I saw him standing in line for the checkouts.  At first glance he looked as though he had some kind of genetic defect, some kind of retardation.  He looked like one of modern man's ancestors with his sloping brow and thick lips, not to mention his longer-than-average arms and thick, hairy knuckles.  He was neatly dressed but his ensemble had a 'too neat' air to them, as if his mother had chosen his clothes for him and he had been given no say in the matter whatsoever.  He...

I had to go to my local craft chain store this afternoon to pick up some Merino yarn.  I had hoped to avoid going to ANY store this weekend because of the Christmas shopping crowds, but the project I'm working on has a deadline and I HAD to get the yarn today. The line at the register wasn't bad at all, and I was pleased to find a line that only had three customers in it.  The people in front of me paid for their purchase with a $20 bill, which caused the cashier some problems. ...

The hives, that is.  Grace is queen of the hives.  She's covered in them. Grace slept on our bed last night.  About 5am she got up and went and crashed in Jake's room - and about 7am Jake was knocking on our bedroom door saying that 'Gracie has these bumps all over her back'. We didn't even have to get up to know what they were.  'They're hives' he mumbled and rolled out of bed to check her out. Sure enough, she had bumps all over her back...and over her chest, on he...

*disclaimer for the dense: 'daft' is a British way of saying 'silly' in a good-natured kind of way.  Read on, and you'll see why I'm saying it* My mum is coming to visit us next spring.  We're really happy and excited to have her come and visit, it'll be the first time in a decade that we've seen her.  She knows that we're excited about it, but she's being very British and very polite about the whole thing First of all, she asked 'do you think it'd be okay if I came to visit...

My kitchen has been a hive of activity this morning. It started with candy. I made some mint chocolate hard candy - it's chilling in the fridge as we speak.  Once I've got the mince pies in the oven I'll take the candy out and break it into pieces, dust it with powdered sugar to stop it from sticking together and bag it. Next, I peeled and par-boiled some potatoes - I'm making roast potatoes for tomorrow's Thanksgiving lunch and I'm trying to do most (if not all) of the prep work...

Our Boxer dawg, Gracie, likes to be outside.  We have a tie-out for her right outside the back door, and when she's outside I leave the door open so I can see (for the most part) what she's up to. When she asked to go outside this morning, I let her out and then went to start some candy mix on the stove and make myself a cup of coffee.  I figured that she'd been going outside by herself for weeks and hadn't gotten into a trouble so it'd be okay for me to leave her unattended fo...

My local paper has been running a series of articles on DCFS and how it's failing to protect children in the area.  I've been reading with horror about children who were left with abusive parents and who were subsequently either killed or damaged for life by these monsters posing as parents - but what horrified me even more was the fact that NONE of the DCFS workers who fell down on the job were fired.  NONE.  The worst that happened to one of them was a 9 day suspension - and tha...

I've been making candy this week. I made some blackberry flavored hard candy last Friday and some cotton candy flavored yesterday.  I made suckers and hexagon shaped candy pieces, and I also used a Jello 'Jello Bean' mold - the candy pieces that came out of that are the perfect size and shape (IMO). I also got a chocolate mold when I was at the cake and confectionery store.   It's like a sucker mold, but instead of sucker sticks you put pretzel rods in it and get chocolate p...

I don't use checks much anymore.  Most of our bills are paid online; there are only two that need to be paid via paper checks.  I only use checks at three stores - the commissary so I can write the check for a few dollar over to tip the bagger, the thrift store because they don't accept Visa, and the BX - we write checks there for cash to avoid the ATM fees (our primary bank account is in South Dakota and we get charged fees at all of the ATM's on base). Consequently, one box o...

There are some people on our street who are moving house.  Again. This is the latest in a series of moves for them, and that's just at this base.  I don't know exactly how many times they moved at their last duty assignments, but I know that the moves were pretty frequent. Here, they've moved from on-base housing to off-base civilian housing, then they moved civilian houses twice before applying to come back on base again.  Now they're moving to another subdi...

I've been up all night, sitting with a patient. After a hair raising drive along some dark and icy roads  I got home and to bed after 5 am, but I didn't really sleep.  I dozed, thinking about how I have to go to the store, clean the house, do laundry and run a bunch of general errands today.  I didn't get enough sleep the night before last either, so I'm literally running on fumes today.  Dave knows that and is being gentle with me...hopefully that'll last until...

A couple of years ago, I made Christmas gifts for my family in England.  They went over so well that I've decided to do the same thing again this year. For my mum: I've knitted her a cabled scarf using a vintage pattern.  I've also made her a pair of earrings and a matching pendant using some gorgeous turquoise crackled-glass beads.  The kids have made her Christmas angels to hang on her tree. For my brother: I hand knit a beanie in his favorite soccer team's colors (Manches...

The Hospice conference I attended yesterday was held on Southern Illinois University's Edwardsville campus in the main conference hall.  Driving around campus made me feel old; there were kids wandering around who didn't look too much older than my 14 year old - and in reality, they AREN'T that much older at a mere 18 - 20 years. All of the facilities in and around the conference hall were geared towards the younger generation:  fast food places, Starbucks, TV's tuned to MTV instead...

...The most annoying person I know.  Like when we're watching a movie or a show that neither of us has seen before and he asks me questions: Him:  "why's he doing that?" Me: "Dunno" Him: "that doesn't make sense.  Why's he doing that?" Me:  "like I said, I dunno" Him: "but...." Me, interrupting: "I DO NOT KNOW.  THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I'VE SEEN THIS TOO.  Perhaps if you quit asking me questions we'd both know what was going on". ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...