Covered Porches and Wooden Screen Doors

Favorite bird…. Without a doubt is the chickadee. We have scores of them up here and somehow they survive the chilling temperatures. I’ve heard stories of people training them to eat out of their hands. I’ve never gotten there, but I can watch them from the feeders for minutes on end. I have a wallpaper border with chickadees; I even have Christmas dishes with chickadees on them. My friend is just as crazy about them. I was wandering through the grocery store and stumbled onto note cards with the tiny bird on them. I dropped the cards in my buggy and they became a “Friendship” gift to a friend. I scanned in the page before giving the box away. Now I’ve been playing with the idea of a postcard. Here’s the ‘work in progress”.
I’m thinking about ¼ inch buttons for the eye, but it will have to wait as we have no fabric store in town and Wal-mart doesn’t specialize. I haven’t done any stitching on the prototype yet, but I’m kicking around using that invisible thread and a tiny zigzag stitch. These postcards along with the others were going to be Christmas cards… now becoming New Year’s cards.

But If I get under time constraints—they’ll be “Just because” cards. Life just happens that way…

The quilting portion of this post is done. Anyone not interested in a testimony on life can click on. As a parent I find every day the task only gets harder. I have a 17 and a 19 year old. In my opinion they are good kids. Not perfect--- you may have perfect kids--- but they are good kids. But I’m the one that seems to be continuing learning lessons on life. I got a call from Chelsey’s teacher yesterday—she cut a class. You’re probably grinning right now--- remembering the time you did the exact same thing. Hey – I did it. But she wrote a note saying she had a doctor’s appointment and signed my name. She had called me early in the morning…”Mom, I cut 5th hour. I’m sorry I’ll never do it again, but I took care of everything ok?” I busted her chops and said, we’d talk about it when I got home from work. It never occurred to me how she took care of it. Now the teacher is calling—she cut the class on test day, (a class that she has an “A” in by the way) and lied to cover herself. I didn’t cover for her. The hardest thing I’ve done in a while. She has to learn there are consequences—we find out today if she gets suspended or not--. Her Dad has put healthy penalties on her at home. She’s just so busy, she’s not thinking of consequences or the depth of the wrongs she’s done. And I want to make this all go away with a band-aid and a hug but she’s almost an adult and you can’t. In life, you have “integrity” calls—she’s got to realize that. (Am I trying to convince you or me)?

She’s a B student, she has an after school job, active in school, There’s no drugs involved--- I need to count my blessings. One day, when’s she’s thundering away in a courtroom, or Speaking Nightly news on television, or maybe lecturing in front of a classroom, we’ll laugh and remember when… But from a Mom’s point of view this has been the toughest one in a while. It’s incredibly hard letting your kid fail—it would have been much easier to cover for her…

Why am I writing this down? One day God will give her three daughters and she will look back and remember this, but from the other side of the fence…. Or maybe one day I won't be around to cover for her and she has to learn to think things through on her own...