Bearypatch

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Location: Maine, United States

I am a 40 something year old mother of 2. I have always been interested in crafts since my sister and I spent summer weeks with my Grandmother, who was a very crafty lady, while my mother was in college. I mostly quilt since I seem to have an obsession with owning large quantities of fabric, but at one point or another think I have tried almost every craft out there.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

6 weird things about me

No one has specifically tagged me, but I have enjoyed reading all of your quirks so I thought I would share some of the things that make me "unique." :oD

1. I don't mix my food. I eat one thing at a time and in a specific order. I eat vegetables first then starch and then main entree. I'm not fanatic about it and I don't mind if my food touches. I just prefer my flavors separate. I have even gone so far as to eat lasagna in layers. It drove my in-laws crazy when my husband and I were dating. Both of my children and my husband eat the same way now although my kids eat their veg last. I'm not sure where this started with me, but I remember my mom telling me once when I was complaining about eating my vegetables to eat what I liked best last so that would be the flavor I would be left with after the meal.

2. My mind meanders oddly. When my husband and I first started dating I would ask him a question or make a comment and he would just look at me because it would have nothing to do with anything we were talking about. I would see something or he would say something that would start a weird chain reaction in my mind and would lead to an out of the blue question or comment. He used to ask what made me think of that and I would tell him the "6 degrees of separation" trip my mind had made. He doesn't bother to ask anymore and I guess as a symptom of living with me for so long sometimes he now tells me my thought process. Scary huh?

3. I can't just "fall" asleep. I have to do something to turn off my mind. I read, plan out my next day, work on an issue with work or something. It's almost like I have to put everything in order before I can shut down. I don't require much sleep either. I can only remember about 3 times in my life where I absolutely could not stay awake.

4. I talk to other drivers when I am driving. I think it helps avoid road rage. When someone will cut me off I will say "Oh no, you go ahead. Wherever you were going must be much more important than what I am doing." This quirk was pointed out to me one time when my DD was about 6 or so and she said, "Mommy, can they really hear you?" This made me laugh and realize how children view the things we do and how I may be passing my weirdness on to my children as if the eating one thing at a time wasn't bad enough.

5. I never just sit. I always sit on my leg or my foot or kneel in the chair. I have a horrible time sitting still (used to drive my mother crazy in church) and I find it easier to settle in if I have my legs tucked under me.

6. I have the same quirk that JudyL has with my stash. I am so afraid that I will need it later or I just like it too much to use it up. I usually have to let my favorite fabrics "age" in my stash for a while because I can't bear to cut into them. I have so much and nowhere near the time to use up even half of it, but it is all special to me. It just has so much potential.
DH said that the only thing on my list that he actually considers weird is this one. He just can't understand the joy I get from my stash. He did then further go on to comment that probably all the people in my web rings would consider this totally normal since we all seem to share the same affliction. :c)

I guess since I wasn't tagged I won't tag anyone else, but if anyone hasn't done it yet it's great fun learning about each other and what oddities we share.

my new view

Now that I've had a week to look at it, maybe it's not so bad? :c/

Sunday, April 16, 2006

happy easter

I am thinking we all must be pretty busy recently. I noticed that most of the blogs I read regularly haven't been updated much lately. Probably we all have Spring Fever. We have had some pretty nice days here. We pulled out our grill last week and had steaks one day and hamburgers another. :o)
We have been very busy trying to get DS ready for college, packed for the move and getting this house ready to list for sale. I hope we can get a good price for it, but I am starting to feel like the cosmos are conspiring against us. With the interest rates going up the housing market is going down. We bought when the market was high and are selling when it is low. I see something wrong with this picture. :>/ Also, our neighbor has done something that I am afraid might lower the value of our house even further. We have lived here almost 8 years and this has been a very nice neighborhood, quiet and well kept. Last Wednesday, on my way home from the office, as I turned onto the side street to drive into the garage I see people on the lawn next door setting up HEADSTONES. The building has always been a Funeral Home, but it doesn't look like a commercial property... or at least it DIDN'T until they set up those headstones. I guess sometime recently they decided that they need to sell headstones as well as have funerals. They couldn't have waited a few months??? Now as you stand at my kitchen sink and look out across the lawn you are staring at 9 headstones. I am just hoping there is a family out there that wants to move here who won't mind looking at headstones while they do dishes.
Meanwhile, at the new house, things are progressing rather nicely. Here is a picture of my kitchen with my cookstove set up and my new work table in front of it. When we had our cookstove in the house we had before I didn't have a table to work on in front of it so I decided to get one for my new kitchen. The person who lived there before had a small dining table in front of the fireplace, but I already have 3 Shaker weavers stools and there is no counter to put them under. I found a work table that I really liked at a local furniture store, but it had a backsplash which would have been annoying in the middle of the room. I went to look at it anyway and found the store has the furniture made locally and will take special orders. I had them take off the backsplash and add a few inches so I could sit my stools at it too. I just love the outcome. What do you think?

Sunday, April 02, 2006

way too much working -- not near enough quilting

This has been a really bad week workwise. One of the problems with working from home is that you can't go home and get away from work. We are on a tight schedule with a new project and the first Iteration was supposed to go out on Friday. I ended up working at least until 11 every night this week. I took out a couple of hours on Monday night to go to a friend's birthday party, but then ended up working until 1 am Tuesday. I was supposed to deliver the CD to the overnight box before 3:00pm on Friday and then I was going to take the rest of the afternoon off to go to a baby shower. Well, about a half an hour before that is supposed to happen the person doing QA called and she had found a problem. :0\ After a lot of scrambling we got it figured out and the testing completed, but missed the drop by over an hour and the baby shower completely. Here in rural Maine there are very few FedEx facilities that are open or pick up on Saturday. I had to drive 45 minutes away yesterday to deliver it to a facility that would still get it to the client on Monday.
Since we had to go anyway we made a day of it. DH has been wanting a trailer for a long time to take his motorcycle and our little green tractor for rides (I think it's a guy thing). He seems to think the move is a good excuse to get one. He has been looking for a couple of weeks and had been wanting to go to some places in the town with the FedEx facility. We went and priced them out. I think he is reevaluating the need. That could also have something to do with the fact that we got the results of our financial aid package for DS's college career. Needless to say they think we can pay much more than we can with 2 mortgages and even when we sell this house the mortgage payment won't cover the cost. Very scary.

I didn't get a chance to do anything quilty at all this week although I'm sure you had already guessed that. The closest I came was packing some of the fabric I don't think I will use until after the move and some of my scraps.

In closing I do have to say to Dawn -- I made myself a bag. Can I come to Paducah too? I need a vacation! :cO