seeing Katherine, Andy and Margaret was delightful! They are moving to within babysitting and cousin range - woo hoo!

This week

This week hasn't been so great. Mary's devoted dog Kieran is gone. He had a great send-off, but will always be missed. He was a one-woman dog.

Also, Jerome (both Jerome and Kieran were named by Mary....) who was our volunteer cat. He showed up with a loud voice in 1992 and demanded to be our cat. We walked him all over the neighborhood (he would follow) to find his lost home, but he was determined to be our cat. He'd already been neutered and declawed in the front, which may have precipitated his departure from his earlier home.
About a month ago, he attacked and jumped on the back of an annoying, barking dog who dared to invade his space! And he did it twice as the idiots who were walking the dog came back "to teach the dog a lesson"!

Jerome had been ailing and losing weight for some time and the last week or so refused food and water. After several attempted interventions, I decided that I couldn't bear for Jerome to just starve himself to death.

Thanks to Janie Hodges, DVM, who treats all of us like family.

In other bad news, my older brother has been diagnosed with lung cancer - no fair for someone who quit smoking in 1987! It's early days, but here's hoping it's caught early and easily treatable.

Founder's Syndrome

My Library group (including me) is suffering from Founder's Syndrome. Those of us who have been there since the beginning of our grassroots effort to make a library happen in our community are having to hand it off to others. And it's hard.

It's hard to see that a whole new group is taking over and depending less and less on our knowledge and experience - even though we know it's time to expand our vision. The new people don't know anything about how we got here and they seem adverse to learning from our mistakes, making them over and over.

However, I'm ready to step back. The new phase of the library is going to involve getting people who know people who can give lots of money to build the new facility - not just us worker bees who sort and shelve the books and hold book sales. We're talking about people who can raise millions of dollars. It won't be perfect, but I have faith that they can get the job done.

There are some of us, however, who can't accept the transition from day to day leadership to a more auxiliary role and are complaining to everyone within earshot that the "letter was too long" "the membership categories were not complete" "the mailing was late" etc, etc. But you know, someone else did it, and we didn't have to.

Our whole effort has been made up as we go along - we could step in and do an event, mailing, program, grant request at the last minute and so far, we're still reacting, rather than acting. But I think this will change as the new group goes forward.

Will they do everything perfectly? Probably not. Would they be smart to listen to the old folks? Probably. Will the Library survive and prosper? I have every hope.

New Car

I just heard about Meg locking herself in the car (she's fine, thank goodness! And Katherine may recover soon.) and I just have to brag about my new car. Here are the things I wanted:

(1) adjustable pedals (my short legs meant that in my Tahoe I was pretty close to the steering wheel. If I were in a wreck, the air bag would probably do some major damage. In my new car, the adjustable pedals mean I'm a little farther away from the wheel.

2. power rear lift gate. Hauling that rear gate in the Tahoe was something I knew I would outgrow. I love punching the fob button and the gate lifts while I'm walking up with my basket from Sam's or Home Depot.

3. power third row. I didn't use the third row in my old car very much. I think we removed the seats when I brought the car home and put them in once, when we had family in town. Each seat weighed about 80 pounds and the installation and removal were hard to do. The power seats mean that I can push a button and raise up one or both of the third row seats.

4. seats fold flat. In the Tahoe, I could fold up the second row, but the third row stood up about 12 inches - meaning that I would have to get in the back area and lift up anything big to go over the seats. In the new car, the folded seats lie flat so things can slide up to the back of the front seats. A caveat is that there is a channel between the folded flat third row and the folded flat second row, but it can be overcome easily.

A bonus is that the car has a locking system that can rescue me if I lock the keys inside or if I just need to put something inside without using the keys. It has a five digit code that unlocks the passenger door with an additional code for the rest of the car. When the total code is in, I can open the back hatch. All without a key!

Also, the car is big, sits up high and small cars fear me.

It's a Ford Expedition. After two Suburbans and two Tahoes, I'm sold on Ford.