(Tonight's Picture Sunday contains way too many pictures. Forgive an old woman, please.)

Picture Sunday

Hello, end of weekenders, and welcome to Picture Sunday. My weekend began with a real bang.

Just about. First of all I spent Friday night, not with with a Friday Chill, but with a lovely event. You see, my dear friend Kellie (with an ie) will be leaving us soon, well, leaving those of us who live around here. Our loss is Denver's gain. And Friday night the Community Band threw a little surprise party and dinner for Kellie (with an ie) and her family. It was a great deal of fun, and so of course I forgot my camera. (I also forgot Sherman, for which I'll never be forgiven.) I was going to do another "artist's rendering" version of Picture Sunday for it, but frankly, I just don't have the time to draw right now.

I ended up Friday Chilling when I got home, and went to bed late into the night. Then as I was lying in bed at 4:40 am, what should I hear right outside my bedroom window but a shotgun blast.

I kept telling myself it wasn't, that maybe a transformer blew or something, but I knew in my heart that it was. So I stayed motionless in bed for about 10 minutes, then couldn't take it any longer. I mean, my bedroom window is right at my head.

My first thought was to roll out of bed and go crawling around the house, and I must admit that more than once I thought of, "Serpentine, Shel!" Instead I grabbed the phone and went into the bathroom, the least-windowed room of my home.

"I really feel like an idiot calling you," I began my call to the dispatcher, and went on to explain that I'd heard what I knew was a gunshot outside my house. She seemed quite unconcerned, almost like, "Well, what do you want me to do about it?" and so finally I said that if she could possibly be so kind as to at least have someone drive by the house and look, I'd be grateful.

In no time, there were two policemen (well, one was a girl) walking around my house with spotlights. They went all over, then came to the door, and I explained where it sounded like it came from, they hemmed and hawed and said, "Well, everything looks completely in order," and thought I must be totally insane, but as they were standing there the dispatcher came over their walkie-talkies and said that someone two doors down from me reported hearing the same gun blast. That report said they thought maybe someone was poaching deer in the woods behind our houses.

And so the police went down that way, and then I saw them get in their cars and drive away. That's it. Nothing else.

Needless to say, sleep, which has been at a minimum around here anyway, has now come to a dead and complete halt.

So that's my exciting story for the blog, and now on to other things. I told you last week or so I'd been a little weepy lately. Earlier in the week the "little" left that statement completely, as I was the recipient of this little piece of mail.



















Which contained this.













Yes, as of this coming Friday, my fine nephew will be a High School Graduate. There were a couple of times in the past months this was in doubt, not for grades but for Teenage Boy Behavior. But all is well, he will graduate as Beta Club member, Student Government President, Baseball and Cross Country letterman, Model Government Speaker of the House for the state of Virginia, and All-Around Neato Guy.

But here's the question. How did the boy that only a year ago was playing in the floor with his toy cars, in his little cowboy hat, get to this point already? I mean, it was only six months ago he was leaving for his first day of kindergarten! Six weeks ago he was playing Little League football, and I happen to know it was only a couple of weeks ago he started high school. It cannot be graduation time already.

But I guess it is, and I'm 18 years older than I thought I was, and so let's take a little time for some Tatyie appreciation. Welcome to Picture Sunday - The Nephew Edition.

























A tender two, he was in this picture.















But he grew, and was cool enough to wear a Squeeze t-shirt when he was just a boy. And what a boy.

Now he's all grown up.

He likes to eat!

























He's captain of the band drumline, and ardent school supporter!

















He makes a stunning sophisticated man-about-town!

























He's made the local papers!

























He's a snowboarder extraordinaire!














He's in a rock band!






















He's had his own personal tete-a-tete with the governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine! (And don't even ask, Mike - I don't know the girl, and have no idea what her phone number is.)


















And let us never forget his, if you'll pardon the pun, crowning moment. The first-ever Ms G-Man.


















So here's to my Dear Nephew, sweet, easy-going, tender-hearted, funny. All-Around Neato Guy indeed.

I guess there's only one left, the whole schmeer, the Graduation Night cap and gown picture.

(*sniff*)

OK, now that that's over with, I guess we still have to get to the recipe du jour. Speaking of "out with the old and in with the new," yesterday I came home from the grocery and found myself doing a little cleaning while putting away the groceries. Mr M was on his way and the house was a mess. But just like those days when cleaning the house becomes three hours spent on going through one drawer, my housecleaning was mainly confined to the refrigerator. Lucky for you all.

From the "Cost-Free!" file at cardland, say hello to it if you dare, Clean-Out Soup.





















Clean-Out Soup is a little dish wherein we take everything old and/or expired from the refrigerator, and before throwing it out, we mix bits of it all together to make a big soup. We have two kinds of Italian dressing, both expired over a year ago. A heaping dollop of expired horseradish sauce, some old pickle relish, the juice from a mostly empty jar of pickles, some mostly rancid evaporated milk, and the piece de resistance, some brown mustard over four years past its sell-by date! I'm quite proud of that. It's topped off with some whipped cream from Thanksgiving, and there you go. Clean-Out Soup is a chilled soup, which is only fitting, seeing the chills you'll be suffering about an hour after it's consumed.

Happy week.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* And now if you'll pardon a little self-promotion, I couldn't help myself. Remember my Text Twist blog? It's just below. My goal? My goal was 200,000 points.




















How about that? I actually got to over 272,000 when "venous" sent me tumbling swiftly back to Earth, right on my ass. It was fun, though.