Happy New Year
Every time I see those three words I think of an email I got from my sister-in-law. This was years back and I didn’t know much about computers and software.
I clicked on it and this amazing fireworks show played on my computer screen.
It was breathtakingly beautiful and made me smile.
So I tried to hit “reply” to thank my sister-in-law for thinking of me and the stupid fireworks show would not stop.
I couldn’t do anything with my computer but watch those those stupid fucking fireworks.
It was a worm and besides shutting me down, it went through my address book and sent itself to every one of those people.
I didn’t think it was so funny back then but now it cracks me up. Fireworks.
Best wishes to all of you and may you all have real fireworks moments every single day.
People Are Liars
When we would admit a new patient into the hospital and gather up history and the question of alcohol or tobacco would come up, we would always double that amount.
They say they smoke a pack a day? We wrote down two packs a day. Two beers a day? That’s four.
They also lie about their weight. Now that’s a biggie. Certain drug dosages are calculated by how many kilos a patient weighs. So if there was going to be a complex drip, we had to put them on a scale for the moment of truth. (For the record, I fucking hate bed scales, hate them!)
Anyway if you read my post yesterday and saw that I wanted to lose seven pounds and laughed, hold on a minute. I actually need to lose more if I was straight dieting. Thing is, with the exercise I’ll be losing about 10-15 pounds of fat and putting on some heavier muscle. I’m guessing in a couple of months that will amount to about seven pounds difference on the scale. One dress size.
Don’t double that.
Percentage-wise, it is a big deal.
Oh, and Mireille probably needs to lose two pounds. Skinny bitch.
Paint your wagon and come along
I swear, this has nothing to do with New Year’s resolutions, but I’m back on the treadmill again. A few days ago I’d climbed a flight of stairs and felt a little winded. Also, my jeans are a bit tight so I had to get back on the wagon.
Last time I was doing it, the routine was every other day for about an hour. I don’t run because I don’t want to mess up my joints, so I walk as fast as I can without falling. This is about the speed of a slow jog. The machine does up to a 10% grade, so much of it is uphill. I spend half of that time also working out my upper body with hand weights.
Why every other day? If I get on that thing, I come off with my hair drenched in sweat and I don’t like to wash my hair every day. Simple as that.
This time however, I’m going to do it every day for the first thirty days to get back into the habit. Last time I was exercising regularly, I did it faithfully for two years. A physical therapist friend of mine told me after seven workouts it becomes a habit. I want this habit in one week, not two.
My goal is to be in shape, build healthier bones, and lose about seven pounds. It should take about two months as I don’t plan to change my diet except for cutting out chocolate.
I’ll post the results weekly. So far, I might have lost a half a pound. That’s after three workouts.
Anyone interested in getting on the wagon? It doesn’t matter what you do, run, Wii Fit, work out with a trainer, just as long as you commit. I’ll crack the whip on you and you can make fun of me if I don’t lose my seven pounds by the end of February.
Hold on.
Mireille just joined!
That’s my dawg and she needs to lose about a pound. I know, one pound. I used to walk her a mile a day, but with the cold weather I’ve been cutting our walks short.
Who else is in?
Who are these people and how did they get in here?
I have a casual household. People come in and out all the time, especially on weekends, so it’s not too unusual to go in the kitchen and see a stranger digging in the fridge. Usually it’s a friend of Kara’s. Or a friend of a friend of hers.
Sometimes it’s a mix of Kara’s and Spanky’s friends. I can usually tell who they belong to by their look. Kara’s entourage has a punk edge while Spank’s are studious with natural hair colors.
Last night there was some big fight on Pay-Per-View, so Blane said he was inviting a few people over. I’m always cool with that. Sometimes I go up there and watch with them, other times I let the guys hang out while I do my own thing in another part of the house.
Nobody expects me to entertain on fight nights. That’s Blane’s thing. He’ll grab some snacks and beer- Guys are so much easier, they don’t expect much and the house doesn’t even have to be tidied up before they come.
So last night I let a few of the “regulars” in and directed them upstairs then went to my room and hit the treadmill. Turned the music up and stayed on that thing for about an hour. Took a long bubble bath… Unboxed my new light stands I got for Christmas… Then I went into the living room to read.
I noticed an unusual amount of noise coming from upstairs. Screaming, clapping, stomping… So I’m sitting there and this guy and a girl appear out of nowhere, people I’d never seen before, and they asked me where they could go to smoke.
I couldn’t figure out who they belonged to. They looked a little to old for Kara or Spanky, but too young to be a part of our gang. Then some more people wandered into the living room. People looking for other people I didn’t know. And this house, it is huge, with two staircases and an unpredictable floor plan. That is one of my favorite things about having people over. Watching them walk around lost and disoriented.
So I went up to the media room to talk to the guys and realized this wasn’t a small group. It was a house party. About thirty people. Most of them were guys, but there were a few women.
I felt awful, really awful that something like this was going on in my own house right under my own nose and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t hear them all come in because I had my earphones on and was exercising. I wasn’t expecting it either. Gee, I hope these people didn’t think I was some sort of freak loner. I did join them for some video games.
Whatifwhatifwhatif???
Someone asked me a couple of days ago if it’s been hard to come up with something to write every day for the month of Holidailies. I told them has not been hard for me this year. In fact, I have several ideas per day. There just aren’t enough days for them or the time to give them the treatment they deserve.
The subject of writing for instance, that is one of the biggest and most important things in my life right now, but I never write about it or what I write about.
Oh well, anyway, ideas. There are opportunities everywhere. Take my inbox for instance. I don’t usually open junk mail, but just as I was about to hit delete on one from “Federal Bureau of Investigations” I just sat there and stared at it. I knew it couldn’t be from the real FBI, but what if it was?
I couldn’t believe someone had the audacity to impersonate the FBI.
The FBI!
Did I open it?
Hell yeah. It looked like a real letter with an FBI seal on it, street address, all that. The letter claimed I was under investigation for making transactions with a fraudulent Nigerian entity and they were going to help me get my money back. All they needed ws my ATM card number. Talk about kick a dog when he’s down, huh?
Now imagine for a moment that I had actually done such a thing, lost money to one of those internet scams?
What if?
Imagine if I’d sent my ATM card number to this FBI scam artist and lost even more? What if I had an endless amount of money to lose but was running low on pride and patience and thought it was high time I get even with these sonsabitches?
Dammit I love a revenge story. There is no glue that holds a story together better than vengeance.
Would I hire my own investigator and hit man because I’m obviously too stupid to know a con when I see it, therefore couldn’t possibly be smart enough to do that job myself?
I’d have to.
Of course, this main character wouldn’t be “me” per se, I’m being empathic, you know, putting myself in the shoes of someone who’s been screwed twice for being gullible and greedy.
Then the real work begins. How do I get you to like a gullible and greedy person? You have to like them to root for them to win. So, who has never had a moment of weakness, wanted something for nothing and got totally pwned in the end? We’ve all been had at one time or another.
There are endless stories out there waiting to be found, to be told. “What if” is a skeleton key to open the chamber and let them out. That’s one method to the madness.
Two Tearjerkers and A Dud
I saw three movies recently, Slumdog Millionaire, Yesman, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Slumdog is a story about a young man, Jamal, who is on the brink of winning the Indian version of “Who wants to be a Millionaire.” Through a series of interrogations (and torture) by the police who believe he cheated, the story unfolds in flashbacks. One slice of his life for each question he answered on that show.
This is an English language film set in Mumbai and directed by Danny Boyle, the same guy who did Trainspotting. I love this guy’s work, particularly the camera angles and the breakneck pacing of the story which moves, moves, moves.
There were some moments in this film when I was on the verge of tears, but he movie doesn’t really ask for audience pity. Yeah these kids are street orphans, but they are survivors and seeing them win every battle is what really makes you cry. Go see that if you get a chance, it is my favorite movie of 2008.
Yes Man was a disappointment. Say “No” to that one. I liked the concept, but the casting was off. I’m supposed to be grossed out that an old woman gives Carrey’s character a bj, but am supposed to root for him when he is romantically involved with a young woman (pretty much the same age difference)? Nah. That was just gross. Maybe another middle-aged actor could have pulled it off, but not Carrey. It’s not just me who was put off by this, my 15-year old was the one who brought it up first.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button would have been a much better movie with about a half hour chopped off (it’s 2 hours and 39 minutes). The first part of the movie just dragged on and on. I almost walked out because every seat was taken and the woman next to me kept sneezing. I had to ask myself, Is this movie worth it, me being sick next week?
Two words. Brad Pitt.
Oh man. I wasn’t prepared for a tear jerker. I don’t cry that much in movies, not that I don’t want to, I just don’t want to be seen blubbering in public so I’m good at holding it in, or at least hide the few tears that escape. With this one, I just couldn’t. So the tears just rolled and rolled and I let them go because hell, everyone was sniffling. I actually had to stop myself from heaving, I wanted to scream cry. Fuck, I’m crying right now just thinking about it.
Rarely have I ever been that moved by any story.
Because of my nursing background, I am able to appear normal during times of extreme stress and emotion. We’re trained to be like that. With the Buttons story, I think it was because of my background that I had such an extreme reaction. It took something I’d seen a zillion times, turned it upside-down, and caught me by surprise. There were probably years and years of repressed sobs in my Kleenex last night.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
I hope you are all having a wonderful day with friends and family.
I’d like to share two of my favorite family photos with you.
That was Baby Oh Oh.
Nothing like having a super strong big brother.
I have a winner for the Ice Road Trucker Season Two DVD set.
Drumroll…
Ginny had the closest guess of August 7th. Scrappy’s whelping date (DOB) is August 5th.
Congratulations Ginny!
All Full Up
Besides all the clutter that Santa will bring, my hard drive is, after two and a half years of digital photo video and photo scan abuse, completely full up. Despite all this, I managed to eek out this photo from my archives to wish you all a happy holiday, merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah… Whatever you celebrate.
See, that was supposed to be in black and white. There is mutiny on the hard drive.
Recoil!
Here is a short and funny video of a guy showing his wife how to shoot a 50 caliber Desert Eagle.
He should have been less concerned about what she was doing with her tongue (guys!) and told her to lock her elbows.
Ouch!
That said, I’ve never fired one of these.
Christmas is Trucking Along
Guess what FedEx brought today?
Season 2 Ice Road Truckers DVDs! Two sets.
I love free stuff. I was running around the house telling everyone it was really true, the lady was legit, and she came through with the DVDs.
It’s ridiculously cold today for Texas, 30 fricking degrees F. I have a little bit of shopping left to do, but I wasn’t about to get out there and do it today.
Nope, I curled into a ball next to my dogs to watch people who were colder than I. Ice Road Truckers.
Don’t forget, I have an extra set to give away, so if you’re interested, go to :::this post::: and leave your comment with your best guess to win.
So far I’m liking what I’m seeing, the photography of the arctic is phenomenal.
I especially like the underwater and through the ice shot of the underneath of the Mac truck. How the hell did they do that?
What I’m not liking is they bleeped out all the cuss words. This is a DVD and these are real life truckers. Maybe there’s an optional bonus track with an unedited soundtrack. Hmmm.
You have until Christmas to win the prize. Ladies with sons (Sulya? AJ, Ginny?), this would be a wonderful show for them to watch. Big trucks. Ice. Tough guys…
They Grow Lemons in Portugal
One of the best and worst trips we’ve ever taken was the one over the Christmas/New Year’s holiday of 2000-2001.
It was one of those things where we were sitting around wondering where we could go real cheap at the last minute. I found some flights to Portugal leaving on Christmas Eve, arriving on Christmas Day.
Flying on Christmas sounds awful, but it was great actually. We had the plane to ourselves and stretched out across all the seats and slept all the way there. It was supposed to be a seven hour flight, but since air traffic was so light, we made it there in five hours.
I’d wanted to go there ever since a relative of ours (a travel agent) mentioned, “Portugal is such a beautiful country, I don’t know why no one ever goes there.”
Portugal is also the bargain basement of Western Europe. Everything from hotels to transportation and goods is inexpensive.
The people are friendly, helpful, and it didn’t matter that we didn’t know how to say more than about three words in Portuguese.
And there were so many lovely things to see.
Problem was, it rained almost the entire week we were there. And it was unseasonably cold. I had promised everyone sunshine. They grow lemons there, weather’s gotta be good, right?
Look at those mad kids!
We brought jackets, but they didn’t seem to keep us warm enough. Especially that night we got stuck at that castle.
We’d gone all the way up the mountain by bus to get to there. Mostly what I remember about the ride was looking out the window and seeing the tires right at the edge of the road, and then nothing. As in, steep drop that seemed to have no bottom.
After touring the castle and grounds, we stood out and waited for the bus, the last one of the day. The scary part was there were way too many other people waiting in line.
So we kept waiting for what would certainly be a fight to get on that bus. We waited, and waited, and waited. It got dark, it got cold, and this creepy fog rolled in along with some drizzle.
An hour and a half goes by, and no bus.
All this time, no one in the crowd could (or would) speak a word of English. There were no phones and the castle and grounds were locked up at that point.
When the bus finally did come, people were shoving to get in, but you know what? It was already full when it rolled up. Maybe two people got on, and the bus didn’t even make a complete stop when it did get there. I just remember the driver saying something to the stranded and panicked crowd as he drove off.
What he said, I don’t know.
One girl, a lone backpacker who looked as if she hadn’t bathed in a year stuck her thumb out to hitchhike. It seemed hopeless as there weren’t many cars coming this way. It was the top of the mountain, why would anyone come here?
But someone did drive by and she got out of there.
So we had some choices. Walk five or so miles back down the mountain, stay with these people and hope another bus was coming but risk death from exposure, or hitchhike.
We stuck our thumbs out and the next car that came along (tiny, tiny, tiny) stopped. We piled in there, all five of us, and left the rest of those tourists up there.
The driver was a skinny college-age kid, someone we could take down in a minute if he tried anything crazy.
He turned out to be a really cool guy who spoke great English and was a drummer in a local rock band.
The last day or so there, the weather had cleared up a bit and there was this amazing fireworks competition over the river. Three countries competed with back to back shows and it was all choreographed to classical music. I’d never seen anything like that in my life before or since.
Why was it one of the best trips?
Because of all the rain, we spent a lot of time in the hotel room watching cable news that was in English. Over and over they kept reporting that the American economy was “going down the drain.”
At that time, we had our savings in the stock market. All of it, and I was day trading with it like a gambler spinning a roulette wheel.
Get back home and what was our news reporting?
The exact opposite. We took everything out the market and by the end of that month, the market crashed with the dot com bust.
That trip saved these angry childrens’ college funds.
I just noticed Spanky’s giving me a thumbs down!
I wish I had a photo of the lemon trees. They are everywhere and this time of year, they are full of gigantic lemons.
Feels Like Christmas Today
Kara had this iPod that went bad about a day after the 90 day store return policy ended. A couple of months ago I called Apple and went through mailing it to them only to get it returned to me “as is” with two different reasons they didn’t do the repair.
By email they said nothing was wrong with it. When I opened the returned iPod, there was a note in there saying it had been damaged by the consumer. Something like that.
I know this is her problem, but I get her to do things for me that I don’t have the patience for and in return, she does the same for me.
Today I went to the Apple Store to talk to a Genius about the thing. I was willing to pay for the repairs, anything to get the thing working again. The guy looked at it and gave me a brand new one. He said he did notice a little dent on the back, winked, and said the hard drive is on the other side of the dent and not to drop the thing again in the future.
While I was there I asked him to take a look at my iPhone. I’d noticed the photos weren’t coming out as good as when the camera was new. He couldn’t figure out why it was like that so he went to the back and got me a brand spanking new one.
I love Apple.
Blane, an Apple hater was with me and almost said it too.
Because all that took only ten minutes.
Many months of nagging problems solved, just like that.
Also, in the mall, just outside the Apple Store, Snoglobes!
This one was almost two stories tall and you could walk around in it.
Inside the snoglobe it’s snowing and there are these little Christmas scenes. Magical.
It feels like Christmas today.
The Gift
Every time I go into the grocery store I bring in one of the shopping carts from the parking lot. I get the kids to do it too, if they’re with me.
It’s not that we’re a bunch of do-gooders. It’s that I owe it. When my kids were little, I was one of those people who always left the cart in the lot. I felt bad about it, but I didn’t want to leave my kids alone in the car while I brought it back into the store.
Yesterday we went Christmas shopping at the Hell Hole Mall. They always have those Salvation Army people ringing bells at the entries this time of year and since I’m not a cash and carry type person, all I ever have to offer is a smile. I feel twice as bad if it’s cold out.
I did happen to have a few dollars on me, and as it dropped the money into the bucket I asked the lady how long she had been out there.
She said, “Eight hours.”
It wasn’t cold out, but it was a dark, grey day with a seeping sky. A little more than a mist, but not quite a rain. Just enough to keep you uncomfortably soggy.
I asked her if she would like me to go get her some food. Her face lit up as she said, “A Chick-fil-A would be nice.”
So we ran all the way across the mall and back to bring this lady some food (yay credit card).
It woke us up. We’d been having trouble getting in and out of the car because of the comfy seat warmers. I don’t know whether to praise or curse the inventor of that thing.
I can totally understand someone falling asleep at the wheel with that on.
Anyway, of all the things I bought yesterday and I haven’t even put much of a dent in the list, that bag of food was my favorite “gift.” Had I not done that, I would’ve felt as if I wasted my day.
The Pink Tide
I never imagined I would live in a girl controlled house. It seemed when my baby brother was born, the fourth boy, the last one, I was forever doomed to male dominance. We had a democratic household when I was growing up, but the guys always overturned any ideas of fun I had.
Play princess? Forget it. Cowboys and indians or cops and robbers.
Play dolls? Are you kidding? We’re going fishing.
My entire neighborhood was also nothing but boys. There were no other girls in walking distance until I was about 13. Almost grown up by then.
I never got even until we played barber and I had the scissors. Boy, did I cut some hair.
My first child was a boy and I had to put in another eight years of being overruled on anything girly. We weren’t even sure if we could have any more children for a while. Then Kara came along. First time in my life, we were tied. It felt strange just to have an equal say in how things would go. When Spanky came along, that was it. The tide had turned, and it turned pink.
Girls rule. FOREVER!
First Christmas, we threw out the wooden train stuff and plaids and got the pink tree.
Which was a gift, really, from whatever had made my life so male dominate for my first twenty-nine years of life.
I was only looking for a tree with a blue tint. I spotted the one I wanted and asked the store manager to get me a fresh one still in the box. They were 70% off.
All they had left was the floor model and the manager said if I bought it, he’d give me all the lights, ribbons, and ornaments on that tree for free.
I got about $500 worth of stuff for $30. Best deal I ever got, depending on who you talk to, of course. Everything was pink, the ten light sets, the ribbons, the bulbs, everything except for the miniature birdbaths.
(I let ‘em off easy this year and used the white lights.)
We were consumed with power. We got flowery wallpaper and drapes, ballet pink carpet (not kidding, it looked like cotton candy) and skunked the house up with perfume every chance we got.
We got control over the remote. Now that’s real power. I can’t tell you how many cage fights and wrestling matches I’ve had to endure. Now it’s a parade or E! Any time we want.
“Oh, you want go deep sea fishing this year? Screw that, we’re going to Paris. You can come along if you want.”
“You want a big dog? No way Dude, I want something I can hold in my arms and dress up like a baby. Girl dogs! Two.”
And now that Blane Jr. is out the house, that leaves us three femmes to one homme (plus two bitches).
But seriously, we only went overboard with the decorating in the other house.
And we never really got control over the remote. Come on, do you really think a guy would ever give that up?
Remember that “Want to Play a Game?” post from Wednesday? Here is a great place to slip in a fair and square game in which the winner will receive season two of Ice Road Truckers.
You have to guess Scrappy’s birthdate, the month and day only.
I have never mentioned her birthdate on this blog or elsewhere, so everyone has a fair shot at this. I’ll give you one hint. She was born in the summer (that is June 21st to September 20th for you guys Down Under).
Put your answer in the comments and I’ll announce the winner on Christmas Day. You can enter one guess only and the person who comes closest to her birthday wins.
I’ll mail the DVD to you or to a person of your choice. Good luck!
Wanna Play a Game?
Want to win something? I got an email from someone over at A&E Home Video, and they saw my post where I mentioned Ice Road Truckers. They said they want to send me a review copy of season two AND some extras if I want to do a giveaway on the blog.
I find this absolutely hilarious because I’m such a girly-girl, you know, I mean… Look at my Christmas tree.
Do I seem like a person who would watch Ice Truckers?
Well I do, actually. I love that show. It’s gripping, these guys have a goal and if they screw up, they could die. For real.
So hell yeah I want season two of Ice Road Truckers and I want to get you a copy of it too. I’m going to think up a fun game (maybe you guys can help me out here, too) to decide the winner.
Who’s in?
Ice Road
We had some freezing rain cover everything yesterday evening, so when it came time for Kara’s boyfriend to leave I offered to bring him home. These icy roads are tricky. They look normal, you can’t see the ice, but it’s there and it’s dangerous.
I lived in Michigan for a year, so I know how to drive on ice. But this is Texas and this is a rare situation for most drivers and you have to watch out for them. We were lucky, we pretty much had the streets to ourselves.
(You can make your own Ice Road Trucker background by going :::here:::)
It took 45 minutes to get to his house. I had to drive 20 mph because any faster and the car would slide all over the road. Kara kept saying I was being overly cautious and that it didn’t feel like we were moving.
I was. I totally enjoyed driving like a slug and wanted it to be excruciating for both Kara and her boyfriend. I had advised that he not come over because of the storm, but she insisted that he come.
So in the car she kept turning the radio station every twenty seconds, something that drives me crazy, but it didn’t break my concentration (what is it with this generation that they can’t listen to even half a song?).
I thought maybe we’d have a chance to talk once I dropped him off, but they kept texting each other on the drive home.
At least I had the radio to myself.
Just as we were rounding the corner to come home, she looked up at the road which looked normal and said, again, that I was being ridiculously over cautious. I told her I was a skilled driver, that I made it look easy, and we were in an extremely treacherous situation, but she wouldn’t know that because she was so distracted with her texting.
Then I hit the brakes and let the car slide down the road to show her how slippery it was. She laughed when I told her I could be an Ice Road Trucker if I wanted to.
Thirty Below
Blane was at this cool place today for his work at an underground bunker in Texas.
A Chinese prince built it during the 70’s as a fallout shelter. It can support about 1500 people for ninety days and has a hospital, a jail, and even a bar, all thirty feet below the ground.
Obviously it’s not secret, but it used to be. After the prince went bankrupt during the oil crunch, the place stayed vacant for years. When the bank reps went to sell the place, a team found it. They opened the door and it immediately shut, locking them in. They had to meander thorough tunnels until they finally found a spot where some earth was falling thorough some cracks in the ceiling.
Blane had to get security clearance to get into the place (on paper, as in background checks) and then when he got there he had to use a special badge and place his palm on a hand scanner. Just like in the movies.
Also, he said the floors have these special pads on them to keep track of movement in there.
This is not a tourist attraction, and don’t go there looking for trouble. In those little huts above ground, there are guards with fifty caliber machine guns keeping watch over the place.
I wish I could tell you more, but that’s all I know. I swear.
Speaking of secrets that aren’t really secrets, remember that room we were working on with the spy door? Finally finished.
The guys who did the spackle on the walls didn’t do it right, it looked like a frosted cake. Not cool. I scraped all of that off and re-spackled the walls with an Old World texture. Oh, I had to do the ceiling too. I did a smooth texture on that. After painting it, we got the carpet guys in there, et voila, a secret room to put my secret Christmas decorations after the holidays are done.
Second Chances
We were so lucky to get a break in the cold weather with a 70 degree day and some bonus sunshine. I took the angel mosaic outside and jigsawed the wood around it.
The blades on the jigsaw are worn or maybe I don’t know how to use the damn thing but it was taking forever and despite the fact I had safety glasses on, the wind blew sawdust into my eyes.
I kept getting this gut feeling that I was going to end up cutting off one of my fingers or maybe even rip an artery in my arm. I always think of the worst thing that can happen, no matter what I’m doing, but I’m used to it, thinking like that. Maybe it’ll earn me some money one day.
So what do people think about while they’re doing man-work with power tools? Drinking beer. I didn’t have any beer. I popped a bottle of wine.
Working with power tools isn’t dangerous enough, you know?
I’m not much of a drinker. I still can’t have a glass of anything without gagging after each sip, no matter how good the stuff is.
So here is how the thing is looking now with the darker grout, post jigsaw. And no I didn’t lose a drop of blood in the process.
Second chances, hey?
Here’s a band I’ve been listening to lately, Shinedown. What’s cool about this video (Second Chances) is they incorporated material from fan stories, photos, videos, and voicemails about their second chances.
Oh, and the temperature outside has already dropped back to 39 degrees in the last couple of hours.
The Only Curse That Ever Worked on Me
I was the only person my paternal grandmother seemed to like. About my father, she used to say, “I should have pinched his head off when he was born.”
We didn’t see her too often due to the miles between us. Once every couple of years or so. But when she’d see me, she’d always look me over real hard, smile, and say, “All my friends say you look just like me.”
I always knew this was why she liked me. She’d parade me in front of all her friends at the beauty shop, the ladies circles, the this, the that, anywhere, just so she could have them tell her again, “Oh yes, Lottie, she looks just like you.”
Maybe she was like that because she never had a daughter. She was a refined lady. She knitted, quilted, embroidered, and knew all the rules of etiquette. We were all pretty much barbarians according to her. I was always asking my mom, “Why do you keep lighting those matches?”
So when I was about nineteen years old, my mom and I went to visit her. Mom told her about the quilt I started making after picking up a magazine with a pattern in it.
I thought for sure she would say “Oh, you’re just like me,” or “That’s wonderful, you’re my favorite person in the world,” or something like that.
What she said shocked me. “You’ll never finish it.”
I, not too experienced in sewing and having never seen a person actually work on a quilt thought she must know something I didn’t know. She was an experienced quilter, had an infamous silk embroidered quilt in a box under her bed which we got to see progress every single time we went to visit.
My quilt, to this very day, looks exactly as it did on the day she cursed me.
I never put another stitch into the thing. I don’t blame her really, I shouldn’t have been so stupid to allow what she said affect me. As time went by, the curse wore off, I did believe I could finish it, but along with the changes in me came changes in my tastes. I stopped liking the colors in it.
Still, I always wondered why she would say such a thing to me. Why did she doubt my abilities? Was it because I wasn’t a refined lady?
I figured it out yesterday by chance.
I was pulling out all the Christmas decorations, going through boxes I haven’t been through in years. I should’ve figured it out right here with these reindeer my grandmother made.
It wasn’t until I got all the family heirloom stockings together, those from Blane’s and my sides of the family.
The blue one was made by one of Blane’s great aunts. The other two by my grandmother. All three are of the same fabric handmade by two people of roughly the same age around the same time.
My grandmother never finished hers. Look at those cross hatch stampings on the stocking at far right. Those are supposed to be beaded. It’s supposed to have sequins all over it.
And that explains why there are only three reindeer.
And most likely why she said I’d never finish my quilt. Not only did she believe I looked just like her, she believed I was just like her.
Finally, The Masterpiece
Five years in the making, I’ve come to a critical point with the angel mosaic. This is not a kit, btw, it’s made from scratch with pieces of old tiles I had on hand, a wet saw, tile nipper, and tons of patience.
I’ve finally glued all the tiles in place over the mesh and am ready to grout it in. The reason I glued them on a mesh instead of directly onto a piece of plywood backing is I intended to hang it on a shower wall but changed my mind. So the extra step here is separating the mesh (I used a strong tulle) from the template I drew on a poster.
First I painted a half inch piece of plywood with primer so the liquid from adhesive and grout wouldn’t warp the wood. Then I applied about a quarter inch of adhesive to the plywood and sunk the mesh with tiles onto that surface.
I hammered the pieces into the glue with a board so all the tile surfaces would be flush.
And let that dry for a day.
Now it is time for the grout. I used premixed unsanded type and worked it into the empty spaces with a two sided grout sponge which is a dense sponge on one side and a scratchy surface on the other.
This part goes fast. Once the entire surface of the mosaic is covered and grout is in every space, I splashed about a cup of water on it and used the scratch pad to loosen the grout on the tops of the tile. This part also helps make sure there are no air pockets in the grout spaces.
And now my favorite part of all. It reminds me of those old movies when someone has plastic surgery and their face is all bandaged up and it is time to unwrap them. The moment of truth.
I took a sponge (a new white one, dyes in sponges can color the grout) and make only two passes over each area.
Unfortunately, the moment of truth for me was a cold and hard one. I screwed up by choosing white grout.
And that is where I am with this thing right now. I do believe I can fix it with a grout dye, I’m just worried that it won’t be uniform in color. Also some of the tiles are porous stone and may take up the dye.
Once that is sorted out, I’ll jigsaw the wood, following the edges of the mosaic.
I’ll make a frame out of metal strips to make it look like a ribbon framing.
The saga continues…
