Anybody Want a Visitor?

Remember Joe Bfstplk from Little Abner? Well he has been staying here for the last 2 weeks and I am ready for him to go somewhere else. If you want some company let me know and I will send him your way.

I took Aud to the doctor last week for her 3 month visit and the waiting room was full of people coughing etc, and sure enough, I came down with bronchitis last Thursday evening. Aud is fine...she always is when we go to the doctor....and she won't let me go in with her so I can't tell the doctor what is really wrong with her.

Anyway, Wednesday we decided we needed to buy a new car....not my idea....but, that was besides the point. Aud spent the evening reading the newspapers and looking up cars online etc.

Thursday I went to the Dermatologist for the year's checkup for the place she removed on my cheek. This wonderful dermatogist is a young absolutely gorgeous tall lanky blonde. She walks in....how's your face...oh it looks terrific, I can't even see you...gee.... your skin is just beautiful....hmmm, I see a little place in your eyebrow, we need to take that off...oh, there's an age spot beside it...want me to remove that also?.....

The whole time she is doing this she has touched my hands and face and arms, etc.......and apologizes for touching me everywhere....I am always looking for places that shouldn't be there...how about that place on your chest, is it bothering you? ....yes, a little.....ok.....wait right here...and off she goes.

A couple of minutes later she is back with the "magic can", and proceeds to freeze the two places on my face and the one on my chest.

I have my kindle with me and we talk about them for a little bit and I am sure she is going to by her mother and mil one. Then it's .....ok, see you in a year unless you have problems and if you do, call me.

I make my appt for next year, make Aud one for the first week in February, because she has some spots she wants the doc to look at, and I am out of there.

I go home and get Aud and take her to have her hair done. Then we go look at cars at a couple of places and decide we want either a Chevy Impala or a Buick Lucerne. It is dark by now and I am feeling crappy from the bronchitis which is rearing it's ugly head, so we go home and figure we will go look on Friday.

Friday comes along and I am really sick and the weather is getting crummy, so we don't go anywhere. Spent Saturday in bed. Sunday I get a few things from the grocery store because we are due some ice on Monday.

By Tuesday we have decided not to buy a car, just don't want to fool with looking for one and the two old cars will last a while longer. Besides that, if I back one of the cars out of the driveway I won't be able to get it back in because it faces north and is in the shade, and on an incline and I can't get up the incline unless I take a flying leap at it from the driveway across the street from us...lol...and the way my luck is running right now, I figured if I did that I would not be able to stop in time to keep from running into the house. Still feeling awful anyway. Can't get to the doc with the roads like they are.

We still have ice in our driveway....even though it was 60 today, and I am still sick and feel like you know what. I finally called my daughter yesterday and got her to pick up a prescription and some milk and bread.

Today is Friday, I couldn't sleep last night so I read until 7 this morning, and didn't get up until 4 this afternoon. The minute my feet hit the floor Aud informs me she has fallen in the kitchen against the counter top and hurt her ribs.

Why didn't you wake me up? Well, I know you aren't feeling good either....
Are they broken??...no, I can take a deep breath...do we need to go to the ER and let them check them?...no, I will be fine but I am sure I will be black and blue tomorrow. She has basically stayed on a hotpad since it happened .

I have dreaded something like this happening, and it finally has. Hopefully she will be a little more careful and walk with her cane all of the time. The doc has told her to do that.

I have done nothing, nada, zilch, the past 2 weeks.....so I have nothing else to say other than please invite Joe to your house, lol

Humanoids and Quilting

The dictionary defines Humaniod as "having human characteristics or form";

Opposable is defined as "capable of being placed opposite to something else: the opposable thumb of primates."

I bring these two words to your attention because Aud has informed me that the reason we aren't as brainy as we used to be is because of the arthritis in our thumbs that won't allow them to be opposable. In plain English, our thumbs don't work like they are supposed to anymore, lol.

The reason we know we have lost some of our brains is because neither one of us could figure out what 2.65 percent of 100,ooo was, and what yield that translated into for 5 months. At one time both of us would have known the answer immediately, but even with pencil and paper we couldn't figure it out. We finally had to get the calculator out to do it. The horrifying thing about this is Aud was an accountant for a government agency when she worked, and I was a bookkeeper for a land company in one of my lifes, lol. We have giggled over that one for the last two days.

The item below is a recorder for groceries. It was a Christmas present to the two of us from ourselves so we could push a button and speak the name of the item we wanted added to a grocery list. When it comes time to go buy groceries all you have to do is push a button and it spits out the alphabetical list on paper. Neat little gadget, but there is only one problem. It doesn't understand either one of us when we speak and evidently we eat things this technical genius doesn't know about. Supposedly you can program items into it, but, you guessed it, Aud has no idea where she put the instructions. So it sticks on the side of the refrigerator with the rest of the magnets and junk. Maybe one of these days she will run across it.

These are the latest blocks in the Designer Block of the Month. Yea, caught up again with these.


This is a picture of the quilt called Posies in The Valley from the Blackbird Designs book In Full Bloom. This quilt is being offered as a BOM through my local quilt store and of course I had to sign up for it. I just love this quilt and this will be the only way I will ever do it. A closeup of the sample. I am going to do machine applique on it and have started cutting out the templates for it. I picked up the first month and I am sure I will not be through with it before the second month comes out, but that's life in the fast lane.
Remember seeing some of this last year? It has been languishing in the bushes due to one thing and another. I finally got it out and have the applique applied to the blocks. Now to get it all appliquied. Of course I made it larger so it is going to take some time to get it all done.
This is the sewing corner I fixed for myself in the kitchen. I have this machine set up to applique and hopefully will be able to do some of it when I have to be in the kitchen cooking. Since I set this up I have added a small shelf against the wall to hold "things"...lol....
Now if I can just get back to doing some regular quilting for a least an hour every day I might get some quilts finished.

Update on the leak in the fireplace, the plumber has been out here and of course had to chip out the mortar etc, and the gas company came out again this morning and it was still leaking a bit, but now that is fixed and the cosmetic work has to be done on the hole. And then we will need to paint the hearth. It had been painted a cream color and with all of the work the plumber has had to do, it now needs to be painted aain. I don't do painting, and even though Aud says she can paint it I know if she starts it I will end up having to finish it so I am discouraging her from even starting it.

The dark quilt I made last year from the toiles was for one of my sils and he was tickled to death with it. It fits him to a tee. Hmm, maybe I can con him into painting the hearth this summer while school is not in session.

Hope everyone's week is going well.

Life is Changing

My life is like everyone elses, it seems to be divided into "lifes" (and I don't mean lives), each one separate from the one before and yet continuous.

I feel that I am entering into a new "continuation". Aud is 92 and she is getting a little "dotty" (lol) in spots. She doesn't have a lot of energy because she has so many little picky things wrong with her and can't exercise, and I think there is a short circuit sometimes. The podiatrist that she went to two week ago for her foot problems told her her maintenance agreement had run out, lol.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not downing my mother. She is a most precious person to me and I love her dearly. Mainly I am concerned about her and I spend a lot of time worrying about her and sometimes I just want to wring her neck. I think this is normal when any 2 or more people live together for any length of time and we have lived in the same house for the last 15 years.

I am an only child and spoiled rotten to the core. I will admit that. I also pay for being spoiled rotten to the core, lol. I owe her a lot for everything she has done for me in my life, and now it is time for payback, so to speak.

I don't know what I would have done the last 7 years if she hadn't been around. With all of the sickness and surgeries etc I have had and things that have gone wrong, she has always been there for me. And I really don't know what I would have done before that for the 4years my husband was so very ill before he passed away.

Right now we are in the middle of a cooking game she and I play. She has always done the cooking since we have lived together. Ever so often she decides she is tired of cooking, so I try to take over the cooking duties and in 2 days she can't stand it, so she takes over the cooking again, lol. This has gone on since I retired 2 years ago.

A couple of weeks ago when she burned her hand and couldn't get it in water and her foot was too sore to walk on it I figured the time had come to really take over the kitchen. We talked about it and I now have a spot in the kitchen eating area that I have tucked a sewing machine into and I can at least do something productive while I am cooking.

I used to be an excellent cook but not having much memory anymore I can't remember lots of the little secrets I learned about cooking. I am having to relearn a lot of it. I also cook different types of food than Audrey does, and that presents a problem, lol.

She doesn't like cream sauces, or cream soups or pasta, etc. I love all of those things. I love spinach salad, or the "salad grass" as Aud calls it, and to her the green for a salad is iceberg lettuce, period. She is a great cook when it comes to pies and cakes, but as far as regular food she has certain things she cooks period, lol.

So we are kind of struggling right now with our meals. If we have a doctor's appt or have to go out, we usually eat out that day. That is also a problem because we don't like to eat at the same places. Luby's is Aud's favorite, and I will not eat there. I like Pei Wei, (Chinese), and she won't eat there. You get the picture. There are only 6 places at the moment that suit the two of us, and I am really tired of them.

Of course I don't get to bed until 4 or so in the mornings because I can't sleep. I don't get up until at least noon and that causes us to eat later than we used to. I can't seem to get myself turned back around. I think mainly it is because it is so nice and quiet at night when all of the extraneous noise is gone.

Life is never dull around here now, that's for sure. I got up one day last week and when I walked into the living room the fireplace was roaring and I smelled gas. Aud....I smell gas....no you don't...yes I do...well, I don't.....end of story. I turned the gas down a little and let it go. My nose is always stopped up and I figured she was right. Ok, two days pass, and I get up, walk toward the kitchen, and smell gas again. Aud...I smell gas...I am calling the gas company...well, there is no gas leaking, I don't smell it....I don't care...I am calling Enogex.

Guess what, we have a gas leak in the turn on fixture of the gas for the firesplace. Duh! The technician that came out was really surprised that I could smell it. Anyway, we turned off the fireplace and the plumber will be here tomorrow to install a new pipe or turn on or whatever he has to do.

She also fell in the bathroom the other day when she stood up to take a shower. Her foot was bandaged from the visit to the podiatrist and I had set up the bathtub with a bench type chair that we have from when she had her knee surgery and we have the hand held shower sprays in all the bathrooms so that was accessible. Why she decided to stand up is beyond me, but she did. You should see the bruise from that one.

Every day is a new adventure, some are good, some are a little scary, and some are just plain awful, but at least we have them. That is what counts.

What are You?

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz...

You Are an Ingrid!

You are an Ingrid -- "I am unique"

Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

• * Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.


• * Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.


• * Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.


• * Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.


• * Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being an Ingrid

• * my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level


• * my ability to establish warm connections with people


• * admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life


• * my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor


• * being unique and being seen as unique by others


• * having aesthetic sensibilities


• * being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being an Ingrid

• * experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair


• * feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved


• * feeling guilty when I disappoint people


• * feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me


• * expecting too much from myself and life


• * fearing being abandoned


• * obsessing over resentments


• * longing for what I don't have

Ingrids as Children Often

• * have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games


• * are very sensitive


• * feel that they don't fit in


• * believe they are missing something that other people have


• * attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.


• * become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood


• * feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Ingrids as Parents

• * help their children become who they really are


• * support their children's creativity and originality


• * are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings


• * are sometimes overly critical or overly protective


• * are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

Take Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz at HelloQuizzy

A Little Quilting Going on Here!

I finally have accomplished something quilting wise. Not much to show for a month, but better than nothing.

This is a diamond in the rough block. I took a class in this block in November and finally have finished the main blocks for my quilt. I am using my stash for this one. I did have to buy some background fabric, but the rest of it is all Thimbleberries.

Here are all of the blocks I have made. The original pattern is by Debbie Caffrey called Diamond in the Rough and is set on point. Since I have to make mine bigger, I decided to set it straight. I am going to use the background for my sashing and put conerstones in. Not sure what I will do at that point, but I am leaning toward a small border of a dark color, then squares of all of the fabrics used in the quilt, another small border of dark, and then a larger border. This will give me basically a queen size quilt. There are lots of pieces in these blocks, lol.

And I am finally caught up with the Simply Sophisticated BOM from Fat Quarter Shop.

Here are the first 6 blocks finished from the Designer BOM from Fat Quarter Shop .

Now I need to catch up with my Star BOM that I am doing with JudyL. That is what I was going to work on last week in during her Quiltathon and ended up too dizzy to do anything. Love this Oklahoma weather when the wind blows, lol.

So Much for Efficiency

I had such high hopes for today. JudyL is having a Quiltathon this weekend and I intended to join it. I even went to the grocery store Friday night with a list of ingredients I needed to make crock pot meals for both Saturday and Sunday. Of course I lost the list before I ever got to the store, lol, but I did remember to get everything that was on it. I called Aud and she looked for it and couldn't find it and she did remember a couple of things. Then when I got to the car with the groceries there it was on the car seat.

I came home, cooked some chicken and rice for dinner, and it was really good. I am trying to cook small amounts because I hate leftovers.

Aud hears something on the radio that scares her enough about her hand that she decides she needs to go to the emergency room, so after dinner I take her to the ER. They give her a couple of prescriptions, one antibiotic to take by mouth and a cream.

While waiting for the pharmacy to fill the prescription, we go to Target so I can get another a smaller crockpot...I find a 3 1/2 quart, yea! We go to pick up the prescriptions and they don't have one of them....standard procedure for us it seems. However, she did have the cream at home so I didn't have to go get it this morning...good thing as it turned out.

I want to cook both of these crock pot meals today and, in order to do that, I needed two crockpots. In that regard, Judy is a bad influence (I think she has at least 4, lol), but at least this only gives me two (I think). Aud says we have a very small one in the garage. (I didn't go look for it.)

I went to bed at 3 this morning, set the alarm for 11 and at 5 was still awake. However, I must have gone to sleep shortly after that. I get up with the alarm and when my feet hit the floor I am so dizzy I can hardly walk.

I know I have to get at least 1 of these meals going so I stumble into the kitchen to put together the Chicken Pot Pie that I am going to cook. I don't like dark meat so I have bought chicken tenders for this dish. I get everything ready to put in the crockpot; the recipe calls for chicken gravy, which I didn't find at the grocery store, so I made my own. I don't like canned gravy anyway. I am sure they had it, but going to the grocery store always makes me mad because I can never find anything and all the labels are different anymore.

I get the chicken out, realize if I use the whole package we will be eating pot pie for decades, and decide I will cut this recipe down to a 1 meal dish for 2 people. I am putting this in a 4 1/2 quart crockpot....lol......oh, by the way, I never cook a dish exactly like it says, like my quilting, I always put my own spin on it. So, I end up with about an inch and a half of area covered (it is an oval pot) and turn it on low, put the cooking things I have used in a pan of hot water, and stumble back to my room, lay back in my chair, and the next thing I know it is 4 o'clock.

Wow, so much for sewing this afternoon. I am now up and my head is a little better. We are having very high winds and when the wind blows in OK my head goes bananas. I go in the kitchen to check on my chicken, and, you guessed it, I didn't turn the *&^&* pot on!!! I guess we will eat at midnight, lol.

And my head is still twirling, so I guess I will take an "anti-dizzy" pill and hope it quits eventually.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!!

I Did Some Shopping During the Holidays

and bought some neat fabric. These were some batiks and a good neutral for my Sweet Romance collection when I get around to making a quilt out of it.

Here is a black and white with some red mixed in. Had to have it for a black and white quilt I have been collecting fabric for for several years, lol.
This is a new collection called Nine from Sanae. Think I will make an Irish Chain with it. Will be on the lookout for a good neutral to use for the background.

Here is Kashmir 3, luscious deep colors. No idea what I am going to do with it at the moment.

Of course I had to visit Fat Quarter Shop during their sale. This is Woodland Bloom. Isn't it gorgeous? I know I bought specific yardage but don't remember offhand what pattern I was planning on, lol.

I also picked up Fresh Paint from Fat Quarter Shop. Here again I bought specific yardage more or less for a pattern. Sure don't know which one, though. At the prices these were available I just couldn't pass them up. Thank you Kimberly for having the great sale you had. Hope to see it again next year!

And then I made the mistake of buying the Country Garden Quilts book by Kaffe Fassett, and one night when I was just too tired to do anything I was looking through this book and found this quilt. It is called Chintz Quilt. I fell in love with it, so I got on the internet and found all of the fabric that this quilt called for, and

lo and behold, it has appeared in my mailbox and here it is in all it's glory. Love it!!!

Now I am on a fabric diet (I hope). So far so good for this year. And it is already the 8th of the month, lol. Good start, huh. My fabric closet is bulging, and I can't find some things I have been looking for for another quilt I am doing, lol. Oh, well. I have actually been doing a little sewing and trying to get caught up. Hopefully will have some actual quilting things to show soon.

Have a good weekend everyone!

We Lost Again!

Well, we lost again. Poor Sooners, and poor Bob Stoops. They just can't seem to win the BCS games, but, at least they always get there. Maybe next year, lol. It will take that long for my nerves to be ready for another year of football. Congratulations to you Gator fans. They are a real good team.

Life at the Funny Farm

Aud and I both have a Nintendo DS and we like some of the games. I bought her Slingo and Solitaire for Christmas and she plays them continuously, lol. I finally bought myself my own Solitaire game....it has a lot of different ones on it and is pretty good.

It has been a little wild around here the last 3 weeks. My oldest grandson, who is a freshman at OU, has stayed with us part of each of the last 3 weeks, and will be here the first part of next week. His dorm is closed for the holidays and since he doesn't live in OKC, he chose to stay with us rather than drive back and forth from his house. This is because he works at one of the malls 3 days a week.


He is in his vegetarian stage and it is a little hard to find something for him to eat that we eat, lol. We have taken him to some of the good restaurants for seafood, etc. I have cooked pinto beans and homemade mac and cheese for him and salads and other things, and he eats it all. You would think he had been on a desert island for months with no food. I have forgotten what a bottomless pit teenage boys can be, lol. I even made some breakfast muffins that are delicious and some pumpkin muffins that I will not make again, lol.


He is also a Starbucks person, lol, so we have been visitors there quite often. It has been a pleasant interlude to have him around. Aud and I have had a giggle or two at his expense, and have threatened to go on vacation during springbreak, lol. I told his mother that he didn't eat the rafters, thank goodness, so we still had a place to live. We also watched a few movies and he read some of Harry Potter, which he does every Christmas.


Of course, Aud and I have not escaped unscathed. She burned her hand last Friday and didn't bother to say anything about it so by Sunday it was not a happy camper. I made her soak it in epsom salts and threatened to take her to the ER, but of course, she wouldn't go. We have finally gotten it in pretty good shape I think. She is worse than a kid about soaking anything, but I swear by epsom salts for infected toes and hands. I think she also used a whole bottle of hydrogen peroxide.


Today I took her to the podiatrist. She has a problem with her right heel...the one everyone eventually seems to have that I can't remember the name of or how to spell it. He gave her a cortizone shot and taped her foot so she couldn't move it and she has to go back in two weeks.

When she came out of the doc's office, I told her to wait a minute and let me get the car tag out so I didn't have to dig for it when we got to the parking valet. So I looked for 20 minutes, seriously, for that you-know-what tag and never did find it. I ended up pouring everything out of my purse, and it was really funny. Not only the ordinary things, but 3 pair of glass cases, my Kindle, my DS, 2 purse calendars, and lots of coupons from JoAnn's and Best Buy, and I mustn't forget all of the Kleenex, lol. The man setting close by was laughing his head off. I was wadding up stuff that had collected in my purse for the last couple of weeks and as he remarked..... well, at least you are cleaning out your purse!......lol

Anyway, never did find it, but the kid that parked the car remembered us, thank goodness, so getting the car was no problem.

Then we went to Bravo's for our salads and flatbread and shrimp appetizers. We took their tiramasu home with us for later because all of a sudden the cortizone shot kicked in and Aud was hurting pretty bad. She has some oxycotin (sp) but it is out of date so she is taking tylenol and her arthritis medicine for pain. Of course her regular doctor will not be in the office tomorrow so not sure what I will do about her pain tomorrow. Hopefully she will feel better; I know when I had a cortizone shot for my heel, it didn't hurt much at all, but I went to a different doctor.

Tomorrow night OU plays for the BCS championship against the Florida Gators. Am hoping we beat them; we are the underdog, but if OU plays like they did the last 6 games of the regular season and in the Big 12 championship game, we will win. Keep your fingers crossed!!!

Surprise!

Hello, blogland. I finally ventured out to see everyone. I have been fairly lazy I think. I know that Sharon will probably never send me anything again. I haven't even thanked her publicly for the wonderful Christmas gift she sent me. So Publicly "Thank You"!!! I love it! I believe this is the first time I have ever had peeps. They are good, lol.

And speaking of Sharon, you need to check her blog tomorrow. You should see a picture of Hunka wearing his OU Sooner's shirt that he has to wear because he lost a bet with me on the Big 12 Championship!!

I am going to try to start posting more, but I am going to have to do it in shorter bursts. By the time I get all of my pictures lined up and ready to go, I am disgusted at how long it has taken. So there may be more than one on some days. I think that works better for me.

Hope everyone's year has started off well!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!!!