Tears running down my face

My coworker and I were talking about Girl Scout camp the other day. She, like me, was a camp counselor. She sang a song that I had never heard that was the most hysterical Girl Scout Song I'd ever heard. It was about the Titanic. The chorus goes like this:

Oh it was sad, so sad
It was sad, too bad.
It was sad when the great ship went down.
To the bottom of the husbands and wives, little children lost their lives.
It was sad when the great ship went down.
Down to the bottom of the sea
blub blub blub

I could not stop laughing. What kind of psycho thought this was a song appropriate for girls to sing? What kind of freak wrote the song to begin with? Clearly the song has fallen out of fashion.

I joined a committee at work. Officially it is called the activties committee, but secretly I call it the party planning committee. I'm on it with a woman who honestly looks like Angela from The Office... down to the old fashioned shirts. We're doing free nachos next week for cinco de mayo. We also do the Christms party and a birthday thing once a month.

I'm almost moved in. (and by almost I mean probably not as moved in as I think I am). I have to finish by this weekend though because I have a housekeeper coming in on Wednesday before I drive to Arizona.

My White Whale

So in the course of packing I've discovered the room I thought was going to be the easiest, my bedroom, is turning out to be the biggest pain in the ass. First of all there's no space. I have to put the boxes on my bed because there's no room at the foot of it for boxes. Apparently I've also taken to just dumping stuff in the bedroom. It's the first room as I walk in the door and about 99% of the time I walk in and immediately have to pee. It doesn't matter if I'm coming home from work, from dinner, from an evening out, the movies... whatever. 99% of the time I walk in the door, throw off my coat, backpack and anything I'm carrying on the bed and then go to the bathroom. My bedroom has become sort of a catch all for everything... old mail, dry goods, bathroom stuff, etc. It is ridiculous.

I have to begin making lists. I'm not a list person naturally, but there's a lot of shit that has to be dealt with for my move... like my cable box... if I sign up for comcast in Dallas can I just bring this one? Do I have to return it to them... and on and on and on. I don't think I have time for this.

Tonight's my last scout meeting. I have mixed emotions on this. On the one hand, of course I'm sad. I love these girls. I've been with many of them for YEARS. I will miss them terribly. On the other... I'm tired. I've been burnt out for the past few years and I know the troop has suffered as a result. I will consider doing it again after Michelle & Bryan move with K & O. If Michelle is interested in having the girls in scouts I'll consider doing it again... or not. :)

My Girls

I never post photos of my girls. They are not my children so I won't show their face online even though I think on a good day only 3 people read this but I did like this photo and can share it. We went camping at Kayak Point Park in Snohomish Co. We had a pretty good time. Played a lot of Apples to Apples and played on the playground. We cooked and ate and did arts and crap. All in all it was a pretty successful camping trip.

Trying new things

This weekend has been a weekend of a few firsts.

Firstly, I went to a concert of the Lake Union Symphony on Friday night. They were good performers, but I did not like the 3rd piece they played. It was a little too discordant for my taste. Afterward went out for some booze with Big R and his boyfriend. I like them both and don't see them too often. Now that Big R knows I may be leaving, he wants to hang out. We'll see how long that lasts.

Today I field tripped to Michaels via the bus. Now this isn't really a first since I've taken bus 150 before. Bus 15o sucks. It is one of the buses that runs through all these little areas and makes you a little bit crazy. But I got a bunch of craft supplies and so the girls and I should be good for our next couple of meetings. I don't know if they'll like what I got for them to do though. They had these wooden bracelets on clearance. I bought a slew of those as well as some ribbon and some wood paint to decorate them. The other thing I picked up were some tin boxes and some rub on transfers. We'll put the transfers on and then modge podge the whole box to make sure they are sealed. I hope the girls like both projects.

Finally I attempted to make something different than I usually would for dinner. I found a recipe online for an Indonesian peanut sauce. It was a pretty simple recipe and somehow I didn't know I didn't have vinegar, but even without the vinegar it was pretty good. The peanut sauce is really peanutty (imagine that) so a little goes a long way. But otherwise it turned out quite nice. :) I now have another chicken recipe to add to my arsenal. I had to come up with something since all the usual recipes I would make seemed to be missing one ingredient. (Apparently I have nothing in my cabinets because it isn't like I was missing one thing. I was missing a whole slew of one things. Grr)

Related to grr... my tv is having issues... well not my tv but my cable. And now I've missed sesveral minutes of this movie. It is illogical because it has only been 2 minutes that have passed. I'm confused.

Big Project

Apparently I've taken a minimum of 266 photos of my scouts during all the years we've been meeting. Minimum because that's the number of photos I just ordered. Over the holidays I purchased this cute photo scrapbook and I'm going to scrapbook all my scout years. I really should find my table before I do this so that I can work in a big enough space. Scrapbooking is big work. :) I'm rather excited about working on this. It was so funny printing out these pictures. The girls were so young!

Brownie Fail!

Well I just got notification that I'm losing two more of my brownies. That means I'm down to two girls. You can't have a troop with only 2 girls. That just doesn't work so I'm trying to figure out what to do with those two. I've contacted my person at GS to see what she says. I'm a little sad but at the same time not so sad. It has been exhausting running two troops. And although I liked the activities the little girls had to do, they just wore me out. Plus, can you imagine the money I'll save...

Mosquitos slapped, marshmallows toasted

I took the older girls camping this past weekend. We went to the same place I took the younger ones, Tolt Macdonald park in Carnation. It was HOT. I do not do well in the heat so it was a bit miserable for me. The girls had a good time though. We went strawberry picking in the morning at Remlinger farms. The 5 of them picked just under 10 lbs of strawberries (like 9.7). I sent them all home with some this morning. We waded in the Tolt & Snoqualmie Rivers. It was so cold but felt so good! The river was still moving quickly but it was much shallower. We made ice cream. We waded again. We decorated t-shirts. We cooked and ate a lot. It was a good time on a whole. :) I am bitten like you would not believe. I am also burned to a crisp like bacon. But it is all good right. :) I'm clean, and sitting in front of a giant fan and planning on dozing off on my sofa. :)

Last Test!

I've started studying for my last CEBS test. (The test that makes me a certified employee benefits weenie according to my father). This test may kill me. I read the first chapter last night and I get it, but I had to reread several passages a couple of times to really understand. Economics. Sheesh.

Sunday I'm volunteering at my employer's graduation ceremonies. What does it say about me that the ONLY reason I do this is so that I can keep my face in the Toolman's face and show that my department IS engaged on campus and we do care about stuff. Also, I make sure to say hello to the Toolman when I see him even if it means making my way across a crowded room to do so. I have to be there at 7:00. That's awfully early for spite. :) But I'll bring my books and my nintendo and entertain myself during he actual ceremony.

I have photos to post. I have to take them off the camera first. I let the little girls use my camera while we were camping this past weekend. The batteries were dead by 2:00 PM. Sigh. I didn't get any of the group shots. :( I'll have to hope a kind grown up took one and will send it to me.

The big girls' camping trip is killing me. I keep having to change the date. I don't think I'm going to this time. Sigh.

Eek!

I'll have pictures from Nashville to post soon. I had a really good time. The conference was good. I learned a lot. The rest of my days in Nashville were nice. I had the best steak dinner I've had ever (I can't remember if DelMonico's in Vegas was better) while there. I should feel mortified by the cost, but I don't because it was great! However if I look at it like this, the amount I paid for dinner plus tip was less than I contribute to Lifelong Aids Alliance and United Way so that's not too shabby.

I'm getting ready to go camping with the little girls this weekend. We're going on Saturday and returning on Sunday since they are only 6 & 7 and I don't want to overwhelm them or be overwhelmed by them. :) I was putting together the 'schedule' and man there's a lot of time to fill. Although luckily cooking does take up quite a bit of time. :) The girls will do the cooking with the grown ups supervising (and maybe pitching in a tiny bit but in general this is the kids' job.) The weather, though, looks like ASS this weekend. We will be rained on the whole time. Good thing we'll be in yurts. We will get to decorate visors (Yeah they're useful...) and backpacks and I think we'll gather leaves. Hopefully there'll be enough 'sun' to do solar prints with the leaves (hence the plexiglass, Stephen). We'll also be able to do rubbings.

I ordered some fancy pants granola bars from peanutfreeplanet.com. These are guaranteed peanut free. I hope they come in by Friday so that I can take them camping. I called and they are sending me a replacement box because according to the US postal service my employer works in a zipcode that doesn't exist. Sigh. I also have to figure out what badges I gave the kids already because I'll have more for them this weekend.

Tolt MacDonald Park

On Sunday Lyday and I went to Tolt MacDonald Park. This is where I'm taking both sets of girls camping and I'd never been there. The park is relatively close to Seattle so that's nice. It's actually a pretty little park. I wasn't really sure what to expect, especially considering you're still kind of in a town.

Nothing really to say about tall trees, but they're cool.

I don't know what this little yellow flower is, but I really like it. I was playing a lot with my camera's ability to take really close up shots. (There's a word for it, I can't remember it.) (EDIT: It's Macro and Super-Macro mode)

Tolt MacDonald park is on the confluence of two rivers, the Tolt and the Snoqualmie. Since we had just started getting crazy warm weather, the river was running much faster than I think it usually does and it was much more swollen than I expected. This poor little tree looks like it is not usually this much underwater.

This is the bridge across the Snoqualmie River. It is a suspension bridge and very... hmm what's the word. Well I don't know if there's a proper word but it moves a lot. We had to cross on foot. That will be a bit of a trial for the girls because they are going to have to cart their gear across it to get to the yurts. There are wagons at the camp host's station that we can hopefully use.

Three dandelions! Yay! Lyday and I both blew the dandelion fluff off several in the hopes that our wishes would come true. :)

Snail. Obviously. He was cruising across the path like he owned the whole world.

Bumble bee! Yay! There were a whole lot of them buzzing around the flowers next to the trail. They seemed a tolerant bunch and let Lyday and I get up pretty close to take their pictures. It did make me realize that I don't know if any of my little girls are allergic to bees. I kind of want to email all the moms and say "Go get your kid stung by a bee. I don't want any surprises." That's probably not the best way to go though.

I liked the green in this photo and the way the moss hangs off the tree branches. They almost look like zombie arms.

This is the Snoqualmie River from the bridge. Although the bridge is designed to span the entire width, I'm pretty sure this is unnatural. Lyday wants to go tubing down the river. I am not partial to tubing. I don't like feeling like I can't control where the tube goes.

There were several grassy areas that were just so simple and pretty. This one was full of those teeny little daisy like flowers. I like those flowers. I remember when we were kids, we used to do this thing where we'd hold the flower in our fingers and say "Momma had a baby and her head popped off" and then we'd flick the blossom off the stem. I don't know why we'd do that. Kids are weird. They are also effective for making diasy chains.

Two little purple flowers. THey were so cute and little. Lyday decided to do a whole set of pictures of pairs of flowers.

There were these ferns that grow kind of in a circle like this. I don't know why they do or what kind of ferns they are but it is so cool the way they do that. Mishka, you know about the area, do you know what type of ferns they are?

I liked these little star type flowers too. They were cool. Another flower I can't identify but I thought it was very pretty.

This is the confluence of the Tolt River and the MacDonald River. You can't tell in the picture but in real life, there is a distinct line where the two rivers are not quite the same water. It's pretty cool.

Luck Giveth and Luck Taketh Away

I found a place that would work for the little girls but sadly I got an email last night that they are full for July and have like one weekend in May. The weekend they have... the weekend I am already signed up for volunteering with NW Folklife Fest. So that's out. I think I may take them to the same place I'm taking the big girls... I don't know. But I have to figure it out soon since everything keeps filling up. Sigh.

I worked out this morning while watching an episode of The Office on my ipod. It didn't seem to slow me down too much and I may do that again. Sometimes I need the distraction and can't take just looking at the clock the whole time.

Wahoo

I may have found a place for the little girls to overnight. Yay! (My fingers are crossed). The best part, they are a no fee place done by a service organization. (Really my fingers are crossed. We still have no money to do anything and any money we use would be coming out of my pocket until we get our money from council after the whole cookie debacle.)

Camping

I have scheduled the camping trips for both my troops of girls. Now that I've done that, I notice that one of my older girls has a dance recital that weekend. Isn't that the way it always is? And apparently one of my other girls already has a conflict. Sigh.

Slacker Rewarded

I took another test today. As I was riding the bus and trying to read the study guide all I could think was that I was going to flunk this. There was no doubt in my mind I was going to fail this test. I hadn't studied and about 1/2 of the material I didn't really think I understood. I passed. It was probably the most satisfying pass that I've gotten on my tests. Also it is the 7th test of 8. I have one more! YAY! The last one is on Health Economics. I'm interested in Health Economics (much moreso than executive compensation) so this one should be the best one. And then I'm done. Go me!

I dropped off the cookie paperwork after running Tess to the vet. I had to turn the mom in. I feel badly about it, but I'm done. I realized that I had tried to contact the woman 19 times in 15 days. That's ridiculous. RIDICULOUS! I am a bit sad that this means a guarantee I won't see her daughter back. I like her kid. And I think we were good for her daughter. That's a bummer.

Cookie Standoff Day 2

The problem with this whole thing is that the mom's excuses seem so vaguely plausible - a family member died, she's changing cell phone providers and she's been in training meetings. Yet, at the same time, they are so shady. No word from her at all today. I called the home and her daughter's father said she brought the money with her to work. I called work and she wasn't there. I called work a second time and she had left for the day. I called her home and said I expect to see the money at tomorrow night's meeting. I feel awful being so naggy about it, but we're talking $570. That's 1/3rd of all the cookie money we owe. I just called the service unit cookie manager and I'm still fine with not turning all my stuff in. Clearly it is a good thing I didn't trust her with all the money. I feel so frustrated with this, though.

Deadbeat

I spent the entire day today waiting around to see if I would hear from a mom in my troop. She still has cookie funds outstanding. Almost $600 in cookie funds. I have to make the deposit tomorrow. I've tried calling her several times. I've emailed her 3 times this weekend alone. This is not counting the reminder email earlier this week that money was due Wednesday and one on Thursday where I said I had to get the money from her I'm free all day Friday and Saturday and Sunday and just give me a time dammit! I did not hear from her. Her phone is temporarily out of service. I've emailed her 3 times since Saturday... each email getting more desperate. I've never had to turn in a deadbeat cookie mom before. I don't like this feeling. ALSO She wasn't supposed to be my cookie mom because I hadn't turned her paperwork in when the cookie sales started and yet I trusted her to be it. Now my ass could be on the line since I don't have the necessary paperwork for her. Clearly I have learned a lesson here. Oh so many lessons here.

(Of course I could hear from her tomorrow and I could end up not having to turn her in as a deadbeat, but I'm no longer holding my breath.)

A Whole Lotta Stuff

1 - I may or may not be down 3 lbs now that I've started exercising regularly. I say may or may not since I am going by the weight I was the last time I went to the doctor's office about a month ago. Also since I weighed myself AFTER I was on the elliptical trainer for 1/2 hour it could be 100% water weight I've lost. (Although I drank quite a bit during and after working out so who knows.) I'm choosing to think I am down 3 lbs because that's the way I roll.

2 - I had a really fun and filled weekend. I sold cookies on Saturday. I am soooo over cookie sales. Like I could not be more over it if I tried and yet I still have 1 more site sale to do. And then I have an assful of cookie money to deposit. Sigh. I wonder if other leaders get as bogged down by cookies as I do.

3 - I went to a puppet show at Northwest Puppet Center. It was really fun. They didn't dumb down the science which I appreciate.

Longass Week

And it is only Tuesday! Actually, after today everything is down hill because I have no more meetings this week. Yay!

Last night we had our cookie site sale meeting. We've got sites and that is all that matters.

Tonight is Thinking Day. I've ordered Sambusas from a local Somali restaurant. I have high hopes for them. A mom from the other troop made coconut bread for Jamaica. I carved stamps out of pink erasers to stamp the passports with. It was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. I cut a star out of the middle of one for Somalia since their flag is a white star in the middle of a blue field. For the other I carved out a palm tree. In retrospect it may have been easier to just dig in the basement for my arts & crap box which has stamps, but whatever. All the letter boxers carve their own stamps. I'm just practicing. Yeah, that's the ticket. :)

Camping is probably on for the weekend. It is supposed to get to highs of 60. Yay! Lows in the upper 30s. I'm excited about that.

I'm going to the movies on VD with Lyday. We're seeing Maybe Definitely or something like that I think. She was not down with the 2 hours of things blowing up. Although looking at the movie list, I don't think there's something that falls into that catagory I want to see anyway.

Checkin' it old school

Robin would be glad to know that use of the libraries is alive and well. I spent quite a bit of time at the library on Sunday trying to find out about Somalia. My troops have Thinking Day in two weeks and for the little girls I decided to pick a country rather than ask them to pick one since we've got such a short time. I chose Somalia because I have two girls from there (as they remind me almost weekly). Little did I know that according to google, Somalia's only characteristic is that it is a war-torn country. That's all I could find using various searches, including words like somali children's games and somali culture. Wikipedia gave me some information, but I needed more. So off I went to the library where I found that not only are there plenty (well 4) kids' non-fiction books, but there is apparently enough of a Somali population in Seattle and I found a bunch of children's books in Somali or in Somali with an English translation. I thought that was cool and checked all those out for use on our display table. My next quest... to find an easy to make food that the girls can give out to sample Somali food.

Cute!

Last night my new brownie troop and I had our investiture ceremony. They were so cute! My littlest one is 5 and she was so excited about her shiny brownie pin. She ran over to her aunt to show it to her right away. I wasn't sure about this new crop of girls, but I'm starting to dig them a lot. I'm really starting to get a sense of who they are, and who their parents are. It's interesting. And they're a lot of fun, but I really have to watch myself with them about what I say we may do. If I don't follow through they get REALLY upset. Last week we had practiced our ceremony and I said we may be able to play a game. Well we practiced our ceremony a 2nd time and so we ran out of time to play a game and the youngest one cried. I felt really bad. They're really eager to help, which is cute. They're just such fun kids. Although I'm alarmed by the fact that when committing to this new troop, I've now signed up for a good 10 more years of scout leading in Seattle... Holy crap. (That's if they all go into high school. Most of them won't.)