Monthly Archives: March 2018

Twelfth Night and Twisted Weather

What a week this has been. Where has March gone?   If the time passes any faster, I will be going backward.

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We were having some decent weather and then, last Saturday, BAM, we got dumped on with several inches of snow.  It wouldn’t have been so bad, but our granddaughter was starring in Twelfth Night at her school and they live an hour and a half away from us and we kept hearing how bad the roads were.  David said we weren’t going and then he said he thought we could make it. I packed an overnight bag. Then it got worse and we decided we should not try to drive.   We kept in touch with our family there and they cancelled the afternoon show, but we were planning on going to the evening show and it was still on.  I was crying because this was her last performance at this school as she is a senior and we were going to miss it.  Then they called and said the evening performance was cancelled and there would be a show on Sunday. Hurray!.

The next day the sky was blue, the roads were clearer and so off we went. We hadn’t gone very far when we saw several cars in the ditch.  We were so glad we didn’t try to get out on Saturday.   We saw the show and it was wonderful.  I have never read Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, but I knew it was about a girl, pretending to be a boy and another girl falls in love with her/him to her dismay.   Even after reading the synopsis of the play, I am still a little confused  But it was a good play with several funny places in it. The costumes were beautiful, the sets were amazing and the music was very good.   Our granddaughter had a couple of solos and she got to play her ukulele.

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Sorry for the poor picture, but here she is dressed as a boy.

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Here she is singing a solo.

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She has a very beautiful voice and I love to hear her sing. Can’t believe she is so grown up. Just yesterday we were holding her on our laps.

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Anyway, if you know anything about the play, she marries the man she loves and the woman who had loved her/him met a man and married him.   That is not the man behind her. I don’t know who that is!

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Here she is with her stepdad, mom and little brother. I say little, but he is taller than most of us and not done growing.   I tell him he reminds me so much of my father, and he does.  Except for the red hair.

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Here’s her other “little brother” eating snacks from the snack table they set up in the hall.  He was eating these cookies.

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Some mother made these and they were good.

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All the seniors in the play came out and talked and they gave flowers or gift cards to the adults that had helped with the play. They were all so poised.  I don’t remember being that comfortable in front of a crowd when I was their age.  I still don’t like speaking in front of people.

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It was a wonderful afternoon, but we had to head back home.  When we got home there was a card from the local sheriff on our door saying we had been in an accident.  What!?

David went down to the sheriff’s office the next day and they could not tell him much as the accident report was not done. He told them we had not gone anywhere on Saturday which was the date on the card. Then David came home and saw this.

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Our mailbox on the ground.  Neither of us had noticed this when we came home.

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Tire tracks  from the road went through our yard.  He called the sheriff’s department and told them what happened and called our insurance company.   Then I noticed our lilac bush in the front yard was pushed down.  Someone had run off the road, hit our mailbox, continued into our yard and hit the lilac bush.   I hope they are okay.  We never saw anything or heard anything so we think it happened while we were in Indianapolis and the sheriff just put the wrong date on the card.   I guess exciting things happen when we are out of town.

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It was a good mailbox.  A friend had given me those quilt stickers to put on it

Here’s to grandchildren.  And sudden snows, even when they interrupt life.  Bye.

 

Authors in the Family and Letter writing

I always have loved to write.  If I were disciplined enough and didn’t have so many hobbies like quilting, knitting, gardening and reading, I might have had time to write a book.  I have written short stories for my grandchildren in which they are the main characters, but that is as far as I have gotten to being an author.  Writing here on my blog seems to satisfy my need to write.

Our oldest granddaughter actually wrote a book when she was fourteen and had it published.  One of our grandsons likes to write and wrote a story about me trying to get to my birthday party.

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I guess that’s me in the picture!

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Wish you could read it. According to the story, I took a subway from Chicago to Lafayette, Indiana. There was a ship wreck and cyclone I had to deal with also.  Quite a feat if I do say so myself.  But I did get to my birthday party!

His brother made a really nice birthday card for me also.

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Better than any store bought card any day in my estimation.

I got a letter the other day from the same grandson who wrote the story, asking for a size 11 pair of socks.  I think he was asking for his dad because I did not knit his dad socks for Christmas this year.   Not sure.  I was just glad to get a letter. The art of letter writing in this day of cellphones and texting and E-mails has gone the way of the Dodo bird.  It takes time to gather a pen and paper and sit down and write down your thoughts, then find an envelope and a stamp and go to the mailbox and mail the letter. If someone does that for you, it’s a real blessing. It means they are thinking of you and you are worth their time.  I wrote him back and also told him to tell his brother to write me also and I would write back.  Maybe we have started something here.  Maybe I need to sit down and write a letter to everyone who means something to me.  Have you ever written a person and told them what they have meant in your life?  A teacher, or relative or friend?     I bet if you did, they would be so happy to get it. I got a birthday card a couple of weeks ago in which a friend had written a prayer for me and it meant so much.   For some reason, a letter means more than a text or even a quick phone call because it means the person thinks you are worth it.

Do they even sell stationary any longer?  I remember as a girl looking at all the pretty stationary and spending time selecting some. Stationary came in pretty boxes and there was usually a picture of something on the top of each page.   I had pen pals I wrote to in Sweden and around the United States.   The two girls I wrote to in Sweden would send me little gifts and I would send them something and we did this for a few years and then we lost contact.  I still have a picture they sent me of the two on them on ice skates  by a lake.   Hard to imagine they are old ladies like myself now.    I often wonder about them. I tried to find them on the internet, but someone I contacted, who  I thought might be one of them, never contacted me back, so I figured it was the wrong person.

I just finished writing a story based on my daughter’s Golden Retriever who lost a leg in a trap a few weeks ago.  I tried to write it from the dog’s point of view and I tried to imagine what he went through, caught in a trap in the middle of the forest for fourteen days.   I still am amazed he survived his ordeal.  My daughter says he runs fast now and coming toward you, you can’t even tell he is missing a leg, but he limps when he walks. It’s amazing how resilient animals are.  After I have done some polishing of the story I will give it to my daughter and her family to read and then I may post it on here.

Have you written a letter recently?   Is there someone who would LOVE to hear from you?

In other news, the work on my shop is going quite well. I have several shelves painted and all but one wall painted and now I am working on the floor.   It takes two days for each coat of paint I put on the floor to dry so it’s a slow process.  Plus, I can only do small portions at a time as I have to move stuff from one side to another.  When this gets done, I am done for a while. I did mention to David that my girly room is in need of fresh paint and he told me to get one project done before I started thinking of the next one!  Maybe this Autumn that room will get freshening up.

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It looks like the walls are pink, but they are dazzling white.

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It’s so nice to have clean, freshly painted walls on which to hang things again. I have decided I am not going to burn candles in here anymore as everything was blackened by the candle smoke.   I have burnt a lot of candles in here through the years.   While I love to burn candles, they do leave a bit of soot even if you cannot see it at the time.   So air fresheners will have to do unless someone can give me some advice on what to use. I’d like to do something with peppermint extract because spiders don’t like peppermint.

I also am trying to make some little quilts from these two books I got in the mail a couple of weeks ago.

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I really love this quilt on the cover and want to make it.  There will be some appliqueing in my future.  In this book, Kathleen Tracy writes of a young woman, Adelia, who lived during the Civil War and shows us some of her diary entries.  It is very interesting. I love reading about this time in American history although it was a very hard time and many lives were lost.

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This is another quilt in the book that I want to try. I love green and pink together.  So Spring like.

I am working on this quilt right now and am loving the process.

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It’s a small quilt and just about all I can handle right now.   Its from this book by Jo Marten.  I want to make every single quilt in his book.  I’m thinking of having a quilt wall in my shop of all little quilts.

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It’s becoming Spring in my neck of the woods. Daffodils are blooming on the south side of my shop and many more are getting ready to burst into bloom.  I know this sounds crazy, but I’m kind of sad to see Winter go as I had so many plans to finish so many projects that did not get done.  I did get some more socks knitted.

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Believe it or not, David loves these and wore them to church this morning.

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These go in the gift bag. I have another pair completed and am working on my Christmas socks. Yes, Christmas. I think about Christmas all the time because I make so many presents.  But the Christmas socks will be mine. The first pair of Christmas socks I knit turned out to be too pink, so they go in the gift bag also.  I also have yarn to knit David Christmas socks.  So, there you go.

Spring starts next week.   Enjoy it because right behind it comes Summer and the heat.   I hope we have a mild Summer this year. Not too hot or cold.

I will leave you with a smiling face.

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Molly Marshmallow says, “Hi.”   Took her to the vet for some shots and  she remembered him from when she was there a few months ago because she got so excited when he walked in the door like she was greeting her long, lost friend.  She doesn’t greet me like that!  Here’s to happy dogs. Bye.

 

 

A Birthday and Celebrating Christmas in March

Well, since I wrote my last blog I have been busy.  David was sick for most of the month of February and has had this weekend off for my birthday.  He is planning on going back to work Tuesday.

Today was my birthday. We started celebrating it Friday by going to this place…..DSCN6733

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With my best buddy by my side we set off on a glorious, almost Spring day.

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The skies were so blue.  A welcome change from the dark clouds that have been in the sky for days.

Zachary’s is a  candy factory with an outlet store. I had read about it in a magazine we get.

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Well, I was like a kid in a candy store. I was looking for Easter candy and we loaded up two large bags with candy.    There was candy of every kind made fresh at the factory. They only use ingredients produced in America which is another reason I liked it.

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We saw this mural on a building in Frankfort.  Remember Grandpa Walton on the Waltons show?  Will Geer was the actor who played him and he was born in Frankfort, Indiana.

We also stopped at the best antique store where I met the two nicest ladies.  We talked about a lot of things, but one thing we discussed was Saturday Night Live in the days when it was funny.  If you are old enough, you will remember Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken in a skit where a band is practicing and Will Ferrell’s character was playing a cowbell.  Christopher Walken’s  character kept saying he needed more cowbell and Will Ferrell would bang that cowbell so hard.  It really was one of the funniest sketches on SNL ever.  Well, I bought an old cow bell in this store and I will use it to call David inside when he is working outside.  I don’t know if he appreciates it, but I am having fun with it.

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I don’t know what this building was, but I like the look of it.  It’s not their courthouse.  Looks like an old hospital.  But we didn’t drive by it, so it will remain a mystery.

Today started out with me feeling sick to my stomach. We were supposed to meet some family after church for Chinese. I didn’t make it to church and thought I might have to call it off, but I took some Pepto-Bismol and felt a little better, but I didn’t eat much at lunch.  Then everyone came back home for cake and ice cream and to celebrate a late Christmas.

David bought me a cake because I didn’t want to bake my own birthday cake, but our daughter brought a chocolate cake she had made.

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Dark chocolate with peanut butter icing.  The sugar high we are going to have. It’s back to veggies, fruits and protein next week.

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It was just like Christmas day again.  With paper all over the floor.

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Watching people unwrap presents we have gotten them is one of my biggest pleasures.

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I think he was surprised with his quilt.

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I love this quilt pattern and how colorful it is. I hope he gets many years of pleasure from it.

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He knows what is being unwrapped because he got one for Christmas.  A hoverboard.

Our son gave us all wristbands for Walt Disney World.  He is taking all of us there this year and I cannot wait. It’s his 50th wedding anniversary gift to us.  We are going to stay in a rented house with five bedrooms  and four baths so we shouldn’t be too crowded.   The last time we did this it was with our older grandchildren and that has been at least twelve years ago.  We had such a good time then.

I am still working on my shop.  It’s been a slow process with us being sick and very tired for so long.

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I am dusting, cleaning and painting every surface I can.  I am going through all my fabric and have taken two large bags of it to a local charity.   I still have boxes and boxes to go, but it’s getting there slowly but surely.   I really am enjoying going through all my fabric, but some of it I will never use and hopefully someone else can get some good out of it.

This has really become a major project.  I wonder how people on those hoarder shows ever manage to get out from underneath with all they have accumulated. It’s funny. You spend the first several years of your life getting stuff and the last remaining years of your life trying to get rid of stuff.  I have become a minimalist in thinking, but my shop doesn’t show it.  Hopefully, when I am done it will.

I did manage to make two little quilts this week. I cleaned off my cutting board and cut them out and pieced them and have one almost quilted.

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I call this one Rhapsody in Blue and Birds.   I used some bird fabric I love.

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Kathleen Tracy has been showing these quilts on Facebook and I figured out the dimensions myself, but she has a small quilt book you can buy on Amazon. I bought one of her quilting books this week that I will share with you later.  Check her out. Her quilts are darling.

I love my grandsons and granddaughter.  My granddaughter grew up too fast and is a senior this year and is going to New York City this week with all the seniors. What an experience that will be. I have never been to New York City, but David drove through the center of it once. He said he got a lot of one finger waves while doing so!    Here are my two younger grandsons who always make me laugh.

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Candy corn teeth!

Oh, and if you think I am done buying stuff, I’m not.  We went to a La-Z-Boy store on Friday also and I ordered a new rocker recliner in fabric called Van Gogh.  Bye.

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