Bad Blogger....c'est la vie

Sorry I've been a bad blogger...
It's on my mind that I should put something out there in the blogosphere, and I have plenty of stuff...that's not a problem.  June is coming to a close, and I feel pressured to write something...
I guess I can just rattle off all my excuses:
after 5 weeks of full team teaching/subbing, I'm exhausted & terribly disorganized.
I cannot find my camera charger, OR my cord to download photos (did I leave them at school?);
I've had to tend my poor yard and flowers, which are needing daily watering due to the drought;
  (I only water the flowers, which are doing well. It's great the lawn is dying--less work there...)
My daughter moved, and we are helping daily...(ok, we financed the house she'll be renting, for one...);
Today, I stained the wood floors, which were just sanded; tomorrow--several coats of polyurethane;
Due to my granddaughter's 'move' also, I'm her daily daycare provider....not complaining...I love it!
Wait! So, tomorrow being a Saturday, means 'double duty.'  Day care provider + floor refinisher.
wow.  It reminds me of the old days, when I really worked...like unloading 4 loads of hay, watching 2 kids, mowing the lawn, and making dinner for guests, including fresh bread.
It reminds me what John Galbraith? once said....'the only good thing about having worked on a farm is that nothing you'll ever do again really seems like work.'

Plus, the last several weekends I'm driving to & babysitting in Milwaukee for 2 other granddaughters, whose parents are doing wedding photography (June=busy season) & the other gram is out of commission;   again....Love it! Not complaining  :)        Time with granddaughters--priceless!

My brother from Arizona is here with us for the summer....Again, Love it!  Not complaining....
I wouldn't necessarily say he is 'high maintenance...in fact, he's helping with the house fixup...but, people who live in urban places are...hmm, demanding?  Not sure what, but not Midwest pace...
The irony is...he's from here too...but, living away from the Midwest too long, I guess....

Let's see...what else? My mother-in-law is planning a gigantic reunion at her one room schoolhouse...
(Her hobby...which is now also often, 'our' hobby... a museum of a slice of life she yearns for today...

   (guess what?  I'm okay with it.  Not complaining...(okay, maybe a little... it's only going to mushroom in terms of more work needed....and I don't have to worry about her reading this...she is anti-computer stuff, and calls facebook 'facemask' and won't even allow me to post things there....
(but, like her Amish friends, she'll agree to use things she finds unacceptable when it suits her needs...
For example, she'll look at 'facemask' to see her great granddaughters in Shanghai kind of like the Amish will accept rides to Walmart, though they won't drive themselves... hmm...I just saw some Amish young folks there yesterday...shopping away....It's okay though--makes them seem more normal, I guess...)

(By the way, we just took a trip to a nearby Amish general store and stocked up on staples...my brother & mother-in-law...both loving it...one seeing it is quaint, the other as catching up on local gossip...). My brother got a photo of them driving their horse & buggy (rear view--all that is allowed) as they left the country store. Maybe I can get him to send me that shot...too bad I don't have it yet...darn!

My days are filled and rarely am I setting the agenda.  C'est la vie....that's life.   It's okay.
I'm happy to be useful.  Not unlike the Amish in that way.


And now, our FM3 Visas are about to expire, and we have to renew them...which means a trip to Isla.
Darn.  Do I have to go?  I have so much to do here, I can't even blog about it or get a photo out.
I need to do something about that.

Poppies

The Poppy flower display was awesome this year.
I tried to capture it, but photos can only give a sense of the blooming spectacle of orange brilliance.

They're so elegant, and you wonder how their spindly little stems can hold up their large heads which wave in the breeze. There's also something about their paper-thin petals...seemingly unreal.
Georgia O'Keefe is from quite nearby here...Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.
Her painting of a poppy flower is very famous.  I've always admired it.  Any flower is suitable to paint.

They hand out little paper poppies every Memorial Day; veterans organizations sell them; I think originally it was the veterans' widows or Ladies Aid Society which sold them to earn money for burials...not sure...need to look that up.  My mother-in-law would certainly know; I'll ask her.
Sometimes, that's just more fun than Google...

There is a little girl named Poppy at the school where I current am teaching.  Cute fit.
And lastly, I happen to love poppy seed pie...it's a Belgian/Czechoslovakian creation made north of here..where many Belgians settled. I learned to love it after often consuming too much from a bakery near my grandma's house. 
(Like Elaine on an episode from Seinfeld, I wonder if I'd pass a drug test after consuming my usual
several pieces of poppyseed pie?)  It is to die for.