Egg Show

We had a fairly busy weekend. Jen showed her eggs at the annual egg show. This was Lily's third year there, as these pictures show.

2009: Year One

2010: Year Two

2011: Year Three

I also went to a job fair over the weekend. It was held at a local college. As I was driving into work today, I heard a piece on another job fair. The reporter opened with "Thousands of job seekers descended on Wilmington  where dozens of local companies were hiring." And, to me, the important part of that sentence is the juxtaposition of "thousands" of people competing for "dozens" of jobs. (Also, "descended" is very apt, because that's how it felt, just this grim swarm of humanity, every one of us equally desperate.) I noticed that there were a lot of older folks there too. The job environment is crappy right now.

But the weekend wasn't all bad. In addition to the egg show, Lily discovered the magic of magnets. We had one on the door of the fridge and she was asking about it, and we had some fun going around the house figuring out what was attracted to a magnet. I showed her a wooden toothpick and asked her if she thought it would stick to the magnet. I was very impressed when she tested it before answering. That's my little scientist!

 Lily did that thing of making little daisy chains out of a bunch of ferromagnetic objects, so she had the magnet sticking to the fridge while suspending a screwdriver, which in turn held a chain of paperclips. This week, the letter "M" is up for show and share day, and we might have our item!

Monday was our first pleasant day in ages, so we took a family walk in the local cemetery. Jen wanted to find dandelions for her eggs and Lily and I just wanted to walk around in a cemetery.  Everybody was happy! Lily was extra sweet. She found a dandelion that had reached the wispy white seed stage, and she had picked it up a was so very earnestly making a wish on it. She had her eyes closed and she was thinking exactly about how she wanted to word it, as carefully as an adventurer negotiating with a genie for the last of three wishes. I didn't catch everything, but it went along the lines of, "I wish everyone in the whole world and my whole family would never be hurt and that I can be good so mommy and daddy never get angry with me."

I suppose we'll see if the wish was granted as time goes on.