Playing Possum

Last night we took Excalibur for a late night walk, as usual. Ex shot out of the door to the end of  his leash and snatched a poor opossum out of the shrubbery, all in the few seconds it took us to shut the front door. He got a few mortal shakes in before obeying Ron's command to "DROP IT!"  Ex left the poor lifeless opossum curled up by the garage door while we went on with our walk, chattering about this surprising event. How could our lovey dovey Ex have killed something? In just a few seconds? We were proud and repulsed at the same time. We felt safer, knowing that Ex might protect us from an intruder (well, if the intruder were an opossum). But what about the body? What does one do with deceased wildlife? Bury it? Throw it in the garbage? Say a blessing before casting it off in a fiery funeral pyre on the canal? All Ron would confirm was that it would have to wait until morning. But not before I could take a picture, I told him. We returned home from our walk, and the opossum was......gone. Apparently it was not actually dead, just "playing possum". How interesting to have witnessed this "playing possum" tactic, used by an actual opossum.

This morning I had to do a little internet research to learn more about this.  It seems that the opossum is not actually carrying out a conscious defense move. It's a reflexive action more like passing out from sheer terror. The whole body goes limp, the tongue hangs out, the eyes roll back, the heart rate slows, breathing is very shallow, the whole bit.  After perhaps 15 minutes with no further activity, the animal's body knows that the coast is likely clear, so it wakes up and walks away. (Thank you, aaanimalcontrol.com .)

Now Alyssa thinks the opossum in question is going to gather up all his friends and attack us during one of our evening dog walks. I assured her no, the opossums run away when you open the door, much like the Monty Python knights running away from the Killer Rabbit. This particular opossum was just too slow to outrun Excalibur!

Talk to ME

I emailed information on an account to a company underwriter. It was precise, concise, and informative. My name, address, phone number, fax number, and email address were included in my email signature. The male underwriter responded…..to my boss. My male boss. What the hell? If I have sent you something, reply to ME. If you have a question on my email, speak to ME. If your question is something only my boss can answer, I will forward it to him. All you have accomplished with this maneuver is pissing me off and moving yourself to the top of my “Dickhead” list. You have just shot yourself in the foot because I am not inclined to send any more accounts your way.

This is not a work bashing comment. My rant applies to anyone who doesn’t reply directly to the person who asks the question: doctors who share medical results or information with family members other than the patient directly and sales people or customer service people who circumvent  the client with the issue. Yes, there are times when I have neither the time nor desire to deal with a particular topic and I will tell you, “Please discuss that with my husband.” Otherwise, please afford me the common and/or professional courtesy I deserve just for reaching out to you in the first place.

Keyboard Kitty

I am a forceful typist. By forceful, I mean I type so hard or so fast or so resolutely that I wear the letters  off my computer keys. I have done this on every keyboard I’ve ever used at every office I’ve ever worked.  My employers are always trying to give me new keyboards because THEY can’t type on keyboards with letters missing. I just don’t see the point. I know what the letters are, whether they appear on the keyboard or not, and I will just wear off the letters on a new keyboard, so why bother changing it out?

We’ve been doing some computer upgrading at my current office, with a lot of the work being done after hours or on weekends so as not to keep us busy little worker bees from our appointed tasks. I guess the boss and the computer guy finally got so frustrated with trying to type on my keyboard with the missing E, R , I, O, S, D, K, L, C and M that the boss finally went ahead and ordered a new keyboard.  A white box arrived from Amazon for my boss and I brought it into his office.  “Wait, one of these is for you,” he said and passed a shiny new keyboard my way.

I got started changing out the keyboard at my desk.  After a few moments, I noticed a red smear on some of my paperwork and realized I was bleeding. Somehow I had cut my finger during the opening of the box, or the hookup of the keyboard….I don’t really know where or how. Not to worry. I just dug around in my handy Mary Poppins bag and pulled out a bandaid. Expecting a typical beige bandaid, I was surprised to find a “Hello Kitty” bandaid under the wrapper. Who knows where that came from or how long I’d had it, seeing as my daughter is now 20 years old.

 And then of course, looking at “Hello Kitty” on my finger, I couldn’t help but sing.

Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur.

Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr, purr.

Thank you, “Big Bang Theory,” for placing that obscure song in my subconscious. It tickled my day.

Crunchy Cookies

We recently planned a Saturday visit to Alyssa’s school for her Alpha Omicron Pi BBQ. She had mentioned in passing that she would like to have some homemade cookies, so we decided to surprise her with some chocolate chippers.

Ron was off from work the Friday before we left so I included “cookies” on his “honey-do” list before I went off to work. He just laughed when he saw that on the list and said he wasn’t going to make the cookies. Although he does most of the cooking, I am the baker in the family, and he lends the muscle when I need some thick dough mixed.

After dinner on Friday evening, Ron took the initiative and got the cookie dough started. Maybe I should have been a little more hands on when I saw him take his glasses OFF to read the recipe on the chocolate chip bag.  I went into the kitchen while he was mixing and washed all the utensils and mixing bowls. My only request was that he mix the dough with a wooden spoon and not an electric mixer.  Once he was done mixing, he commented “this doesn’t look right”.  I went back into the kitchen to spoon the dough onto cookie sheets. The color of the dough was fine but the texture did look a little off. I tasted the dough. Sweet and crunchy!  I was sure that Ron had used all the right ingredients. I began going through the recipe. “How much flour did you use?” “How many eggs did you use?” “How much brown sugar did you use?” “Two cups.” “How much white sugar did you use?” “Two cups”. Therein was the problem. Instead of ¾ cup of brown sugar and ¾ cup of white sugar, he had used 2 cups of each.

With no idea how to fix that ratio of ingredients, I threw that batch of dough into the trash. Alas, no cookies for Alyssa on this trip!  We did take her clothes shopping as a birthday present.  Nothing a little retail therapy won't fix, right?

Reflections on Dotsy

My dear friend Carole’s mother passed away on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at the age of 82. Carole’s family moved into the house three doors up the street from us on Willow Drive when I was about 10. Our first encounter was when I went outside to tell her to stop swinging on our tree. We had a split rail fence along the side of the yard and there was a swamp maple growing next to it that had a large branch growing at just the right height for a child to jump off the top fence rail and swing on the tree branch. My father, however, was vexed to see children doing this and would always tell me to go outside and tell my “friends” to get off the tree before someone got hurt and sued us. Didn’t matter that not all those children were my friends, nor even that I had no idea who some of them were. My father would yell at ME, so I would trudge outside to the tree as directed and ask everyone to lay off the swinging. 

Carole and I became childhood friends, and are still friends over 35 years later. We enjoyed marathon Monopoly games, watching the Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Comedy Hour, playing with Barbies, going to the beach, listening to music, drawing, writing, walking to Cumberland Farms to buy cigarettes for our parents, and scouring the TV Guide for Marx Brothers or Gene Kelly movies, and setting our alarms for 2am so we could get up and watch those movies.  We spent weekends sleeping over each other’s houses, staying up late to watch Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and the Midnight Special, and going to each other’s family get-togethers. We had our moments of friction because there is a 3 year age difference between us, and when you’re very young, 3 years can make a big difference, but we managed to maintain a solid friendship.

Carole’s mom, Doris, was a unique character. After high school, she studied drama in NYC and appeared in some off Broadway plays before she married, and she never lost that acting persona. Conversations with her involved hand gestures, chest clutching, dramatic pauses, and a nearly southern-like drawl. I would not have been surprised if she had invited us out to the sun porch for a mint julep (or more likely, a lemonade). In fact, my own voice developed as a result of impersonating her. I used to pretend I was Doris and call Carole out sick from school and cancel her dentist appointments. Now, people always remark on my telephone voice, and some suggest I should work for a 900 number.

Doris was a tiny woman, and lovely in her Scandinavian blondeness. She never learned to drive and rarely left the house, other than to chat over the fence with the neighbors. Her home was decorated in blues and whites: white slipcovers, blue bottles and clear bottles filled with blue-colored water on the windowsills, blue and white accent chairs and pillows. Carole and I used to joke about how much blue and white was too much blue and white (and how we laughed at the irony many years later when she decorated her own living room in blue and white). Doris was obsessed with magazines, and would sit for hours reading and “getting ideas”.  I don’t think she ever threw a magazine away. She kept her clothes under tables draped with fabric so that she could keep her magazines in her dresser drawers. She was crafty, and the house was full of craft projects that she had begun but never quite finished. She also kept a vacuum cleaner close at hand and whenever a wayward bug or spider would appear, she would swoop down on it and suck it into the vacuum.

The Wall kitchen held a small bistro style table with a white Formica top. There was no need for paper because phone messages and notes between the family members were simply written in pencil on the white tabletop. Sometimes Carole’s father would draw funny pictures as well. You never knew what you were going to see on that table. The kitchen also had a radio that was usually tuned to “Bob and Ray”. You could always hear laughter from the kitchen when they were listening to this comedy show. When family members traveled out of town, once they arrived at their destination, they would phone home with a collect call for one of the characters on the Bob and Ray radio show. Doris would just reply, “I’m sorry, Mr. Whoever isn’t here right now” and hang up. It was their way of letting Doris know they had arrived safely without the expense of a long distance call.

Sometimes when Carole and I were in her room, Doris would open the door to ask us a question, and Carole would scream at her “GET OUT OF MY ROOM!!” and Doris would get this wounded look on her face and shrink her already tiny self into a smaller person and say to me, “she’s so fresh to me”, before closing the door. (This is really funny now because Carole just recently found a letter from her grandmother to her mother from when she was about 3, stating what a “fresh brat” she was.) One time Carole and I were in the back seat of her parents’ car on the way to visit her family in Kearny, NJ, and a car passed us holding a big head of curly hair that I was positive belonged to some guy I had just met at a party a day or two before (at 18, it was all about the guys for me), and I begged Carole’s father to catch up to that car so I could get a better look to be sure. As he was a conservative driver that normally didn’t hit the speed limit, we were surprised when he stepped on the gas. Then Doris started with her “Oh, Bobby, please don’t drive so fast!!” and curled up in a scared little ball in the front seat. Needless to say, we did not catch up with the other car.

When Carole was pregnant with Michael,  I picked Doris up to take her to Carole’s baby shower. Doris came to the door and looked in horror at my beloved Z28 with the T-tops removed. She ran back inside for a scarf to tie over her perfectly coiffed hair, and later she told Carole proudly, “I rode in a convertible!”

Carole’s parents often came to my house for my parents’ parties. (Martinis for everyone!) Doris was a big hit with my mother’s sisters with her entertaining stories. My Aunt Ann once asked her if she was an actress. When Doris said no, Aunt Ann replied (with a few martinis under her belt), “Well, goddamn it, you should be!”   I remember the day my own mother died, and Carole’s parents were the first neighbors to come over the house along with all our relatives.

Although you wouldn’t think it at first, Doris possessed an admirable inner strength. I remember being so surprised when Doris accompanied Carole, her first husband Gabe, and their son Michael, on a visit to Lebanon to meet Gabe’s family and see his homeland. I would never have imagined in a million years that Doris was capable of that. Doris also had to cope with a son and daughter in law that were not the best of parents to their own children, and helped raise those children. She endured the deaths of her husband Bob, her son Robby, and her granddaughter Aja.

When Carole remarried and formed a blended family under one roof (Carole & Tom, her son Michael & mother Doris, her nephew Damon & niece Aja, and Tom’s sons David and Anthony), Tom christened Doris “Dotsy”. It became the perfect name for her personality and unique quirks and will be the name we all remember her by.

I am so saddened by Dotsy’s death, not only because of the great loss this is for Carole, but because thinking of her brings me back to such a different place and time.  Back to a time in childhood when everyone was still there. No, we weren’t perfect families. We weren’t even functional. But we were intact. Before parents, brothers, sisters and children left us, in body or spirit. Before we had to grow up and live in the real world.

Goodbye, Dotsy. Though you were small in stature, you were grand in presence and you have left a hole in our hearts.

Spring Has Sprung

Just before summer arrived, I took the “Springtime Album” class at Strawberry Fields Scrapbook Shop, presented by Stayce DeWid. I just love Stayce. She is from Huntington Beach, California, and she is an educator for Tattered Angels, so she travels the world teaching classes using Tattered Angels products, and she also teaches online classes from her home.  Her scrapbooks are gorgeous and she’s so much fun. Every time I see her, I discover something else that we have in common.

Behold the gorgeous Spring album created in Stayce’s class:

Stayce's sample had fewer pages as she had removed some from each section, but I just sprayed my extra pages with Glimmer Mist and used my leftover paper from class.

Stayce’s beloved mother in law just passed away yesterday so she is having a tough time right now. Sending love and hugs to you across the miles, Stayce.

Bleu Cheese Hair

When I go to Indulgence Salon to get my hair “refreshed”, Patty always asks what color I’d like to be. I always respond with “something reddish brownish purpleish”. The last time I was there, this color description seemed to crack up one the stylists, Jenn. I think it’s more of an “I don’t care, surprise me with whatever you’re trying to get rid of or a new product you want to try”  rather than “I want champagne #328, with some wheat #849 highlights on the crown, and ash blonde #192 lowlights”.  

Star, Jamie, Patty, Jenn, Val

Just before my last visit, Patty and the girls had all been to a hair show in Orlando so they had lots of new samples to try out.

Star put my color on, and after letting it cook for a while, Jenn rinsed me out. Patty gave her some sample shampoos and conditioners from the show. As Jenn opened the little plastic containers, she said “I’m a little wary of hair products that come out of a bleu cheese container.”   When I asked her how my hair looked, she confirmed it was definitely reddish brownish purpleish.

Tada!

Knock Knock Knockin On Heaven's Door

Death has been hard at work this week. My Aunt Sue passed away on Sunday, June 26, my friend Carole’s mother passed away on Sunday, June 19, and my friend Debbie’s father-in-law passed away on Saturday, June 25.

Susannah McConnell Zimmerman Eccles, my mother’s sister, was one of NINE children. She was the last of the nine to pass away. Although there are still children and grandchildren and cousins spread around, those days of the McConnell martini drinking, Chesterfield smoking get-togethers are over.  

The McConnells were quite a bunch of characters. My childhood was filled with endless Irish wakes, somber Catholic weddings, and uproarious drunken receptions. I just thought that’s how EVERYBODY did things. At wakes, Uncle John would inevitably reflect on “Why does somebody have to DIE for us all to get together??”  And cousin Jackie would always ask someone to sing “Danny Boy” at the funeral home. D Reilly, of Reilly’s funeral home in Belmar NJ, was an honorary McConnell because we saw him so often.

Charles, Ruth (Mom), Sue, James,Mary (front), Agnes, cousin Margaret Mary Green, Grammom, Ann, Willie, John.

William: Oddly, my Uncle Willie was the only one of the brothers who wasn’t addressed by his FULL name – Charles was never called Charlie, and James was not known as Jimmy. Whenever Uncle Willie came over our house, and I began to introduce him to whomever of my friends was visiting, he would thrust out his hand (the one that didn’t have a beer in it) and say, “Hi, I’m Uncle Willie”. Instant family. Just add beer. Uncle Willie and his wife Gloria had three children, Billy and the twins, Liz and Sean.

Agnes: Aunt Aggie LOVED dogs. Her back yard was full of German Shepherds and rabbit hutches and cats. There was always a huge Shepherd with giant feet named Teddy. And for a time there also was a monkey in the house. Aggie had five kids, Bruce, Jackie, Brian (who passed away from leukemia at a young age), and twins Charles and Richard (Richard passed away at an older age from……let’s just call it embracing his Irishness). I do have one other set of twin cousins, but they’re on my father’s side so we won’t talk about them here. When Aggie sold her house and moved into an apartment, it was right over Don’s Pizza King in Belmar, overlooking Main Street and the grandstand where the St Patrick’s Day Parade Grand Marshall, dignitaries and local celebrities sat and all the marching bands stopped to perform. Oh, the St Patrick’s Day parties! Everyone came to those parties. We would hang out the windows and enjoy the parade up close and personal. There was so much food, so many people, and it got larger every year. Families grew, friends brought friends….it was an epic event. In fact, when my own children were baptized, the day (selected by my church, not me) fell on the same day as the St. Patrick’s Day parade/party. The only family that skipped Aggie’s party in favor of the baptism was my sister, who is my son’s godmother.And it was at a New Year’s Eve party at Aggie’s that I had my first underage cocktail, a yummy Sloe Gin Fizz, served up my cousin Bruce’s first wife, Paulette.

Charles: Uncle Charles served in the war in Germany, where he met and married Aunt Hilde. After he left the service, he was an editor for the NY Times. He worked nights and slept days and we rarely saw him. After he got older, he became very reclusive and rarely ventured out of the house. His wife Hilde came to all our family events. She was more of a family member than Charles was. Hilde was a fabulous baker who would get up an hour early in the morning to make a cake to bring to work. I still have a copy of her “Sunday Go To Meeting Cake” recipe, typed up on an old fashioned typewriter. Hilde & Charles had three children, Gerald, Christopher and Gregory.

John: Uncle John always liked to tell the story of how he was going to a dance as a young man and claimed he was going to dance with the prettiest girl there, and he did, and he married her, and that was my Aunt Ceil. And she is still beautiful. Their children were Mary, Tim, Mark, Theresa and Kevin.

My cousin Theresa with her mom, my Aunt Ceil.

Ann: Aunt Ann was my mother’s best friend and maid of honor at her wedding. She was the baby of the family and never learned to drive. She often babysat me in my kindergarten days and she would take me on walks through the woods behind her house to a nearby convenience store to buy milk or whatever else she needed that day. She loved cats. She had an orange cat named Willis and later she had a Siamese named Booby, and finally, she adopted some black and white strays. She was often at our house for martinis and dinner or to go shopping with my mother. I remember one time hanging on my front porch with my friend Carole, talking to Tony and Denis, two guys from France that we had met and had crushes on, who had somehow found their way to my house and just appeared unannounced (much to my horror – I was always one of those “meet me around the corner” kind of girls when it came to boys, and I never invited them home, but that’s another story). I introduced the boys to my mother and Aunt Ann when they came into the house carrying groceries, and Tony said in his broken English, “How many mothers you got?”  Aunt Ann & Uncle George had one son, George.

Sue: Aunt Sue lived in the apartment across the hall from Aunt Aggie so she was part of the ever present evening martini get-together. The office that I worked at for nearly 20 years was just a few buildings away from Aggie’s and Aunt Sue’s apartments, and both of them gave me keys to their apartments so I could hang out at lunchtime if I wanted.  I don’t really remember Sue's first husband, Walter Zimmerman, but her second husband, John Eccles, just embraced the whole McConnell clan and became one of us. John drove a great big motorhome. It was his only vehicle, used for traveling, grocery shopping, or driving around town. It also came in handy one late night when, after leaving some bar at 2am, my friend Patty and I decided we needed to see Cousin Charles. We parked in Belmar Plaza and I hopped from the hood of Patty’s camaro to the roof of John’s motorhome, then onto the metal canopy that surrounded Belmar Plaza at that time. I stumbled across the canopy to Charles’ bedroom window and knocked. Surprisingly, Charles was not overjoyed to wake up and find me at his window. He dragged me in through the window and escorted me down the stairwell between Aunt Aggie’s and Aunt Sue’s apartments. I must have been loud and giggly, because Aunt Sue couldn’t wait to tell Aggie the next day all about how Charles had had a GIRL in the apartment during the night!  Aunt Sue had one daughter, Maggie.

James: In my mother’s photo scrapbooks, James was often referred to as “Specks”, in recognition of his Irish freckles. James married Eleanor and moved to the Philadelphia area, but he used to bring the family back to the Jersey Shore to go to the beach on weekends. Uncle James and Aunt Eleanor had three children: Eleanor, Ruth Ann, and Marian. When the family came to visit our house, the girls would play the piano and sing to entertain us. Although I didn’t hear him say it myself, Aunt Ann used to say that James would get so mad at Aunt Eleanor because she never wanted to put her teeth in.

Mary:  Aunt Mary was the oldest of the bunch and I didn’t know her very well as she was on the periphery of the family. According to my mother, my grandmother’s sister always wanted children but was unable to have any, so when my grandmother’s second child was born, her sister convinced her to let her first child, Mary, go live with her. So Mary was raised as an only child by her aunt, and was fortunate to have “nice things” given to her, whereas the remaining eight children stayed with their parents and dealt with the usual money issues and hand-me-downs that a large family has to go through. Aunt Mary married Ev and moved to Santa Barbara, so she wasn’t around at family events. She did come to visit NJ one time, and bunked in my room with me. She was very observant and noticed that I had an obsession with horses. After she went back to California she occasionally sent me cards (with horse designs) with newspaper clippings from local horse shows in her area. Mary did not have children.

Ruth: Ruth was my mother. She was the eternal nonconfrontational softspoken people pleaser. Ruth and Alex had three children, Margaret Ann, Christine, and Theresa (me). To the casual observer, it appeared that my father wore the pants in the family, but after my mother passed away, my father was lost without her and he had to learn how to do everyday household things like balance a checkbook and buy groceries. I was only 20 when my mother died. And my mother was only 54.

Grammom and Ruth (Mom) on Mom's wedding day

My mother passed away on July 2, 1980, and her viewings and funeral were held at Reilly's Funeral Home over the Holiday weekend. Imagine a huge Irish entourage trying to park near Belmar Beach on a holiday weekend at the shore. It was crazy. As I get older, this time of year makes me pensive as I get closer and closer to the same age my mother was when she died. I worried so much about my sister Maggie as she approached and passed that milestone.  I know I shouldn't worry because there is also longevity in the family. My grandmother lived to just a few months short of her 100th birthday.

Now that generation of McConnells is gone. But they have left us with many memories and many stories to tell. Oh, yes, there are stories.

Godspeed, Aunt Sue, and may you all raise a martini in heaven to toast being together again.

Father's Day 2011

Father’s Day weekend gave us beautiful, hot sunny Florida weather. A few thunderstorms rumbled in the distance but didn’t come close to us.  Alyssa and I spent the afternoon in the pool. Alyssa thought our gray cat Rocky might like to go in the pool also, so she plucked him from his cement sunbath & walked him about in the water. He wasn’t thrilled, but at least he didn’t leave claw gouges in her neck trying to get away.

Ron had to work early but he was home at 3pm. He joined us in the pool for a while and then we ordered takeout from Rib City. It was a relief just to have a definite menu and place, as Ron had been giving us a lot of “I don’t know, I can’t decide, but I’m not cooking”.  There was so much food left over that we had the same thing for dinner again on Monday!

Alyssa gave Ron this card from one of my Stampin’ Up classes, designed by my dear friend Debbie.

I gave him this card. The paper is Stampin’ Up True Thyme (retired), Kiwi Kiss (retired), and Very Vanilla. The tree is from SU “Lovely as a Tree”, stamped in True Thyme, then re-stamped with Versamark  and embossed with clear powder. The sentiment, from SU “Word Play”, and the distressing were done with Stazon Timber Brown. The ribbon is from Imaginisce “Ribbon & Blooms”, and the finishing touch is a leaf from the Tattered Angels Glimmer Glass Nature collection.

Oh yes, and Josh actually did call Ron 5 or 6 times on Father's Day....of course, it was to ask for money. He never mentioned Father's Day. Guess some things never change!

Quilting Quandary

I've been crafty since I was young. I remember playing with my Barbies as a child, long before I had any true skills, and wrapping those dolls with tissues tied with yarn to make beautiful (in my mind) dresses. I made Barbie houses with cardboard boxes and stacks of books.  It was also as a child that I learned to crochet. I made endless yarn chains as I didn't learn any other stitches or turns until I was older. As a teenager, I painted, and wrote ....poetry, stories, journals.....writing was both creative and cathartic for me. That teenage angst had to go somewhere, right?

Sewing, on the other hand, has never come easily to me. Sometimes I would sit with my Aunt Ann while she was mending, and she would give me a threaded (but not knotted) (hey, is that a double negative?) needle so I could sew along next to her. My older sisters could knock out jumpers and matching headbands without breaking a sweat, but not me. Even my father could sew. When he reupholstered furniture, he would take the fabric off the chair/couch/footstool and use that as a pattern for the new material, and he would take over the family sewing machine. A family friend once tried to explain the mechanics of a sewing pattern, including how to expand the pattern for her generous bosom, much to my horror. When I had to actually sew something in my eighth grade Home Economics class, I searched and searched for what I thought would be the easiest pattern for me. Looks can be deceiving, that's for sure. While my classmates raced on to their second and third outfits, I struggled with my "simple" dress, yearning for seventh grade Home Economics and cooking. When I needed costumes for Halloween or school plays, my mother made them. When I wanted something stylish and alluring (again, in my own mind), I would take a slinky dress, cut it to waist length, cut it again straight up the front, and weave shoelaces into just the right spot to tie the sides together under my chest. I took that method one step further when I played Helen of Troy in one of my high school plays, "Persephone". I cut a simple white bedsheet to make a plunging neckline, added those ever reliable shoelaces to pull snugly across the front, and stitched up the sides to made a drapey toga-ish robe. I actually did receive compliments on the Helen of Troy costume. Maybe because I was one of the few characters in Hades wearing white and I stood out amongst a sea of black shrouds.

As a young mother, I once did a passable job creating a tiger costume for my son one Halloween. The rest of the time, I stocked up on iron-on patches. I limited my mending to those items that required only straight seam stitching. Mending was a chore I put off and put off and put off until I could say "Hey, if this has been sitting here for a year and I didn't need it, then maybe I just don't need it at all."  I never met a sewing machine that liked me. I would read the manuals, follow the directions, pop the bobbin in, thread the machine using all the correct guides, adjust the tension, and somehow wind up with a nice smooth stitch on top of the fabric, but a snarl of knots on the underside. I convinced myself that I had some negative magnetic effect on sewing machines that would forever prevent me from creating anything from fabric. Then, in a craft class, I discovered Wonder Under fusible webbing and glue guns. I lent my sewing machine to my sister-in-law (an able seamtress) and never saw it again. Nor did I miss it.

Quilts were not appealing to me. I categorized them as too “country”, too “rustic”, too “log cabin”, too “Little House on the Prairie”.  Then, for a few years around the holidays, I began noticing “Wedding Ring” and Christmas themed quilts that would fit right in with my need to decorate too much at this time of year. My interest was piqued. And no, I didn’t buy a quilt, because I also have this stubborn streak that prevents me from buying anything that I think I can make. How hard could it be to make a quilt? They’re just square pieces of fabric with straight seams, right?

Maybe out of curiosity, maybe for some inspiration, maybe to make some quilting connections to get started, I went to “Journey 2011 ~ A Contemporary Quilt and Fiber Art Show” this past January.

I was so, so wrong. And so out of my element. These were not the quilts your grandmother tossed on the bed. These were truly works of art, created with paint and metal and fibers that I would never imagine could be part of a quilt. They were multi-dimensional, begging to be touched. There was even a full-sized mermaid (well, technically, I’ve never seen a mermaid, so I can’t say if it was truly full-sized, but it was definitely human-sized), leaning out of her quilt like a ship’s prow, but she was purchased and stolen away before I could take a picture of her.

Here are some beautiful quilts:

I believe this is "Water Lilies" by Deborah Ann Morgan:

"Lighthouse Beach" by Carol DeCesare (this is a local beach in Sanibel, Florida):


"Coming Home" by Carol Marshall


"Mangroves" by Lisa Gorski ~ "In a 2008 AQU challenge based on a picture of Red Mangroves, I decided to take the picture and turn it to under the water's edge, looking up into the canopy. Roots were made from carboard tubes from pant hangers, covered with silk, yarns and fibers. Barnacles made from cardboard tubes covered with painted, heat shrunk tyvek wrapped with fibers/yarns. Canopy is machine thread. Fish stuffed with metallic fabric and machine appliqued, fins are sheer."


"Rusting Cans" by Carol Marshall ~ Rust dyed cotton, recycled blue jeans, can tops, machine quilted. Inspiration came from a Quilting Art book article using denim jeans and rusting of fabric. Fabric was from a demonstration at SWFQG show 2010.


"Art Festival" by Deborah Ann Morgan ~ "Art Festival is pieced with over 200 different fabrics. Each piece is arranged to have light travel through the quilt and bring the eye to the fringe. The beads and fringe are handmade. The piecing and quilting are machine done. My inspration comes from my friend's design and my love of weavings. This quilt will always be my favorite."

"Serendipity" by Carol Marshall ~ "This design uses different sizes of lace that I have collected over time. Some of the beading is from leftover odds and ends of trims. The colorful pieces are from a tapestry catalog that seemed unique. The buttons were from my mother's stash that got handed down to me to add a theme to the piece."


"DARkly FURgotten" by Patricia Anderson Turner ~ "A doctor described treating this Darfur woman for wounds to her wrists: she had been hung from a tree and molested by the Janjaweed [ I may have spelled that wrong; I can't read my own notes] Militia for three days. I have sewn her amidst a sea of trees representing Darfur's countless victims. She holds a replica of Earth based on a satellite image of our planet's sand storms and asks "Will our story remain darkly forgotten?"


This piece is by Dr. Joan Frantz, a Fort Myers eye doctor and quilter who lost her life to Ovarian Cancer at age 51. Her work is very whimsical. Notice the stockings and purses on these birds!


"Earth-Air-Fire-Water" by Betty Ann Seeman. This was hands-down my favorite quilt in this show. I loved the size (57x57) and theme. Very new age and earthy. Then I read the artist's description and loved it more: "Original quilt design created using ambigram graphics designed by John Langdon for the book "Angels and Demons" and used with his permission. Ambigrams read the same right side up and upside down. This quilt was quilted in seven sections bound separately them connected with  a decorative stitch. "

Overall, I've completely changed my previous notions about quilts and now recognize this as a unique art form. I'm not sure if it would be too ambitious of me to take on learning something new that's going to take up a lot of room in the house. I've already converted the guest room to a scrap room. I don't have any more rooms to dedicate to quilting. I think this will have to stay a "someday" dream for now....but I will still enjoy going to local quilt shows. I'm sure they will give me some inspiration for card making and scrapbooking.

License to Spell

I admit it, I can't help it, I mentally spell check and correct grammar in my head when I read. Books, newspapers, billboards, emails, letters...anything. I blame my sixth grade English teacher, Miss Skokos, who, while teaching us the Greek and Latin roots of our every day English language, instilled a love of writing in me. She also told us stories about misspellings on billboards and signs in local public places, and about how she'd call the owners/advertisers to helpfully point out the errors and expect them to fix their signs.

Unless someone specifically asks me to proofread something I bite my tongue and try to read for content.  Besides, in these times of computer-speak and Facebook, sometimes it's hard to tell if something is misspelled or just shorthand. LOL.

Several times a week, while walking Excalibur, we pass a neighbor's car with one of those magnetic signs advertising their business. "License Massage Therapist" just leaps out at me. I don't think my neighbor  massages licenses. I think it's more likely he is a "Licensed Massage Therapist". Would I call the phone number on this sign and recommend a correction? No. Would I smuggle a black Sharpie along on one of our walks and correct the sign myself? No.

I saw this neighbor the other day and he's kind of a big scary looking guy. No one I'd want massaging me, that's for sure. I'm just going to keep walking past that sign and not say anything. When I saw my neighbor, he was angrily rummaging through his garbage cans.

Maybe he was looking for a "D".

I've Got Burrs That Tingle Tangle Tingle

Excalibur and I went for our morning walk today, and as usual, we stuck to the pavement along neighbors' yards and meandered through the empty, overgrown lots. He really likes that high grass (weeds is probably a more apt term). As we approached the corner on our homestretch, walking along a neighbor's lush squishy green grass (this is the only lawn we actually walk on as it abuts on a very busy street), Ex just suddenly sat his butt down in the grass. This is unlike him, because, a.) he is normally happy to turn this corner and hurry on home, and, b.) he generally speeds up on this corner because the sprinklers often come on unexpectedly (hence the lush squishy green grass), and although he is a water dog, he does NOT like water. In fact, if the sprinklers are on at this corner house, we have to run across the road to walk to the intersection and cross the road again to come down our street and go home.

"What are you doing?" I asked him. "Come on, let's go," I tugged his leash. He took one step and sat down again. I could see he was having a problem with his left rear foot. Uh oh. I pondered the situation. Normally, when I take Ex for a walk, I slip my cell phone in my pocket....just in case. I know, it sounds ridiculous to want your cell phone just to walk the dog around the block.  This morning, however, I couldn't find my cell phone, so we walked without it. What to do, what to do? No phone to call anyone for help. I couldn't just leave him sitting on the side of a busy street and run home to make a phone call. What if someone stole him? What if a car hit him? What if (heaven forbid) the sprinklers came on and he ran into the street? Before you ask, this dog weighs 135 pounds so carrying him was not an option.

An examination was in order. This would be a challenge as Ex does not like his feet handled. As I squatted down to reach for his foot, sharp pains in my own legs caused me to stand straight up again. I ran my hand down the backs of my legs and found several grass burrs stuck in my flesh, which made their presence known only when I squatted down with my upper thighs on my calves. "Ouch, ouch, ouch" I muttered as I pulled these torturous barbs out of my legs, by then having a good idea what the problem was with the dog.

   

I forced Ex to give me his foot, and TADA! There was a grass burr stuck in his foot pad. I extricated the burr and he hopped right up to walk on home. 

Oh, and my cell phone mystery? Upon arriving home, I called my cell phone from the house phone, figuring I'd hear musical ringtones from under a pile of papers or in the car. However, my husband answered my cell phone. Apparently when he left for work at 4:30am this morning, he mistakenly took my cell phone with him. At least, I think it was a mistake.

A Dog's Life

Our dog Excalibur (a black Lab mix) has a very particular routine. As the dreaded morning alarm blares, Ex sleeps on the floor at our bedside.  Whichever one of us has to arise first, according to our work schedules, gets up and proceeds with their morning activities. Ex doesn't pay any attention to the early riser. However, when the SECOND person gets up (an hour, or two hours, or whatever the case may be), Ex begins his dance of  "Time to walk the dog!" . 



I am a grumpy camper when Ron has to go to work early, because that means I have to get up 20 minutes earlier than usual to allow dog walking time.

This morning, because of the Memorial Day holiday, Ron had to go to work unusually early. He was up at 4am and out the door at 4:30am. I luxuriously lolled in bed until 8am, and quietly snuck out of the bedroom, hoping that Ex would give me a few minutes to microwave a cup of hot chocolate (I don't do coffee) and stretch a bit before going on our walk. Well, now it is almost 1:30 pm, nearly time for Ron to come home from work, and Ex hasn't budged from the bedroom.

After a while, I did worry. I was like a young mother with an infant who, instead of waking every two hours throughout the night, suddenly sleeps until 5am. I tiptoed in to the bedroom to make sure Ex was still breathing. As quiet as I was, he still must have heard me, because the tail started wagging. Ok, so he is alive. Then I continued the young mother thing, not turning on the TV and trying not to make any noise, trying to stretch this out for a while. Then I thought, "I have laundry to do, and I have to mop the floor, and I have to vacuum the guest room, enough of this quiet." So I did. And still, Ex has not poked his nose out.

I think Ron left so early today that Ex didn't even realize it was morning, and he thinks I am the first person to get out of bed this morning. He must be waiting for the second person to get up so he can go for his walk.

Boy, will he be surprised when Ron walks in the front door in a few minutes. I have really enjoyed this little break. But I'm not sure Ron will be thrilled about having to turn around and go right back out to walk the dog. :)