Ladybugs

OK. I know ladybugs are supposed to be lucky. Last fall on one of the final really warm days, ladybugs swarmed our house. Honestly, we had thousands of them. We were vacuuming the darned things up for weeks. Well, the ones that made their way in to the house that escaped the vacuum, found some nice cozy place inside to spend the winter. Now that it is warming up again, they have begun to emerge. One day I counted 13 of them in the big window in Riley's room. There are usually at least 4 in every window of our house and also a few hanging out on the ceiling of our bedroom. Chris and I have tried to catch them, throw the in the toilet, suck them up with the vacuum, capture them in water bottles - nothing works. There are always more. Chris hates them because they leave that ladybug smell on him if he touches them. I hate them because of the casualties. It's not like they just hang out in the windows and eventually work their way outside - it's still too cold for them there. Instead, once their window sojourn is up, they die. I have ladybug carcases everywhere.

On Monday I went in to school for a quick visit at the end of the day. It was nice for everyone to see Riley and she slept the entire time. It was nice since she was asleep; I could just leave her in her carrier in the stroller and she didn't get passed around to people. I'm not going to wake her from a solid snooze and it sounded like a lot of people were getting oner illnesses anyway. While there though I did grab my dahlia tubers from the fridge in my classroom to bring them home and wake them up. I had wrapped them in saran wrap individually after dividing them last fall and was pleased to see that I didn't lose too many this way. Last year I lost most of my tubers to rot. Right now they are all sitting out where they can get light so that they will start to show their eyes and I'll know if they will produce a plant for me. I have about 50 or so from last year, so I'm sure I'll be giving some of my duplicates away since I have 30 new varieties coming this year. I'm not quite sure where they are all going to go - I might have to dig a new garden over April break. I'm thinking about getting a big half barrel to put a few of them in - I have quite a few unknowns and hate to give away a mystery.
As far a Riley goes, nothing new to report except that we had a diaper situation at Target yesterday that required a complete change of clothes. She was not a happy camper especially considering that the store restroom was freezing. She was screaming up a storm, but I couldn't blame her. I would have too if I had to get naked in that room.