Abby the Wonder Dog

Couch climber.  Killer of rabbits.  Terrier supreme.  Guadian of Mom.  Neighborhood watch alarm.

That's my girl!

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Two More for Hospice

I've finished a pink ripple prayer shawl and almost finished a men's lap robe for hospice.  I'm trying for one item per week.  Hopefully, that will be little enough not to damage my hand like I did last year.  We'll see if I can keep it to only that.  lol

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Lap Robe

I've crocheted three shawls for hospice.  I'm sure there are men in their care, too.  So I'm trying to make something the guys will appreciate. 

There's the first one for this season:

I used two strands of yarn together.  This is a thick, warm lap robe. 

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Pink Shawl

As promised, here is the next prayer shawl.  Sometimes I run across both a pattern and set of colors that I particularly love.  I'm occasionally sorry that I don't really need another afghan.  This shawl falls under that category.

I hope it comforts someone special.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Volunteer Watermelons

Last summer, my Kentucky sister gave us a watermelon when we went down to visit her in September.  I threw some of the seeds out in my garden and watched them start to grow this summer.  We had a bad year for drought.  I watered, but it was so hot, the tomoatoes looked like they were baking on the vine.  The watermelons obviously didn't get the amount of water they needed, but they grew as best they could.

First they started by growing up and over the fence.  Since I wasn't completely positive that they were watermelons, I didn't keep them on the ground where they belonged.

Here's what these rogue melons are doing:

If they grow any bigger, they will break the vines they are growing on. 

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Shawls for Hospice 2012 - Part 1

Every year when the gardening season slows down, I pick up my crochet hook and start on prayer shawls and some men's lap robes for hospice.  I figure if I do one a week, I can do about 29 this year before Valentine's Day.  Don't know if I can keep up that pace, but I'm about to try.  Here are the first two of this year's batch:

I'll post more pictures as I finish them.  I'm almost done with a really pretty pink and white one now.  I should be posting those pictures later today or tomorrow.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi



Shoes Don't Last Forever

When I buy a pair of walking shoes, they go through a fairly lengthy life cycle.

First, I wear them to work.  As often as possible I walk to work which is about half a mile from home.  If I go home for lunch, there is a two-mile day before I count the walking I do for house chores and what happens at work helping patrons.

If the shoe looks good enough to keep wearing after the inner cushioning starts to fail, I'll by new inserts - sometimes more than once.

Once the shoes start to look too ragged for work, I'll make them my house chore shoes or my yard shoes.  And I always try to have a pair that I use when I paint a room (or a shed or ...).

Today was the last day of use for a pair of navy blue shoes that I bought sometime during the 1980's.  I remember that I was teaching and, during the summer, I was working at Shearer's Pharmacy in Marengo, IL.  I often walked to work that summer as long as I could get a ride home after work.  The walk was 4 miles.  I am vertically challenged, so with my short legs, it would take me about 1 1/4 hours to walk to work.  I enjoyed doing it. 

(By the way, I found out the building where the pharmacy was had at one time been a grocery store.  Grandma Lena worked there.  She would walk to work wearing her two-inch heels.  The walk from her father's acreage was probably a good mile and a half, maybe two miles.)

I got annoyed with those shoes a little sooner than most because, whenever I walked in wet conditions like rain or dew, the blue from the shoes would bleed onto my socks.  Eventually I had a batch of blue-toed socks.  So they were changed into paint shoes.  There are drops of paint on them that I can identify from at least two houses ago.  They have moved with me from Illinois to New Hampshire to Illinois again and down to southern Indiana.

When I lost my previous pair of yard shoes, the blue ones went into more active service again.  I believe that was late last fall.  Whenever I mow or get into a lot of dirt like working in the garden, those shoes slipped onto my feet like they belonged there.  They were still comfortable after all this time.

Today, as I was mowing on the most perfect morning of the season, and just before I finished, the bottom of my shoe started flopping every time I took a step.  The same thing happened with my last pair.  The lowest layer had pulled loose at the heel.  I kept using those until the bottom layer started folding under my foot as I was pulling the mower backwards.  At that point, I decided they were getting dangerous, so I dumped them.

This time, there was no "wait until later".  The whole base of the shoe came off of the upper part halfway to the toe.  I let go of the "dead man's bar" on the mower and hobbled into the house as best I could.  I grabbed a roll of duct tape and wrapped two long lengths of it around the shoe.  I figured that would hold until I could finish the lawn.  It did. 

This is what I do to shoes before I'm finished with them.  It's not that I'm not willing to contribute to Goodwill or other worthy thrift stores.  It's just that those places wouldn't want what I have after I'm done with it.

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Bat in the House

I'm sorry to say that a bat got into the house last night.  At first it was only in the kitchen, having come in through the back door when we were letting the dogs out.  I closed off the room as best I could and we tried to shoo it back outside. 

We have a kitchen door leading to a narrow concrete landing above the basement stairs.  Then there is a door beyond that going out to the backyard.

The bat left the kitchen, and we thought it had made it completely out into its natural habitat.  I quickly followed and closed the kitchen door.  Unfortunately, the bat made a u-turn and got itself between the door and the jamb just as I shut the door.

I was going around opening the utility room door and taking deep breaths again when I noticed a dark, raggy-looking thing at the top of the kitchen door.  The bat had one point of a wing sticking out and its little mouth (with nasty looking teeth, I might add) was opening and closing.

I opened the door to let it out.  It flew into the living room, made a u-turn, and then I lost sight of it.  It could have flown up the steps to the second floor bedrooms.  I went up and looked around, but you know that bats can hide in tiny, dark places.  I closed off every door on the second floor, so that whatever room that creature was in, it would stay there.  I was hoping it wasn't in the rooms required for sleeping. And sleeping seemed slightly out of the question with a bat loose in the house.

Abby kept nosing around Les's desk in the middle room on the main floor.  Since I was sure the bat was upstairs, I didn't really pay attention.  Both dogs were acting a bit odd, but I chalked it up to their having had their heartworm pills that morning and the recent bat ruckus.

Eventually, I was doing something in the middle room and I found the bat.  It was lying on the floor, all unnatural angles and not moving.  We scooped up the poor thing's body and disposed of it before the dogs could decide it was a toy.

I hope no more bats fly into the house.  It makes my stomach all gritty to think of being a bat killer.  I appreciate the bug-eating that they do - as long as they do it outside.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Two Anniversaries a Year

I married a widowed father of one girl.  My daughter was very grieved by her mother's death and Les thought it would be a good thing if I were living with them to stablize the emotions in the household.  I'm not a liver-in, so we married at the courthouse a couple of days after school got out for the summer - May 30th.
My mother's brothers and sisters were all planning to get together for a family reunion in our area for a week starting August 9th.  I wanted a church wedding with all of the family present, so we planned a second ceremony for the 9th.

Weddings are a lot of work, so while I was addressing wedding invitations, I told Les, "If we have two weddings, I get two anniversaries every year."

To date. Les has honored that request and we just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.  We've been married just over 15 years.

I always have to explain it when I tell people how long I've been married.  But then I've never lived a "normal" life. 

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Bread Story

This morning, I wanted to cook a turkey breast and bake some bread.  The turkey went into the oven with its attendant vegetables and then I turned to the kneading of the dough.

I usually knead the dough, let it rise, put it in the pans, let it rise, and then bake it.  This time, because the turkey was in the oven and the bread rose faster than I expected it to, I punched the dough down and let it rise a second time before I put it in the pans.  That was Grandma Lena's way of doing it and I knew it wouldn't hurt anything.

Just as the turkey was finished and I was about to trade it for the bread, when a transformer in the neighborhood blew.  No electricity and bread ready to bake.

My first reaction was to turn the dough out onto waxed paper, pack it in a plastic bag, and freeze it until the electricity came back on.

It didn't take as long as I thought it might for the power to return.  So I grabbed the dough out of the freezer and discovered that it had been working even while it was cooling off.  The waxed paper was a bear to peel off of the dough, and I had to let the bread rise yet again before I could bake it. 

The long and the short of this story is that bread dough doesn't like to rise four times before baking.  The final product was flat and bitter.  I ended up starting from scratch and baking a whole new batch.  Phew!

I'll use the flat bread to feed the birds.  It won't be wasted.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Food Subtraction

I have long held a belief that certain calories should be subtracted from the daily intake count. 

Let's say that someone offers me a doughnut and I don't eat it.  Those calories should come off of the tally of what I did eat.  Let's see, 1800 minus 400 for the doughnut equals 1400 for the day.  A very respectable day's eating.

Today Les took me to the Chinese buffet for lunch.  I ate one plate of food and some fruit and a single square of brownie.  I could have eaten three plates of food, so in the end my calorie count could have been below zero. 

I like it! 

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Writer's Block - I mean, Blog

I went into LinkedIn and found a children's writer's group and a children's publisher's group.  Both groups have accepted me, so now I get daily updates from them.  When I introduced myself in the Children's Writer's group, one member asked me for a link to my blog or website so she could look at my books. 

I understand that nowadays writers have to self-promote.  Publishers don't do that for you anymore unless you are already well-known - and then, what's the point?  I haven't put out a book of any note since 2002.  No one at that time was blogging and few authors had websites. 

I am continually amazed at how fast things change.  I can't keep up with the devices people bring me in the library and ask, "How do I...?"  I don't know!  I've never seen one of those before!  Take it to a techie.  Better yet, hand it to a three-year-old.  They'll figure it out.  I'm terrified that I'll push the wrong button and it will self-destruct.

In my day, we got up off the couch to change the channel on the TV of which there were three or four channels.  The toaster was one of our more advanced pieces of technology.  Plastic was a recent invention having been developed in WW II.  Our shampoo bottles were still made of glass and were deadly if dropped in a shower.  Everything else has been developed since then.  And I'm not that old!  I can't even get SSI yet.

What does it say in Daniel, "In the last days, knowledge will increase and people will travel to and fro."  I didn't look it up exactly but that's close. 

Today the news said that Iran was much closer to nuclear weapons that previously thought.  That means the war with Israel is closer than previously thought, and Jesus has His foot on the threshold eagerly waiting for the word to bring us home. 

I can't wait.

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Comments on People's Opinions

This Chick-Fil-A hoohah has made people show what they really think.  I'm not sure all of them are listening to what they are actually saying.

The news show that I listen to posted comments that people called in to the show about whether they agreed with Chick-Fil-A's CEO's stand on family values.

One person said this, "This is America. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.  But no one is entitled to be bigotted or closed-minded."

I translated this to mean, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion as long as they agree with me."

Is anyone other than me concerned about the thought police?  Doesn't tolerance work both ways?  Shouldn't I be able to say what I believe without being called prejudiced, bigotted, closed-minded, intolerant, racism, homophobe? 

Why is Christianity the only religion that has become unacceptable?  We are supposed to celebrate alternate holidays, remove all references to the Christian God or Jesus, give no offense to any Muslim even if they state that they want to drive Israel into the sea or if they blow each other (and us) up.

America has become so multicultural that we have rejected our foundations.  And the thought police will win unless the silent majority stops being so silent.

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi