I had intended to remove the screens tomorrow, clean the inside windows, wipe up all the spider webs, clean the screens and re-insert them. It sounds worse than it is. We don’t have screens on every window, and they are taken out from the inside. It’s a rite of Spring, part of spring cleaning that really needs to be done after a long winter.
I could get this job done despite the heavy rain coming through, but there have been a few changes to the game plan. Elegante Mother was not feeling well on Thursday, so she canceled her standing hair appointment. I made another appointment for her this Saturday morning at 8:30.
Then, I’m sad to say, a friend from the Empty Nesters group at Elegante Mother’s church has passed away. He was a fascinating man. HE had just recently been moved to a nursing home. His 88th birthday was about two weeks ago, so the Empty Nesters all gathered to celebrate with him. Walt had been in the Army Air Corps stationed in England during World War II. He became very fond of English tea, not just the drink, but the afternoon meal. The EN group arranged for small sandwiches, sausage rolls, fruit, punch, tea, and birthday cake. Walt couldn’t get enough to eat! I suspect the food at the nursing home was radically different from what he was used to eating.
The ladies of the Empty Nesters got together and designed a wall hanging which one of them created using embroidery machines. It commemorated Walt’s life, with squares about England, and Wisconsin. We all signed the back of the wall hanging.
So, it was with great sadness that I learned he had passed away early this week. There will be a service Saturday afternoon, followed by a reception. We’ve offered to provide Caesar salad, brownies and lemon bars for the reception, and I’ll serve while EM sits and talks with friends.
Shortly after the reception, we have to hurry and get a light dinner. One of my talented great-nephews is performing in “Les Miserables” and we have promised to be in the audience. EM is going to be exhausted! This is a lot more than she is used to doing.in one day.
So…..clean windows have been set back a day or two in favor of much more important activities. I can’t say I really mind.

I’ve had the great pleasure to participate in the Share a Square Project founded and managed by Shelly Tucker. Last year, Shelly asked people if they would please send her a six inch crocheted granny square to be used in afghans for kids who will be attending cancer camp this June in Fort Worth, Texas. Shelly hoped that enough people would donate squares that they might be able to make 140 afghans, each having 48 squares. (Let me do the math…..hold on while I take my shoes off…….Um, that would be 6720 squares.) Shelly also wanted all the squares in an afghan to be from 48 different people. The squares have name tags with messages for the kids tied to them. Each child will also get a special bag to hold all these name tags as a memory of the 48 people who cared enough to send them a square.
A number of the ladies in my exercise class donated squares to the cause. I think we may have sent around 300 squares. I lost count as I sent the third box of squares to Shelly. Late this winter, I realized that Shelly still needed help to assemble afghans, so I volunteered to take on two of them, and then I ran to my exercise friends and begged them to help me! And boy, did they! We finished the two afghans and I was able to send them off last week. This project has brought us a LOT of joy!
This is the first of the two afghans:

Sometime around January Shelly realized that she had more squares than she needed. She thanked people for their generosity and said they could stop crocheting squares. A month or two later, it almost sounded as though she was BEGGING people to stop sending squares. I think she has been inundated with over 10,000 so far. You can click on the link above, and in the upper right corner of her blog, you’ll see a link to Share a Square. Go visit to she how they are doing. And, I hope you’ll consider sending Shelly a donation to help defray the registration expenses for the campers. Each child is assessed $150, and anything we can do to help make it possible for them to get to camp is a GOOD THING!
Here’s the second afghan we assembled:

Shelly, thanks for letting us share the joy! Congratulations on a job well done!

Last week I had my head down, ploughing through the work on my desk so that we could take a three-day weekend to visit with my sister, Nan, for her birthday. I didn’t have much time to read my e-mail and even less to visit my favorite blogs.
I was irritated this morning to learn that I had missed wishing one of my favorite on-line and real life friends “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” How could I have forgotten?! Luckily, Bogie, her daughter, bid her mother a happy birthday, so I figured out my error.
No doubt I have missed a whole lot of birthdays on-line. I hope you all had wonderful celebrations of your special day.
So…COP CAR…..I missed the right day, but I hope you know that my wish is most sincere, when I tell you that I hope you had a great day, and that you did something special to commemorate the momentous occasion of your birth! *G* Happy Birthday, my friend!.
Go read what Cop Car has to say on April 20th. I like her thoughts about what the focus of our election should and should NOT be! Way to go, CC!

….My sister, Nan, and her family! Nan’s birthday is this weekend, and it’s Prom time for the girls. Elegante Mother, Dear Husband and I are going to amble down through the fields today. Our oldest sister, My-Sister-The-Nurse, and her husband (yet to be nicknamed), will be joining us on Saturday.
Second Son is going to stay home and keep an eye on Ed. Someone has to be his doorperson!
We have a car to finish packing, and some last minute details to attend to. We’ll be back late on Sunday.
I hope you all have a great weekend; I expect to!

Out of curiosity, I scrolled down through my archives to see when I started blogging. In 20 days, I will have had a blog for FIVE YEARS! It’s really hard to believe I’ve been on-line that long.
A friend from the Red Hatters once likened my blog to the diary which Samuel Pepys kept. We both cover the minutia of our lives. On rare occasions, I get on the soap box, but for the most part, this is a journal of my days.
Today as I browsed through my friend’s blogs, I discovered that one was writing about the prevention of dissemination of information about contraception and abortion, another was writing about her family honoring those lost in World War II. Another of my blogging friends spends her days working for Blogher, and so on, and so on, and so on. Nothing earthshaking is happening on my blog, but these ladies are clearly interested in what’s going on around them, and not afraid to discuss it.
I may be a little jealous of their wider horizons, but there’s nothing keeping me from following their lead. Sooner or later, I’ll get there. Until then, you can continue to expect to see me whining about weeding, and complaining about poison ivy, kvetching about the lack of time to quilt, and carping about the demands of the house and office.
When it gets old, tell me to lighten up! ( And I’ll just go off and sulk for a bit. *G*).

I don’t know that I’ve said much about my beverage of choice, but I am one of those rare people who don’t drink coffee. When I was growing up, Elegante Mother had a variety of teas available, and I came to like iced tea in the summer and hot tea in colder weather. I enjoy Earl Grey, Darjeeling, Jasmine, English Breakfast, and black tea flavored with orange. I don’t care for fruit flavored tea (with the exception of a decaffeinated apricot tea I found some years ago) or most herbal teas, and until recently I wanted my iced tea to be strong, orange and black pekoe without sweetening.
I am making the first step toward a healthier me by changing the blend I use for iced tea. My youngest sister, Nancy, told me years ago that she was making her iced tea by brewing it with three bags of orange and black pekoe, and two of green tea. This week, I swapped one of the black tea bags for green tea. I can’t tell there’s been a change, and I know that the green tea is a healthier drink. Soon, I’ll be using two of the green tea bags.
I know, Sis….it took me a while, but I’m getting there. Thanks for the tip! *S*
And, while we are on the subject of tea, is anyone else irritated with Mickey D’s for being served sweetened tea when you have taken pains to request UN or NOT sweetened tea? Sometimes the problem is with the microphone system where you place your order, and sometimes it’s with a server who only drinks sweetened beverages, who automatically goes to that canister. Now, when I order tea, I ask them to confirm that it is not sweetened when they hand it to me. There’s nothing worse to a tea purist than getting a mouth full of sugar when you are anticipating the clean, astringent taste of unsweetened tea! Yuck!

First, I have a new grand niece! (Is that what you call your nephew’s daughter??) This is My-Sister-The-Nurse’s TENTH grandchild, and Elegante Mother’s 25th great grand child. Pretty cool, huh? There will be four babies born to our family in one year. There’s still one more to come, in September. My youngest granddaughter arrived at the end of September. Another of my grand nieces arrived on Christmas Night, one came yesterday, and the last is due at the very start of September. Isn’t it wonderful to have babies to hold? The women in my family are good about sharing so the kids just go from woman to woman to woman. Even the girls get in on the baby holding.
Today, I collected Elegante Mother and made a trip to Morris, Illinois. Ostensibly it was to purchase birdseed, but Morris has this amazing quilt fabric store…. I warned Dear Husband that I was going to Morris. I have to give him credit. He didn’t even roll his eyes!
We played at the fabric store for the better part of an hour, and then shopped for bird seed. For some reason my mother has taken a liking to the diner at the truck stop. This is the LAST place I’d expect her to choose for a meal, but she was happy as a clam with the luncheon special of salad bar and half a tuna sandwich (which she brought home).
We chatted about what we were seeing in the farmland as we drove We are both interested to see how well the farmland churches are being maintained. God is alive and well in rural Illinois. Some of these churches have even added schools, so the kids are educated closer to where they live.
We saw several types of towers that must be for reception of tracking data. UPS keeps track of their trucks and they know when a package has been delivered. The pipelines have (or used to have) towers to keep track of the flow of the oil (I think…I’m a little rusty on this, since Dad, my font of knowledge passed away more than two decades ago.) I’m sure in this day and age there are dozens of reasons for these towers. There are two of them just down the road from us.
We also watched the suburban crawl edging over hills that used to be prime farmland. To get to what we can honestly call “rural” land now, you have to drive an hour and a half out of Chicago, at the very least.
We had a lovely day. Elegante Mother loves to go for day trips like this, and she informed me that I was NOT to return to Morris without her! *G* I think we’ll go in warmer weather so that we can visit some of the specialty shops that have popped up in town. We both would like to look at antiques and linens. I’ll have to see if I can pry EM away from the truck stop for lunch so that we can try some of the restaurants, too! *G*
This was a “good time was had by all” day. Now we can settle in for the rainy days to come and not worry about impending cabin fever.

This morning I had a call at 7:30. I was getting ready to go to exercise. We’d been planning a party for our exercise leader, who turns 60 on Saturday and I wanted to get to class a little early. The call was from our guru, who croaked out…”I’m sick. Can you cover for me at class, or should we cancel?” know the class was disappointed when I arrived and announced that I’d be subbing. We went through an old routine which kept us busy, but didn’t really move us forward .
The ladies who were organizing the class party said that they would hold off until Monday to celebrate her birthday. We’re each planning to give her sixty of something. I chose marbles, so that should she ever feel that she’s lost her marbles, she have some spares on hand!
Our guru has invited us to an open house at her home tomorrow. When she called this morning, I asked if she was canceling her party. She and her husband wanted to make it through today before deciding whether to cancel the party. She just sent an e-mail to let me know that the party is on. Now, I’ll need to let Elegante Mother decide whether she wishes to risk catching anything.,although it’s probably a moot point, since I plan to go.
It’s been a long week. I may sleep in tomorrow, and then do some yard work before we go to the party. I’m looking forward to a little time out of the office.

My audit is DONE! OVER! FINISHED! KAPUT!
I wish I could tell you that my bookkeeping was perfect, but over the course of three and a half years, I under-reported 17.5 hours. 🙁
It could have been so much worse. The auditor had a name on his list to check that he thought hadn’t been reported. The man had worked close to 900 hours for us. I was on the verge of apoplexy at the thought of the cost and penalties. I was able to hand the auditor the union report, showing that I had paid the benefits, and that the auditor had made an error.
Those 17.5 hours really bug me, but I should point out that in that time period, I reported that our bricklayers and laborers worked a total of 82,173 hours, plus a little overtime. It puts the 17.5 hours into perspective.
I can tell you that the union spent more to do the audit than they will get back in benefits and penalties! *G*
Now, If only someone would put away all the data that I had to drag out for the audit, I’d be a happy camper!

This has been an odd morning. This is the last day before the audit, and I’d planned to work in the office all day. I rose around 5:15 or so, and read for a bit, and then threw on my clothes. I did a few chores, and started a load of laundry, and then headed to the office with a cup of tea to make a grocery list. Dear Husband took the garbage out this morning and asked if I was hiding garbage stickers somewhere. Not good.
The rest of the house was still asleep when I headed to the store. It’s very odd to be there when they are cleaning the deli, and the baked goods are not yet out, and the fish and meat market is empty and dark. Luckily, I didn’t need anything from those areas. I had most of what I needed for the week on hand, and just had to round things out, and pick up some garbage stickers!
I gave Elegante Mother a French cruller, and then headed to the office. I’ve paid my personal bills, and next up is our smaller company. Then, I’ll be back to working on things for our audit. When I was filing, I found the letter from the company who will be doing the audit. I also have a letter from the Union. It’s interesting to note that the letters do not agree as to the scope of the audit, nor the dates covered. Basically, the auditor wants every paper that’s crossed my desk for a period of three years and four months. We’ll see about that.
Doesn’t it sound like a witch hunt? I know the union hopes to make more money from us with unpaid benefits and penalties, but I’m confident that our records are correct, and complete. In return for giving me all this grief, I plan to smile in the knowledge that there just aren’t any mistakes. *S* (Can you see me stomping my foot and saying “So THERE!!”?)
So….I’ll be at my desk for a while, and I might even be here this evening, but most of the pressure will end sometime tomorrow. YEA!! The good part of all of this is that I can see the top of my desk, and I’ll be able to do a little Spring Cleaning in the office. Good timing: the CPA will be here to help me with first quarter reports in a couple of weeks, and I’ll be ready for her.
We’re having Chicken and Ham Tetrazzini for dinner, with roasted asparagus, and maybe a salad. Comfort food at it’s best, and perfect for a gray, dreary day. Come on sun…..show your face!
I hope you’re all having a good day, and that Spring is finding it’s way to you. *S*