Busy Month

Hello my darlings, (esp. Grampa Carl!)

It has been a little wacky; lots of perfectly bloggable things occurring and me not recording them. April is wacky, two birthday's and end of term...yeah...not a lot of spare time. Frankly the minutes I have open I would rather spend reading.(or playing scrabble on Facebook) In an effort to keep my steady readers placated (no Mom, I'm not dead) I shall commence the new and improved categorized lists of Belly Acres Trivia Update:

KIDS: Zoli cut all his hair off and donated the resulting one pound! to Locks of Love. Matt is excited about a job with a Russian lady scientist and diabetic rats. Isabel is reading Book 4 of The Twilight Series.
HOUSE: Blown insulation. Good!! realizing we should have done this BEFORE painting..enh...now, we have a Purple house w/polka dots (at least till our Painterdude can get here.)
BARN: In a fit of spring enthusiasm Pete tore out the 100 year old dead rose canes that had been strangled by the ever present grapevine. This mass of detritus looked like pubic hair sprouting out the east side of the barn--dry crunchy pubic hair-- with thorns. It took him about two hours. In the process we discovered a beautiful wrought iron trellis that will be holding black beans in the garden.
GARDEN: Petey built me a third box. 4X12 rectangle for parnsips & carrots--other seedlings are all sprouting right along though I did have two beefsteak tomato babies damp off...sad... start over. One more flowerbed to go (the raised stone bed out front) and all the beds will be tidy. OH! Isabel has claimed the mound by the flagpole as her "Fairy Village" we have added some creeping thyme & creeping phlox to the lily of the valley GrammaTerry gave her for her b-day. Sarah got her a gollum and some fairy art--we will start building houses soon.
CHICKEN: still needs a roommate. She does not care for her tractor so much, but-- it is necessary as I spotted this predator drooling on her for about a half hour Friday morning. I was throwing tennis balls for the dogs and out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in the big tree by the driveway. I looked closer--that's not a cat..holy crap that is a big ole raccoon. It was about 10:30 aren't coons sposed to be sleeping by then?? Anyway..it was staring at my chicken like she was a KFC bucket and a hockey game was on! Chicken must be supervised or in her pen....sheesh...
DOGS: All is well, adopt-adog Uly seems to have a fondness for licking my shoes, no real damage yet tho she did eat Hannon's atheletic cup! Actually they eat a lot-- 50lb bags of dog food every other week. We like the 'gentle leader' --I can walk both girls on one leash. Jarvis got a hair cut too. he was getting dreadlocks.
JOB: Well Winter term is done and my grades are turned in so I thought I was going to have a chance to finish my "Umbridge Paper" (It is actually Feminine Power in Harry Potter) which is due the first weekend in October (Sirens Conference) and maybe even continue editing "daBook" BUT NOT JUST YET!! Oh no dear ones-- Annette has me writing a proposal for a Special Topics class for next Winter. WOOT!! Cross yer fingers!! The Wayne Public LIbrary guy has frozen at the interview stage.
FREE TIME:
BOOKS: Just finished reading "A Year of Living Biblically" by A. J. Jacobs. I had fun the day I checked it out of the AADL because at the same time I requested "God is Not Great" by Chris Hitchens. Sadly, there was noone to witness the juxtaposition and comment on my eclectic reading habits! I just boogied through the self check out. I devoured the new Harry Dresden and am slogging through "The Nature of Monsters", Mieville's "King Rat" is picking up steam and "Drood" is quietly staring me in the face--It may wait till winter. It seems kinda depressing for spring. It is the last of the initial shopping spree w/my b-day card from Ray.
MOVIES: Finally got to see "Let the Right One in"--CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! DO NOT waste your netflix $ or queue space--Gods-- the hype around here was spectacular. I can't believe I was genuinely sad we couldn't see it in the theatre...feh..it had some nice cinematography but poorly dubbed Swedish Vampire films about prepubescent lovers??? CRAP!
HOWEVER!! We did drag the kids to see "The Soloist" last night. Of course the book was MUCH better, I don't care for way the film treated his Lopez' relationship with his wife and combined some secondary characters--it was a little choppy, but the spirit was there and I teared up. (note I wept like a baby at the book). This would be a good netflix moment.

peace.