Cow Lick

  

I’ve always wanted to be able to wear bangs.  If there was anything I wined about when I was little, it was the fact that I wasn’t allowed to have bangs.

  

At one point I tried cutting my own version of bangs, with mostly disastrous results.  One side would lay flat and the other would stand up all crazy like.

My grandma (dad’s mom) had a wicked sense of humor.  Raising 12 kids in the middle of the depression, I often wonder if she developed her sense of humor to keep her sanity.   One of these days soon I’ll do a proper post on this wonderful lady.  Today I want to tell you a short story. 

We were visiting grandma one weekend when I was four or so.  Like I often did, I was whining about not having bangs.  “Kathleen has bangs,” I’d say.   “Why can’t I?”  Grandma then told me a story that I took to heart. 

 

Grandma explained that when I was a little girl, she and dad took me to visit Uncle John’s cows.  As we were leaning over the fence to pet the cows, one friendly cow licked my head and caused a “cow lick”.  She told me that not everyone is so lucky as to be licked by a cow.  And that because of that, my hair wouldn’t lay down in the place where the cow licked my head. 

Somehow, she made me feel very special.  I was (and still am) very gullible.  I believed this story.  It wasn’t until I was telling this story, many years later, to some friends at school, that I realized just how crazy a story it was.  I was quick to laugh with them and pretended I knew all along that it wasn’t true.  When I later went home and cried to mom and dad that I had believed it all these years, they were shocked.  They didn’t remember grandma telling me such a tale and certainly wouldn’t have believed that I bought it, hook, line and sinker.

So, be careful what you tell your children and grandchildren.  There is always that chance that they might just believe…. and believe… and believe…

Now, how many weeks before the Easter Bunny comes…

Holding my breath didn't help

I got on the scale a bit ago.
I didn't like what I saw.
I realized I was holding my breath.
I started breathing.
I still didn't like what I saw. Sooooo in case you were wondering...
I want you to know.... Holding my breath didn't help.
I still weighed the same.

I've been watching the relief for Haiti special. Tears are flowing freely. It is all so sad. Such a tragedy. Our church is taking up a special collection for Haiti Sunday. I plan on giving.

How about you? Help this country if you can.

Stop the presses!

Cara Marie – the heart throb of Jamestown, turns ten!!!!!

She is beautiful – inside and out.

She is a diva. She really is….

She is precocious – not a care in the world!

Oh wait, this is Reagan. She is precocious too.

But Cara defines precocious. She thinks it… she says it. And she says it with such a big sincere smile that nobody in their right mind would ever take offense. I hope she never changes,

Now it is story time.

When Cara was younger, 3 or so, she was shopping with her mom, Tessa. The checkout lady happened to have an abundance of warts on her face. Cara (in her nice and loud sweet little voice, asked what was wrong with that lady.) Tessa explained to her, after they quickly left the store, that everyone is different and that it was not polite to talk about people like that. Weeks later they go to the same store. And the same lady is at the check out. Tessa was nervous… Cara was smiling… Tessa was more nervous… Cara said in her nice and loud quiet little girl voice, “Don’t worry mom, I’m not going to say anything about her face”. I’m not sure, but I think it took a year or so before Tessa returned to that store.

Any guesses on who actually blew these candles out? Anybody? I was hoping you could tell, because I don’t know. That is another point for Cara… she puts up with her little brother, James.

My other favorite Cara stories involves one of my very best friends, Rita. We were at my retirement party. Rita is great with kids, and was spending some time with Cara. I can only imagine how this went down but I suspect Cara was giving Rita her own toothy grin and said “are those your real teeth?” I’m pretty sure Rita grinned back at her and said, “yes, why?”. And how did Cara answer? “Because I’ve never seen such big teeth!”

Rita couldn’t wait to tell me about how she fell in love with Cara. She has always been self conscious of her teeth and the honesty of this child melted her heart.

Cara has a heart of gold. Her little sister, Anna, made this card for her. Cara gave it every bit of attention that it deserved.

Happy tenth birthday Cara! I love you!

We have ten grandkids. And here we have our oldest grandchild, 13 year old Travis, and youngest, two year old Reagan. This is one of my favorite pictures ever.

They share

We have these little feathered friends outside our window. 

We watch them every morning, noon, and night as we check email, Craig’s List, Blogs, Facebook, and….. (I guess we are on the computers a lot.)  Did I mention that Jim got his very own lap top for Christmas?  Not just a worn out hand me down from me that runs as slow as molasses.  Nope.  He got his very own screamingly fast machine.  Well for him it is screaming fast.  He only uses it for the internet.  I think he loves it.  Actually, I know he loves it.   

Oh, and I also get to watch these lovely birdies as I digitize my embroidery projects.

     

They share, but like us humans, they aren’t always too happy about it.  That big bad wood pecker shows up and the other birdies take flight… zoom!

Dead ready...

In case you are wondering, I chose to fire up the wood stove in the kitchen last night, since that was where I was going to be spending most of my time. It was nice and warm and cozy. And it is 36 degrees here today. How about them apples?

As I looked around my house this morning, preparing to head into town, my mind settled on the fact that it (my house, not town) was not dead ready.

What is dead ready you ask? Well, the term was coined by my Evil Twin. We call ourselves that because we think so much alike. If she sends an email to me she addresses it Evil Twin (ET) and signs it OET (Other Evil Twin) and I do the same. The term is interchangable.

Anyway, ET told me once that when she leaves for work each morning, she makes sure her house is dead ready. She claims now that she didn't put it quite that way, but I know better. Besides, this is my story and I can tell it any way I want to.

So what does dead ready mean? It means that if you die and don't make it back home, the family would not have to pick up the mess around the house before all of the well wishers came to call. Or something like that.

Anyway, my house is definitely not dead ready when I leave each day.

So I...

• made the bed
• picked up the couch pillows that were tossed onto the floor last night
• folded blankets
• cleaned the tooth paste out of the bathroom sink
• picked up the socks that got kicked off when the fire heated my tootsies up to the point that I wanted them bare
• did the dishes
• cleared the counter top
• replaced the empty paper towel tube with a new roll of towels
• hung the towel back up in the bathroom
• removed my shoes from under the kitchen table and put them in the closet

Then I looked around and admitted a sad fact. My house will never be dead ready. I am a gatherer. A saver. A procrastinator. An unfinisher (new word - I expect Wikipedia to pick it up soon). I have piles of pictures, books, paper, unfinished projects... This stuff is what makes me... ME!

And guess what? As long as my soul is dead ready, I'm not going to care whether my house is or not. Because... well.... I'll be.... D.E.A.D.

Now it's time to attack one of my many projects. I guess me and ET are different in some ways, huh. Til tomorrow... Stay safe..

The solution

It is still unbelievably cold here. 

We have a fireplace that is ducted throughout the house.  Thirty or so years ago it was our only source of heat, along with a few baseboard heaters in a few of the rooms.  Then years ago we finally installed a furnace and air conditioning system.  And we largely quit using the fire place.  What a shame.

We always find a reason to build fires in the little wood stove rather than the fireplace.  Two of the biggest reasons is the work of hauling in big logs and the dirt it leaves behind.  Another reason for not using it is that it “eats wood”.  I know – all fire places eat wood, but this one really gobbles it up like a hungry teenager.  And unbelievable as it may sound, if you don’t contain the fire, the house becomes unbearably hot.  Even with the thermostat, the fire box gets so hot that it is difficult to control.  So… we don’t use the fire place very often.  But we did last night. 

 

The temperatures dipped below 0 and I’ll have to tell you a fire was never more appealing and warming than this one last night.  It was so toasty warm that I couldn’t make myself get off my butt to get the camera to take a picture, but rather used my cell phone and took this mediocre shot.  I might just have to rev it up again tonight.  Jim is working and I’m pretty sure a nice warm fire would be a nice surprise to come home to.  What do you think?  Should I?

TGIF

This started out as a short post, that turned into a long tangent of a post, and is now back to a short post.

I’ve been real bitchy lately.  I blame it on cabin fever.  I can’t tell whether it is snowing again or if it is just blowing off the trees.  One thing I know for sure is that I’m tired of being cold.  Enough said.

I’ve seen so many wonderful crafts in the blogs I follow.  Although, I’m not nearly as talented as many of you, I thought I’d share a few of my own creations.  When I’m not mass embroidering logos on shirts and hats, I sometimes play around with fun things. 

I make these bibs out of chenille fabric, with coordinating fabrics for the backing and the appliqué. 

Normally I wouldn’t make so many, but our Country Store booth at our church fall festival was in need of baby items.

     I thought these little tad poles were kind of cute.  Well, I call them tad poles.  Any thoughts on what it is.  I’m actually not too sure. 

I made a few bib/burp cloth sets.  Those sold fairly quickly.  Quite a few people have asked what I would charge to  make one for them.  I’ve decided I will only make them for charity or to give as gifts from me.  They are rather time consuming and I couldn’t charge enough to recover my time and it isn’t about money anyway.  It makes me feel much better to give them away.  Our church often collects gifts to give to mothers who choose to keep, rather than abort, their child.  These precious souls deserve a pretty little bib.

Not to disappoint – of course I embroidered sheep.  Jim would have disowned me if I didn’t!

Soupy Answers

With regard to my previous post...

First of all, in answer to Snappy Di's question, the noodles in the soup are from the grocery freezer case. I used to make my own but why do that when the frozen ones are so good!

The soup was great. Even picky eaters like my chicken noodle soup - onions, celery and all!

I make a mean pot of vegetable beef soup too. In my opinion (and the picky eaters aren't going to like this one) the secret ingredients to vegetable soup is to add a small turnip cut into small cubes and a little less than 1/4 small head of cabbage, slivered. You don't even know it's there but wow does it add flavor. Oh, and a little sugar. Just a little goes a long ways.

Now the answer to how you can tell whose bowl of soup it was. Sorry Land and Iggy, the lefty-righty handy thingy is wrongy! The answer is that I dislike soup spoons with a passion. They are way too big for my mouth. So, if you ever see a teaspoon rather than a soup spoon in a bowl of soup in this house, it is MINE!

Are you staying warm? I just got in from running errands and work. It is snowing quite nicely out there. Ugh. It is also cold, but then I'm not going to say a word about that because we've been warned that it is only going to get colder. Much colder. Oops. I think I just said a word about that.

Well, it is going to be spaghetti and french bread for supper tonight. Sure wish I could share with you all.

Stay safe and stay warm.

When the deep freeze hits….

Most of you reading this are dealing with the cold of winter the same as me. How to deal with it…

My plan when I got off work tonight was to exercise at the local gym and then head home. It was a bone chilling cold out. I skipped the gym and headed home. Then I realized I had nothing planned for supper. What to do, what to do.

What to do is clean out the fridge and freezer! Chicken noodle soup was calling my name.

So I defrosted some chicken breast and checked out the crisper. Oh yea. I’m in business.

I absolutely love soup. And I’m big on the veggies, especially onion. Yum!

So is this my bowl of soup or Jim’s? Why??????

Stay warm friends. They are talking snow and then sub zero temperatures here. I do believe I’m going to put another log on the fire.

Talk about togas!

New Years Eve was an evening of fun with some old friends and some new friends. Here are a few pictures to prove it.

Our original plan was to go totally red-neck to attend the New Years Eve toga party. Many of you suggested plaid flannel and that was definitely in the plan. Camo was also in the plan. Has anybody tried to find plaid flannel lately or priced camo material? Holy moly! I even went to Good Will thinking I could find castaways. It wasn’t meant to be.

No problem. Plan B was put into action. What was plan B you ask? Plan B was we have no plan. So this is what you get when you have no plan.

Jim decided he’d be a Funeral Director since he hangs around funeral homes for a living. He is sizing me up for a casket in this picture. Nice guy, huh. I think I am a misguided floozie. You can’t tell in the pictures, but my hair is in a combination of pig tails and a side pony tail. All of the plastic stuff I added covers that part up. That’s probably a good thing. I needed a scraper to remove the make up I had plastered on my face. I thought the mismatched socks, spandex, and rubber shoes was a nice touch.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think we had Halloween and toga party mixed up.

Now here is a class act. I want a zebra robe like Patti’s. It took a bit of doing for Gerard to get those beer cans tied around his head “just so”. His toga covers the rear flap on his red thermal undies. That is probably a good thing.

Here we are at the party.

The host and hostess. Kim is elegant and Drew… well let’s just say the table cloth on their table was made out of the same material as his toga… Or was it the other way around… I thought the sexy pair of socks was a nice touch.

Don’t ask what these two are grinning about, because I don’t know (and I don’t WANT to know!)

The big question of the night was “what does Jim have on under his toga”. I’m not sure, but I don’t think anyone ever found out for sure. I was afraid to ask, myself.

Yes, we were all very classy on New Year’s Eve, wouldn’t you say?

So there you have it. Toga 101 or What Not To Wear To A Toga Party!