More Things To Laugh About, Or Not

1. A 2 year old caught just as she is about to give her baby a bath in the toilet and who has the most innocent expression on her face - what? I'm not supposed to do this?

2. A 7 year old who replies to all instruction with, "Gotcha!"

me: Would you please pick up your toys?

her: Gotcha!

me: Please don't scream at your sister.

her: Gotcha!

me: If you're going to sew you have to be in a chair alone because otherwise you might poke the needle in someone's eye (like mine!)

her: Gotcha!

3. A 2 year old who wears her Grandpa completely out by having him put her on the top of the water slide instead of climbing up herself - over and over and over and over.

4. A 7 year old who carries her purse constantly, even to bed.

5. A 2 year old who, when being "watched" by her grandpa, gets the tv remote control and attempts to put it in the toilet.

6. A 7 year old who keeps saying "something stinks" referring to her sister because she thinks it's funny.

7. Cousins who play so hard for so long that they sleep until 10:00 in the morning.

This Makes Me Laugh

Things that make me laugh while babysitting:


1. A 2 year old who answers, "OK Honey!" when told it isn't nice to hit her sister.
2. A 7 year old who screams at the top of her lungs while going face first down the water slide.
3. A 2 year old who constantly poses and says, "Picture me!" if a camera is anywhere in sight.
4. A 7 year old who does all the dances 1 foot in front of the television while watching Hannah Montana - and doesn't have a clue anyone is watching.
5. A 2 year old who is in the middle of potty training and will go anytime you ask her as long as you let her "push" the handle.
6. A 7 year old who calls up her aunt to tell her to bring fingernail polish when she comes to visit because Grandma doesn't have any and because she needs to paint her toenails this week.

7. A 2 year old and a 7 year old and a 63 year old Grandpa who are easily fooled into believing that Grandma made Pineapple Dumplings for dessert when she actually made Pineapple Cobbler and forgot to put in the Baking Powder!

Good Stuff/Bad Stuff

I only have a moment but I've been thinking about this for a day or two and wanted to share it. Recently I've read on several blogs about a rash of bad things happening in people's lives. Not really, really bad things but you know when you've had one of those days or weeks or months when nothing seems to go right? Maybe your alarm clock doesn't go off, your battery operated toothbrush dies mid-brush, you run out the door on your way to work and have a flat tire, your son calls from school and he left his English essay at home and it's 1/2 of his grade this semester....you get the picture. I even posted something like that myself recently when I said we had to have the seawall rebuilt, had a flood and the dock floated 8 feet out in the lake and got stuck, the pump went out and the kitchen stove started leaking carbon monoxide! Anyway, someone said something (jokingly) along the lines of "What have I done so bad that God's punishing me this way?" even though she really knew that God doesn't send bad stuff.

And here's what I'm thinking. When the bad/nasty/inconvenient things happen perhaps you should be smiling, rejoicing and dancing for joy asking yourself "What am I doing so good that Satan is sending all of this bad stuff to me? I must really have him on the run!"

Here's My Day

This is what my day will be like today:

Weather - We have a wonderful, rainy day today. Yesterday too. After weeks of a drought I am rejoicing that God is watering my trees and grass and flowers. They have greened up overnight and you can almost see them smiling.

People - There's just my husband and I at home today. I love quiet days at home when it's just the two of us. No grandchildren. :( But I'm going to see other people as I run my errands.

Food - I'm going to put a roast in the crock pot this morning using a recipe I got from Janera at My Garden Hat. It calls for a roast, cream of mushroom soup, rotel tomatoes and a cup of dry pinto beans. Sounds interesting, doesn't it!

Clothes - hmmm, I'm still in my pajamas but since it's raining I think I'll wear slacks and a short sleeved shirt and tennis shoes today. I'll have to take some sandals with me when I run errands so I can change (see below).

Errands - Only a few, thank goodness! First I'm going to drop off a Beth Moore video for a new friend to borrow for her Bible study group tonight. Second, and my favorite, a pedicure. It's been too long and this is one luxury I hope I never have to give up. Third, I'll stop by the bank for myhusband. And last, the Christian Book Store to get a birthday card for my sweet 17 year old granddaughter. Her birthday was actually Saturday but I haven't gotten to see her yet so I'm safe.

Home again - I should have the whole afternoon to work on the Checkerboard and Rails quilt. I'm hoping to only have 2 or 3 more days work on this and I plan to take it to the quilter later this week. Yea!

Bible Study - I'm a little behind in my reading of Genesis with Prodigal Jon in 97 Seconds With God so I'll catch up with that.

Reading - before I go to bed tonight I'll read a little more of the third book in the Twilight series Eclipse.

Blogs - I have over a hundred on my Reader these days and that's way too many. At some point I'm going to have to take some off but I love them all and don't know how to decide which ones have to go. Any suggestions?



What are you doing today?

The Great Read

I saw this on Suture For a Living and thought it was a wonderful meme that's going around. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has a program called "The Big Read". The Big Read is an initiative of the NEA designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. This meme isn't part of that, or at least I don't think so, but it is interesting to read the "meme list" and see which ones you have read. I admit that some of them I've never heard of and that there are several I think should have made the list and didn't.
“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.” Where do you fall on this list?

1) Bold: I have read.2) Underline: Books I love.
3) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read only 6 and force books upon them!!
4) I'm adding this one! What books do you think are missing from this list?

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7 . Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Phillip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 . The Complete works of Shakespeare (Like Purplesque I've tried, and failed. Have seen many of them performed.)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit --J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler's Wife
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 . The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 . Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I didn't understand this one!
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding (we studied this to boredom in sophomore English)
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune- Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (I confess to not finishing this one all the way to the end)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams (one of my favorite books ever)
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town like Alice- Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet- William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Finished by Friday, Not Quite

On Monday I started putting this quilt together (Checkerboard and Rails). I had all the pieces cut and ready but nothing sewn. I thought this was going to be a piece of cake and I'd have it whipped out in a couple of days. It didn't happen. I worked about 4 hours on Monday and this is how far I got. But I knew I would have several times during the week to work so I was optimistic. I sewed all the rail blocks and that went great. I strip pieced them and cut them the designated 6 1/4" length. All 140 of them. Then I started on the checkerboard block - looks easy enough. It would be if my seam had been 1/4" like it was supposed to be. I sewed and sewed and sewed, then unsewed, unsewed, and unsewed some more. Muttering under my breath. Things like stupid, stupid, stupid. Should have measured. Should have paid more attention. Should have, should have, should have. Oh well. On Wednesday I worked about 6 hours, on Thursday about 4 hours and today about 8. This is where I am now.

It's taking a little longer than I expected. But it's gorgeous, isn't it?

I really, really wanted to have something finished by Friday. I have blogging friends waiting. Expecting. Anticipating. You were, weren't you? I mean you do expect me to be here on Friday showing what wonderful things I've accomplished, right? So each night I worked on this block from Winter Wonderland. My fingers hurt and I only half watched NCIS. Do you know what a sacrifice that was? Do you? Just for you. I didn't finish. There are still several snowflakes waiting to be born there. Frantically I'm thinking what to do, what to do? And then I remembered I hadn't shown you these! They were finished by Friday - one Friday, long ago. It doesn't really matter which Friday, right?

This little wallhanging that I call Fly Fishing was made for my husband. Not that he fly fishes but he does trout fish and that's close enough for me. I used the Cotton Theory. Badly. I used it badly. I could not keep a straight seam no matter how I tried. So I disguised them with decorative stitches. Badly. Bad disguise. Oh well, it looks primitive. Right? That's what I intended all along!

And this Mariner's Compass - well I'm a little proud of it. I drafted it!!!! That's right, you heard it here. I drafted it in a class and it turned out to really be a Mariner's Compass. I was a new quilter, just a year or two, and when I walked in with my fabric the teacher took one look and said you brought a stripe? A stripe? You bet I said, all proud and everything. Aren't these colors good together! She wiped the sweat from her brow and set to work. We did ok I think.