Random Musings

I "finished" putting up the last of the apples today. There is 1/4 of a bucket left, but my darling husband agreed that between their small size and bad places they weren't worth peeling and cutting, and he suggested I feed them to the chickens. YES! My very conservative husband who almost never wastes anything suggested I give produce to the chickens. Brownie points for him!!! So tonight after I finish the dishes, that canner is going into the pantry to stay for quite some time. Yes, my happy dance is about to commence. And after 2.5 hours at the Orthopedic Services, we have some answers about his wheelchair. Both motors are bad - one shot, the other just not working well enough to continue using. Good news is that parts can still be ordered. We've decided to go ahead, whether insurance pays or not. That chair can be repaired within 2-3 weeks. A new chair...that would take 8 weeks if everything moved like a well oiled machine...which it never does. We are (I should...

Sometimes there are just no words. A girl from high school died Saturday morning. Her family says goodbye today. She leaves behind a daughter who started middle school last week. Bobby's wheelchair broke -on the weekend when repair shops are closed. And we relearn how dependent we are on that one piece of equipment. A young friend is back in the hospital. Her 11 year old body has seen more pain and heartache than most adults will experience in several lifetimes put together. And there's the ongoing health stuff that we seldom talk about - ordinary people would be calling 911; the quad community shrugs or nods and says "that goes with the territory". And I'm in the middle wondering where the path is. So sometimes I have no words. I don't know what is the best or right thing to say, what I even need to ask God for. So many times I find the words "Lord, you know" coming to my mind. And that's enough.

This is has been a very different summer for me. There was the usual garden stuff, yard work, a few trips, but there was some unexpected events too. I helped downsize/empty two different households. Those types of events usually make me come home and clean and sort and purge items. But in the midst of those two events, there was an estate sale for Bobby's great-aunt Grace, who was an avid quilter. They divided her fabric into five LOTS.  Yes, lots. Not boxes. I bought two of them. And yesterday, I finally had my living room and sewing room reclaimed. :)  The above is my sewing room. My mom would call this extremely cluttered. I call it "organized".  There are several piles that should be eliminated once I finish those projects. Speaking of which, I might have to renege from my joke with Bobby that for every one project I finish I can start three. I think I counted 22 projects that are in various stages (meaning started, not just ideas bundled with the pattern). My h...

AAAAnnnnd, garden season 2015 is 98% over. Above is my one and only cantaloupe. Buster saw Bobby checking on it (it was in one of my pots instead of in the actual garden),checked it out, and must have thought it was a ball. Next thing we knew, he had it, was playing with it, and Little Dog wanted it. One of them ate some of it. Must not have liked it too much, for they left it one the doorstep for me. Next step is to get down all the stalks and tomato stakes. I've opened the gate so the chickens can go inside. They like to scratch and dig things up. I'm not crazy about the holes they make, but it does make tilling a little bit easier.

This spring Bobby found a hornet's nest in our pear tree. It was about the size of a softball. I went to three different stores looking for some foam spray which my parents have used in the past. No one carries it anymore. We bought some jet spray, and followed the directions for dealing with it. I waited a week or two. No signs of hornets coming in or out of the nest, so I was going to take it down and keep. How many people have a small hornet's nest? When I went back to claim the small shell, I was amazed to discover the walls were gone and a nest in its place. Today, I picked pears using the fruit picker instead of my hands.   Too many yellow jackets and a few hornets were swarming around over-ripe pears, and the last thing I need/want is another allergic reaction to a sting. But, for the first time in several years...we have pears. I don't know if we can credit Buster and Little Dog for keeping the critters away, or if the extremely hot weather has ripened them ...

A friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day that the average parent spends $650 getting their child for school. She was aghast. I personally don't believe it. There's simply no way the average parent can afford that. Actually, I know very few people who could afford that. And with everyone having backpack drives (the local Methodist church in Garner, the First Baptist HOPE group, the library, WRAL, Wake GOP, just to name a few) to help families in need, I can't help but wonder exactly what is going on here. I know not everyone recycles their crayons from year to year like we sometimes did, nor use the same binder from the year before (provided we had "taken care of it"), but there's seems to be an inordinate amount of need. So using Wake County's school list, here's what it would cost for a 5th grader to go back to school: 2 two inch binders $6 each                                     ...

 I've never been one to ooh and aah over dresses. But this one, while pretty, made me laugh. I had to go back after reading the description and check it out. Those "flowers" on her dress are not only wildflowers from America, but INSECTS. Yes, Martha Washington attended the dance with a gown decked out in bugs. How awesome is that? And I was a bit surprised by this, but I actually enjoyed the wax section of the Presidents better than the fashion segment of the First Ladies. The Presidents are built to scale, and briefly tell a little bit about each man. It was interesting to see how tall most of them were. The ladies were not made to scale, and their gowns are about 1/3 of the original size. But still, you could tell some about the styles of the time and the woman's personality by her dress. The only thing I wasn't overly impressed with during the trip was the Cyclorama. That's a HUGE painting, the largest in North America, I think, that someone did ...

If you want a historical or education field trip and find yourself heading to Gettysburg, these places are definitely on my list of places worth visiting: 1. Gettysburg Diorama  - If you like miniatures, you will LOVE this. If you need to see the large picture or no little about the Battle of Gettysburg, this exhibit not only explains it very well, but brings the little details to life. Loved the spreaded cotton balls for the smoke...from a distance it looked very realistic! Not only did they have canyons in the fields, they also had soldiers (from both sides) taking down fences. A true but sad fact. 2. Gettysburg National Park - a tour Yes. You can drive yourself around and look at a book and look at monuments, but here's some of the special things you're learn with a tour guide. This is one of the US regiments that fought the 26th NC Regiment. (We hired a personal tour guide rather than deal with the lift on the tour bus, and he pointed out some extra t...

I'll have to save Gettysburg pictures for two days next week. Let me just say now that it was amazing, beautiful, heartbreaking, and mind-boggling. I am so glad we went, and I am also very glad that we didn't do that for an earlier anniversary. A battlefield, although this one is especially interesting, is not a romantic place to visit. And as much as I loved the area and could see myself living there, I'm not sure I could handle living in a place whose main mode of business is constantly reliving the past, especially such a painful one. Today was another training day for the board of elections trainers. I've just got home, and my mind is whirling with things that need to be done and trying to decide what needs to be done first. Tomorrow I meet my niece to give her some stuff before she heads back to college, (I was supposed to be heading the opposite direction to a baby shower), and at some point I really hope to get my house back in order before the craziness of g...

Prior to visiting Lib's Place on our way to Gettysburg, we stopped at a nearby town, only to discover the shop was closed on Wednesdays. Go figure. There was a couple making out on a bench between the quilt shop and the barber shop (which was next door). While I was checking out at Lib's Place, I mentioned to them that the place was closed for the day, and they became very concerned. Turns out, the owner of the store is the sister of the barber shop owner, and their stores actually connect in the back. Whenever the quilt shop is closed, all they have to do is go to the barber shop, and she'll let them into the quilt shop through the back way, and ring them up. For their regular customers, they are sometimes allowed to cut their own fabric if the barber is busy with a client. Are you as astounded as I am? I was of the mindset at first that since there was no sign on the store saying that, we should forget about it and head on to our stopping point. Bobby reminded me we wer...

Last year many North Carolina quilt shops participated in an event called "Row by Row Experience". Unlike a shop hop where you pay to participate and are required to visit as many places as possible in a weekend, this crazy event starts June 1 and goes through August 8. Quilters go to any participating quilt shop (this year in almost every single state!), pick up a FREE pattern, make 8 rows, quilt them together, bind the quilt, and return to one of the quilt shops where you got a pattern to show off your quilt. If you're the first to show off from that shop, you win a prize. Be the first to finish in your state, and you win a big prize. It's quite cool. We allotted extra time on our trip to Gettysburg to do just this. I couldn't help but laugh in one of the shops as I was looking at their fabric, and a small group of ladies came into the store. The sales clerk asked if she could be of assistance, and they happily chirped "We're ROWING!" We stoppe...

I spent quite a while after supper trying to upload some of the pictures I made on my phone during this last week. Let's just say wifi/e-mail wasn't cooperating very well for a while, so I won't be posting things until..one day this week. We left last Tuesday. Bobby had an appointment that morning, and our original plan was that we'd leave after he got home and we were loaded. But as the "joke" is in our house, that didn't happen. We left about 11ish.  After I canned 7 quarts of tomatoes and finished a load of clothes because it had two pairs of shorts that I needed and my dryer was NOT cooperating. But we made it. So thankfully, this scene will most likely not be awaiting me upon my return.  But this view will: Bobby's great-aunt Grace had an estate sale (she's in a nursing home) about a week before we left. She liked to sew, but her specialty was quilting. They divided her fabric into 5 lots. I bought 2 . After five days of washing a...