Canadian Geese are Extinct!

Hooray!  Canadian Geese are extinct!  How do I know this?  THEY NEVER EXISTED IN THE FIRST PLACE.   It is that time of year  when these migrating,  flying poop machines start hanging out at  golf courses,  traffic circles, football fields, you name it.  Eat,  Fly,  Poop if you wanted to write a book about it. TV stations start doing cute reports about all those "Canadian Geese stopping traffic by wandering off the golf course and in to the street.  Yuk yuk yuk,  back to you, Bob."

Canadian? Really?

I'm not sure who started calling them Canadian geese, but they are not. They are Canadas. A single one is referred to as a  Canada goose, a flock would be called a flock of Canada geese.  They are not Canadian geese because they are not Canadians - those are 1) people,  who are 2) citizens of Canada.  Whenever I hear someone call them Canadian geese  I always ask them if they had little bird passports tucked under their wings, or had a hockey stick strapped to their back.   Yuk yuk yourself, dude.

It's always a good day when you learn something new, right?   So - all together now - CANADIAN GEESE ARE EXTINCT.  LONG LIVE CANADA GEESE.  Except for when they are pooping all over the place - I mean jeez, dudes,  really.

Our next lesson will be debunking the saying, "The proof is in the pudding."  In addition to being only  half of the actual expression, it this form it makes absolutely no sense.  It will make sense when you learn the full  phrase.  Your homework assignment is to look it up and write a one page report, single spaced, 1 inch margins,  ink -  not pencil.  No fountain pens.

Class dismissed.

Deja Vu All Over Again

I was married back in 1988, the days of big hair and wide lapels.  You have no control over the styles of the day, you're just stuck with what is in vogue.  (I'm still feeling bad for the Leisure Suit weddings of the 70's .....).  Regular readers already know  I have an aversion to weddings, frou frou, and the parade of BS that tends to come along with them.  Even back then  I made choices about our wedding that many would think appalling.  Didn't care then, don't care now.

I came from a big family in the Midwest; the contingent of first cousins on my mother's side numbered about 56 when Grandma McGill died in the early seventies.  By 1988  those cousins had married and multiplied.  (We had a standing joke about having to marry an orphan so we could fit everyone in to the church.)  Rather than going home and having the wedding on my home turf   (as most brides would want)  I opted to get married in Gloucester  to cut down on the numbers.   Seriously.  I wanted a small wedding and my pre-husband promised me he wanted the same.

NOTE: The Sicilian definition of a "small wedding"  is not even remotely close to the Midwestern definition.  We ended up with 140 people, about 100 more than I wanted.

During the planning Joe informed me he had 4 ushers and his brother, Sam, would be his best man.  I gave that the green light, knowing that my two sisters would be my attendants .   (Even then I did not want to responsible for another  parade of badly dressed bridesmaids.)  As the wedding got closer  I asked Joe who his other groomsman would be.  Groomsman?  What is that?  I explained that Pat and Peg each need a groomsman.  Sam would be one and  - who would be the other?

NOTE: Ushers and groomsmen are not synonymous, damnit. Ushers ush - they escort guests and seat them in the church.  Groomsmen escort the bridesmaids. Period. Apparently this is a geographical thing, but ushers at a funeral don't escort bridesmaids at a funeral now do they. Just sayin'.

We had a pretty good fight over this one,  Joe insisting I get more bridesmaids and I insisted he cut loose a few ushers.  It was ugly.  We did not compromise.  (Irish VS.  Sicilian? Are you kidding me?) so during the wedding procession  those four ushers marched solemnly up the aisle looking for all the world like a group of  freakin' pallbearers.

But I digress.

I had a very hard time finding bridesmaid dresses.  I love my sisters and didn't want them wearing some gacky, overpriced  polyester fluff.   Back then I  was in love with polished cotton chintz  but could find nothing even remotely close in a bridesmaid dress.  I chose to do what any woman who has read Gone With The Wind 20 times ( a conservative estimate ) would do -  I went to a great fabric store  and found a lovely Waverley floral chintz.  LOVED it.  Bought a bunch of it, found a dress pattern, mailed it back home to a girlfriend and she sewed up the dresses for my sisters.  In an interesting twist on Scarlett O'Hara,  I made curtains for our main floor powder room out of the remnants.  ( I love balance in the universe. )

Fast forward to a fundraiser last weekend.  The  Text and Textile Extravaganza is a great way for quilters to manicure their stash and then take home more than they manicured.  For a small donation to the museum, you fill up a shopping tote with zillions of fabrics. (It's a little like getting fabric drunk.) I was working on the home dec fabrics when I pulled out some neatly folded yardage that looked.....VERY familiar.  It was Waverley Garden Tour AND  in the exact same color run.  I let out a yelp and modeled it for all the women present. Needless to say I tucked it into my tote bag-o-stash builders and brought it safely home.  Since we're re-doing the upstairs bathroom I will need fabric for curtains, right?  The walls are going to be one of the greens in the print  so it will already match beautifully.  I'm not that crazy about Waverley Garden Tour now, but I absolutely cannot resist a second round of bridesmaid dress bathroom curtains.  Even my husband thought it was pretty funny, and like  Yogi Berra said,  " It's  deja vu all over again!"

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Yet Another Good Reason To Boycott WalMart - Fabric Swindle

Like we needed another reason to boycott WalMart?  I have never been a fan and the reasons are numerous and available on request. The list is so long you might need me to burn them to a CD rom, just sayin'.

Saw this today from the Quilters Newsletter Blog and just blew my stack.  How does this company sleep at night? Then I remembered:  sharks never sleep.  They just prowl and eat their prey.  Nice.   Don't take my word for it- read it for yourself:

WalMart Sells Stolen Fabric Designs.

While you are at it, read this and send Tula Pink some love.

(Blank) of the Day

In honor of today being International Talk Like a Pirate Day,  I decided to offer a few of my own  "of the day"  favorites.

1. Official SAT Question of the Day.  Bonus: answer the question and it will tell you if you are correct!


2. Word of the Day. Merriam Webster Online offers a new word  every day.  Many of the words you will already know (if you, too,  had a mother who was also a Scrabble fiend),  others  will surprise you.  Each has a little speaker phone icon next to it so you may hear it pronounced correctly.  I'm waiting for the day they do "zoology".


3. Cool Site of the Day is always interesting  and you get to give it a thumbs up or down.  Participatory web surfing is good!


4. Quilt of the Day is usually featured on the Quilt Index Facebook page, but this link to their homepage always has a new quilt shown every day, and always something  to admire and covet.

There are scads of "of the day" sites, many for jokes, scripture, recipes - you name it,  it's got an "of the day".

As the weather gets cooler, I pull out my old videos and DVD's of holiday movies.  I pop one in when I'm in for a long stretch of sewing or ironing.  Right now I'll watching "ELF"  and it  reminds me of my own personal favorite "of the day" thingie.   "Answer the Phone Like Buddy the Elf"  day is -  I think -  on Saturday, December 18th of this year.

You gotta love it - and you gotta do it!

Swiss Cheese Memory

As much as I wish this was about my fond recollection of swiss cheese, it is not.  Something very strange is happening and I do not like it one bit.

Yesterday, after an almost summer-long hiatus from my sewing room, I sat down to my freshly cleaned and repaired Bernina to see how quickly I could get back in the swing of things and finish up some quilts. I decided to make up a few potholders to warm up my skills and found out..... I was all over the map.  I kept pushing the wrong place on the Bernina to get my back stitch,  I had to thread the bobbin twice to get it running smoothly, and all in all was just amazed at the lack of continuity in my head.  I've had this machine for about 6 or 7 years and I know it cold.  Or so I thought. After  finishing up 3 homely potholders (no worries, they get used and stained regardless) I decided to finish up some pin cushions from an old silk log cabin quilt that had seen better days.  I had cut the usable squares earlier and started trimming them with black ribbon to stabilize the edges.  Jeebus, what a mess.  That ribbon was slippery and I had to wrap my head around which presser foot to use, feed dogs, etc. and at the end of the episode I cut the thing up  only to  start over after trimming my nasty edges.  All the Fray Check in the world couldn't save it,  poor thing.

I might blame this on the infernal summer heat baking my brains to a level of irreparable damage.  Or, I could just chalk it up to being rusty.  But I never choose the glass that is half full - it is always half empty. (And in grave danger of being empty at any second.) I am so afraid that this is me,  aging.  I'm 52 and much too young for this crap.....but when does "aging"  actually start? I know it will happen eventually - but am I at the threshold of that "eventually"?  I used to pride myself on the number of balls I could keep in the air and nail them all accurately and quickly.  I could dispatch any number of things in a day.  Now it seems like I look upon the increasing number of  tasks  as an additional challenge to my sanity.

Remember the Ed Sullivan show?  There used to be a  guy on there who spun plates on top of 6  foot poles.   He would start one spinning, then pick up a pole and start the 2nd plate spinning.  Then he would run back to the first, give it a spin, spin the 2nd again, and put up a 3rd plate.  Pretty soon he'd have 8 or 9 plates spinning around and he would run back and forth,  frantically giving each of them another spin just as they would wobble precariously.  (Behind this, the orchestra would be playing the Sabre Dance to add to the drama.)  It was wonderful to watch back then, but not so wonderful now. I feel like I'm the one trying to keep all those plates  spinning, and I'm afraid I'm breaking a few of them.

What Gives?

I'll tell you who gives -  Betty Londergan.  Her blog is called What Gives 365 and here is some insight on her thinking:

I’d been looking for a way to do some good in the world for a while but could never figure out exactly what to do – so I’ve settled on a random shotgun approach of giving to anything that rings my chimes –which hopefully will inspire other people to pry open their wallets and give as well. I’m using the money my dad left me to fund this venture – and since he and my mom were thrifty savers who were also passionate givers, it’s poetic justice that those hard-earned dimes and nickels will be passed along to good causes. Dorothy Mae would love that—and say that it’s about time I stopped buying so many darn shoes and did something for others.

Today she gives a shout-out to the New England Quilt Museum (yay!) by featuring a beautiful quilt from the collection, and gives props to the Quilt Index and the Alliance for American Quilts. It's a wonderful blog entry - just click on this link. Thanks, Betty!

Ornament Rain Man

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Just about everyone who really knows me has, at some point in time,  looked me square in the eye and said,  "Your head is filled with useless information."   I am actually ok with that.  I have a memory for minutia and it pops up at the most amazing times.  It serves me well - many of my passwords incorporate old phone numbers or zip codes or even the dates of various - well,  never mind.   On the down side, I  remember (usually verbatim)  hurtful things said or done or overheard.  (Sometime I'll tell you the story about my kindergarten teacher correcting me on a sentence.  Seriously.)  On the upside,  I can also remember things that happened long ago but made me  feel creative and clever.  Here is one of my favorites.

In between hot flashes  I have tried to think about  snow and Christmas and maybe  making something new with which to deck my halls when I remembered something Mom played with years and years ago.  She taught us how to make these weird ornaments from scraps.  The ones we made back then were done with bits of reds and greens and Christmas-y prints.  I had the necessary materials already in-house, so there was no fussing.  I did not want to make actual tree ornaments  (I haven't got much in the way of scraps of  Christmas fabric) so I did one with some batik scraps.  It was  kind of nice to look at,  so   I selected some of my precious scraps of Japanese fabric  to play around with and see what I could create.  It finished up well  but I had  a *$#&$%  of a time with those beautiful fabrics that unravel if you so much as LOOK at them.

By this time I was pretty much satisfied that I remembered how to make them (there are a few tricks) but at a bit of a loss to know what to do with them.  For now they are just going to sit on a shelf in my sewing room.   The best part of the project was thinking back on  making them with Mom.  I miss her so much.  I guess we never think that what we do  now could be remembered years later with so much love.

Sometimes it's good to be a Rain Man.

Even Steven

"Even Steven" was something my mom used to say  a lot  - probably because with 6 kids there was a lot of dividing up to do and there was much less chaos if things were evenly distributed.

This weekend I officially become "even Steven." Twenty six years ago on Labor Day Weekend I left Nebraska and flew out to Boston to start the next chapter of my life. Twenty six years later, here I am.  I have had one foot in two very different lives for 26 years  each.  Even.  Balanced.  Or not.

First of all, I can't believe I am 52.  (I expected to be MUCH older when I turned 52, probably close to being dead because back then it sounded so ancient.)  I know like my brain is more fully formed than it ever was at 26  and I do like myself a lot more.  While I am happily  free from so many of the concerns that overwhelm the 26-year-old mind, I look back and am a little in awe of myself -  I uprooted my life, my culture,  everything I had and knew to move halfway across the country. Yikes.  I was motivated by a broken heart, a fatigue of singing at all my friend's weddings (and then  babysitting their children) but mostly  because I had to feed the wanderlust that  took root when I began reading books. Those days of lying in the grass and watching the contrails from jets stream across the sky  - oh how I wanted to be one of those people ON the jet,  going somewhere,  anywhere - just going.   I wanted to  see,  do, and experience the big, wide world.

Would I do it over?  In a New York minute.  There are parts of both lives I would never want to repeat, which is moot anyway since we don't get a do-over in life.  I can't choose which life has been richer or more satisfying because each has had tremendous joys and gifts.

It will be interesting to see which way the scales tip in the next 26 years.  I have a lot of places to see (when am I EVER going to get to Paris????) and a lot of things to do out here.  I do know that when it is all over I want my body to be burned and my ashes to be scattered along the Platte River in Nebraska.  That saying about "you can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl" is true.  Life is where you live it, but home......is home.

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