Part Two

Sorry about that abrupt ending for Friday's post. I kept losing a connection to blogger and I was afraid I would lose all I had written so far, so I saved it and didn't get it posted until Sunday night (tonight). But better late than never.

Okay, the second reason why Camp Meeting was so sad this year...It was our last Camp Meeting. Ever. We, in the kitchen, kept saying stuff like "Next year we'll do it this way" then realize, no, we wouldn't be doing anything any way next year. Just felt a little sad, like the end of an era. A big era.

So much has been going on lately that I haven't even been blogging about. The whole time I'm doing something I think how I can't wait to blog about it, but then I get tired and go to bed and by the time I get to my computer, the excitement is either gone or I want to keep that part of my life to myself. How selfish and fickle I've become. Become? I'm thinking maybe I've always been this way. Ha!

Shael learned first hand what the word "longsuffering" means. She went to the tractor pulls with us a couple weeks ago. My parents went so she didn't have anyone to stay with while Mike and I took off. It was kind of expensive, but when I think about how many hours we were there, it kind of evens out. We were there SEVEN hours. We got there an hour early to get a good seat, then it had some delays because the track wasn't quite ready after the big rain they'd had the night before. So, an hour and 45 minutes of those seven hours were spent waiting on the thing to start. Shael hated it and never wants to go back. How did we raise such a child? A child who disdains tractor pulls? Hogwash. We should make her go every year until she learns to like it. MUAH-HA-HA! At one point when a modified truck went by, it was so loud that it made the earth shake and the bleachers fairly hum with vibrations. Mike said he figured all the women were squirming in their seats with big smiles on their faces. Shael looked up at my Mom and asked "Hey, Mum? Did that make your butt rumble?"

Shael has completed her first full week of summer school. Week two commences tomorrow morning at 8:25. My Mom has volunteered to pick Shael up from school at 11:30, when class time is over (yeah, 3 whole hours of classtime) and take her over to church camp, which is only about a mile away from the school. Then she's going to pick her up at church camp by 9:30 and take her home, where she'll spend the night and catch the bus in the morning for school. This way, she can have her cake and eat it, too. I guess. Not really because having to go to summer school is not quite like having her cake. But, you know what I mean.

I went blue berry picking yesterday. In the hot, hot sun. Stupid me, I didn't want to get out of bed before 8:30 or 9:00 then I watched Pretty Woman while I did a load of laundry. Yes, it took the entire movie to wash one load of laundry. The cold water comes out in a pinky finger size trickle and I was washing my delicates in cold water. I finally got to the blue berry patch by 12:30 in the afternoon. I forgot to tell my sister what conclusion I came to after about 30 minutes of picking berries and only having one bucket half full. Next year, my nieces or nephew are coming to pick berries, too. It'll build character. Another conclusion I came to: any person who considers themselves to be Indian, should go pick berries at least once in their life time. Blue berries would be easyest, no thorns or stickers. Just lots of heat and tedious work. It took me three hours yesterday, but I finally got three gallons picked. One gallon for me, one for Mom and one for my sister. And sister, if your freezer goes out and you lose the whole gallon of berries, please, DO NOT TELL ME THIS! When your berries leave my fridge to go to their new home, I'm going to assume they will find their ultimate destiny in some pie or cobbler or muffins or something delicious like that. Not ruined and dumped into the nearest trash can. No, if you have to lie to me, I'm okay with that. Last year, if you will remember, I picked LOADS of blackberries and gave them to my Aunt Susie. I know I gave her at least four gallons. I helped her find place in her plumb full freezer and I left there with this beautiful quilt she gave me. Then at Green Corn she tells me that her freezer went out on her and she lost all the berries, not to mention all the other stuff she had in that freezer chest. It was CRAMMED. She lost every thing in it. I was sick! All those berries! I pampered those berries, picked every morning as soon as it was daylight enough, dew still on them. Then they got ruined and thrown away. So, please, if I give any of you berries that I've picked myself, don't tell me if they go bad. Lie to me, if you have to, and tell me they were scrumptious.

So, now, I'm sporting a nice little red neck sun burn. Literally, a red neck. I burned my new tat, not a good thing. And my forearms are burnt. Can't forget my face. My face is red cheeked. But, I have blue berries!

I took Shael shopping for clothes today. Wal-Mart clothes for my growing girl. I dropped her off at "Miss Tammy's" house so she could ride to camp with her new friend Dahlian. She put on one of her new outfits with her new swim suit on underneath. The rest of her clothes I took with me and dropped them off at my Mom's house as we were going by on our way to Mike's Mom's house. We took the bike so Mike crammed all Shael's new clothes, plus her bible and her school three ring binder in the saddle bags. He also crammed a pair of new swimming shoes and a can of sun screen in there. He was pulling out stuff from the Wal-Mart sack and when he pulled out those swimming shoes he started to stuff them in the saddle bag then took a second look and said "Good God! These are HUGE!" I laughed because they were huge. She tried them on, though. She just has big feet. To give her some credit, they were a little bit long. It seemed they only carried great big men's swim shoes and little kid swim shoes. Nothing in between. She got a pair of the big men's shoes but they were only about an inch too long and not too wide at all. She's my growing girl!

I'm going to bed. I'm tired even though when we got home from Mike's Mom's I took an almost two hour nap. I came home, peed, changed into a night gown and then sprawled out on the bed. I woke up at almost 9:00 and decided I'd better get up and wash some towels or we wouldn't have anything to dry off on in the morning. The washer buzzed it's finishing buzz about 20 minutes ago. I really should put them in the dryer and go get some more sleep. I know, I know, *safety hazard*! I'm going to live on the edge, so sue me. Guess what? I also rode on the motorcycle without a helmet! AHHHH!