The Soul of a Needle and Thread...

The Soul of a Needle and Thread…

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I was standing in the yarn aisle of a local craft store today when a woman approached me, "Excuse me. Do you know anything about knitting?" Then she proceeded to tell me that she had just taught herself to knit a purl because she was having her first grandchild and today they found out he is a boy. Now she is standing in the yarn aisle ready to make hers, & his, fist blanket. ♥

She had bought a lovely skein of that funky yarn that looks like it does all the stitches for you, and we knitter know, it doesn't. It's difficult to work with for rookies. So she returned it and was going with a standard baby yarn in winter white. She wanted to knit a blanket that only knit & purl. Something very simple and elegant. Could I help? I gave her my business card and told her to email - I would write her a pattern and return it tonight. I wrote two.  Instructions for both follow at the end of this blog.

There is a distinct energy from the soul that transcends into tediously handcrafted work.  If you ever start a piece of knitting, or crochet, or detailed needlework, and put it away for a few years, when you pick it up again even years later, your mind starts playing the scene from when you held it last – whether it be the music you were listening to, the conversation you were having, it’s a snapshot our your soul at that particular moment in time.  It’s uncanny!  Every sweater, every garment that my Bonnie Mommie ever made for me felt like a luxurious, generous, warm hug from her every moment that I had it on.  Whether it were conscious or subconscious, her soul is always wrapped around me in the garments she makes.  I remember as a young girl, the back-to-school wardrobe that she made for me every year before school.  Plenty of pretty dresses for me to wake up to and look forward to wearing on school days when my naturally nocturnal spirit would rather lie in bed.  Rather not go at all.   Big circle skirts overflowing with ruffles and trim.  Lovely dresses with puffy sleeves and pinafores with applique, embroidery, one even had a dollie in a heart shaped pocket.  An apron to hold my giant 64 box of crayons.  Dresses to match my dolls dresses.  And even a pair of jeans with pretty red ruffles on the pockets and hem with a matching peasant blouse, for 2^nd grade school trip to the zoo where jeans were the required wardrobe.  I had always refused to wear pants, convinced, if not slightly paranoid, that even putting a pair on would turn me into a boy.   Oh the horror!


By the fourth grade I had decided to design my own back to school wardrobe.  A pair of pants in royal blue like Olivia Newton-John wore in Xanadu (similar to the ones that M.C. Hammer made famous a few years later) with a matching peasant blouse.  A peasant blouse cut off one shoulder (also similar to one Olivia Newton-John had worn in the same film, so had Christy McNichol in “The Pirate Movie”.  The outfit was bright red with yellow trim (because I liked the colors on the McDonald’s French fry boxes) and I paired it with an A-line skirt that had big, metal yellow zippers down each side.  And mini-skirts because Barbara Eden in “The Harper Valley PTA” was my hero!

While my designs were the all the rage of the 4^th grade and all my teachers at school, it was really my mother’s ability, willingness, zeal, and support in executing them that was so impressive.  I was into the makings of a life long education in art, craft, and design at her heels.  In my earliest memories she was never without fabric, thread, yarn, hook, needles, or hoop in hand – unless of course, she was sanding away at greenware, hovering tediously over bisqueware with a delicate brush.  I would spend my childhood trailing behind her fingering bolts of fabric in the fabric stores as she called out “wool, linen, flax, cotton, polyester, rayon, tulle, crepe, sharkskin, matalese, brocade, silk…..”  and having me finger the fabrics behind her and repeating them by name; memorizing them by touch.  She would make her selections and wait her turn at the cutting table while I busied myself in gigantic books of patterns  and make a mental note of all the beautiful dresses I would make when I was old enough to wear them. Or stand mesmerized in front of walls of beautiful buttons, choosing the ones I would ask to have for the fabric she was having cut.  It never failed, I would see her finishing up and run to get my instructions for gathering notions – the list of zippers by size and color, buttons, etc…  And every single time when it came to buttons she would say, “Get the ones that you can get the most in the right color for the cheapest price”.  Well shit!  That’s nothing close to what I had already chosen.  The ladies at the  cutting table could always read my mind and laughed sympathetically under their breath.  I don’t think Bonnie Mommie ever had a clue. 
.She might have thought them frivolous but I probably could have had them had I had the courage to ask.  Buttons became somewhat of an obsession, certainly an investment piece, in my later years.  I had grown to think of them as jewelry and well worth the investment.  When I explained my position, Bonnie agreed.  I was in my twenties by then.

A psychologist asked me one time to describe my childhood.  The only word that came to mind was “ideal”.  It really was.  It certainly had it’s dis-ease:  the constant moves, the unhinged family, the instability of people and place but the thread that held that all together was the discipline and organization of what could have easily been a very cluttered life:  home made (custom made) garments, home made (tailor made) meals from scratch, family sit-down meal (every meal), long family vacations driving in the car that inevitably bring one to meditate on life and the world we live in),  ballet classes, baton twirling classes, art classes, reading, the early discipline of letter writing and thank you note writing (when I was too young to write or sign my name – every letter, every Christmas card, every thank you note had to contain an original artwork in crayon “because if you don’t sign it or write it yourself it doesn’t count”, Bonnie Mommie would say).  To this day even my kitties sign their own Christmas cards with a personal ink-pad paw print.

In my first year of junior high school, all that had never been ideal in life imploded and rang out with the thunder of a very ugly divorce.  I will say, my parents didn’t do divorce gracefully and in the 30+ years since, nothing has changed that.  It is an undiscussable subject.  Sibling might have helped bear the weight of that burden, I don’t know.  It’s like an unending death.  In an instant, every memory – every family vacation, every school play, every ballet recital, every birthday party, Halloween party, Christmas, or Easter is erased from all conversation.  It’s a bitter pill for each bitter parent.  It’s a bitter pill for the new spouse.  No longer can you ever make mention of any moment of joy that preceeded the culmination of lava that finally spewed forth.  And in this same instant, this girl is alone.  Twelve years old and alone in a new town, among new strangers, in a new and most-unfriendly school (teachers and kids alike).  In some instances perhaps even cruel.  Certainly these days it would be called bullying but in my early life of only-childness, I was taught not to complain, to be grateful for the kids that teased me because I didn’t have sibling and it was that that makes you tough.  In this aloneness of environment & spirit,  I was also hours and hours and hours – and days and days and days alone in life.  My mother left for work before 5am and normally returned from her 3^rd job around midnight.  I didn’t have friends and for my own safety, I wasn’t allowed to leave the house, or have the curtains open, or let anyone know I was home alone.  Many years later I would come to fully understand the necessity of this but it was lonely.  Even my 12 year old poodle died that first year. 

I spent the first few years of my adolescence in tears and sadness.  Bonnie listened when she was home and would coach me.  She would spend her very few spare hours making me new school clothes that we copied from outfits I found in magazines and bought fabric for off of yardage sale tables at Alco, a local discount department store.  I would often wake up to new dresses neatly pressed and hanging on my door knob.  The night before, in one of my many floods of tears, she would coach me, “You go to school.  You hold your head high.  You smile big.  You say “hello” to everyone.  If they’re mean to you, say something nice to them.  If they say mean things about you, say nice things about them.  If they don’t invite you (they never did) let them know you are happy for them.  As hard as they make it to like them, make them think you like them anyway.  Don’t ever let them know they cause you the pain they want you to feel.  If they don’t think they won – they didn’t win.”  Day after day I would.    Complaining was never tolerated in our family – crying wasn’t even allowed when I was an infant.  In that same vein, I was taught to laugh at fear and laughter was an early defense I was taught in my earliest childhood.  Certainly I grew up with an element of real fear.

From the 7^th grade to the 9^th grade, from ages 12 to 15, I would come home from school every day – do my homework, count my calories, make my dinner, bake the next recipe in the cook book I had been working my way through one recipe at a time, watch multiple 1950’s tv series on cable (“Leave It to Beaver”, “Dobie Gillis”, “Father Knows Best”, etc…) and spend my evening plowing through unfinished needlework projects my mother had started and not finished in our previous life.  I embroidered Christmas tree skirts, cross-stitched pictures, and whatever else I found in her boxes of unfinished projects while I waited and waited for her to come home.  She waited tables at a pancake house for breakfast, had a real estate career that she attempted to keep track of between pancake house and the dress shop she managed and was a buyer for, then worked the night shift at a Mexican food restaurant.  Her weekends were no different but she could take me to work with her on Saturday and Sunday, where I would help her bus tables or do the store window and mannequin displays.

While I had dabbled at sewing, I was around 15 when I really made genuine attempts.  The thing about sewing, knitting, crochet, or any of those long lost arts is you really need someone at hand, to shadow you and remind you stitch by stitch what your brain and hands argue about with every next stitch.  Like dance, it’s not so much a thing one learns, so much as it is a language in and of itself.  It takes the daily discipline of repetitive reminders to fully comprehend.  I had bits and pieces of that – an invaluable gift for sure.  But I didn’t really know enough.  I would cut and sew and spend my hours whittling away and then Bonnie would come in like elves in the night and correct my seams to make my garments presentable.

 At the same time I was enhancing my knowledge of crochet – something I had learned the basics of as a toddler.  Although I had had the stitches down pat since I was 3 years old, I didn’t have enough knowledge of crochet to work from patterns.  I was inspired by a long lost stack of old magazines I had found in an antique store in rural New Mexico.  The woman who owned the store really specialized in antique dishes and the stack of magazines and newspapers was really what she used to wrap them with.  I pleaded with her and she sold them to me for 10-cents a piece.  I didn’t know what they were at first but they were the most beautiful lace I had ever seen.  I knew I would be getting married one day and we wouldn’t have the money for a wedding so I thought I’d start working on lace for wedding dress – ten years or so should be plenty of time to finish one.  Funny now but I seriously thought it at the time.  The books were all patterns for Irish and Celtic lace bits.  Some of them had photos or diagrams, other didn’t and I would eventually work them up just to see what they looked like.  They were published in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s.  In those days, most newspapers published regular columns with needlework patterns.  I would also learn in learning from them, quite by accident, that most of them were written in British crochet which is not the same as American crochet.  I did figure this all out on my own though – of that, I was very proud.  It was also therapy for the extended family periphery that was often  far too much to bear.

When I was 20, Bonnie Mommie and I took our first year long gypsy art trip in an old beat up Chevy Bonanza pick up truck that belonged to my uncle but had been left abandoned at our house because it was too much of an eyesore to park in his own neighborhood.  We sold art  (clay sculpture) by day and spent our nights in the hotel rooms – me cutting and Bonnie sewing, an outfit for each of us nearly every single night of that year.  Fabric was abundant and cheap in those days and that was when I really started to become an excellent seamstress.  Cutting patterns was excellent training ground.  As we traveled, we toured upscale and expensive dress shops and department stores along the way.  More than window shopping, we devoured garments for the knowledge they had in store – the way the seams were finished, the way the pieces were cut, the buttons, lapels, zippers, hems, trims, cuffs and collars.  Bonnie fingering them to pieces and talking out loud, “this seam is turned to the back to give it a certain line…..that garment is French seamed just the way I do it………..oh look!  What a wonderful use of grommets.”  I trailed behind her just as I had as a child among the bolts of fabrics, and inhaled her every discovery.

I was in my early thirties and we were both working in a theatre office in Los Angeles when a co-worker overheard me say how much I hated ready to wear garments.  That we sew all of our clothes has never been a secret and our new found address near the Fabric District of Downtown LA was our sheer delight and bliss.  Nevertheless, our co-worker seemed stunned.  “You don’t like to wear clothes that you buy in a store?”  I was sort of shocked at her shock but in hindsight I don’t know why.  It is stereotypical to think of home-made anything being inferior.  How ignorant are the masses!  Custom fit, tailor made clothes had been the wardrobe of my entire life.  I do hate those store bought jeans that crawl up your crotch while simultaneously falling below your butt crack.  Far from superior, but someone who had never known custom fit would never know.  It’s what so many people never really have the opportunity to know – luxury is not expense or wealth – although it can be those things.  Luxury is not incompassionate, exclusionary, or unkind.  By definition, “Luxury is the state of great comfort and extravagant living.”  In my lifetime of experience, luxury is a big warm smile greeting you on a dark ugly day, the warm soft hug of caring heart – if not in person, in the spirit of handmade garment, the discipline of a decadent life, the discipline of a hard won education, tailor made clothes, travel that exasperates ones soul and fuels one’s imagination and thirst for life.  The but greatest of luxuries is kindness – coming and going, ever flowing.  Luxury is ideal! 

That baby that grandmother is knitting a blanket for will be swaddled in a luxurious love from a woman who stretched her intellect to learn a new craft, just so that she could knit that child an eternal hug that he could pass on to his child who will wear that same hug, and sense elements of her struggle to learn and to conquer.  What an indelible, if not silent and even invisible, legacy to pass on to coming generations.

Earlier this week I received a thank you note from an old and dear friend for a gift I had made her:

““I got something really wonderful in the mail today. It was beautiful and brought back memories of seeing this girl in a mini wearing bright colors with a sad look on her face. She was the prettiest little thing in clothes she made herself. Very talented, warm and inviting. All the other girls were jealous and gave her a hard time but the truth was they were jealous at the fact she had more talent in her little finger than they even thought of having. I was proud to call her friend and I still am. I loved you as a young girl and have an awful lot of respect and admiration for you as a woman. I thank you, my friend, for my treasure in the mail. Lots of love to you and Mommie Bonnie and all the kitties. My life is better at having you still in it!!!! Now if I could just get you to drive this way that would be even better!”   - TCB

What luxury to have a friend who sensed something of me she never really knew, and who in the decades of our distance, she never lost sight of.  I have to say, when I read her profound words my heart broke a little and I fell into a bit of melancholy in that I didn't apparently fool everyone with my false bravado.  And yet somehow, my soul felt a distant and warm and comforted hug in the acknowledgement of all that that little note said.

I think junior high school and high school are probably not fond memories for most people.  Maybe they are.  I don’t really now, I guess.  I do think it’s unwise to dwell in one’s past – and unwise to dwell in moments of pain and sorrow.  It’s too easy to miss the beauty of the present.  I was reminded of this last summer driving down an old, familiar, Nebraska farm road.  I had driven it so many times in worry over bills, worry over an uncertain car, worry over uncertain weather, but mostly worry over an uncertain tomorrow.  It was never a beautiful road.  In my memory it was always muddy and  slushy, weeds lining the road side and junky cars along the way.  Somehow last summer it was green and lush, full of hope  not fear, brimming with smiles and not fear and loathing.  The only difference being, as I noted in that moment, that I wasn’t driving down that road on that particular summer day, hoping to make a sale that would pay my rent on time, or pay my bills.  Just driving for the sheer joy of seeing it again.  And then my mothers words came back to me, “.  You hold your head high.  You smile big.  You say “hello” to everyone.  If they’re mean to you, say something nice to them.  If they say mean things about you, say nice things about them.  If they don’t invite you (they never did) let them know you are happy for them.  As hard as they make it to like them, make them think you like them anyway.  Don’t ever let them know they cause you the pain they want you to feel.  If they don’t think they won – they didn’t win.”

Much Love,

Angela Catirina

P.S.  Below are the two baby blanket patterns I wrote for the soon-to-be new grandmother  I met in yarn aisle.  Great for beginners, they contain only knits and purls – no increased, decreases, or anything to intimidate someone just starting out.

So here they are for anyone interested:

Option 1: This option will make a hemmed blanket which will give you a small hemmed finish around the entire blanket - similar to a blanket with a binding only the binding will work into the knitting.

cast on desired number of stitches to achieve desired measurement (120-130)

Row 1: Knit

Row 2: Purl

Row 3: Knit

Row 4: Purl

Row 5: Knit

Row 6: Knit; CO (cast on) 5 stitches at end of row

Row 7: Knit 5, Purl 1, Knit across:; CO 5 stitches at end of row

Row 8 & every other even numbered row (WS - wrong side of blanket) Purl 5, Knit 1, Purl across to last 6 stitches, Knit 1, Purl 5

Row 9 & ever other odd numbered row (RS - right side of blanket) Knit 5, Purl 1, Knit across to last 6 stitches, Purl 1, Knit 5

*Repeat Rows 8 & 9 until you have reached desired length for blanket & end with a right side row facing you ready to be worked next; then proceed to work the last 8 rows

1a: BO (bind off) 6 stitches; knit across to last 6 stitches, P1, K5

2a: BO 6 stitches, purl across

3a - Make sure this is a right side row) Knit across

3a: Purl across

4a: Knit across

5a: Purl across

6a: knit across

7a: Purl across

8a: BO knit wise - leave a tail long enough to hem one edge of the blanket. The blanket binding will fold naturally around at the Purl rows to form a natural hem. Hem using a chain stitch method with a tapestry needle. If you're adept at crochet, you can add a simple chain stitch around the edge with the same or a contrasting color as an added embellishment.

Option 2: With this option you can make a simple square blanket without a hem. We'll knit a selvedge edge instead.

*CO (cast on) desired number of stitches to achieve desired length for blanket

Rows 1-5: knit each row

Row 6 & all even numbered rows: P1, K1, P1, K1, P1, Knit across to last 5 stitches, P1, K1, P1, K1, P1

Row 7 & all odd numbered rows: P1, K1, P1, K1, P1, Purl across to last 5 stitches, P1, K1, P1, K1, P1

* Repeat rows 6 & 7 until you have achieved desired length. Then work last 5 rows as rows 1-5. Bind Off.

Either method will work very well. I think method 1 will be a slightly more luxurious finish. The hemmed edge just adds a more luxurious touch. Option 2 is also an excellent option and will make a lovely swaddle.

Golly WOW!?...........Might the United States Close Their State Borders?

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(About)

California taxes move people out

California taxes move people out
Walter Williams
Published: Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

Several prominent California cities have declared bankruptcy, including Vallejo, Stockton, Mammoth Lakes and San Bernardino. Others are on the precipice, and that includes Los Angeles, California’s largest city.

California’s 2012 budget deficit is expected to top $28 billion, and its state debt is $618 billion.

Democrats control Calif-ornia’s Legislature, and its governor, Jerry Brown, is a Democrat. California is home to some of America’s richest people and companies. It would then appear the liberals’ solution to deficit and debt would be easy. They need only to raise taxes on California’s rich to balance the budget and pay down the debt — or, as President Barack Obama would say, make the rich pay their fair share.

The downside to such a tax strategy is that people are already leaving California in great numbers.

According to a Manhattan Institute study, “The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look,” by Thomas Gray and Robert Scardamalia, roughly 225,000 residents leave California each year — and have done so for the past 10 years.

They take their money with them.

Using census and Internal Revenue Service data, Gray and Scardamalia estimate that California’s out-migration results in large shares of income going to other states, mostly to Nevada ($5.67 billion), Arizona ($4.96 billion), Texas ($4.07 billion) and Oregon ($3.85 billion).

That’s the problem.

California politicians can fleece people in 2012, but there’s no guarantee they can do the same in 2013 and later years; people can leave.

But given the widespread contempt for personal liberty and constitutional values in our nation today, there might be a way for California politicians to solve their fiscal mess.

They can simply stop wealthy people from leaving the state or, alternatively, like some Third World nations, set limits on the amount of assets a resident can take out of the state.

This would surely be within their jurisdiction and would not raise any constitutional issues, because it would serve a compelling state purpose. In other words, if California were to set up border controls to stop people, as East Germans did at Checkpoint Charlie, before they cross the state line, such action would be protected by the 10th Amendment.

The fact that many Californians have managed to get their assets out of the state complicates the issue.

Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution authorizes Congress “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

This is known as the commerce clause. There’s no question that people who pull up stakes and leave California affect interstate commerce; California has less tax revenue, and recipient states have more.

What California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris might do is sue Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Oregon in the federal courts for enticing, through lower taxes and less onerous regulations, wealthy California taxpayers.

Were California to take such measures and have a modicum of success, one wonders how many Americans would be offended by such an encroachment on personal liberty.

After all, how would forcing an American to remain in a state differ in principle from forcing him to purchase health insurance?

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He writes for Creators Syndicate and may be contacted at:

wwilliam@gmu.edu

Giddy'up!.......Corn Bread's Homecoming

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We started out this morning in Virginia and I was still undecided when we left as to whether we would head Southwest toward Eastern Tennessee, or cut due West through West Virginia and into Ohio. Fate led us towards Tennessee as the day progressed. We rambled through Abingdon, VA - a tiny town nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountain Range and just beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, known for it's history of Martha Washington, and a favorite stop of ours for many years now. From there we followed our instincts through Bristol, TN and on towards another tiny town - Jonesborough, TN, home of the International Storytelling Center and host to annual storytelling festivals - something on my Bucket List. I haven't yet had the pleasure of attending one. Then East towards Greenville, TN - home of the President Andrew Johnson National Historic Site and Museum. Eastward still through the foothills of the Smoky Mountain National Park and Gatlinburg, Piegon Forge (Home of Dollywood), and Sevierville (Dolly Parton's home town). 

It's a work day though and often times on work days it's difficult to separate the necessity of getting the job done from the sheer gift of what each day brings. We know this trail well - we've travled it for decades now and we lived here for a over a year. In fact, it was our home in Pigeon Forge, TN that was Corn Bread & Apple Jack 's first home - a rented house on a moutain side with lots of tall tress for them to climb and raccoon, squirrels, birds, and bunnies to befriend and give chase. We gave them Tennessee names so that they would always have a piece of their birthplace with them - not unlike Catirina being a ghost town near San Antonio, my hometown - or Bonnie being a Scottish name.

We brought Corney & Jack back here a year ago and were somewhat surprised that they seemed nonchalant about the visit. They LOVED this place!! A kitty's best dream for sure! I hadn't thought of it since because of their nonchalance but when fate turned us this direction today Corn Bread turned absolutely giddy.

He was doing cartwheels in the car all day. Determined to ride on the dash to help lead the way. Patient, ever patient, with each stop we had to make. He licked and combed his fur, cleaned his paws, washed his face, and then gave Sugar Brithces & Moonshine a good grooming and a good grooming agian. They all sat at attention and it was obvious he was the master of the days ceremonies. I was utterly happy to see him so utterly happy about a visit home, and equally trepidatious of the idea that perhaps he thought he might find Apple Jack here. Whatever his joy, it was contagious!! The little girls, Sugar & Moon, were every bit as excited as he was as we drove the long way through the foothills of the Smoky Mountains thorugh Gatlinburg and into Pigeon Forge where we visited the old house and then went to the park near the Old Mill and the stream where we used to take Corney & Jack as kittens to learn to walk and to visit the ducks.

It's a work day - but I don't ever have to remind myself that every day is a work day. It's a beautiful day - I do sometimes need to remind myself that every day is a beautiful day ♥ I signed the guest book at the Old Mill Restuarant - "Bonnie Mommie, Angela Catirina, Corn Bread, Sugar Britches, Moon Shine, and our guardian angel Apple Jack."

A True Story.....

Source: dailyfunnies.ca via Jess on Pinterest

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OMG..FREAKIN...GAWD!!!!...........Simple little trip in the grocery store. 4 items. Bonnie drops me at the front door and waits. Middle of the day. No customers. 2 cashiers each with one customer with an equally large amount of stuff. Both cashier appear competent and moving so it appears to be a toss up. I went left............So I'm waiting patiently (we all know I don't have surplus of t

hat) and thumbing through bridal magazines (pointless but pretty) while I wait. Cashier on the right is making more progress but now she has a line - nobody behind me so I wait. ............I see this coming but at this point I'm annoyed and I figure she's got it coming so I just watch it all unfold. It's one of those Food Lion conveyor belts that has a triagle at the cashiers ends to shove stuff toward them so they don't have to reach. It's styrofoam carton of 24 jumbo eggs followed by a dozen 3 liter bottles of pop. I wait. I watch. I hear the roaring screeching moan as the carton begins to be crushed but cashier notices nothing so I say nothing. Pretty soon she reaches for the grapes and her hand comes up with a bunch of egg goo all over it. She thinks it's the grapes. Conveyor belt is still moving. Then follows a tidal wave of egg goo spilling through the produce and over the scanner. "Oh!" she exclaims as she begins to try to lift the lid of the now accordian folded egg carton, "I might have cracked a couple of those". I say nothing but I"m thinking to myself, "hmmm....ya think?"..............She decides to go ahead and scan them in order to be more efficient (meanwhile cashier on the right had checked out 6 customers), and she proceeds to try to mop the mess into her floor with her hand so that it will be less noticeable. OKAY??? Well, that's a choice...............she proceeds, scans all the pop, egg goo running and crusting as she works and then here it comes........................screeeeech.......pop............another 24 carton of eggs crushed all over the conveyor belt again but now the gooey mess from the former carton is circling back around the the back side of the conveyor belt.....................I'm losing it but I'm trying to remain cool and burst out in either laughter or fits of furious "you fucking imcompetent nut job!!"..........Didn't utter a sound. Just moved right over to the cashier on the right (who has now completed checking out the nearly dozen customers previously in her line. She (cashier on right) brushes her nose just barely with her hand. I wouldn't have even noticed it if she hadn't said, "OMG!!! At least I didn't pick it. I have this horrrible habit of picking my nose in weather like this. It's hard. You try not to do it so people won't notice but then it just happens. I didn't pick it, did I?"

I wish I were kidding but this is a true story.

Source: thazing.com via Johnathan on Pinterest

A Drop in My Ocean

July 18

We may have made a mistake in not letting Corny witness the very end. Just before Apple gave his last fight for life, he crawled over to Corn Bread and wrapped his arms around him in a big hug. When we realized he was having another painful episode, I pulled Corn Bread away and removed him to the bathroom while we worked to help Jack and held out hope that he might still make it. We didn't let Corn Bread see him after he died. Now I'm afraid he thinks we just left him behind.

In leaving, we left the old things they shared - litter box, beds, chairs, etc... and replaced them with all new, just to not have the constant reminders for him. Corn Bread has been a wet mop, or constantly looking in every drawer, bag, corner, crevice, and wailing out in unbearable cries for Apple Jack.

He's not a cat that can function by himself, and his grief supercedes ours which is tragic enough so I found him two new friends - two 8 week old, black tabby kittens that we've named Sugar Britches and Moonshine. This is going to take a while. The kittens are adjusting marvelously but Corn Bread is growling and hissing - perpetual anger still beats eternal sadness and unconsolable grief.

I had mentioned to Bonnie the day after Apple Jack died that I wished we could get a "do-over". That I wished that Apple Jack would re-incarnate in the body of another being and that he might come back to us one day in another form. She looked at me somewhat surprised and said that just the instant before he left his body she had told God that she wished he could have a new healthy body, and in that instant he left us. Bonnie had always regretted that we didn't also take Apple Jacks brother when he was a baby (we got Apple & Corney on the same day but from two different litters). I didn't think we could manage 3 and Corn Bread was so weak I didn't think he would survive with 2 strong brothers. Apple Jack's brother died a few months later, a fact we were first made aware of when his ghost arrived at our house to check up on him. He checked out his toys, his kitty condo, his home, and took a ride in his swing, gave a satisfying nod and left. Apple Jack was sad and lost for about 3 days before he bounced back from the apparitional visit. While Bonnie has mentioned over and over her regret of not taking his brother when they were kittens, I always thought it was the best decision.

I laid down to sleep that night, and Apple Jack said to me, "Don't regret what became of my body after my death. It was a painful body for me and I needed a new one." I cried tears of releif and realized that I had missed the signs. That he had actually been gradually sick for a couple of years, since he first began having kidney problems when we were in San Diego. He had grown mellow but I had thought he was growing up and mellowing with his maturity. He wasn't playful like he had been but I thought it was his personality - he was always my sophisticated gentleman cat. Social, well mannered, charming, and the quintessential ambassador. Corn Bread had never lost his baby playfulness but often hid it from Apple Jack. He had been too weak and too much in gradual discomfort, then pain to play the way he would have liked. He was skinny and we thought he was vain or just wanted to be able to shimmy into small spaces, but his body couldn't process food the way it should. In the last few weeks his habits had changed - drinking from the toilet, or only accepting bottled water. What I thought was a quirky and amusing behavioral change was a signal of a more serious health issue. And my great regret is that I didn't know enough. He hid his pain, perhaps because he and his brother had been adopted as kittens and returned after having visited a vet and recieving their shots. Perhaps the vet told the adoptive parent something they failed to convey to us. I would have taken him anyway. I couldn't have possibly loved him more but I would have never loved him less.

So in dealing with our own grief, and Corn Bread's this week, we made the decision to get him a playmate and quick, lest he die of grief. And the very practical concern that he can't be left alone for even a moment or he wails and cries like tornado siren on auto pilot. Kittens may be a dime a dozen but they go quick (a fact we learned the last time) and every call was another "sold out". I ran across the photo of a face that beckoned a familar spirit but it was at the bottom of the list and no doubt NOT a chance. I took a chance anyway, and just as I did with Apple Jack, I had the stroke of luck of a kitten promised but never retrieved. Even better, he has a matching brother.

Could it be? Could it be that God answered our prayer and let these two spirits inhabit two healthy bodies, and returned them to our family for a long healthy life. I don't know. I'm afraid to hope too much. I miss him inconsolably. I don't know them well enough yet to say and I'm afraid to guess but I have hope. Whoever they are we will find in our hearts unconditional love for them - as soon as we can convince Corn Bread to quit growling and hissing at both them and us. He's not pleased but he's too pissed off to be depressed right now. The last little piece of Jack he can cling to is the top of Bonnie's suticase which he used as his throne. Corn Bread now lies on it all day depressed, and I often join him in unconsolable tears. Today he lies on it and growls at kittens.

Oddly, Sugar Britches hopped up on the bed when Bonnie tickled her fingers on the mattress and called "Apple Jack", and all of the toys he plays with are Apple's. Perhaps part of Corn Bread's present anger.

Dear God, I need a do-over. I didn't get to love him long enough.

A Year of Roadtripping......my Bonnie Mommie, Two Kitties, and Me Surviving One Tough Economy

Last year a friend said to me, "I never really understood the title of your blog but now it's beginning to make sense." I sort of chuckled to myself; I hadn't really ever considered it. I was a pack-and-go kid, uprooted yearly to new places, to faces, new schools and new horizons. I think from that, I learned early in life that the snapshots of our lives are ever changing: what is difficult will eventually pass, just as what is easy and abundant will also pass. People get weighted in material things. Over the years of my adult life, I have learned that to hang onto material things will only weigh you down in the journey that is this life. I think of life as a relay race, we each have to give each leg of the race all we've got and pass the baton to the next runner to do his part, and have faith that another baton will come our way to continue our journey.


In 1993, my Bonnie Mommie and I set out on an 18 month journey through 38 of the United States, selling crafts (home decor items - country decorating was very popular at the time) wholesale to retail stores to pay our way. This was the second trip we had made like this - the first being a one year escapade that came fresh off the heels of our 15-minutes of fame, when some clay sculpture catapulted us into "the Collector's Art Guide", a prestigious Santa Fe art publication, in which I was the youngest artist to have ever been featured. That led to some work in museums and a brief bit of fame and publicity that caught us completely unaware. We would sell by day, and gather fabrics and materials along the way to cut and sew at night and on weekends in hotel rooms to be ready to go again.

We had a tiny, 1993 Toyota Tercel with our entire lives packed in the backseat and the trunk. Mostly we had crafts to sell, supplies to make more, a sewing machine, iron, electric tea pot, and hundreds of Zip-Loc bags with tiny cut pieces of fabric that were bits of the patterns we would sew up every night. Bonnie swears to this day that the people who sell vacuum-seal storage bags on television saw me packing our car in a hotel parking lot and made millions on the idea. Could be! Zip-Loc bags are very handy when you have to vacuum-pack your life. Behind each of our front seats, was a bag Bonnie made to fit the tiny back seat floor space, that held our changes of clothes. We put about 70,000 miles on that car in those 18 months and we paid for it along the way. There is a life story behind all of this that I wont share because it's not mine to share but there is also a life story that evolved from it and that story is mine because kooky little road trips like this have indeed shaped my life.


Last year we both found ourselves simultaneously out of work, bills mounting, facing eviction, and like people the world over dealing with this global economic downfall, we were at a total loss. We packed up our car and our two kitties, Corn Bread & Apple Jack

and stopped first at a home that had been destroyed in a fire, that we had made arrangements with the owners to paint in exchange for being able to sleep on the floor in one of the burned out rooms while we completed the job. Years ago we had worked as commercial paint/wallpaper contractors. We weren't paid for labor but we did have the relief of a place to stay while we figured it out. We had $12 left between us when we arrived, and we invested it in two bags of plastic beads and findings that we made rings out of at night when we finished painting for the day, to sell to local salons and boutiques on our lunch break so that we could buy food for the kitties and ourselves each day. Any money left over went right back into more beads and more findings to make more rings.


It took seven weeks to complete work on the house, and by the time we left we had around $600 in wholesale inventory to leave with. We started driving, first toward Texas then east, and stopped selling to stores along the way. Each day's sales paid for food, motels, gas - all of which were often wretched and led me to re-name a particular hotel chain "Crackwhore 6". When each days expenses were settled, we would take whatever money was left and re-invest in whatever beads I could find on whatever clearance rack happened to be in whatever town we were in. At night, we would unload: kitties, kitty food, litter boxes, and countless plastic grocery sacks that at the time served as our luggage. We would scramble through the mess of bags to find our tools and get busy until the early morning hours, turning each days bounty of beads into jewelry to sell the following day. By mid-summer we were still making rings, but we had also expanded our designs to include anklets. By early fall we had built on our rings and anklets and included earrings.



We trekked East - along the Gulf Coast states, and north through the Southeastern U.S., then up the Atlantic Coast and back through the South. A year has now passed and we are a full-blown business. That original investment of $12 and a lot of gumption has morphed into a full line of jewelry including: rings, anklets, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, gypsy sandals, eye glass lanyards all in everything from acrylics to semi-precious natural stones (turquoise, amethyst, citrine, carnelian, labrodite, coral, lapis, agate, aventurine, just to name a few) to Swarovski crystals and crystal cut glass.

Just that we have survived this year, in my mind, it is a success. When we did this twenty years ago, not only were we 20 years younger (Bonnie will be 70 in June), we had a new car, no pets, and started out with over $5,000 in inventory to sell. By those standards, this year was a miracle.

We left in a 20-year-old car with 140,000 miles on it, and survived the hottest summer on record - triple digit heat over 100 days in a row and temperatures reaching 114-F. At one point the A/C went out in the car and it was a week's drive to find parts. We kept the kitties cool on a bed of ice wrapped in towels, lots of water, and lots of shade. We spent months in hideous motels and often times driving on fumes. And we've had exasperating arguments with foreign owned hotels over everything from their crack whore infestations to their "pet friendly" intolerance of our pets. Seriously, if you don't have a hospitable bone in your body then get the heck out of the hospitality industry. Some personalities are better suited for bill collector's a bouncers. Every day I say this prayer over and over, "Dear God, please lead us to someone who needs us as much as we need them.".....and without fail, every day He does.


Every day we talk to people who are struggling and NEVER do we EVER say a word about our circumstances. As much progress as we have made, the more I see of this country, the less hope I see. I don't know how or where this will all end for any of us but I do know this, as long as we all keep going, keep working together, keep learning and challenging ourselves to do more, we will find a way.