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My beautiful girl, Lacy!

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Random Tuesday and Coffee Chat

Feel free to link up with Stacy Uncorked for some randomness.

Well... As soon as my daughter returns, she leaves!  The nerve!  She came home from England, and now she's headed back up to her college home to reconnect with some friends there.  She'll be back in a couple of days, but I worry so much when she's out on the road by herself for a six hour drive.  Typical mom here!  And next year when her twin brother is living off at college, too... I don't know what I'll do!

And another daughter is coming back home for a couple of weeks!  Her school is even further away.  Nine hours!  She'll be able to stay a couple of weeks before her summer session starts.  She'll be headed back about the time I get out of school.  Eventually, we have a wedding to plan.

And speaking of school... Twelve days left including today.  That equals 96 hours.  Or 5,760 minutes. Or 345,600 seconds, not that I'm counting!

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And our lovely hostess at Coffee Chat asks...

My home has several projects requiring starting/finishing.  
I hate leaving something unfinished.  
 Are you a starter or a finisher?

Well, it depends.  There used to be a time when I left nothing unfinished.  I've relaxed a lot, or you could say I just don't care as much as I probably should.  One thing I have a very hard not leaving unfinished is a book.  If I start one, chances are high that I will finish it, eventually.  I may put it down and come back to it later, but it annoys me to start one and not finish it.

If we're talking scrapbooking - well, that is a job that is never finished. I used to have difficulty with scrapbooking my photos out of order, but when you're at least ten years behind, who's going to notice if you stop and do a vacation scrapbook from 2009 before you do the chronological photos from 2006?

For household projects, I'm a finisher.  If I start cleaning out a room, closet, folder, cabinet, I want to finish it.  If it doesn't have anything to do with crafts, I'm definitely a finisher.  Creating crafts, though?  I'm a starter.

And there you have it.  Me and of my neuroses!

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It's Just My Opinion

Famous Last Words by Katie Alender
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I promised myself I would read more young adult novels this year so that I could recommend a variety of newer writers to my students.  I almost abandoned this book when I first started it.  It was a little creepy and a little confusing. I put it down for a couple of months after reading the first 3 or 4 chapters. I picked it back up at the urging of one of my students.

This is some of what Goodreads says about this thriller:  Willa is freaking out. It seems like she's seeing things. Like a dead body in her swimming pool. Frantic messages on her walls. A reflection that is not her own. It's almost as if someone -- or something -- is trying to send her a message.
Meanwhile, a killer is stalking Los Angeles -- a killer who reenacts famous movie murder scenes. 

I worried about it being too scary because it is about living in a house where a famous person had died 70 years prior, a ghost, writing on walls, hallucinations, trying to contact the "other side," and a seer. It was a little eerie, but I got past that because the story was good. Understanding the main character was difficult in the beginning. I was very confused. But it got better and ended up being a pretty good story. I figured out the mystery only shortly before it was made obvious. Clever story line, if just a little unrealistic.

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Random Tuesday (sort of), Coffee Chat, and Some ABC's

I'm linking up with Stacy for some Random Thoughts

What an incredible week last week, which explains a little bit about why I haven't been around much.  Work, of course, sucks my time dry, my husband was out of town for a week, and I had to get the house clean for my daughter's return from Oxford!  The word I use to describe this feeling is JOY!

When my twins were six years old, they went to separate summer camps.  It was the first time they'd been apart for more than a day.  Each camp was a week, and they overlapped by a day, so it was almost two weeks of not seeing each other.  This is the result:

She has lived away at college for a year and a half before leaving in January for England, but she's always been driving distance from us.  I wanted to go see her so badly while she was over there, but we just couldn't swing it financially, not to mention I can't just miss work for a week at a time.  Below is the result of her and her twin brother seeing each other after four months apart.:

My babies are home under the same roof, at least until they both leave for college again in the fall!

And on a completely unrelated topic... what do you do when you're bored at a meeting?  Do you doze off? Play on your phone?  Fold paper?  Doodle on your paper?  Make lists? Pass notes?    Don't you hate it when that ONE PERSON keeps the meeting going longer due to previously asked and answered questions or just plain idiotic nonsense?

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We have boring "lovely" state testing this week.  Sixth and seventh graders yesterday and today as well as eighth graders who had to retest in math and reading, the two tests that 8th graders "theoretically" have to pass to go to ninth grade..  Notice I said, "theoretically,"  because I have never seen any of our 8th graders held back.  Maybe they go to summer school?  Tomorrow and Thursday they take science and social studies.  They don't have to pass those tests to be promoted, but they are used, along to "rank" our school and our district.

On to more exciting things:  Coffee Chat with Ink Interrupted.  This is what our hostess has to say:
It's my birthday this weekend - I will be camping with Girl Guides.  What is your perfect "this is how I spoil myself" birthday plan?
Oh, that's not as easy as it sounds!  I can say with certainty that it would not be a camping trip with the Girl Scouts as they are called in the US.  Not that I didn't love spending time with my daughter and her troop during their camping days.  But now?  Not so much.  I would love to have a day of pampering at a spa and a fancy dinner out with my husband including an adult beverage or two.  The other things I would enjoy would include a weekend of scrapbooking with my sister or a friend, some good books to read, and some uninterrupted sleep!  This is actually fairly realistic.  Now, if I were pretending, and money was no object, I would like to spend my birthday in England, maybe visiting Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London.  Someday...

And speaking of someday... I would like to visit Rome and see up close and personal the things my daughter saw on her travels. (The weekly letter for ABC Wednesday is R.)  She photographed these in March on her trip to Italy's capital.

The Coliseum lit up green for St. Patrick's Day.

The Parthenon

Won't that be awesome? I'm counting on it!

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She's Home!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  To me, this one surely is.  My daughter is home from 4 months of studying abroad in Europe, and her twin brother and she had such a heartwarming reunion!