Happy Friday the 13th!

For an entire week, I have been wondering why my blog won't post to people's blog rolls. I guess if I am just writing for myself, it shouldn't matter. But maybe some people in my family would like to read it, but it doesn't appear that I am writing anything. I just tried, yet again, another fix. We will see if it works...maybe today will be my lucky day (Friday the 13th?) and it will work!

I wanted to write about today...the misadventures of Josie.  Today, since David and I had to leave pretty early to drive to the library conference at the Davis Conference Center, Patrick had to get Josie off to school, which he did successfully. She texted me a few hours later to tell me that some boys were fooling around and broke her sunglasses. And after that, her day just got better and better.

It was her first day to work at the snow cone shack of which her cousin Jessica is the manager. Since we weren't back yet, Patrick took her to work in Provo. I got home about ten minutes after her shift was scheduled to start, and already she was on the phone to Patrick in tears.

Because her first customer on her first day on the job passed counterfeit money to her. And she is young, inexperienced, and no one had said "Do not take bills over--whatever--" or even "watch out for counterfeit money."  She was terribly, terribly upset, and she and Jessica were all worried about MAKING UP THE MONEY! I said, "You have to tell the owner! This should involve the police because HE IS THE BAD GUY, not you!"

I am sure that he was probably watching them, maybe even close enough to listen...he waited until Josie was alone because Jessica had gone to get supplies, and then he approached her. He was very nice, very pleasant, seemed ordinary and honest, and his timing was so wonderful...soon after he left, by the time they realized the problem, they were swarmed with customers. Josie was in tears and could hardly function.

So she only worked two hours of her first four hour shift, and half of that time she spent writing a description of the man and making a statement. They will be watching the surveillance tapes of the store to see if they can spot him.

Icing on the cake: Jessica's car got hit in the parking lot while all this was going on.

And two of our co-workers were in  a car accident on their way to the conference this morning...

But, on the bright side, Patrick found Josie's necklace which has been missing since, oh, the day she got it about a month ago! And where it was--I am just amazed that it hadn't been vacuumed up!

Mother's Day Tomatoes

I decided to give myself a mother's day gift of tomato plants. There is nothing quite as yummy as a tomato from the garden, and I really want to grow some. Plus they have been so expensive lately, so I just really want to grow my own.

In keeping with the adventures people in this family keep having, I chose the Jetsetter variety of tomato, which was recommended by my friend Irene N.'s brother at our R.S. garden night. Hopefully, my tomato plants will end up like this:


They are of course not there yet! Today, they are small plants that caused me to work very hard. Irene's brother said that, since our soil here is not very loose--like solid clay in our yard--each plant needs about two feet of prepared soil to make a good root system. I planted six plants, and one of them got about eighteen inches of prepared soil, and it was all downhill from there: the last one was lucky if it got nine inches. Digging in that clay soil with a shovel is hard work--the poor little roots have my sympathy!

Irene's brother also recommended that we either surround the plant with black plastic or with stones. We have a lot of flat stones, so that is what I chose. The stones act just like--well, in the olden days, people would warm stones to keep their feet warm. That is what the stones do for the tomatoes, only they hold the heat in the soil, and therefore the roots stay warm. Tomatoes, like me, like to stay warm.

We will see if I manage to keep my six Mother's Day Tomato plants alive and healthy--if I succeed, we should be eating some beautiful tomatoes sometime in July. Yum!

(Image courtesy of gardenharvestsupply.com. I hope mine look just like that once they grow!)