Sweet Home Alabama

As always when we travel, there's no such thing as a full night's sleep. And when I woke up at 6am NC time (5am back home), I got to see the sun come up and hear a symphony of birds and owls every single morning. Granted, there were many mornings I let them sing me back to sleep, but it was still glorious to hear. And without all the parking and street lights and such glaring at night, the stars were shining in all their glory. And of course, it wouldn't be a summer trip home if it didn't involve picking beans or peas and shelling. Thankfully the corn wasn't ready. I'll gladly leave the corn-shucking contest days in my past.

On the festive side, I got to visit a new town and experience new things. First, a small diner with the best fish I have EVER had. It would almost melt in your mouth. The owner, whose name I didn't get, was friends with Amie, my new sister-in-law, and was very friendly and helpful. Somehow we ended up sitting with her bridesmaids and their families, and they were all very easy to talk to. Usually I hate sitting with strangers because I can't think of anything to say or feel like an intruder, but they didn't make me feel that way at all.

While there, a bad storm came up, blowing out several transformers. We made it through all the blank traffic lights only to find a dark house. An hour before departure time for the wedding, everyone headed different directions to a relative's house to get ready as we still were without power. I never heard whether or not Amie's house lost power, but she looked beautiful. I'll probably post wedding day pictures on Facebook so relatives can see them (they don't visit my blog even though it's open), and I'm heading to bed after an already over-full day.

4.5 hours

To those of you who know I struggle with habitual procrastination (my husband says I just have no concept of time), it would be absolutely no surprise that we will get up in 4.5 hours to start getting ready, and I am only halfway through packing.
This seems to happen with every trip. I stay up half the night before cleaning house and packing while Bobby sleeps, then we pull out around 5am and I sleep 6-8 hours of the 13 hour drive. Am I a wonderful traveling companion or what?
The craziest part of all is that I actually had today off work. But I have a cousin my age up from home (her husband is in training in Cary for the next two weeks), so I spent the day with her and her two teenage girls. They assisted me in picking out the quilt backing from the quilt (I'll have to post that later as it's a story in and of itself.) then we went shoe shopping and in search of a dress. I came home to tend to some details, then we joined them for supper. I have laughed and reminisced so much today, and I think it'll be a little easier to come home knowing she'll still be here when I get back.
I am currently contemplating whether or not I want to take my sewing machine with me. A part of me says, "Yes, by all means." Tomorrow I can recruit Mom and nieces and siblings to pin quilt parts while I sew. Who knows? Before I leave to come home I could have the remaining 1/3 of the quilt top finished!
I most likely won't have internet access while I'm gone, but hopefully by next Tuesday evening I'll have a ton of pictures and stories to share!

the bridge

Let's say every other day in the course of your comings and goings, you cross a bridge. Granted, there are other ways to get to the precipice on the other side, but keep in mind that climbing down a mountain takes time (not to mention the climb back up), and training a pet eagle to fly you across might not be the safest alternative. And to make things more interesting, let's say this is a swinging bridge. So every other day you make the trek back and forth across hanging boards to maintain life as you know it. Some days the bridge swings more than others; some days it shakes. But hey, it is a swinging bridge, after all.
And then, one crazy day, you almost drop something. As you crawl on all fours to gather your packages, you notice one of the underlying support ropes is a little loose. Not loose enough for the boards to come untied or loose enough for the bridge to break into a free-spirited swing, but nevertheless, loose.
The next few weeks you hesitate before stepping out, then slowly and gingerly make your way across. The bridge is unchanged. Some days it sways. Some days it shakes a little. But now you know the danger is lurking underneath.
One day you get the bright idea of adding a stronger support rope underneath the loose rope, but you quickly realize it's still not taut enough to hold all the boards together.
The bridge and its supports have not changed; your knowledge of it has.
Do you still keep crossing for supplies?

aUUAuuAAgghhhH! my six month check up

Can you believe we are embarking on the last month of the first half of this year?!?!?!? It seems absolutely incredulous!
I am happy to report that I did get a few things accomplished during May, my "catch up" month.
I managed to work through Chapter One in the Dreamweaver text, though I fear most of it was following instructions and not really grasping the text. Nevertheless, a few project ideas have sprouted. (Yes, I know. I'm supposed to be COMPLETING projects, not dreaming up new ones.) I reserve the right to rescind the following project's deadline, but by Jan '10 I hope to have my own designed website. NOTE: I reserve the right to rescind both this project and deadline!

THE Quilt: is still in pieces, haha. Actually, the first 3.5 rows are completed and sewn together. Rows 4-5 are in the process of being put together, and goodness knows how many rows are pinned together. SOOO, shall we say there is hope? My older sister has graciously agreed to embroidery something in each corner before I quilt, so my target goal is to take the completed quilt top to Alabama next week. If she can complete the embroidery work by the end of summer, then maybe I can have it completed by Christmas. If not, it'll just have to wait until their first wedding anniversary.

The garden: is there. I picked, shelled, and blanched two servings of peas tonight. And by two servings, I literally mean Bobby and I would both get three bites each. The aisles are still not completely covered with pine straw. I have succumbed to reality twice now and actually MOWED two aisles. BUT my peas, cabbage, and tomato rows are all surrounded by straw. Unfortunately I still need to weed between the plants. When I asked Bobby how my garden looked after watering tonight, he replied "it looks like you have plants growing up in the yard."

The nesting area for the geese: The door is semi-up. I stapled boards to the wire, purchased the hooks to hold it in place, and the hooks are.....still in the back of Bobby's van. Tomorrow perhaps? And of course the geese aren't too crazy about it. Two did set in the duck house, hatching two goslings, both of whom we lost within two days. Maybe next year.

BUT.....my four chickens, or "Bobby's girls" as I should call them, have usurped everything on my project list (except the quilt). They are doing well, thoroughly enjoy the free range time that Bobby gives them by insisting the dogs be locked up a few hours every day, and are getting bolder as they roam and a little harder to herd back in their house. They have also destroyed two (at least) of my pea plants in their scavenge for bugs.

So life goes on. I may not reign as the queen of unfinished projects, but I'm fairly close to the throne.

hoop #2

Well, we've officially jumped through medical hoop #2. Whoohooo! We'll jump into hoop #3 tomorrow, and we'll see where that one takes us. I recognize the practicality of specialists not seeing new patients without a referral, (can you imagine how swamped they'd be if anyone could just call up and come?) but there are times when it seems absolutely unnecessary. It's one of those times when I feel like we're being punished because there are people who abuse the system. Meanwhile, we can strike another item off the list of potential causes that are making life occasionally interesting in the Bryan household.

I'm also finding this whole matter of "purging" records bizarre. I can understand in the old days that doctors would probably purge their files of patients they hadn't seen in a while because they simply didn't have the space to store huge amounts of paper files. But in today's technology-filled offices, that should no longer be an excuse. Two years ago Bobby's brother was sick and called to make an appointment with his doctor. He was told he wasn't a patient at the facility. He informed them he had been going there all his life, but the lady didn't want to budge. He finally insisted she go ask the doctor. She did, the doctor agreed to see him, and she gave him a lecture about not waiting 6-8 years between visits. Today I called a specialist that Bobby has seen in the past, and he's no longer on file because he hasn't been to that office many, many years.

Meanwhile, we'll fill out forms and jump through hoops.

busy, crazy, and fun

This is going to be a VERY busy week.
I have too many ideas floating in my head.
There are many things to think about it.
And then there are the mundane chores of life (sigh).

We kick off in high gear in the morning as we head for Bobby's six month check-up. Don't really expect to hear anything earth shattering or unusual, but it means I'll work from noon to 4:30pm or thereabouts tomorrow.

And sometime between now and next week I need to get the supplies to build a chicken pen, finish the top of my brother's wedding quilt (just the top; he won't get the final product until Christmas, or later), and I want to tackle a few craft ideas before Friday night's fun time (pricing of Lydia's yardsale stuff), but that's all tangent on paragraph two.

Meanwhile, my heart/head is loaded with many thoughts and possibilities. I'm trying so hard to let my steps be led by God and not Monica, but I find it's SO easy to rationalize what I think is best or run ahead of His game plan. During the next two weeks I've got some decisions to make. Nothing horrendous or dramatic, but some simple choices in which I need to be totally certain before I act. So when I cross your mind, send up a prayer that I will seek only His will and not chase rabbits on Plans A, B, C, or D.

the shoe grouch

When I was a little girl, every season Mom would load us up and drive to Jasper. I'm showing my age here, but near the courthouse was a Fred's Department store and J.C.Penney. I loved walking into the JCPenney shoe section and seeing all the beautiful shoes on display...until it became time to try them on. The nice smiling sales clerk would line us up in the chairs and measure our feet, one at a time. My sisters would get several choices. I would have one, maybe two from all those monstrous lines of shoes. It stunk. And they always looked something like this:

I absolutely HATED these shoes. The rise in the T always rubbed a blister, and none of the big girls had T's on their shoes. I was SO happy when I was able to get a pair with just a strap and no T to hold it in the middle. And then came the year of THE CHOICE.

Penneys actually had TWO pairs of girls dress shoes in WIDE WIDTH!!!!!! Oh my oh my! One pair looked something like this:

and I absolutely shocked and aggravated Mom by choosing a pair with the T! But mind you, this was no ordinary pair of shoes. Like the pair above, it had a HEEL, FLOWER cutouts, and the T and the strap WERE DAINTY! Gone was the 1/2 inch wide strap. To me it looked like a grown-up shoe. And I would have never admitted this to Mom after complaining for years on end about ugly shoes, but they didn't hurt my feet as bad.

To this day I hate shopping for shoes. I have no Biblical basis for this whatsoever, but one of the cool things about heaven will be not having to wear shoes. And if we do, I'm sure they'll be tailor made. That's worth waiting for!