Tea Time & such

One of the things I have noticed about creative people is that they must create. I don't mean they do so at convient times,(I mean look at this daughter's blog life of a fritz, she just can't help creating, even when she will be sad to see her good friends leave.)I mean they must create even at inconvient times. While I had my grandkids this past weekend my parents also decided to pay us a visit. Of course I love having my mom and dad here. They are such wonderful people and still going as they hit their mid 80's.

So I'm thinking as I know my parents will get here and want some coffee, which is of course the "proper" thing to do. Did I mention that my mom is the quientisential southern belle? Did I also mention that two of my daughters think it is too funny she is so proper. When my little life author was about 8 and we went to Florida. As I was driving trying to find my way to our motel, in a state where I had no clue where I was, in the middle of freeway construction with my mom arguing-no wait-instructing me which way to go, she said to the, bouncing off the walls-literaly, three kids in the back 8, 5, and 3 "lets be calm and gentle." That author started to laugh and giggle, so hard that I as the driver almost lost our way. So Calm and Gentle has become part of our lexicon.

Just so you will know, I did get the coffee ready. I did get the tea cups my mom loves and I did get the... Oh no! The napkins! I have really really old napkins for the kitchen. Ok I admit it. My kids always comment on how rag tag my kitchen napkins are. Well, they are for the kitchen use, not dinning room use. We always use cloth napkins, and it looks I have trained them to do so in their own homes. (Yea me. One for the Mom) But, of course I would not get the "good" napkins out of the dinning room, even though I have gotten most of my damask and linens from thrift stores and meticuosly clean them. OH No. I had to go upstairs and sew new napkins.

I don't mean I just wanted to. I had to. I was compelled to sew new napkins. After all I had cleaned my living and dining rooms so my mom could see that I don't always have a flea market in my home. Not that I care, "...and out of the back of the class came a sarcastic, 'yeah, right.'" But I did get them done and we did have our coffee in style and we did use my new napkins.

The funnyest thing happened after we all had coffee and chit chatted. My mom and dad folded the napkins they had used with the stripes going sideways. Am I missing something? Is there a southern belle way to fold napkins? What is it in our psyche that wants us to still impress our moms? I'm a Grandma for goodness sake. Aye, there is and always will be something in us that wants to please those we love. My mom is always good about not presuring me to live up to her wants, but still I do. I am just thankful I have a sence of humor and that I love to create.

Well gotta go sew potholders out of quilt squares cause I am going to a bridal shower and that quilt was never gonna get made anyway. Proverbs 10:4 But the hand of the diligent makes rich.

Grandkids

Our grandkids came to visit for the weekend. Here is what our oldest did.

My oldest grandson, age 7, had a "Museum" set up around the living room. Here is the Model Plane C130.

He also set up a "Tea set from Colonial Era 1776," on the table.

A "diarama" of Germany invading Poland.

A Pirate ship made of legos with pirates at the mast.

Treasure in the treasure chest.



World War II Helmet with gun and flag.

Red Confederate hat with a "spyglass."

Black Union hat with a cannon

My favorite is the first ever "game boy." A part off of a toy scooter.

Of course we had a great time. And we didn't even have to leave home.

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