The Birthday Quilt

I've been lugging around boxes of scraps for years. I always thought how cool it would be to make a quilt of all the clothes I'd constructed (and that my girls had constructed) over the years. At the last big family get-together, I divided up all the scraps and gave a selection to all the girls so that that they could start lugging around their own set of scraps. Lo and behold, my darling daughter, GL, actually made them up into something--a wonderful birthday quilt for me. I tried not to tear stain it because I was truly touched. And no, I am not using is as an antimacassar. I'm still looking for the perfect place to hang it. This house gets a lot of sun, and I don't want it to fade, but I also want it to be in a prominent place so that I can look at it often. Be sure and click on the photo to get an up close view of all the wonderful fabrics she included.

It's a beautiful object all on its own, but if you don't sew, you can't quite get the importance of seeing all those projects. Every small square represents a memory. There are tons of beautiful dresses on here but some are not dresses at all. My clown suit (GL had one that matched), NS's beloved cow shorts, some of the fabric from the Hawaiian shirts I made for the whole family, lots of  80s bloomers--those sure were cute, and even a piece from a flour sack that I used to play fashion designer with when I was a girl. GL and I are sure that she made up at least one of these projects, that NS did and that my mom did. I am almost positive MF will find a square on here that represents one of her many sewing projects as well. Those years we were making so many dresses, it is kind of a blur who made what. But that would make it truly unique and would represent three generations of sewing machine magic. 

I realize how blessed I was to have all those girls at at time when home sewing was not only possible but affordable. Beautiful dresses made out of cottons were all the style and we made some absolute gorgeous ones. We even had an orange one that had a big square collar and ribbon ties at the side waist that fit all of us. You never knew which one of  us would be wearing it.

Thanks to GL for an amazing present.

Birthday Fun

It's been an awesome day!

What a great day it has been! It really started yesterday with Skype calls from my parents and my daughter and her two daughters in the Czech Republic. I've received greetings from friends and former students from around the world, I've opened some lovely presents, Michael bought me flowers, and we had lunch in Bethlehem with my niece, Holly and her husband, Mark. And I've talked to all four of my children, my parents and my brother and nephew on the phone. The Playmobil guy was standing in front of a toy store in Bethlehem and I couldn't resist.

Lunch was especially nice. It was great to get to know Holly's new husband, Mark, better. And visiting with Holly makes any day a good one. We were somewhat early getting to Bethlehem for lunch so we visited the Moravian Bookstore. I had read much about it on the Internet. It is a truly wonderful independent bookstore. The restaurant was called Mama Nina Foccaceria and it's on Main Street.  The food was very delicious and out of the common way. I had a crab cake on a bed of spinach in a red cream sauce with scallops and shrimp. Very, very nice.

We came home after lunch and for the rest of the day I've been enjoying telephone calls. No wonder I decided to have more than one birthday! They're fun!

Why I'm Having More Than One Birthday This Year

1. I just thought it was a good idea.
2. I've had a few memorably bad ones (the funeral of JFK comes to mind) that I need to make up for.

3. I've spent a lot of birthdays over the years either preparing or cooking or eating leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner.
4. I've missed a few to headaches.
5. I don't have any of my children with me on my real birthday this year.
6. I can't have my favorite German Chocolate cake any more so I must deserve some other kind of reward.
7. It's been a long year.
8. Having just one birthday puts too much pressure on the day.
9. I've spent many of my birthdays with my inlaws because we were there for Thanksgiving. Not that they weren't wonderful, but...
10. I'm worth it. 
I'm thinking a half a dozen this year. I've already had one of them. I treated myself to a day at JoAn's Fabrics on Friday. I had coupons and the Vogue patterns were on sale for 3.99 each. I spent hours there and bought six gorgeous Vogue patterns for myself for less than 25 dollars. Then I had lunch at my favorite fast food, Taco Bell, (two crunchy low fat tacos) all by myself and then went to one of my favorite stores, Big Lots. What an awesome day!

I will, of course, celebrate on the real day tomorrow, but I reserve the right to randomly deem any day my birthday I feel like it from now on. These alternate birthdays won't require any effort on anyone else's part. I'll just call them when I have something fun I want to do that I don't want to feel guilty about. I'm feeling rather mortal this birthday and I'm going to start doing some things that I've always wanted to do.

Life's patterns

As I approach my birthday, I wax philosophic. I never like to be a cookie cutter person, but I must follow the crowd on some things. Baby boomers are averse to growing old, and I'm glad to be part of that group. There was a day when women settled into a middle-aged homey look and they didn't worry so much about waistline or style. That's not me or practically any other boomer lady. (It's not my mom either so I've got a good example to follow.) Boomers follow another pattern. We tend to be very nostalgic as a group. I think it's because our young era from the 50s to the 70s was a memorable and exciting part of the twentieth century. We had cool stuff. In fact, the 50s saw the beginning of the concept "cool." Roy Rogers lunchboxes and hula hoops. We also got to wear cool things like Converse sneakers (for boys only at that point) and poodle skirts. We had the best rock music. Sorry for everyone else, but it's true.

Speaking of patterns, don't you love this one? I bought it a thousand years ago at a garage sale. It's missing the instructions so I won't be selling it, but the picture on the front just sends me. The guys are playing golf, smoking pipes and discussing a business paper in their PJs. Awesome, is it not? What kind of man would walk around with a golf club while wearing his shorty pajamas and his houseshoes? Hmm, maybe I shouldn't ask that question. This picture is a slice of the past. It's what a man was supposed to be.

Mom and Dad and Sidney Poitier

Mom and Dad made the front page of a local Shreveport hospital magazine. It must be a magazine that is adapted for use by many hospital systems as I doubt that Willis-Knighton Hospital in Shreveport landed an interview with Sidney Poitier. It's a really good article about them keeping their home and living in the retirement village most of the week. I am quoted as having said lots of things I don't remember saying. I am always so scrupulous when interviewing. I keep a tape recorder going and listen to my tapes to make sure I don't misquote anyone. Alas, that is not always the case. The file is pretty big so if you click on it you can see Mom and Dad better.

In other news, the writing group I started a few months ago is going well. We had a really good group last night at the Barnes and Nobles downtown Wilkes-Barre. For possible Wilkes-Barre blog readers, the group meets at 7 on the first and third Tuesday of each month.

Also, the Etsy shop is going. I don't make a sale every day now, but enough is coming in to make me want to keep it open. I've already paid my fees for the things I have listed so I wouldn't close it up anyway. I add a few things each day. It's my goal to keep about 100 patterns offered at my store. I'm up to 95, I think. But if I'm going to keep this up, I need to get a new supply of patterns. I've been asking around and have posted an ad on Craigslist so maybe I'll find some more soon.

I'm pretty excited about Thanksgiving. I don't have to cook but will be sharing the day and meal with former Texans. This is a really good thing. I will bring the cornbread dressing.

I also have a birthday coming up. Michael and I talked about a birthday present for me and I told him that putting one more thing into the house might not be the best idea. (Although diamonds take up very little room.) I asked if we could go to Kazimi's for lunch. Even at lunch it's a big splurge for us, but the food is divine. And they make this caramel banana cake for dessert...excuse me while I wipe the drool off the keyboard. He's actually taking the day off for my birthday. He's taken so few days off this year that I am really honored. He said we might even go somewhere. And folks, going somewhere in this part of the US can be pretty exciting. The art museums alone could keep us busy for several years.

R.O.U.S.

For those uninitiated among you, ROUS stands for Rodents of Unusual Size. We watched The Princess Bride again last night. I always forget how funny and wonderful it is. That whole schtick when Wesley is coming back from being mostly dead is insanely funny. And both Peter Falk and Freddie Savage are still too cute for words.

We did have a little run-in from rodents the other night. Or so we thought. There was this odd munching, scritching sound in our bedroom. It finally drove me to sleep in the guest bedroom. Very unnerving. After much searching, we found that one of the windows in our bedroom was slightly open at the top. The sound was the edge of the window shade scraping the side of the window as the wind blew it. Have no idea why it just started making noise. Nice to know that something wasn't eating our wiring.

The photos are of a hair salon in the poshest Park Avenue area of all places. Shows that even New Yorkers can be a bit unsophisticated. Also, the inside of the Empire State Building shot is me from the back. Michael takes far more photos of me from the rear than from the front. That will inspire a girl to keep on her diet, let me tell you. These are big files so you can click on them to get the full detail of that wonderful Art Deco wall art in the Empire State.

What We Did in Manhattan

Remember that scene in "Cars" when Lightning McQueen is talking to the two SUVs from Minnesota and they just go "bloop bloop" because they had no idea what he was talking about? This happened to me as I talked with a friend at church about our trip to Manhattan on Saturday. Nothing we did seemed like something she would choose to do on a day in Manhattan. It was pretty funny actually. So here's what we did:

We went to the Chrysler building but couldn't go up it. But just seeing the exterior (see photo) was awesome. The foyer is amazing. We went to the New York Public Library (that's me with the lion) and channeled Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard in the famous reading room. We both picked up a reference book and read. It's what you do in a library, right? We also went to the Empire State Building but didn't go up. It was very crowded and a bit chilly. I don't think it would have been fun. But again, the lobby was iconic. We also went to the Guggenheim but didn't actually visit the museum. It was packed and the big exhibit was Kandinsky. My apologies to Michael's sister who is such a fan that she named a cat after him, but I'm not that big on his stuff. The exterior and interior both were beautiful. There are details on the building which you only get when you see it up close. We visited the museum shop which was pretty intense as museum shops go. Then we actually went into a museum, the Cooper-Hewitt. Not on my top list of museums to go to, but we were on foot and it was close. It was totally worth the visit. It's the old Vanderbilt mansion. If you really want to see wealth, it oozes from every inch of this building. We also spent a fair amount of time in Grand Central Station (actually Grand Central Terminal but who's going to call it that?). We could have pretended to be lots of people here: Cary Grant in "North by Northwest" comes immediately to mind. Another incredible building architecturally. We ate lunch in a cafe in the Empire State Building and dinner at Grand Central Station. The food may have not been the best, but what can you say about the ambience. It was a wonderful day!

Got upgraded

My bone density scores are in. I'm usually good at taking tests, but I've been failing this one for years. I was really, really worried because of the months of inactivity caused by the sciatica problem I had. But amazingly, my spine number is in the normal range for the first time in maybe ten years? My hip is still not so good, but it didn't get any worse in the past two years. I guess that was much better than I could have hoped for. The three main things that fight osteoporosis are calcium, medications and exercise. And I failed miserably at one of those. So I'm still fighting it and making slow progress. And I hope all you young ones out there are exercising, getting enough calcium either in your diet or in tablets, and that you're getting vitamin D2 or D3. We didn't know what to do when I was young. You young women have the advantage. Who told me what I could do in my youth to avoid being a tiny bent-over little old lady? No one.