Because sometimes...

Too tired to "arrange" them last night; they
still look wonderful just plopped in a vase.

...a girl just has to have roses.

White supermarket roses - I never pay more than a dollar a stem, oftentimes less. They smell wonderful, though given the size of my living room and the incredibly high ceilings, you have to get up close and personal with the flowers before you are aware of the scent.

These are from my local high end grocer; on the rare occasion I'm at Aldi when they have roses in stock, I find those are even nicer.

No matter if they last a few days or a week, it's great to have a floral pick-me-up when the skies are grey and the winter winds blow.

On feeling old

At fifty-seven, my foot has yet to slip over the edge of the grave, but I'm still what one would call solidly ensconced in middle age. This fact bothers me less than many of my similarly-aged friends, as I've no children growing into adults to make time's progression in my life obvious to all.

But boy, am I feeling old today.

Yesterday, I went to a wonderful baby shower. I've the privilege of calling both the grandmother-to-be and the expectant mom my friend. You see, I met them both when they first came to my church - back when the mom to be was eight years old.

Sigh.

A whole crop of the young ladies who were my charges in AWANA when they were eight and nine years old are now married and having children at a rather quick pace. A quick survey of the kids who were part of the program the years that I was a leader shows at least ten kids, and three more (that I know of) on the way.

There is a special joy in this, even for a non-parent like me. These young parents have, for the most part, been faithful to what they have been taught, walking out their beliefs moment-to-moment. They are setting an example for these little people, in the hope that they, too, will come to a life of faith.

While I will play no part personally in handing down my physical genetic make up, I hope I've played a part in handing down my faith. If that's true, I can live with the grey hair, aches and pains.

With fairly short notice for this shower, I did not have time to make even a small baby quilt, and for that, I'm thankful. Chris was able to give to her daughter Kim a baby quilt that was made for Kim by the women of the church Chris and her husband attended back when Chris was pregnant with her. Every other square is signed by the women who encouraged and helped Chris with her first pregnancy. Several of the women who signed that quilt were at the shower.

As I said, these young people are popping out kids with abandon. A month from now, I've the joy of going to a baby shower for another very special young woman.

Note to self: Get hair colored before then...

A little strange, but it works for me

Two weeks until Christmas Eve. Time to start stocking up the pantry, both for vacation and the traditional Christmas Eve meal -

- pizza.

It sounds strange, but isn't that big a departure from the antipasti spread my grandparents put out every year when I was growing up. It's just all put on a pizza.

When my sister gave birth to my mother's only grandchild, she had just started divorce proceedings against the girl's father. My mother, in order to be sure to have access to her granddaughter "first", decreed that our family Christmas would happen Christmas Eve...morning. Well, brunch time-ish.

After the festivities, sister and niece (and later new husband and stepdaughter) would trail off to whichever relative was next on the list. My mother would take off to her brother's for the evening. I'd go to services at either five or seven p.m., depending on whether the church was offering a 5 p.m. "child friendly" service.

I'd come home to a very quiet flat.

One year, I realized after service that I'd not had dinner, and there wasn't much in the house to cook. About the only place that was open was Walgreens, where I grabbed a frozen pizza and a tape (this was a long time ago) of a movie I'd not yet seen.

Thus, a tradition was born.

It's much more upscale these days. I'm making home made pizza, complete with all natural, nitrate-free pepperoni, buffalo mozzarella and a sprinkling of Parmigiano-Reggiano to finish it off. The local up-scale grocer with the great spirits department is starting their holiday wine sale tomorrow, so I'll pick up a nice bottle or two to go with the grub.

That leaves the movie. Any recommendations? With Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime and Netflix, I should be able to get my hands on just about anything you suggest. Action movies preferred, though action movies that are more than just special effects strung together with minimal plot (Air Force One versus Transformers). Or a light holiday movie (not The Christmas Story, nor It's a Wonderful Life).

I've put together the Peapod order that includes the cheese and pepperoni, plus some supplies for the pulled pork I'm bringing for the office potluck. There should be enough fresh produce to get me through to the weekend before the holiday, when I'll stock up the last time for the week ahead. I start vacation the 19th, and don't really want to be out in the stores much between then and the holiday if I can help it. Crowds make me itch.

Do you have any offbeat traditions or holiday habits?

Me, me, meme!

A bloggy thank you goes out to Robbo, for nominating me for the Liebster award - "liebster" apparently translates from the German as "sweetheart, beloved, darling". It's a way to discover new blogs and bloggers by forcing encouraging them to tell a bit about themselves and pass the love on by nominating others.

The Quasi-Official Rules of the Liebster Award

If you have been nominated for The Liebster Award AND YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, write a blog post about the Liebster award in which you:
1. thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.
2. display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”. (Note that the best way to do this is to save the image to your own computer and then upload it to your blog post.)
3. answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.
4. provide 11 random facts about yourself.
5. nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. (Note that you can always ask the blog owner this since not all blogs display a widget that lets the readers know this information!)

6. create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer.

7. list these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:

8. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)

*****
Part One, Spelunking in My Mind:

1.  Let’s play Desert Island Disks.  Singles or albums.  Pick your five and explain. Bach, Brandenburg Concertos, double disk. Dave Brubeck Quartet, Take Five. Mozart, Eine Kliene Nachtmusik. Johnny Cash, Greatest Hits, double disk. Third Day, Move. Yes, this is a cheat, as there are seven disks. Sue me. Aside from being a favorite Third Day disk, Move has some incredibly meaningful lyrics, reminders of God's gracious gift of salvation and my coming home in heaven. Both classical and jazz music are complex, yielding something new every time you listen to it (only five disks on a desert island - the boredom would set in quickly). The Johnny Cash? No explanation needed.

2.  Who shot first?  (Understand that the wrong answer here will doom you straight to the appropriate circle of hell.) I don't care. How's that for a wrong answer? It's been decades since I've seen any of the Star Wars movies (amazed that I even understood the question without googling), and Mr. I've-already-made-millions-from-my-poorly-written-movies Lucas (or the studio) won't let the films be released via streaming, so I won't be seeing them again soon.

3.  In baseball, what is your opinion of the DH rule and the introduction this year of the replay review challenge rule?  (See above.) Everyone else both plays defense and hits. Why should the pitcher be excused? As for the replay review and challenge - grow up, boys. Life isn't perfectly fair; bad calls happen. Eliminate replays altogether, suck it up and deal with it.

4.  When the light turns green and the fellah sitting in front of you obviously fails to notice it, how do you remind him?  (Please include horn technique, appropriately-censored vocabulary and body language.) A single, light tap on the horn. If they still don't move, a light double tap. I haven't yet encountered a situation where I had to go to the third option...

5.  Are you better off than you were six years ago? Financially? Yes. Emotionally/spiritually? No. A lot of stuff has happened over the last six years; I'm still trying to find solid ground.

6.  Name a historically significant point in your life and tell us how it affected you personally. For some reason, I was home to watch the launch of the space shuttle Challenger. It was a pointed reminder that man is not all we think we are, pushing to explore and expand our knowledge is a risky business and we should think long and hard before acting. In an odd coincidence, years later I took a decision-making class. We were given a set of facts/circumstances surrounding a cargo train trip. Given the facts from previous trips, those around the prospective trip and the possible rewards/consequences, did we go, or not? I argued long in our group that we should not, based on historical data and the current conditions. No one listened, I was overruled...and we blew up Challenger all over again. The professor had used that data, just changing it from a space shuttle to a cargo train. I'm not much of a risk taker.

7.  Brush with Greatness.  There are two ways to take this question, and how you take it says a lot about your character. One, when have you been in the presence of someone/something great? Two, when have you done something that may have seen you immortalized? Or my third option: greatness isn't found in what you've done, but in who you are when things are going against you.

8.  Cats or dogs and why?  (See Nos. 2 and 3 above re incorrect responses.) Dogs.

9.  If you had to pick an historickal epoch in Western History with which you have the most sympathy, which would you choose?  Why?  If you don’t identify with any given period, why not? While I have a thing for the art and design of the Art Deco period, I wouldn't say I've any particular sympathy or identification with any era. Modern conveniences are too, well, convenient for me to want to go back in time. Though I do rather wish our nation's faith and morality would rewind by a century or two.

10.  Charcoal or gas?   Why?  (See Nos. 2, 3 and 7 above.) Charcoal. If I want to cook over gas, I'll stay in the kitchen. Besides, the fun in using charcoal is in conquering the various methods needed to cook all sorts of yummy goodness on the grill.

11.  How has the experience of blogging influenced you over the course of your time dabbling in the innertoobs.  Best positive?  Worst negative?  How has your approach/attitude towards blogging changed as you’ve gained experience and as your personal circumstances have changed.  Tell us about the crossing of the streams between your bloggy life and your real-world existence.  (Okay, I’m cramming a bunch of questions into one, but they’re all interrelated.)
Positive - interacting with a wide-ish variety of people - many I wouldn't necessarily do so in the normal course of life.
Negative - I'm a bit more open on the blog than I am in real life (and I'm pretty emotionally shut down on the blog, so you can imagine...), and it still freaks me out a little bit when people I know casually in real life are regular readers.
Approach - Eh. The last two years or so there hasn't been much of an approach, the result of real life things more than lack of passion for blogging (see previous response about being rather emotionally reticent). Originally, this place was meant to reignite my love for writing, as well as be an outlet for faith-related discussions. While there are a few moments of brilliant writing (none in recent months), the faith component has fallen by the wayside. I still plan to get back to it, but I need to reorganize some other aspects of life first.
Crossing streams - unlike the catastrophic effect of "crossing streams" in Ghostbusters, my real life encounters with on line bloggers has been pleasant. Back in 2003, I travelled to Toronto to meet with twenty-odd other quilters for a four day informal retreat. While a few knew one another from real life, most of us only met via a quilting message board. Laughing, eating, sewing - a perfectly lovely trip. Closer to home, the lovely Sandy of Piecemeal Quilts lives just over an hour away; we met at Starbucks one Saturday to talk quilts. She invited me to a monthly quilt-in she hosts, but with the distance and the fact she has three cats (I'm deathly allergic as well as not partial to felines), I can't make it.

Eleven random oddities:
1. In third grade I wrote a series of mystery stories starring my best friend and me. The teacher let me read them to the class (to my friend's embarrassment). I still have those stories, written in loopy, big just-learned cursive in pencil on rough lined paper.

2. My third grade class included eight or so fourth graders (overflow from the other class). One of the fourth graders played violin, which is what induced me to take up the instrument the next year, when I was eligible to start in the orchestra. I played all the way through my sophomore year of college, when things just got too busy.

3. During junior high, I received a guitar as a Christmas present. Mostly self-taught, with about a year of lessons at a local music store, I played in our high school jazz band. Our choir recorded an album (this is back in the days of vinyl) every third year, including my senior year. They needed a guitarist for one number - including the sixteen bar solo opening. Yeah, that was me. I don't play much anymore, though.

4. I'm always early. For everything.

5. Watching television or a movie without doing something else - folding laundry, doing a crossword, reading a book - makes me twitch, then fall asleep.

6. No matter how many times I use a particular staircase, I still count the number of steps. OCD much?

7. Visual disorder - an inordinately messy/chaotic room - makes it difficult for me to think. In fact, it can actually make me feel so overwhelmed, I can't figure out where to start to make it better. Too much visual stimulation makes me shut down (I can only do museums in short doses); too much aural stimulation, however, makes me homicidal (not a fan of loud crowds or concerts).

8. Including college, I've lived with the same thirty mile radius my entire life. And I'm happy with that.

9. The only family vacation we ever took was to Expo '67 in Montreal. We stopped at Niagra Falls on the way.

10. On those personality/aptitude/career tests, if you tell me what result you want me to get, I can most likely do it.

11. I still wonder what I'm going to be when I grow up on a regular basis.

Wherein I may lose some friends:
A couple of friends just shut down their blogs, in fear, I think, of my tagging them for this meme. Well, ha! There are still a few left:

Mariel and/or Valerie of What's My List? (this should be right up your alley!)
Leann of Some Days There's Pie
Chad of Ruminating Out Loud

All participation voluntary; don't feel obligated.

Odd/prying/silly questions for you to answer:
1. Salty or sweet?
2. If you could only, for the rest of your life, either see the movie or read the book upon which the movie was based, which would you choose, and why?
3. How long has your longest friendship survived?
4. What part, if any, does religious faith play in your day to day life?
5. Clowns: Funny and cute, or evil Satanic spawn?
6. If the great zombie apocalypse strikes tomorrow, what skills could you bring to our hearty band of non-zombified survivors (remembering that most of our current infrastructure would collapse)?
7. What is your favorite vegetable? Method of preparation?
8. What was your first car like? What is your dream ride?
9. What is your favorite hobby? Feel free to define "hobby" as loosely as needed.
10. Star Wars or Star Trek?
11. You are a fly on the wall at a gathering of your friends, who are (for some inexplicable reason - we know they wouldn't do this in real life) discussing you. What do you hope they would say about you?

Whew. Have fun.

Peri-menopausal moment #...I forget

For years we've been told by Science that as we age, we basically get stupid. Cognitive processes slow down, and we lose our minds memory.

A new study shows, however, that we may have been bamboozled, or at least been given exaggerated findings.

The experiment they ran adjusted for the differences in vocabulary between the old folk and the youngsters. It makes complete sense that a seventy year old would have been exposed to a wider variety of words than a twenty year old. Adjusting for the added processes the senior has to go through to retrieve a word from their vast storehouse, the researchers found that the age deficit mostly disappeared.

Hah - take that, you whippersnapper!

Everything we've accumulated in our years of living has to fit inside our heads; no matter how efficient the storage, sooner or later you will run out of space (side note: In this week's episode of Sherlock, he said as much when trying to remember a particular fact - "Full! No room! Didn't save it!").

From now on, I'm using the article's last line as my mantra:

It’s not that I'm slow. It’s that I know so much.

Laugh of the day

Beware cow farts.

The methane in cows' farts and bleches built up in their shed, and literally blew the roof off.

Moral of the story: remember to leave a window cracked open when beans are on the menu.

Point of view

Three guys go to rent a hotel room. The room costs $30, so they each pay $10. Later that night the hotel guy finds out the room is only $25 so he gives $5 to the bell boy to split between the three guys. The bellboy did not know how to split $5 in three ways so he kept $2 for himself and gave $1 to each guy - so the guys only paid $9 apiece right?

 

If the guys paid $27 and the bellboy kept $2, where is the other dollar?

The first years of my career were spent at a local c.p.a. firm. The training I received there has not only stuck, career-wise, but has carried over into other areas of life. Simply put, the basic tenet is this: always check your work, preferably from a different perspective than that which you used to do it in the first place.

Looking at things from a different viewpoint isn't always easy. It requires changing how we think about things, setting aside preconceived notions. We may need to shut up and really listen to someone on the other side of an argument, trying to understand not only what they believe, but why they believe it. We may need to delve more deeply into a process, to understand how things work in order to understand how to check the results.

While it isn't necessary that our out perspective on things change, learning to see more side of an issue, more ways of looking at things, adds to our ability to understand our own position or the processes around us.

The solution to the riddle? In the comments.

What color is your parachute car?

While pondering the thirty-one miles per gallon my ten year old Honda Civic still gets on 95% city driving, I ran across an article on what your car color may say about you.

The article is a bit confusing, as it both mentions research that shows there is a correlation between car color and driving habits (and by extension, one would think, your personality) and goes on to say there probably isn't a real link between color choice and what you are like. It says there is no evidence to support claims that color is representative of the driver's psyche, but concludes with a list of colors and related personality traits.

Eh - who needs real research to have a little fun? Following is the list of car colors and associated traits. What does your color choice say about you?

Silver: You are calm, cool, elegant, futuristic and possibly detached

White: You are fastidious, enjoy a simple life, have a strong attention to detail and are possibly a perfectionist

Green: You are trustworthy, traditional and balanced, but can also be lively and occasionally hysterical

Brown/Beige: You are practical, reliable, down-to-earth and pragmatic.

Yellow: You are upbeat, intelligent and young at heart

Grey: You are calm, sober and very career-driven

Blue: You are confident, quiet and dependable

Red: You are energetic, dynamic and have a lust for life

Pink: You are gentle, loving and caring

Black: You are conservative, empowered, elegant and professional

Purple: You are creative, unafraid of stepping outside of the norm and happy to be seen as unique

I must be getting older - I've gone from red to black, and have been seriously thinking about beige for a small SUV sometime in the next two years. It's worth noting that car colors, like decorating colors, go through cycles. Certain manufacturers have traditional colors as well.

Leave your car color and analysis in the comments.

Happy tax freedom day

Forgive me: today is tax day, the day we need to have our returns postmarked, actually or electronically, in order to be considered as timely taxpayers.

Tax freedom day, on the other hand, isn't until April 18th. That is the day that the nation as a whole has earned enough to cover their tax liability for the current year.

So yes, we have to pay any balance due on the previous year's return before we've even earned enough in the current year to cover the current year taxes.

Isn't America grand?

Week in pictures

I've not been very diligent in posting the activities of the week, in large part because I seemed to be overtaken with a case of the "ehs". While you'll see I did quite a bit of playing, for a lot of the week, I just wasn't feeling it. That may have something to do with my sleep cycle; I'm still waking up in the middle of the night for half an hour or more. It's just enough to throw me off.

On to pictures.

First, a non-picture (just wanted to make sure you were paying attention). The fabric shown in this post is now cut, sewn, recut and sewn again into a cute baby quilt top. I've no uncluttered space in the studio to lay it out for a picture, though I took one of where it currently lays sprawled over the traveling case for the sewing machine (there are three long seams that need to be ironed, and I have to press the whole thing before layering it, so why fold it nicely...right?). If the picture I just took makes it from the phone to my inbox before the rest of the post is done, I'll add it.

As I said, just tossed over the case...

Here we are. The colors are a bit goofy - the natural daylight lamp is on, but the light you see coming from the left is the floor lamp with an incandescent bulb and a beige shade...take it that all the colors are brighter. The fabric is all rainy day themed - multicolor raindrops, a cute umbrella print, storm clouds.

The pattern is the same as this quilt, although the quilt is smaller and (oddly) the individual blocks a little bigger. Kara's quilt was made from an antique kit, where all the blocks were already cut for you and had to be sewn to each other one by one.

The author of this current pattern tried to have you do the same thing, but she reckoned without my inborn laziness. There is a way to cut strips, pair them, sew them together and then recut them that shaves hours off of the assembly time. You do need to do some purposeful unsewing at strategic points, but all in all, this was much easier to put together than the other.

Who said grocery shopping can't be fun? Even online grocery shopping has its perks. My order this week included an impulse buy - a dozen red velvet mini cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They taste just as good as they look. Bless the person who invented cream cheese frosting.

A hot cup of coffee, a cupcake and a good book was the activity of choice for most of the week. I've finished or read most of the following:

That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life, Margaret Peterson Kim
A Fatal Grace, Louise Penny
Still Life, Louise Penny

While sewing and when in need of a mental break, I've also managed to work my way through two seasons of Game of Thrones. Nothing like watching people hack one another to death to relax you.

This afternoon I finally got around to a mini craft I've had the supplies for since January. The directions were part of the e-mail magazine for owners of my machine - projects that are, of course, designed to encourage you to run out and purchase all sorts of add on doo-dads.

Pretty pink, cream and brown ribbon. The
 cover is more raspberry than red. Really, I  need
to start using the "real" camera for pictures.

In spite of not having the specific presser foot called for in the instructions, I managed just fine.

Simple as pie. Cut two, 15" lengths of one inch wide grosgrain ribbon. Using invisible thread and a narrow zigzag stitch, sew them together side by side. Fold two inches to the back on either end. Fold one end up five inches (so the sewn down raw edges are inside) and sew the long edges together.  Add elastic just a smidge shorter than whatever you want the pen holder to go around.

In my case, I want it around the cover of my journalling Bible, to hold the really fine markers I use to jot in it (obviously not the Pilot pen that is in the holder for illustration).

All in all, everything worked very well. Invisible thread is usually the dickens to work with. Aside from the fact it's difficult to see, it also tends to be wiry and slick, sliding off the spool, not wanting to go where it is supposed to go. But I reduced the machine speed, loaded it up (even in the bobbin) and started sewing. I didn't notice any difficulties (thank heaven for an automatic needle threader, though). The wrinkling on the finished pen holder is entirely due to my lack of desire to set up the iron to press it when I was done.

This is the last of that project. The reading plan I'm using this year has you read both testaments and a psalm every day. The pages of this book are very thin; I'd grown tired of the time it took to flip around. Certainly a three-ribbon bookmark was in order.

You can see the three ribbons (and the original satin ribbon bookmark from the Bible itself) in the picture above. When I was buying the ribbon, I ran across these really cute ribbon flower things. They are self-stick; we will see how long that lasts before I have to take a needle and thread to tack it down.

It's been a crafty, relaxing, but sleepless kind of week. I'm handling the media at church tomorrow, so I need to see if I can get a decent night's sleep tonight. I'm running off The Hobbit right now - it's a bit of a trio of yumminess with Richard Armitage, Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch all in one movie. A grilled cheese and some carrots for dinner, then some more reading before bed.

A pretty decent week off.

Oh happy day

The sweet Melissa and I have a challenge of sorts going. We both have the week off, from work and homeschooling. Both of us have a tendency to do spend most of our time doing the things that are necessary, leaving little time for the things that are fun.

We're keeping one another accountable to have a little bit of fun each day this week, beginning today. The working definition of "fun" that we are using is that it is something we do just for ourselves, that makes us happy. Melissa has a large family making requests of her constantly, I've a tendency to forgo what I want to do in order to get a jump on things I think I "have" to do.

So far, I'm off to a pretty good start.

The morning began at one of my favorite spots - Panera - with a breakfast sandwich, a large coffee and a book by a new-to-me author (thanks, Joyce P.) and no time limitation.

The book is a mystery set in a small, picturesque town outside of Montreal in winter. Appropriate, as today has been unrelentingly grey, with flurries making their presence known every so often. I'm already cold; may as well enter a story set someplace even colder.

***********

Back at home well before lunch, I decided to find the terracotta cherubs bought at City Market in Charleston a number of years ago. I've finished rubbing on the wall words above the treadle sewing machine in the living room; the cherubs are meant to frame them.

I thought they were in a certain box in the studio but I was wrong. By the time I'd remembered they were in a decorations box in the foyer closet (already unpacked and ready to hang), I'd emptied and cut down three boxes of stuff, added to the Goodwill box, vacuumed and put out a few cute things. There's still a bit to be moved and put away, but the sewing studio is up and running.
**********

The colors here are washed out, but I'm cutting out the strips for a baby quilt. Actually, as of this writing, the strips are all cut; I'm about to drop the machine into the desk and take my first stitches in the studio. Woo hoo!

And that is surely fun; having the space to keep everything up (but organized) and available to be worked on in those ten minute spaces that crop up during busy days.

**********

I intend to finish the night off with a special treat (scalloped potatoes with dinner - haven't made them in ages) and a run at getting all the strips for the quilt sewn together and cross-cut.

All in all, a pretty great day.*

*Lest you think it's all been fun and games, I've done a sinkful of dishes, managed to break a plastic container trying to get too-frozen soup out of it, vacuumed more than once, started gathering garbage for tomorrow's pick up and gathered up the laundry as well. I'm not entirely sure I could handle a full day of "fun" anymore, so something task-related had to get done.

Because everyone needs a giggle on Tuesday Wednesday...

Especially when you are confused about what day it is.

Even penguins have issues walking on ice.

("Geez, give us a break - how do you think you would do if your legs were only four inches long?")



h/t chailles.com