Isn’t there a song in “My Fair Lady” that starts out that way? …where Eliza’s father is getting married and he’s celebrating before he has to go to the church?
Well, in a few more hours it will be my birthday. I expect this one to pass quietly; this is not a milestone birthday. I generally don’t care to go clothing shopping, but I may take some time to pick up some new clothes for this fall.
Dear Husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and beyond a few new quilting books, I didn’t have any suggestions.
It’s supposed to be rainy off and on tomorrow. The storm is on its way in now. I don’t mind the rain, but I wish I had made better use of the good weather to get some yard work done. If the rain keeps everyone out of the stores while I shop, so much the better!
Soooooo….I’ll just be off quietly celebrating over here…..

I’ve been casting about, wondering what I wanted to write about. There’s a lot on my mind, but most of it is trivial nest making, and it isn’t the thing to inspire great posts.
I have to tip my hat to billy who can make a blog entry out of not having the time to blog. I teased him about his absence in the blog world lately, and I got a lovely letter, and then found he had blogged about visiting my blog. *G* I can use all the help I can get in terms of links, but he was linking to a blog that has been too darned quiet lately.
So…first, I want to say to billy…..I totally understand, hon. We all have other things that demand our time, and most of them rank higher in importance than our blogs (unfortunately). I’m sorry I made you feel bad with my comments. More to the point, I should have said I missed you, but I understood. (I’m still waiting for Dr. D’s comment on your comment about packaging.)
Secondly, I want to THANK billy, for giving me something to write about in my blog! lol I have unabashedly stolen his idea and repeated it here. *G*
Maybe things will pick up here when gardening season ends. No….what am I thinking. We’ll be headlong into the holidays by then! Well…maybe in the new year I’ll find time to write.
Until then….be patient with me.

Blue Witch wrote at length last Friday about changes in the retirement rules in the UK (“More pensions” Friday, September 24). Once again, I have great empathy with her subject matter, especially since Dear Husband and I are much closer to that point in our lives.
I had so much to say to her about it, that I felt it would be more appropriate to write it here, and link to her comments.
For the past ten years or so, we have been receiving notices from the Social Security Administration telling how much we had paid into the system, and how much we would be likely to receive a month should we retire at 62, or perhaps 65. In the past couple of years they are now telling us what we would receive should we choose to wait to retire at 70!
The government never intended Social Security to be a complete retirement package. They have always talked up 401k retirement plans, and savings, and any prudent person has investments to augment those. Unfortunately, the stock market wiped out a lot of those investment gains, and those who were in for the long haul, are running out of time when it comes to rebuilding those funds.
At the same time, the Federal Government is realizing that the Baby Boomers are nearing retirement age, and they are beginning to worry that there won’t be enough money to pay their claims. Their response: encourage them to work longer!
So….these notices show you how much MORE you would earn if you worked until you were 70. They don’t tell you that you HAVE to work that long, but the graphics showing what you would earn at 62, 65 and 70 are pretty convincing.
There are several catches to this line of thinking. First, it’s one thing to assume that I might continue to do paper work until I am 70. As long as I get my sleep, and I can see my monitor (Thank you for LARGE FONTS!!!), I could keep working. However, Dear Husband is an officer in a construction company. He is NOT going to be able to deal with the extremes of heat that Northern Illinois throws at us much longer. He might choose to take a job that pays a lot less than his present job, in order to stay inside more. So, Catch #1 is the physical ability to continue at your job.
The statistics the SSA sends us assume that we will continue to earn as much, or more, from now until we retire. It doesn’t, perhaps can’t, take into consideration changes in employment (Catch #2). And, in our experience, those our age who change jobs, tend not to move up in salary. We have friends our age who would be happy for a run of the mill job, let alone one with a golden parachute.
And….Catch #3….I seriously doubt that by the time I retire there will be one red cent left in the treasury to pay my Social Security. My Federal government sees fit to GIVE half a billion a week to five countries who are at the top of the list as recipients of our foreign aid: Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Afghanistan and Columbia. I have NO idea how much more we pay to the rest of the world. It’s a shame we are being taxed to support a world that doesn’t like us, rather than providing health care for our own poor.
So, we’re pretty uncomfortable about the idea of retiring. It will come one day, but I suspect it won’t be soon, and it might be a lot later than we’d like.
Blue Witch….good luck revising your plans. I’d really like to know SOMEONE who retired by fifty!

Tonight, my quiilting bee meets. I’m just about ready for them. I have some of my Halloween decorations up, and candy corn to put out as treats. There are candles to be lit, and dishes to ready for dessert.
I really need to cut out some pieces for a pumpkin applique that I started the last time we met. THEY would have finished it that night….and I’m still futzing around with it a month later. I love the look of applique, I just don’t like to do it, and all but one of this group are experts at applique! Just my luck.
The only problem is, I can’t keep my head up. I was working in the office until almost one o’clock last night, and now the need to catch up on my sleep is overwhelming. If I get up and move around, I bet I can catch my second wind.

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Faces in trucks with neatly trimmed white beards. A LOT of guys in the rural area have decided that beards are “in,” and it seems a lot of them happen to have white hair! There were one or two I would have liked to stop and chat with! *G*

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As I traveled to my sister’s in Indiana, I had a portable tape recorder with me. When something caught my eye, I made note of it. The drive was interesting.

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This is the view of the herb garden on the North side of my home. I leaned out the window one day, early last May and snapped this with an instant camera.
The garden has been in place for about 15 years. The trees and shrubs to the west have been encroaching, and I cut some of them back this summer.
If you look carefully, you can see the tips of the fern fronds at the bottom right of the picture. The ferns fill the area where the back wall of the garage joins the house. The faint line from the right of the picture that runs across the bottom of the herb garden, is the path the chipmunks have worn through the grass to the bird feeder.
The front right corner of the garden has garlic chives, a chrysanthemum, regular chives (the pink blooms), oregano and winter savory. You can see day lilies in the bottom left of the garden. In the center box, a dame’s rocket is in bloom with more chives, and the rest of the area is waiting for basil, rosemary and several other herbs to be planted. The arbor holds a deep purple clematis that is just beginning to leaf out.
The veggie boxes are covered with plastic. I have a weed that I couldn’t kill off any other way, so I tried solar heat for the summer. We’ll see how things turn out next spring.
And all the way to the back is Dear Husband’s pride and joy, the Arr!! It’s a 32′ Bayfield cutter that is moored in Lake Michigan during the summer, and boards with us the rest of the year. Any time you can’t find DH…..check the boat!
I want to thank Stu for starting the “View” meme. I have wanted to post this picture all summer and he gave me the incentive to work with my stepson to get it scanned. If you have a view from your home that you would like to share why not join us? And thanks go to Blue Witch, too, for sharing Stu’s meme with us.
UPDATE: Stu’s meme is called the Skyline Project.

I’m home!
I had a wonderful weekend with my youngest sister and her family. They had a ton of stuff planned and we filtered through it and settled on one thing here, and another thing there, and it turned out to be a laid back visit that was still jam packed.

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Well, actually, I won’t be roving….but making a trip to my youngest sister’s for the weekend. Roving would imply that I am going to wander. Even though I plan to take a new route, I still have a definite plan, and destination in mind.
Dear Husband and my mother and I will be making this same trip in mid October. I don’t usually make the trip more than twice a year, and sometimes just once. So, when Younger Sis asked me to visit, I had to think twice about it. The answer, of course, was…WHY NOT??

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Wednesday, September 22, is our wedding aniversary. We’ve been a couple for twenty years, and have been married fourteen of them. We plan to celebrate in a low key way. Our favorite restaurant is about thirty minutes east of us, and we’ll pack Mother into the car and head off to dinner. No dancing, no huge party, no gifts (at least, I don’t think there will be any gifts.)
Hmmmmmmm….I wonder if I should be looking for a gift tomorrow? What can you buy a man who has almost everything he wants other than a sixty foot sailboat? He can’t sail a 60 foot sailboat by himself….so that’s a moot point.
Happy Anniversary, Dear Husband! My gift to you tomorrow is not having to eat my cooking! *G* Have a great day, hon.