May something, what, the 5th?  6th?  Lemme check...  May 6th.  Wow. Where'd time go?

I look at the picture at the top of this journal and think of what others see:  A whimsical young woman, sweet cherub babies, the whole world behind her.  I think my glass is half empty.  I see her looking tired and spacey, the weight of the world on her shoulders, several kinds climbing all over her and one even working hard to set her hair on fire.  Don't know where that comes from.  Good thing Freud is dead, I guess.

Five whole days since I last journaled and I really missed it.  It's been a really busy time.  Saturday was the public Beltane and I learned a big lesson in humility, rather in why NOT to be humble.  If you will remember, I was calling in the rain some time back because I hadn't had enough rain for my winter tastes and the rain, she'a'came!  It was great.  Sadly, when I put the brakes on it for our event, instead of stopping it a day or two ahead of time, I asked for noon through five as an open time.  At noon, it was pouring, but by around 1pm when we got to the park, it was down to a mild drizzle that you barely felt under the trees.  There were already 4-5 people there when we arrived (it didn't start until 2:30, but they were early) and we ended up with around 30, which is a nice sized group.  By 2pm, the sun was shining brightly and no rain was around.  We got the area set up and Katie started drumming and leading some singing, which was fabulous.  People had drums and rattles and tambourines and it was really energetic, despite the soggy ground. 

Everything went off without a hitch.  We didn't forget anything except paper plates for the feasting, but we worked around that.  The  music even went well, which is a first.  There were enough Maypole ribbons for everyone who could participate to play and we had jumping of the balefire and that went well also.  Of course, our balefire were a couple of small duraflame logs in a cauldron, but hey, it worked!  Lots of peppy music with that one, as well as the Maypole.  Eric and I did the scene from Grease ("You're the One that I Want") to represent the joining of the God and Goddess (Beltane celebrates the fertilization of the coming harvest that was planted in the Spring) and it got a great laugh AND applause!  It was lots of fun.  Eric even "took one for the team" by falling to his knees in the mud for "it's electrifying!" line.  :)

We didn't start eating until around 4:30pm and I promptly forgot that Cinderella had to leave the ball at 5:00pm or the rain was coming.  At 5:05, there was a HUGE thunder strike (we don't get much thunder here, being so close to the coast) and the heavens opened and buckets and buckets and buckets of water started pouring down on us.  We were drenched within seconds.  There was a mad scramble to keep the drums and stereo dry, then try and save the food.  We were all moving like mad, laughing and splashing and a mess.  It took us a good twenty minutes plus to get it all packed into the vehicles and then we scooted off to my house, drenched to the bone. It was deemed a success and we packed away Beltane for another year and set our heads to the coming Summer Solstice celebration. 

Delena is working on a report for school on the state of Mississippi.  It's a good bit of their grade, so she's been hard at the helm on it.  They are given a study pack to work from and I could not believe the info they are expected to find.  God forbid a kid not have the Internet.  Things like "Who invented the school system in Mississippi" (still don't have that one located), what percentages of their exports are in mineral, agriculture and manufactured goods?  What is the average teacher's salary, class size, teacher:child ratio, number of children in public school, number of children in private school, break down of local government...  Josh asked, since each child chose a different state, if the teacher was looking to relocated and wanted potential job information.  She's slowly getting it all together to turn in on Friday.  I'm very proud of her for doing such a good job all on her own.  I have the typical parent smirk of knowing a lot of kids will have their parents doing it for them and will have a better product, but hopefully, the teacher takes that into consideration when grading. 

Both washer and dryer took a dump this week and are now fixed (I *love* having an electrical engineer for a hubby!), so I've got a mountain of laundry to catch up on today.  People have been looking for underwear that isn't quite as icky as the rest, so that's my sign to catch the Tide and get moving on the laundry.

I did find some totally fun stuff on the net recently.  I hope you enjoy it.

Here is a trailer for the new Hulk movie, which looks wonderful:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/the_hulk/trailer_5/

Of course, I can't watch that without waxing all nostalgic for my favorite Hulky Guy, Bill Bixby, who I miss terribly.  One of my favorite shows of long gone status is "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," not to mention how cool he was in "The Magician."  Katrina had quite a thing going for "Mr Eddie's Father."  *sigh*  Moment of silence, please.  Anyway, on this trailer, a lot of people are bitching loudly about the Hulk being CGI instead of a green painted Michael Clarke Duncan, but I say bring on the computer and give me some Hulkamania!

 This is a movie short by Michael Nesmith (Yes, my dear readers, THAT Michael Nesmith, as in THIS Michael Nesmith of Monkees fame and who co-created MTV AND is heir to the throne of the woman who invented "Liquid Paper," I mean how frickin rich can this guy get??) that I have loved for a good 11-12 years now.  I happened to find this on streaming video when I was tearing my house apart looking for the video I have it on (unsuccessfully, I might add):
 http://www.digitaloffspring.com/html/realplayer/sororitygirls.html

From Chris Rock: