Random Musings

Happy Friday. It's thundering. The type of thunder that is so continuous we're not sure if they're blasting down the road again or if it's the weather. It's raining. A torrential downpour, then just a soft, steady rain. And I'm sick. Again. I don't know if it's allergies like before, or a cold, or what. And I don't care. I just want it to stop. I'm thankful it's now, the one week I have off before my schedule picks back up, and hoping it's cleared up before my next class next week. I'm not sure if they'd tell me to go home or not if I show up with a bass voice and watery eyes. Like the last umpteen years, my temp has dropped well below normal. I have the routine conversation "well, maybe your baseline temp is below average" with people like my husband and nurse and dr (and for the record, it's not). If I were to go to the dr today, which I won't, the nurse would stick the thermometer back in my mouth and say...

Dr. Pepper is the drink of choice for many people in Alabama. In college, I tried drinking coffee for a week. I was totally miserable.  Every morning, I tried a different suggestion from someone how to make it drinkable. None of them worked. By Saturday, I decided there was sweet tea, milk, hot chocolate and Dr. Pepper available. Who needed coffee?  So imagine my surprise when I discovered that my non-coffee drinking husband also dislikes Dr. Pepper. WHAT? We both dislike coffee!! How could he not savor a Dr. Pepper? He claims it tastes like medicine. A few years ago I wound up with a cherry coke. How, I don't know. Bear in mind, I don't like cherries. My husband does. Being the loving and gracious person that he is, he said if I didn't like it he would trade with me. (He normally drinks water and avoids soft drinks like the plague.) But once I tried it, I found it was very similar to Dr. Pepper. I had him try it, and he totally agreed (which meant he didn't like it...

A few years ago after a Bible study a lot of the group continued to sit and talk and simply relax. One of the ladies felt like she was being mistreated by her boss. She was always given extra tasks or asked to assume responsibilities that no one else was asked to do. She felt it was unfair. As she was listing off some of the extras (she worked in a cafe for a plant), I was in flashback mode. My last year of college I was a shift manager at a fast food place. One of my many duties was to ensure that certain cleaning jobs (extra duties) was assigned and done properly. We were inspected by company headquarters once a quarter, and 3 of their 4 visits was ALWAYS a surprise visit. When I handed out those extra assignments, I had three things in mind: Who will do this job without making a bigger mess? Who can quickly do this job so we don't impede serving customers? Who will do this without the most drama? In essence, I wanted the best person for the job. Use the teenager who griped and c...

One of the patterns Quilts of Valor quilters often use is the Carpenter's Star. It's nice, has a different look with different colors, and while fairly simple to piece it looks elegant. It also works well as a group project, which our local group has been doing a lot of the last two years. Last fall, in an attempt to use up some scrap fabrics and get ready for a group project, I stitched all my scraps together to use for the basic blocks. It turned out even better than I hoped, and I was quite pleased with the result. I think our group and our longarm quilter did a great job in putting this one together. We often don't get to see the quilts awarded to the veterans, but I do hope to see this one presented.

The house/farm that is considered "the homeplace" to the Bob Bryan family sold this year. It had been in the family for almost 200 years. Even though the house is obviously not that old, it is the house Bobby's Dad grew up in. The new owner is a developer who is going to tear the house down and put in a subdivision. The large oak trees near the house are going to be left, and there will be a roundabout placed around them. Bobby's siblings got permission from the new owner to go in and remove some of the fireplace bricks, doors, cabinet shelving, and door frames. We might have taken more, except we didn't want to take off all the doors and leave the house totally exposed (and we were all short on time the one morning we did work). My brother-in-laws graciously took down two door/window frames for me. The one I'm about to show is from "the parlor" or "the sitting room" that Bobby's aunts always talked about but which I never saw until a...

One evening last week we took a walk down the closed part of Bryan Rd to look at the school and all the developments. Even with the closed signs up in the road, we still had to dodge quite a few vehicles. I'm not sure what all the drilled holes in the road are for...testing for rock? Prepping to remove this section of the road? Supersonic sized moles? They go down quite a ways and are spaced along regular intervals from where the school drive will begin to a ways past Mr. Goodrich's driveway. The view from view from the road (as opposed to the shots from our yard). "The mountain" (it's what we call the huge mounds of dirt they created at the end of the Elem. Sch section of property) seems a little smaller these days - maybe because it has grass, maybe because part of it is gone, or maybe we've just gotten used to it. Fire hydrants! And there's more to come. :) But I don't know why they're yellow, unless they just wanted a cheerful c...

Before:   After: When I first saw the color on the wall, I thought "Oh no! I didn't go as dark as I wanted." But I think it looks good, and I'm ready to start putting things back where they go. Well, let me reword that. I'm putting things back in the kitchen, and I'm playing with where things go and purging a few items. :)

There's an online forum for missionary women and Christian women who live and work overseas. I know two of the women who helped create that wonderful online community. Even though I'm not working overseas anymore, many of their posts still resonate. One of the many fellowship venues they offer is an online book club. They read 3-5 books a year and have online discussions. I've never participated in a discussion or small group since I'm not truly part of the community. But this past year one of the discussions on a book they read jumped from my "books I want to one day read" list to an Amazon purchase. Yeah, I know. I sometimes ignore the book and fabric moratorium I placed myself under. So... A City of Tranquil Lights by Bo Caldwell. I LOVED reading this book. Even though the time frame is years before the China I knew, so much of it still resonated. I cried and hurt and nodded my head and laughed some as I read through it. And then I get to the end, read an...

It seems life is a lot like a hurricane. There's the eerie quiet before the chaos, the chaos, a total peace, total chaos, and then just a mess. I've been trying really hard not to over-commit (something I'm bad about doing) and am working on reserving more time at the house for things that need doing. And yes, I'm aware of the irony here as I'm typing on my blog instead of prepping for my lesson in a few hours. Back in May I called a painter. He came out, looked around, and in a month was supposed to e-mail an estimate and time frame for coming. We never heard back. He didn't respond to text or phone. The second painter we called never even returned my initial phone calls or e-mails. So finally in August I gave up with going with private people and called a painting company.  They were scheduled to send a carpenter out this week and a paint crew next week. Yesterday I got the phone call that due to the rain, they can't do their outside project this week ...

My niece is getting married in December, and for the reception they are having typical holiday finger foods. I volunteered to make sausage balls, and maybe one other item. Since my sausage ball recipe does not have a "yield" amount on it, I decided I'd make a batch for gathering and see just how much it made. After all, I need to know how many items to buy when the time comes. So I spent yesterday afternoon making sausage balls and deviled eggs for a luncheon we were having during our  Quilts of Valor group today. I learned my recipe will make 60 decent sized balls, but they were also very dry. I told Bobby I may try another batch in the next week or so for something else and experiment with the recipe to see if I can make them better. I'm debating whether to try a different sausage or to simply cut back on the amount of Bisquick. December sounds SO far away, but it's really not. I know if I don't get this done soon and organized in my mind, it will be her...

Tuesday we met with some workers and contractors and Wake County Dept of Education staff to discuss all the stakes in our front yard and what they meant. I'm a visual person, and I'm having a very hard time processing what our yard is going to look like when all is said and done. It's a bit overwhelming. I don't like thinking about all the hours we spent researching and planning, then planting, watering and pruning. It's not like you can just replant a new tree when that section of the yard is totally gone, and fruit trees take 3-5 years after planting before having a strong enough root system to truly bear fruit. I still need to call the underground fencing company and see how much they'll charge to redo the fence line, which is hard as we're not exactly sure where our new property boundaries will be. I hate seeing stakes in our yard, daily reminding me that we're losing almost 1/3 of our front yard. Not sure how the dogs will react to losing that much ...

With the opening of a new high school one mile away and construction next door to us for an elementary school, our world has been slowly, and yet rapidly, changing.  For several weeks in July, no matter which of the three routes away from our house we took, this is what we saw: And this view from our road is about to no longer exist: The section of the road past our driveway is now closed to the public and is being re-routed and prepped for paving. The section of the road shown above will be paved in phase 2, which we think is scheduled to be completed before the year is out. We're hoping to find out more this week about exactly what impact that will have on our property. In the meantime, my car battery is dead, my first poll worker training class is Saturday, and the chicken pen needs some work. Life never stops.

There's a group I joined in January called "Gatherings" where everyone meets to work on a chosen quilt pattern. I've only been able to make half of the meetings so far, and I'm woefully behind on my blocks. A few people are piecing their tops together. But that's okay. I'm doing what I can as I can. Like so many other things, I'll finish one day. :) Hopefully by the end of this month I'll have at least one more block finished!

I about had a heart attack one day last week when I closed the chicken house door, turned sideways, and saw this: It's the largest spider I've ever seen. Bobby said they're common in gardens and they're harmless, outside of the fright they give everyone when they first see it. He saw them a lot in the fields growing up. And I don't know how he did it, but he made it disappear for me. :)

I had planned to spend Labor Day, well, laboring. Our grass needed cutting, there was laundry, election work, church stuff, and other things we needed to take care of. But we had a pleasant surprise of family we don't see very often showing up to fish. So today has been a bit of a whirlwind trying to get caught up. My yard doesn't look great, but it's not a jungle. And the last load of laundry is in to wash now, and a lot of my paperwork stuff I'm going to take with us on our trip, so I'm just not going to stress about it. But here's a few snapshots of yesterday's fun: Uncle Bobby and Annie Annie offered to trade her Mocha for Little Dog. If we ever have to get rid of our dogs, I know who is getting them. :) Sophia, who was really reeling in the bream, and her Granddaddy Paul. Gentrie, who will reel in a fish, but not touch it or get near it. But she's a great cheerleader for everyone fishing! Annie was interested in anything BU...

Earlier this summer we hatched about 19 eggs. (Same old story - broody hen snatches up all the eggs and it's too hot and too long of her sitting on them to eat but we need to make her stop and we're left with 10+ eggs that wee need to do something with so we incubate them.) Chicks hatching (seems like an eternity ago) Chicks in brooder box...and we had some of the cutest ones! Pullets and Cockerels running around At stage 3, when we moved them to the little hen house, we hit our first snags. At first we only let them out with supervision, but as they grew we felt like they need more time to roam and graze. So we began letting them out more. And they started disappearing. No feathers, no mess. Just no birds. One day it would be one short. The next day two. Then one day the birds were inside acting terrified. Not long after we left them locked up and came outside to see a hawk sitting outside the door staring in...trying to figure out how to get one. We lost 10 te...