Only One More Day...

...of July.  This year has gone so quickly, I feel like I'm always a month behind.  This year is now over half gone.

I am glad that it has gone quickly in busyness.  I have accomplished many things and enjoyed many things.  

My flower garden looks the best it has EVER done.  I had the will and desire in early 2012 but I had cancer instead.

I've been canning, keeping up the house, knitting, cooking, resting.  Normal stuff.  Things I used to take for granted.  

I have been especially thankful this month for a little pill used to boost the hormone level the thyroid isn't producing.  I have so much more energy and a better state of mind now.

 This month Zane played soccer a couple weeks as part of our Park and Rec Program and I went to watch.

I also got some Gramma time as well.

My daughter is still in Spain.  It was hard for her to adjust to life over there at first.  There's money, language, food, culture, home life.  Things are shaking down there and she's travelling all over and really enjoying herself.  

She visited Christopher Columbus' grave site one trip. 

In other news.  This cute little prickly succulent has a little bloom on it.  It was given to me on Mother's Day by my son (I should have warned you to hang on to your chair) and it had two little blooms on it.  This thing needs hardly any water so it's perfect for my method of caring for in-house plants and it has rewarded me with another flower.  

My grandsons who visit frequently since they only live 15 miles away, see me often.   This time they got to see Papa and really have fun. 

One of our employees grew up on a wheat farm.  He took a couple days off to help his father harvest his wheat and brought us back some wheat cereal from the mill down there. 

Real wheat, cute sack.  

June With a Little Bit of July

I seem to having a road block about blogging these days.  Actually, I am having a road block about a lot of things.  It is partly because I am spending a great deal of this summer on the road for doctor visits.  It is also partly because I am letting perfectionism rear it's ugly head and it stymies me.  

(I'm not really sure you're supposed to make stymie plural.)

Love these jeans with the little handkerchief in the pocket.  

Swim lessons--Zane

Barry and Christian played in the baby pool during Zane's lessons

Swim Lessons--Barry

I've always wondered what a Chautauqua was like and Jim and I went this year and listened Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I think we'll go again to those speakers we are most interested in. It was really interesting.

Lynette got a new camera and was trying out her remote. 

Now, the little bit of July actually started in June with a BBQ and firework celebration and Lorene's. We stayed for their little town's firework display and enjoyed it immensely.  We were able to sit practically right under the display and then were able to drive right out of there since there weren't hundreds of people in the parking lot.  Part of our group walked home and may other townspeople did as well.  I think we need to make this a yearly event. 

The next celebration we lit this cute thing the boys picked out just for Papa.  

July 3

July 3, 2015

...a day we looked toward, with excitement, anticipation and nervousness on the part of my daughter and worry and nervousness on mine.  

This is the day she flies out of the country, to stay for 6 weeks in a land where English is not the native language.  

I know she's capable.  

I know she's studied Spanish.

I know she's looked forward to this day since she knew where Europe was.  

Moms worry, in spite of all this.  

Her flight to Atlanta was delayed over a half hour.  

We stayed to watch her fly away into the wild, blue yonder.  

I was okay until I saw this plane get smaller and smaller in the distance.  

And then, I felt all gone inside.  

She'll be okay.  

And so will I, when she gets home. 

Saving The Sheets

I am a tight-wad.

Not frugal.

Tight.  

People who know me well know this.  It might even be that people that don't know me well know this too.  

I also have a thing about throwing stuff away that still has life in it.  

A real problem.  

I am getting better, though.  

That being said, I also have a hard time getting rid of things that are old but are better quality than I can buy today. 

 For example, I like nice sheets.  I like sheets that are smooth and stay that way.  

(I also like flannel sheets that are not smooth, but that's different.)

Sheets with higher thread counts are the good ones, and are very expensive.  I bought a pretty high count sheet set on sale for my daughter and while they don't pill, you can see through them.  

I have a lovely sheet set that I picked up at a garage sale.  

They are very nice but I think they were discarded in the conspiracy that exists in the mattress market today.  

Mattresses are thicker, therefore all the sheets you ever had before don't fit them, thus you need to buy more sheets.  At the time I still owned a thinner mattress and the sheets, and with the elastic refreshed on the fitted sheet, they worked very well.

Fast forward a few years...

To celebrate the end of cancer treatments we bought a new mattress.  I didn't want to, of course, but ours was getting to be one those that has fallen in the middle and hilly around the edges.  As much as my husband and I love each other, spending every night in the valley just doesn't work very well.  

So, we bought a new mattress.  It was thick, the flannel sheets fit (having been purchased this century), the old ones didn't.

We struggled with the old ones, they didn't work.

We tried sheet straps, they worked half the time.  

I looked at sheet sets.

I was confused with the choices and annoyed with the prices.  

We used the flannel sheets as long as possible. Until the first of June, this cold spring.

Finally, after a few days of over 80 temperatures. we had to give in.

So, I was looking for other options.  I found a website with a tutorial on how to make fitted sheets, so how much harder should it be to add on to these sheets to make them deeper so they will stay on the thicker mattress?  

Actually, not hard at all if you know how to sew.  

This is what I did.

2 yards of 100% cotton, not quite white.

I drew and cut 8" strips to have plenty of room for hems and tucking under, 

I was going to rip out the elastic casings, but the elastic has melted completely away in most of the casings into gluey spots. Other spots had a few pieces of weird elastic so I had to cut away the casings.

I ripped out the corners so I had a big rectangle with the corners cut out.  Next, I pinned the strips to the edges of the sheets and serged them along the long edges to make a bigger rectangle.

I sewed the corners (the edges of the cut out square) with the sewing machine first, then after trying it on the bed to assure it fit, I serged the edges.

Then, I pressed up a hem/casing and sewed the ends of the elastic into the hem before the final sewing.  

After hemming, I put it on the bed.  With the edges all tucked in there is barely an inch of the new fabric showing. 

I made my elastic too long so I had to rip a bit of the casing to tighten it up after I was finished.  

I'm very pleased and I can use my sheets now until they wear out.  

I won this round.

June Already

I always  think a blog post is more interesting with a photo.  So I put one on even though the photo has nothing to do with the post.  

I mean, who wouldn't just love to look at this cute kid.

What is really nice is that I get to squeeze him often and you don't.

I can't believe it's June already.  In spite of some very long waiting days and weeks that were taking place this spring, I guess I was living April twice, because it was rather a shock to look up this week and it was the first of June.  

Of course, a lot of that might have to do with our rainy May weather.  We really didn't get a lot of rain but we had more gloomy, damp days than not.  It didn't help that I spent most of those days in a funk.  

Recovering from surgery is never fun.  I wasn't even like myself until the end of the week, and I walked around on eggshells for three weeks waiting for some restriction-free and pain-free days.  

I couldn't bend, I couldn't lift, I couldn't work hard. I took medicine several times a day.  I had to have ear drops three times a day.  

After my post-op check on Monday I  feel more like me again.  I have a little more energy because I'm able to do more.  

We've also had a couple of sunny days. 

(It's still raining, however)

I didn't want to blog during that time because I was having a hard time keeping my spirits up.  

I was having to sleep on an incline, on my back or only one side.  

Here I had one more thing wrong with me that had to be dealt with with the expectation of having the other ear done eventually.  

And then there's the whole issue of my hearing loss.  I can't hear out of that left ear because there is packing in there holding the graft done on the ear drum still in place.  As the packing dissolves I should be able to hear better.  

I am beginning to understand how difficult it is for people with hearing loss to cope.  

It's HARD sometimes.  Sometimes it takes a lot of work to listen.  It's so much easier to just tune out after while.  I think it's like listening to someone speak in a different language and you aren't fluent.  

Every word that comes in has to be translated from one language to another.  I have to listen hard, and then, "oh, that's what they said", and by that time I'm behind.  

And then, it isn't a given that this repair is going to work.  If it does, I am only going to get hearing back to where it was last September and my hearing loss was getting pretty close to interfering with normal life.  

I had a couple of hearing tests done before surgery and one was to test nerve function and that was the answer I got. My nerves are still working as well as they were last year.  That is good news really.  Before surgery my hearing loss was classified as severe to profound in the left ear and moderate to severe in the right.  So, that is how I am hearing right now.  We hope it goes back to the moderate hearing loss stage. 

 What to do then, is another step in this process.

 It takes 6 more weeks to heal the ear drum, and then we talk about surgery for the right ear and healing that before we even think about that step.  

Some days are harder than others. 

I'm really looking for the sun. 

Although, I had a really good time weeding in my flower garden in the calm, light clouded evening tonight. 

Enter In

I'm just sitting here recovering from aforesaid surgery.  The last surgery it was very easy to sit around and do nothing because I felt like doing nothing.  This time, I'm having to enforce resting periods so I don't do too much and it is difficult.

So, I'm going to show off the photos of the entryway project this morning. 

Here we are ready to start.  The door is in the sidewalk and stoop are ready to go, 

(We being the occupants of the house, not the actual laborers, which was Jim)

Jim rented a hydraulic hammer drill to knock out the concrete with our excavator.

Then the hauling out, piece by piece. 

There go the steps

Concrete!!

Pouring the footings for the steps.

Clean up machine, our vacuum excavator truck.

Jim is putting up a few foundation blocks with Zane's help.

The forms are done.

Steps poured.

Removing the forms.

Sidewalk poured.

Jim is staring our decorative brick.

I like it!

It is really nice having a handy husband.