This sucks, but…

I am not so shallow or self-absorbed that I don’t realize how lucky we were…keep that in mind as you read through this.

I was in my truck pulling my camper about 7 years ago in the midst of straight-line winds; I had never been so scared.  Though my truck was being blasted by hail as I’m trying to find cover somewhere on the road, it was all the trees falling in front of me on the streets that truly terrified me.  By the time I made it to my destination (which was a hitch and welding shop) two of the workers came running out of the building yelling “tornado” and almost pulled me out of the truck and into their shop…but not before I saw the tree fly OVER the building.  When I got home, two bedroom windows had blown IN and all of the walls were now decorated in floor-to-ceiling wet leaves, the glass patio furniture had exploded on impact with my deck doors, and a few other things, but at least I didn’t have a tree in my kitchen like my neighbors.  Ever since that day, I get REALLY uptight when there’s even a hint of severe weather.  The kids roll their eyes and say I’m over-reacting when the sirens go off and I make them go downstairs; hubby runs outside as soon as the sirens start going off so he can see what’s going on.  Is that a GUY thing???

We’d been watching the weather and news most of the day yesterday because we knew there was a chance of severe weather in our area.  At about 4:00 we were looking at ugly radar and tornado warnings abou 40 miles northwest of us…smack dab over my ex-husband’s town…where my 15 year-old was.  I called out there and he said they were down in the basement and getting about golf ball size hail at that time.  Radar was showing the storm moving in a northeastern direction, so it didn’t look like we’d get hit with the severe stuff.  Around 4:30 it started moving directly east.  Around 5:00 I told my 17 year-old that I would drive him to work (instead of him taking my truck) because I didn’t want my truck sitting in a parking lot if there was a chance it would get hailed on.  At 5:15 I told him I was driving him to work a half hour EARLY because it was the ‘calm before the storm;’ so we left.  At 5:25 I pulled back into our garage, closed the garage door and stepped into the house, and that’s when the hail hit.  I don’t even remember seeing rain, I just remember seeing hail – probably because that’s all I could hear.  My husband was next door (neighbor had just graduated from his MBA program and was having a party) already, so I rounded up the cats and ran downstairs.  Cats lasted about 10 seconds and ran back UPstairs again – the hail hitting everything was so much louder downstairs than it was on the main level!  I could hear glass shattering as I was running down the stairs, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.  It lasted about 5 minutes though it felt like at least an hour.   We had hail that ranged from pea size to golf ball size to even baseball size.  The glass shattering I heard was all the poor cars of our neighbor’s guests – there were 3 or 4 that had windows completely smashed out, others with holes in their windows and some just peppered with dents.  We were having people take turns pulling up in our driveway where we vacuumed out the glass and put plastic over the openings where the windows used to be.  Ironically we had just picked up a couple rolls of duct tape and had a couple huge rolls of plastic and it worked great – we got word from our neighbors this morning that they all made it home with the plastic still in tact.  So I wasn’t really focusing on taking pictures of the car damage – and kept saying thank you to God that I got my truck in the garage before this hit – so much as the damage sustained to our own property.  They say that pictures speak a thousand words, but not necessarily pictures that are taken by a lame photographer (me).  These really don’t do justice to the the full scope and detail of the damage, but it’ll give you an idea:

      

If I had to walk it in the rain or snow, 2 miles would seem like an extremely long distance, but in this case 2 miles feels almost like our back yard…it was 2 miles north of us that the tornado hit, completely destroying 50 homes and severely damaging 100 more.  But by far the saddest aspect is the 2 year-old who was blown out of the house and landed in a pond in the backyard.  So far that’s the only fatality that has been confirmed.  I guess he had a 6 year-old sibling who was blown out of the house with him; her heart stopped but they got it restarted in the ambulance.  She and both of her parents are in the hospital.  I just couldn’t even imagine.  As I said in the very beginning, compared to what happened right up the road, we are so very lucky that our damage was only cosmetic and for the most part only superficially.  It’s a pain in the butt now to deal with, but we have our HOME intact and we have our LIVES intact.  Every time I start to feel even a little sorry for myself because of something going on in my life, there always seems to be something else that puts it all in perspective.

All day Saturday (I still can barely stand on my stiff little legs) was spent laying down 4 yards of new mulch all over our property, setting up and planting all of our annuals as well as hubby’s herb garden, and his pride and joy (hopefully) for this season – the Topsy Turvey Tomato planters!  We certainly have our fingers crossed, and take it as a very good omen that they survived the storm.  We love love love Bruschetta, and it’s never as good as it is with freshly picked tomatoes!

The hostas didn’t fair too well, but although I never wish harm to any of our perennials, I’m not a huge fan of the hostas we have (planted by the original owners, all the same size, shape, color, etc.) so am looking forward to mixing things up a little bit with a wider variety. 

 

The hanging baskets are a little more painful because I do them all from scratch, and we spent the majority of our time at the nursery on Saturday trying to decide on what to put in the baskets this year.  Hubby doesn’t believe they’re dead, just sad; so I’ll baby them over the next week or so and hope for the best.

 

 

 

A tiny little miracle…

Nooner ADDENDUM

As God as my witness, I did NOT stage any of this or blow it into piles – this is what I saw when I went into the garage this morning.  My poor husband said he left his car window open last night (in the garage), and with the way all of this swirls around…yep, he had a little cotton cyclone going on in this car this morning driving into work!!

He had also said that when he mowed the lawn over the weekend, he had the bagger on, and when he opened it up the cotton was in “sheets” inside the bag and he had to pull it all out in order to get it out of the bag.  I can’t even sit out on the deck right now and knit (or do anything else) – even though it’s supposed to be sunny and 70 today – because it blows around so bad and lands all over my knitting. So we’re kinda stuck inside, but hopefully not for much longer.  They’re predicting low 80’s over the weekend, so I don’t care if I have to wear a surgical mask, I will be one with the sun!  TTFN!

A Nooner

If there is such a thing, I’m pretty sure I’d win the BAD BLOGGER AWARD this month – less so because of my own posts here and more so because I have been so busy that I haven’t had time to get to some of my favorite blogs and comment/chat with people!  It’s shortly after noon here so I thought I’d just throw a quick little post together while I have a few minutes.

Aside from graduation and party preparations, and almost fearful to say this out loud for fear of jynxing myself, job interviewing has picked up considerably.  This is obviously a good thing and a good reason for being so busy right now.  A couple of them are moving along very positively, so I have all of my digits crossed hoping that one of them pans out.  Feel free to send all good mojo this way!  I can’t complain too much about having the last couple of years off, but it’s definitely time to get back into the working world again.

Is it snowing anywhere else right now???  Our house backs up to a little forest, and in that little forest (as well as our yard) are poplar trees, and from those poplar trees come these little seeds/pods that produce little cotton puffs.  It truly does look like it’s snowing!  It was so bad yesterday, in fact, that my husband had to put something over his nose and mouth while he was mowing the lawn because you breath it in just being outside.  Most annoying when it’s all over the garage, the house, the deck furniture; most compelling when you start to wonder how much yarn you could possibly have made with all of this… I haven’t yet figured out how to compress video or I would have shot some footage of it.

I am 2 repeats of the main pattern, plus the border and edging, away from completing my shawl.  I have my blocking wires on order (thanks, Miss T!) and pray that they get here in the next week or so because I REALLY want to wear this to my son’s graduation ceremony.  I have fallen so madly in love with lace that I just joined a group called Seasons of Lace…it is so jam-packed full of contests, prizes, etc., that I couldn’t possibly list it all here; but you can check it out via the link.  My whole desire to learn and knit lace started by seeing a picture of a scarf out on Ravelry – it’s the Melon Pattern Scarf by Jane Sowerby, in Victorian Lace Today (I couldn’t find a picture to use right now that would most likely not violate some kind of copyright infringement…but I’ll be sure to include one when I get started).  Next thing I know I’m taking a lace class, have purchased the book for the pattern, and splurged – SPLURGED – on 100% Silk lace-weight yarn to make this in!  Check out this color – it’s called Copper Pennies!  So since I was going to be doing this over the summer anyway, and the Summer of Lace ’season’ runs from June 21st through September 23rd, I figured it would be fun to do this “with” a bunch of other people.  And God help me I’m already thinking about what to do for WINTER of Lace!  In the event that I get finished with the Melon Scarf and have time for another lace project by the September 23rd deadline, Kat (I lead a pretty boring life and sometimes live vicariously through her blog!  Kim’s too!) was selling some of her stash and this one just cried out to me: 

These are so totally my colors!  Are you starting to see a “fall” color palette?  So I’m hoping to do another lace scarf with this yarn.

If I take you back up to the very top of this post, it’s titled “Nooner” because I was going to quickly throw this together around the lunch hour – and I did start writing this at that time…it’s now 5:06pm and I am just getting back in here to finish it.  That time also signifies that it’s time to get the grill fired up for dinner – it’s a good brat night…wonder what they’ll taste like with a cotton coating??!!

If I don’t get back out here in the next few days, everyone have a WONDERFUL Memorial Day weekend!  BE SAFE and have fun (in that order)!

Just some Hump Day babbling…

The sun has been out all day today…that’s a first for a little while now.  It’s a good thing.  I definitely need the sun; it definitely affects my mood.  I spent a good portion of the afternoon here, working on my lace shawl.  I still love it – not just this shawl but lace in general.  If it wasn’t for the constant up and down to chase a cat who’d snuck down the stairs and out into the yard (and all 3 of them tried it at least once), it would have been a very peaceful, lazy yet productive afternoon.  But I’m certainly not complaining – it was still great time spent outdoors in the sun and warmth! 

 Speaking of sun and warmth, Lazareth (that’s what I named my Fern Leaf Peony) has been thriving with all of the rain and sparatic sun.  Can you see the actual BLOOMS he’s sprouting now?!  You’ll most likely need to click on the picture to enlarge it a little to actually see them. 

I don’t know if any of you see this, but I really do believe that spring growth is slow to come this year; maybe it’s just a mid-west thing.  Even the annuals selection in the nurseries are pretty sparse right now – you can get geraniums, pansies, impatiens, begonias; the pretty basic standard stuff.  But the snapdragons, salvia, even the zinnias aren’t out yet (at least not in my neck of the woods), and ‘we’ were just warned that it’s still too cold at night to plant the tomatoes and to wait until at least after the 15th.  The most poignant indicator, though, is that there still haven’t been any great deals advertised yet.  Sure there are sales, but nothing terribly spectacular.  Probably because the choices are still so limited.  Being born without the patience gene, it’s tough for me not to just get out there are start filling all my pots and hanging baskets (which I typically make myself vs. buy pre-arranged).  So I compromised and just went ahead and bought one so I can look at something right now.  Yep – made sure it was a damn big one!  Unfortunately, the ’shepherd hook’ I bought just about bent in half when I hung this hummer on there, so I had to move it to the back – on the big sturdy hook – which messes everything up because it’s a sun-loving arrangement and everything in the back is either predominantly for shade or a shade/sun mix.  So I’ll need to think about this one some more. 

“Of course they’re mocking us…they know the screen’s there!”

The finches are around in droves now – it’s great!  Not only are they all so beautiful and colorful, but they provide hours of entertainment for the “girls”…which then provides entertainment for the humans!  There have been a few times where we thought the cats were going to go right through the screen in order to play with them.  The two in the picture are the extremely lazy ones – you pretty much have to bring everything directly to them in order to engage them in play!  And they’re the two that need the exercise – just look at Zoey’s butt!  Of course I really can’t talk…but that’s why I don’t put my butt in pictures and then on the internet.

This was at 6:30 this morning, apparently “resting” before heading to school.  Madison’s not a lap cat at all, and only rarely with either of the kids…so we like to capture these adorable moments when we can!

Graduation announcements are being printed and hopefully we’ll get them addressed and in the mail by Monday.  I had thought about doing labels, but I think the graduate here should address them by hand; make it a little more personal.  Tomorrow we’re off to have him take a college entry/placement assessment, and then try to put together a resume – there is a summer job opening at his father’s place of work:  16 hours a week doing image scanning, copying, collating, etc., $11-13/hour (almost twice what he’s making now and about 4 times as many hours in a week), and he can pretty much define how those 16 hours play out (2 8-hour days, 4 4-hour days, etc.).  Hell, *I* thought about doing it!  I can knit while I’m watching the copier spit out.

8:37pm and still much to do tonight.  Have a great week everyone!

Remember Elusive #15?

 

NO MORE, SISTA!!  Bye bye.

On the subject of garter snakes, the University of Minnesota says, “Remember that garter snakes are harmless to you and your pets and should not be killed.”  Uh-huh…

Okay, enough about death – onto LIFE!

 

Lets take a look at beautiful, living, GROWING things:

  

Not only is my precious peony still coming back from the assumed-dead, but see that little weed-looking thing to the right of it?  Haven’t seen that for 2 years; we assumed it died at the end of the ’06 season.  It escapes me exactly what it is, but you can tell it hadn’t surfaced last spring when we planted the peony or we wouldn’t have planted it so close!

My lace continues to prosper as well.  I’m so amazed by how “old” lace is and how “alive” it still is today; some of the more popular patterns I’ve seen go back hundreds of years!  I for one am very glad this style has survived.

My shawl is about 25% done.  Something finally just clicked for me and I’m clippin’ along much more quickly (though not fast) and with almost no errors – I even managed to do an entire pattern repeat WHILE watching TV last night and only had one little oops that I noticed right away when I’d made it.

 

That said…off to go work on it for a little while before the chillens get home.  Have a great day, everyone!