Norman Rockwell

This afternoon I read kenju's post about the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. Filled with envy I looked it up on the web and after its close, January 30, 2011 , it will travel to Tacoma, Washington, where American Chronicles opens on February 26, 2011 at Tacoma Art Museum. It's a bit of a drive but there are people there I was hoping to visit and what a treat if we all could go see it.

Oddly enough it meshes with my post about kids from yesterday. A print of the picture above was given to me by mother for reasons best explained by the picture itself. She even looks like me at age 10. Girls didn't often get into fights in the early 50's but I had occasion to defend a younger sister, a neighbor's dog, and myself from a school boy's insistence on dumping grasshoppers down my back and squashing them. Can you hear the righteous indignation here? Woe to those who cross a combatant who thinks she is fighting for an honorable cause. It didn't hurt that I was the tallest, if skinniest kid in our tiny country grade school. I can't help but wonder that I still have some pride in this behavior, the same behavior my young sons engaged in with each other and drove me crazy trying to change. Mom said " I hope you have 10 kids just like you..." Good thing I stopped at two.

Breakfast of Champions

Sometimes I think my breakfast is a predictor of the kind of day I am going to have. Maybe I should go back to bed. For breakfast I ate the leftover meatloaf, four unbaked chocolate chip cookies (salmonella be damned), and two cups of coffee. Let me see, protein, chocolate, sugar, and caffeine. I will have to dine out for lunch to repeat this and I'm not really prepared to leave the house. Oh wait, there's the chocolate chip cookies I baked. Oops! I'd better get into the shower, the cookies reminded me. I baked them to take to my 12-year granddaughter who is showing her first critter at the fair which begins today. She is in for an all day stint, the other young handlers couldn't get out of school today and she, being home schooled, could schedule around it. Giddy up grandma.

The Grandma Van Takes a Break

The Grandma Van has been in go mode all this week delivering kids to Vacation Bible School, to the Fort Walla Walla Museum Lewis and Clark Camp, and visiting the extended family with our young guest. The kids who went to camp got to learn or practice archery. My eight-year old nephew hand sewed a "possibles" bag to carry all your possible required tools to trek across country in the early 1800's. He enjoyed it so much he came home and contructed a hand sewn bear and then found himself a stick and wove a grass and straw line and tried luring crawdads from a nearby stream into his clutches.

Thanks P. Franzmann Fort Walla Walla Museum.

Today I am enjoying a quiet moment alone with a cup of coffee. My lovely daughter-in-law invited our nephew to overnight on their farm with their six kids last night. A much more lively mix, kids, room to roam, hay, tractors, piggies, goats, chickens, woo, woo! We ate take-out and watched two episodes of "Six Feet Under," from Netflix. Ah, off for another cuppa.