Nothing like a blanket in the sun

I finally cleaned out the back of my car. Sad, that I left my job at the end of April and STILL had two boxes & one bag of crap from my office in my car in SEPTEMBER. Queen of denial, that's me. I also found out yesterday (strangely, after I cleaned out my car) that they've FINALLY hired someone -- not quite my replacement, since my job was ELIMINATED (not that corp would admit to that, no unemployment bennys for me, no, I "quit because they wanted me to go to 40 hours," that's what the letter from HR claimed but I was railroaded out of there...bitter, moi?). It's funny that the person they've hired is everything my former boss (who's still there) would not want -- pregnant, and working remotely, from another STATE. To paraphrase John Lennon, karma gotcha. I knew it would eventually bite her on the ass.

No, not bitter at all.

Anyway, one of the things I now have room for in my wayback (does everyone call the back of their station wagon that?) is an old blanket. That came in handy this afternoon when Tess wanted to be outside. She's got a swingset in the backyard and can handle most of it, although she doesn't like the slide. Her first experience, to dad's horror, was when she was about 14 months old and flew down it (while he turned for a second), landed on her butt, and bit her tongue. Short slides, no problem, big slides, still a little gunshy.

So I spread out the blanket in our semi-sunny, semi-shady backyard, and hung out there while Tess grabbed some toys and threw them down on the blanket and ran over to her swings and jumped on my back and found red-orange Fairy-Lanterns (yay! another mystery garden find) and poked sticks in our mole holes (E hates the squishy tunnels but won't put down anything to get rid of the grubs they're after, so...live on, Mr. Mole!) and generally got her ya-yas out, even though she STILL doesn't nap, despite all that fresh air.

Then tonight I had the first of my Special Effects classes at Stampeddler, kind of a haul for me but it's fun to sit and stamp and NOT BE INTERRUPTED. We used Crystal Lacquer (still drying), Fun Flock (with Crystal Lacquer as a base) and Liquid Applique, which I still need to get a feel for (heat drying it makes it puff and raise, almost like embroidery, but makes great hair for your rubber stamp people, fur for your RS animals, etc, I think CTMH sells it, GREAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW MY OWN CATALOG).

My sister-in-law got me a gift certificate for my birthday at the OTHER stamp/scrap store in Livonia, they have a sale going on (15% off everything) so I'm going to check there tomorrow for Crystal Lacquer and Liquid Applique. Since I take Special Effects 2 next Thursday, if Scrappin' and Stampin' doesn't have what I want, I can go back and get my 10% class discount next week in Northville. That allowance thing again...