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I discovered a barometer that tells me my Summer Retirement Internship – Part 1 is working.
I tried to check my work email and I couldn’t get in. My password expired sometime after the end of the Spring semester.
I don’t care and I don’t feel any panic. This is a very good sign.
Goodnight’s Eighth Grade Fast Pitch Softball team is going to the Championship game next week. They won their quarterfinals game on Monday and they won their semifinal game yesterday in a nail-biter down to the wire. The score was tied going into the bottom of the final inning. But . . . it didn’t stay tied for long. Beautiful slug into the gap with two runners on base scored for the win.
GN is enjoying having her great-grandmother attend her games. Gr8 makes little scoresheets to keep track of the game and then gives them to GN after the game. What fun!
I think we are going to hit the batting cage over the long weekend to get a little practice swinging.
Must scoot. I have a date with my mother for a few hands of penalty solitaire over coffee. It’s really sweet time for me to have my mother spending such a long visit with us. Good for Gn and good for me, too.
I received a secret email yesterday. It was from Goodnight’s school. She will be named Student of the Month (SOM) for May and I am invited to the SOM breakfast. Goodnight has not been told, yet.
The timing of the event coincides with my mother’s visit to our house, so means Goodnight’s great-grandmother gets to attend the SOM breakfast, too.
In fact, Gr8 will also get to attend the Athletic Banquet at which GN will receive her sports awards for Basketball and Softball.
Then there will be the Eighth Grade Awards Ceremony and the Baccalaureate and Graduation – three separate events, but on the same day.
Before all of the above, however, we have the Fast Pitch Softball Playoffs to get through, fabric shopping for GN’s graduation dress, a whole lot more Algebra, and four more years to complete for the Autobiography assignment.
Well, my friends . . .
I got a phone call yesterday and there will be a slight change in plans for a while. Gr8 is coming for a good long visit and will be staying at my house long enough to attend Goodnight’s middle school graduation. I’m thrilled! As close as Smalltownville is, I’m usually driving in for a weekend and having to get back for my work and GN’s school. Now we will have leisurely chats and no hasty good-byes.
As far as my Summer Retirement Internship goes, there won’t be too many changes in my plans. I just get to have company with everything I do and as a bonus, there will be someone to play cribbage with during the day while GN is at school. My Grammy field trips will be more fun with my mother joining me. Gr8 will get to watch GN play softball and attend the athletic banquet, too. We will take two strolls each day: down the block and down memory lane. I love it already.
I still have to sew GN’s graduation dress, but it will be so much more pleasant with the one who taught me how to sew keeping me company.
I’ll be back when I get the chance, but it may not be until after graduation – and that’s not until early June. Boy am I glad for my ’chore and a drawer a day’ work routine. It keeps things presentable for a last-minute changes in plans.
Must scoot and get the summer sheets on Gr8′s bed.
Interesting words, “cast off.”
1) It could mean that I’m blowing this blog and ready to take a boat ride.
2) It could also mean that I have completed a knitting project and have taken the final stitches off my needle.
3) The words could imply that I am throwing/giving something away or setting something aside.
Or . . . . .
4) It could mean that GN has her cast off and is ready to get back in the game.
Here’s a hint: Pick #4 for today. The only problem is, that her team faces the same team with the bad pitching that got her into the cast in the first place. 
I’m hoping for rain . . .
I had phone conversation with my Gr8 last evening. I told her what I had done with my rhubarb.
She told me that her dad, my grandfather, had actually sent the plants to her after Mom and dad were married. They were cuttings from her childhood home. They’ve been doing well all these years. I’ve read that a plant can be productive for up to fifteen years, but Gr8 has been away from home a few more years than that . . . There were a couple of times when they looked like they were petering out, but, we dug up the crowns, divided them, then replanted them. That’s how I got mine, too. Her crop this year is really robust.
Mother also told me that yesterday was her father’s birthday. I never knew that date. Grandpa had passed away before I was born. “He would be 130.”
But . . . who knew I was going to need some new stemware? I might need to purchase a larger glass for the Rhubarb Daiquiri. Thank you Grandfather, (what would you have wanted us to call you?) for the rhubarb and for my mother. A toast to you on the anniversary of your birth. I’m very fond of your youngest child and your daughter’s children, grandchildren, and great-granddaughter are taking good care of her.
I can feel the ‘ahh’.
I chose the patio umbrella for my reading. It’s a little nippy out there this morning, but that’s why I knit. I just throw on something cozy enough to read out there in the early morning chill. It works.
I cut some of the peonies, added some bleeding heart stems for fill and it spiffed up the view from the kitchen.
Of course, I believe in leaving some peonies on the bush so I have something to look at out the living room window.
Today, I have a date . . . with the Corleone Family. I make no apologies for never having seen any of the Godfather movies. They are rated ‘R’ and as a single parent and now single gram raising a child, I’ve always been too tired to stay up and watch movies after Angel or Goodnight went to bed. Seems like a Retirement Internship, while GN is at school is a good time to spend the day with Brando, Pacino, et al. I really liked Talia Shire in the Rocky movies, so I’m looking forward to seeing her play Connie Corleone.
As you can see in the photo below, I have my Retirement Internship supplies handy. The blue and white scarf in progress is not a late Super Scarf, but it is part of a very large promise I made to myself when I went to Indianapolis for the Super Bowl. More on that promise at another time.
I took myself shopping yesterday. I went to my favorite thrift store with an assignment for myself: find a dress and ‘frivolous ornamentation’ to wear to the college graduation ceremony. The notion of going to a thrift store may sound cheap to some, but I prefer to think of it as eco-shopping. I went to the same store I went to last year when I had a summer party to attend . . . and I had the same fast luck. It just works that way sometimes.
I didn’t have a specific color in mind for my scavenger hunt. I hit the dress section first. Bingo! I found a dress within the first five minutes I was in the store. I took it off the rack and went to the jewelry section. It only took me a minute to find some ‘frivolous ornamentation’ to wear with the dress.
I headed for the checkout lane and my total came to $7.00. Eco-friendly. Budget-friendly. Grammy-happy. And oh so very red!
Goodnight and I have a graduation night custom. We head into the city, park in a ramp that’s far enough from the graduation event parking so we don’t have to compete with a lot of cars, walk to a downtown restaurant and have dinner together. She dresses up, and I dress up. We enjoy a leisurely conversation over dinner. Then we stroll through the park to the graduation site where I shake hands and meet family members and significant others who have been the support for our students during their time with us at the college. I like that part: the hand-shaking and meeting the families. I hug the interns whom we hosted and tell them how proud I am of them. The pride is genuine because they worked very hard during their ten-week internship.
I invite my granddaughter to join me so that she sees the success stories that come out of the daily work we do at the college. It teaches her the importance of my routine, gives her a glimpse into her future and emphasizes the importance of education. I have just completed my 23rd year there and I’ve only missed two graduations: the year Officer Friendly passed away, and last year when the ceremony was held after the semester ended and I was spending time with my mother in Smalltownville. That’s a lot of graduation ceremonies and a lot of hopeful new careers for folks that leave our campus.
There were about 447 graduates who were able to attend the ceremony last evening. I wish them all the best for a bright future.
When I asked GN what her favorite part of our graduation custom was, she looked at me with a sheepish grin. “The ice-cream you always get me on the way home from the ceremony, Grammy.” I hadn’t forgotten. I just wanted to see if she had.~
It’s rhubarb picking time. I don’t know how you do it, but I like to follow the advice of someone who makes it so much more appropriate for my Summer Retirement Internship 2012 – Part 1.
Go to the patch some afternoon in early summer, fuzzy with beer and sunlight, and pick a sack of rhubarb (red or green will do) and God knows watch for rattlesnakes or better, listen: they make a sound like an old lawn mower rolled downhill. Wear a hat. A straw hat’s best for the heat but lets the gnats in. Bunch up the stalks and chop the leaves off with a buck knife and be careful . . .
. . .Then go home and sit barefooted in the shade behind the house with a can of beer. Spread out the rhubarb in the grass and wash it with cold water from the garden hose, washing your feet as well. Then take a nap.
That evening dice up the rhubarb . . .
“How to Make Rhubarb Wine’ by Ted Kooser from Rhubarb Recipes complied by Jeanne De Mars. 1994.
I’ve picked the rhubarb. My feet are clean. I skipped the part about the beer . . . for now. I don’t have a buck knife, but I hacked off the leaves and put the stems in a sink of cold water to rinse off any garden soil that still clung to the stems.
I made rhubarb pancakes for breakfast this morning and we topped them with rhubarb sauce.
I soaked a few of the stems in the cold water bath overnight so I could achieve the effect I needed for my rhubarb ‘flower’ bouquet. The cut ends split and curl and look sweet in their own way. I didn’t want to put them under the knife just yet and the stems will continue to curl.
The forecast for part of this week is hot and humid – not as bad as it can get in the throes of summer – but hot enough to practice the Rhubarb Daiquiri recipe I found. I’ll practice just once, then make some rhubarb candy. Goodnight is too young to have a daiquiri, but I have a feeling she will like the rhubarb candy.
I’ve not made the daiquiri or the candy before, but if they are wonderful enough, I don’t think I will have to bake any cakes or pies or muffins with the first pull of the season!
Sometimes change is good. Sometimes change is delicious! 
After a quiet reflection from the Mother’s Day section of the garden, we move mercifully on to happier things. The peonies have started to open. My happy, happy flowers! My mother had them and I loved them even as a child. I’ve changed my preferences for many things over time, but not for my happiest flowers.
They make lovely thank-you gifts for good teachers and wonderful neighbors. Goodnight had plenty of good teachers and I have very good neighbors: the man who shares his black walnuts with me and the woman who lost an adult child. (I’ll make her bouquet a bit bigger . . . )
I never feel any obligation to apologize for ants that hide in my peony bouquets. They are necessary for the flowers to bloom. When I pick the early blossoms, I try to find the strays that hide out within the petals and gently lift them to some unopened buds. They do a task that results in my pleasure, so I like to be kind to them.
There are not enough peonies open yet, but when there are, I will drive my granddaughter to school with her arms full of flowers for her teachers. Happy granddaughter, happy flowers, happy car ride.
