Random Notes: Puttering About

Friday morning began with a breakfast date with two former colleagues who became close friends.  It was great to get out and about and even better to see some dear friends and catch up on their lives.  We lingered nearly two hours over tea and coffee, eggs and toast.

I came home to putter with the blog and then spent some time reading a chapter or two of the new Nora Roberts book, The Obsession.  It's the sort of book commonly called a good beach read.  Since the weather is finally warming up, I guess that's appropriate.  Still puttering, though now in the kitchen, I made some pasta prima vera for lunch.  

Later, I set the Roku box on the classic radio station and settled in my stitching chair for a few hours bliss.  All the more blissful because my husband had finally finished watching his new box set of all 10 seasons of JAG.  Not a terrible show but, really, damn near two full weeks of morning to night marathon viewing.  Where ever I went in the house, the theme music followed.  I expect I'll be hearing it for days rumbling round in my head.  

The neighbor's pit bull is doing his usual "I don't care if my master's property ends at this fence, MY territory extends three row houses in either direction!"    He barks if I dare to open my back door for fresh air.  He goes into an absolute frenzy if I actually enter my own backyard.  He even barks if I sneeze indoors.  Since this is allergy season and since my sneezes tend to be loud and dramatic, this is rather embarrassing.   There must be a way to train the poor dog to recognize the boundaries but first I'll have to find a way to train the neighbor, a 20-something young man, to see that there is a problem and that his neighbors should be able to enjoy their gardens [or sneeze in their own living rooms]  with a modicum of peace and quiet.  The animal is simply acting on his instincts.   It's the owner who leaves the dog out doors for hours at a time who is the real problem.

I may have mentioned that the neighbors who had Karoke parties into the wee small hours and a son who would get up at  6:00 am to shoot baskets moved ... the neighbors three doors on either side of them happily waved good bye.  But alas, the new resident has a basketball player - ka thimp, ka thump at all hours..

April Fool's Day Came Late

We woke yesterday morning and today to snow on the ground and.  All the jonquils and daffodils that had been blooming so cheerfully are now sad and sorry wet shreds  ... like so many tattered battle flags at the Confederate surrender at Appomatox.  [Sorry, but such images come naturally to anyone who has spent 47 years with a Civil War buff.  My oldest son has always maintained that my husband can bring any conversation around to the Civil War within three sentences.  Seven degrees of separation is for winps!]

The daffodils and jonquils usually provide colot until the Van Houten Spirea blooms but not this year.

Some Days ...

 ... start off badly and then just go downhill from there.  Enough said!

Taking Care of Business

Today is a day for running hither and yon getting all manner of things done.

First, I've made up some packages for the post.  The Workbasket Quaker Halloween [aka owl and bat] will be winging its way over the Atlantic to a new home.  A winner of the Christmas in July giveaway of Heartstrings charts has been chosen: Karen.  I've bundled those charts ready for mailing.  And I've put together an ice cream cone making kit [two different kinds of cones, several different kinds of sprinkles, chopped nuts, toasted coconut, several varieties of hard shell toppings, etc] meant to delight the grandchildren and compel my son and his long suffering wife to run out immediately for the ice cream needed to complete the kit.  I've included a rambling letter about going to the corner candy store with my grandfather to buy ice cream cones for the whole family, about the ice cream trucks that were commonplace in Brooklyn in the 50s ... in short, about my childhood memories of loving grandparents who lived in the upstairs apartment of our two family home.  It's hard to carry on the tradition of grandparental treats from the opposite coast but I'll give it my best shot.  You've got to be really creative if you want to spoil grandchildren who live 3,000 miles away.

And on that note, I am sending my granddaughter another needlepoint kit since she likes to sew like Grandma Regina.  [We sent her one for her birthday last month.]  I've got to nurture whatever genetic tendencies I've passed on to her through my son.   I foud this beginner's needlepoint kit for kids on the 123stitch website.

I purchased two more relatively simple kits that I'll send on later as she builds more skill.  These two kits will cater to her love of all things pink and her fondness for princesses.

Second, a trip to the jewelers to have some links removed from the band of the watch given me at retirement.  

Third,  a quick trip to the library to return unread a book borrowed on inter-library loan.  When I opened the book, I was disgusted to find it was riddled with unidentifiable stains.  It should have been removed from the shelves.   I am most definitely not a proponent of book burning but it might be justified in this case on purely sanitary grounds.

Fourth, a pre-op visit to my internist to be cleared for cataract surgery.  NYS requires patients to be cleared for non-emergency surgery 30 days prior to the operation, checking on heart and lung health.   I  have a visit to the podiatrist scheduled two hours later.  I hope the visits won't take the whole afternoon, because

Fifth, I hope to head into Nyack to do some antiquing.  I usually like to start my Christmas shopping about now and I often find the perfect gifts for my daughter, my Mom and my sister-in-law while browsing the stalls at large antique and collectible malls,.

Out of Shape But Optimistic

Getting started on an exercise routine, even a relatively mild one, can be quite an eye opener.  I have spent the bulk of my waking hours over the past twenty years sitting at a desk or standing at the front of a classroom in a sprawling one story school building.  No stairs to climb, no distances to walk, not much of an aerobic challenge.  So completing my one mile walk in place DVD was a form of torture.  But it will get easier,  It's just a matter of sticking with it long enough to retrain these rebellious muscles.

Yesterday, I did something I haven't done in years: I read a book, cover to cover, in one day.  Granted, it was not anything terribly deep, just Julie Garwood's Fast Track.  The next book on my summer reading list will engage a bit more brain power, it's one of Neil Gaimon's books.

The question of the day: why do doctors persist in maintaining the fiction that they make appointments to see patients?  I had a 10:00 appointment to see the eye surgeon, I was ushered into the inner sanctum at 11:15, had my eyes measured, scanned and photographed by five different machines run by three different technicians, was sent to a second smaller waiting area and finally saw the doctor at 12:30 .  I was released at 1:00.  I am thinking of starting a rebellion that will end in doctors having to respect the value of their patients' time or pay steep fines when they fail to do so.

The Sixth Decade

The sixth decade of life seems to be all about medical procedures for both my husband and myself.  Last week, it was his turn.  I had to take him to an outpatient surgical clinic to have a growth removed from his lower right eyelid.

My husband is used to being the driver and not the navigator on our excursions but obviously I was the driver this time.  The drive to the clinic was like something from a Marx Brothers film, marked by many a missed turn because Bill hasn't the knack of telling me when to turn until we have passed the appropriate point.  But eventually we got there. 

It was a very upscale surgical clinic: the people were solicitous and communicative, the surgeon and anesthesiologist were skilled and the place itself was quite lovely, complete with crown moldings , sculptures and comfortable furniture in the reception area.  But from the point of view of the person waiting, the best part was the courtyard on the ground floor..  It was open to the air, surrounded on all four sides by the building, paved with Belgian blocks, appointed with tables and chairs of heavy steel mesh and adorned by plantings in squares scattered throughout the area and along the borders of the space.  The gardens were not showy or glamorous, though quite attractive in a simple and elegant fashion.  Every plant were clearly selected for fragrance: with even the slightest breeze, one was treated to wonderful scents.  I am not quite sure what sort of a comment it makes on the quality, or range, of my life when I start writing reviews of surgical clinics and their waiting areas.  Anyway, it was a fine place to spend the two hours waiting for my husband's procedure to be completed.

I spent the waiting time stitching on Workbasket's Quaker Squirrel.  In the very peaceful atmosphere of the courtyard, I got quite a bit done.  The chart called for Belle Soie's Cinnamon Stick for which I substituted GAST Cinnamon and, just for a bit of contrast, GAST Sarsaparilla, for the acorn.  I'll post photos tomorrow when I catch up with all the stitching I have done since I last posted in May.

Later this week, he'll be having another surgery, removing a large growth [the size of an orange] from below his arm.  This one will be done at the out-patient clinic of the local hospital which has nowhere near as congenial a waiting space for relatives.  The doctors are 90% sure this is a benign growth but, of course, we'll be breathing a sigh of relief only after the biopsy makes that a certainty.

In August, it will be my turn.  I will finally have the cataracts removed.  I had wanted to get it done in  July but August was the earliest my doctor could schedule the procedures.  Still, I am looking forward to much better vision in the near future.

Shake It Up

I find myself in a very odd sort of slump.  I only want to do easy stitching lately, hence the concentration on Town Square ornaments.  Normally, I become bored with stitching that doesn't involve some complex specialty stitching or some intricate design [a la Teresa Wentzler] or some other such challenge.  It's as though I have entered the stitcher's equivalent of senility, incapable of doing anything beyond the most basic of projects.

I am blaming the slump on The English Band Sampler.  And, so, I will use the rest of November to purge my stitching persona of all the toxic effects of the months of endless eyelets on Band 6 [July & August], the weeks of stitching/frogging/stitching/frogging of that damnable double helix border in Band 7 [September] and the days on end of cowardly avoidance [October].  Just simple smalls for the remainder of this month.  Then, I will rise again, as my former stitcherly self, like a phoenix from its ashes.  That's the theory, anyway, a sort of purging and restoring.

So, here's the plan: starting on Monday, December 1st, I will resurrect the notion of rotation:

Monday: The English Band Sampler

Tuesday: Piper's stocking

Wednesday: The Dragon of the Summer Sky

Thursday: Mystic Smalls

Friday: Sewing Finishes

Saturday & Sunday: get out of the stitching chair and do a wide variety of things: walk, exercise, antique, reorganize, put the garden to bed for the winter, feed and observe the backyard birds, read, visit friends and relatives, try a new restaurant, experiment with the recipes I have been downloading, host a high tea ... whatever.

It is high time to shake up my life a bit and what better time than during the holiday season.

Fall Feelings

The air is a crisp 39 degrees these mornings though it is still warming up to the high 60s and low 70s during the day.  Indian Summer is here: those late Summer and early Fall days for which one never knows how to dress.  Should it be for the morning's chill or the afternoon's warmth?  Layering becomes the order of the day.  And being the sort of person I am, that means a trail of cotton sweaters and bolero jackets left behind.

Alas, though it is still warm enough for an afternoon of stitching on the patio, I am confined to an office and have been since August 25.  Tomorrow, we kick off the Religious Education Program with Parent Orientation and Meet the Catechist Night and repeat the process on Thursday.  It will be very good to see the children again.  So much pleasanter than dealing with the duplicitous archdiocesan bureaucrats.  This year will be bittersweet and full of last times as I will be retiring next September.  So I am determined to enjoy every moment with the children.  And, next year, I will be enjoying the Indian Summer afternoons stitching on the patio.

I Surrender

Yesterday the temps reached into the 50s and will do so again today BUT tomorrow temps will drop into the low 20s.  As if that isn't bad enough, the evening will bring snow.  There is still about six or seven inches of icy snow that hasn't melted on my raised beds in the garden.  I was hoping it would all have melted by March 17.  I always try to plant my peas on St. Patrick's Day for a May harvest.  I'll have to be clearing the snow this year to do my planting.

This is the very first year I have ever been troubled by joint pain due to cold weather.  The past four or five winters have been unusually mild.  Perhaps arthritis pain has been lurking beneath the surface all this time, it just never got cold enough to present.  I feel as though I have spent the last three months just trying to stay warm and upright.  The continuous cold has been bone deep.

So, let's make it official, Lady Winter.  I am raising the white flag. I admit defeat.  I surrender.  You win.  Please accept your victory and leave your sister, Spring, to rule in your name as you move on to conquer other lands.

The Lull ...

...  between yesterday's storm and tomorrow's.  We are expecting another 8 inches of snow.  So, today is the day to scurry around to the bank, the post office, and the grocery store.  I'll also be going into work three hours early to help make up for yesterday's snow day.  I may do so again on Thursday.  It depends on how much work is left in my inbox tonight.

I have hit a slow patch on The English Band Sampler so there won't be any photos for a little while.  I think I will have to prepare some linen for a small travel project just to have something to stitch when the single stranded Algerian eyelets in the sampler start crossing my eyes again.  The eyelets are stitched in an area hemmed about by cross stitches that partially conceal the threads to be counted when placing the arms of the eyelets.  I can only do so much before eyestrain gets me down.

I got Milady's Tea Shoppe out this morning and worked on it for two hours.  This is going to be one very pink building.  In spite of my general dislike of pink, I am enjoying the more "normal" stitching of this piece.  It makes a nice break from the complex variations of The English Band Sampler.  And I zig-zag stitched the fabric for Piper's stocking and a smaller piece of the same linen for a small pillow I'd like to stitch.  I know I haven't yet earned a new start according to my annual goals.  I don't consider the Tea Shoppe a new start since it is part of a series I have been stitching for some time as well as being one of my monthly goals.  But the pin pillow has been calling my name ever since my husband gave it to me last year as an anniversary gift.  I may just set the band sampler aside long enough to get a start on it as well.  So we should have a bit of variety going on again. 

One More Halloween Stitch

I started this piece on Halloween ... there's that seasonal stitching disorder thing happening again!  I finished it yesterday.  It was  a quick and easy stitch though I fear it'll be too large for an ornament at 75x75 stitched over 2 on 36ct.  Maybe a small pin pillow or pin keep or a flat fold stand up.  I did make a very few changes in the colors so as to use stash and replaced the basket with a cauldron which I thought more appropriate for the collecting of toadstools.  But otherwise, I was pretty faithful to the designer's intent.  As I noted in a previous post, this chart is a Primitive Needle design, all the more precious since Lisa's untimely death means there will no longer be any designs quite like this in the future.  I have stitched five or six piece's by Lisa and still have two more of her charts in my stash.  Lisa left a legacy of great quirky and primitive designs that bring joy to many a stitcher.  She is missed.

Here's another shot of the fabric, showing all the ornaments I have stitched on it.  There is probably enough room for two small ornaments or one large one.  Soooo ... this may not be the last Halloween stitch for 2013.  I do have a few more small charts that would do well on this fabric.  It all depends on how much time I have for stitching during the remainder of the year.

A New Start: It has been so long since I worked on one of the Town Square SAL ornaments ... not since August ... so much for doing one a month!  But I will try to get at least two more done before the year is out.  This month it is The Frame Shop.  This will make the 21st ornament for my Town Square Christmas tree, only 21 more to go for a complete set.  As you can see, I finished the roof line and have started outlining the windows of the upper story.



Just a Random Thought: I enjoy statistics so I tend to track my page views and audience and such through the statistics menu of blogger.  And what boggles the mind is that lately the post with the consistently highest page views is the post about "What I Kept"  from the door prizes of the October Stitcher's Hideaway I attended recently.   Now, granted, that post contains a link to an earlier post on pricing trends in the stitching industry but even so ... 390 page views ???!!!???  Lately, most of my posts merit a modest 75-100 page views.  I really don't get why this one merits so much more attention ... especially since the linked post about pricing trends made barely a ripple when first posted several years ago.

Stitching To Go

I'll be leaving my husband alone on the home front when I leave for my annual religious retreat Sunday night   I will provide him with sustenance by cooking a pot roast tomorrow and, perhaps, frying up some breaded chicken cutlets for a little variety.  In the meantime,  I have already packed my clothing, toiletries and diabetic friendly food stuffs so I don't crash on the carb heavy food served at this retreat house.

Now comes the fun stuff: picking out the stitching to carry with me!

I have decided to take:

The Woodland Angel Stocking: braid and beading yet to stitch

The Frame Shop: need to start this November goal piece

By the Light of the Moon: A Primitive Needle piece started on Halloween that I'd like to finish this month

Declutterring

We are in the process of de-clutterring our home, a closet at a time, a room at a time ... with my husband and I working in different areas so as to avoid a nasty divorce.  After 42 years, it would be a shame to come to blows over what is worth keeping and what is not.  I am working with household stuff for the most part and he is working with two filing cabinets filled with papers accumulated over 33 years in this house.  We each have our area of expertise and we each are sticking to our areas, with just the occasional consultation.  I must say he is keeping the shredder busier than the Nixon White House.  The recycling collectors are going to just love us.

 While working in the spare bedroom, I came across a box of old jeans that I had put aside because I had this ambitious idea of making a braided rag rug from old denim strips.  Like most of my ambitious ideas, this one pretty much stopped at the gathering stage.  I decided to get some of the preliminary work done, tearing the denim into approximately 2" wide strips.  Well, I wound the strips I have torn into a very dense and heavy ball, currently about the size of a soccer ball, but weighing quite a bit more.  As you can see it fills the basket in which I am storing it.  Since I still have about 20 pairs of jeans to tear up before sewing the strips together, I'll be start winding another ball.

I think I'd like to prep all this stuff during the summer and save the actual braiding for the winter.    The braiding would be a nice repetitive task to do while watching TV after a hard day's work, not too terribly taxing for my weary brain.  I am hoping to get a small area rug out of this: maybe a circular rug with a 4 foot diameter.  But until I start the actual braiding, I have no idea how much "shrinkage" there'll be.  I may have to hit the thrift shops for some more old jeans.

I wonder how many other old projects I will discover as I dig through the clutter.  I wonder how much I'll discard and how much I will keep.  Getting rid of the housewares will be easy enough.  My church has two annual white elephant sales, run by our Men's Club.  And I have an empty storage closet here in the school building.  I am bringing my "donations" to work and storing them in the closet till the Fall sale.  So far, I have brought tons of Tupperware, no longer needed by our much smaller family; dozens of mugs [everybody always gives teachers mugs, lotions or candles].  I have got to be careful when donating things students have given me - the items have to be old enough so that the students are already long gone from the program and won't have their feelings hurt.  Clothing and quality housewares can go to the consignment shop.  Books can go to the library.  When I finally uncover my husband's old stamp collections and my old coin collections, I shall see about turning them into cash.  For almost two decades [70's and 80's] Bill collected plate blocks and the First Day Covers [envelopes with new stamps, postmarked at their post office of origin/first release] and a complete set of postcards First Day Covers as well for that period.  I am figuring a little Internet research might help us realize a small profit.  I don't know what I'll do with old tools and fishing gear that Bill no longer wants or needs: probably the Men's Club sale for that as well.  It's interesting going through all the stuff.  When I run across some of my children's favorite books or those special toys, I send them on to my grandchildren with stories of how their Daddy or Uncle Dan or Aunt Ange used to enjoy the items.  It's kind of a family history deal.  Some heirlooms will be passed on to my children while I can still enjoy seeing them enjoy the items [why do people wait until they are dead and gone to pass things on?]  Oh, well, it's a nice summer project ... sort of like an archeological dig of Bill and my married life.  Somehow excavation sounds so much more dignified and upscale than de-cluttering.

June Bugs Me

May was tough but the beginning of June promises to be more trying and emotionally draining.

Being slammed at work is one thing, but having a full professional-social calendar is far worse.  I am, by nature, an introvert and, by choice, a hermit.  I'd rather chaperone 60 8th graders on a  two day retreat than spend two hours at the end of year parish team dinner making small talk.   June is the month for all of the end-of-year celebrations which I tend to consider worse than work, listed here in order from least onerous to most deadly:  on June 9, the parish's afternoon reception for volunteers [command performance as one of the "hosts"], on June 4, the parish team end-of-year dinner [command performance as one of the members],  and, on June 6, the archdiocesan Communion Breakfast [another command performance as one of the hundreds of honorees].  

The last mentioned event is the positive worst.  It is run by nuns and only those who have worked closely with nuns can know what this means.  Nuns build community and affirm the members of said community.  Normally, this is a good thing.  But when the community is the catechetical leadership of damn near all the parishes of the NY Archdiocese plus the regional and diocesan staffs ... well, you're talking about a very large, diverse and unwieldy community.  This community runs the gamut from urban sophisticates to "black dirt" onion farmers, from third generation white flight suburbanites to poverty stricken ghetto dwellers, with a few genuine hillbillies and native American Mohawks  thrown in for good measure.  You will find at least a dozen languages spoken by members of this group.  Indeed, sometimes it seems as though the only things making us a community are a shared faith and some artificial boundary lines separating us from the Albany diocese to the north and west and the Brooklyn diocese to the south and east..

Anyway, the Mass that begins the day [and, yes, a Communion Breakfast takes nearly a full workday] is the best part.  From there on,  it is all downhill.  The Mass is usually followed by a breakfast that has nothing to do with breakfast, or even brunch, foods.  It is the considered opinion of myself and a few close friends in the ministry that the food served is whatever was left over from the previous weekend's weddings catered by the venue ... a rather cheesy catering hall in Westchester that owes its main claim to fame and its name to a marvelous Hudson River view.  There is invariably a keynote speech, followed by recognition of 5 year, 10 year, 15 year, 20 year anniversaries of service; followed by recognition of 25 and 50 year jubilees of all the nuns in the audience celebrating those landmarks; followed by farewells to all those retiring from the ministry complete with curriculum vita noting every detail of their accomplishments in ministry.  And then come the awards for extraordinary service.  A Communion Breakfast that ends by 2:00pm is a rarity.  And then there is the hour long commute back to the office on the other side of the Hudson.  And when I say that this is a command performance, I do mean command.  Attendance at a certain number of archdiocesan events like the annual Communion Breakfast is one of the requirements for re-certification every five years.  "Yes, Sister, I will be happy to attend!"

I console myself that the remainder of June and all of July will be relatively peaceful and almost solitary.  Just the occasional parent dropping in to register or former student dropping by to say hello and maybe a few visits from publisher's reps trying to sell me something.  I'll be able to spend the bulk of my time closing out one school year and prepping for the new one in September.

Why I Didn't Stitch Yesterday

Yesterday was frantically busy with no time for stitching, or even a lunch break, for that matter.  When I got home from work at 9:00 pm, I feel asleep on the couch while my husband watched three or four episodes of Warehouse 13 on DVD.

Part of the problem was stress.  The 8th graders in my Confirmation prep program complied with all the NY State Board of Regents protocols to secure excused absences for religious observance while attending the mandatory retreat day on Monday 3/18.  No tests should have been given and no new material taught according to the protocols.    The kids returned to school to find out that no less than nine teachers gave tests and quizzes or taught new material.  I had been in written and phone contact with the principal and the attendance office about this last week.  The  principal had assured me that no child would be "penalized" for attending the retreat but the children had to give up lunch hours and study halls to make up tests that should never have been given that day in the first place.  Others missed notes for a test given the day of their return, clearly putting them at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the others in the class.

It didn't take long to draft my protest letter to the principal on which I will be copying the school board.  But it irks me that my kids' religious rights were violated.  The crowning insult was that I knew at least two of the teachers to be Catholics.

And, of course, there was the usual work to clear my desk before the 10 day Easter break.  When I return to the office on 4/8, I need to jump right into preparation for the First Communion mini-retreat, the registration mailing for the 2013-14 program and all the usual Spring routines [inventory, textbook & supply orders, drafting the 2013-14 calendar, building inspection and setting up a summer schedule for maintenance and repair].  This year there will be an additional chore, updating our AV inventory.  All the VHS tapes I so carefully amassed 10-15 years ago are wearing out and I need to draft a list of DVD materials to replace the outworn and outdated materials.

The hard part will be convincing the pastor that I really need to replace these items.  I have been on an austerity budget for the last 5 years with no new electronic equipment or resource materials purchases permitted.  We have been making do with donated used TVs, DVD players, etc.  My office computer is at least 12 years old and showing its age.  We have none of the standard teaching technology of the day: no computers in the classrooms, no teacher's lap-tops hooked up to projectors and large screen TVs showing computer generated Power Point presentations, no wireless in the building.  We are still using over-head projectors and transparencies.  I suppose I should be grateful I don't have to make do with mimeograph machines and reel-to-reel projectors ... or stone tablets and chisels, for that matter!  I have a hard time understanding how we can afford flowers for the church every week or expensive new matching sets of vestments for the deacons and priests but can't afford learning materials for the children who are the present and future of our church community.  Rant over!  For today, at least!  I can't promise not to revisit the topic periodically.  When even our 1st graders are fully "wired", for us  to be teaching with methodologies from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s is just so quaint.

It's Not Fall Yet, Folks!!!

Lately, I have been seeing a lot of blogs showing Fall decorations.  Many have changed their blog background to reflect a change of season that has not actually taken place yet!  What's with all you people?  Around here we are still suffering through 80 degree weather, high humidity, mosquito infestations and all sorts of other summertime miseries.  We are also enjoying fresh picked peaches from the local orchard, fresh picked tomatoes from the back yard, all sorts of fresh vegetables from the local farm market, near constant birdsong, frolicking squirrels and other summer delights.  We still have some days to wait till the Fall Equinox and, while sometimes I'd like to fast forward as much as the next guy, time passes as time passes.  There is no hurrying it along.

I'll put out my Fall stitched items at the end of the month and my Halloween items will go on display in early October.  Living in the moment seems to be the most intelligent choice  ... why waste one's limited treasure of minutes wishing oneself forward or backward in time?    For now I have my lighthouse model, my deck prism and my port and starboard votive holders on my hall table ... somehow late summer and boats go together in my mind.  Must be living so close to the Hudson River that has me thinking that way.  

TGIF

A day off in the middle of the week should make it feel shorter.  But somehow mine felt longer, probably because I caught up with everything current at work by Friday morning, all the loose ends that could be tied up were ever so neatly knotted, the inbox was emptied, the reports were updated.  I had to resort to starting to write a Family Catechesis Event I won't be running till November, just to fill in the time.  The truly exasperating part of all this:: right now, I should be very busy with registration and evaluating home study students.  But that presupposes that the remaining 1/3 of my families would actually register by deadline [already passed] and the home study families would keep their appointments [or, at the very least, return my calls].  This is all the more frustrating because I know from past experience that when I return to the office in mid-August after my usual one month summer break, most of the late registering families will come out of the woodwork ... and, at precisely the same time when all the textbooks arrive from the publishers and need to be inventoried and allotted, the new catechists need to be trained and vetted, the classrooms prepped, the Catechist binders need to be updated with current student information and all the Parent Orientation/Meet the Catechist materials need to be prepared.  What this will mean is that my assistants and I will have to deal with the added confusion of revising class lists, recounting class materials, updating the catechist binders ... on a daily basis and at the very time when those tasks should be "done" and finalized.  This invariably leads to a mistake or two or three and that inevitably leads to angry parents.  And it's almost always the parent that has the least right to complain who does so.  And, in my role as CRE, I represent the face of the institutional Church and thus, have to be patient and welcoming and serene ... when what I really want to do is look the recalcitrant parent in the eye and ask with my very best aging hippie intonations, "Are you freaking kidding me?"  I think this is why I like the Gospel of Mark so much: it actually shows Jesus getting a wee bit testy with the apostles and with the people, even, I fear, with his Mother.  Of course, He had a lot more to put up with than I do but somehow I find it comforting that even He found the people he served so lovingly a bit trying at times.  It keeps me sane and smiling when I'd much rather crack a few heads together.  In any case, it's good practice for the real challenge: the few really special families who will wait till the first day of class and just show up expecting me to drop everything and place their darlings, even as I run the Orientation Meetings and answer the questions of the newbies or deal with the needs of the returning families who registered on time.  You gotta love the entitled few!

Returning Incrementally

I never did post any monthly goals for May, or for June, for that matter.  It was just as well that I didn't bother, since none of the May goals would have been met.  Very little stitching has been going on since the second week of May.  Indeed, the only piece I have worked on at all has been Primitive Needle's Black'd Skie and even that wasn't much.  The dark green fill [Perfect Palette's Swamp Thing] of the tombstone in Block 3 was boring in the extreme and I barely completed a row a day on those rare days that I picked up the piece.  Things are slowing down a bit at work, though, classes have ended and most of the end-of-year reports and updates have been completed.  Just a few odds and ends need to be cleared up before starting the big push for next September's classes.  So, I'll just set three goals for the remainder of June:

1. Finish up block 3 of Black'd Skie

2. Finish up the scissor keep exchange ... already past due.

3.  Start and finish a Christmas bird ornament exchange ... due in early July.

The heat and humidity have really worn me out, though.  We didn't get our air conditioner window units in till last week, so my husband and I have been suffering with heat-induced lethargy.  The garden on the other hand has been thriving with all the heat and the rain.  The zucchini plants are huge and beginning to climb the trellis.  I already see one nice large blossom.  The broccoli plants are nearly 18" tall at this point and the tomato plants are thriving.  My tomato cages will arrive by Fedex this week and not a moment too soon..  The basil, rosemary and chives are also doing quite well.  I will be planting my second sowing of lettuce this weekend as well as some miniature carrots.

On the personal front, my husband and I have been kitten sitting for my daughter.  As some of my readers may already know, my daughter and my sister-in-law are the co-founders of a Trap-Neuter-Return feral cat management group called Four Paws Good.  Whenever they can catch a litter of kittens early enough, they foster the kittens and find good adoptive homes for them after neutering the little dears.  Well, my daughter had been fostering four very sweet kittens just about the time she was getting ready to move.  She had nursed the runt of the litter through a near fatal bout of pneumonia and the other three through the trauma of having been removed from their mother before weaning [by a well-meaning little boy who thought he was rescuing abandoned kittens] and needed a safe place to keep them throughout her move.  So we have had them for a week and a half ... she'll be taking them home to the new apartment tomorrow.  What have I learned from the experience?  First, that kittens are fearless and more energetic that I could possibly imagine.  I confined them in my dining room using temporary "gates" constructed of window screens and leftover lengths of laminate flooring.  My dining room looks like something out of a 1930's film about hobo camps.  The kittens sleep in a large cage [about 5x3x3] and I do keep them caged while I am at work, for their own safety.  But once I am home, the cage is open and they turn my dining room into a feline gymnasium.  The furniture I thought was flush with the wall is not apparently since these little guys can get behind it, under it, and over it.  The rungs of chairs, the screen "gates" and even the mesh of the cage are just so many Everests to these feline Sir Hilarys.  They have even managed to get up on the dining room table by jumping from stackable baskets to chair seats to table top.  They also play a very rough and tumble form of soccer or rugby with little balls containing jingle bells.  Or maybe I should call it Australian football ... as I said, these little guys are fearless.  The second thing I have learned is that I am not cut out to live with cats.  Even though I have cuddled them only briefly, I have developed rashes and welts and itches.  And cleaning litter boxes has really taxed my already sensitive gag reflex.  My husband says he hasn't heard such extraordinary sounds since the bad old days of morning sickness some 30 years ago.  Lest you think my husband insensitive, I hasten to add that he has taken on the chore of feeding the kittens their "wet" food which I find even more disgusting than the contents of the litter box, if that is possible!  Rowdy, Tumbleweed, Bennie & June are adorable and amusing and very sweet and I wish them well but I will be glad when they go home to my daughter.

Last Night

As anyone who read yesterday's post knows, I was in a funk most of Friday. But the day ended on a high note with my daughter's birthday celebration. We went to a really cozy little vegan restaurant in Nyack called Main Essentials. The food was excellent and served with such genuine good will by the dread-locked staff [it's a Rastafarian establishment] that if you closed your eyes and ignored the modest furnishings and cold NY temperatures, you might have been in one of those tony Bahamian resorts where the staff just about trips over themselves in an effort to please. Talk about island hospitality! I wish I had brought my camera. I would have taken photos of the steam table selections which included a lovely basamati rice, a bean stew, kale, mock chicken, empanadas, fried plantains and what my sister-in-law kept calling faux beouf. All of the mock meats were soy-based, of course, but the textures and tastes were amazingly real. I had rice with beans, some of the faux beouf stir fry, the plantains and the kale. Though not usually a fan of kale, this was scrumptious and not the least bit bitter. Those who had the chicken found it equally good. For my less adventurous husband, there was a Boca burger. There was also a soup available but none of us indulged. The place is also famous for its custom blended juices and fruit smoothies: my sister-in-law had a pineapple and canteloupe melon juice blend and my husband had the Caribbean Breeze smoothie made of bananas, berries, mango, pineapple and soy milk. And both my son and my husband enjoyed a ginger beer that had just enough burn to be very smooth. My daughter enjoyed her presents. We got her a delicate marcasite necklace and a small sculpture of a wolf by a native American artist. I also bought her some tubs of frozen cookie dough: two for her dogs in peanut butter and cheese & oats flavors and two chocolate chip for herself that are casein and gluten free with vegetable and fruit purees added for extra oomph. Not everybody's cup of tea ... but hey, she's vegan and she likes that sort of thing. So, all in all, the day ended well even if it began inauspiciously.

A Day Off

It all started with a stress test ... a fiendish medical examination designed to demoralize and humiliate those of us carrying enough excess weight to create a twelve year old child ... and a tall, muscular twelve year old child, at that. Wearing a paper shirt that would expose Twiggy's midruff and struggling to remain upright on the treadmill while it seems the entire office staff [okay, only the tech, the nurse and the doctor, but it seems like a crowd] gathers in the mistaken belief that you are encouraged by their cheers ... not my idea of a dignified way to spend a morning. And the day just went downhill from there. What can I say! Electricians not keeping appointments for the second week in a row. Long lines at the post office and the bank. I shudder to think what things will be like when the Postal Service makes good its threats to cut back hours and services. When the high point of your day is crossing off from your list of chores "make appointments for a full range of eye examinations, to have a colonoscopy and to see the podiatrist about diabetic foot issues", you know you just need to get some kind of a life. And it is supposed to snow tomorrow with sub-zero temperatures. Well, between now and then, our family will be gathering at a vegetarian restaurant to celebrate my eldest child's 35th birthday. And that's another thing, how the hell did I get to be old enough to have a 35 year old child? Fate plays cruel tricks. One day you are slender, young and vibrant, with waist-length hair the Clairol ladies would envy ... and the next you require undergarments that are major feats of engineering, gravity is your enemy and even your hair, once thick and lush, is thinning to the point that comb overs may be the wave of the future.The one thing I console myself with is that I have selected some really great gifts for my daughter's birthday. I know she will love them and I will get an extraordinary amount of pleasure watching her open her gifts.