Our Home

In a great rush, just realized blogger has scheduled an outage in 10 minutes...

LO's SS class read a poem today about the author's home. Their assignment tonight was to draw a picture of their own home; write some characteristics of their home; write a poem about their home; compare their poem to the poem they read today.

I was so pleased to see the characteristics she listed included "laughter" and "happiness." The other characteristics had to do with our neighborhood at large, good neighbors, dogs, friendly people.

She went outside to draw her picture at dusk and was out there well past dark. I had to wonder how on earth she would do in the dark. I was pretty pleased with her final product, and asked her if I could post it. For *once* she agreed. (I ask a lot; usually she says, NO.)

Here is her drawing.

(Whew. Made it with 2 minutes to spare!!)

Generations

I have always envied DH his close, extended family ties. He knew all four of his grandparents -- and they were around when he was little. His aunts and uncles were around, too, and involved in the daily life of DH's family. He has many stories about adventures with relatives, rattlesnake hunting with his uncle, making sugar cookies with his grandmother, etc.

On the other hand, my grandparents were not alive when I was born, with the one exception of my paternal grandmother. She lived 4 states away and came to visit once, when my little brother was born. I vividly remember her taking her teeth out at night and chasing me with them chattering in her hand. She made lovely chocolate cakes from scratch, and made my mother some lovely hand-smocked pillows by hand. You'd have to see them to get it.

But, it was just one trip, when I was 6 or so, and I never saw her again. I was close with an aunt and uncle, who again, lived out of town, so we did not have this closely-knit family communityDH reminisces about.

DH's dad must've loved taking films of his family with his Super8 movie camera. DH had reels and reels of 'em when we met, and he took the box to a guy in Charlotte to have them copied to VHS. Then, several years ago, we bought a gadget (we love gadgets) called the Snappy. You hook it to your VCR and your computer, watch the tape, and when you see the image you want to capture, "snap!" you click the button on the thing and bingo! you have a .bmp or .jpg, I can't remember, in your computer. This was several years ago, maybe 7 or more, so the resolution isn't what you could probably get today, but we did capture some really poignant images from the VHS/Super 8 movies.

Flash forward to this weekend, when DS2, DIL and 3 GBabies visit for Thanksgiving. DS2 generously offered to give DH some photo editing software, about the best out there, and DH said, matter of fact, I have a couple of shots I would love to clean up.

Meanwhile, DIL and I were in the kitchen. I showed her the directions I had for a crochet flower I would love to learn to make. My goal is to crochet a shawl, crochet some little flowers, and put the flowers on the corner of the shawl.

She enthusiastically said the pattern was quite easy and she would be glad to help me with the flower. I scrounged up some yarn and a needle and we nestled on the oversized couch upstairs in the TV room, outside the guest room where all 3 GB's peacefully slept.

The house was dark and cozy. While DIL patiently told me for the 13th time how to double-crochet, I could hear DS2's deep voice droning from down the stairs and across the hall, now, you click here, and click on this, and see? this improves this part of your picture.

It was so cool that both of us, grandparents, were being sweetly mentored by our children, while the younger children slept away. Meanwhile, the image of Grandfather slowly emerged on the screen, clearer and clearer. He was sitting on DH's family back porch, whittling toys for DH and his 2 brothers. Notice GF sits elegantly with a knee crossed over the other, just as DH does today. Here it is:

This is the handsome devil I enjoy looking at out my kitchen window. DH took his picture this morning. Not a bad pic, for through a window.

Thankfulness

Little One had a swim meet today in Hillsborough, NC, which is quite a drive for us. Fortunately, she did not have warmups at 7:30am, as she usually does, which would have required us to get up at dark:thirty, am, and get on the road. No, today she did not have to be in the water till 11:30. She swam 3 events, each less than 3 minutes long, and we left the facility at 4pm.

Almost 4 weeks ago, her flute developed a sticky valve and Mr. Band Director sent it off to the music shop. She has been politely sitting in band class since, watching the other kids play. (No loaners are available at this time.) She has mentioned several, SEVERAL, times how frustrating it is, not to be able to play, and how concerned she is that she is falling behind the other players. We could certainly understand. However, Mr. BD was handling the flute repair. (We own the flute.)

About a week-and-a-half ago, he began saying, "I'm going to get the flute tomorrow." Then tomorrow, he would say, "I'm going today," or tomorrow, or this afternoon. We love him dearly but LO is still fluteless and this has been quite some time. We are unclear as to whether the elapsed time is his fault or the music repair shop's, and don't really care -- she just needs her flute. The music shop is about 60 miles away so it was not a simple matter of our bopping over to pick it up. He had several instruments to pick up, so we left it in his hands.

So, today, as we completed the swim meet, DH called us on the cell phone. He had been unable to go with us b/c he was called in to work last night and did not get home til 5:30 am. He had found a flute on the other side of Raleigh on Craig's List, and wondered if we would go check it out so she could have a 2nd flute? OK, and off we went.

I called the owner of the flute who gave me crystal-clear directions to his house. Problem was, the exit to the state highway off the interstate, is closed for a month. So I had to call him back for an alternate route. Whew. It was quite a haul. Finally got there, after dark, and she assembled and played the flute. Liked it. Owner wanted cash so I got directions to an ATM and went, came back, paid him, and left with the flute and more directions to get back to the interstate without going on the state highway, whose entrance and exit ramps to the interstate are closed for a month.

We got home from today's swim meet at 8pm WITH a flute. LO played it in the car and once we got home, played for almost an hour in her room. Intrigued, she also tooted on a throwaway trumpet some old neighbors gave DH a zillion years ago.

She is finally tucked in bed and we promised to go out and see falling stars in a short half-hour.

I started this posting, intending to share about our Thankfulness Conversation on the way home, in the dark, but am too exhausted to get that far. The flute is enough for now. :)

Catch a Falling Star

Tomorrow night the meteor shower Leonid is going to be in full show at about 11:45 ET in the western hemisphere.

I marked it on the calendar and remembered three years ago when we saw it in its full glory.

Serina was with us that year, and the best time for viewing was said to be 2:30 am. I got up at 2 and made a pot of hot cocoa and spread piles of quilts in the back yard. We had tucked the girls in in their best warmest footed jammies, and we woke them and carried them to the back yard.

It was amazing how awake they got. The four of us lay there snuggled under a heap of quilts, on top of more quilts, and saw a million zillion "falling stars." We made wishes til we ran OUT of wishes to make. It was really cold. We came in, drank our cocoa and went back to bed.

It was sort of a magical night. We'll get up tomorrow night, too, but somehow it can never be as magical as that night was.

How I Spend My Time, Part II

Two weeks ago, this closet was so full of er, whatever, that I could not even walk into this little walk-in closet. I worked for two days cleaning it out and I am embarrassed to report I took FOUR huge plastic bags to the closet at the Homeless Shelter.

That was the first day. The second day, I ironed and organized the clothing. Made labels for the shoe boxes. It has been heaven, every time I go in to get something.

More pics below.

...........and..... here is how DH spends his time. He spent this week refinishing our BR floor. See my little closet reflected in the floor? We will reload furniture in the room on Sunday.

How I Spend My Time

Being home full-time affords me the time to do things I never had time to do before. Like, keep my house cleaner. Like, scoop the litter box every morning. Like, keep all my clocks that strike the hour within a minute of each other.

Trivial? I think not! Surely not as trivial as searching through computer code for the one missing period that is causing the program to loop endlessly, causing the computer to crash. (This is one of things I used to do.)

Surely not as trivial as sitting in management meeting for two hours, discussing whether computer operators should be required to wear a tie, complying with company dress code. (They should not. Lots powerful rolling things in computer equipment. Ties are a safety hazard.)

So, when LO mentioned her favorite sneakers were looking a little rough, (and they surely were, I hadn't noticed) I was pleased to refer her to her B pair so I could clean these up. When we bought new sneaks for school, the local shoe store had "buy one, get the second half off," and I thought we got 2 pair that were nearly identical. Not nearly enough, I learned, as one pair quickly became her favorites and the other languished in her closet as the B pair, as in, A - I like these best and B- wear in emergencies.

Several years ago we toured Fontana Dam with the inlaws. (This really does pertain to the shoes, bear with me.) We were in the glass elevator going down like a zillion feet to underneath the dam (I don't think they do this anymore, $$ cutbacks) and a family in the same elevator had a son with these blindingly white shoes on. I remarked about his new shoes and his mom said, "Oh, these are quite old. I clean them with Soft Scrub with Bleach." BING! Mental Note.

So I, too, have been using SSWB on shoes, ever since.

On another tangent, my father used to LOOOVE to shine shoes. You'd think he'd hate it, if his stories were true, that he HAD to shine shoes on the street corner when he was a little boy to earn money for his mother to buy food. But, he loved it. About twice a year he'd pull all his shoes out of his closet (wingtips and brogans, not sneaks), line them up in front of the TV, and sit on the floor in his boxers and polish them all. The phrase "in his boxers" is somewhat redundant as, if Daddy were home, he WAS in his boxers. Didn't matter who was visiting. He never seemed to mind. He wore big white baggy boxers, a skinny ribbed undershirt with little strappy shoulders, like a tank top, and black socks almost up to his knees. Anyway, he'd shine all these shoes and leave them on the floor to dry. Mother would finally gather them up and put them away, til the next time.

Maybe this is where I get it, maybe not, but I love to clean our shoes up (fully dressed, tyvm) and I always clean one before I start the other, so I have a full "before" and "after." Very gratifying.

The Omnipresent Project

Little One is making the ever-present Science Project: a functional volcano. I was so pleased that she had the idea to make hers a cutaway version so the viewer can see what the inside of a volcano looks like. She wants to label the parts.

In 1964 when I had to make mine, it was an amorphous lump of brown paper mache with a tomato paste can in the top. I believe her idea is much more creative and educational, although the science teacher did not request this level of detail.

Fortunately Jody purloined a cigar tube from one of his co-workers a while back, thinking I would like it for holding beads or some other craft items. We cut it to size, and voila, the volcano has its vent.

Got to run for now, will post a few more pics later.

1st Quarter Report Card

Scanned this in and cropped off all the personal information. I have supersized it so much that it is a little blurry; hope you can read it. That last grade appears here to be a D but it is not. It is a P as the class is Pass/Fail.

Best part is at the bottom. :)

Her math teacher did not post a comment to the report card but instead, wrote a personal note to each student in her classes. She stapled them shut and asked the students not to read them til they had picked up their report cards.

Here's hers:
You make teaching and learning fun! I have really enjoyed getting to know you this 1st quarter. You participate well, ask very good questions and take responsibility for your assignments. Excellent!

My Favorite Freebies

Life affords us all some freebies -- those things we just get, we don't deserve, but make our day. I have been noticing some of them in my life lately. Here are a few that come to mind.

1. The sign language "ILY" my granddaughter flashes to me as she gets out of the car at school in the mornings.

2. The warm and lovely fabric softener smell that comes from the new laundromat that is right next to the YMCA. Go for a workout, get a nice smell.

3. The way DH thoughtfully builds a fire whenEVER it might be cold enough. If it's really cold outside, I just hate to go out for more firewood. He's a guy, though, so he never whines like I do. He just does it.

4. The total love and adoration our little white dog gives me (even when I'm bad company.)

5. The precious kiss our orange cat gives the dog when we come in from our walk.

6. The little clues left to us by the lady who had our house built 70+ years ago. We have found many little treasures, newspaper clippings with cleaning tips, hairpins, Royal Crown Cola caps, a poison antidote chart. We feel like victorious archeologists when we find one.

7. The cheerful songs the birds give me when they have their breakfast at the bird feeder. They know I can hear them, they really do.

I think that's it for today. There are a million more, but these are the ones I've noticed in the last day or two.

Normal Clock

Years ago, I bought quite the snazzy clock from Hammacher Schlemmer. (sp?) It plays CD's, makes sounds of nature, has adjustable brightness, and will wake you with your choice of church chimes, alarm, radio, or CD. If you choose to go to sleep with sounds of nature going on, they get quieter and quieter as the time begins to run out. There are 25 choices for the sounds of nature. My own personal favorites are Summer Night (complete with crickets) and Wind Chimes.

The thing is, earlier this year, the snazzy clock became completely unreliable. Sometimes it would remember to wake me up, sometimes it would not. It's the set-and-forget kind of clock, so it was not a matter of my having forgotten to set it -- IT forgot to wake me up.

With all these bells & whistles, the one main quality an alarm clock really needs is reliability. It really needs to remember to wake you up.

KNOWING I would take quite a deal of **** from DH, I began to study clocks online to make another purchase. Target has a whole line of Westclox retro clocks that are quite dandy to the eye. I studied them over a few weeks and was finally ready to make my purchase. Here is the one I selected:

Before ordering it from Target, I ran one of the comparison shoppers and was surprised to find it was actually cheaper -- quite a bit -- from LL Bean. So I ordered it from them.

The clock arrived early this week. Needless to say, the very night I plugged it up, DH noticed it, eagle eye that he is, and was quick to say, "What kind of sounds does this clock make?"

Being somewhat defensive, well, pretty darn defensive, about the whole gadget thing, I retorted that it's just a normal clock, thank you, and it rings.

This was a teensy lie. The clock is called the "Moonbeam" because it wakes you with a flashing light and if you don't go on and get up, it finally resorts to a bell. Supposedly the light is a gentler way to wake up; no harsh rings or buzzes.

Inevitably we had to sleep together, quite the novelty with his rotating schedule, but yes, we did sleep together last night. This morning at 6am, I was somewhat rudely awakened by DH's screaming in the bed next to me.

"WHAT'S THAT?" he yelled. "WHAT'S THAT?!" I opened my eyes to see the bright blinking, illuminating the whole room. Quickly, somewhat ashamedly, I turned off the alarm and got out of bed. He went back to sleep, for a while longer.

Well, the firewood man was coming this morning at 8:30 and DH had said he wanted to clean up the wood stand before he got here. So, at 7:15, I reminded him that if wanted to get it done, he might want to get up. Rolling over, he took me into his arms and sweetly said, "Tell me about this normal clock." I had to laugh. In his dreams he had thought the flickering lights were the house ablaze.

I wish I had never called him Mr. Gadget. Actually my words were, "You're the gadgetinest man I ever met. " It was like TEN years ago, when he got the remote control ceiling fan for the front porch, which btw I love. Very convenient.

I will never live those words down.

Halloween in the Neighborhood

Halloween night afforded us perfect weather. Cool, not too cool, and clear. At 4:00 it was 65 degrees and by 7:00 it was 45.

Our neighborhood holds an annual Halloween parade with costume contests, pumpkin contest, police car, hot dog vendor, face painting and photographs. The kids dress up, some adults dress up, heck -- even some dogs dress up. This year a family brought their pony!! We also have a float contest, meaning, kids can decorate their wagons, bikes, sister's stroller, and these are judged as well.
Here are two of the costume winners. Our little gf with the umbrella won the prize in the middle school category. In case you can't tell, she was a jellyfish.











We took third place this year with our pumpkins. I am proud to be one of the last holdouts who still carves by hand, without a purchased stencil. We tied for third with our NDN's, who, btw, did use stencils. I used a linoleum cutter to give my large punkin spectacles, large round ones, and I gave our smaller punkin curly hair and eyelashes, also using the lino cutter. Unfortunately we forgot to take pics of the punkins before discarding them on Wednesday. The mayor and a councilman drove through the neighborhood on Monday, the night before Halloween, and picked their winners, and then made a brief appearance at the parade to announce the winners.

Little One had her BGFs over for a Halloween get-together before and after the parade and trick-or-treating. I believe 6 girls came in addition to LO. This was the first time ever she chose to be something scary, also the first time she wore a purchased costume. I have always sewn them in the past: last year she was Pocahantas, the year prior, Laura Ingalls, the year prior, Queen Isabella. She has been a jester in teal and purple lame', Glenda the Good Witch of the North, a pumpkin, and her first costume ever was the infamous Cow Costume, made of spotted flannel, with feet and a pink tummy. (Used it for jammies afterward.)

The girls arrived at 4pm and we had hotdogs here at the house before heading up the street at 5. After the festivities, the girls trick-or-treated the entire neighborhood, all 24 blocks, then returned back to the house at 7:50. Moms were due to pick them up at 8:30 so they spent the last half hour or so, trading their take. It was great to hear them: "I've got Snickers up for offer: I don't like Snickers." "Ooh, I love Snickers! I'll give you 2 Tootsie Pops for a Snickers..." and on it went.

Here are more pics: