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Sunday, May 20, 2012

Top Ten Reasons to Keep Your Man Out Of Your Studio

1.      He will, without doubt, step on the needle you lost last week.
2.      He will be able to count your works in progress and ask why they aren’t finished.
3.      He will discover that the cost of your quilting ‘tools’ rivals the cost of his power tools.
4.      He will wonder why you need an entire library of quilting books and patterns.
5.      He will want to know when the fabric bomb exploded in your studio.
6.      He’ll want to know why a grown woman needs crayons, felt markers, coloring books and a felt board. Men just don’t understand the creation of applique.
7.      He might discover your hidden supply of chocolate and hot tamales and want to share.
8.      Or God forbid, he might discover how big your stash really is.
9.      He’ll want to know how you can work in that mess and won’t understand that you know exactly where everything is. (More or less.)
10.  He’ll start touching stuff and moving things around and you might have to kill him. (And digging a hole in the yard big enough to bury a man is sooo much work.)

This is all tongue in cheek of course, except number ten.

Hugs
Cathy

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Happy Mother's Day from The Brat Child

        Okay, I’ve decided to honor my mother this mother’s day with some top quality poetry from her daughter the gifted writer. *snort* Hey, no laughing this is serious business!

Let’s start with me. Daughter: the things I was as bratty child and have grown out of as an adult. (I think. I hope!)

D: dishonest
            A: argumentative
U: ungrateful
            G: galling
H: hateful
T: toxic
E: exasperating
R: rude

Now onto what Mother means to me… Mother’s Love And Caring

M: is for the mud I tracked across the floor a hundred times.
O: is for the orange juice you caught me drinking from the jug.
T: is for the toilet paper I never refilled.
H: is for the heated arguments that should have gotten me a slap upside the head.
E: is for my over-blown ego and your ability to ignore it.
R’: is for the rude replies and ignorant responses.
S: is for the shirking of chores and lazy-ass behavior.

L: is for the lies I told that you let slip by.
O: is for the obnoxious eye-rolling when asked to do something.
V: is for the vet bills for all my pets.
E: is for every time I was nasty to my sisters and you didn’t kick my ass.

A: is for Andrea, the sister you gave me who got blamed for my misbehaviour.
N: is for the nights I kept you up wondering where the hell I was and with who.
D: is for the dollars I wasted, extorted and ‘borrowed’ from you.

C: is for the chair I put through the china cabinet window: you don’t want to know how.
A: is for the annoying, stupid things that kept you awake at night.
R: is for my reign of terror over house, home and family.
I: is for all the ice cream I finished and blamed my siblings for.
N: is for the noisy, head splitting, rock music. Bet you regret giving me that stereo!
G: is for going to bat for me all the times I did something rude or idiotic in public.

            Good gravy, how could you even stand me? Thank heavens for a mother’s love that keeps her from killing her offspring!
            This one is for you Mom. I owe you and Dad for everything I am, everything I have achieved and accomplished. The stupid, irritating and annoying parts of me are all my own doing. You and dad are fabulous parents and I can’t thank you enough for all you have done for me. Nor can I apologize enough for the stress, trials and tribulations. Even if they were all Andrea and Jean’s fault. J Oh wait; they might have been Kevin’s fault too.  

Who me? Clearly I am the picture of innocence.
            I love you Mom, more than words can ever express.

Hugs
Cath

Friday, May 4, 2012

Restoring My Faith in Today's Youth

                Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that on occasion I use this space to vent about my life, its issues and my problems. They will be delighted to learn that today I am NOT going to vent. Today I celebrate!

            There is a lot of ugliness is the world. Open any newspaper, turn on the radio, the television or fire up the Internet and you will find countless stories of the atrocities people commit against each other. Over the years it seems that we are feeling increasing despair for our youth and are complaining about how cruel and selfish they can be. A lot of those stories are true, some of them are sensationalized.

But what about the kids that aren’t total screw-ups? Why do we never hear about them? Do they not exist? Can all of our youth be as bad as the media makes them out to be?

            Today I saw something that restored my faith in humanity and in our youth.

            While I was out-and-about with a friend, we pulled up to a light and there, at the side of the road, we saw an elderly woman who had lost control of her walker/chair, had fallen off the curb and landed on top of her walker. We had no more than noticed her when we saw a teenage boy sprint through moving traffic to her side. It was clear that she was unable to stand up unassisted. As he gently helped her up, three other boys dodged the traffic to help.

            Working together, they gently set her on her feet, righted her walker, reattached its basket and returned her parcels to the basket. Although we couldn’t hear their words, their expressions showed that they were reassuring her and making certain that she wasn’t injured.

            It was a very touching moment, and lasted less than the duration of a red light, but it was enough to remind my friend and I that good does still exist in this world, and there are still young people unselfish enough to help a stranger and ensure she was unharmed. Sadly, it is unlikely that the local media will ever hear of this kindness and the world will be poorer for not knowing about this not-so-small act of kindness by our youth.

            To those four boys, I would like to say “Thank you. You’ve done a good deed and should be proud of yourselves.”

            My faith in today’s youth, in humanity, is restored.

Hugs
Cath

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Fun and Games: Medicine and Applique

Close up of one block.

Today I have to update my beef about the medical system. Parts of it do work! Over the past week I have seen 3 ER docs, 2 Ortho docs, 1 rheumatologist, 8 med students,1 family doc, and 2 neurologists. If you add in the two radiologists who have looked at my X-ray’s and MRI, I have seen a grand total of 19 doctors in one week. Some of them, I have seen more than once. They are all confused about what is happening with my knee/calf/foot, none of them have seen anything like this before. So, they bumped my MRI up to emergency and I have already had it. How fabulous is that? The system can work!


As it turns out, I have a severe sprain/strain of my MCL (a ligament in my knee.) That explains why the knee is sore, but not why the calf/foot are buggered up. They are hoping that the issues lower down are related to the swelling in the knee. One would think that if your knee has a severe sprain that you would remember damaging it. Not me! I have no idea what I did. I’m not sure if that is a comment on my coordination (or lack thereof) or on my mental acuity.

Yesterday I was back at the rheumatologist’s office. She froze the knee (which hurts like a bugger), aspirated off a small amount of icky looking fluid and injected some steroids to speed the healing. She is optimistic that it will help the knee, but isn’t sure about the rest of the leg. We shall see. The rheumatologist was fabulous and her staff wonderful. Except for one little thing …

Had to decorate my Band-Aid myself.
I sat up after the brutally painful procedure and looked at my knee. All there was to see was this wee tiny flesh colored Band-Aid. So I said, “What all that pain, and I get this crappy little Band-Aid? Where’s the Hello Kitty Band-Aid? Old people like fun Band-Aids too. I would have settled for Batman or even smiley faces.” They did get a laugh out of that.



An old work in progress that I am revisiting.
One to more pertinent things relating to sewing, quilting and fabric … I have discovered that while sitting to sew, or standing to run the longarm is still quite painful, I can do short spurts of hand sewing. (Thank God for good drugs that are controlling the Rheumatoid Arthritis.) I could be doing the bindings on some of my WIP’s but have decided to focus on something more fun. I am doing some hand applique on a project that has been underway for a number of years. The blocks are supposed to be Six inches square. Much too small for a beginner at hand applique like me. So I enlarged them to nine inches. I think it is coming along quite nicely.


My lovely friend Mrs. Brown has brought me this beautiful purse from Hawaii. It is so nice to have such generous friends. I’ve carried the purse for one day and have already lost track of the number of compliments I have received for it. My other friends and family have been fabulous too driving me back and forth to appointments with no complaints. Thanks everyone. Your help means a lot and there is no way to express my gratitude.

Hugs and keep quilting
Cath