Loving Fall

 I absolutely love when fall finally comes to our part of the country, southeast Missouri which usually does not happen until October.  It is especially wonderful when it comes with a rain storm, wind and sudden chill to the air!

I can remember walking around my college campus in the drizzling rain, up and down the hills to class, wearing an all weather jacket, getting totally wet. When I finally got home mom had on a pot of homemade vegetable stew and had made biscuits!

Now I can only look out my office window and wish I was walking around the campus when fall comes.  Tied to my desk, I am counting down the days to retirement this December. Then I will be able to enjoy the season changes and walk whenever and wherever I want!

I can hardly wait to find a path such as this in the many parks we have in our town.  The smell of the wet decaying leaves draws you further down the path into the wood. What would make it even better would be a dreary cloudy day and drips of rain coming down.  

Then I could go home and put on a pot of soup and make some biscuits, warm up some tea and write or read a book.  

Ahh, fall, the most wonderful time of the year! 

Desperate Times Call for Crocheting

 A couple of weeks ago I was spending some time in a hospital bed getting ready for an angiogram. Yup, I'd been having a little trouble with my ticker acting weird and the doctors all decided they needed an inside look.  Not really knowing what I was in store for other than I could not eat or drink for 12 hours... I was a little nervous.  All they kept saying was it just depends on what they find when they insert that little needle or camera into the vein in my wrist and up to my heart. If it was all good I could go home. If they found clogging, well then they would have to do something about that and it may include a longer hospital stay.

Yeah, so what else do you do when you are awaiting medical tests and who knows what kind of news?  You knit or crochet your worries away.  My husband did me the favor of  recording this reaction of mine to the stress of waiting to go to the surgical theater.

I got most of a dishcloth crocheted while waiting!  Even with iv needles in my and a pulse monitor on my tension finger I was able to crochet.  And my husband just shook his head and laughed as my blood pressure kept going down. The nurse saw this and said maybe all her patients should crochet while waiting for surgery!  I agreed!

Afterward, with good news that my arteries were beautiful, I had to wait several days to get back to knitting or crocheting since my wrist was swollen and black and blue. But it was worth it for the good news.  
 

The Band You're About to Hear

 My family loves music, something that has been passed down through generations of both my husband's family and mine so naturally our kids have picked up the music bug too.  And we love to get together to play music. My husband digs the dobro and harmonica, with a little ukelele at times, my son is a major percussionist and vocalist, our middle daughter loves the tamborine and vocals, our youngest daughter is working on the bass and I play guitar, six and 12 string and sing.

Our parish has an annual picnic and sometimes the five of us decide to work on a few songs to share with our fellow community at church.  The first time we did it we weren't asked if we had a name, we were just the Simmons Family. But the second year someone in the audience asked for our name and our son came up with, "The Band You're About to Hear." This may be a take off of "That Thing You Do" movie if I remember correctly, but we borrowed it for that day. 

Since then it's the only name we can think of, not really agreeing or even discussing anything else.  And now our granddaughters have joined us on stage as evidenced by the picture above.

It is just good clean family fun and we just enjoy being together whenever we can to play.   

Yarn Wars

 I love yarn...bright, colorful, dark, white, it doesn't matter. When I walk into my local Hobby Lobby I have to buy at least one skein, usually more.  I want to just sit down in the store and start making something, usually a bear or a hat. And hey what do you know you can also buy hooks and needles in case you forgot them in your purse!  

All those soft, cuddly yarns waiting to go home with you. The warm speckled ones that beg to become hats. Who needs a blanket, raise your hand and even if you don't I am making some anyway!

Socks...ooo the concentration it takes to make socks is very appealing to me...sometimes I need to dump other stuff in my head and socks are the perfect way to do that. I have to concentrate on sock knitting, all that counting and marking....

I am retiring this December and I cannot wait to have more yarn time!  There are so many projects I want to do!  Sorry, cannot volunteer for that I have hats, bears, socks, blankets... you name it. My volunteer times is knitting, crocheting and sewing!  I will teach my grandchildren to work with yarn and fabric!

Yarn is in my future! 

The Frog

 I was on my way to our storage rental the other Saturday and as I stopped to get in the gate I glanced at my passenger side mirror.  Hmm that was weird, some strange green thing was perched on my window edge. I thought it was a Magnolia blossom from our neighbor's tree.

 

 I leaned back to look in that side mirror when I saw a pair of eyes.  Little black eyes. Suddenly the green thing moved. Why, it was a tree frog!  He was hanging on for dear life on the edge of my car window.

 

Suddenly he jumped onto the mirror, his webbed feet sticky tightly to the glass.  I began to laugh and even more embarrassing I started to talk to him. He rode with me into the storage facility and as I stopped and parked I got out to take a  picture of him. 

He hung out until I was finished loading some items into my car. As I drove off I wondered if he would ride all the way back home which I figured is where he had gotten on.  But as I went down two blocks he must have seen something that interested him and off he went.  

I was worried about him, now he was in a strange neighborhood and could get squashed by another car. But there was no car behind me so he was safe that way.  While I missed my green companion I wondered if he had just gotten bored with the old neighborhood and wanted to explore town. What a way to meet new...um...tree frogs?

So I wished him good luck and drove back home, a little sadder for having lost a companion who thought the trees were greener on this side of town! 

I Am Not Strong

    I don't understand why people keep telling me this. I am not strong. Why would you think that just because I am standing here, after losing both my mom and one of my daughters within a month of each other, that I am strong?  

   I am not strong. I cry every day. While the death of my 92 year old mother was expected, the death of my 36 year daughter was not. She was ill, but we expected her to recover. I am not strong. I keep questioning God why.  Why did he not answer our prayers for her recovery? Why did he let both things horrible things happen at the same time?   I am not strong.

   What makes you think I am strong?  We had to plan two funerals within weeks of each other. My husband and I spent four weeks out of town in an Intensive Care Unit with our daughter, one week was in her room sleeping on the recliner and bench, the other three weeks in a hotel.  We cried, we held her hands, we talked and encouraged her, we cried, we were exhausted beyond words.  I am not strong. 

    I want to go to my mom and cry, cry over the loss of my daughter, but my mom is also gone. I want to cry over the loss of my mom with all my children, but one of them is missing. I am not strong. 

   My husband and our other two children have had to pack up and clean our daughter's apartment, take care of her funeral arrangements, distribute things we cannot keep, settle her accounts. This came just after we have been doing the same for my mother's things just weeks before.  I am not strong, I am exhausted, grieving, worn out from trying to figure out what we should have done differently to have kept our daughter from dying. Worn out from answering teams of doctors' questions.  Worn out trying to figure out why this happened.   I am not strong.

   It is ONLY  because of the love of our families that we are getting up each day. Both my husband's siblings and his dad, and my siblings and our nieces and nephews are we able to find a reason to get up each morning. I am not strong enough to get up every day and face the emptiness, the huge hole in my heart.  I am not strong. I must have their love and support and prayers to get through each and every day.  And sometimes, even that does not feel like enough. 

   So please do not tell me I am strong.  I am struggling. And I need prayers. 

 

Old House Stories # 2- The Critter

 I have a lot of memories of our old house, here is another one:

A squirrel was sitting in my house gutter the other day. He had really gone too far. I mean, we have hawks that swoop down on such unsuspecting critters like him and here he was sitting happily in the middle of the gutter, munching on maple seeds staring in my kitchen window. I stared back wondering if he was really watching my face or was simply in maple nut nirvana. Either way he was going to get himself snatched off the roof if he didn't stop stuffing his face. More seeds in that ever expanding belly of his and he wouldn't just be lunch for a hawk but find himself stuck literally in the gutter.

Suddenly, a friend of his decided this was just too good to miss and there were now two squirrels in the gutter loading up on seeds. Normally I would have thought good deal, they are cleaning out my gutters from the yearly scourge of maple helicopters landing all over my roof that end up clogging the gutter downspouts. But they were making such a mess with the husks of the seeds dropping them all over my desk that I thought for a moment, you deserve to get picked off by a hawk. Shame on me.

Finally I had enough and send Watson, our Basset/Springer Spaniel out to chase them off. Poor Watson, he is getting up in age, but his eyes have never been his strong suit. He comes out the back door all ready to engage in battle with the intruders but he can never quite see where they are. I can point up to the roof all day and he will sniff the ground nonetheless. Low to the ground, Watson has the heart of the Springer Spaniel and the legs and dragging belly of a basset hound. He stir up some mighty fearsome barking but it will be all day before he reaches you.

Squirrels off the roof for now, I move on to filling my seasonal swimming pool. It's the type of pool you put up every year because my husband and I don't quite want a year round pool in the back yard. We seem to have amnesia when it comes to remembering how much trouble it is to drag five hundred pounds of hot sticky vinyl in the middle of the yard, slide the metal support tubes into sticky vinyl sleeves, set up the metal legs all without damaging our fingers, shins and ears of our neighbors.

My husband and I are aging too, as in we are getting too old to think just the two of us can do this by ourselves every year. But not just getting old as in in creaky bones and muscles but also our hearing. How can two people who are standing back to back not hear what the other one is saying when they are standing in the yard working on a project? It's beyond me. All I know is we are constantly yelling, "What? What did you say?" I am surprised neighbors don't come out and interpret for us. Of course none of them are much younger, so maybe they don't hear us.

Back to the pool, so the box says it takes only thirty minutes to set up and begin filling the pool. It takes us ninety, with a lot of sweat, swearing and wine at nine in the morning. Last year my wonderful husband built a wood deck by the pool so our grandchildren and I could get in and out easily. It made it so wonderful not having to climb up and down a rickety ladder. We kept the deck throughout the winter, but moved it down the yard so it wouldn't be standing right in front of our main deck all winter looking all forlorn. Of course that meant pretty much disassembling this deck because it was too heavy for us to move. It worked out great during the fall and early spring as a miniature playhouse for the and the granddaughters to play on. But, of course, once we got the pool assembled the deck had to be moved back in place. Which meant disassembling it again, and also reassembling it next to the pool. I think it was easier to build in place the first year. This time we had to keep pushing and pulling the five hundred pounds of vinyl along with poles and legs to get it in the right spot for the deck or else the ladder would not fit along a flat side of the octagonal pool. Believe me, we thought we knew where it would fit against the deck, but when you push, pull and scream at five hundred pounds of vinyl it tends to sit wherever it wants.

Finally, it was done. Back in the house, I washed vegetables to have with lunch when I looked out and saw the squirrel was back but this time on top of our pergola. The pergola sits on the deck right next to the pool deck. The next thing I know, Watson is outside barking, in the wrong direction again, at a squirrel he can smell but not see. The barking was enough to alarm the squirrel, but now I can see it panic as he realizes where he would have normally run and jumped when the dog came running out there was now a giant blue five hundred pound vinyl thing in his squirrelly path.

So, this squirrel is no dummy, he improvised and he jumped to the pool deck and and down the ladder. Now because I had immediately begun running the hose to fill the pool as soon as we had set up it up, I know that there are a few inches of water at the end of that ladder, but the squirrel did not. He suddenly reappears looking rather freaked out at the prospect of maybe having to swim instead of run. He is back on the pool deck closer to the loudly barking dog. Much to the squirrel's further chagrin, my husband appears on the deck to see what the dog is barking about. And the squirrel Olympics begins. Mr. Squirrel is so panicked to see a human and a dog blocking most of his paths to freedom, he begins running up and down the pool deck. He makes a quick decision to leap to the pergola and running along a narrow beam flies with hope and a prayer to the top of the house.

I am happy to say he made the leap, much to the amusement of my husband and myself. Watson, of course because he hasn't been able to track him still thinks the squirrel is lurking around the pool and keeps barking.

So summer has officially begun in our backyard.

Old House Stories # 1- Litter

I have a lot of memories of our old house  which sat on a very busy major street in our town. We had absolutely no privacy in the front yard, but lots of stories to tell. Here is another one:

 I was mowing our front lawn.  I have claimed the right to mow the front lawn mostly because I have planted two dozen trees, flowers and shrubs out front in the hopes of gaining some of the privacy we lost when our fifteen year old pine tree was destroyed by ice four years ago. 

 You don't realize how exposed and naked you are in your front lawn until you lose a thirty foot tall by twenty foot wide evergreen. Suddenly the world is staring at you when you look out the front door, stand on the porch and of course do anything in your front yard.

  So while I enjoy mowing the front yard so I can make sure all my little baby plants survive the weekly trim going past them, I also
have to endure the constant noise and wind of passing vehicles, trucks, semis, you name it going by on our somewhat busy street.  But the biggest hazard is trash.

 Whether it's the wind picking up trash from the trash container in the apartment complex across the street  or what I actually suspect is not so nice people throwing things out their car windows either way trash is a hazard.

I am reminded of the anti pollution commercial famous in the 1970's of a Native American standing near the forest on a highway and some woman throwing an entire bag of trash out her car window and it lands at his feet.   As a kid I always thought he should have taken his bow and arrow and shot the tire of their car but he was nicer than I was.

 Mowing along our yard I have found beer bottles, cans, wrappers of White Castle burgers, Chick Fil A, Arbys, and masks which apparently people are still wearing (and should wear if they are driving past my house throwing out trash).  The other day I found one fake fur Easter bunny ear lying on the ground.  That was just disturbing.  But all this is particularly gross in our post Covid world of not wanting to touch anything that might have 'the GERM' on it.  Especially a discarded mask!!!

And I won't even go into the number of times I've hit paper napkins which explode all over the yard looking like I hit a confetti canon.  The mulching attachment on our mower doesn't make this any better. It just mulches up the paper into even better flying confetti.

I either have to get over my germ phobia or begin wearing gloves to pick up trash. But I happen to like getting a tanned while mowing so gloves are definitely out.  I would have a golfer's tan!

So on I mow, trying to swerve around the debris, put on a glove and go back and pick it up afterwards.

Maybe I could make up social media memes asking people not to throw trash. Or just stop being a baby and pick it all up, like a good citizen.  :)

Hard Times

 It's weird how at different times in your life, going through hard times, or good times, you pick up different projects to work on?  Crafts and hobbies are so good to have on hand because you never know what you are in the mood in.  Recently I lost my mom of 92 years.  Even when you know it's time, it is never easy to lose a parent. My mom was my best friend.  While she never knit or crocheted, sewed or wrote stories, she loved seeing and hearing about what I was working on. She always marveled at every little items I created whether it was a hat or a dish cloth!

She was my number one fan.  It's not been very long since she died, but I still keep picking up my phone to call her before I remember I cannot.

Knitting has helped me rock away in tears, crocheting the dishcloths my mom loved me to make for her has helped keep me busy over a holiday weekend.  Now back at work I want to just stop what I'm doing and pick up some yarn and lose myself in the stitches.

My mom is where I get my bullheadedness from. You could never tell her she could not do something because she would find a way to get it done. I am the same.  

But she also taught me faith, trust and hope. Those are the securities I craft into my yarn projects and hope the bearer feels them.

One of the things that is helping keep me steady through these days of hurt and sorrow is knitting on my granddaughters' sweaters.  I finished the purple one and have begun on the oldest's red and splashy color one.  I have the back finished and am working on the front.  I can tell sweaters are going to be my next marathon of knitting items, much like my bears, socks and hats.  At least they take longer to knit so there should not be quite so many of them hiding in my gift stash!

Here we are, using the same plain easy pattern, but in red, pink and black and white. Worked with Hobby Lobby's 'I Love This Yarn' yarn.

 

Almost Finished

     I don't know how, when you are being very careful counting while knitting, you can still mess up lines of stitching!  I am not a great pattern follower but I have been trying REALLY hard on this sweater for my granddaughter to get it right.  So while I finished the front and back and sewed it together and began picking up the stitches along the sides for the sleeves, I was REALLY careful to pick up the correct number of stitches on the first sleeve.  And it turned out great, it looks a little long, but it measures what the pattern says it should.  So with confidence I began the second sleeve, picking up the stitches along the side.  

     Hmm... I could not get enough of the stitches picked up like the pattern said to, but I thought, that's okay it will be fine.  I think I was also watching episodes of the British series, Father Brown while doing this. We borrowed a dvd copy of the series from the library.  It was a new season and since we only had five days on the loan I got a little distracted watching several episodes in the evenings.  Anyway after knitting ten rows, I realized this sleeve was way too narrow. I counted my stitches and oh my gosh there were ten less than I had on the first sleeve. I had no other choice but to rip out all ten rows and start again picking up the correct number of stitches this time.  

I was doing well until, feeling cocky, I forgot to start decreasing immediately after picking up the stitches like I did on the other sleeve. Okay, I can make that up without ripping back this time, I only had a few rows done.  Night after night I settled into my rocking chair, after supper and prayer time and began knitting and watching more episodes of Father Brown.  I kept track of my decreases with my knit markers occasionally forgetting to put in a marker when I had decreased. Finally after several nights I was getting close to knitting the wrists.  I held it up and folded the sweater in half so the two sleeves were laying against one another and one was longer.  Well of course, I still had to knit the wrists. But wait, it wasn't the already finished one that was longer, it was the side I was still working on and still had an inch to go!   NOOOOOOOOOO

     Oh my word, how in the world did I knit too long??!  Now, what... I was sure my granddaughter who is five and very worldly in her fashion sense would notice that one sleeve was too long. I could just hear her voice saying, "um, Grammy, this sleeve doesn't fit right?"   And I am not the person to say, oh, honey your arms are just different sizes... What do I do?  

     Ugg, if I mark where I need to rip out it was two inches!  If I ripped it out I really didn't think I was going to get 32 stitches back on a needle with several dropped stitches and holes.  So I did the unthinkable. In fact, I didn't even know if it could be done. I had only done this technique once before with just two stitches.  I tinked back two INCHES of knitting. Yup...I  UNKNIT.  

     I don't know if that is a term in knitting or not but tinking does not describe what I had to do. This was totally UNKNITTING!!  

     But, it saved my sweater and in less than two hours I was able to begin again this time immediately beginning the wrist.  I was never so relieved to be almost finished with a project. 

     But now looking at the body of the sweater I am concerned the body is too short, but I am going to sew up the sleeves and sides and have my granddaughter try it on first before figuring out how to add inches to the bottom.  Me and following patterns...I am not sure about the next sweater

In this picture I have not finished the second sleeve, but I love the variations in the yarn. My granddaughter loves purple!  Hobby Lobby Yarn Bee Color Wheel  Grape Jamboree

 

Knitting So Much It Hurts

 It's been a long two years since my husband and I packed up our home of thirty years and moved to a different part of town.  There were lots of reasons, but unfortunately the neighborhood was degrading into loud music, cars with horribly loud music sitting in apartment parking lots at all hours of the night.  Now we have a quiet neighborhood but after redesigning our old house over thirty years to the way we liked it, we have had to start again adding some features we missed from our old house.  So we have been spending time adding grass seed, gardens and most recently a deck off the back of the house. Luckily it was a down on the ground deck but it took a lot of lumber and oh boy are my hands hurting from hauling lumber.   That wouldn't be such a big deal but I am working hard on knitting sweaters for my granddaughters, three of them before Christmas.  I have only knit one or two sweaters in all my years of knitting mostly because 1) they take forever to knit and 2) you usually have to follow a pattern which I am not good at doing.  

But I decided after knitting thirty hats this last year, it was time for something different. That and my family is tired of receiving hats.  And...I also decided to change up the knitting pattern and add a heart on the front: Tada!!

Now for you really good knitters this may not seem like a big deal, but it is huge to me to have to track down some graph paper, which I have never used...not being a math person I never saw the need until I had to make a pattern for the heart I wanted to stitch.   Luckily my daughter-in-law who is very crafty had some. So I have now advanced to working on the second sleeve and I will be almost finished with it!! I am so excited and hoping that it fits at least one of the girls. Yes, I measured but for some reason it looks short to me.  We'll see when it gets sewn up.  Oh by the way I am using Yarn Bee Sugar Wheel yarn for these because I love the color variants as I knit along.

But, because of all my knitting and wood-working, my fingers have been screaming at me. More than just the little bit of arthritis, two of my right hand fingers won't move at all or worse, get a charley-horse in them.  Ouch. The poor things have been overworked.  Picking up and carrying several ten foot long deck boards did not help them at all. 

One of my daughters bought me a hand wax tub where you melt the wax then dip your hand it to make it hurt less and feel smooth. The only problem is sitting around twenty minutes while the wax hardens on your hand which means you cannot do anything but sit still.  Using the phone or reading a book is impossible so I don't use it real often.  I also tried a roll on analgesic with lidocaine which works but again you cannot use your hand while it tries and once it dries the analgesic relief doesn't last long.

Even typing this blog piece is killing my fingers.  Suffering for so many arts can really be a big pain.

 

Happy Easter!

 

It was a beautiful Easter day for us this past Sunday. What was supposed to be a rainy possibly stormy day turned out to be sunny, mild temps and a slight breeze that was wonderful. We were able to attend Mass without rain spoiling everyone's outfits, have Easter Egg hunts and we even had several visits from the Easter Bunny as pictured! The bunnies visited our yard Easter morning!

But the funnest part of the day was getting to spend time with family and enjoying the enthusiasm they had finding eggs, plastic ducks, swinging and running up and down the deck my husband and I are working on and blowing bubbles. The highlight was when the 'Easter Bunny' flew over the house and dropped several eggs into the backyard while the granddaughters were playing. They were amazed and astonished. That is until several eggs rained down and hit both of my daughters on the head and just missed the one year old on the deck!

Oh my, what a day. It was wonderful and beautiful. We later watched video of Pope Francis blessing everyone on Easter Sunday. I even said, "I believe Pope Francis wants to keep going doing everything he can and die with his boots on." Little did I know that in 24 hours he would do precisely that. God bless him and may he rest in peace.

Looking Back

 Good golly, I was searching for a radio station a few weeks back when I stumbled across a very faint KMOX 1120 AM station.  It was faint because I live 90 minutes south of St. Louis but oh my it took me back to my childhood!

I grew up with summers of listening to the St Louis Cardinals on the radio. This was before they were broadcast on television.  Yes, we had a television but those games weren't on there. The best place to listen was the portable radio my dad always had at his workbench or outside when he was working on the house.

The other place I always remember hearing the games on that static-filled radio was at my mom's family reunions every summer.  It was always at one of my cousins' houses and always outside. No one's house was big enough for over 70 adults and kids to gather so we ate outside, played outside and visited outside all day long.  And you would hear somewhere in the yard a radio blasting out the Cardinals game.

It's hard to remember that it was a really long time ago when we did that. I'm 65 which doesn't seem that old but when I start looking at all the changes, the new technology, the ways things are done, it is so weird to think we only had landlines with a rotary dial...and only one in the whole house, black and white televisions, only one and it sat like a huge box in the family or living room. We had newspapers which had comic strips every day, we drank Kool-aid, shared a bottle of soda, ran around the yard barefoot and drank out of the water hose.  We rode bikes without helmets, roller skates with no knee guards, our swing set got going good when the concrete holding down the legs would work loose in wet soil and the legs would rock back and forth!

I am not embarrassed to remember any of this stuff. It is part of my history and I love telling my grand kids about it.  I showed my granddaughters a picture of my husband and I when we got engaged to be married, I had long dark hair and he had long dark hair as well!  My granddaughters refused to believe it was us in the picture!  I of course don't think Mike and I look all that different. But of course we do... 

There has been so much life lived and enjoyed. Of course there have been sorrows too, but those go along with a life lived.  

So I will enjoy trying to listen to KMOX way down in Cape Girardeau, the static and some of the weird noises I imagine are lightning strikes from a storm between us and St Louis.  I will roll down the windows of my Command Vehicle, otherwise known as a van and enjoy the oncoming rain and storm and hope my kids have good memories of their childhoods the way I do.