Memorable Days - September 11, 2026

Two people that I know have birthdays today.   They are both old enough to remember what happened 25 years ago today.  I remember it well.

I was on my way to work, listening to the local classic rock station, when one of the goofy DJs announced that a plane had hit one of the twin towers in New York.  It had just happened, and the DJ did not know what kind of plane it was.  At that moment, nobody suspected that it was anything other than a tragic accident.  When I arrived at my office, I turned on the old rabbit-eared TV we had.  It wasn't long before news of the other planes was broadcast.

My sister was living and working for the government in the DC area at the time and occasionally visited the Pentagon.  I panicked and started trying to call her.  The phone lines were jammed; there was no getting through to her.  Fortunately, she was able to telephone me to tell me that she was okay, and she asked me to get word to our parents, whose phone line was down because of some bulldozing being done in their yard.  I called my uncle, who lived just across the hill from my parents, and asked him to go tell my parents that my sister was okay.  My mother said that the first thing he said when he got out of his truck was, "She's okay."

* * * * * * * * 

We got a little rain last evening, but not enough to help our drought situation.  The weather radar app shows some clouds coming from the west.  Hopefully, they will hang together long enough to give us a little more rain.  Our hydrangeas are crispy.  

* * * * * * * * 

Tomorrow is the day of the benefit dinner.  I spent part of the day yesterday gathering up the things I will take.  I am nervous, a little excited, and a little bit dreading the day.  The temperature is predicted to be "only" 94 degrees, so it will be a little cooler than it has been, but still mighty hot.  I hope the heat doesn't make people stay home.

Book Club - September 10, 2026

My phone alarmed at 2:00 yesterday, reminding me of my friend's book club meeting at 2:30.  There was a pot of red beans cooking on the stove, and they weren't done.  I'd never been to a book club and wanted to see what it was like, so I transferred the beans to the crock pot and went to the meeting.

Side note:  my friend - a new friend I met in an art class earlier this year - was the only person I recognized.  Twenty years ago, it would've been strange to have found myself among strangers in our little town, but not anymore.  At the grocery store yesterday morning, I did not encounter one person I knew.   It is just weird.

Anyway . . . .

I enjoyed the book club meeting.  My phone is set to remind me of the meetings on the 2nd Wednesday of each month, but I am not sure I'll go again.  

The red beans and rice were done in time for supper.  Earlier in the day, I'd texted The Grandson to let him know I was making them.  Before he came home from work, he texted me to ask if he could bring a friend to dinner.  He came in about 6:00 with a young lady, the sister of his best friend, a tiny little thing with colorful striped hair and a beaded nose ring.  She seemed to enjoy her dinner, especially the coconut pie.

The Husband got home about 7:30 and went straight for the pie.  He took red beans and rice and coconut pie for lunch today.  

He'll be getting the same thing for supper tonight. ;)

Saturday is fast approaching, but I think I am ready for the craft fair.  It will be a hot day.  We have to be set up by 9:45 and packed up by 4:00.  I just hope I don't come home with everything I took.  If that happens, there may be a huge craft supplies give-away at my house next week.

Kitchen Duty - September 9, 2026

Last night as we were eating left-over meatloaf for dinner and lamenting our lack of appetite in this outrageous heat, The Grandson suggested red beans and rice.  

So I went to the grocery store early this morning and got the ingredients.  I intended to put andouille sausage in it but got side-tracked on the way to the meat department and forgot to get any.  Thus, this pot of red beans is getting polish sausage and ham, instead.

What side-tracked me was a passing glimpse of a package of coconut.  The Husband loves coconut pie.  Detour to the freezer section for a pie crust.  

I came home from the grocery store and went straight to cooking.  Sweated the vegetables, low and slow, while the beans soaked.  Made the pie.  Sent The Husband the picture when it came out of the oven.  

There were two pie shells in the package.  I made a ham & cheese quiche with the extra one.

The beans are simmering on the stove.  The quiche just came out of the oven.

A few minutes ago, The Husband called and said he had a meeting after work.  

Just for that, I may send a slice of pie to all of the neighbors.

A friend invited me to a meeting of her book club at 2:30.  The beans probably won't be done by then, so I'm not sure I'll make it to the book club.

Or maybe I'll dump them into the crock pot and motor on.

Okay, I'm up.  And dressed.  Even put some shoes on.

Now what?

I just had a walk-about in the back yard, checking the mole traps.  During the past couple of weeks, I have fished three big moles out of the "way-back" yard.  I gottta tell ya . . . it is most satisfying to discover that a trap's been sprung, and pull it up, and find a fat old mole dangling from it.  No trap was sprung this morning, and I didn't see any fresh digging in the area.  Maybe I've caught them all.  But on the way back to the house, I noticed some fresh disturbance in an old tunnel closer to the house.  I can see it from my perch on the back porch and can probably hear it if it's sprung (if the air-conditioner unit isn't running when it happens).  

Cheap entertainment.

Anything to keep me from facing the craft room.

I need to be in there working.  

For the most part, I am finished with the manufacturing processes.  I am not going to make anything else from scratch.  Nothing is priced except one or two of the hats.  There are at least 64 pairs of earrings, two dozen bracelets, and two dozen rings.  I am just going to put a price on each category and roll with it, for I will never be able to decide whether THIS pair of earrings is worth more than THAT pair.   

There are two or three more "dumpling" bags cut out and ready to sew.  Before I can sew them, I have to take the embroidery unit off the machine, but I just downloaded a free-standing lace dragonfly that I want to embroider . . . . 

I should get to it, huh?

Time to Regroup - September 6, 2026

Although our little get-away was officially over on Wednesday (we came home on Tuesday, but I claimed the whole day as "down time"), I am still not in full craft mode.  The Husband has been home all week, scheduled to get back to the grind on Tuesday.  Maybe that's when my vacation will end, too.

But the past few days haven't been a total loss.  While we were in Mountain View, I crocheted a cute bucket hat and started another.  I can't crochet for long stretches.  (The ring finger on my left hand is what The Husband's grandmother called a "trigger finger"; it doesn't want to un-bend after it's been bent a while.)  I finished a child-sized hat yesterday working about 10 rounds at a sitting.  It made 6 hats I've finished since the last week of August.  Not too bad, all things considered.

But I want to decorate the hats.  

I crocheted some small flowers.  They help, but . . . meh.

I embroidered some free-standing butterflies.  So-so.  They were too big for a child's hat, and pushing it for adult hats.  I can size them down and try again.

Yesterday, I tried making flowers out of sparkly tulle and taffeta.  I did not try hard, and they came out crappy.  I will try again and mean it.

There are a couple more school logo tote bags to embroider.

This morning, I've made 4 or 5 rings for big fingers and one or two smalls.

But I am running out of time.  The benefit is this coming Saturday.  It will be an outdoor event, and unless the weather cools off, it will be miserably hot.  I will have to supply my own tent and display tables.  There are tables and tents in the shed, but also snakes and mice and spiders.  For several days, I've been warning The Husband that I will need those things from the shed and that he would have to be the one to get them out.  Finally, today, he went into the shed, and I went as far as the door - the *outside* of the door - to help him.  We set up the table and the tent to make sure they're ok.  When I suggested we put the stuff in the truck instead of back in the shed, he balked.  I did not understand why - we'd only have to get the stuff out again in a few days - until I overheard him tell Son #2, "She's doing a craft fair later this month."  When I told him, "It's NEXT WEEKEND," he understood why I thought loading the truck today was a good idea.  But by that time, we'd already put it all back in the shed.

The table in the shed isn't quite big enough.  I just ordered an 8 ft. table that should be here in a day or two.  Those two tables, plus our card table, should do the job.  

I went ahead and registered for a November craft fair.  

Mountain View - September 2, 2026

We're back from our trip to Mountain View.  

I was not ready to come home.

We got to our cabin around 4 p.m. Friday afternoon, unpacked our stuff, and headed to the square to listen to some music.  A "headliner" group was to play on the courthouse lawn later in the evening, but we preferred to go to the little park near the courthouse, where impromptu groups had congregated under the gazebos.  

As dinnertime approached, we went into a Mexican restaurant (it was Friday, after all) only to discover that they didn't serve margaritas - it's a dry county.  A lady who was waiting on a pick--up order said that another restaurant a few miles away served liquor, so we got in the truck and drove down there.  The parking lot was packed.  We didn't even get out of the truck and drove back to town for dinner at a pizza buffet (sans beer), then back to the square for more music.

The Husband had packed his ukulele but did not break it out Friday night.  I think he wanted to scope out the scene first.  Or else he was just chicken.

It was hard going to sleep that night.  Our refrigerator kept making clicking/grunting noises.  I got up and raised the lever on the icemaker, and the noise settled down.

Saturday morning, we had breakfast at a place on the square that had been recommended to us by the cabin rental agent.  It was crowded and the restaurant seemed to be short-staffed that morning.  They were out of biscuits (Horrors!)  and got our order wrong, to boot.  We did not go back there for the rest of our stay.

We spent most of Saturday poking around the shops on the square.  One of the shops seemed to be an "overstock" store.  I found a bag of smooth gray rocks on the shelf that did not appear to be part of the overstock inventory.  I've seen these kinds of rocks painted and left for people to find.  The lady at the counter was the same lady who'd told us about the restaurant that served liquor.  She said that she and her kids liked to paint on the rocks.  Thinking that The Granddaughters might enjoy doing that, we bought the bag of rocks.  After we paid for the rocks, she very nearly crowed with glee.  The store manager had bet her that the rocks would never sell; if she could sell them, he'd give her a day off with pay. I meant to check back with her before we left to hear her tell his reaction.

There's an ice cream/coffee booth on the square that does a hoppin' business in the evenings.  The Husband and I had lusted after ice cream cones since we got to town, so when we were finished scoping out the shops, we walked over to the booth.  He ordered ice cream, I wanted lemonade.  Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, were minding the store.  They were bickering as we walked up to the window.  The girl took our order and instructed the boy to make my lemonade.  When he said he didn't know how, she said, "I ALREADY SHOWED YOU HOW.  FIGURE IT OUT!"  Having just paid $6 for the lemonade, I stuck my head in the window and said, "NO!  NO EXPERIMENTING WITH MY LEMONADE!  SHOW HIM AGAIN!"  The bickering ceased (though there was probably some low, under-the-breath muttering.)  

My lemonade was fine.  :)

We went back to the cabin for a while (it was just off the square) but went back to the square around sunset.  The Husband took his uke this time.  As we walked up to one of the gazebos, one of the musicians spied the ukulele case and, thinking there was a fiddle in the case, invited him to join.  The invitation held even after they discovered the instrument was a uke.  ;)  The Husband had a good time playing and singing with the group, something he rarely gets to do.  We stayed until everybody got tired.

Sunday morning, we broke our travel rule of "no eating at chain restaurants" and had breakfast at a fast-food joint.  After breakfast, we drove up to Mountain Home, just to look around.  We had a good lunch (with alcoholic beverages . . . ON A SUNDAY!) on the square.  Afterwards, we found a liquor store, where I bought a small bottle of Jack Daniels and a small bottle of Fireball.  We drove back to Mountain View, rested a bit, then went back up to the square.  The Husband played with the gazebo group again.

We laid around the cabin a lot on Monday.  Running low on ice, I lowered the lever on the ice maker.  There was a hum as the icemaker began to fill itself with water.  I closed the freezer door and went back to my book.  A few minutes later, The Husband observed that the icemaker was still making that humming/filling noise.  I got up to look.  THE ICE BUCKET WAS BRIMMING WITH WATER, and we could not get it to stop.  The Husband opened the cabinet doors under the sink, looking for a cut-off valve, while I bailed out the icemaker bucket.  The water kept coming.  While he grabbed his phone to call the rental agent, I flipped the icemaker lever a couple of times and, mercifully, the water flow stopped.  We did not fool with the lever for the rest of the trip.

Monday, after breakfast at the fast-food joint, we drove up to the Ozark Folk Center.  It is closed on Mondays.  :(  

Monday evening, as we were eating dinner in a restaurant down the road from the square, we recognized one of the other diners as a lady who had done some singing in the gazebo the previous night.  The Husband struck up a conversation with her and learned that she planned to go back to the square to play music that night.  She encouraged him to come along with his uke, so after we ate, we went back to the cabin, got the ukulele, and went back to the square.  Several people were sitting around the gazebo.  Nobody was playing, not an instrument in sight.  An elderly man spied The Husband's ukulele case and said, "Boy, break out that fiddle and let's have some music."  When The Husband told him the case held a ukulele, he said, "Oh.  Never mind."  Everybody laughed.  But one of the other observers said he'd brought his guitar, and this started a trend.  Before long, there appeared several guitars, a mandolin, and a harmonica.  We stayed at the gazebo until nearly 11 p.m.

Our cabin reservation ended Tuesday morning.  I tried my best to get The Husband to extend it, but he'd talked to Nanny and Son #2 and learned that (1) Nanny's cousin had died and the funeral was Wednesday, a long way from home, and she'd need him to drive her there, and (2) The Little Rotten Baby (who had been named "Student of the Month for August) was expecting us at the school on Thursday for Grandparents' Day.  We had to go home.  :(

Even though I would have happily stayed for as long as the cabin was available, we packed up Tuesday morning.  On the way home, we realized we had not even opened the liquor we worked so hard to get.  ;)

Even though I would have happily stayed for as long as we could've found lodging ANYWHERE, it was good to get home.

 Yesterday, my BFF sent me a picture of a pair of dragonfly earrings, along with the comment, "You can do that."

My response:  "Jewelry production temporarily suspended.  Moved on to the sewing machine."

At the time, I was digging through the buffet cabinet in the sewing room (which once was the dining room) where I'd stored the fabric that survived The Great Purge of 2022.  To my delight, I found two sets of embroidered placemats and a table runner/napkin set that I'd made several years ago for my booth in the antique mall.  They are fall/holiday colors.  They will go to the booth I will set up in September at the charity benefit.  

I spent most of the day working on dumpling bags. Found the right size pattern, which took a while.  Cut out one using nice fabric, sewed it up without any hitches.  Today I am going to choose the fabrics for a few more bags and have them ready to sew when we get back from our trip to Mountain View.