Snapshots: An Idiosyncratic Mother's Day

Want to see what I got for Mother's Day?

Flowers!

Our very first iris bloomed on Mother's Day from the bulbs A. brought from Blackrock and planted two years ago. I thanked him for getting me flowers for Mother's Day.

And a trip to a movie theater!

Blurry photo of the movie theater. (The feature film was Adventures in Babysitting, which is still entertaining forty years later.)

I know. It doesn't look like a movie theater. Lemme 'splain.

What I always really want for Mother's Day is some time by myself. That was a particularly difficult request this year because of the hot, windy weather. A. would normally take the kids out somewhere for a few hours so I could be by myself, but no one wanted to be out in that weather. 

However, since all I wanted to do was watch a movie on my laptop, and that can be done indoors, I decided to take myself out for a few hours. So I went to school.

Specifically, I went to my classroom at school, which isn't a regular classroom with desks and everything. It's more like an enrichment room, with different areas that have tables or carpets or even bean bags on the floor. It's air conditioned. There's wi-fi. There's a bathroom. There's an ice machine in the concessions kitchen so I could ice down the seltzer I brought with me. 

And there was no one there. Perfect.

Moving on . . .

Quite a few more irises have bloomed in front of the house.

All purple.

I've stopped harvesting the rhubarb, so it, too, is flowering.

This plant is particularly exuberant.

Cubby's teacher called us on Thursday afternoon asking if it was okay if he was given a Tylenol. He injured himself jumping for a football when he came down on the edge of a three-foot stump at the edge of the playground. He was wearing shorts, and in addition to a massive bruise, a inch-long piece of wood went into his thigh.

It was really nasty.

Miraculously, the mother of another student happened to be at school for an event and actually on the playground when it happened, and she is a practicing nurse. There was just enough of the wood sticking out for her to remove it with tweezers. Very luckily, it went in laterally rather than straight in and deep, so she could see that she got it all. Then she wrapped him up and they gave him the Tylenol.

Of course, Cubby brought home the piece of wood as a souvenir. He remarked that the blood stained it a very nice red color.

Match for scale. Yikes.

He's been gimping around a bit--mostly because of the giant bruise on his thigh--but there's no sign of infection, so he should be fine.

And last, let's end with something a bit less gruesome, shall we?

Sunrise on the range. (Still somewhat dimmed thanks to the smoke from the massive fires burning to the east of us. We're still in no danger, though.)

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.