IN Carmel

 Good grief.  I slept till the alarm rang.  I'll take it.  A repeat tonight?  We'll see.  Eric got his ride to the bus.  It was breakfast for me and the crossword and wordle finished and a stab at connections.  I'll take what I can get.                                      More pretty dogwood leaves.  They remind me of pink apple blossoms.  I cut out ten burps ready for sewing.  The rest of the morning was slow and easy.  Way too cold for a walk in the garden and yes, there was a frost with a few flurries later in the day.  One almost needed to imagine we were seeing them but they were here.   Another hard maple at the edge of the yard.  By the end of the week, I think the trees will be bare.                          ...

 A day at home.  Yeah.  Well with the exception of getting Eric to the bus stop at Nora.  It's one of those cold rainy mornings when it's not such a hot idea to ride the bike to work.  Can't blame him a bit and it's a mom-son time.  Love it.                        My favorite sewing tool was gifted to me by Kimmy and Jared about twenty years ago.                                                                                               And I still have it.  It was a slow morning that made one want to stay cloistered somewhere warm and quiet.  I chose the sewing room of course working with the hum...

 Church Day!   Another wake up at 3:30 but I stayed in bed and eventually..(about 2 hrs. later)  went back to sleep.  I'll take it.  Well, not the awake but the extra 2 hrs of sleep.  Whatever I can get is good enough.  I finished some burps (please excuse me) before going to church.  LOL We visited with folks before church and then it was time to find the pew.  We have quite a little group that hangs together, most of us with hearing aids so we're smoking out the best place to hear.  I think we have found a good spot.  The children choir sang What a Friend We Have In Jesus.  There were some verses in Swahili.  This is my friend Sarah Ellen sitting beside me in church listening to the children having spent more than 20 years living in Kenya where Swahili is the language of the day along with a few others. Her feet were moving.  Her smile was the best. They will be visiting Kenya for a few weeks again in January B...

 It was a rough early morning start at 4 a.m.  Way too early.  Sounds like the name of a program on MSNBC. That show starts at 5 every weekday morning. I've been yawning all day and fell asleep around 4 p.m. after a PT floor session.  The day was a drag.   I was out the door for Bread and Bowl at 8:30.  I should have been a little earlier.  There was trouble with the Monumental Marathon as I got closer to church.  Lots and lots of people trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon.  But I found my way through.  Workers coming later had more trouble.  Church seems to be in the middle of the runners every year.   Another big flannel sale. My ability to say no needs to be strengthened.  There are no altar flowers for tomorrow so I cut some grasses and hosta leaves and arranged that at the altar and then it was time for the Community Room Bread and Bowl preparation..  We were busy and had no time to spare bef...

 A quiet day at home.  No trips out.  The Odessy stayed in the garage all day.  Well, on second thought Doug took it out. Not me!  Crossword successful but I'm taking a break from the other brain stuff. The Oehler Mapel on the north side of the house.  The walls of the rooms  near the tree turn yellow from the reflection coming from the leaves.  It is a wonderful sunny day.                                                    Twelve burps at the beginning of the process. I spent a whole lot of the day at the sewing machine sewing burp cloths.  A few days ago I cut more fabric so today I did some sewing.  I'm expecting more babies so there will be more burping I'm sure.                             ...

 Up early and off to church to deliver clams with labels for food serving today at Bread and Bowl.  I picked up more clams for Rita to label later.  Then back home after saying hello to the Thursday Crew!  I made it a point to get one PT session in before I went to see Sophia.  Improvements are coming along.  The stairs are not so painful and I hope to keep it that way.  We worked on balancing which is just hard.  I'm flopping all over the place with just about everything she has me do. Lunch after a lot of hard work was what I needed.  Then the crossword was completed.   The sewing machine just came on once for two burp cloths for Kenzie.  Chickens.  She has the free range kind.  I called Rita asking her if she felt like a ride to see the tree colors.  She said yes and we were off for what I thought would be an hour but turned into a couple more than I had planned.  Cool Creek park got a ride through and th...

 Up early.  I love it when the house is quiet in the early morning.  Doug always is a late sleeper.  It's me and only me making any noise.  I watched a little morning news.  The Carmel Russells reported all their successes with the puzzles.  I just groaned.  Sometimes my brain does better things in the afternoon.  Sometimes it just doesn't do!  Just a reminder.  I just can't get enough of so much color. Not to be forgotten was the three-month checkup with the primary care doctor this morning at 8:40..  I've graduated to every six months for now.  I never know for sure until she tells me.  All is very well with no problems.  All the doctors are being watchdogs now with no anticipated surprises.  I like that a whole lot. I'm learning that they will be sticking with me forever. Home again and Doug took off for the library.  Not my cup of tea when I just wanted to sew.  I completed 4 baby feeding cover...

                                There are not many of these but what are here are displaying beautiful color. Early morning rise with a whole lot of thumbs down with wordle.  I didn't even attempt connections.  I got to do a grandma thing.  The parents had other responsibilities and I got to take the grandsons to school.  It was a quiet ride with this grandma not sure the grandsons were awake during the ride.    When back home I worked on the crossword.  The mistakes I made brought complications to the morning.  A huge oops when I realized I worked right through PT trying to fix the crossword.  What a bummer.  In those early morning hours, I did go through all the PT drills assigned.  I guess you could say that PT was at home again but without the teacher..  I felt so bad about dumping Sophia that I took some chili to her for her even...

                                                              A miniature iris with the morning sun. The morning started a bit late with a late wake-up.   The reason?  Perhaps because the night had another glitch with the electricity.  Meaning that there was time spent in the chair again   Today the big boys are in the neighborhood with the big boy toys. It's been an all day event.                                                                                          A b ig boy toy. This is one of many toys statio...

 What a day of ups and downs.  Thank goodness the ups lasted a whole lot longer than the downs.  So I would say the day was mostly good.   Up early.  Well, last night was a bust.  The power went off around 9:30.  No storm. No accident was reported.  No explanation.  It just went away quietly not to return for a long time.  We went outside for a while to check on the meteor shower.  It was supposed to be a good one.  It didn't show either.  It was to bed without the cpac machine.  That was a bust waking up around 1 breathing like I was not supposed to be breathing.  That was a panic time for sure.  So back to the chair as it happened when recuperating from the first surgery with no cpac machine.   Finally at 1:40 power appeared from somewhere again.  I snapped on the machine and the rest of the night was much better.  Tonight should be even better.  Today of course was church day...

 It's 8 PM and I haven't touch wordle or connection and I just finished the crossword.  I did eat breakfast.  That was the extent of the morning stuff.  Where have I been?   My view for 25 hours today!  At the sewing machine among a few other things.  And there are 100 Baby Burps ready for Ginny and the Goodwill nurses and babies.  I proved to myself that I could do that in 4 days.  Will I do it again?  Probably not.  Once is enough. No more 100 goals.                       That's what 100 looks like. I set a goal and darned if I'm not going to reach that goal.  I went to JoAnn's and back to Westfield's Goodwill for the flannel sheet. The sheets are 100% better quality than store flannel.  Look around in your Goodwills for them and if you don't want them for your bed, send them on to you know who at you know where. The pattern is not very impor...