My sister pointed out to me that I had not posted in some time. It’s been a busy spring, despite the fact that it hasn’t seemed warm enough to get out into the gardens. We’re getting ready to host about 25 people for Easter dinner. I’ve been cleaning and sewing, reorganizing spaces, and today I caught up with some of my paperwork.
Read on, to see what else has been going on the past few weeks.

My youngest sister is a teacher, and last week she was on Spring Break. Each day she posted how she had chosen to use the day and everyone sounded envious of all the fun she was having. She came to visit us and rather than get some much needed work done on our Mother’s things, we vegged out on Friday. I know I’ll regret that, but it was really nice to be a sloth, and visit and chat and snooze and eat. It turns out we were charging up for Saturday.
Saturday morning we met our oldest sister and we spent the day shopping in a four by three block area of Naperville. It started with dropping off knives to be sharpened, then we browsed our way through Penzy’s Spices, Barnes and Noble, a new tea shop, and a boutique before walking back to have lunch at Hugo’s Frog Bar. Luckily the cars were just across the street, so we left the morning’s round of purchases in the cars before going to lunch.
Lunch was to die for! Our waiter was perfect. He had the answers to a multitude of questions and was present when needed, otherwise unobtrusive. We ordered fish tacos, seared scallops and a jumbo lump crab cake, and all three of us were totally happy with the meal. I enjoyed it so much that I told Dear Husband that we needed to plan a lunch-time visit so that he could enjoy it too. (I had the crabcake!) (With a heavenly remoulade)
We had a loose list of other shops to visit. Sur La Table was right next door, so we started there. I bought an immersion blender that I had been coveting for some time. Chico’s was next, followed by Eddie Bauer. Since we were right there, we paused for tea at Starbuck’s, and stopped at Anderson’s Book Store as we worked our way back toward the cars. The list doesn’t seem terribly long, but we spent SEVEN HOURS together. I was absolutely astonished. I don’t think I have ever shopped that long before, but the company was so totally entertaining that I never realized how much time had passed.
While we sat at Starbuck’s my techie little sister took out her phone so that we could make a list of what we needed for Easter, and had the menu planned in no time flat. We thought of one more of Mother’s quirky sayings, and that went into the phone, too! And while we were in Sur La Table, she opened an app to try to find out what music they were playing. Those phones are scary, ya know?!
I hated having to say goodbye to our oldest sister. I think Saturday may go down as one of the best days I’ve ever had. My youngest sister stayed a second night with us, but by morning, she was thinking about all she needed to get done before school resumed today, and she was on the road before 11:00. We are a family that worries, so she called as she got to the outskirts of her home town, to let us know that the trip had gone well.
Both my sisters and their families will join my family for Easter. We are all conscious of needing to store up memories. We can only hope that Easter Sunday will be as wonderful a day as Saturday was. Perhaps we will be able to share that wonderful sense of community with our children and grandchildren.

We have had the oddest problem in the main bathroom. We thought that condensation from the upstairs bathroom pipes was dripping onto the ceiling drywall. Eventually it became so bad that the wallpaper began sliding off the wall! At that point, I nagged Dear Husband and Second Son into checking it out, to determine if we needed a plumber or whether we could do the repairs on our own.
It turns out that the medallion behind the handle of the upstairs shower was coming unscrewed from the fiberglass shower wall. When SS would shower, he’d splash water on the wall and it would slide behind the medallion and soak the ceiling. We might not have discovered the truth of it, if the ceiling had not been opened, but when we saw the volume of water that covered the counter, potty and floor in the lower bathroom, we knew that more sleuthing was needed.
Dear Husband seriously caulked behind the medallion, and pushed it back into place, removing the excess caulk that squeezed out. He tightened the screws to re-secure the medallion to the wall, and then they did the shower test. No drips. A second test the next day. No drips! YEA!!!
Today, my favorite contractor, our painter, came to strip the wallpaper, close the ceiling, and spackle rough spots. Tomorrow he will paint, and hopefully, our bathroom problems have come to an end.

I have egg on my face in a major way!
Today, I received an e-mail from a friend about children of Congressmen not having to pay back student loans. I had just been listening to a local radio program where the speaker was talking about how much it costs to send students to various colleges for four years. The cost is astonishing! Moderate expenses might be $60,000 or so for room and board and tuition. Most private schools are much more expensive than that for four years. The students or their parents are left with huge loans that have to be repaid, and a years worth of some of the payments could be the equivalent of buying a brand new car for cash each year!
At any rate, I read the opening of this e-mail and saw red. I hit forward, added a personal message, and then sent it to almost everyone in my address book. (Those who live outside the US were spared, as were business contacts.)
So, I started to post the message here, and found myself writing “If the item about not having to pay back student loans is true…” I hadn’t checked. Drat! I’m always the one who gently tells friends that they should check with Snopes before sending on rabel-rousing e-mails. So I checked, and sure enough, most of it was false.
I HATE making an error of that magnitude. The only good thing that might come out of it is that I’m bound to hear from a lot of people I haven’t talked with for a while. Of course, they will be writing to tell me that they forwarded it BEFORE they read my mea culpa.
For the record, I think an amendment requiring Congress to operate under the same rules as everyone else in the United States is a good thing. They should be required to participate in Social Security, Medicare, and the health care reforms, and they should earn MODEST pensions based on years of service. If there’s a grassroots movement out there to accomplish this, I’m all for it!
And for the record, I’ll be more careful about what I pass on in the future.
Mea culpa!

There’s nothing earthshaking to note today, but I have a lot of tidbits to share.
The amaryllis bloom that I posted about recently has begun to wither, but the bloom on the second stalk is just starting to open! Tomorrow, I’ll cut off the first stalk and move the supports to the second. I think we’ll have another week to ten days of pleasure from this plant. This summer, I’ll put all four of the amaryllis plants outside, in a bid for a Christmas display.
Dear Husband and I had a light breakfast together, and talked about our (read:MY) plans for the weekend. I want his help to clean out the mudroom closet and the shelves under the counter. The hanging things are his, and I suspect there are dead boots and odds and ends that could be thrown out. I need to have him tell me why something should be kept.
I hadn’t intended to clean out three of the shelves in the cleaning pantry, but I wanted to put away the food processor, and it seemed like a good time to do the job. I store potatoes, onions and garlic on the lowest shelf, and discovered four sweet potatoes lodged behind the onion bin. Wouldn’t you know that I had just sent DH off to buy a sweet potato? I reorganized all the cleaning products, threw out an old iron (there were three stored there, I should really throw out one more), and generally got things into a more usable order. When DH returned I told him where to find the mink oil for his shoes, and he said he had just purchased more mink oil, not knowing it was there. I handed him two containers, and the brush. I think we need to do this reorganization about once a quarter until we’ve used up all the doubles and triples of things. Note: I did this with the food pantry and the freezers last week!
Mark the calendar. Today was the first day we have seen chipmunks for the 2011 warm season, and they are exceedingly frisky! The gray squirrels have been ruling the roost during the winter, but these little rodent cousins will eat them out of house and home now that they are awake.
My brother-in-law’s sister, Karen, is in the hospital. She may have had a heart attack. Prayers and positive thoughts would be welcome.
I’ve started a book called “The Coffee Trader,” by David Liss. It’s set in Amsterdam in 1659. I love novels in historical settings. If this turns out to be a good book, I’ll post more about it later.
I have to buy a skein or two of red yarn this weekend. I am assembling an afghan for Shelly Tucker, the organizer of “Share a Square.” She has organized the donation of more than 12000 six inch crocheted squares, as well as the assembly of these squares into 150 afghans for kids who will be attending cancer care camp this summer. It’s been a pleasure to be a part of this effort. If you crochet, or know someone who crochets, Shelly will be organizing a repeat effort for 2012, starting in August. Visit her FAQ page for information on what she needs.
I had a good day yesterday in the sewing room. I have just two seams to sew and I will have finished the second of five or six baby quilts I plan to do this year. YEA!!! I have the parts cut for one, and half of another, sailboat quilt. There are times when it’s just comfortable to sit and cut pieces for quilts. I have another quilt on which I’ve completed the blocks, and just need to sew them together.
SUN!!! OMG, the SUN IS SHINING!!! I understand that we are supposed to have a week of gradually warming temperatures, with some sunny days. THIS is what I have been missing for the past two and a half months. I think that I experienced a little SAD this year, and I’m very happy to have this glorious light around me!
And with that, I think I’ll open the shades in the studio and sew for a bit. I hope you’re all having a great weekend. Don’t forget to turn your clocks back!