Random Musings

Many North Carolina quilt stores are participating in this "thing" (for lack of a better word) over the summer and early fall.  Quilt shops in Canada and across the US who are participating are offering a free quilt pattern (36"x 9") if you visit their store between July 1 and Sept 1.  Once you acquire 8 rows (or more) and put them into a quilt (totally finished, quilting, binding...the works), if you are the first person to show off the quilt at one of the stores where a pattern originated from, you get a prize from that store. NC is a little behind the buzz (we've only had 2 winners out of who knows how many stores), but evidently a lot of people are doing it, as the Cary store has already had 1,000 people come by the store and request patterns. That's a lot of customers in just three weeks! While it would be incredibly awesome to be a winner, I'm being very picky about what patterns I'll do. If I'm going to invest my time and money into a qu...

Last week I finally got around to filling up the hummingbird feeder (yes, I know that should have been done in March or April). IMMEDIATELY, as in, within an hour, we had hummingbirds. One little fellow seems to camp out at the feeder. I was able to get a few pictures of it this morning, though they're not the best quality since I had to zoom so far. Hanging out on the dog pen (which is near the back porch & feeder) Drinking from the fake flowers (he'll usually stay almost a minute each trip) Taking a break between gulps I keep calling it a "he" though realistically it's probably a female since it's so dark. The male birds are usually bright colors, which just seems wrong. I know that it's a protection thing for the Mom while she's on the nest and that makes perfect sense, but it still seems a little backward.

Sunday morning we stopped on our way to the drugstore for some Benadryl, as every home remedy and pharmacists suggestions were not curbing the swelling or pain from the wasp sting. (For those of you on Facebook, I did NOT use the chewing tobacco suggestion). And I figured day three of swelling and redness and itching and hurting was enough. Time to pull out the big guns. By the time church had ended Sunday morning, I was getting very drowsy, but the swelling was 90% gone and the redness was reduced to a spot about the size of a dollar bill. I've been pumping it every 4-6 hours, and am noticing a steady improvement. But there's not a lot of patience on my part. I want this red itchy spot gone like YESTERDAY. We were laughing about the irony of the fact I cleaned out the medicine cabinet two weeks ago. Everything out of date was tossed. And I tossed almost a whole package of Benadryl that I bought about 4 years ago when one of the boys cutting grass got stung (and like me, he h...

Anyone else having issues with google blogger? Due to some computer issues, we switched from Internet Explorer to Google Chrome for internet connection, and ever since, I've not been able to post. I can read my blog and see the blog feed for other blogs I read, but once I click on Post, all I get is a blank page. So tonight I have a little extra time, and decided to try Internet Explorer again...and it works. Go figure.  So here's a brief week in review: Tuesday - up at 3:30 am and so we can both be ready and have breakfast before Election Day begins. What should have been a simple and easy day (low turnout, as is the case with most local elections), turned out to be eternally long as people got careless, didn't follow their checklists, and resulted in a drive to downtown Raleigh when I should have been at home. We eat supper at home at 10:35pm. And thanks to the disability lifestyle we live, we weren't in the bed until midnight. I jokingly said we should stay up thre...

We joke a lot about spin doctors in relation to politics and journalism, and how anyone can spin a story to make it sound totally different. Dan Quayle complains about the practice quite a bit in his book Standing Firm . I've been thinking about that a lot the last few days. Mainly because Tuesday is election day here, meaning I go on call in about an hour and will have the "calm before the storm" (which is ironic given the thunderstorms out there) tonight.  Several years ago I had two opportunities to work in early voting (a special feature NC has that I love). Both places had what we call observers (where people representing a party or candidate come in and "observe" the process to make sure it is fair and honest).  The difference was in how the leadership perceived them.  At one site, our supervisor's response was "It doesn't matter whether we have observers or not. We're still going to be following the manual and our checklists and doing t...

Four summers in a row we upended our lives and brought three foster kids from a Belarussian orphanage to live with us. It was hard. It was fun. It was heartbreaking. It was fulfilling. It was exhausting. As we've joined countless other Americans watching footage of all the illegal immigrant children now in our country who have overwhelmed the processing centers and the border offices, I once again checked into being a foster parent, wanting to specifically request some of these kids. Mikalai's words still ring in my ears: You have a big house with no kids. We're kids with no family. Why can't we stay here? And I want it to be that simple.  I wish there was no such thing as red tape and regulations and home studies and fire inspections and laws...just simple supply and demand. It makes me angry that any Susy Q can become a Mom, but for me to adopt or foster I must attend parenting classes, have every inch of my home and personal life invaded, submit to a physical and...

Last week the construction, well, the clearing of the land, for the future site of South Garner High School began. This is directly across the street from my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and is about one mile from us. After years of talk and rumors and town hall meetings and letters, and about two months behind schedule, the property is finally being cleared.     Here's the sights from last Monday, about 2 days into work on the property:   It's unreal. Bobby says in all his life, he's never seen this stretch without trees all the way to the road. Hopefully I can post pics this week as well. You'll be amazed at the change in just one week.

For the last several years I've wanted to participate in a quilts of valor group (they make quilts for soldiers who have been wounded or served our country in a war), but the closest groups at the time were in Wake Forest or Fayetteville...both of which were too far to go for a day of quilting. Then last fall Bernina World of Sewing in Raleigh started a group that meets once a month. I've made it the last two months, and am really enjoying getting to know the ladies, as well as seeing the variety of quilt blocks and tops everyone is making. At our last meeting, I finally completed the squares for my quilt top, and it's not quite turning out the way I had hoped. My fabric choices are very different from what most people do (red, white, and blue), but the print, which you can't really see here, is an Army print, and all the colors surrounding it are in that print fabric. Here it is on the design wall in the classroom: So far I've been able to sew the bottom...

About 16 years ago, I moved to North Carolina with just a truck load of belongings. My parents gave me the bedroom suit I had used as a child, I had a bookcase from college, as well as a trunk full of towels and washcloths and a set of dishes. Bobby told me he had some things if I wanted them, and he showed up with his cousins at my apartment bearing a kitchen table and chairs (from his brother), a couch and cookware (from his best friend Hank), and I had two end tables I bought for $5 from a yard sale at a nursing home that was going out of business. The couch was one of the first things we replaced. Around our 8th year of marriage, Bobby's nephew was getting ready to move into a new house, and he mentioned to me that we should probably offer them our kitchen table and chairs, since it had belonged to his parents. They were thrilled with the offer, and we ended up purchasing a table and chairs from Craigslist. A few weeks ago, we were blessed with the opportunity to receive th...