A good day for my ego

It doesn't take much, admittedly, to build up my deflated ego. Too bad it doesn't stay! Today, however, has been an amusing day. Friend Gina and I met at Starbuck's to do handwork and talk about life. I have so much fun when we do that. Today she was working on a hat that looks like it could repel rain, the yarn is so dense. I didn't want to work on Friend Husband's sweater, as I've made a mistake in the middle of the cable panel and I needed to be able to think about what I was doing rather than doing something mindlessly and talking a mile a minute with F. Gina. So I brought Keziah's quilt and mindlessly quilted.

At some point in the morning, a small family group of ladies was walking past us to go outside and the oldest of the bunch (who just looked like Grandma to me) stopped to watch what we were doing. I made some off-hand comment to the effect that I was just quilting and she walked off talking with an amazed tone to her daughter (?) or granddaughter (?) about how we were just sitting there and "one's knitting and one's quilting". I thought, "Wow, if that's all it takes to amaze you, come on over to my house! I could use the adulation!"

Then I went to Kroger and spent $50 on $130 worth of groceries. May I just say again how much I love The Grocery Game? I really need to do a stock up because I've been slacking a little with our stocking but I got 8# of boneless chicken breasts, 7# of frozen vegetables, 2# of Italian sausage, 2 cans of soup, some Sudafed, pantyhose, 3 boxes of tea bags, a bottle of chocolate syrup, 2# of lunchmeat for Wednesday's lunch away from home, asparagus, red pears, and red grapes. Oh, and a metal emery file. I wouldn't have even bothered with that but it was free with my coupon so I went for it. Hard to beat free. So that kinda put a spring in my step.

At Kroger (which is not the grocery I normally shop), the bagger was engaging people in a game of guessing how old we all were. Bear in mind that I barely got out of the shower before meeting Gina this morning. I was clean, but my hair was not brushed and I had not a bit of makeup on. I scared myself when I looked into the mirror. She guessed that I was 35. Um, no. 37? No. When I told her I was 41, she was amazed. I'm thinking, "You just don't know what 40 looks like, sugar." The cashier was also 41 and the bagger was 23, although I guessed a nice round 25. So, hey, I'll take what I can get...6 years off my actual age? Wonder what I would have looked like to her with makeup?

I came home, heated up some soup and got to talking to someone on the phone who wanted me to qualify for a focus group. I've never qualified for a focus group with this group, but Sarah did and got $50 for it. So we were talking, she was asking questions about Lucy the Wonder Dog and used the exclamation, "cool beans", which I use a lot. That made me happy, just because. Oh, and I ended up not qualifying for anything, but last week in the mail I received 12 weeks' worth of dishwasher gel packs to sample for another consumer group thingy I'm in. Gotta love free dishwasher soap! All I have to do is tell them how well they work.

And so now I'm at the library. Why? Well, because the library was having its Friends sale, where we can get many many cheap (or free) books with which to line our walls and insulate the house. Friend Husband was already there, with the twins and Sarah, and asked if I could please come and watch the twins for a while so that Sarah didn't have to while he was at the sale. So I sat in the rocking chair they have in the corner of the children's section and worked on quilting Keziah's quilt. I got to educate children on how sharp a needle is and what a thimble is. It was fun. While I was doing that, I got to thinking about some famous quilter who mentioned that she hand quilted 3 hours a day and got into a groove with it. At the time I thought, "How can you quilt for 3 hours a day, don't your hands get sore?" Now I think, "Well, you clearly don't have demanding little people hanging around you all the time because ain't no way I could eke out 3 hours of hand quilting a day."

Speaking of the library, I read two books from there recently that I thought were quite interesting. One was Thunderstruck by Erik Larson. I've talked about two of his other books before (Isaac's Storm, and Devil in the White City) and this one wasn't as good as those but it was still interesting. It's wild to me how people can take non-fiction and tell the story as if it were a fictional tale. And I love reading about how they discovered little tidbits of information here and there to build the story. It makes me feel not-so-bad about all the papers and stuff I save.

The other book I just finished this morning and I think it's a newly published book. I picked it up from the other library on Wednesday because it had quilt squares on the front of it. Doesn't matter what the book, if it has quilt square illustrations, I'm there. The name of the book? Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke. There were parts of it where I literally gasped and reread a part of it because I was so surprised by what I read. It is the story of a family of slaves right before, during, and right after the Civil War, living in the Georgetown area of Washington, D. C. I picked up her first novel today while I was perusing shelves. Hope it's as good.

Well, gotta run...have a good weekend!