Me, Myself and Memories

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  Noreen 5:41 pm on May 11, 2018 Permalink  

  A damp and dreary day . . . that’s what Dennis is telling me. I had not noticed. If I know it’s not fit to be outside, I pour myself into whatever the sewing studio has to offer. I will say it felt good when the furnace kicked in every once in awhile. While the embroidery unit was running I did tidy up a few things in the sewing studio. The one thing that made me feel light and cheery was packing up two different bags of t-shirts from one of Dennis’ Granddaughters. I don’t have the heart for a t-shirt quilt right now. I don’t have the strength in my hands to cut up 40 different t-shirts right now. The hint that I had dropped about having the shirts already disemboweled by Amy and her mother didn’t stick. Hmm. I believe that the age that I am at, I can pick what lands under the needle here on Stauffer Ave.

  I was surprised how many graduation invites we received this year. Time will tell how many we can work into the schedule. Those invites coupled with birthdays for the great grand kids, shower invites and wedding invitations . . . what a crazy schedule it could be.

  Those invites aren’t any different from when I was a farmer’s wife. At that time the invites were over and above working side by side with Orlin to get all the outside livestock chores taken care of, getting the gardens started, the kid’s end of school year functions, etc. and taking care of the home. Do you suppose I had more than 24 hours in each day? Could it be that I had the energy of a young woman and knew no quitting or giving in? Is it possible that today some of my somewhat annoying physical challenges are the results of those wonderful days. If that is the case . . . . I wouldn’t trade any of it. It was a sweet life.

   
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  Noreen 3:58 pm on May 10, 2018 Permalink  

  It was brisk enough this morning to keep a fairly good pace for walking to stay warm. It is now five in the afternoon and it was too chilly for me to stay outside. I did get one pumper of Roundup applied. It is difficult to get at the tip of roots of the unwanted. I have decided the investment of Roundup will be a one shot solution and not taking a chance of leaving some of the spreading root behind. Speaking of solutions: I make mine very strong.

  I always have time to chat with a neighbor as she does her walk in the afternoon. June is three years older than me and she has been a widow for a year. Dennis and her husband grew up together, though David was three years younger than Dennis. Small town . . . common threads.

  My expected project came in the mail today. As it is now raining, I know I will be taking my sweet time on this project. Measure once . . . measure twice and a third time doesn’t hurt. I know a certain someone who has a sharp keen eye and he doesn’t even have to squint. I believe he has a built-in eyesight level. The sewing machine will have the night off and we will both be up for the task in the morning.

   
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  Noreen 5:18 pm on May 9, 2018 Permalink  

  A Welcomed Rain 

  Yesterday and into the evening we had rain off and on.  Nothing with winds, but not lacking on lightning or thunder.  I believe 2″ is what we did get.  Well after midnight lightning was going on in the northwest.  It wasn’t surprising that this morning was cool and gray.  After I came back from my walk this morning, I did check out our backyard.  It seems as if everything greened out overnight.  No . . . I was not enthused enough to try to do anything outside.  My feet and shoes would have held me down literally with mud.  I headed in and down into the sewing studio.

  I have all my ducks in a row for the task that I have coming into the sewing studio later this week.  Playing with embroidery designs takes patience and a goodly amount of math.  It’s not totally like fitting a square peg into a round hole, but close.  I had a selection of designs and until I stitched out one of them I would have no idea as to how it would work.  I used this kitten design as a prototype.  The detail was good.  The colors I chose were good.  The 18,000 stitches into a 3″ x 3″ finished product was not good.  The design ended up hard and certainly not conducive for a soft white dishtowel.  The design was downloaded onto my laptop and I began working with it.  For a large dishtowel I felt a design that would be 5″ or 6 ” would look as if it belonged on a 36″ square dishtowel.  After playing around with it on the computer screen, I downloaded it to a flash drive and plugged it into the sewing machine.  Embroidering just for the sake of doing it is not my thing.  I want a good balance of design and what it will be stitched onto.  The same 18,000 stitches on this design turned out well and I now know that the remaining collection will also need to be adjusted.  The end result was a soft, pliable, stitched design on an equally soft dish towel. 

   

   
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  Noreen 4:22 pm on May 8, 2018 Permalink  

  Some long awaited rain today coming in fits and starts. Dennis took advantage of the “day off” and visited his long time friend that now lives in an apartment house here in town. I spent my time working through a stitching design. The design made a great 8″ quilt block. After several tweaks and several trial error stitch outs it is going to be just as great in a 2.5″ x 4″ shirt logo on a t-shirt. I must admit . . . as much stitching as I have done, I had never stitched on a t-shirt. It feels great to challenge myself. It is also a nervous feeling when once the green light is pushed and the needle goes down . . . it will no longer be a prototype, but the real deal.

  It was good not to feel that there was work that could be done out in the gardens but rather to enjoy the rain falling. Dennis and I have had a great run of taking care of our acre after the winter. We can now take it a bit easy . . . still working at some problem areas but knowing that mowing can be done without taking out a chunk of the mower blades when hitting a hiding rock or branch.

   
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  Noreen 4:16 pm on May 7, 2018 Permalink  

  A Dirty Day 

  

  As we have not had a cleansing rain as yet, the first mow of the year was downright dirty. I am past the days of going barefoot. You would never had know it when I took my shoes and socks off. My outside garden shoes have mesh and the silty dirt found its way right through my socks and settled in . . . in between my toes. Dennis caught a break . . . under our new umbrella while my idea was a fast track into the shower. The umbrella stand that we have recycled fits perfectly over the hole in the patio where once was an Oak tree. When we saw that one of the patio slabs was tipping due to roots of the tree, the tree had to go. The patio porch benefits from the shade the umbrella brings as the bright hot sun begins to set towards the west. Right on track we are here on Stauffer Avenue. Once I was cleaned up, it was time to see if the sewing studio still recognized me. I have been commissioned for a special project. I need to do a prototype or two before tackling the real deal.

   
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  Noreen 3:54 pm on May 6, 2018 Permalink  

  A sure way to take a day of rest is . . . get the heck off of Stauffer Avenue. We have been waiting for Dennis’ nephew, “Mr. Crete,” to do a bit of work for us so we have stayed pretty close to home. When family agrees to help out the last thing that is appreciated is not being accessible. Brett ran into a glitch with his schedule. Not to worry from our end. We have done our prep work and ever he gets to Stauffer Avenue we will be here to ramrod the job.

  So . . . we ran away from home and off to Mankato we went. Great Clips has been doing a good job on our haircuts. We stop in there as soon as we arrive at Mankato, find out what time we need to be back for our appointment and off we go to do errands. Dennis drives and I am the “go to” person to hop out and do the business.

  I will admit Dennis and I are spoiled. I have gotten on in years and make sure of where my feet are to prevent falling. The last thing I will do is run for a phone call when we know we are expecting one. We have indulged in wireless phones that need to set on a cradle to recharge . . . if the batteries are healthy enough to hold a charge. It was time we bought new batteries for them, Batteries and Bulbs were our first purchase. Doing one phone at a time to allow them to charge won’t be a problem.

  The Koi have adjusted to the outside pond and they were eating like crazy to make up for being dormant all winter. Pet Expo was doing a promotion and with Koi food purchase a box of Aunt Annie’s cookies were given. That is never a bad freebie.

  Jiffy Lube parking lot looked like it was swamped but we were wiling to wait. Jiffy Lube as been taking care of Dennis’ pickup since he has had it. Great service. Apparently the next door shop of Anytime Sports was hogging the parking area and we were able to drive in for the grease job and oil change. Check that off for another 3,000 miles.

  Our treat to ourselves is the new patio umbrella that we purchased at Lowe’s today. The old one was fourteen years old and the ribs of it were wood as well as the pole and neither were feeling their oats any longer. In fact it was sacrificed late last fall in a bonfire. The new one is also the 11′ that we had had but it is aluminum with a crank out for lowering and raising. It should be easy peasy.

  Coming home felt good. We had had quite the workout. Oh, by the way . . . our heads feel so much lighter after great haircuts. Dennis’ Korean cap even fits better.

   
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  Noreen 5:42 pm on May 5, 2018 Permalink  

  How can we justify a clean garage when there is a dirty pickup that wants to call the garage home. As we were cleaning out the interior, I made the mistake of brushing past the release of the glove compartment. That sucker popped open as if there were a firecracker that had gotten ignited. Time out was called. An enormous about of paper work was taken over to the patio for some sifting and sorting. In the past there had been a mouse that had gotten in the glove compartment of our car. Though there was only tissues in the compartment originally, upon opening the compartment a cloud of fluff welcomed us.

  As we sorted through all the paper from the pickup glove compartment, I kept an eye out for a mouse that may have been smothered for lack of any room to chew. Dennis, “Who would have just have had a baby with the photographer from Duluth?” Hello Dennis. It’s Ava’s baby picture from Silver Bay and she is now 10 years old. Yes, this clean out was needed.

  Once the inside was tidied, we splurged on new floor mats. The old ones were so curled, I was worried about one of us catching a foot on it and landing spread Eagle on a parking lot. Why such a simple task and purchase had been overlooked was mind boggling. Dennis teased me and commented that we probably had an emotional attachment to them. That guy cracks me up sometimes. Yes, a good hand washing was in order, but . . . a drive through the automatic wash at Casey’s would have to do for now and we called it an abbreviated road date.

  It got so hot so fast this afternoon with a fair amount of humidity. About five the skies became black, thunder boomers had all the cats heading for the garage rafters and then . . . nothing. The temperature dropped from 80 degrees to 68 degrees. I am sure there was bad weather not far from us. We were fortunate and settled in for a quiet night.

   
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  Noreen 6:06 pm on May 4, 2018 Permalink
  Tags: Lena ( 6 ), Raymond ( 4 )   

  Dennis and I could do a polka in our garages this evening. Naw . . . that’s not going to happen. We wouldn’t be able to pick our feet up high enough. It started out looking for a plier. It ended up having the entire surface of the workbench in the car garage being cleared. A wastebasket was close at hand. We touched, we looked, we sorted, we sifted and we pitched. That methodology continued on all four walls. We took a break for lunch. Not much for quick choices, so we decided on oatmeal. It worked.

  Cleaning the floor was a challenge as the north wind was very strong. We closed everything up and I swept and brushed debris into a shovel and then into a bin. When we knew there was nothing left large enough to clog up the vacuum hose, we vacuumed. The ole cowboy gets very annoyed when I pick up leaves and they don’t cooperate and get sucked up and down into the canister. Yuck for silt that was as fine as powder once it was aggravated.

  When the car garage was done, I was ready to shower so I could run some errands that needed to be done TODAY! Dennis was parked in his rocking chair totally enjoying the view through clean windows. I came back out and suggested one more item as long as we were grubby . . . cleaning the floor of the pickup garage. Coming in off of a gravel surface, it was thick. A mixture of gravel, clay, snow that had melted off of the pickup that had salt included in the snow melt . . . big time mess. Again closing everything up, it was shovel first, vacuum second and garden hose third.

  Dennis’ comment as squeaky clean me was heading for the errands, “I can’t figure out how people our age complain about being bored.” My thought, “Honey, they aren’t married to Raymond and Lena’s child.”

   
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  Noreen 3:42 pm on May 3, 2018 Permalink  

  Window washing is quite rewarding. All the grit and grime can be a downer when you want to see spring . . . spring. Dennis’ patio porch has three sliders. If it were not for having the fourth side being part of his little red pickup garage, it might also have sported a slider. I didn’t get those slider windows washed last fall. The nitty gritty is that when I look out of our east house window, it gives me a good feeling to see Dennis in his rocking chair in the patio porch. Just saying . . . keeping tabs on him doesn’t hurt. The inside of the windows were just as dirty as the outside.

  Picture this: four cats finding lazy flies on the slider windows just aching to be pounced upon. The height that paw prints were seen was amazing. Plus, a winter of the ole cowboy smoking in the patio porch . . . Yup . . . you got it.

  Before I put the cart before the horse, I sat on the patio and thought this through. The aggregate patio surrounds the patio porch. Man, oh man, there was a lot of winter grit, soppy leaves and twigs that had been blown during the strong winter winds. The best bet was to get the garden hose out and the broom and take care of the patio. Without fail, I might have gotten the sliders washed then realized how badly the patio needed a cleaning and there would go the muddy splatter onto the clean windows.

  By the time Dennis came out after his forenoon nap, I was sitting and relaxing on a clean patio. From many springs of the past, I knew I would be fighting hard water window spots. How could Kevin have known that the Turbo Foam Lime-A-Way that he had brought along on Easter Sunday would be a great addition to the slider window cleaning. I am not saying the windows are streak free, but by golly there are no water spots.

  I think Kevin had remembered last Thanksgiving when he was doing a window I couldn’t reach. Windex didn’t touch the water spots. CLR didn’t touch the water spots. A little dab will do you of Lime-A-Way. The Turbo Foam will also come in handy to spray on the shower nozzle from time to time. It doesn’t matter that we have a Culligan softener on board, crusty stuff does appear.

  Before starting supper, I checked. I can look out the east window of the bathroom and see through the west slider windows to the point of seeing through the east windows and see most of the acre to the east. if I could only wiggle my nose and have the house windows done. That will be for another day.

   
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  Noreen 2:42 pm on May 2, 2018 Permalink  

  — And Here is the Nasty 

  

  This is the nasty perennial that is related to the Chive plant. It will sprout a blossom stem. It is totally uncontrollable. Now that I have the planter cleaned up, it would not surprise us that there may have been some that will sprout next year. I will be ready for them. Now that we have the acre raked, there will be a trip to Fleet and Farm for Roundup. I will cover my Hosta, Bleeding Heart, etc with a pail and then spray around the good plants to try to kill off ALL those that have invaded and think they can settle in for expansion.