A Full Mailbox!

It's always exciting to go to the mailbox and find packages and other good stuff waiting for you, isn't it?! Today I was blessed with a mailbox full of good stuff and no BILLS! Outstanding!

Darlene, one of my blog-buddies (and I'm sure well known to all of you!), had a pincushion giveaway to celebrate her 200th post and her birthday. I was one of the lucky recipients and look what arrived in the mail today!

Extremely cute and the fabric is just perfect for my tastes--she had made several using different fabrics and somehow KNEW this was the one for me. Isn't she the best?! Thank you again, Darlene!

Then remember this pattern I posted the other day? I mentioned wanting to make it in Kansas Troubles fabrics because I had a bit of a stash and thought it would be perfect. Well, here's my stash (the fabric in the top cubicle):

Yes, it is a nice stash, thank you very much! But do you notice that there's not that many lights? Well, maybe it's not as apparent in the photo because I can see it came out a little lighter than it is in person. Anyway, I was thinking maybe I should see about adding a few lights to the quilt I make, and I found that Quilt Patch Lane had a tan FQ bundle on sale. My photo came out darker than real life (I'm light/dark challenged, aren't I?!), but here's my pretty little bundle that arrived in the mail today--don't they do a cute job of packaging?

Along with that little bundle of joy came another--from the Chocolat line by Moda. I have some charm packs from the line and a couple large pieces for borders, but since this was on SALE and I thought a few pieces a little larger than the charms would be nice, I went ahead and ordered it as well. The cool thing was that Quilt Patch Lane has bundles that are small-ish (10 FQs, I think), bundled by colorway--so I didn't have to invest a ton of money on a ginormous bundle. Less guilt that way, you know?! LOL!

Finally, I want to tell you that I have very definite plans to finish quilting "the monster" this weekend. I'd really like to take it to my next Thimbleberries show and tell (next Wednesday). I think if I can finish the quilting by Sunday, I can get the binding done by Wednesday. Thank you all for your compliments on it so far--I know it seems surprising that I could quilt a more-than-King-sized quilt on a domestic machine, but the Juki has a longer, larger throat space, and I've really stuck to free motion quilting so I don't have to turn and push and pull the bulk of the quilt through as I would if I were using a walking foot. I'm really happy with the way it's come out so far (even if I'm totally burned out on quilting it!), but the real test will come later when I see how it hangs--that will determine whether I'll ever put it in a quilt show or just keep it on my bed. Either way, though, I'm pleased and have enjoyed sharing my progress with you! Thank you for your comments--I love to hear from you!

My Husband and the Diet

For several reason, it's been decided around here that my husband and I should both start eating healthier and lose some weight. For me, I've always been overweight. I've been on diets, lost weight, and eventually it creeps back on. Part of it, I know, is that I'm not physically active enough. I don't much like to sweat, for one thing. For another, I'd rather sit in front of my sewing machine and quilt. For a third, I get paid pretty good money to sit in front of a computer all day. As I get older, though, I realize that eating healthier and taking off some of the weight will make me feel a lot better--body parts just don't seem to work like they used to, and I seem to be developing aches and pains in places I never even thought twice about before.

What really pushed me into a diet, though, is that in doing a little basic medical research in connection with a lawsuit I've been working on, I came across some information that in the last few years, they've found that a fair percentage of women with the same hormonal-based "syndrome" I have become insulin resistant, and that leads to Type 2 diabetes. So, yeah, I don't really want that to happen to me.

For my husband, he has his own health issues that would be greatly improved if he lost some weight. More recently, though, he had a blood test that showed he was a bit low on his "good" cholesterol levels and, although his overall cholesterol levels are okay, some other test results led his doctor to recommend he cut back on fat.

So, with both of us looking at some good reasons to take off the pounds, on Monday night I went through some of my diet cookbooks and came up with some recipes for the next week or two. I made up a grocery list. Tuesday night I hit the grocery stores (Trader Joe's AND Safeway) and cleaned out some of the less healthy things around the house. We would start actually DIETING on Wednesday!

So Wednesday came, and I had a quilt club meeting after work and my husband had an appointment for a mechanic friend of ours to do some work on his van. As I left for work that morning, I told my husband he was on his own for dinner and would need to find some reasonably healthy food around the house or get something while he was out but nothing like a burger or other high fat foods. Fine. We were all set.

On my way to my quilt club meeting, I stopped at McDonalds--the only convenient stop between work and the quilt shop--for a grilled chicken sandwich, hold the mayo please! (Do you know they're now using honey wheat rolls for those? All the better!) Oh, yeah, and a plain iced tea. So, for 360 calories and 4.5 grams of fat, I was reasonably happy.

Later that night, my husband got home about 20 minutes after I did, carrying with him the "diet" food he had picked up on the way home. What do you suppose he chose? I looked in the bag, and lo and behold, there was a large paper tray filled to the top with French fries. On top of that were three fairly large breaded and fried fish filets. His justification? Well, isn't fish HEALTHY? And, of course, he was quick to tell me the restaurant uses unsaturated fat to fry the fish in!

This morning, I was up early, packing my husband's breakfast and lunch, something I NEVER, EVER do. I'm not a morning person. In fact, I can't even remember what I packed for him, but I do know it was a lot better than anything he would have packed for himself. I think this diet thing is going to be harder than I thought! Either that, or I'm going to have to find myself a good life insurance agent and take out a LARGE policy on my husband. OMG, the man is obviously diet challenged!

Well, now I'm off to pack his breakfast and lunch for tomorrow. I'm hoping after a few weeks of seeing the kinds of things that make up a good breakfast and lunch, he'll get the hang of it.

Author's Note: No, that's not him up there in the photo at the top. I just didn't really want to post a photo of a half naked fat woman, which seemed the most popular image search result!

Philosophy Lesson

Someone sent this to me at work and I thought it was good enough to share:

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. Again they agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things---your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions---and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full."

"The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car."

"The sand is everything else--the small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you."

"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first--the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled and said, "I'm glad you asked. The coffee just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

When Do You Give Up . . .

. . . on a book? When I was younger and spent more time reading, I would never, ever not finish reading a book, no matter how bad it was. After all, I knew that even if it didn't get any better, I'd be done with it in a day or so. Then, since I started quilting and haven't had as much time for reading, there have been a couple books that I didn't finish. The last one that I remember giving up on--after reading a couple hundred pages because I read a review that said to expect the first 150 pages to be a bit slow--was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It's gotten some good reviews too, but it just wasn't for me. Too bad, because I was just starting to develop some real firm arm muscles from holding the darn thing up! (Note shipping weight is nearly 3 pounds!)

One book that I struggled through and finally finished was The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Critics raved; even OPRAH raved. So I figured it must just be me and my lack of taste. Did you read where I said the other day that I don't like most "LITERATURE"? So I figured this must obviously be Literature. If you look at Amazon now, they only give it three out of five stars. I guess I'm not the only one who found it less than perfect! Of course, that was before Oprah's embarrassment with James Frey and his Million Little Pieces book, so I figured back then that if Oprah thought it was good, it must just be ME. Still, despite the problems with James Frey, I know Oprah gets it right more often than not, so I don't want to give the impression that she's been totally discredited in my book (bad pun intended!).

More recently, I read some raves about a largely unpublicized book written--or partly written since it was never completed after the author died in Auschwitz--in the early 40s about the Nazi invasion of Paris. That book is Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. Have you read it? I found it totally depressing, and since it was translated from French, it seemed kind of stiff. I only made it to around page 150 before I gave up. The fault there was me, I think. I was reading it at the time of my parents' car accident and my dad's subsequent death and I just needed to read something lighter and happier. I still have it on my nightstand, but I'm still not in the mood to be depressed.

Which brings me to the present. Now I'm reading Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning. Amazon shows only three out of five stars. I read the reviews before I got the book, but there were some people who loved it and I fully expected to be one of them. Well, no, apparently I'm siding with the majority on this one. How could AMY TAN be bad?! The writing is actually good, but I'm not getting caught up in the characters. I don't care about them. In fact, I can't even keep them straight. The story is told from the perspective of a dead woman who was to lead a tour group through part of China and into Burma. Her spirit accompanies the group and reports to us what goes wrong along the way. According to one review, it's a love story, a mystery, an adventure story--and maybe that's why it doesn't work for me. It's trying to be too many things at once. I'm on page 108 of 472 pages. I don't think I want to go on. Have any of you read it? Does it get better?

I really don't like to abandon a book I start, but I don't have a lot of time to waste, and there's a whole bookcase of books here that I want to read. In fact, while I was writing this, my husband brought in the mail, and there was the latest book in the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear, Messenger of Truth. And I KNOW that's going to be a good one!

So, when do you give up? Have you read any of these books I couldn't finish? Do you think I should go back and finish any of them? Do YOU ever give up on a book? Inquiring minds . . . .

The Wild Child Grows Up? Maybe a Little?

Remember my daughter, the Wild Child? She came into town last night from Tahoe to spend the night before leaving with her boyfriend for Maryland today to visit his family somewhere near, I think, the Baltimore area. The boyfriend is about 12 years her senior and has commitment issues, which is just fine with her because she's been burned a couple times and is hesitant to get involved too. But we sense things might be getting a little more serious if he's taking her home to meet his parents. AND he's asked her to live with him.

Now the funny thing is that they've been more or less living together for the past year, first as roommates in a house and then later as . . . well, it's a little hard to explain, but I'll give it a shot in a second. But, anyway, I guess in his mind, those experiences don't really count because they weren't "living together"--as in no commitment, not even to a lease. Okay, whatever! All I know is that he seems to be good for her and treats her well, and she's happy and healthy, so we have the important things covered this time around.

So, back to the weird living situation. That house they were roommates at? Well the owner was an absentee owner who had hired a couple to manage the house. It was really a four-bedroom house with a cottage out back where the managers lived, and they rented out the other four bedrooms. According to the Wild Child, the managers were tweakers--literally, as in meth users. As such, they were undependable and volatile. They failed to maintain the house, and when anything needed repair, the husband would do some cheap patch job. You have to wonder about the owner never checking on his property, and if all the Wild Child told us is true, the managers are surely turning a decent rental property into a hovel. After several months of putting up with these managers, my daughter and her boyfriend got fed up and moved out in April. But they had nowhere to move to, and rentals--at reasonable prices--are hard to find in Tahoe. So, for a month or so, they were sleeping on friends' couches and living in their cars--often parked side by side. Is that living together?! My daughter rented a storage unit for all her things. For a couple weeks, they rented a room in a hotel connected to the casino where my daughter worked--this was when they were having some late season snowy weather up there.

In late May, the campsites opened, and the Wild Child and her boyfriend camped. My daughter thought it was great fun. And her brother refused to speak to her because it was his opinion that she was being stupid and she wouldn't see reason when it came to her safety. My husband and I did what we could to let her know that we were concerned about her safety, but since she's an adult, we couldn't very well "put our foot down"--something our son didn't seem to understand. As you may imagine, this has been an uncomfortable situation for our family over the past few months.

Imagine, then, my joy when she told me last night that she's tired of not having a place to come home to after work where she can collapse on the couch and watch TV; a bed to sleep in; a kitchen to cook in; and a shower and/or bath to bathe in. You see, the Wild Child has to learn things for herself--as we all do to some extent--and this was one lesson she finally seems to have learned. Now all they have to do is find somewhere to live--another big hurdle in an area short of rental properties compared to the demand, but one that I hope they'll solve soon after they come home from Maryland.

Monster, Movie, and Megs

Here's a new photo of the monster quilt. Of course, it looks much like previous photos except that this one features Spike because she wouldn't get off of it! I've actually gotten to the point where I'm quilting those blocks that go around the edge of the quilt and had finished the side facing the camera when I took the photo this morning. Since then, I've finished the blocks at the foot of the bed, and it's on to the other side next. I'm sure hoping to get the quilting done by sometime next weekend. After quilting the blocks, I still have to quilt the bottom setting triangles--I wanted to see how the quilt looked again on the bed so I could decide if I wanted to stay with the straight edge or do a scalloped edge. I think I'll stick with the straight edge but I'm not certain. What do you think?

The movie we saw last night, No Reservations, was a pretty good chick flick. I'd give it a B+ for entertainment. It wasn't Academy Award material, but that's probably just as well. Sometimes the movies the critics think are wonderful bore me to tears. ("Literature," with a capital "L," usually does the same thing!) I guess my tastes just aren't sophisticated enough! Yes, No Reservations was fairly predictable and the general plot is one we've all seen many times before, but the three of us, Lisa, Kathy, and I, enjoyed it quite a lot. Our dinner was excellent, as it usually is at Fat's. And yes, we did manage to stop at Starbucks TWICE, and ended up there at the end of the night, sitting at an outside table talking. I think I got home around midnight. Last week was a tough one at work, so being able to spend some time unwinding with my girlfriends was a real treat! Of course, after all that caffeine, I stayed up quilting until around 2:30 a.m., but it's the weekend--that's what weekends are for, isn't it?!

Okay, you Blogland quilters, you're going to have to stop talking about great patterns, fabric, books, etc., because I'm just to darn suggestible. Carole blogged about some purchases she recently made and what did I end up doing? Stopping at the quilt shop Friday night and buying the Swatches pattern, Awakening, that she mentioned. I had seen it and liked it at a quilt shop a few weeks ago (I think that was the $75 spool of thread trip) but managed to leave the store without it, but I just couldn't pass it up a second time. I have a bit of a "collection" of Kansas Troubles fabrics, and I think a quilt from this pattern and the KT fabrics would look great!

Then my Blogland bud Sharon had to go and blog about her shopping spree and share with us photos from a book she bought, Comfort and Joy. Well, gosh darn it, wouldn't you know it?, I then got online and now that book's on its way to my mailbox! Click over to Sharon's blog if you want to see a couple patterns inside the book. I love that wreath pattern!

I have no self-control. AND I think I'm getting so tired of quilting the Monster that I'm subconsciously trying to distract myself with tempting treats to work on once I finish this project. And I have no self-control. No self-control whatsoever. Sheesh!

Girls' Night Out!

It's girls' night out tonight! Wooo-hooo! My friends Kathy (who is also my sister-in-law) and Lisa and I are going out to a movie and dinner. It's partly in celebration of my birthday, but that's mostly an excuse--we try to get together every month or two whether there's a birthday or not. I think probably the real nod to the fact that it's my birthday MONTH is that I got to pick the movie and restaurant. Sort of. Well, I DID get to pick the restaurant, and the movie was "suggested" as a possibility to which I agreed. Of course, I think it's probably a real chick flick, or what the movie promoters like to call a "date movie"--yeah, right! I guess that's a date early on in a relationship when the guy figures he won't get lucky unless he sits through a chick flick!

Anyway, we're going to go see No Reservations, which opened yesterday. Reviews seem mediocre, but I don't mind. My friend Lisa and I once sat through The Grudge (Kath was smart and stayed home that night!)--after that movie, anything's an improvement!

So, Lisa has big plans for stopping at Starbucks first and smuggling our drinks into the theater in her big purse. I have to laugh when I consider that about 25 years ago, we would have been smuggling in rum to spike our Cokes. Now we need our caffeine so we can stay awake and enjoy ourselves. Sad, isn't it?!

We'll go to an early-ish movie and then a late-ish dinner afterward at Fat's Bistro. Fat's has wonderful, to-die-for Asian food. (That's a photo of the outside up at the top; the main room is below.) I'm sure I'll be ordering honey walnut prawns. Yes, I'm in a rut, but it's a rut I like! Sometimes we each order a plate for ourselves, but usually we share. There's really very few things at Fat's that I don't like, so one way or another, I know I'll leave with a happy tummy. Fat's also has some outside dining, and I bet tonight will be a great opportunity to sit outside and enjoy the summer evening, as long as everyone else doesn't have the same idea.

Lisa joked about going back to Starbuck's after dinner. Joked? Well, we'll see. I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up at Starbuck's, sitting outside and talking girl talk. Girlfriends are the best, aren't they? The older I get, the more I appreciate these great friends of mine!

Monster Garage

I don't like garages much. Do you? Don't get me wrong--I'd hate to be without one. No, we don't keep our cars in it, but since our house is small, we do store a lot of stuff in it, and it also serves as our laundry room. So, I think I'll keep it, but I still don't like it a whole lot.

About a month ago, I was telling my husband about a woman I know who bought a long arm so that when she retires several years from now, she'll have a way to bring in some extra money, quilting for paying customers. In the meantime, she can pay off the machine while she's still working full time and practice on her own quilts. I thought that was a smart idea. The first thing my husband said was, "We're not putting a long arm in my garage." No, honey, the last thing I'd want to do is have a long arm in the garage. Not only would it mean not being able to use the darn thing for four or five months out of the year when our temps are hovering around 100 degrees, but I think the garage is kind of creepy.

It's my belief that garages have personalities--usually malevolent ones. And ours is really mean. A few years back, my husband fell off a ladder in the garage and broke various body parts. But that's another story.

My own worst experience with the garage happened about seven years ago. I think our son had moved out--maybe to go away to college at Cal Poly--and my husband had taken our daughter out of town for the weekend to a soccer tournament. It was summer or early fall and the temperature outside was around 100 degrees or more. I had the house to myself for two days, and on Sunday morning, I was busy cleaning it. Around noon, I went out to the garage to change a load of laundry. I was still wearing my nightgown, figuring I'd take a bath and get dressed when I finished cleaning.

When I turned to come back into the house, I realized the door to the house had closed behind me, and when I tried to open it, I found it was locked! So there I was, locked in the garage in my nightgown. The only other exit was the main door out to the driveway and street. Maybe luck would be on my side, and I'd just be able to push the door open and walk out. (This was before we had replaced the old door with a new automatic door--the old door was completely manual.) With the temperature around 100 degrees outside, it was closer to 115 degrees in that garage and I was already feeling uncomfortable.

Of course, the garage wouldn't release me that easily--the door was bolted and locked on the outside. Panicked thoughts started running through my mind since I knew it would be at least four hours before anyone was expected home. By the time anyone found me, surely I'd be dead from heat exhaustion! I started rummaging through the clean laundry basket to see if I could find something to wear besides a nightgown, and I finally found a pair of my husband's Adidas nylon shorts and a T-shirt. I quickly changed and tried pushing on the garage door again.

I have to tell you that pushing on a cobwebby, spider-infested old wooden garage door was pretty darn yucky, and I would surely have given up if I thought there was any other way to get out of there. Putting my shoulder to that door, I heaved. No luck! I heaved again. And again. And again. With adrenaline and panic giving me strength, the door was starting to swing a bit, and by pushing on one side, eventually the momentum and the twisting of the door itself popped the bolt out of its casing, and the door opened. Free! I was free!

Surveying the damage, I thought my husband was likely to kill me for breaking the garage door, because I could tell that it wasn't likely to fit right ever again. But I didn't care--at least I was out! Now what? I went around the side of the garage to open the gate, but it was latched and wouldn't open. I had to pull a stool out of the garage and climb up on it so I could reach over the fence to open the gate. (I'm not sure what any neighbors thought at this point, if any were watching!)

So, at least I was able to get into my own backyard, but what about getting into the air conditioned house and taking that now MUCH needed bath? (I was SURE that I had spiders climbing around in my sweat drenched hair!) Finally luck was on my side--the sliding door onto the patio was unlocked. Ahhhhhhh! I was going to live after all, no thanks to the garage monster!

Since then, I haven't had any major trouble with the garage, but I still don't like it. And it knows it, too, I'm sure. How else would you explain why, when I got out of the bath last Sunday and carried my towel and nightgown out to the hamper in the garage, I found the main door wide open to the street? My husband swore he clicked the clicker to close the garage door when he left a little earlier that day, but there it was, as wide open as it could be, and there I was, standing in the doorway to the house, as naked as I could be. And was that a barely audible haunted chuckle coming from the dark, far corner? Darn garage demon!

Water

The little blue . . .

. . . pill?

Connecting Threads Fabrics

My online group has had some discussion lately about the new Connecting Threads' lines of fabric. Have you seen those yet? Five different lines of fabric and at least a couple kits for each of the lines. Of course, you can also buy the fabrics by the yard, or purchase charm packs, etc. The kicker, I think, is that the fabrics cost $5.95 a yard, and right now, Connecting Threads is offering free shipping for orders over $50. They ship to the US and Canada (I'm not sure if there are extra shipping charges to Canada). I've picked a photo of a kit from each of the lines to give you some idea of what they look like, but if you want to check it out for yourself, click on "Connecting Threads" up there in the first sentence.

So far, I only know of one quilter who has tried it--Linda Z. who leaves comments on my blog occasionally. When someone asked her about the quality of the fabric, she said she was pleased with it and that it had a feel similar to Moda.

I need more fabric like I need a hole in my head, so I'm trying to resist right now, but I'd be interested in any input anyone has. Here in the US we've seen fabric prices creep up to $9 to $10 a yard or more, so this sounds pretty promising!