wow, it's been awhile and in the meantime, i've of course forgotten my user name and password. that would not be a problem, but i also have a new computer that does not have my passwords stored in it. let's see, what's been going on?.......we just got back from new york where our granddaughter was christened. did i tell you i have a new granddaughter? what do you mean, i've told you a hundred times? ok, maybe i have, but i am so totally in love with her, i can't stop talking about her.

on the ebay front, i've started making collections of crocheted flowers because i love to crochet them. i recently won two large auctions of crochet thread and i am set for life. i should be crocheting right now, but here i am, talking to you. we leave for florida next week and i will be taking along my bag of crochet thread and my books. speaking of books, while we were in new york, my favorite crochet flower book disappeared into thin air. it seems as if during this time of my live, i am always totally losing things. one minute i was using it, the next minute, i placed it on the back seat, and that's the last i saw of it. i don't know if it got on to the luggage cart to take to the room. so i had to order another one. i hate when losing things costs me money.

well, i guess i'm off to crochet more flowers. i'll catch up with you later.

Wow, being a grandmother is so much more than I expected. My granddaughter was born the 27th of June, and I have fallen in love. She's the most beautiful baby in the world, of course, but she's also the best baby. Unfortunately, she lives seven hours away, so I can't see her as often as I'd like, but that's why God made email. Not that she's able to email me, but my daughter can email photos of her so I can see her grow.

While I was visiting, I had some time on my hands, so I crocheted about a million flowers for scrapbook embellishments. I need to get out of this chair and go list some of them on ebay. I also have a new project that I need to start and finish by the middle of August. After I give this project to Ashtyn, I will try to post a photo with an explanation. Well, I'm off to try to get something done.

Ok, don't wait until three weeks before the baby is due to start working on the quilt and don't pick the most complicated pattern. It took a couple of days to get 1/16th of the quilt done, and I think I'm going to just leave it for later when i have a lot of time. It's not like this child has a shortage of blankets. We're waiting for the phone call that tells us we have to get in the car and make the seven hour drive to hopefully get to the hospital before the baby is born. Being a Labor and Delivery nurse, I would really like to be there, but it may not be possible and I'm sure that they can do this without me. It's not like I will be wearing my nurse hat.....I'll just be wearing my grandma hat. Wish us luck.....

How long does it take stickles to dry? One hour? Two hours? Three days? I guess it depends on how quickly you need them to dry. For example, I have a star album ready to photograph and list, but I'm waiting for the stickles to dry, so it will probably be three days. Speaking of stickles, have I mentioned how much I love them? Anytime I finish a project and it looks like it needs something, I pull out the stickles and they make such a difference.

I just got an order of crochet thread from Joann, so will be crocheting a lot of flowers this weekend. I got some really cool colors.

I was determined to accomplish something this weekend, and I got the top of my work table (pool table) almost cleaned off. Where does all this stuff come from? I put one thing away and magically two more things appear on my table.

I had the best delivery yesterday. A couple who have three boys at home and didn't know what they were having had a girl. When she was born and the doctor said, "It's a girl", everybody in the room just shouted with happiness. What a wonderful job I have!

OK, I totally hate my life. My mind is going so quickly. Monday I lost my credit card. I used it at the post office and by the time I pulled into the gas station, it was gone. I always put it in the credit card slots in my billfold and it wasn't there. I dumped my purse out TWICE to try to find it. (The upside is that my purse got cleaned out.) I looked thru the pages of my schedule book and my notebook that are in my purse and it wasn't there. I finally called the credit card company and told them to cancel it and issue a new one. I am lost without my credit card, I guess I'm one of those "don't leave home without it" people. Karl Maldon really made an impression on me. So I'm without my credit card for 7 to 10 days. Ok, are you ready for this? Monday night as I was opening my checkbook (which is in my billfold), my credit card was sitting there between a couple of check carbons. Last week I lost my keys. This week my credit card. Before that it was my prescription drugs. What next? I am getting so tired of this. It seems as if I waste so much time LOOKING and not finding.....

Who says you can't teach an old cat new tricks? Oh, right, nobody. I am continually amazed at the things a cat can learn. Take my cat, for instance. She loves my sewing bobbins. I'm the type of person who wants to have a bobbin for every color of thread, so I have a lot of bobbins. No, scratch that, I USED TO have a lot of bobbins. For some reason, Cinder wants a bobbin for every color of thread also. I try to keep my sewing room door shut, but every once in awhile, it gets left ajar and she makes a beeline.......straight to the bobbins. How does she remember where they are? If I'm sitting at my computer and hear a tink, tink, tink on the stairs, I know she's found another bobbin. If I grab it quick enough, it's ok, but if not, she chews the sides off the bobbin. More later about my cat and how she loves to play pool........

Ok, I'm going to try to add a people tracker to my blog. I'm going to add a code to this message and see if this works. Keep in mind that I'm old, so might really screw this up. here goes:

It's Memorial Day, the end of my long weekend and nothing to look forward to except twelve hours at work tomorrow. I wish I could live more in the moment instead of always looking ahead to what bad things are coming. For example, I didn't totally enjoy my weekend off, because I was thinking about next weekend and what a bummer it's going to be. oh, well, if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.

Whatever would I do without clothes pins? I was working on some scrapbook projects today, and it occurred to me how important clothes pins are to me. I am always grabbing a clothes pin to hold something I have just glued. These clothes pins have not touched clothes for a long time. In fact, the last time they were used was when we went on one of our camping/fishing trips to Minnesota, and that's been several years. I am not a hang-the-laundry-on-the-line kind of gal. I remember Mondays as a child were wash day and there was no such thing as an electric dryer. Who would have thought that I would be using laundry tools for making scrapbooks? It's just another example of a scrapper taking something and using it for something other than its intended use.....

I am so ready to have some days off. Twelve hour shifts are killing me. But I have to die of something, so it might as well be twelve hour shifts. Today I was full of energy and finished a mother star album and made some crocheted flowers. Tomorrow, I'll make more flowers and an idea for a layout is brewing in my head. It's been brewing for a couple of weeks now, I certainly hope I can get it out of my head and on paper. I'd like to catch up on the house-cleaning, too, but I can't see that happening. It's so much more fun to create than it is to clean.....

Ok, so today was my day off from work, but I got very little accomplished, other than taking my mom to two doctor's appointments, getting the oil changed in my parents car and taking it thru the car wash, and going to lunch with my parents. Of course, I got a lot of reading done in the doctors' offices. Why do they give you an appointment if they're not going to be ready to see you at that time? That's a question that will probably never have an answer. I am paying these people to not be available to me at the time of my appointment. Go figure. They kind of have us over a barrel, though.....I mean, who else are you going to go to if you need medical help? My hairdresser never makes me wait, but I don't know how much she knows about medicine. I guess I wouldn't want her to do my pap smear or my mammogram. more later.........

I hate when the phone rings at 2 o'clock in the morning. it can only mean one thing. i have to go in to work early. so today, i worked almost 16 hours, because i went in more than four hours early, then worked my regular 12 hours less one because i went home an hour early. I'm definitely getting too old for this. I did pretty good, though, wasn't crabby when I got there (wasn't awake, either), did the whole day with no whining. I loved the patients I took care of, they kind of made it worth being there the extra hours.

Now I'd like to get some scrapping done, but don't know if I can get out of this chair. It's so comfortable......

Two down, one to go. My thirty-six hour weekend of work has been whittled down and I have only one more twelve hour shift to go. On my weekend to work, no scrapbooking gets done. It's just work, sleep, get up, go to work, sleep, get up. The weather is finally decent. Spring has been a long time coming. I was finally able to shed my winter coat and just wear a hoody. Now I'm hoping my yard magically landscapes itself. But alas, it's not going to happen. I'm not very good at growing things although my intentions are good. I have some cactus that I plucked from a pasture in Texas. Now keep in mind, they were not planted in the pasture, so they're probably a weed, but I have an affinity for cactus, probably because they are low maintenance. They're in two big pots and have lived for a year. Our climate is much different that that of Texas, so I did have to bring them inside for the winter and they did survive. I bought some wooden flowers and some colorful pinwheels at the dollar store and thought I would have a plantless garden......don't know what the neighbors will think of that. Actually, I do more gardening in my head than I do outside. If everyone else could visualize what I do, my job would be a lot easier. Oh, well, I'm off to bet so I can get up again in the morning. More garden talk later.

Today as I was scrapping....or as my husband calls it, "making stuff"..... i was clearing some scraps off my table and (gasp) throwing them away. I started thinking about all the little bits of wasted paper, and it reminded me of my mother. She used to sew almost all of our clothes and I swear, she could take one-third of a yard of material and make a floor length dress and have fabric left over for a shawl. She would not have thrown those scraps away and probably could have made a 12 x 12 album with them. They really were just little scraps, none bigger than two inches wide and most smaller. I do have a drawer full of scraps and I just feel that I have to draw the line somewhere. If I had kept all the scraps I've generated, we'd probably have to move out of the house. It's already getting crowded as it is with all the full sheets of paper.

I just got the cutest Mother's Day present. It's from the Vermont Teddy Bear Company and it's a grandmother bear with my name and a baby bear with my soon-to-be granddaughter's name. If you're ever stumped for a gift for Mother's Day, check this place out. These bears are beyond cute.
You can also check BTDL on Ebay or the BTDL website for some great scrapbooking items for all occasions. Custom orders are welcome. I am currently working on a Mother's Day star album, and several Jacob's Ladders. If you don't know what a Jacob's ladder is, check it out on ebay where my auctions have a video. Here's a link that will make it easy for you....be sure you push the play button on the video: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=180243115567&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=008

I'm gearing up for my long stretch of 12 hour shifts at the hospital, hoping for a fast, easy weekend. Yeah, right, that could happen. In my dreams.

I don't believe I've mentioned the most important thing that is currently going on in my life. My oldest daughter is pregnant and I will have my first grandchild this summer. It's a girl and I can't wait. Being a Labor and Delivery nurse makes it even more exciting. If all goes well, I will be in the birthing room at least up until the time of delivery. This is all assuming I get there in time, it's a 7 hour drive and I'm hoping that her dr. will induce her after my vacation starts and I have arrived. Anticipation.......

Another day, another dollar seventy-five. It was a busy day at work today. Twelve hour shifts are killers at my age, but the days off are nice.....and of course the money. Lots of babies being born today. Well, I've convinced myself that my prescriptions never came and called to have them re-sent. i hate to think, though, of all the time I spent obsessing about them. What a waste! I have two days off now so hope to get some items made and others mailed. Have a good night.

Did you ever lose something really important? I mean really lose it, as in, it's gone? Somewhere in my house is a padded envelope with three months of prescriptions, and I can't find it. And I can't stop thinking about it. I've looked in all the usual places.......the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen. Now I'm ready to start looking in the unusual places......the car, the garage, the freezer. Where could they possibly be? Why can't I think of where they could possibly be? I feel as if, along with my drugs, I'm losing my mind. If you think of some place where they might have gone, please share your thoughts with me. In the meantime, I'll just keep obsessing about them.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Well, as promised, I'm on a mini-vacation, and as usual, I'm fretting about having to go back to work next week instead of enjoying the time off. I've gotten a few things done.....some explosion boxes and a new star album. I still have a lot that I would like to do....not the least of which is clean my house. It has really gotten away from me. I need to subscribe to the rule of getting rid of something each time I get something new, but nope, not happening.