Random Musings

When I first moved "up north" as folks back home in Alabama called it, I wondered why on earth North Carolinians complained about Yankees so much. The war was a very long time ago. (150 years, to be exact.)  Then after five years of living here, I attended Wake Tech (a local community college) and learned the saying that there's two types of Yankees: a Yank, and a Yankee (with an expletive in front of it). And I sadly must admit, within 8 years of living here, I too had learned the difference. Having lived in different places, including one overseas stint that involved learning a whole new culture, I understand what it's like to long for something familiar, to feel out of place, and to be totally baffled by everyone around you. It's not a pleasant feeling.  I've always tried to gently rebuke those who have never ever had the privilege of living somewhere else and are totally ignorant of what that's like when they criticize others for being totally ...

It is an unwritten rule in my life: whenever fast progress is being made on projects of any kind (even if its laundry or housework) a speed bump of some sort will occur.  It's just a fact of life that I can now sometimes laugh about. :) I'm well over half-way through quilting the 2013 Bernina Saturday Sampler quilt, when reality dawned on me that the fabric we picked out the first of January for a baby quilt needed to be cut and pieced and quilted by next week. Even though it says February on my calendar for the shower date, it means the actual work has to be done in January. It's those little details that always seem to throw me for a loop. And my much needed hiatus that I've taken at church since the children's Christmas play is now officially over and we are back in full swing of planning and organizing. Today I've already been on-line and had a trip to Michaels this morning to start preparations for the kids Valentine's party (and upon hearing one ga...

A few years ago I sat in on a court session (they were handling eviction cases). Everyone was super quiet, the cases moved very quickly, and I was a bit intimidated at how austerely the judge ruled the courtroom. Every time the doors opened, he briefly stopped and stared at the person coming inside. Yesterday Bobby needed to be at a courtroom in another county, and since his wheelchair is still not repaired I needed to drive him. I was also curious to see how this type of court (superior court, as opposed to magistrate court) would be handled. I expected it to be even more somber and serious. The courthouse was relatively new, meaning very nice and very clean, the guards at the metal detectors were very nice (and Bobby left his fork in the van instead of in his pouch since the Wake County Courthouse officials are not ADA friendly and were going to confiscate it because it "could be a weapon"), they didn't ask Bobby to take his pouch off the side of his wheelchair or t...

Yes, we are southerners. Yesterday was my planned day to go to the grocery store for the week. When they announced on the news at lunch that Wake County was cancelling afterschool activities, Bobby looked at me and said "You better get on to the store now."  And he was right. I parked at the very end of the parking lot (think malls at Christmas time), and was expecting the bread and milk to be almost gone (which they weren't, thanks to the bread and milk men making a new delivery). That evening I was telling my mother-in-law about it, and she said, "Oh, you know Tuesday is senior citizen day. That's why everyone was there, for there discount."  So now Bobby wants to go grocery shopping on Tuesdays. Sorry buddy-o, but I'm not there yet. I'm not fighting a huge crowd for a discount they won't give me anyway. I'll stick to my shop on the day I need to go plan. And at 6:30pm, we turned on our floodlights so we could see the snow when it began...

We received an advertising e-mail from one of the three places where we've bought chicks in the past (Carolina Town & Country in Sanford), saying they'll begin having chicks from the hatchery the first weekend in February. That seems awfully soon to me. I know they'll need 4-6 weeks under a heat lamp, but with it still being winter, they'll actually need the heat lamp much longer than that. In the spring it's so warm during the daytime after 4 weeks you can cut the lamp off during the day and just have it on at night, but with the day time temps being in the 40s and 50s, that's really not an option. And as nice as it would be to rebuild our flock and have a wider range of egg colors, the breeds we'd need/want are not all brought in on the same week. I'm not driving to Sanford every weekend to get the various breeds. There's also the timing factor, and Bobby wants us to hatch some of our eggs as well.  To do that means we have to make a decision...

We listened to about ten minutes of the Martin Luther King Interfaith service broadcast on the wral this morning. We learned that the last five commandments: Don't steal; Don't kill; Don't commit adultery; Don't covet; and Don't slander actually mean this: Don't take money away from Medicaid/Medicare; Don't cut anything from the educational budget; Don't tell the poor they need to work to receive anything; and don't cut a teacher's salary (ie, I guess that does fall under coveting as other state employees DO somewhat resent going years without any raise at all, EXCEPT for the protected sub-category called teachers).  Sorry Ms. Rabbi, but after your political rant you called a prayer, we watched two more speakers and then turned it off. I think racism falls under the same category as equality: it means a lot more when people practice and live right than when they just rant and rave about it.  It's a lot like the Good Morning America Show. ...

The more I learn about quilting, the more I learn there is to know. Along this quilting journey, I've learned that there are many opinions. Early on, I quilted what I knew (ie, the way my Grandma did). One lady snobbishly informed that was NOT the way to quilt. Since then, I've learned the phrase "stitch in the ditch" and what the experts consider to be quilting. Stitch in the ditch is where the quilting seam is found in seams (not outside the seams) of  the top layer. Photo from www.tqn.com And then yesterday, I saw photos of quilts made 150 years ago. They can be seen here . Of the thirty quilts in the exhibit, NOT ONE used stitch-in-the-ditch with straight stitches. A few had decorative stitch-in-the-ditch quilting, but most used a 1/4" straight stitch inside the pieced material, just like my Grandma did.  This photo does NOT use stitch-in-the-ditch, but places the stitches inside the square and not on the seams.   I suppose it really c...

My nephew is often curious about the old things we don't have. He's also very kind to show me games on his Mom's ipad that he thinks I will like, and will sometimes play them with me. (He also thinks I should ask for an ipad for Christmas so I can play that stupid rock game and word jewels...as if I need anything else to usurp my time). A year and a half ago I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo...same thing as the official NaNoWriMo, except it's NOT in the month of November, which is an absolutely crazy month for us.  This past week I pulled out my rough draft to start critiquing, and quit on page 67. I do have a post-it note FULL of page numbers that need work, but I was boring myself.  I also found I don't critique myself very well on a laptop. So today, I purchased a ream of paper and two things of black ink (one should be sufficient, but it's cheaper to buy two....that's my Dad's shopping skills coming out in me) so I can print the thing out and start ...

This weekend I updated some of the Quilting Page on this blog so my aunt could see a few of the things I've done. (We've not seen each other in a LONG time.)  I even entered the text for 2014, as I have two quilts that I need to finish/do ASAP. And since I was within a week of finishing one, it made sense to go ahead and enter the text so I could post pictures next week. Right? So here we are, Monday night, and I have 3/4 of the quilt filled with basting pins, only to realize that the backing isn't straight. So now I have two options: unpin everything (which means undoing about 4 hours worth of work), or leave it the way it is. Actually, I have a third option: flip it over and see how bad it truly looks on the back before making a decision (and then hoping if it's livable looking at that I can straighten all three layers out on the unpinned section).  I enjoy quilting. But it's these make or break moments, when I'm tired, when I just want to finish, when I k...

It's hard to believe that it's been ten years. Ten years ago this week, a dear friend planned a party on Saturday for Bobby's 49th birthday (which was the Saturday before his birthday). Why he wanted to celebrate 49 instead of 50 I will never know, but Bobby had never had a surprise party, he was really struggling with some things, so I quit arguing with this dear friend who so desperately wanted to do this for him. And then my Grandma died. Her prayers were answered. She died at home, in her sleep, and did not have to go live with anyone else like she feared and knew was about to happen. My little sis was out of school (she teaches first grade), was very pregnant, and stopped by her house so my nephew, who was 4 and dearly loved his great-grandma, could get a hug. No one answered the door, the blinds and windows were closed, and the back door wasn't open...all screaming signs to anyone who knew her that something was wrong. She called my uncle who was living nearby,...

I forget how "routine" our life is, until someone says or does something. And it's never big things; it's always the small things that make me realize how different our life truly is. Here's some examples: 1. Kitchen utensils - Bobby has an adapted spoon and fork. They almost always stay on the kitchen table. I do wash them, but if I don't put them back on the table, then it's a scramble at meal time trying to find where they are. I have to be on guard when we have adult guests who help clean off the table that they don't get dropped into dishwater or the sink (the holders aren't washable) or the dishwasher (or heaven forbid some obscure drawer). My Mom, who is a fanatic about cleaning, once took his spoon and holder totally apart so she could wash the entire spoon and not just the part that was used. We had quite a time figuring out how to put it back together. And I have had one person toss it in the trash (thankfully there was nothing icky on ...

Eighteen degrees outside, with the sun shining, at 10:30am.  And yes, I am in the South.  I've tried hard not to laugh the last few days as people everywhere are taking precautions (which is wise) and over-reacting a bit (which is crazy) to the thermometer.  About 15 years ago I lived in an area where the temp never reached above freezing from October-April. We walked a mile to the market at least twice a week to buy food, we walked to the post office, and we rejoiced that unlike the Chinese graduate students,  our classes were held in our building so we didn't have to walk half a mile to our classroom across campus. (And I learned that when the temp hits 0, your nose hairs freeze...a fun but disgusting fact.) And now I watch and listen to people cancel doctor's appointments and refuse to leave their adequately heated houses because of the cold weather...when we have heated cars and heated everything else.  Granted, we southerners do not have clothes appropriate...

Above all else, guard your heart,      for everything you do flows from it. ~Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)     Sunday morning as we read through the ending of Proverbs 4 and listened to how the Hebrew root word in verse 23 is actually the same word for guarding, as in on watch or guard duty (some translations use the words "keep" or "preserve" here).  I couldn't help but think about a story my Uncle told from his time during Vietnam.  His group had lost members during the night as the person on guard duty would fall asleep and the enemy would slip into camp and slice the throats of one or two soldiers, then leave. (I've heard other soldiers say they'd also decapitate or do other such atrocities.)  The position of night guard was one of the most critical jobs they had. It was serious enough that any time a group of fresh recruits arrived, they didn't want them to have the assignment. One night a newbie ha...

In one of my art classes at Wake Tech, every Friday we had to place our work on the board in a line, and go through each piece as a class and offer a critique. In the beginning, I was terrified, both of offering anything as well as hearing what anyone had to say about my work that I knew was seriously in need of improvement. And yet, with each passing week the process became easier for those of us who participated in class (we actually brought our notebooks and pencils and stayed for the lectures) because of one simple reason: our teacher taught us the basics of a critique. In the beginning I thought a critique was negative criticism. But I quickly learned that it was so much more. A true critique is more like a book report. While there is opinion, it MUST be centered on facts to have any merit.  When we studied light placement in paintings, then that week's critiques included viewpoints on how the artist used light and shadows in their drawing. It's one thing to say "Th...

The Chinese, while an atheistic society shunning foolish beliefs, are very superstitious. One of their many superstitions that they dare not break involves cleaning and the New Year. Prior to the New Year, you are supposed to clean every nook and crany of your residence, so you won't carry any old germs/dirt/baggage into the new year. Considering the lack of great cleaning supplies and the fact the area I lived in was desert with frequent dust storms that piled an inch of dust up under the door and window frames, I found that idea crazy, futile and pointless. But for some reason I found myself thinking about that this holiday season. I normally push myself beyond exhaustion right before we leave on a trip trying to clean the house (don't ask me why). This year I made sure the laundry was done, and that was it. Yep. I left my house with wheelchair dirt tracks and dust. And no one cared at all (well, except for maybe me...a little).  I began jotting out a list of housework it...