Things That Go Bump in the Night

Anyone who ever visited me in Palmdale knows that my husband can snore with cartoon-proportions! (Insert a pic of Donald Duck snoring and the curtains are alternately being sucked down on his face and rapidly propelled away accompanied by a decibel level to shake the foundation!) But all of that ended when he finally started using his CPAP machine just before we moved to Utah! Yay, we could finally share the same bedroom again!

But that doesn't mean that sleeping in the same room with him is always a peaceful experience. Now his CPAP machine will occasionally blow loud raspberries that wake me up. But not to worry! I always keep Mack's Earplugs handy. (their advertising proclaims: Mack's Earplugs saved my marriage!... and I wasn't the one who submitted it either!)

Last night was one of those raspberry nights so I yoinked my earplug off of my nightstand and went to sleep. I frequently take it out later in the night... but I couldn't believe where I found it this morning when I made the bed!



I ask you... WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?

Oh, Grow Up!

I don't want to and you can't make me! So nyah!

Well, that wouldn't be any fun! I love the saying, "I may be getting older, but I will never grow up!"

Ever since Namma got Ashton mismatched socks I've wanted some. To show you how desperate I was I even bought self-striping yarn, needles and a free pattern (hmm, how does one buy a free pattern?) all for the reasonable price of $20 (what was I thinking? I've since returned it all to Hobby Lobby!) and was going to make myself a pair of fun socks, which would have matched...

Tuesday I had Grammie duty at Lewis Zoo which just happens to be close to Target. So when I was finished with my duty I decided to go wander aimlessly at Target (one of my favorite activities!).  I came upon a whole display of the coolest socks ever. So, thinks me, I can make my own pairs of mismatched socks! Yay, little Joanie!



So I bought several pair of MATCHED socks (silly Target, that's the only way they sell them! for $2 a pair) and brought them home to mix and match as I desire... and you know if someone tells me my socks don't match I can just tell them-

"That's ok! I have another pair at home just like them!" bwahahahahaha



PS I've decided this is the winter version of cute toe-sies!

Sunshine

I've mentioned that in years past I've suffered with SAD. Last year I tried an experiment of daily (or as often as possible) basking. I felt a noticeable difference. This year has been even better, for a couple of reasons...

First, Gordon and I have gotten out of the house A LOT! For the better part of 3 months we were going to physical therapy, for arthritis (I can't like those -itis boys!!), so we were out in the car driving in the sunshine at least 3 days a week.

Second, emmm, I forgot! but maybe it had something to do with being active in addition to being out in the sun.



So anyway, I will share some of the sunshine from my life, coming right in through my kitchen window (where a new Bosch lives... I'm just bosching everything around in my kitchen... bwahahahahahaha)

Mom, You Really Are The Little Red Hen!

I mentioned earlier that Gordon got me a new Bosch mixer. I love it! I realize I didn't NEED it, but it is wonderful.

Since yesterday was Grammie-dinner AKA 3rd Sunday family dinner I decided that I wanted to make some wonderful whole wheat rolls. So after church I ventured into the dungeon to get a can of wheat... from 1978 (oh yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about)! I had to really dig to find my Magic Mill II which was lurking in the back corner of my pantry; poor thing hasn't seen the light of day for a decade! I pulled out my Madge May Whole Wheat Roll recipe from 1974. She was a sweet lady I knew in Priest River, Idaho who helped me learn to bake good whole wheat bread and rolls.

Fast forward through the mixing, shaping, while the home teachers were here, making a cake, in the new Bosch, turning chunk pineapple into crushed pineapple with the food processor attachment (what? that's not a fast forward?) Camille and family arrived just in time to see me putting the rolls into the oven.

"Mom, are those Rhodes dough rolls?

"Nope."

"Jessica's rolls?"

"No."

"Well?"

"I got wheat from the dungeon, ground it and made my very own rolls!"

"MOM! YOU REALLY ARE THE THE LITTLE RED HEN!!"

The other fun thing is this...

"Holy Deer-Poo, Grammie!" Doug cracks me up.



But you know... he's right!  When the snow melts  this is what my lawn looks like!

Kodiak... grrrrrr!

When we move in 6 years ago one of the things on the *TO DO* list was GET NEW CARPET... we just didn't realize that it would take us this long to get to it! You know how it is, there are always so many things you want to do and not enough cash to do them all. But that's ok!

Our old carpet was a very low loop medium brown (Gordon said it looked like it belonged in on of our chapels, you know the kind, very utilitarian... but not great to look at.)  We Gordon started looking at carpet about 6 weeks ago and finally roped me into looking as well. I loved the carpet... but not the price! Then we found a place up in American Fork that would sell us the same carpet at a significant reduction!

Do you know how much work getting new flooring is? Yeah, me too! EV-REE-THING! has to come out of the room! And, boy, do we have a lot of junk! I spent a week sorting, packing, and organizing every thing so we would be ready. Gordon had the idea of having it done on two different days; one day for each half of a level (we have a 3-level house and only got carpet on 1 & 3, we have wood floors on level 2)

Stuart brought over his room-mates on Monday evening (2/7) and they moved all of the heavy stuff: boxes and boxes of books, book cases, etc into the garage. Then we put the bulky stuff, like beds, couches, etc into the other half of the of the level.

(AND, YES, THAT IS MY CHRISTMAS QUILT ON THE FAMILY ROOM WALL... WHY DO YOU ASK?  IT STAYS UP ALL YEAR 'CUZ I LIKE IT!)

The installers pulled up the old carpet (ick... how did all that dirt get under the pad? GROSS!) Then sweep up the big pieces and I needed to go in and vacuum the floor before they could start to lay the new padding and carpet. They finished the first, and larger, half in about 5 hours (the master bedroom and hallway upstairs and the family room downstairs.)  I ended up with a major allergy attack from all that cleaning... again with the ick!

Harley was keeping a close eye on those worker-dudes... it's what he does best!

(LOOKING FROM MY WORK ROOM INTO THE HALL)

Tuesday night and Wednesday we had to move every thing from the bedrooms back onto the finished carpet. Then Thursday the worker-dudes were back to finish the job. I wish I could have finished my part as quickly as they did! Stuart and his buds came back on Friday evening and brought all of the stuff in from the garage... bless their young, strong, muscular bodies!



My favorite part of my new carpet is the shot above... I love how the carpet looms above the top stair. I joke and tell Gordon I'm going to trip on the carpet it is so thick or that I will get lost. Really, it is heavenly to walk on!

And!!! not only do I have new carpet... Gordon said he needed to treat me for *working like a mule* and bought me a new Bosch mixer!  Somehow the salves 2 weeks of hard labor ;-)

So are you wondering about the title?  Kodiak is the color of our new carpet.

Work

Early last week Maxine called me to ask if I would be willing to teach the Relief Society lesson today. I agreed and then asked what the lesson was on... hoping it wasn't another *hard* lesson. I was thrilled to find out it was on work. I read through the lesson several times during the week to familiarize myself with the material. By Thursday I was kicking myself and asking, "Why did I say yes? Dang!"... I'm to busy working! bwahahahaha!

So lasterday morning found me with a bowl of oatmeal and the need to finally put the finishing touches on my lesson. As I prayed for help on this subject I knew I needed a way to present this information in a happy way.

That is when I saw this:



It came as a complete picture... very close to what you see here (I deleted the stems... too cumbersome). I dug into my copious amounts of 12 x 12 scrapbook paper and found these happy colors (get-back Michael's... I'm ready for the competition! I never have clearance!) Since I already knew what this was supposed to look like it seemed easy to translate it to paper and from my Tole painting days I could add the fun line work... now it was mine... but the idea was given to me.

I'm always amazed at how good God is to me! But I'm not sure why I should be... He always is if I will just ask!

This was a dear lesson for me. I was taught the Eternal principle of Work by my goodly parents. They not only taught me the HOW but they taught me the WHY and the LOVE! What a wonderful blessing!

If you'd like to see the text for today's lesson you can go here.

Crusty

Isn't it interesting how something will get our mind going?

My sweet friend, Karen, sent me another sourdough start down lasterday with one of her darling little boys because I let mine get *beyond-sourdough*. I fed it last night and decided to start a loaf of bread.

Sourdough isn't difficult, but it is time consuming. You mix flour, water, salt and some of your sourdough start into a medium dough and let it rise overnight, about 12 hours. Then you punch it down, shape your loaf, let it rise again for about 1-2 hours and then bake. Hands-on is only about 10 minutes total, that includes mixing, punching down, shaping, preheating the oven and dutch oven, transferring the risen dough to the dutch oven and starting the two-part baking process. Yeah, you just let it do all the work... and it works slow! My favorite part about fresh sourdough bread it the crunch, crust outside and the soft and fluffy inside.



So this is where my brain started whirring!

Have you ever considered just how much we, as women, are like crusty sourdough bread? We take a lot of time to turn out *right*. And, frankly, sometimes we want to rush that process! We want Pillsbury Dough results using a sourdough starter! Those Pillsbury Crescent rolls are yummy and FAST! And for some reason we think we have to be that fast, when really, were are sourdough all the way!

• We get sick... we want to be well YES-TER-DAY!
• We lose a loved one... we want to stop hurting YES-TER-DAY!
• We have financial difficulties... we want to be out of debt YES-TER-DAY!

Well, you see where I'm going with this.   We hold ourselves to higher standard than anyone else around us.  And you know what?

WE JUST NEED TO BE KIND TO OURSELVES!

We need to say, it's ok to take time to heal, to grieve, to dig out, to adjust, and often times, accept that we will NEVER be who and what we were before [before we lost our parent or child, went through a divorce, had surgery, moved away from a best friend, before...]  It's OK, because it has to be OK!

So my advice today is allow yourself to be like that sourdough bread that just came out of my oven:

• Crusty on the outside [read- I can do hard things.  With God I can do all things!] 
• Soft on the inside [read- don't become jaded by the negative things around you.  Fret not yourself!]

***(Yeah, and break open a jar of apricots to go along with your hot, buttery, slice of sourdough bread [read- I don't know but it sure tastes good to me])

Oh My Stinkin' Heck!

You may know that I am a bit of a quilt fanatic. It is one of my expensive, addictive habits (it joins scrapbooking in that distinction). My friend, Anne, infected me nearly 20 years ago, for which I thank her.

Besides quilting for my own enjoyment I will occasionally take in quilts to be quilted using my big quilting set up. The beginning of December, the same day I was taking photos of the Lewis Zoo, Kaye gave me several bags of quilts along with various instructions for each one and the proviso that there isn't any hurry so don't rush.  I put them carefully in my big quilting machine room to await further attention.

A couple of weeks later *a friend of a friend* sent her quilt to me to be finished as a Christmas present for herself. (Her mom was going to pay to have the quilting done on the top she had pieced). And my friend's mother delivered the top, backing and batting to my house the morning that we had almost 2 feet of new snow that I was trying to clear away with a balky snow blower! (Can you see where this is going? Just the fact that I'm getting this quilt 3rd hand should have been a giant red flag!) I put the bags of fabric and batting on my car until I finished with the snow and then took them inside and chucked it all into the room where my big quilting machine lives.

Then I got sick with bronchitis! dun... dun... dun...

The week before Christmas, when I still wasn't feeling all too well, I pulled out this top and backing and glanced at the batting... ugh! thick poly batting... a top without borders on it, but the borders were in the bag, cut, but not joined together (she told me she was a beginning quilter!) I couldn't even make sense of it all. I was still too sick to even think about it. I left it strewn around the room, closed the door and vowed to look at it when I felt better.

I wrote her an email and told her she had the wrong batting and was I supposed to attach the borders? I described in detail what I'd found in the bag...

In the bag you sent there is:
*  the top consisting of blocks of 6" solid blue squares and 6" 9-patch of red, white and blue prints.
*  a bunch of small blue print cut in 9.5" widths that look like you intended to add them around  the aforementioned blocks in a 9.5" border. And I think you said you didn't know if you had enough so you purchased a length of red solid fabric
*  also a large blue print (is that the back?) not pieced together
*  some solid blue that matches the blue squares in the top... is that just extra?

(Holy cow... this is turning into a mess!) But by then I did determine that I was mistaken about the batting... it was actually a king sized thin poly bat that would work just fine but I needed to wait to hear from her as to what she wanted me to do about the borders (heck... I even sent her a photo of a quilt I'd made showing her what borders were!!) Then I didn't hear back from Marianne until New Year's Eve when she told me to go ahead and do what I thought was best.

(Deep breath...)

So on Friday-last I finally was feeling human and energetic enough to attend to this neglected project.  I attached the borders, piece the back and start quilting. Now I never listen to audio books while I am running my big quilting machine because it is too loud. But I have new ear buds and found that I could listen to Northanger Abbey just fine. I'd sewn a couple of widths of quilting when my machine started to bog down... stupid speed-regulator... on the fritz already! Oh... it's not until the machine starts to make a very loud gronking noise that I realize that something is seizing up in my machine, hence the slowing. What?? Is this whole stupid quilt just cursed or something???

So, back to the email to tell Marianne there will be another delay! For whatever reason I told her what I'd done:

I added the borders to the quilt, using the white with small blue print. There was plenty to use just that fabric. It measures 91 x 98 inches finished size. The backing is the white with the larger rose print. I didn't use the solid red so you have that option for your binding but you also have enough of the same small print for binding if you want to use that instead.

This is the email I receive back from her:

No problem- I'm just getting a little nervous that we're not thinking of the same quilt! I don't remember having a rose print! Is there any way you could just take a quick snapshot and send it my way? I know that's a lot to ask, but I keep having a nagging feeling that it's not right... Thanks!

So I sent her a photo of her quilt.

Her response:

Oh my goodness... I don't know who this is worse news for, but that really is not my quilt! I didn't think much of it because mine is red and aqua  [I added this emphasis] with squares on it. I am so sorry! I don't know where the mix up happened! No wonder it wasn't finished!

Oh My Stinkin' Heck!!!!

Now it all comes floating back to me... Kaye told me she was sending a quilt that wasn't finished, she'd worked on it so long she never wanted to see it again, the borders weren't on, didn't know if there was enough for borders, bought more red just in case, so if I wanted to finish it I could send it on to whoever!

For cryin' out loud... do I ever feel like a dough-head!

This is Marianne's pretty quilt, top all finished, back all pieced, thin poly bat...  I'll bet she is so glad that she sent her *beginner's quilt* to a seasoned quilter to be completed!

January Thaw

We had the January thaw! It lasted 2 whole days! We had sun! no inversion layer (aka smog)! High temperatures in the high 40s and low 50s!  Did I mention the SUN?

Today the cold returned. As I left the Temple this afternoon it was sunny, cold AND horizontal snow!  (It is the Utah version of sunny and raining.)

But the best part of the day was this...



a golden sunset!

Happy Adoption Day!

Normally we celebrate birthdays... but when you deal in *used dogs* that just isn't possible!

Three years ago today we adopted Harley at a *pet adoption event* sponsored by Lost Paws held at the American Fork Petco. He has added so much to our family. What a character!



One thing that really bothers me is ill-mannered dogs and I try very hard to teach my dogs to be well-mannered. And sometimes that takes some thinking on the human's part.

We found early on that Harley loved his toys and understood that they were *his* (I've blogged before about him killing the squeak!)  He would proudly meet us at the door, when we arrived home, with one of his toys. My friend says it is his way of saying, "Look! I live here! These are my toys!"

So to avoid the ill-mannered jumping and excitement when company comes, or worse yet, dashing out the door, I gave him the job of getting one of his toys to show off when we have company. That way his energy is channeled into showing instead of jumping. He understands the concept of "Good dogs get treats!" better than any other dog I've ever had.


CAN YOU GUESS WHICH RUBBER ANIMAL HE'S HAD THE LONGEST?

As you can see, Harley loves his toys! He knows it's OK to chew them up, lose them in the backyard, leave them as *assassins* on the stairs and take to bed with him (Poppa's bed, of course!)

Now here is the funny part... he kept losing his toys in the nether-regions of his domain. We would get home and he would be nearly frantic with anxiety at not being able to greet us with a toy. Now what do we do for our little children? A toy box! So I got one of my baskets and gathered up all of his toys and bones and put them in Harley's toy basket; it lives at the top of the stairs. Now he knows just where to find his favorite toys when the occasion rises... what a funny pup!



Happy Adoption Day, Harley-boy! We are glad to have you as a family member!