A Saturday Drive

On Saturday I decided to drive down to Houma, Louisiana to visit a quilt shop there that I found in the Quilter's Travel Guide Book - The Quilter's Niche. Houma is about 50 miles from here so it was an easy hour's drive. I had a little trouble finding them because they didn't have a sign. Their sign was blown away during Hurricane Gustav a couple of years ago and they haven't been able to get anyone in to replace it. But with a quick phone call I solved that problem and had a great visit with the owners. It's a really nice shop and I bought several pieces of fabric - two coordinated packages of fat quarters and a couple of yards that I needed to finish some things I was working on that I'll show you a little later in the week. What I really want you to see today is this wonderful house! I was in a long line of traffic going into town when I saw this house off to my left. I nearly had a wreck trying to get a look at it!

Since I couldn't get off the road right then I waited until I was on my way home and made sure I let everyone pass me before I got to the point where I could pull off to get a couple of pictures.

I only had the camera on my phone so these aren't great but isn't it beautiful? It's quite large and obviously many years old. I sat in my car looking at it and thinking about what it was like to live in it when it was new. There wouldn't have been vacuum cleaners; heavens, there wouldn't have been carpets on the wood floors, just rugs. The rugs, as heavy as they were, would have been rolled up and dragged outdoors to be "beaten" clean. There wouldn't have been a washer or dryer or hot water tank so water would have to be boiled to do laundry. And no washing powder - just a bar of lye soap to shave off into the boiling water! Lights would have been kerosene lanterns or candles, and quilts would have all been done by hand. No phones, no television, no local quilt shops, no internet, no WalMart, no toilet paper!

Here at the mission we live in a two room apartment and I miss the space of my house. I have to go down the hall to use a washer and dryer and have to wait until after 4:00 or on the weekends to do my laundry. There's a very small WalMart here but it isn't open all night and it doesn't have all the things my WalMart at home has. The water on this campus is perfectly safe but it smells like sulfur and the iron in it is turning the towels and my white clothes yellow and we have to drnk bottled water. The treadmill I walk on every morning is set on a particular program and won't move off it - I have to change the setting every 2 or 3 minutes or it will get way to fast for me. Do you hear what I'm saying? I have two whole rooms for just Jerry and I! I have a washer and dryer and wonderful bottled water in my apartment and a treadmill in the gym so I don't have to exercise outside in the heat. This afternoon I asked Jerry where the cable came into the apartment (thinking about moving the furniture). He said, "we've only been here two months and you want to move the furniture?" I said "I've been here two whole months and I want to move the furniture!" :)

It's all in how we look at things - how often do we forget to be thankful for what we have? Every day...I forget to be thankful every day. So today I'm remembering. Today I'm thankful for the electric throw on my bed that keeps me warm in this air conditioned apartment. I'm thankful for a refrigerator that keeps my milk cold so I can have a chai tea latte over lots of ice every day. I'm thankful for my car that has 140,000 miles on it and still drives great and takes me to that little WalMart 5 miles down the road so I don't have to walk it or ride in a horse drawn buggy. I'm thankful for quilt shops that carry the most beautiful fabric and gadgets that make quilting sew easy. I'm thankful for cell phones that allow my son to send me pictures of my granddaughter leaving for church camp for the first time ever - 5 minutes before she leaves! And for cell phone plans that let me talk to the people I love every single day if I want. And for blogs - I'm so thankful for blogs and the friends I've made out there in cyber space.

What are you thankful for today?