Show and Tell - Les Fleurs

Dozed off last night early in the evening. Woke up, glanced at the clock: 7:20. I'm supposed to be at Day Job at 7:30. How could I have slept so long in a chunk?? Zoomed downstairs, got dressed at random, thinking ok won't take care of the cats, won't shower, won't call the principal as we are supposed to do if we are running late. Throwing bottles of water into the bag and about to go out the door when the cellphone rings in the bedroom at 7:30. Didn't get there in time but it was Timmy, who hasn't called for a few weeks. Why would my son call me at 7:30 in the morning? Checked time on the TV: it was still the night before, not the next morning. Got back in comfy clothes and wandered off to call Timmy back. Just think if I had called the principal at 7:30 in the evening to report my tardiness for the next morning.

There's a bad connection at boot camp, or else Timmy ruined his phone in the swampland. We can talk for a few minutes, then the connection breaks. Also superior officers knock at his door or burst in seemingly every few minutes, at which point he puts down the phone and he calls back after a while. Disjointed conversations at best. One time, somebody wanted chewing tobacco, which T. doesn't use and didn't have any, so he had to do 50 push-ups. Then he called back. We talked in about six installments.

He was supposed to learn to drive a Humvee but it emerged that his driver's license was suspended back when he got cut off and drove his truck into a tree and didn't report it. The truck got towed off by the police before he could arrange for it to be retrieved. He got a concussion that time (which I didn't hear about until long afterward, in fact, I didn't hear about the whole thing until long afterward), which he kept to himself because it was right before Boot Camp began. He says he can take some sort of driver's class this Saturday in North Carolina, pay a fee, and that will magically reinstate his license and he can join the next Humvee class. I don't know what to say, except "you drive too fast".

Now he says they are sending him to "Death Valley" in Afghanistan. This is not a happy mother. And on to Show and Tell for Les Fleurs.

We had one week less this time and only one of us managed to finish her block. It certainly wasn't me: I seem to be doing nothing at all waiting for this miserable school year to end. The paycuts have been truly stunning and accomplished in too many ways to count, while every expense has gone up. My brand-new salary really isn't even enough to bother about. Everybody wants the end to come but there are 15 workdays to go:

Here is one group so far. Aren't they pretty colors?

And here is another group. So beautiful:

So today it's a half-day off in order to attend Traffic Court. I intend to fight it. I got rear-ended at an expressway exit and once the police showed up an hour and a half later after four calls to 911, they first were entranced by the other guy, who ended up being an illegal and they spent half an hour putting him in handcuffs and towing away his car, then they spent four seconds on me to give me a ticket for not clearing the roadway. The roadway was clear. Be careful out there, people, at least in Dekalb County, Georgia, they are giving tickets to anybody who moves out there on the roads in order to make up lost revenue.