Pillows of Love Workday

Yesterday our Women's Ministry MerryMakers (our motto is "Spreading Joy through the Work of our Hands) had a workday where we made pillowcases for the Pillows of Love ministry. This is a wonderful ministry started by a lady in our area after hearing about children and women going to shelters often with their meager belongings gathered up in a trash bag. She felt God nudging her to use her special talents as a seamstress to make bright, cheerful pillowcases that could then be distributed to shelters for battered women and homes for unwed mothers. That ministry has now expanded to homeless shelters and to orphanages as far away as China.

Each pillowcase has a copy of the New Testament or a children's book about the Bible included in it. The pillowcases are given to the women and children and are theirs to keep. At the very end or wide cuff of the pillowcase is the verse "He will give you sleep, peace and a safe place to dwell." Psalm 4:8.

We had 3 sewers and 2 ironers at our workshop and after spending the morning sewing and ironing away, we had 27 pillowcases completed and another 13 pillowcases all finished except for the final seam around the 3 sides. Since each shelter receives about 40 pillowcases at a time, that was enough for one shelter. It's really awesome when God can use our hobbies to serve others. The morning was a joy.

If you would like to find out more about this much-needed ministry, check out www.pillows-of-love.com. Well, off to do some ironing of my own now so better cut this short. Practice some random acts of love today.

Crunch-time in Crisis Land

It's been one of those weeks, my friends. Have you ever felt hemmed in on all sides? On shaky ground and afraid that at any moment the bottom of your predictable little world was going to collapse and you were going to fall on your (unfortunately) substantial keister?

It all started last Friday when one of my coworkers asked me what my plans were for the weekend. Hey, I actually had plans for a change. My hubby and I were going to a retirement seminar at the Army post on Saturday and then to a big quilt show on Sunday after church with friends. It was going to be a great weekend! My coworker shared that she and her husband would be going to a party Saturday evening. Great! We were both getting out and about.

On Saturday I headed out to run errands prior to hooking up with my dear husband for the seminar. Soon it was time to go find him and head over to the War College. Off we went. Of course, you don't just drive onto the post anymore. You have to detour to the left and go through a gate guard before you can go on the post. So we drove up to the gate and I passed my military ID over to the guard. "Oh, oh...one of you has an expired ID," he said. "I'll have to confiscate this and ask you folks to drive over to the other guard station. They'll give you a receipt there."

"Ha, George!" I laughed. "Didn't you realize that your ID had expired?"

"Um, it's YOUR ID, Ma'am," the guard replied.

Gulp! Not only did the Army take my ID (with my picture looking 4 years younger and skinnier, to boot) but they also gave me a receipt that said "confiscated ID card." I felt like an illegal alien. It was hard to concentrate on the retirement seminar. While others obsessed over this point and that of health benefits, I kept fighting the urge to raise my hand and say, "They confiscated my ID!"

That evening, I decided to get our checkbook up-to-date so I'd know how much I could spend at the quilt show the following day. There was only one problem. I couldn't find the checkbook. I knew I had it with me that morning when I went to the bank. But from there I had gone to the post office, the fabric store, the local library and the optical shop. Gee, I kind of remembered the outdoor mail drop box at the post office making a clunking sound when I dropped in my letter. Could I possibly have absentmindedly dropped in the checkbook as well? Oy vey! Now I was really getting frantic. I grabbed the flashlight and looked in every nook and cranny of the car that I could reach. No checkbook!

I couldn't face the quilt show on Sunday. I just didn't feel comfortable going and spending without knowing who had our checkbook and how much we had in our account. So I stayed home and sulked after church. Well, sulked and ironed and logged onto our account periodically to make sure that I wasn't seeing wierd purchases showing up there. And I did a LOT of praying that the checkbook would show up.

Monday morning my husband went to the bank and sure enough, they had my checkbook. Apparently their policy is not to call you if you leave your checkbook. They wait for you to show up for it. DO THEY KNOW WHAT I WENT THROUGH OVER THE WEEKEND? I wasn't the only one. My coworker with the party plans was out sick Monday, Tuesday, and most of Wednesday. Both she and her husband came down with some nasty virus after attending the party, along with quite a few of the other guests. Looks like both of our weekends didn't go quite as planned.

On top of the weekend trauma, my return to the library on Monday was greeted by LOTS of student requests. The dam has burst, so to speak, and the rush has begun. It won't slow to a trickle now until right before Thanksgiving. I do all the interlibrary loans for our college and fill all the interlibrary loan requests sent to our school from other institutions. I've been so busy this week that for two nights, I didn't get home until after 7 p.m. It has been crazy at work. I've had constant indigestion.

 Good thing I'm on meds to help me cope with stress and anxiety. Because today, I had to leave work early to go get my new ID card at the Army post. My husband had to escort me there so I could get onto the base. Then I had to get a new picture for the ID. Drat! What kind of sick joke is this? Who put that old person on my ID card? On top of that, the clerk asked me to verify my weight. I seriously considered fudging since my husband was sitting right there and she had read my weight off the old form and I'm now 14 pounds heavier. But there was a scale on the floor right next to a mirror and I wasn't too sure if she'd make me stand on it if she didn't believe me so I decided that honesty was the best policy. Besides, I'd been seriously EATING fudge for the past 4 years so I could always blame it on my sweet tooth. So, there you have it. I'm legal in military circles once again. Humiliated, but legal. And I'm really hoping that this weekend is nice and quiet and restful.

Reeling in the Years

Well, the Summer Scrapbooking Challenge is finally over and I am happy to report that I finished the challenge with 303 pages completed. What a ride it has been! I did a heritage album of my mother's side of the family from my Gr.Gr.Gr. Grandmother up to my mother. I scrapbooked my mother's life up to her present day at 92 years young, I started my own heritage album and have just gotten through my Army years, and I finished the heritage album of my father's life.

Speaking of my father, it's been a bittersweet time. Dad died while I was on my honeymoon almost 27 years ago. He never met my husband although he did talk to him over the phone when George called him from Greece to ask for permission to marry me. We had planned to redo our vows back home once we rotated back to the States so that our parents could attend the ceremony but that wasn't to be.

Putting these old pictures into a scrapbook and writing down all the old stories has been very emotional for me. I've been reliving all these memories. Take this picture, for instance. My brother and I are posing next to Lake Superior while we were enroute to the farm in Minnesota. Notice the bloody bandages on both of my knees. With my usual grace, I had decided to run down a hill at a rest stop to get to the car and had lost my footing, skidding down the remainder of the hill and across half of the parking lot. Ouch! I still bear the scars on both knees. When I look at that picture and when I read the journaling about it, I can remember that day so clearly.

I think people still throw pictures in albums but not many write down the stories these days. We need to do that, even if it is writing it up on the computer and then printing it off and sticking it in your album. Every culture has had its storytellers. In early cultures, that's how they passed on the group memories and traditions. In our extended families, someone has to be the group storyteller because the older generations are passing on and as they do, many of those wonderful stories are being lost forever.

So I've spent some enjoyable time with my dad this summer, I've caught glimpses of my mom in college, and I've relived the triumphs of my college theatrical career, all through the combination of scrapbooking and memories. Not a bad way to spend the summer, if I do say so. But I must admit, after 303 pages completed.....I'm taking a break for a few weeks to do some knitting, crocheting, and looming.

Destined for Texas?

Our travelin' son, Jason called me several days ago in the middle of the day. I almost had a heart attack as I scrambled to find my cellphone. Knowing he was traveling crosscountry and not expecting him to call before evening,I figured that he must have an emergency.

"What's wrong?", I gasped into the phone.

"Texas coffee is terrible," he replied. "You'd think they'd have good coffee in Texas. I mean, if it's black and hot and it's in Texas, it should be good, shouldn't it?"

"Honey," I laughed. "If it's black and hot and in Texas, you must be drinking oil."

The dear boy reported that he'd gone to 3 gas stations before finding one that had coffee and then it was only half a pot and looked like it had been sitting there for several hours.

"And they don't even have coffee machines here, Mom," he bemoaned. "Not even a capaccino machine."

"Son, you need to get off the freeway and find a nice cafe. One where the waitresses have pencils stuck in their hair and call you 'Hon' and pour you steaming coffee out of endless fresh pots. That's where you'll find good coffee."

Well, I guess he'll just have to wait to sample good Texan cuisine until we move down there. Yep, we are destined to be Texans. We're shirttail Texans right now, as it is. My husband's father was a direct descendant of early Texas pioneers. We've been dreaming of making the move to Texas for some time now and I'm more than ready. I've been ready to move out West since I was a kid. While other girls played exclusively with dolls, I was riding the range with the Lone Ranger and Tonto and tracking bad guys with Sky King. Even as a teen, I could have cared less about soap operas.....I loved westerns. I used to saddle up the old oil drum outside the farm house and sit in that saddle for hours imagining that I was riding the range.

So if you happen to see a red Pontiac Vibe with a Pennsylvania license plate heading across the Texas plains piloted by a dreamy-eyed lady singing exhuberantly while clutching a coffee pot in one hand, with a white dog in the back seat followed by a gray-haired guy in a gray SUV loaded with yarn, you'll know we've made in to our new home state.

Hairball Shawl

I found the smaller gauge loom at the local craft store today so decided to buy the longer one to try a prayer shawl on it. This particular shawl is for a lady who has recently had knee surgery. I had asked her husband what some of her favorite colors were but he said he had "no clue." I went home and asked my husband in amazement, "How in the world would a spouse NOT know what colors their wife liked?" To my astonishment, my dear husband of 27 years said, "I wouldn't know what to tell someone if they asked me that question." Good grief! Men really ARE from Mars.

So I decided to try to find some Homespun in a colorway that would be neutral enough that she wouldn't mind it. In other words, a safe color. Well, it looked safe enough in the store. So I brought it home and started it on the loom. My goodness, the more I worked with it, the more depressed I got. What was going on? This was supposed to be a shawl to provide comfort and cheer, not one to depress the poor lady. I looked at that skein and the more I looked at it, the more I realized that it reminded me of dried hairballs. There was absolutely nothing attractive or pleasing to me about those colors.

Now the shawl below the "hairball shawl" is another prayer shawl I recently completed for another friend who is recovering from surgery. Now those are cheerful colors. Reminds me of Spring. I LOVE color. Half of the fun of knitting or crocheting something is seeing the play of color as the fabric develops before your eyes. Now I'm all in a quandry. Do I continue with the depressing colors, knowing that I'm going to be struggling with the joi d'vivre through three skeins of the stuff or do I return the other two skeins and pick something that I like? I'm definitely leaning toward the latter.

In my case, at least, it is true what they say about color having a huge impact on your emotions!
Speaking of emotions, I woke up this morning all jittery knowing that our son was heading off on his great adventure today, driving coast to coast on his own. Thank goodness that he had the presence of mind to take his old car into a good mechanic before attempting this road trip because he discovered that the clutch needed to be replaced. So at least that has been done. I've been praying for safe travels every time he has come to mind today, which has been often.

And that got me to thinking about squeaky wheels. Yes, my mind works in tortuous circles. I was thinking about how it always seems that the high-maintenance child is always the one that gets the most attention, while the chld who is self-sufficient and plugging along reliably sometimes can seem to get short shrift. That probably isn't fair. We have a lovely daughter who is talented, highly intelligent, a hoot to be around, and we love her dearly. But I haven't mentioned her much in this blog because she has been steadily working away at her job and on her Masters' degree without creating much of a stir while our son, on the other hand, has kept us jumping trying to keep up with all the twists and turns that his life is taking lately. He's been the "squeaky wheel" and consequently has taken a lot of our focus and attention. However, Laura deserves no less. So, hat's off to an amazing daughter who makes us proud to be her parents each and every day. We enjoy every tidbit of her life that she shares with us and are so happy that she lives only an hour and a half away. It gives her the space she needs but lets us see her regularly. We love you, Laura!

What's a mother to do?

It's been a busy day. I spent most of Saturday at a scrapbooking workshop from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. I'm happy to report that I'm now working happily away on my own heritage album and have scrapbooked and journaled my pictures up to my middle school years.

Now we're getting into my "ugly" stage though. Yikes! Whatever happened to that cute little girl? And where did that bucktoothed geek come from with the tightly permed hair and the glasses with side fins that could compete with a '62 Chevy? I certainly wasn't part of the "cool crowd." Looking back on it now, though, I think it was a blessing in disguise. By not having an active date life (ok, I didn't have ANY date life) and by having to get by on my brains, personality, and imagination, I developed a rich inner life and a great appreciation for the friendships that people can offer above and beyond their outward appearances. This is a good thing. Because now that I'm approaching my '60s....I seem to be entering another "ugly" stage only this time those side fins are firmly entrenched a good six inches below my waist on both sides and they aren't sporting rhinestones either. It's the dreaded "Van Rossum Hips." Sigh! I always knew they'd catch up with me, sooner or later. I don't have buckteeth any more. Two sets of braces took care of that. Now I'm just trying to keep my teeth. At least I don't have the permed hair again. Although I AM feeling like tearing my hair out, thanks to our son, Jason.

Yes, the dear boy called us two nights ago to say that he was going to be coming home sooner than planned. This is a good thing. Then he casually mentioned that he would be driving home. This is a bad thing. You see, he's planning to drive from Los Angeles to PA in an old Honda with almost 200,000 miles on it, no working AC, side mirrors that I think are duct taped on right now, and he plans to camp along the way to save money. I wasn't sure if I should laugh or cry. I think I did both. Life was a lot simpler when I was a preteen.

Little White Powerpuff

Well, I dropped off Fresca today at the groomers to get her summer clip touched up. I know some purists will think this heresy but she loves being a "naked" pup, we love the fact that she doesn't shed and doesn't get all matted with that dense undercoat that never seems to fully come out, no matter how much I comb her out, and she prances around like circus poodle when she's clipped. It just seems to be a win-win situation. Even the kids, who were dead set against me having her shaved down, have now both admitted that they like it this way. The only thing I had them change this time was to give her less of a "bubble-head" look. I thought that looked rather silly last month.

Then I headed over to the office to work on some statistics for a funding pitch and to go over the interlibrary loan notes for the new faculty briefing I'll be giving next week. Can't believe that I'll be heading back to work in less than two weeks. Where did my summer go? Ha! I do believe that I can hear all the students plaintively asking the same thing. Little do they realize that their teachers and educational workers feel the same way.

I have a big scrapbooking crop coming up this weekend so must get busy on some more journaling for my heritage album. I'm up to 201 pages completed on the summer scrapbooking challenge. The trouble is that I'm getting distracted with prayer cloths to knit and crochet and now hats to make on my new knitting looms.

Jason called from California to ask about substituting milk for cream in a Chicken Tika Marsala recipe and I gave him some cooking tips on that. Gee, it's nice to be needed, even for cooking advice. Take that, all of you who complained about my creamed corn chocolate cake recipe! So you got the corn skins caught in your teeth when you ate it. Hey, the frosting was delish! You can't have everything.

Dogsitting Schatze

I've been dogsitting Schatze, who happens to be my dog's best friend. Schatze is a little Shih Tzu mix and she and Fresca, our Miniature American Eskimo have been best buddies since they were puppies. They have a great time guarding our house from every imaginable predator in the neighborhood. "Imaginable" is the key word here. They see a predator in every person who walks by the house and every car that drives past. So it has been a noisy weekend as they've raced from the front bedroom windows to the living room windows and then strutted proudly by, looking at me as if to say, "Heh, heh....chased THAT one off, too!"

At any rate, my mom LOVES Schatze so I went over to the Assisted Living facility where she stays and brought her home to spend an overnight with us. After a joyous reunion with the dogs, they all settled in the living room for a piano concert. I played and the dogs and Mom sat attentively and listened. When I complained to Schatze's owners that she hadn't clapped after each number, they said, "Well, at least the dogs didn't howl."

As I turned off the lights last evening, Schatze curled up with Mom and the two slept snuggly in the same twin bed. It was a sight to behold. This morning, they were still cuddled up together. By the way, Schatze is a licensed therapy dog. If any of you have toyed with the idea of taking your dogs through the classes and training for that program, I'd highly recommend it. Just seeing the way Mom and Schatze interact together is proof to me that an animal with the proper temperament can really make a difference in a person's day, even someone suffering from various stages of dementia.

After tucking Mom and Schatze into bed, Fresca and I joined hubby George downstairs in the family room and watched a few episodes of the Dog Whisperer on National Geographic. They must have been running a marathon of past episodes. It was fascinating, as always, to watch. And I had some much-needed time to unwind and do some crocheting on my prayer cloths. Since I've joined the prayer-cloth ministry Yahoo group, I'm having a great time trying the different patterns out, especially since these little cloths don't take a long time to knit or crochet. I shall put a link to the group's homepage up as soon as I can get my husband to show me how to do so. In the meantime if you try this link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Prayer_Cloth_Ministry/ it should take you to the homepage of the group where you can read about this great ministry.

Walking Down Memory Lane

Our scrapbooking consultant has a summer scrapbooking challenge every year. We're encouraged to set a goal for ourselves of a certain number of pages that we think we can finish scrapbooking and then we work on our pages independently over the summer. At the end of the summer months, we report the number of pages we completed, journaling and all, and have a big scrapbooking party where the winner is announced, drawings are held, and food is eaten (of course).

This year I decided to set a goal of 100 pages. Being the over-achiever that I am, I've already finished 183 pages since the middle of June and am still going strong. I started the summer working on a heritage album for my mother's side of the family and finished it (all except for my grandfather's side of the family). Then I started and completed a heritage album for my father's side of the family. Now I've started on my own childhood pages. I've worked my way up to my toddler years.

Having just come back from Michigan and working on my childhood home, I had to laugh when I saw this picture of me in full Halloween regalia. It wasn't the costume that made me giggle. It was the horrid wallpaper. You see, my folks ended up painting over the wallpaper in the hallway leading up the stairs to the second floor. It's now a putrid green color. But get a load of the wallpapered ceiling in a DIFFERENT print from the busy wallpaper of the side walls. We had caught a glimpse of this wallpaper this summer when we removed a picture from the wall and saw where the paint had worn away and you could see about a 5-inch section of the original wallpaper. Whoever buys the house will have quite a job whether they decide to strip the walls and repaint or repaper.

Going through these old photos certainly brings back the memories. I'm often reminded of one of my favorite moments in the movie "Peter Pan" with Robin Williams. At one point, a grown up Peter Pan is faced by Tinker Belle, who can't quite believe that this OLD fellow is her beloved young boy, Peter. She goes up to him and pulls the skin of his face back tightly, looking deep into his eyes. "It IS you, Peter," she cries. I think about that many a day as I stand in front of the mirror.....pulling back the jowls and the wrinkles around the eyes to try to catch a glimpse of the young girl that I know is in there somewhere.

Our son, Jason, was recently looking through Mom's heritage album. "This is scary,", he said.

"What is?", I asked.

"Grandma looked just like a teenager back then," he replied. "If she could look like that and now look so old, it could happen to me, too."

Ah, age. The great leveler of us all!

Having my Cake and Eating it Too

When Jason asked me why I was going to go get my own birthday cake I said, "Honey, if I've learned anything in 57 years of life, I've learned that if you want something done right, you might as well do it yourself."

With my crew, I've learned that I can hint all I want but usually my hints fall by the wayside. So last year when I tasted the fantastic chocolate truffle cake from the Dingledein Bakery near us, I knew that I had to have it for my own birthday. With that in mind, Jason and I headed down to the bakery and bagged that baby and brought it back to the house. Let me tell you, I enjoyed every bite, even knowing that I'd be modeling it on my hips later.
You might as well live life with gusto.

"Happy birthday to me!"

Son today, Gone Tomorrow

It's been a quick visit from my #1 son, Jason. He flew in from California a little over a week ago to help me drive out to Michigan. The plan was that we would help my brother get Mom's house ready to put on the market. It's been sitting empty for almost 5 years and it's time to sell it.

Jason flew into Baltimore and DH George and I drove down to meet him. From there it was a quick hop over to pick up daughter Laura and her boyfriend for supper before heading back up to PA. It was great to see the two siblings have the chance to catch up on what's been happening in their lives. It was a "proud mama" moment.

Of course I had to take a book along in the event that I'd find myself waiting awhile in the airport. I would have taken my knitting needles but a book is so much more portable when wandering a terminal, don't you think? This one was the Dog Whisperer's book. Yes, I have an errant dog named Fresca who you'll be hearing more about, I'm sure. Happily, I didn't have long to read before Jason came striding out of the gate looking tanned and healthy, considering he's been living and working with the L.A. urban poor. I WAS a tad worried. All right. I was a LOT worried.

The next day our adventure was to begin...the trip back to the land of my childhood. Michigan! But more on that in my next post. Suffice it to say, the best-laid plans of mice and men "gang aft aglay"