Promise of better things to come

Good gravy, it's September. How'd that happen?

When I got up this morning it was 58*. Of course I threw open the windows. It was so hot in August that any cool air is coveted. Day after day of searing heat makes me think it's never going to be anything but hot again. It's nice to have cool air coming into the house; my feet are cold for the first time in weeks!

Slimed!

In the course of my studies, I've found a few recipes to try. The first, a cleansing cream for my face, was pretty easy and I like the results. The second was a flax seed body lotion which required the soaking of flax seeds for 24 hours, and then boiling for 15 minutes. Soaking produced a weird goop, but I put them on to boil, set a timer, and moved on to something else. Five minutes later there was a strange smell. The flax seeds had boiled over. I turned them down and proceeded with the lotion, which was an unqualified failure. I can only guess that I lost too much goop for it to set up. (Also, I had to add vinegar while it was hot, and when I added lavender oil to make it smell good it got even stinkier. Eric came from the other end of the house to investigate, and the cats went upstairs.)

In all the excitement, I sort of forgot about the mess on the stove until this morning. (I know, you Flybabies are having conniptions.) I didn't have time to get to it before work, so I put paper towels on the mess so the water would absorb. It should have been a clue that it hadn't dried. Instead of hot and goopy, it was cold and slimy. It didn't absorb into paper towels; I had to sort of cover/grab/scoop. My babies produced things that were easier to clean up. At least it didn't smell bad. I'm not too sure I want to try the recipe again.

Deja vu

I was skimming an article this morning about an Arizona law that will kick in Jan. 1 that will prevent companies from hiring undocumented workers. Even though it's not in effect yet, illegal immigrants are packing up and moving to greener pastures now, which is more or less the intended effect of the law.

There weren't any surprises in the story until I got to this:

"But others say the state's economy will pay a price for the sanctions.

"If these workers leave, it's going to hurt the economy and put the state at an economic disadvantage with other states," Judith Gans, program manager for immigration policy at the University of Arizona*, told the newspaper."

The first image that popped into my mind was of mid-19th Century plantation owners bemoaning the fact that they couldn't afford to pay people to do the work the slaves were doing. I know it's not the same thing. Undocumented workers are willing to work for less money than Americans are; it's a win/win for them and the employer. But let's think about it another way. What if employers were hiring escaped convicts instead of illegal immigrants? Would you want to go to a fast food joint if you knew a rapist or a murderer was on the staff? I'm not saying that all illegal immigrants are violent, but they're breaking the law just the same as if they were shoplifting or embezzling money. There has been selective enforcement of the law for too many years. Enough excuses.

Thank you to the legislatures of Arizona and Oklahoma for doing something about illegal immigration. I hope the rest of our leaders will follow your example.


*Oh, and by the way, why does the University of Arizona need a program manager for immigration policy? I would think her job would be to keep track of student visas, not opine about the effect of a new law. I wonder what her boss at the State University thinks about her implied support of illegal immigration?

God's Green Earth

I thought I'd mentioned it here already, but looking back it appears I haven't. One of the families in our homeschool group lives on a farm. They gave some space to the group last fall to start an organic garden. Even though I'm no longer homeschooling, they still let me come and play! We started off small and planted zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkins, watermelon, cauliflower, and onions.

I've just come from the garden. Apparently I'm not the only gardener who's been slacking in the heat, but there's been activity in the garden. God's green earth took it over. Squash bugs got our zucchini, pumpkins, and watermelon. We lost the cauliflower to moths earlier in the summer, and the onions got over watered. That leaves the tomatoes, crab grass, weeds, and the morning glories that have taken up residence since my last visit.

Fortunately, the garden at home has faired better. I had squash bugs out here, too, but when the zucchini died, the pepper plant beside them burst into bloom. I have to read up on companion planting over the winter, I guess. Maybe I better start a list...

Big Bang Theory

I’m back—did you miss me? We finally got some rain on Friday, which was great. Not so great was the thunderstorm or the lighting that fried our modem. Saturday I did all right without the Internet. Yesterday I was philosophical; after all, the whole computer could have been fried. We just lost the modem and maybe the router. Then I started remembering all the things I needed to do. I finally broke down and started a list so I wouldn’t forget anything.

The cable guy came this morning and spent the better part of two hours replacing the modem. Apparently it wasn’t playing nicely with the router. Eric finally got the router going, only to find that our ISP went down.

What I’ve learned from this: 73 hours is too long to go without Internet access when I’m home. If I’m away, it’s a different ball game. I was starting to get cranky. Yes, I'm spoiled.

The real capper, though, is that of the 56 e-mail messages waiting for me, more than half got deleted immediately, and there was nothing from Scott (book related or otherwise). Go figure.