Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Hugs and Kisses

Nothing much going on in these parts of the world. After the hubbub of the election, then Blogblast for Peace two days later, followed by Veteran's Day a week ago, things have pretty well settled down.

I've been reading blogs but not been commenting much lately. Just nothing much to say I guess -not that what I've read or seen (photos and such) have been boring. Far from it. But my mind has been functioning on a different level of late and the bulk of it has had to do with embroidery!

I finished the set I was working on -the snowflake pillowcases and matching dresser scarf plus two round doilies. Well, the embroider is completed but the dresser scarf and doiles, technically, are not finished as I still have to hem them and then, attach the lace edging to them too.

This past Sunday, I started another tablecloth -it's actually a table-topper, not a full tablecloth, measures 35 inches square I believe. This one is a red fabric, done with white snowflakes around the entire border area and in the middle of each side, is one embroidered -actually cross-stitched -reindeer! I finished this last night. I was really astonished that I was able to do it in just over 24 hours as I think it took me a little over two weeks to do a cloth of the same dimensions, but with the border of Christmas trees and snowflakes. And this one really looks sharp too! I like the red fabric behind the white floss design a lot -a whole lot!

Last night, I was going to start working on a red table-runner that I had purchased about 2-3 years ago -poinsettias done in white on the red background and the fabric of this was sort of a silky, nubby-textured -very pretty, very rich looking -and feeling too. However, when I opened the package and removed the runner, I was dismayed to see the stamping of the design (White stamping) had almost completely disappeared. Just extremely faded out. I tried to mark it in, as best I could but I was getting the markings a bit cockeyed, uneven and such, so I decided this is a project definitely for my "after Christmas, when I feel like slaving" pile!

So, I picked out another table-topper I have in my "to-do" stash - a floral design, very pretty, but a lot more work involved in this one than in the other table-toppers I've recently completed. In the past 24 hours, all I have finished is the dark green leaves and stems on ONE flower in ONE corner! A far cry from how much I had been able to complete on the tabletopper I finished in ONE day! I'll post pictures of the red tabletopper at a later date as well as document my progress on the one I'm currently slaving over!

Tonight, when my son-in-law came home from work, I had a few words for him. This has been brewing, bothering me for a long time and though I have made comments about this -trying to be subtle -apparently they were very ineffectual, not received at all on his radar and tonight, I had made up my mind I was going to mention this issue to him, directly!

I asked him, plain and simple, to please, when washing the dishes to NOT PUT ANY DISHES OR POTS AND PANS AWAY! Just leave them in the drainer, on the side counter and I will put them away!

Why? Because he consistently INSISTS (no, not verbally, but shows me by his refusal to put things away the way I have stuff organized in the cupboards) on shoving the pots and pans into the oven drawer and by stacking serving dishes as well as plastic storage containers NOT in the way they should be placed!

Now, I know this is not that big a deal to most people -obviously, it isn't of any importance to him, but it is something that totally irks me to no end!

I hate to open the oven drawer and find that pots and pans are just tossed in there, not placed in any semblance of order, by size, with no regard to handles that easily get caught on the drawer and making it difficult, if not impossible at times, to open the drawer! A while back, after he had put pots and pans away in there, just all willy-nilly, when I went to open the drawer, the handle to the base of my nice stainless steel double boiler was caught in the under part of the oven and ended up breaking the handle off that pot! That really ticked me off because it was a very nice pot and the ONLY double-boiler I had too! Last night, when I went to get some serving dishes from the corner cabinet, there was the big 5 quart Visons casserole dish sitting on top of the oblong pyrex baking dishes, all tottery, ready to slide off, possibly slip and fall out and on to the floor. I really like my large Visions casserole dish and would hate to see it come crashing down to the floor all because someone refused to put it back, in the corner of the cabinet, at the bottom and with a smaller casserole dish resting in a nesting fashion inside it!

Last week, I had told him to not bother putting dishes away, especially the pots and pans, when he does dishes and he had blithly replied "OK. No problem!' But evidently, it is a major problem for him to remember WHY I don't want him messing in my cupboards.

I am not exactly the epitome of neatness -I'll be the first to admit to that -but the kitchen is primarily my domain, and I do like to try to have my cabinets there organized as best as possible, in a fairly neat fashion too. However, some people around this house have never paid a lick of attention to my wishes in this respect and yes, as you can tell, it really does bug me!

It always takes me back to when my ex and I were still married, living in the house we built next door to this place and my Mom was still alive, living here, in this house. Now my Mom was a stickler for organization -especially of the cupboards -(maybe that's where I got this little idiosyncracy from) but she used to drive me bonkers when she would come over to my house and insist on doing the dishes or at least putting them away. (I've always been of the "wash and drip-dry" whereas she believed strongly in wash, dry, put away, then and there! And, I wouldn't have minded her putting dishes away there either but she would never pay any attention either to where I stored things and just put things away in cupboards where SHE THOUGHT they should go, not where I WANTED them to be! So you can see, this was a power struggle for me then and I guess in some ways, it's a bit of a power struggle now too. I don't mean for it to be that but just please, put things away so larger dishes are on the bottom, and then nest the smaller dishes, by size, in or on the larger dishes -not the reverse! I don't really think that's too much to ask, nor is it a difficult concept either. Well, at least not to my mind it isn't difficult. If it were something hard to do you can bet your bottom dollar I sure as hell wouldn't be doing it that way then!

Ok, 'nuff said about that little bit of irritation in my life!

There was something really neat that happened today that I wanted to tell about here.

Kurtis responded to me with a request for a kiss for Grammie! Yes, he did and I am still all excited abou that!

He's been responding, of a sort, for some time now, when you hold him if you ask him for a kiss, that he would sort of lean forward, putting his cheek close -kind of like he is extending it there for us to kiss him. But tonight, he DELIBERATELY came and offered his cheek in response to my asking him for a kiss! Oh, yes he DID! Of course, when I asked him for a hug, he immediately ran off in the opposite direction but heck, the kiss was worth a gold mine in my book!

And finally -but certainly not of lesser importance to me -I have to take the opportunity here to do a little bit of bragging -about my older grandson, Alex! Seems my "Prince Alex" made the honor roll at his school (Bellefonte)!!!! YAY! How awesome is that, I ask you? I am so happy, so excited and PROUD of him! Can you tell? I waited, not very patiently for all the years his mother, uncle and aunt were in school, in hopes that just ONE of those three, would just ONE TIME, make the honor roll in school -all to no avail! Most of the time, I ended up grumping and growling a lot about the grades they brought home -especially my son's! Atrocious! Absolutely atrocious my son's grades were! The girls did a bit better but none of them wanted to be bothered studying much, doing the extra work needed to be a good student. And now, finally -one of my long-held wishes and dreams for my offspring has come true!

A big round of applause for Alex Genet for his efforts, hard work, and studying! See, Grammie was right in saying it would pay off and at least, I'm happy to say that his mother -and his Dad -both enforce that with respect to his studying!

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