One more ready to go!

Yep, quilt #4 in the last two weeks, that is now all bundled with it's batting and backing. I will see Carol at our small group meeting this Thursday, so I'll pass it off to her then. She is off for a bit of a vacation after our meeting, so I know I won't be seeing any of these quilts back for a couple weeks, which is just fine! I still have 3 or 4 that are needing binding.
This quilt is for Kyle. Used lots of tone on tones, no flowers. Now he and Genie will each have a snuggle quilt! Genie's was a lovely scrappy red and white quilt I made two years ago.
Carter's "official" quilt has been located and I'll work on that one after I finish up some obligatory sewing that needs to be done.
That is the end of my roll of warm and natural!! Now I need to watch for it to be on sale again, or come up with a good coupon to pick up another roll. I don't usually buy a WHOLE roll, just one that looks like it is at least half full on the tube. I'll also need to order some more of my neutral flannel 90" wide backing from Fabric Depot in the next week or two, so I can continue to move through my huge collection of finished tops!!
Hope all is right in your world.

Twenty Five Years Ago

Twenty five years ago today, my life forever changed. The early morning drive to Tacoma General, telling myself that if I left that place later that day with good news I would celebrate with what was then a NEW thing - a vanity plate for my car. I would order it up to say B-9.
Alas....I never did get to order that particular license plate.
When I arrived, I was directed to put my clothes in the provided plastic bag and climb into the bed to await someone to come and start an IV for me. Task completed, next in was the anesthesiologist. She assured me that her part of the job was purely routine and that I would wake up just fine from the anesthesia. Next in came the physicians assistant. I remember his name was Manny, and he was really short, and really cute! He was very calming and reassuring as he patted my arm and told me not to worry. He should have been patting Lynn's arm as he sat nearby looking like he'd eaten some very bad mexican food the night before....
Soon the OR staff came to roll me out of this room and into the OR hallway. It was really kind of interesting. They placed me at the end of a line of gurneys against a wall, feet to head with 3 other people also dressed in the same hospital gown, with their IV's hanging and the same look of fear and dread in their eyes. Then it was like a bell rang and the person in the front of the line was taken around the corner and through the automatic double doors, which then closed behind her. The rest of us were then moved up one position in our line. Was I at Disneyland waiting for a ride???? Soon it was me at the front of the line waiting for the doors to open. Anticipation, and interest filled me at this point. DING and around the corner, through the doors I went. And sure enough, just like at Disney, I found myself again at the end of the line of beds waiting their turn.....At least I had something different to look at in here. Oh COOL! A big white board just filled with information. OR room numbers, DR's name, Patient Name, Procedure to be done. A plethora of great information to distract me! Until someone came by and took my glasses!!!! How RUDE!!! DING....around another corner I went. Now there was only one person ahead of me....and on my right side, there was a big glass wall, with people on the other side! Looked like nurses and lots of medical "stuff".....I wasn't a nurse at the time, not that I would have been able to tell what any of it was without my glasses.....but in the center of this glass partition was a speaker like object. Made me think of a fast food restaurant, when you would go up to the window and order. So....me, being me.....leaned up to the portal and said "EXCUSE ME!!!" Several heads turned my way in surprise and I said "Could I get a strawberry shake and small order of fries........to go??" Laughter erupted on their side as well as with the people ahead and behind me on my side. A moment of levity for us all.
My next stop on my way to the OR had me in front of a display showing different medical instruments and how much they cost, so staff needed to be careful in the OR not to lose them, or drop them. Yeah....that was reassuring.....
Into the chilly, sterile OR I went. Moved off of my now comfortable, warmed gurney onto the cold, narrow operating table. People scurrying about preparing for my surgery, everyone covered head to toe, and masks on their faces. How nice it would have been to have seen a smile somewhere. The anesthesia doc came in, followed by the surgeon and Manny the PA. A few words of reassurance and off to sleep I drifted.
When I woke up I immediately knew that the news I was going to receive was going to be bad. The reason I knew is that I wasn't in a "recovery room", but in a private room. Lynn was sitting on the window ledge, looking like the bad food had now left his body every way possible and all that was left was a pale, sweating shell. I asked him if he had heard from the doctor yet and he lied to me and said "no"..... a few minutes later the surgeon and PA Manny came in looking very sheepish and reserved. 'Yes', they said, 'you have breast cancer.' At the unbelievable age of 32 years old, with three little boys at home under the age of 8, I was given what I was afraid was a death sentence.
What happened next, I'll cover over the next few days, weeks and months.....keeping in sort of real time to how it happened. I will also back up in time and tell the horrendous story of what I believe to have been medical malpractice, and how I had to fight to get to the OR in the first place.
Get a Mammogram. Follow up on any suspicions you may have. Ultimately it is up to YOU to get the medical care you need.

And Another One!!

I'm on a roll!!! Here is another quilt top now with batting and backing and ready to take tomorrow to Carol. I loved how the border print working on this project. It was a pattern that was a stack and slash procedure, so while it looks like a lot of piecing it really was just nine patches that were cut up and resewn! Easy Peasy. I have a green on in progress. I have a great technique for doing the mitered corners.
Let's see what else I can put together in there. I am really going to have to keep an eye out for batting on sale at JoAnn's again, or fine a coupon! This roll is almost out!

Next Quilt

This is my next quilt ready now to head to Carol the quilter. I'll probably drop it off tomorrow if she is home. This was a row quilt that my small group all worked on together. I think 5 or 6 of the 12 of us actually got it finished. A few already have theirs quilted. I should mention that we worked on this project about.....oh....5 years ago!! Each month we worked on a different row. I took some design liberties, naturally, tweaking and changing a few things. Size wise, it would lay perfectly on top of the Queen bed with no hangover. I've used that "meandering geese" technique on other projects. What really attracted me to this pattern was the village row. It was fun to do, and choose fabrics for the buildings.
I have a bib order to work on, and I use the warm and natural for the center layer and didn't have any scraps hanging around. So I thought I would sandwich a couple of quilts so that I could have some leftovers to work with. This quilt happened to fit perfectly on this piece, so now I'll have to roll out some more batting, choose another quilt top and see if I come up with any extra!!

A Quilt on The Way!

Okay, I chose the next quilt to go to Carol the long armed quilter!! This is my 1" postage stamp quilt. I am showing it laying on the batting, so I hope you can see that the quilt ends with colored squares. Part of me would like to make this quilt larger, but it is amazing the weight already with all that thread! These are all floral squares. It will be a good lap quilt, or wall quilt sized for spring since it is so pink! Loved using up all those 1 1/2" strips I had been saving.
Now that I have my backing and batting out, I might just package up a few more. For those of you who don't know, I always use a plain neutral flannel on my quilt backs. I buy the wide, so my backs are one piece. And most important, require no further sewing to create it!! I do sew some of the remnants together to make another back, but that's it.
Rain, wind, dark skies today. Ethan and I have spent a lot of the day just cuddling, and he is taking a siesta now, so I need to get him up so we can go and meet Jillian's bus.

A Few Random Thoughts

Just to get them out there.....
The story about the big baby being denied medical care because he was obese......a bunch of crap!! Mostly because the chart they are referring too, has nothing to do with obesity. It basically graphs where the baby is at that time in comparison to other babies the same age. 99% just means that this baby is heavier than 99% of babies this age! The importance of graphing height, weight and head circumference is to see that the baby is growing appropriately. All three of my boys were in the 90+% during their growing years. Imagine if they denied insurance because they were too long!! Can't really call it tall, since they aren't yet standing - LOL!
The health insurance industry is only interested in keeping their shareholders and high paid administrators happy. And they will continue to cut services and raise costs to patients until that is forced to change.
I had an insurance fiasco, ended up in collections for a $66.00 bill to a hospital for a mammogram. My insurance covered in full routine annual mammograms. However since I had been diagnosed and treated for breast cancer 10 years before that, the routine annual screen got coded as a "diagnostic" screen instead of "routine" and the insurance doesn't cover that. Imagine.....if you NEED a mammogram because you are a survivor, they don't want to pay for it. It happened again when my husband went in for a routine colonoscopy. Our insurance covers it at age 50. However, during the screening some polyps were found and removed so the coding went in as a diagnostic colonoscopy, no longer "routine" since polyps were found. They were benign, thankfully, but COME ON! So if you have the test and they don't FIND anything then okay, they will pay for the test. But if something is FOUND, forget it.....Can you imagine????? I battled and won that one, thankfully. Yes I am 100% behind health care insurance reform and I believe the public option is the right way to go. I wish there was a public option for auto insurance.
I think Glenn Beck is nuts. He is a showman. But a dangerous one. I get why my conservative female friends like him. He is like a pillsbury dough boy, that wears his emotions (when convenient) on his sleeve. But he is nuts. He is dangerous. He is the worst of snake oil salesmen of our generation. He and Rush Limbaugh are 90% responsible for the incredible divide in our country. They will not be satisfied until President Obama is out of office, and it is filled again with a puppet of the extreme right wing of the Republican party.
Okay, I feel better now - LOL!!

Where do their mates go?????

I've been going through my kitchen cabinets, cleaning clearing and reorganizing. I pulled all my plasticware out of that cupboard and all the lids that live in a drawer out, and matched them up.
Now, you'd think there would be missing lids, right? NO! The photo is the array of leftover lids!
I have Krista checking her collection to see if she can match any of these up.
Life has been pretty good here at home. I'm still meeting with my therapist now every other week, and she has been a great listening ear. I think I'm on the "brink" of making a career decision, still doing a bit of research online, and soul wise with a goal of November 1st to decide.
I've done a bit of sewing. It's a little more cleared out in there. So hopefully I'll be making some progress on getting some more things done! I truly have about 10 tops all ready to go to Carol, awaiting the cutting of batting and backing. And budget!! LOL! I'll admit to a new online game obsession, via Facebook. I've been farming there since June and have pretty much run through those games, but now I am into Cafe World....loving it!!!
And love, love, love my DVR. So nice to record those shows I don't want to miss, and then watch them when I want, zipping through commercials!! Plus I have some GREAT old movies recorded that can be watched on a quiet rainy day.....
Back to the kitchen, one more cupboard to do today.

Jeff's Birthday

October 10, 1978......Jeff's birthday. He was due on the 4th, so like his older brother he decided to prolong the pregnancy as long as he could. He was my smallest birth weight baby at 8 pounds 15 ounces and a pretty easy delivery. His head came out, his shoulders came out his arms came out and before the rest of him delivered he had his pointer finger in his mouth. This was before the days of routine ultrasounds, so I'm sure he was sucking that finger long before he was born.
I think this is the only photo I have of him as a toddler sucking that finger, which probably makes him happy, I don't have more!
He was such a contented baby. Amazing blue eyes which he inherited from his paternal grandfather. Of my three boys, when they were little, Jeff was always the "sweet" boy, and the one my friends wanted to take home with them.
He worked really hard in school and was devastated when we moved just before his sophomore year. He did that year at the "new" school and then convinced us he would be happier at the school the rest of his junior high friends had gone to, so we let him transfer. He admitted years later that it was probably not his best decision.
He decided a year after high school that he wanted to be an Army Ranger. Not just in the Army, but a Ranger. This is a photo of the day he left for boot camp in Georgia.

My family was not a big military family so this was really, really hard for me. Lynn and I did go to his graduation, and he did indeed make it into the Rangers and was assigned to Fort Lewis in Tacoma, so that was nice.
He got out of the Army 2 years later and I was so glad. Two months later he let me know that I was going to be a Geema....shock and awe....
He is a great Dad to two beautiful children. He has a heart of gold. And still the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen.
Happy Birthday Jeffrey Poodles, You're So Cutells', How's Your Noodles......

Jeffu

Life Lessons

Dear Geema, (that's me...)
I love you more then flowers
I love you more than drawing
I love you more than reading
What would I do without you?
But best of all your here for
me, I love you!!!!!

This was my note from Jillian today. She will be 8 in November. Totally unprompted. She asked brother Ethan what he wanted to write and his side (in her hand) says I love you Geema!!!

For the days I wonder what am I doing.....why am I the one taking care of these kiddos instead of a daycare.....I could be doing so many other other things with my time....
I will take this love note out and read it again, and again and again and know that I matter because "your here"....