For real...

So, today started with a bang. Literally. I walked Jack into school to deliver a few things in advance of tomorrow's luncheon and to help him pass out teacher gifts. As I was heading back upstairs, an enormous boom brought everything to immediate, uncomfortable silence. What was that? As it turns out, a transformer had just blown, knocking out all the power at school. Two hours later, as I had those pesky thirty chicken breasts a'poaching, school was officially canceled. Anyone who reads Em-i-lis with any regularity will understand why I thought, "of course this happened today of all days when I need to finish preparing a darn lunch for 70 folks." Seriously, y'all, isn't this uncanny? Every time I have a large job on the exceedingly near horizon (within a day), something big happens (Jack starts bleeding from his ear; snow day; Ol sick; etc) which forces me to call in helper troops as fast as my little fingers can dial, email or text. I'm very lucky that things so often work out. Good lord people, a blown transformer?

So Jack and his pal Annie came over for an hour and then we went to pick up Oliver whose last day of school wrapped up at noon. Meanwhile, I'm trying to chop all the damn chickens and stay marginally on task. It is my utmost hope that school resumes tomorrow because otherwise, what a bummer of a last day today would have been AND I've got a heck of a lot of food here.

I then had to call the DC-government hotline because hanging out of a drain-pipe from our yard onto our sidewalk is a seriously dead squirrel. His head, neck and one paw are up the pipe, torso, other paws, tail just splayed out for all the walkers to see. It's just awful and though I don't get skeeved out by much, the flies swarming his poor head just took it too far. I simply could not dispose of Mr. Squirrel. So I put in a request and hopefully a sanitation worker, probably a horribly underpaid one who didn't think he'd be shoveling dead squirrels from sidewalks, will come out and remove the small corpse.

Also today I saw two different AU students wearing shorts so short that their bottoms hung below the seam. This would have been an unfortunate solo sighting, but twice? My eyes started to roll back into my head. And, it's further proof that not nearly enough people use their mirrors to see their backsides. In my opinion, you always need to get a rearview before committing to an outfit. And, if they looked in the mirror, saw their peek-a-boo butt-cheeks hanging low and still approved these outfits? Well, gross. Didn't your mommmas raise you right?!

Jack and I just toodled to get a coffee, for me, and a rice krispie treat, for him, and I ran out of money at the register after he'd bitten into his treat and my drink was being made. Like I needed that one, people. Audrey, gal at the register, was infinitely lovely and made it work somehow. Thank you SO much. Random acts of kindness are incredible, you know?

Torrid Tuesday

OhMyGawd, readers. I cannot believe it's only Tuesday, and I can't believe just how long this Tuesday has felt. The regular 5:30am wake-up was especially rough for whatever reason, and then, one by one, we had to say goodbye to my sister. I ran her out to the airport so we had another hour or so together and then I raced home to finish up some grocery shopping and get myself cooking for the faculty luncheon that is less than two days away. 75 people!! Six amazing dishes!! I'm thrilled and honored to be able to help appreciate the incredible people who run and teach at Jack's school but I imagine I might just drop on Thursday afternoon. And then, hah, I have to pack for our family vacation; we leave Friday. It's all good.

I made a batch of blueberry-rhubarb Cava jam to finish off the stashes of each ingredient I had left, hung with Ol for a couple hours, chopped huge amounts of grapes and celery, went to Jack's drama finale, made another 3x round of mujaddara, cleaned mint, peeled pistachios, made the boys dinner, chilled some wine, took a brief yet over-the-phone and unplanned Italian placement test (I'm taking a ten-week course this summer!!) -talk about changing direction for the moment- and am considering starting in on the poaching of 30 chicken breasts.

It was such a treat to have my sister here for so long and to truly enjoy that time together. She is such a good person with so much love to share, and I really admire her positivity and unceasing work ethic. Chin-chin a mia sorella!

Oh, and I finished Jack's birthday invites- can you guess the theme? I'm so glad he doesn't actually have this hair-do. He wrote the script himself! Priceless.

Color rendering is horrid here (ex, his pants aren't silver), but I just can't bring myself to take another pic. I'm sure you understand!

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