Working for love

When I arrived home from work on Thursday, I found a Valentine Factory running in my house. Kylee was sitting at the counter in the kitchen working on her valentines for her class party on Friday.

Actually, I had stopped at the drugstore on my way home to pickup some for ZBoy for the same reason. I guess I got a little carried away. I bought stuff for him, stuff for Darling Man, and some valentines of my own.

I discovered little "treat bags" that were perfect for putting a couple of candies into and bought some for Z's class and some for some people at work.

Zboy got right to work on his little homework table, and I started putting mine together at the diningroom table.

It was quite lovely, all of us working away to express affection for those we share our daily lives with. However reluctantly for some. It is the rule now in school - make one for everyone in your class, or don't bring any. There are a couple of kids in ZBoy's class that made him grit his teeth as he wrote their names on their valentines...

Valentine's Day is a big roadside business. At least it usually is. I didn't see nearly as many of these set ups this year as in years past. I'm guessing the economy is to blame for much of that. The big seller seems to be gigantic stuffed polar bears - something to hang on to when your 401K tanks?


For the last couple of days, Darling Man has been working in the largely ignored back yard. We haven't raked it and gave up picking up all the bits that Revan has so joyously spread all over the place while in his teething phase. But after an arctic blast for North Florida, we had temperatures in the 70s this week and although it hasn't arrived yet, Spring Fever and the Gardening Bug both hit with avengence. After several days of picking up spikey sweet gum balls and dog poo, we got to see what the backyard actually looks like these days.

One side looks pretty good, but the other side has been denuded by enthusiastic digging dogs. We are wondering if laying sod will be a waste of time. Going to have to do something about that bare spot though!

We are also wondering about the pool. Last summer, it started losing water. We would top it up a couple of times a week, but once the first cold spell hit, we stopped using the pool altogether. I'm not sure how much time went by, but suddenly we noticed that the pool had emptied itself. And discovered a rather large hole in the bottom. So the debate began. It's an old pool - should we just pull the whole thing out? Or patch the hole, refresh the sand in the filter and refill the pool for another year or two? My personal vote is to pull the whole thing out and put in grass and a garden. DM and the Boy have different ideas. I guess it won't kill me, so I'm willing to let them have their way - but THEY must take care of the thing.

Today, Darling Man did a little pool walk around to inspect damages and make a plan for fixing it up again. And made a startling discovery:

We have a tenant in the pool. After finding the evidence, DM spotted it cruising around in the leaf debris. He thinks it's an Eastern Ribbon Snake.

I went out to see if I could spot him.

I looked and looked, but never did see him. Bummer. I'd have liked to see him before we evicted him...