Well, today was my first day back to work and they surely didn't ease us back into it. Jeesh. Meetings started at 7:30 and I was busy pretty much all day. I wish there was more time in the day to spend in my classroom. And when I say time in the day, I mean time in the day before 3pm because it is just too nice to be inside for too long today. As you can tell, my good old artroom needs some charm sprinkled onto it. Right now it is vomitiously (yes that is so a word) filthy and there is clutter everywhere, BUT it isn't the room that I thought it was... and that's a good thing. Yes, I'm definitely happier about this job switch than I have been, but there's still a long way to go.



Oh, and we did make it out to the fair on Saturday. This picture is from The Dark Side ride in the midway. It was totally sweet and awesome. The cheesecurds were delightful, but so were the baby animals, and the cool artwork, and of course the cookies. The only thing we couldn't find was the butter sculpture of Princess K!



Here's Boo. I haven't posted a picture of him lately, and I think he's looking especially cute. Lately he's taken to giving this rug a running jump and leaping underneath of it... WHERE WE CAN'T SEE HIM! It's a terribly fun game over here at the Cannon household.

Oooh, Ahhh... I just found this necklace here, and gosh, I want it. The price tag prohibits, but have any of you seen something similiar for a girl on the cheap?

Yesterday was my last day of summer freedom until next year. I woke up stressed about going back to work. Then, I painted part of our bedroom the loveliest shade of asparagus. I'm crazy about the color, and jeesh, Behr paint is pretty nice. I also worked on gluing more smashed up coffee cups on to an old terra cotta pot. It'll be cute on our doorstep next spring. Then I stressed some more. Then the insulation guy came over to give us an estimate, and ended up giving us free advice on doing it ourselves. Such a nice guy, I wanted to ask him if he's married, and if not, give him a couple of numbers on the spot. Then I primped for our Anniversary Date. I even put on mascara. We ended up over on Grand at Cafe Latte for dinner and then Grand Ol' Creamery for some cones. Before we left we even played a doubles game of Ms. Pac-man and Zander got the high-score! I still can't quite believe we've been married for 4 years. In some ways it feels so much shorter, but in lots of ways it seems like we've known each other forever. Ahhh.

Today I got to school for an 8am meeting. I left at 11:15. I cried some hot, sad tears on the way home. If I had those little faces that you can blog with to show moods, mine would be the ugliest today. With puffy eyes even. My classroom is still a mess. I talked to the custodians today and they basically leave the art department ALONE. He said that he'd help me move the stuff I can't push even when use every ounce of strength I possess. But, he doesn't think I should move anything until I talk with the other art teachers. AND, it seems to him that the art teachers all switch rooms throughout the day and he had no idea even which room would have my desk in it. What seems like it should be my desk is filled to the gills with clip-on earrings and half-eaten CERTs. I am quite certainly in a serious funk about this. Monday we have a department meeting at 10am and I'm seriously hoping to be able to turn this frown upside-down ya'll. Or you'll hear about it, oh will you hear about it.

On a bit of a cheerier note, this weekend is packed full o' fun! Tonight there's a fiesta at the lovely Kari's pad. Tomorrow we're going to the FAIR (congrat's Emily), and Sunday there's a Boo Hoo, We Have to go back to School shin-dig at Anna's. I'm hoping that she's still got the recipe for her famous Bee's Knees potion. Speaking of recipes, I just picked this up for $5! It's a pretty simple cookbook with lots of fish, veggies, and awesome looking desserts. However, lots of the recipes call for caster sugar. Is this powdered sugar, or what?

Right now I'm killing time waiting for the "alarm guy" to get here. He's late, but he called first, so he's still alright with me. Most of you have heard the rant about how I'm going to get that alarm installed TODAY, well yes, today I finally am. In about 30 minutes I can officially check it off of my list of things to do before I go back to school. Other things that still need checking off... Paint our bedroom, bathroom and office, plant a tree in our backyard, get a northside home improvement loan, so we can start thinking about a new roof on the garage, a bathroom in the basement, and insulation up in the attic so we don't have the water damage we had last year... Oh I also need to have at least one more BBQ, go camping in the back of our new pick-up truck, sew a wrap skirt with vintage stretchy fabric from ARC, clean out the garage, call ARC to come and pick up my old stuff, make some gazpacho, get signed up for belly dance class, and maybe try and get down to see my Grandma in Nebraska. Whew. Oh, and maybe plan some art projects for my soon to be students. One idea for them is mandatory "doodle of the day" time. Which will hopefully give them a time to warm up their hands and get into creative mode. I'll provide blank note cards, and folders of artifacts from other countries, and they've got to provide a bic pen doodle that somehow represents what they see without copying. At the end of the quarter we'll bind them into a doodle book.



On Sunday we went to the Lantern Festival at Como Park. Here's Zander with Mike and Rhonda while we were getting ready for the lanterns. Zander looks happy because only hours before he got the title for his truck. It ain't pretty. However, it will be able to handle any alley way extravaganza that I might stumble upon. Mike and Rhonda were great sports after having to deal with Rhonda's purse getting stolen early in the morning. Thief, if you're reading this, you're a bad, bad, person. Give it all back and say way more than just 20 Hail Marys. Anyway, we watched some drumming and saw more than our share of Ninja style fighting. During one of the demonstrations the teacher explained how Ninjas would disable their attackers and then sneak away into the darkness. It was pretty quiet at that point, until a little guy with a not so little voice said, "Ninjas are cowards, huh Dad?"



When we first got to the park, this huge string of kites was flying with almost no wind. Bee-u-ti-ful.



Here's what we came for... The lighting of the lanterns. I'm so crappy at taking nighttime photos!

Crap Week

...but especially crappy yesterday. I went into school yesterday. Do I want to go into school yet? No. It wasn't a good thing because, dear friends, it was awful. I had to get a "sub key" because it's too early to get a real key. I politely asked the secretary what my classroom number is, and to hell if she knows. Finally, and begrudgingly, she opened a notebook and told me 119. 119 is CRAP. And backwards, it's 911. That cannot be a good sign. It might as well be 666. There are tables everywhere, some of them turned over on their side. Speaking of over on their side, there are 3 HUGE flat files on their sides... too heavy to push over, but junk cascading onto the floor. Files that don't belong to me or the previous teacher, but to the teacher NEXT DOOR. Nothing is labeled, and everything is dirty. My mother-in-law taught me the word "catastrophizer." I'm trying my very best not to be one. But mostly I want to FREAK RIGHT OUT. In the midst of my anguish, one morsel of school-workings 101 came back to me... The custodians really rule the school. On Monday, I'm bringing in some home-made cookies and I'm not going for the "sub key". I'm going for the masters of all the keys.

In other news, I finished Harry Potter 6 yesterday. I laughed and cried and begged for more.

In other, other news, next Thursday night is our anniversary! Unemployed Ladies Club, I've earned no points with you so far, and it's not looking so good.

Yep, it's down

Our tree is down and our yard looks naked. We're interested in a tree for the front to make up for it, but our local nursery is looking pretty shabby in the tree area. We'll see...



Here's a Cherokee Chocolate tomatoe from our garden. They're delishioso!



Last night we painted the town red with Mike and Emily. I got a great shot of them at the Red Dragon, but I'll email it to her in hopes that she'll stinking update her blog, darnit anyway. I'm not sure what I was doing with my tongue, but otherwise, not a bad picture for only four tries!

Here's what I found under the pergo floor last week. I think it's probably from the 70's, and gosh darn it, I kind of like it. ANYTHING is better than that fake crapola that they threw in here to sell us the place. There is hard wood flooring underneath this lino, but right now I'm just not up to tearing out the lino and the subfloor, and then throwing some money at someone to refinish everything. Instead, I'm into throwing money at a plumber that had to come and save us from an exploding toilet problem. Boo "accidentally" smacked some dental floss into the toilet and I, not predicting floss in the toilet, flushed and no amount of plunging was going to fix that situation. I even had a pregnant lady at my house and had to forbid her access to our disgusting situation. No problem though, I signed up for Angie's List, and I've got the recommendations of people throughout the cities. If you need me to look something up for ya, just let me know.



Here's the pride and joy of my thrifting last weekend. $1.50 bought me this cutey little summer quilt. Someone spent a lot of time putting this together. Thankfully it wasn't me because I have absolutely zero patience for putting together little triangles--so their corners fit together just so. Blech. Anyway, our regular comforter is thick and warm and perfect for being thrifty on the winter heating bill, and not so great for sleeping with the window open during the summer months.



This Saturday night at Mosaic on a Stick there's a gallery show called Emotions, happening at 7PM. I did this piece called Preconception. It's all about trying to get pregnant and really, it's my own little shrine. The little baby on the front was a gift from Lori. She kept it in her pocket when she was trying to get pregnant and so she gave it to me. (This woman is just the sweetest) Well, I know that things in my pockets usually disappear for good, so I decided to glue it onto something instead. I had so much fun with this project.


The numbers on the front are a reference to this song.

Three Things

1. If you're in the Twin Cities you NEED to get signed up to get these weekly updates. Today I scored a beatiful handmade quilt for our bedroom, a vintage fiestaware cutie pie bowl, a fertility doll, a set of 16 mugs that I'm going to smashie-smashie, a big old blue beaded necklace, and some vintage linens to hang in our kitchen for under $15! I'm so proud of my purchases that I'll have to post pics when Zander gets back with the camera.

2. In my opinion, the Uptown Art Fair has become an absolute bore. Yes, there was some good stuff there. In fact, most of what I saw had wonderful craftsmanship. Done to perfection. I totally support putting the arts in the public eye. I love that this particular fair is huge and, from what I understand, difficult to get in to. But do we want the general public to see art as something clean and shiney, not much soul, and expensive?

3. We're contemplating a second car. A smallish truck, if we can find one. My sisters and Mom accompanied me to Car Mart (a sell your own car lot out in Maplewood) today and I was suprised that there were a few right around my price range. My favorite was a Toyota Tacoma and it was CUTE. Just as we were opening the hood and looking for the VIN, a guy (I thought he was the sales person) came up and offered to let me start it up. He was a little gruff about why we cared about the VIN, but if we wanted to waste our time with numbers we could just be his guest. At that point I should have realized that something was up. I took it for a little spin around the lot, and as I pulled up next to him he wanted to know what I thought. Well, besides the ENGINE LIGHT BEING ON, it was pretty nice. "You can't trust those engine lights, they come on all the time." "Yeah," I said, "but I just can't spend money on something with an engine light on." "Oh sure, it runs like new, but you trust a little light. Last week a bunch of damn asians came in and messed around under the hood so that the light would come on. But you go ahead and trust a little light when it runs like perfect. YOU, get out of the truck." I did get out, I was in shock. He got in the truck and squealed out of the parking lot. I hope he was on his way to an anger management class. Apparently he was the owner and I hurt his little feelings by looking for a VIN and getting all hyper trusting of a stupid little engine light. Hrrmph.

maniac

Whenever Zander's out of town, I become a bit of a maniac. I don't sleep. I stay up all night working on a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Last night, after the crafter's conspiracy meeting (which was absolutely wonderful) , I came home and made a messenger bag out of some turquise velvety fabric that I picked up at Unique Thrift last winter. Yes, I was up until 3. I didn't have insomnia and I'm what you'd call a "good sleeper." I like sleep, and I like 8 hours. So This morning after 4 hours, I got to thinking about our kitchen and the ugly, fake, wood floor that floats about 2 inches above the rest of the world. So I went and got a puller-upper tool from the basement and began what has been on my mind for almost a year now. Bye-bye ugly pergo. Hello vintage linolium underneath. For now. Until I decide you also must die.

Key Lime Pie

Our block party was an interesting one. Lots of neighbors that I hadn't met yet, many of which I'd love to hang out with before the next block party. We had a balloon toss with the little kids, which quickly turned into us all trying to soak each other. We might possibly have the cutest kids on our block. Jason (lives just a few doors down) loves playing with his action figure of the Rock. The Rock is missing an arm and he just never gets tired of me pretending like I'm chewing it up. Another little girl asked if we could have another BBQ again sometime so that we could play together. We had house tours... After seeing a few other kitchens in our 'hood, I'm convinced that there is hardwood underneath our kitchen floor. I might just rip up all the junk and see what I find... Zander won't mind--he's out of town! We also had a cell phone taken by some girls from another block. We kept calling the stolen phone and they just kept on answering. We tried to threaten them with "the police will come to your house if you don't bring it back," but it didn't phase them. Finally a much smarter man offered to meet them and make a $5 exchange for the return of the phone. Money talks. Here is the key lime pie recipe that I used for the party. It was so easy, and there weren't as many ingredients involved as I'd imagined. Yumm!

we're back!

We're back and we had a great time in Franklin, in case you're wondering. It was a relaxing vacation with lots of time for great chatting and delicious eating. We got to see a really huge lighting show that seemed to me like it was right there in the back yard. Although the yard is really a huge field that gets mowed and then raked and then burnt to the ground in just a few really smokey piles. I love bonfires... So mesmerizing... Must stare into the fire... We also got to play lots of ping-pong in the attic of the new garage. The Cannons are a ping-pong playing family, and had absolutely no problem mopping the floor with me. Our tourament is called The Coop Classic. Next year I hope to dominate.

It's fun coming back to such an exciting week. First off, Anna took great such great care of my plants that I've got quite a little harvest going on. Thank you! The next best exciting thing is our block party tonight. I'm making key lime pie and maybe some kind of salad. I'm excited to meet some more of the neighbors. Thursday night is the Crafter's conspiracy meeting, which is also very exciting. Archana is a lovely lady and I just love this whole henna business. AND this weekend is art and craft mayhem with all of the festivals going on all over the city. YEEEHHAAAW!