'Twas a Successful Friday

Indeed it was.
I slept in late. Typed up a new post. Went into town with my mom and youngest brother, Dawson. We had  few errands to run, but mainly we went here:

I kinda love Hobby Lobby. Like, love LOVE it. They have so much cute stuff. Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for our bank accounts), we don't really have a need or space for any stuff right now, since basically everything except essentials are in a storage building right now. I hope they haven't melted in there because of all this crazy heat. I remember the first time I went into HobLob after our wedding last summer and how weird it felt to not go directly to the bridal aisles to see if they had anything new (they never did, not sure why I kept trying).

But the goal of this trip was to get some silk flowers for my mom's job. She and I picked out some awesome bouquets, but Dawson was just there so he could go to the "kids' aisle". After a while he was pretty bored, so he snatched up a feather and did an interpretive dance for us.

And then he decided his feather was going in the basket.
I love that kid. He was born when I was 13, and everyone thought he was my baby. Seriously. Even the lady who checked us out at Walmart one time when he was still an itty-bitty baby asked if he was mine or my mom's. Rude.
Usually he instantly puts on the pout and hides when I take out my camera, but some days, like today, he hams it up. I need to get a close-up of his eyes- they are so beautiful. And his lashes, holy cow. Wish I had inherited those.

After Hobby Lobby I drove him and my mom to his elementary school where he was able to meet his new teacher before classes start on Monday. While they were visiting, I went to Hastings to pick up a few books I'm required to read before my classes start on the 29th.

Thankfully I've read both of these before, so I just need a refresher. I also have to read Frankenstein and there's one other, but I can't remember off the top of my head. The goal is to finish Huck Finn and get half-way done with Hamlet this weekend. The class I have to read them for is Intro to Lit Crit. I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty scared. I attempted the class my second semester in college, but quickly realized I was in wayyyy over my head. For one, I was a freshman attempting a 3000 level class that was taught with the assumption that you were familiar with a lot of apparent "classics", which I was not. I was barely 18 years old and just wasn't ready for the class, so I dropped it. Best decision ever. Now I get to take it with one of my best friends who's awesomely-smart, so hopefully it will go a little better this time.

Speaking of books, I love reading. I was the best reader in my entire elementary school, and in the 6th grade I had the most AR points in the entire junior high.  After 6th grade (and having already proven I was the best), I didn't worry about making it to the top again, but I was always in the top 5 or 10. My name is even on the little plaques in the library.

I would really love to read more these days, and I did read 2.5 books for fun this summer. But for one, books are expensive. We already have to pay ridiculous amounts for textbooks, fun books just really aren't in our budget right now. Second, I just don't have time to read for fun during the school  year. Being an English major means a lot of required reading that eats up all the time I would use to personal reading. I look forward to next summer. I see a lot of books in my future.

Later in the afternoon I went to meet with the mom of the student Will and I will be tutoring/teaching this school year. I am in charge of ELA and Will is doing Science. I'm pretty nervous about this as well; it's a fantastic opportunity for me (gives me an ease-in and trial run for teaching a class full of students), but I figured they would have picked out a curriculum. Nope. They have some books and have a general idea of what they want him to learn (needs to be ready to enter public school for 9th grade next year), but it's pretty much all up to Will and me to decide what and how he is going to be taught. Talk about pressure.
I'll be spending a lot of the weekend doing research and making a "grand plan" for the next several weeks.

This is what we have to work with....

And this evening I managed to talk myself into going on a run. I almost didn't because I kinda had the whole "you did so well yesterday, you deserve a day off" thoughts running through my mind, but I kept telling myself that's how I got to where I am today in the first place. There are no days off when you're trying to loose weight and get back into shape. Everything you put in your mouth matters. Every minute you spend moving matters.

I did take another route with no hills. It was AWESOME.

Finally had some cloud coverage that cooled off the air a little better.

It took me about 21 minutes to run the out and back, with about 10 minutes for warm up and cool down.

Look ma, no hills!

When I turned around I was running against the wind, which was great for evaporating the sweat, not so great for the the mental part of pushing against it.

I saw some rabbits, and the horses from a pasture were coming in for the night on my way back.

Sorry for the crappy iPhone pic. Those ARE horses.

A few other pictures from the day:

This is Freska, Will's baby.

After their house burned down about 2.5 years ago and they lost all three of their cats, he felt like he needed another cat. He wanted a white one. So his mom got on the SPCA website and found Freska. She is a "special needs" kitty; when we got her her back left leg was cut off at what would be our knee. We took her to the vet and he said she was fine, but it was probably a trauma wound because a vet would have cut it off at what would be our hip. Eventually we would need to have the rest of the leg removed because it could easily become infected. That time came much sooner than we expected, not more than a month or two later (around Christmas time) she started limping around like she had a Charlie Horse and the vet said it was time. So a 3 day stay at the vet and $800 later, she was perfect as can be.

Did I mention she was at the SPCA in Oklahoma City, 4 hours away from us? His aunt picked Freska up and drove her halfway and met my MIL, who brought her back. Talk about a high maintenance kitty.

Don't feel sorry for Freska though. She can run and play with the other cats just like any of the rest of them. I'll have to tell you more about her later; she is so funny.

And this is a happy/sad picture:

Happy because something in the Panhandle is still alive, despite the incredible heat and drought.

Sad because you can tell it didn't produce any corn and the farmers just let weeds take over.
It was so hard to come home for my family reunion and see all the beautiful farm land that should be covered with crops almost ready for harvesting filled with nothing. Just brown and dead. It usually doesn't look like that around here until November or December. It breaks my heart to think about all the people who have been affect by the heat and drought. Not to mention the insane wildfires we had all spring/early summer that destroyed millions of acres of land and a lot of residential houses.

What do you wish you had more time for?
If I had more free time, I would read more. If I had more time and our own house, I would definitely craft more :)