Another Year Older...

...for someone special in our family.  Marty's birthday is today.  Our tradition, as a family, is to go out to dinner to celebrate at the restaurant of choice for the birthday person.  This year, we had to give that a great deal of consideration given that it could mean a couple bags of groceries, or a tank of gas, or could be needed to go towards the mortgage or utilities somewhere down the road.  We decided to go ahead and go out and enjoyed a nice meal at Macaroni's Grill.  If you don't have them in your area, they're an Italian style restaurant.  We hadn't been there in several years, and I have to say it was nice going on a Tuesday evening :)  No waiting!  

The birthday boy had a grilled salmon plate while Nick and I each had "Penne Rustica" which is penne pasta with prosciutto, shrimp, chicken in a nice creamy sauce with some Parmesan grated on top, yum, that's what I always have when I go there and I brought half home for tomorrow's lunch.  Marty enjoyed his salmon as well as his individual chocolate cake served with a side of whipped cream sprinkled with nuts and a small pot of chocolate to dip it in, or I suppose you could pour it over the top.  They also sang happy birthday in Italian.  The singers had wonderful, harmonized, well-trained voices which was awesome because I wouldn't have expected those voices to come from the two singers.  The female had a speech impediment that I had to listen to very carefully to catch her words when we were chatting, and the gent, a thin young man of Asian descent, came out with a wonderful deep rich voice that I would have expected from a classic portly Italian tenor. Just goes to show, never judge a book by its cover, and you'd think I'd have learned that by now.

Tomorrow is the day Marty has a "weeding out" phone interview with a prospective employer.  Pray that this turns into a belated birthday gift by turning into a full-time job.  It's hard keeping him encouraged.  I know many out there are struggling finding jobs, and have been unemployed longer than Marty, and for those I would offer a prayer for relief too.  Marty has never been unemployed since his college days, so he's learning a whole new ball game, so to speak.  And since college, he's only worked for two agencies, one a university, the other an internet start-up.  There is a huge diversity of skills required in any given company looking for software developers/computer programmers, so while he may have many of the skills they're looking for, he may not have all their requirements.

Flying Decades!

Today was a milestone for me.  I have officially completed six decades on this planet!  It doesn't seem possible.  I remember as a little girl, thinking forward to the year 2000 and how that was SO far away and wondering if I'd live to be "that old"!  I was sure I wouldn't, but here I am and thinking it's impossible that I've reached that old age.  Frankly, I'd be doing fine with this age if it wasn't for the extra poundage, I call it being "fluffy", hehe, and all those ridiculous aches and pains that seemingly came out of nowhere when I reached the half-century mark a decade ago.  

Lord willing, I'll reach beyond another decade or two and get a lot more quilts quilted and done.  When I get home from vacation and get 're-settled' I'll get caught up on my blogging.  As it is, Nick and I managed to wipe out my aunt's allotted internet time so I'm at my mom's for a few hours and using her internet.  I didn't know there were caps on internet time, but now we know.  You need to understand that Nick brought his monster-computer with us and has spent far too much time on it while my aunt and I were out doing some other things.  He could have stayed home in the dry land for that! but he was, and still is, quite sure he wanted to be here in the wet land, which by the way, has been perfectly dry the entire 24 days we've been here - boo, hiss, we wanted at least some clouds with a few sprinkles here and there, didn't happen!

On Monday, I'll be headed home to see if I can even get into my 'new' quilt room, it may take time, but there's always the dining room to work in.

...the Behinder I Get!

You all know the saying that comes from, something like the hurrier I go, the behinder I get.  Well, I'm not hurrying much, but I'm not catching up much either.

Hard to believe he's now 14! and 5'8" or more.

Yesterday was Nick's 14th birthday.  Daddy 'caved' and ordered his, achhh, expensive computer set-up.  I won't say how expensive but I'd like a sewing cabinet that costs about that much!  Dinner plans included his two best friends, Tino and Jay and we all went to his restaurant of choice (our birthday tradition) Olive Garden - yum.  I was 'bad' and didn't get out to get him a card, but I did sing Happy Birthday to him.  Did you know that O.G. no longer offers a complimentary birthday dessert?  And they'll only sing H.B. IF you BUY a dessert!  Nick was too full for dessert and most of their desserts now cost what a meal did a decade or so ago, so we skipped dessert entirely....not even a cake at home!  Very low key.

Tomorrow I become a teacher.  A younger friend asked if I'd teach her to quilt, so I said I would.  I'm looking forward to it.  I don't know if she has any sewing experience at all.  She told me her sewing machine is still in it's box.

I've not used my crutches since Friday.  I'm slow, but moving.  Remember, it was the tortoise not the hare that won the race.  Each day is better, and I thank God for the healing He is giving me.

I worked on the little quilt that I've had oh-so-way-too-long that is a many-hands community service quilt for my guild.  All I've had to do was prepare the back, sandwich, quilt, & bind.  It's been pinned for eons, really for eons, and I'd done some stitching in the ditch around each block, and originally planned to do something more free motion within each block (crib quilt), but at this point, just want to get it back to the guild and the meeting is Thursday night.  With that in mind, I just did some additional straight-line, diagonal quilting and tomorrow morning will hopefully knock out that binding so that I can stitch it tomorrow night or Thurs. morning and call it DONE.

30 years ago

I brought my wonderful, lovely daughter into this world. I can't believe it's been 30 years already (as of 11/3 -- I forgot to finish and post this!). I planned to put a pic of her from when she was born, but I'd have to find one, then scan it, then crop it, etc. and I find that a bit difficult right now, so I'll post this one of her (and I) that was taken just before her wedding in 2008, and I don't have a lot of photos of her already on my computer. I love this girl...woman! There may be some things that I'd like to see change in her life (I'll keep praying) but she's a wonderful young lady, she graduated from college 2 years ago and worked very hard to do so with little to no assistance from me (except for encouragement) and little from her dad. She and I have a great relationship even if we do disagree in some areas, like parenting...she and her husband now have a 14 month old little boy...my first and only grandchild. We didn't get to spend a lot of time together during her childhood, but that's a story for another time. We don't get to spend a lot of time together now, and once went 5 years in between visits...only because of the geographical distance (about 1100 miles) which was WAY too long. We talk on the phone often, we're friends as well as mother/daughter. Have I said I LOVE this woman?!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY, 'VICTORIA' ! You will always be my 'baby' and will always have my love.

Near-Teenager...Now Teenager

It's official, Nick is now 13, a teenager. Marty took Nick and three of his best buddies to one of those places where they can race each other around a track. Not inexpensive for two sets of 14 laps each, but a kid only becomes a teenager once in his life, and we've not done anything but our traditional birthday dinner at the honoree's restaurant of choice in the last two or three years, so it was ok. They had a great time, but Marty didn't take a camera, so there are no photos. Nick wanted cake donuts with frosting and sprinkles in lieu of a cake, so I ordered them from the local bakery and placed them on the cake plate with 13 candles. They look pretty nice on the plate and Nick was pleased.