Happy Mothers Day to you all. Ours is going well. We got out to a playground and are starting to build a fine stable of playgrounds for use this summer. Last summer we were so busy unpacking/settling in that we didn't get to explore Portland's summer activities that well, so this year it's like opening up a present. One place I really want to check out is Jamieson Park on the west side. It has cool water features and is supposedly close to a bento place called Get Bento, which, pretty much as soon as I ever heard of bento I decided I needed to open a bento restaurant called "get bento", so these people beat me to it. Less work for me, I guess. Tony and I laugh about Get Bento and we plan to take a photo of ourselves in front of it and mail it to all our similarly gutter-minded buddies.

I got some goodies from the boys this Mothers Day. That is pretty much all I ask for for mothers day. I want nice (or crappy, doesn't matter) art-craft projects from them. Fortunately I'm no longer homeschooling and Simon's in daycare so I actually had other adults who assigned them the projects. It does kinda take some of the wind out of a gift's sails if you supervise the gift's making yourself (at least that's what I've found) so this is a real treat this year.

Simon's gift to me was a little heart with hand prints hanging from it and Tony made me a haiku. Yay!

Last week was a real killer for us. The first week of the month is my busy volunteer week. On Tuesday I helped organize some clothing with the people from swap shop for donation and then that night Tony and I went to the food bank and labeled a bunch of bags with "instant potatos" "salmon steaks" and "white rice". Wednesday I signed people up for the walk/bike raffle and then distributed prizes on Friday. I'm not real satisfied with that last one, though. The same people keep winning and I keep giving the same prizes to them. So next month I'm going to switch it up and give prizes to everybody who's participated all year and hasn't won. All the people who've "gotten bento" as it were.

We also had Tony's science project to work on last week. It is finished now, and thanks to the help from you mamas on that blog there's a real impressive looking graph made on excel that bolsters Tony's hypothesis. So thanks a lot for that. The whole thing looks professional as hell. I'm really proud of both of us for pulling it together so fast.

Some additional wildness was thrown into our mix last week: we've got some freaky death-threat fool on the loose here in Pdx. First, on Tuesday during my statistics class I noticed an unusually high number of phones vibrating. So after class I checked my messages and apparently the library was shut down for a bomb threat. So I went on with life and after school on Wednesday I received a phone call from Tony. He was at school waiting for me to pick him up like I'd told him I would, but my groceries were delivered late, so I've got Simon all crabby from his nap screaming at me and hitting me and Tony on the phone and I'm slinging meat into the fridge and hurrying over to the school so we can get to the chiropractor appointment we had. And I'm on the phone the whole time like "ok now I'm at 29th street! now 30th!" by wednesday the stress of my week was starting to take a toll. And Tony's on the phone like "I'm across street from school and there's all these cop cars coming by" So I hurry a little faster and when I get within sight of Tony I start waving, but some people step in between us and I'm crossing my fingers that I know them, because I'm accidentally waving at them. I do! I know them and I cheerfully smile and say hi, and they look all shaken and shocked so I mentally castigate myself for not wearing deodorant and keep going (Ha!) Turns out someone had called in a gunman threat to the school and parents are coming to pick up afterschool stragglers (who've been sequestered somewhere safe inside) while my kid's randomly cooling his heels across the street. On the bright side we were on time to the chiropractor!

On Thursday and Friday I also did some productive stuff, but goddess knows what the fuck it was anymore

Next week I've got a midterm in statistics which I am sorta prepared for and I turn in another lab assignment. We're getting almost done in there. Also I got signed up for an online class this summer, so that will be productive. It's actually within my major, so that should be fun to see what those classes are like. Tony's science project is due Tuesday. We're going to celebrate by going to see Paranoid Park on Wednesday if any Portland hipmamas want to join in on that action.

I hope everybody's doing great! Take care.