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Good idea or horribly, horribly bad idea?

I saw these bleach tablets at Menard’s and decided I had to try them. We get some pretty nasty pink slime in our toilets, and a dosing of bleach seems to clear it up. I don’t like those live-in-the-tank tablets since we have kitties around who might freak out from the fumes, and I am rather cautious of liquid bleach due to all the clothes I’ve ruined with tiny bleach spots. These seem like just the trick. I’ll keep the bottle in the bathroom and drop a tablet in the toilet every so often, scrub away, then flush. Done and done.

The downside? These look an awful lot like giant Tums. One mix-up and that could lead to some fatal heartburn relief. Good grief, why isn’t there a padlock on the top of this?

(I forgot a quarter for scale. They’re a little larger than the diameter of a dime.)

As you know, we are fond of weird lighting. Well, today at the UNL surplus auction they had a medical examination lamp (dentist lamp?), and Lloyd said, “That would make a cool reading lamp,” to which I replied, “Knock yourself out.”

So he did. And now he can get a nice tan as he reads. Or I can scrape the tartar off his molars.

You know how when you’re a kid, random stuff really sticks with you? I once heard a speaker at a conference tell us, “Every conversation is important. The stuff you are saying to your kids that you hope they’ll remember? That’s not what they’ll remember.” It’s true – think about a pivotal moment from your childhood and what was said. It was probably not that inspiring speech about saving your pennies for a rainy day. It was probably the first time you heard your saintly grandma swear.

One such moment for me happened when I was…. 7? 8? I don’t know. It’s a story that has served me well in my classroom, since after I tell it, the children are entirely on my side. Here’s how it goes:

“Everyone in my family is an artist. My parents can make art, my brothers can make art, and my sister can make art. One day when I was little, my brother Phil said to me, “Isn’t it funny how we can all draw…. and you can’t?”

I will pause for you to imagine my dramatic pause as the children look shocked and say, “That wasn’t nice.” I nod and we all agree that it was not nice. Then I go on with the whole rest of it – about how maybe I can’t draw as well as he can, but I’m doing my best and blah blah blah inspiring stuff blah blah blah. Then when I draw a kitten that looks like a squirrel monkey the children all tell me what a good job I’m doing and my ego is soothed.

So, when I went to Illinois for the conference, this was part of my talk (Title: Stick Figure Awesomeness / Subtitle: Take that, Phil.) – encouraging people to embrace their own art and children’s art and blah blah blah inspiring stuff blah blah blah. I wanted to read the wonderful children’s book the dot by Peter Reynolds, and have images from the book projected behind me on the screen.

The story is about Vashti, a little girl who feels she can’t draw so she just jabs a dot on her paper. Her teacher frames her dot in swirly gold, which inspires her to experiment with making all kinds of dots blah blah blah inspiring stuff that’s actually very inspiring blah blah blah.

I needed permission, so I wrote to Peter Reynolds. I told him my sob story about Phil, and asked if I could use the images.

He wrote back!

Thank you, Peter – you and Vashti are my heroes!

(By the way, there is zero chance that Phil is reading this, but just in case – I’m not really mad. That one moment has made for a great story!) By the way, here is a painting that Phil did when he was an infant. See what I was up against? Need I remind you of the squirrel monkey?

Our church is working on a capital campaign, and one of the things our consultant recommended was to have a Servant Saturday to get us all in the mindset of serving because Jesus served us. Congregational members could sign up for a two-hour time commitment (which was genius) and go out and help somehow in the community. We collected food, cleaned at a cemetery, cleaned at a park, visited with the elderly, led a hymn sing at a nursing home, cleaned and painted at various places, and just generally had a good morning. Afterward there was lunch waiting for us at church.

Lloyd and I signed up to help paint a room at the Methodist church. We worked with Luther and Jerry, two fine members, Concordia people, and painters. We cranked out that room like mad, and I didn’t spill any paint!

….. Until then end. When I spilled a fair amount. On carpet.

D’oh! I’m always careful – until I’m not.