Spring-Time Busy-ness

I realize it's been a long time since I've posted anything, but I'm sure you didn't miss me, since I am pretty humdrum anyway.

Most of the time, I don't post anything cuz I don't have anything exciting to say.

This post will prove it cuz I still don't have anything exciting to say, but I will record a few things that I've been up to.

Sewing.  Purging.

There.  That about covers it.

If you want more details, you can keep reading if you wish.

This Alaska quilt that I've been working on is finally almost done.

I really hate the way my quilts get puckered when I quilt all the way across the whole thing, so this time I tried to minimize the puckering by not sewing across the sashing, which meant constant starting and stopping, which meant more frustration with my machine.  So in order to maintain a fairly good relationship with my machine, I had to do only a little bit at a time each day, and get it done slowly and calmly, instead of quickly with high stress and rage.

Anyhoo, I finally got to the part where I can start working on the binding.  I was looking forward to taking a break from my machine while I waited for myself to go buy some fabric for the binding, but then PW asked me to teach her how to sew.

sigh........okay, fine

I got her started on a small project, and this placemat is the final product of her labors.

 I thought it turned out pretty good for her first project.

She had a little help from Weeners, of course.

I think Weeners loves my sewing machine more than I do.

Since I still had the walking foot attached to my machine, I went ahead and made some more dish rags for the church building.  I will probably keep some of them for myself.

I got 4 more to go, and then my machine will be put aside until I get my binding fabric ready.

Also, I started another quilt.  I know you're gonna think I'm crazy, but I decided I am going to hand piece this one because I'm sick of my machine, and I just find it relaxing to sew by hand.  Besides, this one will have a lot of seams and corners to match up, and I know if I do this one by machine, nothing's gonna match up.  It will look way better done by hand.

I take turns making quilts for my kids, and since PW's is all done, it was time to make one for Justin again.  I found one in a magazine that I thought would be nice for him.  The whole thing is made up of 2-1/2" squares.  Very simple.  

It took me a long time to get all my squares cut out.

For a twin size quilt, I needed 1800 squares.  All neutral colors in dark, medium, and light tones.

I didn't want to repeat the same fabric in the same 25-block square, so I had to keep running to the quilt stores to look for more patterns, for variety.

I finally got them all cut out and ready to sew.  So now when I sit down to watch TV, I can relax with my thread and needle and let the quilt top slowly grow in my lap.

This is the first block.  I gotta make 72 of these.

In the meantime, I finally FINALLY! got Justin's 1st year album all DONE!

I had to buy a 3-1/2" binder cuz it ended up too thick for the binder that it was in.  You know how it is when it comes to taking pictures of your baby, especially your first one.  You take LOTS of pictures.  So I'm sure the 1st year album will be the thickest one, and the later years will end up being 2 or 3 years all in the same album.  That is, if I live long enough to get through all his years, let alone Steph and PW.  But it's a fun on-going project that I enjoy doing.

My other recent activities involved purging.  We've accumulated a lot of JUNK over the years, and decided it was time to get rid of stuff.  We've already made 3 trips to Value Village, and that was just after going through Justin's and PW's rooms.  

Mostly got rid of a lot of books from our homeschooling days.

Then I went through the game closet and got rid of half our games that we don't play anymore.  :-(

Next room to go through is my scrapbooking room, but I highly doubt I will be getting rid of much there.  I do need to do some serious organizing though, and that will be a huge time consuming job.

Side note news flash:  one reason we wanted to start purging is because Chuck applied for a transfer to Duluth, MN. If he gets the job, at least the biggest part of purging will be done.  But nonetheless, even if he doesn't get the job, purging is still needed, and it feels good to get rid of stuff.

That is all I'm going to say about Duluth because there's no point in elaborating on it until we know something for sure.

At I'm not quite sure how I feel about it anyway.

So a couple weeks ago, Chuck had to go to Florida for 10 days.  Midway through his absence something happened.  PW left the garage door open all night, and that resulted in a whole day of an unexpected fiasco which woulda/coulda been avoided.

Friday morning I woke up to a cold house.  It's usually on the cool side anyway, but this was cold, so I knew right away something was wrong.

The furnace wouldn't kick in, so I knew I had to call someone right away before the house got even colder. I called HeatSource cuz they've been out here before to fix our furnace and I was very pleased with them, so within an hour or two, the guy arrived. (His name was Jesse - very nice guy.)

First, he discovered that the furnace froze up, so he gave me the option of thawing it out myself and then he would come back after it's thawed, OR he could switch to hourly pay and stay and do it himself.  I knew either way it was gonna cost a bunch of money, so I told him to just stay and finish it.  It's a good thing because while he was here, he discovered that the pipes behind Chuck's "slop sink" were frozen.  So while the furnace was thawing out, he examined that problem, and found out that the pipes behind the sheetrock had burst open.  So he had to go down into our crawlspace and turn off the water and look for the leak and then he told me I should call a plumber.

Here's the weird part that I don't understand.  I asked him if he recommended anyone in particular and he said "no".  So I got on the internet to look for a plumber, and HeatSource came up.  Well, that is who this guy Jesse works for!  (So, why didn't Jesse recommend HeatSource?????) So, I called HeatSource and told them what happened, and she asked my name, I told her, she said, "Oh, Lisa!  Not your pipes too!"  She recognized me from my earlier call about the furnace.  I told her that Jesse was still here working on my furnace, so I gave the phone to Jesse.  I heard Jesse say something into the phone like "I don't know, she looked it up on the internet and HeatSource came up....."

So, I was getting the feeling that maybe they didn't want to do the plumbing work?????

Anyway, Jesse got stuck with both jobs of fixing my furnace AND my pipes.

I'm just glad he was here, and I told him that he was my knight in shining armor.

He said, "we don't usually get that kind of reaction from people".  But Chuck was gone, and I was feeling like a helpless damsel in distress, so that made him my knight in shining armor.

(The last time the furnace went out, Chuck was in Iraq!  Should I be seeing a pattern here?)

He ended up cutting a hole in the sheetrock to change the pipes.  It was all wet and soggy in there, so he told me to put a fan in front of it to help dry it out (so mold doesn't grow in there).

I know, by looking at this picture you're thinking I was supposed to turn the fan ON, not just set the fan in front of the hole.  LOL! No worries, I took this picture after everything had dried out.

So, while Jesse was waiting for someone to deliver two new pipes (yes, two pipes burst open), he continued to work on the furnace, which by this time was thawed out.  He got it working again and said there was no damage, but then he made another discovery.  He said, "I hate to give you more bad news but I have to "red tag" this furnace and shut it down."

WHAT!?

He tested the CO2 emissions and they were SKY HIGH, way off the charts.  He said if our furnace happened to crack, everyone in the house would be dead in a matter of seconds.  

So maybe it was blessing in disguise that PW left that garage door open?  Otherwise we never would've been aware of this.

He said it would be a week before they could install a new one, so I asked him, can't we just take our chances and keep this one running for one more week?  

He said no because it would be against the law, and he would get fired.

Okay, so what am I supposed to do to keep warm for a whole week?

He said he would let the furnace run long enough to heat the house up, and he would stick around and watch the CO2 emissions, but then he would have to shut it down when he leaves.  And he would also loan me some space heaters to keep the house warm until the new one was installed.

I was grateful for that cuz I thought I was gonna have to run to Lowe's or Home Depot to go buy some.  Also, Jesse set up one of their other guys to come out to my house later that same day to sell me my new furnace, so I was glad I didn't have to run to the store and try to get back in time.

So after Jesse fixed my water leak and shut down my furnace, he left.  And then Ben came to give me his spiel.  He presented me with 3 choices:  cheap, medium, expensive.

And we also got Chuck on the phone so he could be in on this.  I didn't want to make this decision on my own, although I was already in my own mind leaning towards the medium one.

It didn't make sense for us to spend a bunch of moolah on the expensive one if we ended up moving.  The cheap one didn't sound too impressive.  So Chuck agreed that we should get the medium one.

So for a whole week, the furnace in the garage sat useless

while I kept the space heaters quite useful inside the house.

They actually kept the house quite toasty, too warm at times.  It reminded me of being in our toasty cabin on a cold winter day.  :-)

So anyhoo, that was an unexpected adventure that ended up taking my whole day,

but thankfully we are still alive and warm with our new furnace which was installed on the same day that Chuck was coming back from Florida, of course.

Now if we could only train PW to get into the habit of always shutting the garage door!

For someone with nothing to say, this post ended up being really long.

I leave you now with a deep thought from Peeka-boo:

"???????????????????"

My Poor, Poor, Poor, Poor Begonia!

A few months ago a lady from church gave me this begonia plant.  It was supposed to grow pretty flowers on it, but apparently it wasn't getting enough sunlight cuz it never grew any flowers.  Or at least that's all I can figure.  Other than that, I thought I was doing a pretty good job at keeping it alive.

Until Peeka came along.

She is a very sweet cat, but has one very bad habit.

She likes to chew on my plants, both live and plastic, she doesn't care.

This plant quickly went from standing up straight and proud.....

to wilty.

Peeka had broken one of the stems, so I had to take out a whole stalk.

But she wasn't done with it yet.

I tried and tried to keep her out of my plant, but even if I manage to do this during the day, who's to say what she does during the night when I'm in slumberland?

This is all that's left of it now.

Even if I could revive it, what's the point?  

Do cats ever grow out of this habit?

Or is she hardwired for it for good?

What should I do with this plant?

Here is my other plant that she chewed up.

This used to be what they call a "money tree".

I forgot what it's real name is, but it doesn't matter cuz it's not fit to bring me any fortune now.

So, do I give up on having any live plants altogether?

Good thing for her, I don't have a dieffenbachia.

I still have one more plant that she hadn't touched yet, but it's only a matter of time, I'm sure.

I suppose you all heard about our earthquake.  They say it was 7.9 or 8.0.

When I heard it was that high, at first I didn't believe it cuz it didn't feel any worse than other earthquakes we've had.  8.0 is pretty big.

But I guess we didn't feel the big impact because it was far away, and it was really deep under the ground.  So we just got a good shaking and swaying motion.  I was just crawling into bed when it happened, and at first couldn't figure out what that knocking noise was.  Turns out it was my bookcase hitting against the wall.  Anyhoo, we didn't have it that bad here, but I guess the people closer to it were advised to get to higher ground because of a tsunami warning, which turned out to be only 9" higher than the normal tidal wave.

Better safe than sorry, I guess.

That's all for now!

January 9, 2017

I don't have anything interesting to say, but it's been almost a whole month since I've said anything, so here I am to say pretty much nothing.

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and I hope the new year started off with a positive note.

Peeka has really made herself at home here now.  She acts like she truly belongs here.  And she's also under the delusion that she's got us under her spell and will worship her and spoil her at her every whim.

She's almost right.

It's hard to resist her sweet charm and loud purrs when all she wants is loving affection.

One thing she does when she sees you coming toward her - she flops over onto her back and expects you to scratch her belly.  Just like a dog would do!

Of course, Chuck is always happy to oblige.

She's got him so wrapped.

As you can see, her fuzz still hasn't grown back from her surgery, but she's not ashamed of it.  She just wants her belly stroked - that's all that counts.

Weeners if finally warming up to her.

They're not exactly snuggling together under a lap quilt, eating popcorn and watching movies together, but Weeners no longer minds if Peeka is only inches away from her.  Sometimes they chase each other up and down the stairs - I don't know what kind of game they play or what the object is, but they sound like a couple of horses running around the house.  This keeps Chuck awake in the middle of the night.

Peeka discovered my large kitchen windows.  That might not be a good thing for me, but it's a great place for birdwatching if you're a cat.

She does so many cute things and gets into some interesting positions and poses.  I always want to get pictures of these moments but it's near impossible to do.  Every time she sees me coming with a camera she stops what she's doing and walks toward me, purring of course.

She also has been learning to use her scratching board, which is a happy huge deal.  Maybe we won't need to get her declawed???

A couple weeks ago we got our truck back from Fairbanks and it's pretty much good as new.  They left a few minor scratches on the driver window, but gave Chuck a $500 discount for not fixing it.  The scratches are so minor, we don't really notice them anyway, so we thought it was a good trade.

So last weekend we spent New Year's Eve at the cabin, now that we had a way to haul our snowmachines up there.  After all the holiday "busy-ness" it was a nice way to just relax.

It was kinda cold when we got there.  The temp inside the cabin was in the upper teens, but it warmed up enough by the time we went to bed.

As always, there was evidence of a critter visitor that tore up our insulation. Again.

I thought we were gonna do some snowshoeing the next day, but after we had everything from breakfast cleaned up and put away, Chuck was ready to go home.  I guess he had some stuff to do before going back to work the next day.

I still had stuff to do too, like finish making these magnetic labels for my Bible class.

Last Wednesday I wanted to introduce the next phase (the books of History), but classes were cancelled on account of a snow storm.  So now, I'm eager to get back in the classroom cuz I'm kinda feeling like we're running behind.  I want them to have all the books memorized by the time I'm done teaching two quarters, but I'm trying to do it not too fast, and in a fun way.  I have some activities and games planned that I think will be fun, and always looking for more ideas.  

Well, that's about all that's going on here.  

Stay warm!

"Scratch my belly!"

Peeka

Does this kitty look familiar to you? 

We found her at the animal shelter.

I was ready to get another kitty, and this one looked so much like Bossy, I had to have her.  She is 8 months old.  I wanted a little hyper 8-week old furball, but they are hard to find when  you want one.

She was already named "Peeka" by her previous owner, so that is what we're calling her for now, but that might change.  We are still waiting for her to get comfortable here.  Mostly she still hides, but she LOVES to be petted and she purrs really loud when we hold her, so I think she will warm up to us quite nicely after she gets used to her new surroundings.  Plus she just got spayed two days ago, so she is still recovering from that.  I will be able to get more pictures of her when she's feeling more at home here.

Weeners of course doesn't like her very much.

She growls and hisses at her, but I'm hoping she will get over it and accept her.

But I think Weeners is taking out some frustration on me, too.  She was so full of sassafrass today and made it very difficult for me to get any sewing done.

 She perched herself up onto my machine and kept trying to catch my threads.

And then she wouldn't let me tie my knots.  She bit and clawed my hands every time I tried.

I finally just gave up and walked away and came back to it after she left.

She looks sweet and innocent, but she's not.

She also came to like sitting under the Christmas tree.

I'm debating whether or not to put presents under there cuz I don't want her to claw them open.

She is just SO SASSY!!!

If you've ever seen the movie "Arsenic and Old Lace",  you will "get it" when I tell you about Mr. Spinalzo.  We started a running joke here that whenever we see a dead mouse laying by the door, we call it "Mr. Spinalzo" and when Weeners goes back outside, we tell her "...and take your cold companion with you!"  But she never does.  Instead, she brings back cold companions for Mr. Spinalzo. 

"We can't leave Mr. Spinalzo in the window seat!"

This has been a very busy and very different week for me.

Chuck left for D.C. Monday morning, so he is gone for the week.

Also on Monday, I got my teeth cleaned and checked.  I told my dentist my tooth still hurts, even though he did a root canal on it a year ago.

To make a long story short, I had the root canal redone yesterday (I was surprised they were able to get me in that fast.)  This time I was referred to a specialist in Anchorage, so I hope it works this time.  It was done in a surgical center and they had more fancy equipment.  He said my dentist missed a nerve.  He should've done 4, but he only did 3.  (I want my money back!)  

Then last night we picked up Peeka, so we are constantly mindful of trying to make her feel comfortable.

Besides all the running around, I am trying to get other things done - like this quilt that Weeners apparently doesn't want me to finish.   Plus I'm trying to make these magnetic labels for my Bible class.  I plan to make all 66 of them.

But these were turning out too big, so I started over with a smaller font.  

I find it sad and unacceptable that kids these days don't know the books of the Bible, so I plan to remedy that situation with my class.

I don't want them to move up next year without learning something from me.

Oh yeah, Christmas.  I don't even wanna think about Christmas.  I'm too busy for Christmas this year.

Can we skip it?

I suppose not.

We will have to do some last minute Christmas shopping next week after Chuck gets home.

Oh what fun it is...

Thanksgiving 2017

Did you all have a nice Thanksgiving?  I hope so!!  We certainly do have a lot of blessings to be thankful for!!!!!

Our Thanksgiving weekend was......shall I say.............memorable?

We started out by going to our church Thanksgiving potluck.  Sorry I have NO pictures at all of that event.  I was planning on taking pictures of the talent show participants, but we had to leave before the talent show started because Chuck wasn't feeling good.  Maybe we should've taken that as a bad omen for the rest of the weekend.

We had plans to drive up to North Pole the next morning to see Stephanie again.  She and Alec are moving to Louisiana this weekend, so we wanted to see her one last time.  With Chuck being sick, we questioned whether or not we would go, but with lots of rest, the next morning he said he felt "good enough".  So we rose out of bed at 5:30, and were on the road by 7:30.

This highway might start to look familiar to you by now.

When we got up to Cantwell, things were really starting to look like a winter wonderland.  It was a very pretty drive.  But beauty comes with a price.  In this case, it cost us degrees in temperature.  The further north we got, the colder it got.

Steph said the weekend temperatures were expected to be around -13 or something like that, which is normal for them.  When we got there Friday night the temps were hanging around 0, which wasn't too bad.

We checked into this hotel, which is only a few blocks away from Steph's house.

It was very nice inside and the price was very reasonable.

PW stayed at Steph's house in their spare bedroom, which was nice because that gave them some "sister time" (I hope).

On Saturday we went snowshoeing.    Steph and Alec took us to a place called "Creamer's Field", which I guess used to be a pasture for a dairy farm.

We bundled up warm cuz it was COLD.  But once you get walking in the snow shoes, that helps warm you up.  Steph is so climatized to the frigid cold and didn't think much of it, but 

It. Was. Cold.

But we did have lots of fun!

I couldn't get any more pictures of this hiking adventure because my camera froze up.

Afterwards, we went to this little museum place.  By that time, my camera warmed up enough to get a couple photos.

The dioramas in there looked so warm and Summerish (is that a word?).

The rest of the day was spent mostly visiting, and Steph was purging out a bunch of stuff that she didn't want to take with her to Louisiana.  

Some things she gave to me, and some things she just wants us to hang on to for awhile.

That is why we took the truck up there with us this time, which brings me to our next adventure (or should I say "unfortunate event"?)

On Sunday morning we went to church in Fairbanks, and then met Steph and Alec for lunch, and then they loaded all their household goods onto our truck that we were supposed to take with us.

I was so anxious to get on the road and on the way home because Fairbanks was COLD, and I wanted to get closer to home where it was warmer.

But before we could get on the road, we had to stop for gas.  First delay.

Then we stopped for coffee.  Second delay.

At last we got on the highway exiting Fairbanks. By that time it was about 3:30.  We were gonna get home late, but that's okay - we would be HOME.  I was excited about getting out of the cold climate of the north, so I kept watching the temperature display in the truck.  It kept hovering around -18.  A couple miles down the road it was -16.

Yay, two degrees warmer! I was happily sipping on my coffee, anticipating getting warmer. And then...

About 5-10 miles out of Fairbanks, the truck suddenly stuttered, there was a loud noise, we violently spun around in circles, and then slid backwards into a shallow ditch.

Hm..   that was really weird.

We didn't know what had happened until Chuck got out and noticed a cable wire attached somewhere to the truck.  At the time, he thought it must've fell off someone else's truck.

People in Fairbanks are pretty good about stopping to help people on the road.  There were 3 or 4 cars that stopped to see how they could help.  One guy tried to pull us out, but we were too deep.  So another guy gave us all a lift back to Fairbanks.

Back to Fairbanks.  Ugh.  ("no, that's the wrong way!")

Chuck arranged to have a tow truck guy meet us at Lowe's, and also arranged Steph and Alec to take me and PW back to her house.

We waited to find out if the truck was able to take us back home.

It wasn't.

One of the rear shock mounts was completely ripped off, the emergency cable is gone, and that's what we know of so far.  It was dark out by the time the tow truck got there, and the underside was so full of snow so we couldn't see how much damage was done. We are still waiting for the full report from the body shop, but we do know that some of the cable is still tangled up in the rear axle.

When Chuck got there with the tow truck, some crewmen from the power company were there.

As it turned out, the cable wire was down and as we drove over it, it got tangled up around our rear axle and snagged us (like a fish!)  The other end of the cable was still attached at the top of the pole, so our truck yanked it right off the pole.  They were saying that we were lucky it didn't flip us over.

Anyhoo, we all came out of it unscathed, so we are grateful for that.  (A Thanksgiving blessing.)

The downside was that it meant another night in cold Fairbanks.

The upside was that we got to spent another evening visiting with Stephanie.  :-)

On Monday morning, I was eager to get back on the road again.  I just wanted to get home.

First delay:  Chuck spent a long time on the phone trying to find a rental vehicle to get us home, and that had a number of delays in itself.  Since we were carrying household goods, we needed a truck or a van, preferably one with a bench seat to accommodate three people.  We ended up with a 2-seater U-Haul van, and had to make a seat between the seats for PW to sit on.

Second delay:  When we got to the U-Haul place, the guy said he couldn't find the key, so they had to get another key from another U-Haul location.  So we sit and wait, and sit and wait.......

Finally Chuck and Alec were able to get everything transferred into the U-Haul van, and we were ready to go!

Just one more last little joke played on us:  When we tried to drive away in the U-Haul van, the uphill driveway leading to the road was icy, so the van just spinned its wheels and we couldn't get out.  

I was beginning to think that Someone didn't want us to get back home!

Finally, one of the U-Haul guys went up to the road to watch for oncoming traffic, so Chuck could back it up real far and get a good running momentum.

Ahhhhhhhh!  Home at last!

Our 20 degrees sure does feel warm!!

Blessings are everywhere!

Enjoy them!