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"