Wednesday Randoms <3
Well, it’s been a while since we had some randoms and I have been collecting a list of them so here we go in no particular order:
Random # 1
Our Sarah has a new teaching job this year.
She will be doing orchestra for a middle school and we are so happy for her. After starting out with K-8 general music the past few years, and may I remind you the last two have been less than ideal for music with online and masks and short staff so she would get moved to a regular classroom for the day or four, this is a dream come true.
She sent us a picture of her “classroom” and I cried seeing the instruments lining the walls and music stands in place of desks. Truly our girl’s happy place.
Last week I got a text asking for pictures of her in middle school. I am assuming they are doing some kind of teacher board for the hall and so I found myself one night digging through the boxes of photos.
Oh my…how the technology of today has replaced that mess of double and triple prints.
I laughed and possibly cried as I went through multiple blurry shots of basketball games where you can’t zoom in and figure out which kid is yours.
The print is fading on many of them, which is okay when I found two accidental shots of the door to our basement in one stack…in triplicate, mind you.
And yes, I am purging pictures that no one will ever look at.
Who am I even?
Random #2
I don’t know what the media coverage of the economy is trying to do in the grand scheme of life and I am not a student of inflations, recessions or really anything that involves math and politics, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that stuff costs more than it did.
A postage stamp is a small investment and mailing a package to someone means taking out a second mortgage.
So as someone who works in a small business, I want to remind you that every single shipment that arrives in these local shops comes with a hearty increase in shipping costs.
These have to be figured into the price we pay, along with all the other things like salaries, maintenance, packaging of your purchase, supplies, and theft…which is happening at staggering rates.
Yes. It is cheaper to buy through Amazon where somehow they have managed to bulk purchase things and are still making a killing on what you pay…but please remember as the holidays approach, that our small businesses (and that includes Etsy shops and the like) are the back bone of actual communities.
Don’t forget to support your local and small business owners as you do your shopping. Saving a few dollars here and there may cost more than you ever imagined if we lose our community owned businesses <3
I’m done.
Random #3
On a more pleasant note, I am loving these cool mornings and milder temps. They are making me think maybe fall is not such a bad idea.
Today I was helping in the cafe at church and as I iced scones, I opened a couple of containers of pumpkin ones.
I commented about that and discovered a variety of takes on when to pumpkin.
So I wonder…are you craving all things apple and pumpkin yet….or is it a way off for you.
When does your pumpkin season start officially?
The great debate that will take us right into the Christmas holidays…ladies and gentlemen, start your engines <3
Random #4
When we were kids, our Cootie game came with uniform pieces. All the bodies, heads, legs and features including the proboscis (that’s where I leaned my first scientific name for anything) were identical from one Cootie to the next.
Not anymore.
Now we have four different colors and four different sets of all of the above.
Which makes for added stress and joy-hijacking when you play with kids.
The first version had one point, be the first person to complete your bug.
Now…it’s a scramble to not get stuck with the funny teeth or the weird claw feet or whatever is not to the liking of a particular player.
I guess the manufacturers were trying to make the game cuter and more fun, but introducing choices has kind of ruined it for me.
Sigh…and speaking of the “good old days…”
Random #5
Rachel bought a couple of different kinds of watermelon at their farmer’s market and when they cut into them, there were seeds.
WHATTT????
The kids were less than impressed with these obviously underperforming melons.
Rachel explained about how home grown watermelons have seeds and all about hybrids and such. They were still dubious about these interruptions to a good piece of watermelon.
Then Russ and I were enjoying some with them last night and we were telling about how we would eat our watermelon out on the porch and spit the seeds. We showed them, of course not encouraging them to do so in the house, and we shared our techniques which we would employ with fiends in contests for distance and style.
As Graham reached for another piece, he sighed and said he wished he could have been a kid back when we were kids.
Yes…he would have thoroughly enjoyed spitting seeds, riding his bike, helmet free, in flip flops and blissfully just trying to fill his Cootie bug with standard limbs and such…but for now he just has to live vicariously through his grandparents’ musings <3