Chickens Counted After Hatched

I'll just be hanging out with my peeps.

A Day in the Life

Yesterday was a day much like any other...if you live in a hell dimension.

The very first thing in the morning, I opened the door and saw THIS sight:

Yeah, that's a human body laying curled up on my stoop, wrapped up in a hoodie. Sorry about the calcium build-up on the screen so you can't see so well. I'll get around to scrubbing that off when I get a new batch of energy. I've got one ordered, it just hasn't arrived yet.

Anyway...I stood there to see if the body was breathing, and it was. So I spoke gently and woke the fella up and the body turned out to be an 18 year old runaway boy, now homeless.

I talked to him for quite a while; asking things like what was his drug of choice, was he hungover, and could I expect to see his face on the back of a milk carton? I also asked him if he was hungry and he said he was.

I fed him a couple plates of eggs (he ate all that I had on hand) and a chicken salad sandwich with some juice.

And I asked him if he'd like me to call his mom or someone else in his family. He said, yeah, he'd like that. So he gave me the number and I dialed it and left a message on an answering machine.

He's been on the street for more than 8 months so I would imagine someone out there is frantic for news of him.

Come to think of it, maybe not. I've had some experience with families leaving members to die in a ditch. I just hope that's not the case with his. He was a nice young man, lost, scared, and with no way out of his predicament without a serious helping hand.

I asked him where he'd be in case someone called back and he told me and then he left.

It was later in the day and many phone calls later that it dawned on me! I hadn't left a call-back number! I am so lazy and so used to caller ID that it never occurred to me that not everyone has that feature!

Now I am haunted by the vision of some poor people down in San Francisco having heard word that their son/brother/nephew is alive and homeless on the streets of Sacramento but with no way to find him or learn more! Arrggh!

Just to show that no good deed goes unpunished, I had to resort to buying a blender because none were available for cheap at the Salvation Army. Mine had met with an unfortunate spoon-in-the-blades accident earlier this week and had to be tossed out. I was really sweating the expenditure on a budget that has no room for such luxuries, but I went ahead and bought a cheap one at Walmart.

And when I got home I noticed a letter in the mailbox from my landlord stating that my rent had just increased by $100 a month.

I'm sure there's a bible verse to cover this second big event of the day: something about adversity and heaping coals upon my head and probably even boils, pestilence and locusts. What it could be doesn't come to mind, but I am for certain sure I know which one covers the first incident:

Matthew 25:35-40

Bye Bye Blender

Ah, the joys of simple summer things. Like drinking fruit smoothies all season long. It's one of my simple pleasures.


Until yesterday when I left a Reed and Barton stainless steel soup spoon in the blender and turned it on, sheering the motor drive in two and ruining the spoon as well.

I don't know if there is a lesson in there or not. There's no money for a new blender so I guess the lesson is to do without. Again.

In the meantime, I am working on the pile of unfinished quilts and have a great time. So is my seamstress assistant Mackie, seen here marking the quilt pattern in pencil:


hmmm, this looks like a good spot.

Just let me get a good grip on this thing...

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille

Cozy Up

I've been longing for some new tea cozies for over a year. But I never had the energy to make one!

It requires piecing and quilting an entire design. Or, if I was to make a one-fabric cozy, it would still need to be quilted. The task just seemed daunting and so it never got underway.

Until! My Pink Brain! kicked into 'AHA!' when I was at the thrift store this morning!




I spotted some very nice PILLOW SHAMS. For $1.99 each. Fully pieced and quilted and fully calling out to me to buy them and cut them up.


So I did.

A simple shape.

A quick whip around on the old machine.

And VIOLA!

I'm so happy! Aren't you?

While the Cat's Away

I thought I would be able to sandwich up another quilt this afternoon while Mackie was sound asleep in the other room.

Um, I guess not.

So I had to do it on the table instead.

Doing My Part

It's good to know that in these trying times of hamdemics, there are those who are out there fighting the good fight and trying not to spread the dreaded Swine Flu.

I like to think I'm doing my part. Keeping my hands washed. Keeping my finger out of my nose. Spraying anyone in the face with hand sanitizer who dares to sneeze in my direction.

Yesterday, however, I did a bad, bad thing. I may have single-handedly created my own disease vector. Here is what happened:

My co-worker had told me that Sheba Cat Food no longer comes in the little square plastic cans that I found so handy as soap molds. She said they are made of tin, now. I could hardly believe her and since getting a few 'cans' of cat food for Mackie (so I can use them as soap molds later after he rejects the contents because he doesn't like wet food) was on my shopping list, I found myself standing in front of the cat food at Safeway on Alhambra yesterday, pondering the display.

My last batch of soap had to be poured into a big plastic tub. And when it came time to cut it into bars, for some reason my mind switched off the mainline and into a derelict sidetrack, and I ended up cutting the soap into brownie sized into larger soap bars. And thus we have the 40,000 wee snack sized bars of soap in this picture:

Hey, you couldn't possibly be taking a photo without ME, could you?

Back at the Safeway, I could clearly see that Sheba had indeed changed it's cans. Instead of flat and square, they now resembled little round one-serving pudding cups. I could see that they appeared to be made of tin now, too, rather than plastic.

But just to make sure, I picked up a can and tapped it with my fingernail. Maybe it was still plastic that had been painted metallic to make it look more expensive.

But it was hard to tell. I tapped again. I know how these merchandisers like to mess with us consumers. It could still be plastic.

If the tap and scratch method doesn't work, there is always the tooth test. You can always tell what something is made of if you bite it. People have done that with gold coins since time immemorial. And the only sure fire way to tell a pearl from a plastic bead is to run it across your teeth to feel if it's grainy or not. So why not chomp down on a can of cat food standing in the middle of the aisle at Safeway in front of God and everybody?

It was then that I realized I was sucking on a can of cat food that had probably been touched by at least a dozen other people. Dirty, germy, disease bearing people. Including the grubby mitts of the entire third world, depending on where the stuff was made, canned and packaged. It's not like they sterilize them right before they put them on the shelves or anything.

Think about it! Manufactured in vats and poured into the cans in China where they regularly poison products just because it's amusing. Tossed into bins with rats and human body parts for storage. Transported to the coast in the back of filthy trucks that double as chicken carriers and not cleaned EVER. Loaded into the bowels of Merchant Ships where they mingle with the bilge water for months as they navigate past pirates. Sent to distribution warehouses, trucking centers, the back room of the local grocery store, the store shelf and finally coming to rest upon my lips.

I yanked that can out of my mouth and put it back on the shelf, looking surreptitiously around to see if anybody saw that. And then I fled the premises in embarrassment and disgust.

I am so much prettier than those old cards you make, admit it!

Yes, that's correct. I didn't buy the one I tasted. I was too traumatized and besides, it IS made of tin and therefore cannot be used as a soap mold.

It was when I was sitting in my car in the parking lot, after having washed my mouth out with hand sanitizer, scrubbed my hands and the steering wheel, my keys and my purse handles with an antibacterial wet wipe, that I realized I had just done a bad, bad thing.

I had possibly started the spread of an even deadlier virus than the Swine Flu.

I have single-mouthedly spawned the new pandemic that will wipe out the entire human world.

Beware the Idiot Flu!

Sunflower Blue

Just a few more glorious days of cool spring weather before the HEAT hits and I wilt like a tired dandelion until the autumn. When I turn into a pumpkin? I don't know!

After 4 years of non-quilting activity due to cataracts, I finally realized just the other day that I could probably see well enough to try my hand at it again! So I dug into the drawer marked 'ufo's' --that's quilter talk for "Un-Finished-Objects" and chose this bright sky blue and sunny yellow quilt top. I don't know what I was thinking when I chose this BRIGHT combo, but it's perfect for me now.

I had forgotten how amazingly peaceful it is to sit for an hour or two and quilt.

Card Trick

Word to the Wise: Don't download Internet Explorer 8 if you have an older computer: you will never see the internet alive again!!!! Bwaaahaaaaa haaaaa! What with a few computer problems and being so dull and too busy to be anything but dull, I've had no time and no inkling to post. But the other day, when it was rainy, I had time to do a little card trickery!

I had to make some cards for an ailing friend, and I did manage to send her some very nice ones, but these could not be parted with! They are pink! They have roses! They must be hoarded!

Rainy Day in May

Nothing to do! It's raining! Guess I'll pester my human for a while!

Hey, look at me!

I said, HEY! Look at ME!

Lusty Month of May

It's May, it's May!
The Lusty Month of May!
The lovely month when everyone goes
Blissfully Astray!

That darling month when ev'ryone throws
Self-control away.
It's time to do
A wretched thing or two,
And try to make each precious day
One you'll always rue!

It's May! It's May! It's May!