On Being Busy, and Parental Pride

It's almost noon here, and already this morning I have:

• taken PTA carnival fliers to school, some to be laminated and some to be posted. I also did the poster posting.
• had the Sears repair guy change out the heater coil on my dishwasher (yes, my new dishwasher) because the old coil was under recall.
  
• been to Cedar Rapids twice, once to pick up the rental roto-tiller, and once to return it.
• as should be obvious by the last sentence, I tilled up our garden plot. I wanted to do it this morning since its supposed to rain this afternoon.

You know how they say "If you wash your car it will rain"? Well, I guess if you till your garden not only will it rain, but you get severe weather with it. We're under a tornado watch, so I've got my National Weather Service Spotter Report number programmed into my cell phone's speed dial and I'm ready for action. I plan to review my reporting protocols and severe weather cloud formations after I'm done blogging. That's about all I can do, considering that I slightly injured myself tilling the garden. I asked the rental guy for a front-tine tiller, one with lower horsepower than a rear-tine tiller, because the last time I used a rear-tine tiller the stupid machine almost ripped my arms out of my shoulder sockets, and I was sore for days. Well, this guy may have thought this was a front-tine tiller, but it sure acted like a rear-tine. I'm not too sore (yet) but even though I had the tillage brake all the way down, the tiller dragged me across the plot and was very hard to steer. I liked the front-tine tiller I rented in Bettendorf better.

But the garden is pretty much ready for planting. I need to go through the plot with the girls and pull out the sod chunks, put up posts and fencing, and move the bird feeder to the center of the garden before I can plant. That's not too much. Oh, and I also need to buy seed. I'll do that next week.

And now, on to the Parental Pride segment of this blog. Last September, Hannah won an Outstanding Effort award from her school for working so hard in class. Well, her class has 22 kids, and they give out three awards per month, so by now every kid's gotten some kind of award and her teacher is on to Round Two. When the kids asked "Does everyone get two awards"? she said "No, you have to earn a second award." Well, Hannah did, but this time it was Student of the Month!! My baby, my little girl, is Mrs. Andersen's Student of the Month!! Talk about beaming with maternal pride. The first thing I did after the ceremony was over was to call my Mom and tell her. You just can't keep something like that to yourself. And yes, Carl was very proud, too, and he was there for the ceremony, video camera in hand and a big grin on his face. What a guy.

I call Hannah my little girl, but she's not so little anymore. She's just started wearing a bra, and she has early adolescent acne which we treat twice a day with various over the counter medications. (Thank you, Clean And Clear.) She can look some of the shorter ladies in our church congregation right in the eye (she'd look Grandma Chilla right in the eye) and she wears a size 8 women's shoe. In three years, two months and two weeks (approximately) she'll be getting her learner's driving permit. It hardly seems possible, but there it is.

Well, I must be going. The sky is getting dark and the pickup is parked outside. Oh, no! I just realized that I have the pickup, and my new Expedition is parked at Rockwell!!

I hope it doesn't hail.