Band Mom

Today I took on official duties as a band mom. Squig was marching in the parade that runs through our little downtown. It's a typical small-town parade made up of mostly firetrucks, tractors, scouts, little league and the middle school band. And there's a street fair.

I walked with the band, squirting water in the kids' mouths if they needed it. It was pretty hot and the sun was out full-force. I put sunscreen on my arms and the back of my neck, but forgot to do the front and the bottom of my neck/top of my chest is sunburnt. Ow. And my nose got it, even though I was wearing a hat. I walked with the drummers to help out if any of them got too tired to carry the drums. They're pretty heavy. I ended up carrying one of the snare drums for a while.

The kids were all very nice and it was fun to hang around and listen to them chat and interact. Kids that age can be really funny to listen to. After the parade, the kids went back to the band truck for water and popsicles, then Squig and I walked the fair and I bought her a cupcake from a lady whose kids have been in school with my kids from the very beginning. She's started a cake business. Squig got a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting, which, if you know her, is just the perfect combination.

And then we went home. Where it was air conditioned and we just sat around waiting for John and the other two to get home from soccer. They should coordinate things like that better, I think. They shouldn't have opening day for soccer (and pictures, too!) the same day as the street fair in the town next door. Especially when a good number of kids from the fair town play soccer over there. Two of the kids on Sam's team missed pictures because their dad was in charge of a booth at the fair for his scout troop. Ah well. What can you do.

At least John wasn't traveling and we were able to split up. That helped a lot.

In all, a good day, and we got a lot of yard work done after everyone got home. I pruned my rose bush with its preliminary fall pruning. It might bloom again, so I don't want to cut it all the way down just yet. It was just getting out of control. I did some heavy duty pruning on the avocado tree which is trying its darndest to die. It's basically a stick right now. I trimmed off all the dead (as in broke off, because it was sooo dead) wood and found just one half-alive branch left. I don't know what's going on with this tree, except that we moved it. They're very tempermental, avocados are. Every time we move it (it's in a half whisky barrel, so it moves fairly easily, and we move it every winter to a protected spot and then move it back in the spring) it promptly drops off all the leaves and tries to die. This time it may have succeeded. All the leaves dried up and fell off, and most of the wood died. And if you go online to try to see what the problem is, you get overwhelmed with all the possible problems with avocados. They're just cranky. So, we'll see if I can save it. I pruned it, propped it up, fertilized it and watered it a little. The soil was already damp, and the don't like soggy roots, so I only gave it enough to soak in the fertilizer. I'll give it six months and then I'll have to get a new one and start over. I think it will do better if I get one and keep it in one place. It's only given me two avocados in, what 4, 5 years? Grrr. Not much return for the amount of work I put into this thing.

Anyway, we did some work, cleaned up and jumped in the pool to cool off. Just threw the kids in bed, and will head off to sleep myself very soon. Sunburns make me tired for some reason. Even little ones.