Is that all?
Five years ago today — on May 29, 2003 — a cute brick house became mine. Actually, it became the property of a certain mortgage company… and it has been gradually becoming mine ever since.
A day or two before closing, I went to the credit union to get a cashier’s check for the amount of the downpayment. After the teller handed me the check, she asked me a question I will never forget.
“Is that all?”
IS THAT ALL?!?! I know she was merely inquiring whether I needed to do any other financial transactions… but I wanted to yell, “What do you mean, ‘Is that all?!?’ You just wiped out most of my life savings. YES, that’s all!”
sew close
Yesterday was Memorial Day here in the U.S. of A., but I didn’t do anything remotely patriotic. I sewed.
And Murphy smiled on me.
In the morning I designed and sewed a simple shoulderbag. I’ll be spending the latter part of this week at a work-related conference, and I’m sure I’ll get some type of mass-produced tote bag to carry all of my papers in, complete with a huge, tacky logo that will prevent me from ever wanting to use it again. I decided that I wanted to be different from all 1500 other attendees, so I made my own tote bag. Sans tacky logo.
I have a box of fabric that includes several half-completed sewing projects. Sewing clothing is a hobby that I almost gave up on, because I could never seem to make my clothes fit my curves. And then I discovered a pattern for an A-line skirt that was designed with me in mind. Or at least I like to think so. I made a skirt from this pattern last summer, and it fit perfectly, so I made another one last evening… and I didn’t even try it on ’til it was almost finished.
Remember Murphy? He’s the pessimist whose law states that “if anything can go wrong, it will.” But apparently Murphy was in a good mood last night.
I tried the skirt on to check the length and decided to hem it without trimming any fabric off. So I was sewing along merrily, listening to music. After hemming the skirt (by machine), I proceded to hem the lining. I was on the home stretch. With six inches to go, my sewing machine suddenly died. OK, it didn’t exactly die. It still pretended to sew, but it didn’t actually make any stitches. I fiddled with the machine and checked everything I knew to check, but to no avail. It was getting late, so I finally just hand-stitched the last six inches and went to bed.
Six inches! Murphy was almost too late.
so many strawberries
This morning I got up early, emailed my coworkers to tell them I’d be coming in late, and headed out of town. Destination: a pick-your-own strawberry farm. I got a little carried away and ended up picking twenty-one pounds of beautiful, red berries. I alternated between squatting next to the plants and hunching over them; neither position was particularly comfortable, but it was worth it.
The potluck/meeting I was planning to go to this evening was suddenly cancelled this afternoon, so I spent the evening capping, washing, slicing, mashing, cooking, stirring, canning, and eating strawberries. I always helped Mom make strawberry jam when I was growing up, but I had never made it on my own before. I used a recipe from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving, and there are now twenty beautiful little jars of strawberry jam on my dining table.
I also made just one batch of strawberry-banana freezer jam, and the recipe says to bake the bananas IN THEIR PEELS first. It felt so stupid to lay two yellow bananas on a baking sheet and stick it in the oven, but it worked perfectly. The peel turned black and the banana became soft. In addition to the strawberry-banana jam, I also put a half dozen snack-size bags of sliced berries in the freezer.
And there are STILL ten pounds of strawberries in the fridge, patiently waiting for me to decide their fate.
Virtual Barbershop
Need a haircut? Grab your headphones, close your eyes, and listen to the sounds of this Virtual Barbershop. The audio is so incredibly realistic that I could almost believe Manuel and Luigi were walking around in my house. I’m not exaggerating — it’s amazing!
By the way, the Starkey Cetera is a hearing aid. If I ever suffer from significant hearing loss, I’m getting one!
Happy Mother’s Day!
This is what we looked like 28 years ago. I think I’ve changed more than you have, Mom. 
And this is what my Mother’s Day artwork looked like a few years later…
Contrary to what you might think, the blue letters in the bottom right corner do not spell “MY MOM.” I was trying to write “MOMMY,” but I obviously ran out of room. Oops! Nothing like a little creative problem-solving!
the light at the end of the tunnel
When I walked into my office at 8:00 this morning, I found an unusual gift on my desk.
Clever, eh? It’s from my boss. I’ve been working on a big project and there is a major deadline tomorrow, so the past couple weeks have been pretty intense. The good news? There IS a light at the end of the tunnel.
The bad news? It’s off.
the avocado mystery
I always love a bargain, especially when it seems like the price of pretty much everything is going up. And a good deal is extra good when it comes as a complete surprise.
Occasionally I stop in at a funky little grocery store on my way home from work. It’s mostly a surplus-type store, but they also sell cheap, fresh, sometimes-semi-local produce. It’s run by a Ukrainian family and has a very straightforward name: “Save and Prosper.” The store isn’t far from my house, so yesterday afternoon I went there to buy an 89-cent avocado and a big 69-cent bunch of cilantro.
While the cashier was ringing up my items, she looked at me and said something I didn’t understand.
“What was that?” I asked.
She held the avocado in one hand while she pointed towards the produce and said… something. I had no idea if she was speaking English or Ukrainian, but she was clearly waiting for a response from me, so I raised my eyebrows and blinked. Brilliant, Rachel.
What happened next is still a mystery to me. The cashier walked over to the produce, picked up another avocado, and brought it back to the cash register. She only charged me for one of the avocados, but I guess she wanted me to have two. I thanked her, she told me to have a good day, and that was that.
Other good things in my weekend:
* holding beautiful five-day-old Madison Esther.
* walking to the farmer’s market with Lisa.
* enjoying fajitas, guacamole, and limeade on Rebecca’s deck.
* falling asleep last night… in spite of the rap music that someone else in the neighborhood was enjoying.
* seeing a “Beautiful British Columbia” license plate in the church parking lot… and remembering my vacation in BC last summer.
* bowling in a smoke-free bowling alley.
