Wonderful Sewing Weekend

Sunday, May 3, 2015 @ 1:08 pm Good afternoon! J  Here we are having a very nice afternoon.  The weather is perfect and Dakota and I am out front sitting on the patio.  He’s already watered our trees and checked out the neighbors dogs and everything is just very nice.  We’ve been home almost 2 hours from our WI Quilting weekend and things seem to have gone by very successfully.  Nicest part is that we’re all home and after talking to Rich for about an hour, he’s back to his gardening and we’ve got a few moments to be writing – at least as long as our elbows hold out.  They took a bit of a hit this weekend. The time always seems to go too fast.  We don’t know how to slow it down, but as Saturday happens, there are markers to let us know that things are moving on from one thing to another.  Like you get there – there’s the set-up time, and then people start coming in and they set-up too and all the while your talking.  Then people start doing work again while talking and about 12:30-1 pm, someone will ask what to do for lunch.  Then there is a nice lunch period where people are talking and eventually someone thinks –hey we should go back to work.  Soooo, more talking and quilting happen until there is another break for dinner around 6-7 pm.  Again people eat and talk, maybe someone has to then go home, and then another, but the hard core like us will be sewing and talking until about 1 - 1:30 am at least that’s the time we looked at the clock once we finally settle down on the bed.  This time Emily couldn’t get there, CS was first out – Linda stayed until 11-11:30 pm and then the Twins and us closed her down.  Every time someone leaves it’s a little disappointing, but overall it’s just the way of the day. There just had a little break.  Don stopped by for a few moments, but it wasn’t too bad this time.  I kept my fingers on the keyboard – like, ok you are interrupting something here.  He felt compelled to say that both Rich and I were out and only one of us was working – oh well?!  That just seems to be the nature of the beast.  At this point we have to hold on to our thighs to take steps up and down the stairs.  We did go visit Rich and to get Dakota’s bowl so he had something out here for water, but other than that we’re glad to be back at our computer.  It’s still where we feel best of any part of any given day.  Rich brought out our blue canvas lawn chair – and we feel that if the weather and bugs held out, we could spend almost time here every day of this next season.  I did have to go in for the computer cord, but as luck would have it … there is a handy dandy plug-in right on the wall in back of us.  Yay!!!  It’s as if we were meant to be. There’s just the nicest warm breeze blowing.  Wish it could be like this everyday! So, hmm, maybe a little bit more of the weekend?  I think we’re up to it.  Sleepy face is doing fine to the side and back of us.  He seems to be using the house a bit as a prop.  That works fine … feels a little spidery if you ask me, but he’s good with laying on either concrete or grass.  I don’t know how he settles a mood to decide which at any given time.  I think he really likes being outdoors and is definitely a shade person.  He’s good at taking care of himself.  As to the chains tied up and caught on pillar posts to hold up the patio roof?  It’s going to be a hard summer if Rich doesn’t get the patio blocked off proper.  I think he was thinking he could get to it before Maury’s dogs got here for the week.  And, I did tell im that Maury is running late on the day so hopefully that works out.  I’m thinking that we used to have 3 gray chains, but might have to get the one Dakota uses on the front side yard when watching Rich on the boat.  I’m afraid though there is only one, because Rich doubled the one in the back side yard – just now getting these things done will make it much easier to be entertaining the dogs outside during this next week. I’m not sure if we mentioned it already, but Maury is going on a management training program to Atlanta Georgia for the week.  YAY MAURY!!!  He was selected out of hundreds – 40 got selected in all from about a 6-state area.  The first week and the last week of the 6 month program is away and the rest of the training will be done in the Chicagoland area.  I’m very excited for him to be getting this opportunity.  It really is because of the hard work and good numbers he puts in at Comcast as a tech for this last 7 years or so. I’m glad to be taking his dogs for him, but there is no mistake it won’t be an easy week.  Ya know? But as to the weekend?  Most of the stuff we had to pack was already in the car.  Neither Rich or I unpacked from the last quilting trip, and now we’ll be going once more by June 7 ^th, so just over a month, and then we’ll have a month off.  I didn’t realize it until now, but June 7 ^th was my wedding anniversary.  I would have been married 35 years this year.  I guess though it wasn’t meant to happen.  To put that reflectively, we were together, but separated in 1990 and married officially until Feb of 1994.  We did try to salvage what at that time had been about a 10 year marriage.  So officially, we made it 10-14 years, while Rich and I have now been together for 20 years.  Much better connection though because of the boys and Rich having another family, it seems like less weight that we have been together as when we were married.  Plus, I think just SAYING and being married makes the relationship feel stronger.  One way or another – the next sewing weekend will cover our old anniversary.  Odd isn’t it?  It took a little bit of maneuvering to get everything loaded and ready to go from the perspective of being in WI.  Thankfully the Holiday Inn we meet in New Berlin has a couple of those big carts for getting luggage and such from the car to the rooms.  That part helps a lot, but it is still hard to maneuver the big cart where there are little hills and valleys in the parking lot AND when you are trying to watch a dog at the same time.  The best idea was to put him in the car until we were ready for him.  He got good walking next to the cart, but then when you get to the other end, there’s still the loading and unloading of the equipment and supplies, THEN after short breaks you always have to be concerned with getting the dog situated – either for washroom breaks or food and drinks.  It’s a bit of a chore, but we’re glad that we have the extra time – BEING at the hotel overnight to take up some of the slack from the additional 2 ½ hour drive – one way.  There was a bit of an overlay in that I got to the meeting room about an hour plus before anyone else.  It left me feeling responsible for setting up the room and then just biding some time before people got there.  I was to the point of just needing to plug in my machines when Linda finally wandered in.  She’d had a harder start to her day and hadn’t been feeling real good, so she took it slow.  Soon after the twins came in and then CS well, she usually comes in last.  Maybe because we come from such a distance, we are more challenged to keep our morning schedule tighter.  We want to be there by the time others get there too so we don’t miss a moment.   It seems by coming in earlier, we are able to cool down a bit before people get there and it gives us time to think through our set-up which is harder when your having full conversations. In general it works.  I’d love to talk of some of the conversations, but we’d not want to do so with the exception of a few loose topics.  Maybe it be better to cover our own?  I think one of the first was with what happened with the depression and the PA Group.  In telling the story, we could tell we were still hot, bothered and a bit too animated yet.  I thought the feelings had died down, but given new opportunity to talk, we felt we were just as bad off with it as the first telling.  Hopefully, we’ve run full circle now and can let it go.   We talked to Jean and Janet a little about what we were doing with the Web page project, but it was still early in the day and the conversation was disrupted after a short while. I realized at that time that we wouldn’t go into it again, because they really are the best to understand and of course Linda has been hearing it as we’ve gone along.  And, we had a conversation about the new billing work cycle Rich is trying to push through, but I think the rest of my stories were more like little additions to other peoples’ stories.  We are very conscientious about trying not to take up the longer bits of time.  I think everyone gets times to talk and it is VERY important to make sure everyone gets those times.  There seemed to be a fair amount of time where people would break off to have small conversations too.  I think this set of conversations is more like shop talk and we’re in the background of them, because we are the only real one that doesn’t understand all the current flow of quilting conversations, like the shakers and the makers, and the new and trendy.  Like I wouldn’t be able to name more than one fabric designer, where the others now both business and personal and also are read up on things like quilting authors.  I’ve got NONE of that!  We’re good without it though – just recognize it as shoptalk as well as trading things like information on applique or embroidery.  There was a lot on embroidery with three of them into it – and Linda also knowing stuff about it.  I’ve got probably the least amount of interest though the pieces when completed are really very nice.  I know that my sewing machine is supposed to do it, but again we haven’t the interest. In general though with the conversations, people talk about what’s most important whether it be family, work, leisure, quilting, or a variety of other things that include a lot of laughter and teasing.  Ahh lets see if this won’t work a little better.  Instead of typing from my lap, we put the computer out on the little bistro table on the patio to see if it would hurt our elbows left.  It’s working so far  though we don’t get to put our feet up which is a negative.  We also untangled the dog a bit so that he’d have a little more space.  He’d gotten up from his position next to the wall.  That’s something that gets a lot of talking too – What’s going on with Dakota while we’re all together.  He’s like another member of the group, and the girls are seeing stuff he does like I do – as he moves around the room showing interest in this or that.  One of the most fun parts was that Jean had brought back a funny plastic yellow squeaky duck – he bath tub variety and Dakota really appreciated the gift.  He had instances where he went to fetch it, but fewer times he brought it back to anyone.  He really did love his duck and frequently put it between his paws and then laid down with it with his chin over it’s top.  He looked like he’d found a best friend.  He played a little with various people and periodically, he’d go visiting to see if he couldn’t get a pet or share some food.  We had to make sure he understood he couldn’t beg from people and would have to go lie down.  A good part of the day, he tucked himself under our table near our feet and it is always comforting to know he’s there. 
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