Friday, April 12

Up at 6:30 to get ready for water aerobics. There was a chill in the air this morning, so I wore my fleece outfit and fleece hoodie. The pool, though, was bath-water warm. Everyone except the lap swimmers enjoyed it. Twenty-five attended today...I guess word is spreading about how warm the pool is.

We won't have a session Monday, however, because our lifeguard, a baseball coach, will be away with his team at a tournament game. We'll be able to meet again on Wednesday, but if the team wins their game, the coach will not be available to lifeguard on Friday.

Naturally, weather forecasters are already predicting severe storms for next Wednesday, and into Thursday. So we might not be able to swim on Wednesday, either. And, drat it, if the storms continue into Thursday, the ladies of our scrapbook club also won't want to meet.

This past Wednesday, a home medical service/Caring Hands meeting was scheduled for 8 a.m., but was cancelled upon the threat of severe storms and possible tornadoes. As it turned out, the storms didn't arrive until later in the day.

Last month, we cancelled our scrapbook club meeting under the threat of wintry weather that ended up not arriving until after dark that evening.

We're a skittish bunch of scaredy cats, I guess. At the WDCS last Tuesday, Hubbie and I wondered why the store was so packed on a weekday. Someone commented that folks were preparing for the storm...picking up bread and milk. Gad.

Fortunately, our town was spared the worst of the storms that rolled through. All we got was thunder and lightning, and a whole lot of rain. Other communities were hit pretty hard, though. A story in our local newspaper reported the weird incidence of a storm sucking up a lake, spinning it around and, I suppose, dropping it back into the lake bed.

Back home after aerobics, I enjoyed a cup of coffee, while Hubbie accompanied Mother to our house, where Hubbie set up necessary gardening stuff for her to plant impatiens for her porch. She thoroughly enjoyed this activity.

Afterward, she was ready for kitchen duty. I would have preferred to wait until after I'd showered and dressed, but she was on a roll and wanted to get at it. So I gathered and washed veggies for her to dice for making potato soup (Hubbie peeled and sliced the potatoes). While she did that, I gathered and measured all the rest of the ingredients. I also set a pan of eggs on to boil.

Then, she diced onion, celery, pickles, and apple for tuna salad. She added pecans, Craisins, and salad dressing to the fish. She also peeled and diced the boiled eggs, added chopped black olives, spices, and salad dressing, for egg salad.

By this time, it was nearly noon, so I prepared her Ramen Noodle lunch, and heated the remaining goulash for Hubbie and me. After lunch, I was finally ready to head to the shower. Mother went to her jigsaw puzzle, which she finished today. She discovered that (phooey) this puzzle is also missing a border piece, so I guess I'll be writing the company about it.

Back downstairs, I finished making the potato soup, then relaxed and played on my laptop and e-reader tablet. Before I did this, I searched for another jigsaw puzzle for Mother. This one is a teddy bear motif. Already, we know there are two missing pieces in the puzzle, because we have circled on the box cover where the pieces would go.

This is a puzzle I probably bought at a yard sale, so I'm not surprised there are missing pieces. But, I am surprised that once again, there is a missing border piece on a puzzle I recently bought for Mother as an Easter gift. The last time this happened, I wrote the company to complain, and we received a new puzzle of another design. I'm going to write them again. This is a well-known company, so I'm surprised we've encountered this problem twice in such a short time. But to their credit, they stand by their satisfaction-guaranteed policy.

Later, we enjoyed bowls of the potato soup, with a choice of egg salad or tuna salad sandwiches, which was very satisfying on this cool evening. There's enough of it for meals tomorrow, too...which was my plan, since I knew we'd be occupied most of the day at the Scottish Festival.

Hubbie accompanied Mother to her house after supper, and then around 7 p.m., we went to the college for a Celtic concert. This was a concert of bagpipes, bagpipes, and more bagpipes, of course, presented in the college's fine arts auditorium. The acoustics are awful in this space, so the music reverberated off the walls. Nevertheless, they played to an enthusiatic audience that filled the auditorium to near capacity.

This is a program that is produced by the students, and it included Highland dancers that performed a couple of numbers, including the Sword Dance. The program also included the Scottish Festival poetry contest winner, who read his poem about the newly knighted Gawain, of King Arthur's court.

The audience particularly enjoyed a comic song about a Scotsman who wears a kilt instead of trousers, performed by a group consisting of three men and one woman, who played guitar, banjo, fiddle, and bass, while they sang "Donald, Where's Your Trousers?" This the song:

I just down from the Isle of Skye
I'm no very big but I'm awful shy
All the lassies shout as I walk by,
"Donald, Where's Your Trousers?"

Let the wind blow high and the wind blow low
Through the streets in my kilt I go
All the lassies cry, "Hello!
Donald, where's your trousers?"

I went to a fancy ball
It was slippery in the hall
I was afeared that I may fall
Because I nay had on trousers

I went down to London town
To have a little fun in the underground
All the Ladies turned their heads around, saying,
"Donald, where's your trousers?"

The lassies love me every one
But they must catch me if they can
You canna put the breeks on a highland man, saying,
"Donald, where's your trousers?"

From the rediculous to the sublime, the concert ended with the most requested bagpipe number, "Amazing Grace."

We were back home just after 9 p.m. Watched TV for a little while, then headed to bed.