Posts….

GRADUATION!


 ARLIE at her FIRST graduation, Kindergarten 1990
 GRADUATION DAY!

Well, here we are—Graduation day!!!!

Long awaited by all, an anticipated final moment of the great chidhood-adult divide.

I can’t quite describe how incredibly proud and impressed I am by my daughter and her achievement.

It’s been a longer than average journey, but there you are. A College GRADUATE! Arlie is 100% responsible for making this dream of hers come true.

I work with young people often; in retail I am around young men and women her age all the time. I feel that I can say with only a little pride that she is unique. I am sometimes disappointed by the behaviors and attitudes of some of my co-workers, because I am so used to the way that she thinks, with an eye toward the future, and an understanding and acceptance that hard things are hard, and that working toward a goal is satisfying in the long run….(who WOULDN’T want to be handed everything, and not have to work for it??)

As Timmy often told me whe he was getting to know Arlie, ‘Your daughter is NOT normal!’ (meant in the most positive of ways) Who knew… she and all her friends operated on the same page, that of personal responsibility and accountablity and expectations from the adults in their lives. They all were ‘good’ kids…. they were good students, good citizens, and good friends. They accomplished and achieved and cared and loved and suffered together….

What a girl!!!

PS…She’s looking for work. You want to hire her?? She’s an AWESOME worker (I can say that because she worked with me for 3 years during high school, and was without a doubt my second best employee –I often said if I could just clone her and Ozzie…Well, yeah, ok,  I still say that!!)

PPS… Happy Mother’s Day to all to whom this applies in my life… No frogs this year, a photo of a graduating child is an even better Gift!!!

PPPS HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!

PPPPS HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOE!!!

TORNADO…

Originally uploaded by rteest42

 

well, yeah give this Yankee girl a good old fashioned blizzard any day of the week….

This is my little photoshopped image of the track as the tornado touched down on Monday, April 28, 2008. (click on image for enlarged view) I was in the M marked location, toward the back of the store, and the best description I could give would be it sounded as if some huge creature was being dragged across the roof, it’s claws digging into the roof. Not at all like any of the many bad thunder or wind sounds I’ve heard in the building.

We had no warning; considering no one was on break watching TV.

The first X on the lower left —that building had its roof cave in and debris (possibly an AC unit??) was tossed onto 95, along with some vehicles on 95 being involved…..

We were incredibly lucky. The A/C unit was ripped off its base and left a 4×8 hole in the roof. Other than that and some sign damage, minor cosmetic exterior damage, we were good. Then it went across the parking lot toward the water tower, damaging but not flipping a good 2 dozen or more cars, skipped just by the tower and hit across the street… there was much more damage there, cars flipped, roofs torn up, etc, and some injuries…then it went to the last X which is now a car dealership; it folded a few light poles and damaged cars there…then disappeared…

And all day yesterday I heard of how incredibly lucky we were…. how last time (15 years ago) before touching down and destroying the Walmart (the W on the map) how it leveled part of Historic olde towne Petersburg, and then leveled where M’s is currently, before getting to Wallyworld and killing 4 people….

This time, it seems as if Suffolk got the worst of the tornados…. but you know what?

I’m good. Really. More things to cross off my list of Experience before you die…

Been through a hurricane (isabelle), an earthquake, and now a tornado since I moved to VA—and Everyone is always carrying on about how I must be glad I moved from New York!!!

ETA— So, I got to work yesterday and everyone kept telling me how good I sounded on TV!!! –apparently my 911 call was played on channel 12 and 8 over and over…..Yikes…

INFO dumping…

I have about a half dozen thoughts, that could be posted tonight, but I don’t know if I’m really in the mood to flesh any one of them out at the moment, so I think just a random sampling of what’s rolling around in my head would be enough (or possibly WAY too much for some)

So, without further ado and with absolutely no order to the listing….

1-flowers/animals…

2-writing

3-quilting

4-joy?

5-anniversary

6-computer

Last week Timmy and I went to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden and I had a blast taking some lovely floral shots. That you can’t see. Because of(let me see) # 6. The computer. Right, recall that computer I got from Joe for my birthday? It’s great. Wonderful (no, Really Joe, i MEAN IT, Thanks!!!) However, it and I have had a difference of opinion on where I store software, whether I wanted all 110,000 messages sent to my new OUTLOOK, etc.

But now, basically, I am good to go. Except for the monitor which is small (I didn’t think it was, I thought it the size of a house, but the SCREEN part of the monitor is SMALL!!!) and the fact that my Photoshop Elements claims a file is missing and won’t upload. So, I just ordered myself Elements 6.0 and when it arrives, I will be able to share images (I mean, I COULD…but I shot in RAW, and they are HUGE…..)

Ok, that was the flowers, part one. Part two is that I planted seeds on Saturday last, and so of course the deluge came. I am relatively certain that most of my seeds were washed away, and I will see them in the gully (sorry Timmy) or in some unsuspecting neighbors yard. I am talking something like 4 inches of rain on Sunday, ok?? A little tiny seed probably didn’t have a chance. 

In any event, it was all part of my annual effort to prove I AM NOT A PESSIMIST!!! I insist on planting, I am sure success will be mine, this time. I forget, except intellectually, what it feels like in the summer, at 103 in the front southern facing yard. I forget that the weeds are barely capable of surviving the voles/moles that are tunnelling through our entire front yard. ( I know there is a difference between the two creatures, but if I google them I will have to look at some icky creature. Its ok, thanks)

I determined after 4 years ( I AM teachable) not to spend too much money on plants, because it seems they just cant make it. I bought seeds. Except for two plants. One of which was stolen. Yep, yanked up right out of the garden a gaping hole left. It was either a vole/mole or a squirrel because they left the name tag.

 Speaking of squirrels. I am thinking of opening a spa for them, right here in my back yard. Location, location, location!  I watched a squirrel yesterday collecting seeds from the scene of the crime the day before, when he or his cohorts were caught hanging by their rear legs, and swinging their bodies up at an unnatural angle in order to stick their head into the bird feeder. The cheap bird feeder I bought when I decided we would see how the birds liked our yard, which they have promptly broken by all their acrobatics.  Well, the jury is out on the birds, but the squirrels are guilty!!! 

After said squirrel gorged himself on stolen seed, he pranced into my screened in gazebo, stood on the adirondak chair and stopped for a drink of water that had pooled on the side table. Then he proceeded to climb up onto the corner shelves of the gazebo, and stretch out for a nap under the shade of the roof.

 Ok, so WRITING. I finally have completed an outline for The Big Chill,  my fan fic in progress for over a year. It’s down to 6 songs. I know (kind of) whats going to happen in each of them!! hooray!! ( wow, I finished a thought in 3 sentences!!)

Onto quilting. Ah, quilting. My other love. I have started three (shush, you DID NOT hear that) projects. And have made headway on a fourth. I am working currently on a Wild Goose Chase made entirely of batiks and black. I have one-third of the blocks finished.

I started (although I swore I would wait)  on my Sylvia’s Bridal Sampler quilt. Two blocks so far. But there are 140. So I have some time yet to go. Eithne and Robin think they will join me on this journey.

And of course I FINALLY started on the challenge quilt Eithne proposed. I have 1 of four named blocks completed. Waiting on receipt of the other 5 block names.

And then there is the TQP challenge, 2008. Which as a challenge goes is easy. Using your initials, choose three colors and make a quilt. Wonderful. Easy-peasy. Except I designed the quilt. And then messed up the measurements and cut and stitched 24 nine patch blocks too small.  No, not really too small, just too small for me to do do the alternating block as a paper pieced block. I am ready to shoot myself after the first 2/3 of one block!!! So I re-drafted the pattern to enlarge that block to 10 inches from 6 so that I would still have hair left when I was finished.  I do have to master Paper Piecing if I expect to get through Sylvia. But — easy steps.

Joy?– Or control? What causes, in this day and age, with all of the incredibly serious, earth changing events currently at play,…. what causes someone to lose their minds over the minutiae of life? Is it because they truly DON’T have any worries?? They know of no-one suffering a great illness, or worrying whether their job is secure, or has family in Iraq, or, or, or…..

Today, a customer called me. (I custom frame art) She had brought her art BACK to me to re-paper, because the BACK of the frame was wavy, bubbly, whatever. I agreed it didn’t look awesome as far as that all went, and  was flummoxed by the adhesive not sticking. I re-did them myself this time, so I KNOW what they looked like. Mind you, the frame was great, the stitching, etc, not a single complaint on any of the 5 pieces. But she swore the ‘only’ thing she could see whenever she walked by them was the gap between the paper and the frame. (I know, WHERE are they hanging anyway?? AT what angle is she viewing them?)

Her husband picked them up the other day. We looked them over and found them acceptable. Today she got home from her vacation and called me, yelling at me, wanting to know what I could do to fix them, what kind of a guarantee did we have, what kind of materials am I using? You get the picture, right? Remember, from the front they are PERFECT. It’s not as if scraps of backing paper are sticking randomly out. It is the back. The side that faces the WALL. 

So, the question I leave you with…. is this person truly that Anal? Does she really think this is an IMPORTANT issue?  Or is her world spinning so fast off of its axis that THIS is the only thing she thinks is within her control?

Anniversary… SIX, yep count’em, SIX years ago Sunday  we got married. And we agree we are so well suited. Indeed I went out yesterday and bought Timmy a gift. You see he has recently taken up Golf.

And today, I watched as he emptied out his trunk when he got home. Yep, I stood there and watched him pull out of his trunk a golf bag. And not ANY OLD golf bag, but indeed the exact one whose twin is currently hiding in the guest room, now apparently awaiting return…

Yep, we belong together!