I'm here in Houston and it is too cold here too! And on top of that...my oldest son's Varsity Baseball Team has hosted a tourament all this week---which means I have had games every night this week, including tonight that I just got back from, and have been out there sitting on the bleachers until about 10-10:30 every night!!! We couldn't sell enough hot chocolate!!! We were wrapped up in blankets===we have thin blood and don't like this weather!! I thought I was going to freeze tonight! I got home about a half hour ago and I am STILL SHAKING!!!! ~MJ

Tree Oracle...nice to see you posting again. :-) Amazing photos! Clouds can be so fascinating. I have not seen anything like that myself. I didn't know the name of it, thanks. Thought you might enjoy this photo... A rare, mother ship cloud formation hovers over Childress, Texas. Tornado-chasers there covered seven hours and 150 miles (241 kilometers) tracking the supercell thunderstorm that produced this cloud formation. Supercell thunderstorms are known to spawn tornadoes with winds exceeding 200 mph (322 kph). Photograph by Carsten Peter I'm sorry to hear of all the damage from the weather in NH and ME. That's when it stops being any fun at all. Dawiff...I hope you brought your watery garden to the attention of the neighbor. Brother...lol. I just checked the rain gauge again this morning terrene..2 more inches of rain. So 3 inches yesterday emptied out, 3 the day before and another 2 today. 8" altogether. I wonder, when you get this much rain all at once, does it penetrate deep enough so that even if we go a couple of weeks without any more rain, that there will still be a reservoir for the plants to go to? Or do the plants just suck it all up? What I find disturbing is seeing so much water running into the streets and into the storm drains. There has been a lot being said recently about the contribution to water pollution this makes. I keep eyeing my property to see if I could funnel the overrun so that it would not run off the property, but I have such a level lot, I would have to create a depression somewhere not too close to the foundation. I suppose it would be a great place for Hydrangeas and such and I am always complaining about my dry soil. Raingardens are a big thing in the Chicago area to clean up the Lakes. I am thinking about whether this would be a nice idea instead of collecting rainwater. Actually, it is amazing to me that every summer can be so individual. This year is nothing like last year, and although the year before, I barely had to bring out the sprinkler because of the frequent rain days, the storms were nothing like the downpours we've had this year. pm2 Here is a link that might be useful: [Rain Gardens of West Michigan](http://raingardens.org/Index.php)

I have never brought a project for them to help me with, I was just saying that you do not get friendly service even if you just ask for a minor thing, much less you would not get project help. I only posted this to disagree that Joann's is friendly comment so one left earlier. I am sure it varies by location. But, just because they make a low wage does not excuse them for being unfriendly. It's not really possible to compare to a local shop, because we don't have any now. They may pay the same wage in both places? Maybe Joann's should look at the Colma store and see why it is so unfriendly? I am not the only one who thinks so. Reviews of the Colma location say, what I am saying. Reviews of your local Joann's may be glowing and warm. If they raise up the price of the bobbin winder to 39, then put it on sale for 10 dollars less, and they same bobbin winder is priced more like 30 elsewhere. It's not a good deal. I would only want to buy from Joann's if they were really friendly and really helping me a lot. If you are getting help from a store you may want to buy a things there to go with the project to support them for supporting you with your project even if the price is higher. I used to do that when we had a local shop. If Joanns was really friendly they would have sent me more coupons. They can tell I did not use those by the scan of my name. Here is a link that might be useful: Reviews of the colma Joann's on yelp

lol, I picked her up from school yesterday and we went back to her class to get her backpack & binder. I asked, 'you have everything?' and she said yes. Later, after 5pm she tells me she forgot her spelling words in her desk. Well, Wednesday is the night they have to put spelling words in alphabetical order and write them three times each. She knew this but I wasn't thinking about it, we had been at the doctor's office & radiology all afternoon, but she brought it up. She said she guesses she can't do her spelling since school is out. My first thought was she did it on purpose and I wanted to call her on it. I didn't. I thought about it for a while and a couple miles down the road, I said that when we get home, she can call her friend that's in her class and ask for the spelling words. She claimed she didn't know her phone number but I told her I do. When we got home, I double checked her binder and the usual spelling list wasn't there but the spelling words were. I found a loophole... the teacher sends home an optional sheet on Fridays. It's an activity they can do over the weekend and at the bottom, it gives the next weeks spelling words so they can start practicing if they want. Well, of course she was bummed that I found that and proceeded to write them out three times each but not in ABC order. DH had her redo it in ABC order. Then we watched TV for a while. She had a great attitude. Her mom sent DH a text message an hour after she went to bed to have SD call her. He wrote back that she was in bed and if she wants, she can call in the morning before SD leaves for the bus. She called before any of us were up and wanted to talk to SD so I went and got her up. I heard SD telling her about going to the doctor and say her arm doesn't hurt anymore. She started to ask BM how she was doing and then abruptly says ok, I love you too. Bye. BM apparently didn't want to 'chat'. That is the FIRST time BM has called SD in a very long time, I can't remember the last time she called her. The doctor called me a few minutes ago to say the X ray shows no break. He said she probably pulled a muscle if she fell on her hands playing on the trampoline. There's not much to do for it, he said to apply heat and showed us how to stretch the muscle. It will resolve itself in a few days if she rests it. and I do agree that some lying... about school work or brushing teeth, etc. are common at her age. I don't know if it's normal or alarming, and I understand the lies she tells her mom to get mom's attention, but she is old enough to understand that there are consequences for those kinds of lies when mom gets CPS or the police involved. There could be great consequences for DH and me. I was more concerned with her lying about injuries, being hit, and things she complains to her mom about but doesn't tell us. We don't find out until BM calls DH to chew him out or now, until she calls CPS. SD never complained to us about having to eat foods she doesn't like and when she told DH about her arm, she only mentioned it once and he didn't see a reason to go to the doctor and she never complained to us about it again. And we don't know if SD complained to her mom or if her mom is the one that is asking her if she was seen by the doctor but I don't know why BM would put it on her daughter to get dad to take her to the doctor if SD isn't saying it hurts. I'm probably overly cynical of BM, but I'd say she knows SD fell on the trampoline and got hurt and didn't want to pay for a doctor visit so she told SD to tell dad her arm hurts so he can make sure it wasn't hurt too bad. SD told him a couple of days after coming back from BM's, after she got off the phone with her. BM might have reminded her to ask dad. DH looked at it, and didn't think it was broken and considering SD had gone to cross country and was swinging her arms around earlier, concluded it wasn't too serious. SD never told him she fell down on the trampoline. I'm sure she didn't want to get mom in trouble, although we don't know exactly what happened so it could be an innocent **stuff happens with kids** accident or it could be she was not being supervised and got hurt. We don't know that and we already know BM isn't going to tell us if she did anything wrong. But, when SD came home this last weekend, she did tell DH that she collided with her sister on the trampoline and cut her lip. She said her teeth went into her sister's leg. That was on Sunday and on Monday, she didn't call BM but she did call BM on Tuesday and after she got off the phone, she again told DH that her arm hurt. On Wednesday is when CPS went to the school so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how coincidental it all is. I'll admit that I am pessimistic when it comes to BM. But, I've never been wrong about her actions.. not yet anyways. I have been surprised that she has done some things I've predicted because I honestly was fooled at first and she presented herself as a GREAT mother. But, maybe because of my 'control freak'ness, I noticed little details that went unnoticed by my DH about her. I mean, she did things that I found odd being a mother myself. I went through custody issues with my son's father and we would fight over who gets him more, not who has to take him. She was always asking him to take SD on her weekends but if he ever offered to let her make up the time, she said she was busy. She never asked to makeup the time either. Then, when she refused to help her daughter do a school project, that pretty much sealed my opinion of her... she actually told my husband that if I want to do 'mom' things (like bake cookies, which I guess really upset her) that I can help her with her school project too. Hearing her say that shattered my image of her being a wonderful mom because I can't imagine saying or doing that to my own child. It's been downhill since then and she has aspired to new lows as a mother, in my opinion. The only one I did not see coming was her moving away and giving us custody, that blindsided me because we had just spent several months (and thousands in lawyers) to fight for custody and she fought it so fiercely, I never imagined anything would cause her to give up her daughter so easily. Maybe that is why SD was so affected too, she saw how fiercely her mom fought to keep her, only to be discarded two weeks later for a stranger. (so, yes I have had a hard time not resenting and hating BM for doing that and I need to learn how to let that go, but it's hard)