Gorpy

Today was a Gorpy day. I think my brother said that word first. If you think different, well too bad I am claiming it for him. Some things you just have to keep in the family. But even though it was Gorpy it reminds me how we need some time to be cocooned. Yesterday it rained freezing rain here in the southern part of Arkansas. Yes, we do have winter. It is called January. I'm not kidding. In February we will begin to have weather in the 70's. Oh it won't be all at once, but there will be days where the wasps come out, because the sun is so strong and warm. Green clumps of grass and pretty little spring flowers will be all over the place.

But today was a Gorpy day. Rainy, sorta, and cold sorta, and well just Gorpy. But, I had a good day. I stayed in and sewed. Again! On the curtains I am making for my daughter. Actually they haven't been that hard, but we have been on the road for nearly a week. Our friend Ann died, and my father-in-law has been gravely ill and well, we just have been busy away from the house. You might recall I am a Homebody . I also have been a substitute teacher here in our district, so today I had to get really far into the project, and I did. I will have pictures as soon as I finish.

Yesterday, during our run in with winter, I got out the turkey carcass that my son-in-law Nathan had saved for me from Thanksgiving. (thanks Nathan) Yes it was frozen, so don't do that worrying thing. I got my stew pot that holds way too much. I mean how much broth do two people really need? Whatever the freezer will hold, is how much. It is great, cause you can stew, and stew and stew. I put in the carcass, garlic, onion, and celery. Did you hear that the celery is really the thing that makes the chicken soup help with a cold. Imagine that! The lowly celery. Oh don't get me wrong, I love celery, especially the inside celery sticks that are the lightest. Mmmmmmm good. And I have even taught my grandsons to eat peanut butter smoothed on top of celery. One of the greatest after school pick me-ups a mom ever had. But all this time I thought it was the garlic. Maybe it is just synergistic.

But I digress. I stewed the turkey until there wasn't any thing left of that ole bird. The picture to the left says it all. That is what is left of the carcass. Then I strained it into another smaller pot, took some of the turkey meat off the bones and made some dumplings. Yes we had turkey and dumplings. But, just for reference I called it chicken and dumplings. But since today was a Gorpy day and my husband and I were on different eating schedules I heated up a bowl of delicious Chicken and Dumplings. I put it on the table, along with a cornbread muffin I had mixed up, fresh iced tea, (I don't like ice in my drinks during the winter, and hardly in the summer) a smiggen of my YeaHaw hot pepper jelly left in the jar and a wonderful meal was had by all. That would be me of course.

So even if you feel a day is Gorpy, enjoy what God has given you. It is Gorpy for a reason. And anyway you won't be able to change the weather, so change your attitude. You don't want to hear you mama saying, "Gorpy is as Gorpy does."

Today is Joshua's birthday! I can't believe he is 30 years old. Jemimah was 28 on the 21st of January and I always think of them as a unit. But talk about different! These two are as different as night to day. Jemimah is so neat and clean and Joshua doesn't want to remember if it is today. It is so unusual to have two people born so close, two years apart, to be so different. When they were little Joshua and Jemimah were two running, jumping & moving kids. They did everything together and Jemimah would actually do them before Joshua who is the older of the two. She climbed a tree higher than he did. She rode a bike before he did. Even when they were both in baby beds, she climbed out before he did. They were like Twinkies. Now they are like Hostess cupcakes and Ring Dings. Same, yet different. I don't have any pictures of them together on my computer. But, they are always in my heart.
I love you two.
Happy Birthdays

Knowing Ann

Today was a sad day, but a homecoming day. Today we had a funeral for Ann Booker of Emmet Arkansas. She was such a wonderful person to know here on earth and I know she will be a great person to know in heaven. Being a pastor's wife is an adventure. Some times you are judged even before you enter the church. But, that wasn't the case with Ann. The minute I stepped onto the property of Emmet Baptist Church she accepted me as if I had been there all my life. She was a teacher in the local high school, active in the community and in the church. You might say she was the face of the church. She played the piano and held positions in the church and was always there.

But she never made a big deal about her place in the church. She always made me feel I was the most important person in the church, just like she made everyone feel. She was so beautiful and elegant. Always well dressed and manicured, yet she hugged everyone as if they were her own kids. She is a beautiful soul. I miss her already. I know her husband, does, her daughters, sons-in-law, grandsons, granddaughter, brother and sister, and of course her best friend Rosalind do miss her so much.

It is so hard to describe grief. Of all the things you can take a course for, grief really can't be prepared for. You can prepare for a lot of events. You can go to counseling for pre-marriage, after marriage or for anything in between. You can take pre-birth classes, or pre-college classes, or pre-business owner classes, but nothing you take can prepare you for grief. It is the hardest of all emotions. It is like that old song, "Why do the birds go on singing? Why do the seas rush to shore? Don't they know it's the end of the world? It ended when I lost your love." That is what grief is like. Your world is shattered. So why doesn't everything just stop. It just doesn't.

We miss the body of the person we love. We should. We know as believers in Jesus Christ we will see them again, but we miss them in the here and now where we live. Joseph's reaction to his fathers death is just like ours. "Then Joseph fell on his father's face, and wept over him and kissed him." So, it is a part of grief. The missing of the person inside the body we love. May we never lose that. Thanks Ann for being the kind of person who loved not only the soul, but showed that love by hugging the body's that housed them. We love you.

Warming up my mind

Today I was working on some curtains for a client of my daughters. You know that girl over at My little life. Well, all day I have been sewing sewing sewing! Up and down the stairs, cause my sewing room is upstairs and my dining room has the only table long enough to work on these curtains. Here is a snippet of the table in my sewing room. A summer beach/swim bag I am designing for my etsy, A Razorback bill cap I have to mend for my husband, a couple of baskets I want to put fabric in for Easter decorations ,etc. Why do crafty people have to be so creative? So much to make and so little time. Isn't it great!

I came downstairs,(again), because I was fixin' to get supper ready when I walked through my living room and saw the sun coming in the windows. That is such a warming feeling. Even here in Arkansas where we will have winter now for about two weeks. Then it is spring and sooner rather than later it will be summer. But the sun shining in makes you remember that you really like this winter pick me up. The sun makes me feel warm, not just physically warm, but warm in my mind. As if it is saying be warm, the sun didn't go away.

I really can't blame the druids for being scared every year when the shortest day would come around. After all, they didn't live around the equator so when the sun set earlier and earlier they were in darkness and cold longer and longer. But you would think that someone would see that the same thing happened year after year.

Which brings us to faith, (wow that was a really cool transition), because if you thought that what you did would influence the earth and natures cycles and of course that included the sun, you might think it was up to you to save yourself and those that you love. Hey does this sound like anything we are hearing about now. You might do something drastic like have a human sacrifice or set things on fire to bring back the sun. And, you would see by golly it worked! The sun returned. So now you have set a precedent. If we have a sacrifice to appease the "sun god" the earth will obey. Jeez, and we think they were crazy. Aren't we being told the same thing today. It is our fault the earth is warming. We have to sacrifice our lifestyle to the "earth god." Not only am I insulted by that thinking, I feel the shamans of today's world want to hold sway over our lives. But I'm not going to go along.

Here is what I believe 3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Wow! It is all about Him. Not what we do, but what he does. So now I get to enjoy what he has done. Which is why I love the sun in the winter. He called the light "day," It is good.

Just warming up in my mind.

Loving Dolls

I have been loving dolls since I was a little girl. I love baby dolls and girl dolls. I mostly love to love dolls. I once spied a gaggle of dolls at our local thrift shop and I had to buy all of them. Ostensibly, I wanted them to come home and dress them, but really I just wanted them to come home with me. One of my grandsons loves to play with the babies. He loves to put them in the highchair and feed them and wrap them up and put them to bed. I am assuming he does this in his mothers day out class, cause he doesn't have any babies at his house. He reprimanded me one day when I called them "baby dolls." "Meme," he said, "they are babies." Which I understood to mean, not to call them dolls, which would mean they are not real.

I am the one who usually does the surprise gift for my mom on Christmas. One year I found a reproduction Patsy doll to give to my mom. My mom tells the story of how she had just given birth to me and the twilight medicine made her loopy. She held me for the first time and she cried talking to my dad saying how she now had a Patsy doll. The doll she had always wanted as a little girl, but couldn't afford. So I was her little doll. So at age 76 she finally had a real Patsy doll.

But, this year was different. This year my mom made a surprise. She gave me my favorite doll. Poor Pitiful Pearl. I was absolutely astounded. I couldn't believe it. She had a new dress, but she was as sweet as she ever had been. When I first saw her as a little girl in one of the catalogs, Sears, JC Penney or Montgomery Ward I just fell in love with her. All the other dolls were very pretty, and I certainly had my share of those dolls, but this is the doll I truly loved. I wanted to take care of her and love her. I often would say later on as an adult, in my mothers presence, that I didn't know what ever became of her. She never said, and if she actually "got rid of her" I don't want to know. Now Pearl is back home and looking over me from my dresser. Now I can love her.

But I have other dolls. Oh I don't mean all those expensive dolls. I think they are so beautiful like works of art, but I want real dolls you play with, and mostly dress. I have my youngest daughter's Felicity doll, which I dress. There are many patterns for the American Girl dolls. I made up a clown outfit out of vintage material for Halloween, even though we don't celebrate Halloween, she was all decked out for a party!

I am now dressing my Barbie. She has been with me for 23 years and I have been collecting things for her like telephones and chairs. So today, I had to make her a ski outfit. It is winter or at least it should be winter. She needs to go Cross Country skiing and be warm, so I have her in new overalls and a new hat. All the other things in the picture are from her collection. It is so weird to finally have a place to show off Barbie and her clothes. It is just too much fun.

I gave my husband a doll for a Christmas present. A Lou Holtz Doll. (Sorry he can't come out of the bag yet!) I'm not so sure he is into the whole doll thing yet, but it is start and it is about the Razorbacks! We can only hope.

Happy Twenty-oh-eight

Homebodies unite! Oxymoron?

Today I was working on my mantra. Oh, I don't mean I was trying to find zen or anything like that, but I was trying to get my mind around doing what I love. That is what I am telling myself these days. Not that I haven't been doing that most of my life, but I find myself in pecular situations where I have the opportunity to work outside the home, but I absolutely hate it. I don't mean I hate the people I have to work with, I hate being out of my home.

I love being in and around my home. I am a true homebody. I can remember even when my husband was going to school and I had three children under the age of 6, we were living in an apartment in a complex where there were many people, but I loved being in my "home" as it were. I just have to accept the fact that there are many days I would just as soon stay home as go anywhere else.

Today I was up in my sewing room on the second floor where I can view my domain, (you remember the kind that is an actual place, not an internet cyber-nowhere place) and I just sat in the sun sewing and just enjoying my life. I have been sewing aprons like this one which is at my etsy shop. It has been a very satisfying experience. Creating, executing and hopefully sending to a new home. I was emailing a fellow fabriholic, (person addicted to fabrics) about loving fabrics. Not just certain fabrics, all kinds of fabric. And mostly if they are very colorful. And not only do I love fabrics, I feel like a mother of adopted orphans. I want to give them new homes where the people will love and take care of them.

The window was open, because of course it is January and it should be 70 degrees outside, and I sewed and sewed and sewed loving every minute of it.

So, when I begin to feel myself wanning and I feel the tug of Outside Job I repeat my mantra:"Do what you love. Do what you love." I am always encouraged and feel myself going again for another session of glorious creating.

So do what you love, do what YOU love.

Five totally acceptable weird things

Ok here is my first totally acceptable weird thing. Because today was the "putting Christmas away" day I must confess something. If you know me this will knock your socks off. I love to organize my Christmas decorations! Ok, it is out there. I don't know why I am unorganized in other areas, but when it comes to Christmas I know where every item is located. Just look at the first box I packed. It has what is packed in the box and is labeled Box A. I don't do this with any other items in my house, but I do it with Christmas. But, wait there is more, I also have index cards with the box letter and what is in each box filed in my card file. Yes, I am addicted to organizing my Christmas. I love the items I have. Just look at these funky 12 days of Christmas glasses. I began collecting them and now I always buy any I see, at the thrift store or at a garage sale. Anywhere. And since I have been collecting them for 30 years I still haven't had a complete set yet. But as Scarlett said (sorta), "I'll think about that tomorrow. After all tomorrow's another day!"

2)The second totally acceptable weird thing about me is I have no natural concept of time. Don't get me wrong, I do have a very natural and realistic concept of the future, weird huh?, but I have had to develop a real-life working concept of time. I was always late wherever I went and still I have to work on backing up my time machine to make sure I can leave early enough to get somewhere, but it is a habit learned. I am never without a watch, but this has come about only because I needed to know what time everyone else was working on, not because of some innate need for me.

3.) the third totally acceptable weird thing about me is I'm not in love with mushy shows, game shows, sitcoms, talk shows, or sports shows. I love funny, quirky shows like the hit "Ugly Betty." I love the characters, because they mix the real, Betty, with the "we hope they are really like that," Amanda. My all time favorite movie is "What's up Doc?" with Barbara Streisand and Ryan O'Neal. It just has that crazy mix that makes it work. But the totally acceptable weird thing is I love News Shows. I am addicted to News. I have worn out the buttons on my remote where I flip from one News show to another. Who'd guess. Quirky and Newsy?

4.) The fourth totally acceptable weird thing about me is that I am always curious. I want to know why the sky makes these beautiful pictures. I took that picture at a stop sign thru the windshield on my way to Emmet. I don't want the answer to be just generic, I really want to know why does it happen and how does it happen. But it isn't just about clouds, it is about every thing. I want to know why. I am always looking, questioning, pondering who, what when where and how.

5.) The fifth totally acceptable weird thing about me is my need for clean clothes. Oh, I don't mean the usual need for clean clothes, I mean a real crazy need for clean clothes. I investigate cleaning supplies. I find them in the car care section of Walmart, or at the fabric store or at the back of a deep, deep discount store, where the items are dusty. (You know the place.) Yes, I had my kids start washing their clothes when they were 6 years old. They started off with towels and moved up to the big stuff. I always said when it came to Church clothes that I had two rules, "clean and not lewd." Most moms could understand the first, but didn't know how to do the second. My response was, "That is why I am the Mom." But, the totally acceptable weird thing about me is I'm not that way about any other thing. I was going to say "ask my kids." But please don't.

Fast Food Generation Style

Yesterday I took my mom to "help" my daughter by babysitting and helping out any way possible. I love to see my daughter and I especially love to see my grandsons. My mom is 84 and is doing great, but she doesn't like to drive in the big city. Here she is in one of Jerusalem's 4th of July hats. (See Jerusalem's Storriahome etsy shop for this kind of fancy.) My mom is so much fun and she loves to be around her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. So I picked her up and away we went. The big city has fast moving cars lots of people and fast food.

The first time my mom ate in a McDonald's was when she took my kids and me to Florida. She loves the beach and I think she would love to visit it more often. My mom is the ultimate Southern Belle. Very polite, very proper, and very opinionated about how and when you should eat. We had driven a long time and the kids were tired but as soon as we checked into the motel they wanted to go swimming in the pool. After a good cooling down we got dressed to go eat supper. My mom always reminds us that dinner is really the noon meal. Supper is what you eat just to fill up. Dinner is the real meal.

I suggested that since the kids are hungry, and I mean after swimming hungry, we go to McDonald's to eat. I know that kids and fast food is what it is about and if they have a playground maybe they will sleep long into the morning. Hope, Hope, Hope. But, my mom insists that we eat in the motel dinning room. After all, we need to go somewhere to wind down after our travel and swimming.

The waitress brings our menus and what do they want? Hamburgers! That's right, hamburgers! The waitress brings mom and my salads and-uh oh, a basket of crackers. I have never seen kids eat and enjoy crackers so much and with the sodas they ordered, it was like cornbread in a bowl of peas. Those bellies plumped up like a chi-chi-chia pet. We had to take the burgers and everything else to the room. I don't think I ate a complete meal the entire trip.

The next morning my mom says, "How about McDonald's for breakfast?" From then on my southern belle mom was on board for home cooking or fast food. Either way we could eat while the kids jumped, ran and just had fun. After all isn't that what having a grandma is all about?

Yesterday as we were going home around 5:45 pm she became hungry and wanted to go eat. I suggested we get something to eat on the way. She loves Wendy's chili, but she didn't think we could eat it driving. So we got hamburgers. Once again we delved into the world of fast food. She loved her burger and so did I.

It is amazing to me how we can live so long and change so fast. Here she is 84 years old and eating in the car. 100 years ago in 1908 our mothers and grandmothers would not have been allowed to go out at night, much less travel to another town at night going 75 mph. I always respect my mom and the way she thinks, but I'm glad she respects and trusts me to help her think and try new ways. I hope I am that way with my children. From generation to generation, life gets passed on.

The Color Orange

Do you love colors? I do. I love all colors. That is why I love orange. I was looking at some of the things in my collection of fabric (you should read,"overwhelming pile of unused woven threads") and I was amazed at the collection of orange influenced fabrics I have and how much I really love orange. Look at this sheet which I bought at a local thrift store. You see what I mean.

I was amazed, because I don't wear orange. I have too much red in my skin, really, too much red. I have four children and only my son has the skin color I have. My two youngest daughters can wear orange and lime green. I don't remember ever seeing my oldest daughter in those colors, but if you put either of those colors on me it is horrible. I'm serious. It is terrible. So it is amazing to me that I am so drawn to orange.

The shower curtain in my bathroom are two vintage tablecloths sewn together and they are in the orange family.

I'm rather flummoxed about my love of orange. I'm flummoxed until I realize that I am orange. Have you ever noticed that you can't look away from orange? Go ahead try. You have to look at orange. You have to pay attention to orange.

With blue you can let it stay in the background. With red it speaks out loud, but you can look away. But not with orange. You have to look. You just have to. Yellow is playful and pink is sweetness. But orange is making a statement. I guess that is why the hippies loved orange. They would not be ignored.

And that is what made me realize I am orange. I don't want to be in the background. I don't want to be playful and I don't want to be speaking out loud. I just don't want to be ignored. If you look at the table cloth in the picture here you are drawn to the orange. It is not ignored. I love all colors and I love orange. Now you know me. You know that you should not ignore me. I am Orange!