Gardening is another of my love/hate relationships. I have all these plans and then....Mr.Man knocks them back everytime. I wanted a pond...nothing fancy, just a nice little pond. I wanted it either round or kidney shaped. No! It's easier if it's square or rectangle. I wanted it flush with the ground...no, it needs to be slightly above so grass doesn't get into it. Everything I wanted to do, he had different ideas and since I've never had a pond before I was bullied into doing what HE wanted. Well, now, I have a pond half dug and he says it's too much work...how can he say that!!!! I've been the one digging it out! I've been the one piling up dirt, etc. He has really infuriated me! I almost gave myself a heart attack last summer digging out the damn thing and now he wants to fill it in....over my dead body...maybe!
As they used to say in The Three Stooges...in a crass Southern accent...."Sir-This means War!"
He's going to wish he'd just kept his mouth shut and done what I wanted in the first place.
He wants to do stuff, but he doesn't want to do the work. He buys all his model trains, but then, never puts them together....
He is so afraid of starting something...he never does.
His excuse for not wanting to do the pond and the back garden..."If we get lucky on the lottery we won't want to stay here and take care of the garden." What?????
If we don't get lucky on the lottery we will spend the rest of our lives looking at a crummy back garden! Shit, if we are supposed to spend our lives waiting to do anything till we win the lottery....take that damn hole the pond is at the moment and bury me in it....cause it's just going to be a slow boring life waiting to die.
That's like saying I'm going to wait to cook dinner till I get a whole side of beef given to me....it ain't gonna happen!!!!!
Monday, January 22, 2007
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
I wonder as I ponder...
Old Bags....
Well, I was going to write this about purses, handbags, pocketbooks. What you call them depends on where you live, I guess. When I was growing up and living in California they were purses, in the Great State of North Carolina (where I really grew-up by raising a family) they are called pocketbooks. In California a pocketbook is a paperback book you can stuff in your PURSE! Pardon me, I've gone off on a tangent, rabbit trail, thought process (something else that depends on where you live as to what you call it....)
Anyway, I was going to write about those things ladies carry their stuff in. Men are supposidly once again trying to use them too...but a real man wouldn't be caught dead with one...ask my Ex, he always wanted one but was too vainly macho to use one, so I ended up carrying all his junk (i.e. medication for mental illness) in mine. He wasn't so macho that he would work and support his family, but that is another blog entry all together and at this point I don't have time to deal with it... nor the energy either!
Back to purses, I will for the duration of this entry call them purses for simplicity sake and my sanity. The old bag reference is because I just realized I'll be fifty-three in about ten days and it really sucks, because I will be an old bag.
So, speaking of old bags and purses; This old bag needs/wants a new purse. This is not an easy task. There is a form of social advertising called the purse. Too trendy and no one will take you seriously, too stern and people will think you use it as a weapon and fear being plummeted with it. I'm not a teeny bopper and I'm not Maxine from the Hallmark Shoebox Greetings, close but not quite. What to do? There is a vast expanse of looks between Hello Kitty and Chanell. Price being the first criteria. Size is another. I don't want to carry my entire life in it, but at the same time, I do need certain things. My ex-mother-in-law used to buy me those purses (pocketbooks, she was Southern) you see advertised in the back of the Sunday newspaper magazine. You know the ones, they have your initials embroidered on the big wide strap that locks fifteen organizer pockets closed. The leather look vinyl comes in a choice of colors: black, beige or white and it also has a matching checkbook cover and key fob that snaps inside the monstrosity. At one time I had three on the top shelf of my closet, yes in each color. I left them all when we moved to another house and claimed HER SON forgot the box they were in! I didn't want to hurt her feelings and besides....let her think he was the bad guy, she raised him....
Back to size...yes it does count! I'm short and fat, no getting around it or me, if I've been eating a lot of popcorn anddrinking lots of Diet Coke....with a Snickers on the side for energy, I will feel bloated. So a tiny purse looks like a cranberry beside a watermelon, a large one and I trip over the sucker because the straps are too long. If there are several pockets yes, I can organize it, but then I have to look through every pocket to find what I need because, as an old bag, my short term memory is, short!
Now, we get to the color catagory...basic black? Hot Mama Red? Go Green? Purple Passion? Do-Do Brown? My kids if they read this will no doubt be laughing! A print? That is almost a cry for help....I'm old, I want to look cute. True but I don't want to advertise it.
So we have pretty much come full circle...we are back to price...people who take too much medication for depression and have way more money than common sense are spending money on purses and then idiots who read too many magazines and shop because their lives are basicly empty (gotta fill something, might as well be the closet) are following suit because they believe the advertisers. I will carry all my stuff in a plastic grocery store bag before I will spend hundreds of dollars for a purse! Are you people listening to me? There are children who do not have shoes, warm beds or food and people are spending that kind of money on a purse? THINK ABOUT IT?! If you are one of them, hang your head in shame, and the next time you are tempted, send the money to Save the Children, or UNICEF, or another orginization similar to them...for crying out loud, get your head out of a magazine and smell the poverty of the real world.
Hmmm, I just have, I guess the purse I've got now will suffice for another year.....
Well, I was going to write this about purses, handbags, pocketbooks. What you call them depends on where you live, I guess. When I was growing up and living in California they were purses, in the Great State of North Carolina (where I really grew-up by raising a family) they are called pocketbooks. In California a pocketbook is a paperback book you can stuff in your PURSE! Pardon me, I've gone off on a tangent, rabbit trail, thought process (something else that depends on where you live as to what you call it....)
Anyway, I was going to write about those things ladies carry their stuff in. Men are supposidly once again trying to use them too...but a real man wouldn't be caught dead with one...ask my Ex, he always wanted one but was too vainly macho to use one, so I ended up carrying all his junk (i.e. medication for mental illness) in mine. He wasn't so macho that he would work and support his family, but that is another blog entry all together and at this point I don't have time to deal with it... nor the energy either!
Back to purses, I will for the duration of this entry call them purses for simplicity sake and my sanity. The old bag reference is because I just realized I'll be fifty-three in about ten days and it really sucks, because I will be an old bag.
So, speaking of old bags and purses; This old bag needs/wants a new purse. This is not an easy task. There is a form of social advertising called the purse. Too trendy and no one will take you seriously, too stern and people will think you use it as a weapon and fear being plummeted with it. I'm not a teeny bopper and I'm not Maxine from the Hallmark Shoebox Greetings, close but not quite. What to do? There is a vast expanse of looks between Hello Kitty and Chanell. Price being the first criteria. Size is another. I don't want to carry my entire life in it, but at the same time, I do need certain things. My ex-mother-in-law used to buy me those purses (pocketbooks, she was Southern) you see advertised in the back of the Sunday newspaper magazine. You know the ones, they have your initials embroidered on the big wide strap that locks fifteen organizer pockets closed. The leather look vinyl comes in a choice of colors: black, beige or white and it also has a matching checkbook cover and key fob that snaps inside the monstrosity. At one time I had three on the top shelf of my closet, yes in each color. I left them all when we moved to another house and claimed HER SON forgot the box they were in! I didn't want to hurt her feelings and besides....let her think he was the bad guy, she raised him....
Back to size...yes it does count! I'm short and fat, no getting around it or me, if I've been eating a lot of popcorn anddrinking lots of Diet Coke....with a Snickers on the side for energy, I will feel bloated. So a tiny purse looks like a cranberry beside a watermelon, a large one and I trip over the sucker because the straps are too long. If there are several pockets yes, I can organize it, but then I have to look through every pocket to find what I need because, as an old bag, my short term memory is, short!
Now, we get to the color catagory...basic black? Hot Mama Red? Go Green? Purple Passion? Do-Do Brown? My kids if they read this will no doubt be laughing! A print? That is almost a cry for help....I'm old, I want to look cute. True but I don't want to advertise it.
So we have pretty much come full circle...we are back to price...people who take too much medication for depression and have way more money than common sense are spending money on purses and then idiots who read too many magazines and shop because their lives are basicly empty (gotta fill something, might as well be the closet) are following suit because they believe the advertisers. I will carry all my stuff in a plastic grocery store bag before I will spend hundreds of dollars for a purse! Are you people listening to me? There are children who do not have shoes, warm beds or food and people are spending that kind of money on a purse? THINK ABOUT IT?! If you are one of them, hang your head in shame, and the next time you are tempted, send the money to Save the Children, or UNICEF, or another orginization similar to them...for crying out loud, get your head out of a magazine and smell the poverty of the real world.
Hmmm, I just have, I guess the purse I've got now will suffice for another year.....
Friday, November 03, 2006
I wonder as I ponder...
Cats....I have only one cat, Abbey. I originally wanted to get two, a male named Whitby to complete the name of my first really historic site I saw when I first visited Dave here in England...Whitby Abbey. I could feel the Holy Spirit's power there even before I knew anything about it. Caedmon was a member of the Christian community there in Whitby. Working as a handiman, shepherd, etc. Being a common man he had no education and no musical training. However, he had a dream where he was told to sing songs to God. The songs and music flowed from him, and he is credited with writing the first praise songs. Caedmon's Hymn
What does that have to do with cats...nothing except I never got another cat to name Whitby, so Abbey is queen of the castle. A monarchy not to take lightly. I jumped down Dave's throat for feeding her from the table when she first came to live with us. Now, I'm eating my words as she reaches up to nab something off my plate, since I started dropping an occasional snack down to her. She sits in front of the fire at night and turns to look at us, till we light it, then stretching out, she rolls about like a chicken on the rotteserie (sp?). Now, after waking me at 5:30, she is sound asleep on the back of the sofa and I am on the pc because I can't go back to sleep! She will no doubt adjust to Day light savings time...in the spring when we change the clocks.....Perhaps, she is waking me up for morning prayer?
What does that have to do with cats...nothing except I never got another cat to name Whitby, so Abbey is queen of the castle. A monarchy not to take lightly. I jumped down Dave's throat for feeding her from the table when she first came to live with us. Now, I'm eating my words as she reaches up to nab something off my plate, since I started dropping an occasional snack down to her. She sits in front of the fire at night and turns to look at us, till we light it, then stretching out, she rolls about like a chicken on the rotteserie (sp?). Now, after waking me at 5:30, she is sound asleep on the back of the sofa and I am on the pc because I can't go back to sleep! She will no doubt adjust to Day light savings time...in the spring when we change the clocks.....Perhaps, she is waking me up for morning prayer?
I wonder as I ponder...
Why do so many people think they are selling themselves when they act like a Ginsu Knife, slicing and dicing their co-workers through out the day. I admit I've done it myself, not so much to put myself ahead of someone else, as for self-defense. One woman I work with goes out of her way to find a mistake someone else made, so she can bring it to the attention of the poor wretched soul...and anyone else within ear shot. She is either the Alpha-female or she is seriously insecure. Finding fault with everyone, taking offense at everything, slashing the throats of those who she claims are her nearest and dearest, she storms out of a room leaving it littered with the wounded. She is now in a no-mans land. Her closest friend has been sacked, she is going to school part time at the expense of the company to train her for advancement. She is no longer one of us peons, and she isn't lord of the manor...hard to find a place to rest and feel accepted when she's alienated everyone....guess we will have to see where this goes.....
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Quilted thoughts
My Aunt made me a quilt for my fiftieth birthday. Bright colours filled the blocks with images and patterns reminiscent of days past. Days when none of us were grey and the wrinkles we wore were from a life too busy to iron, rather than the ones pressed into our flesh by living.
She had resisted joining the neighbourhood-quilting group when she moved to her new house. Sitting around quilting is for “Old People” she said. Finally, defeated by loneliness and boredom, she relented and gave it a try. Like a crack head on the corner, urban or otherwise, she was hooked! No fabric store is safe from her search to add to her fabric stash, feeding her need.
Why am I writing this? Is it an expose’ on the latest secret lives of middle aged women? Perhaps, but it’s also a “True Confession”, like any junkie, she introduced me to her drug of choice. “Come on, give it a try…all the cool old women are doing it, even the not so old women are doing it…you don’t want to feel left out…. Do you?” Now I too have a textile monkey on my back.
Not so different from my hippie days, I go ten miles to another village to get “The Good Stuff”. I’m no longer happy with the common, lesser quality of the cloth found at the market stalls. Similar to my days of driving through the mountains between San Jose and Santa Cruz when the local home grown just didn’t give the buzz it used to. I want the Acapulco Gold of fabrics, I want the Maui Wowee, Moda fabrics, Red hairs of Rowan weavers, and of course, the Thai sticks of Thimbleberries cloth. When in my youth I used to watch “Reefer Madness” and howl with laughter, I now watch “An American Quilt” and laugh at the mistakes the “quilters” perform pretending to know the craft.
Sitting in front of my machine this morning, I began wondering why this particular craft, hobby or art, is so addictive. I’ve pondered my own life and reaction to this journey known as quilting.
Perhaps there is a genetic pull, past generations of women speaking through our DNA, “Keep your family warm, you don’t know what tomorrow may bring, give them something to remember you by.”
Maybe it’s a way to fill our days. With all the modern appliances we have Washday is more like wash hour, and then what? Our husbands are asleep in front of the TV, or out playing golf. We can cut fabric, sew, read quilting magazines and form our plans of attack, I mean our plans of a quilt!
Another thought crossed my mind. Quilting is not just being creative, quilting, is controlled creation. If we make a mistake, the stitches go wrong, the colours clash, or we just wish we had done it differently – we can. The seam-ripper is near by. More fabric can be purchased, cut and sewn.
We cannot re-make our spouses, not for lack of trying and a divorce or two along the way. Our children cannot go back to infancy for another jab at rearing them. Changing the pattern of their lives is in their hands. Lets hope we’ve oiled their machines well, and given them enough thread! However, we can re-do our quilts, our new babies.
Quilting is also an extension of ourselves and a reflection of how we feel about the person we make the quilt for. It’s our love wrapping around them, our acknowledgement of who they are, what they have done and where they have been. It’s our dreams for them, beauty, tranquillity, harmony, warm nights and comfort.
So perhaps that is the real reason we quilt, become addicted to it and keep making things for people we care about. We want them to know they are appreciated, noticed in the hectic world we live in, and that we have taken time to make something special just for them.
In the Bible, King David wrote a Psalm (a song) to God saying,
Psalm 139:5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
When God hems us in, he keeps us from unravelling, from falling out and being trampled on in this busy world. When we make these quilts, we are doing the same thing for those we make these quilts for. We are putting this special thought for them together, and keeping it from unravelling. The quilt becoming an analogy for them, who and what they are to us.
On the other hand, it could be a way to keep us from spending all our time sitting in front of the refrigerator!
She had resisted joining the neighbourhood-quilting group when she moved to her new house. Sitting around quilting is for “Old People” she said. Finally, defeated by loneliness and boredom, she relented and gave it a try. Like a crack head on the corner, urban or otherwise, she was hooked! No fabric store is safe from her search to add to her fabric stash, feeding her need.
Why am I writing this? Is it an expose’ on the latest secret lives of middle aged women? Perhaps, but it’s also a “True Confession”, like any junkie, she introduced me to her drug of choice. “Come on, give it a try…all the cool old women are doing it, even the not so old women are doing it…you don’t want to feel left out…. Do you?” Now I too have a textile monkey on my back.
Not so different from my hippie days, I go ten miles to another village to get “The Good Stuff”. I’m no longer happy with the common, lesser quality of the cloth found at the market stalls. Similar to my days of driving through the mountains between San Jose and Santa Cruz when the local home grown just didn’t give the buzz it used to. I want the Acapulco Gold of fabrics, I want the Maui Wowee, Moda fabrics, Red hairs of Rowan weavers, and of course, the Thai sticks of Thimbleberries cloth. When in my youth I used to watch “Reefer Madness” and howl with laughter, I now watch “An American Quilt” and laugh at the mistakes the “quilters” perform pretending to know the craft.
Sitting in front of my machine this morning, I began wondering why this particular craft, hobby or art, is so addictive. I’ve pondered my own life and reaction to this journey known as quilting.
Perhaps there is a genetic pull, past generations of women speaking through our DNA, “Keep your family warm, you don’t know what tomorrow may bring, give them something to remember you by.”
Maybe it’s a way to fill our days. With all the modern appliances we have Washday is more like wash hour, and then what? Our husbands are asleep in front of the TV, or out playing golf. We can cut fabric, sew, read quilting magazines and form our plans of attack, I mean our plans of a quilt!
Another thought crossed my mind. Quilting is not just being creative, quilting, is controlled creation. If we make a mistake, the stitches go wrong, the colours clash, or we just wish we had done it differently – we can. The seam-ripper is near by. More fabric can be purchased, cut and sewn.
We cannot re-make our spouses, not for lack of trying and a divorce or two along the way. Our children cannot go back to infancy for another jab at rearing them. Changing the pattern of their lives is in their hands. Lets hope we’ve oiled their machines well, and given them enough thread! However, we can re-do our quilts, our new babies.
Quilting is also an extension of ourselves and a reflection of how we feel about the person we make the quilt for. It’s our love wrapping around them, our acknowledgement of who they are, what they have done and where they have been. It’s our dreams for them, beauty, tranquillity, harmony, warm nights and comfort.
So perhaps that is the real reason we quilt, become addicted to it and keep making things for people we care about. We want them to know they are appreciated, noticed in the hectic world we live in, and that we have taken time to make something special just for them.
In the Bible, King David wrote a Psalm (a song) to God saying,
Psalm 139:5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
When God hems us in, he keeps us from unravelling, from falling out and being trampled on in this busy world. When we make these quilts, we are doing the same thing for those we make these quilts for. We are putting this special thought for them together, and keeping it from unravelling. The quilt becoming an analogy for them, who and what they are to us.
On the other hand, it could be a way to keep us from spending all our time sitting in front of the refrigerator!
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
I wonder as I ponder...
I wonder as I ponder... Well, I'm trying to figure this whole blog thing out. No one would ever call me a computer nerd...please don't laugh too hard as I learn this.....I remember when pc's first came on the market...what the hell would some one need a computer in their home for? If they can't balance their check book, or write soemthing down to remember it...they should start riding the short bus instead of driving a car....famous last words!
Monday, October 30, 2006
getting to know you...
Hello,
My name is Kim and I live in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Originally from California and then living in North Carolina for 25+ years, I moved here two years ago to marry my sweet guy, Dave. We've just celebrated anniversary number two. I'm not saying it's been easy, but nothing involving more than one person is. There are always differences of opinion, temprament, and body clock to deal with...of course that's what makes it fun!
Currently I have started learning to make patch-work quilts. So if there are any quilters out there, come visit! My other passions are writing, gardening, and cooking.
That is all I'm going to write for now, I want to see how this looks and reads, etc. The Dave man has just come down for coffee and the start of another day.
Be Blessed,
Kim
My name is Kim and I live in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Originally from California and then living in North Carolina for 25+ years, I moved here two years ago to marry my sweet guy, Dave. We've just celebrated anniversary number two. I'm not saying it's been easy, but nothing involving more than one person is. There are always differences of opinion, temprament, and body clock to deal with...of course that's what makes it fun!
Currently I have started learning to make patch-work quilts. So if there are any quilters out there, come visit! My other passions are writing, gardening, and cooking.
That is all I'm going to write for now, I want to see how this looks and reads, etc. The Dave man has just come down for coffee and the start of another day.
Be Blessed,
Kim
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