Suziecreamcheese Sings the Blues

I got a surprise, sort of, today – I read back over the last 6 or 8 posts I’ve written and holy cow, what a Debbie Downer I’ve become!
So today ……….something happy.
Max and I took our usual mile walk yesterday, and happily, his best friend was home. He got to play with Keno, a 2 year old Husky, for over an hour. They do the bitey face game, and the wrestling game, and the chase each other game. He was one tired – and very happy – boy.

(Okay, why did this person sit down next to me and start talking?)

So today’s plan is to go home, have lunch, get a nap, take a walk, and come back to school. I get to teach adjusting entries. It’s very amusing to watch the confusion, and very rewarding to watch the lights go on over their heads. 🙂

AND……..the Orioles clinched! I think that’s the term, anyway, my husband is very happy about it!

I didn’t know the planes had hit the World Trade Center till after I went on the computer that morning. We never turned the tv on till after lunch, so we didn’t see the news that morning. I went online to talk to my friend, the man I had fallen in love with, although neither of us realized it at the time. He told me, and the images were there on the screen – the plane hitting the tower, and then the second plane hitting, and the news of the Pentagon being hit, and the plane in the field in Pennsylvania.

I cried. I couldn’t believe this was happening to my home, that there were people in the world who hated us so much that they would do such a horrible thing – and celebrate it as a victory of some sort. How could they hate us, when they didn’t even know us? How could people think so badly of a country that always had seemed so full of joy, so big, so confident, so filled with light? I couldn’t make sense of it.

I didn’t realize how badly shaken I was till I was driving to school a few weeks later, and a plane flew overhead -circling to land at the airport. I had to pull over. I was shaking and screaming “GO AWAY!”

And I cried – again.

I’ve given them enough tears. I didn’t lose my family – that day. I didn’t lose any friends. I’m very grateful for that.

I’ve been aggravated all week by things I can’t control.   So here’s the thing.  I can accept that I can’t change them………..or I can keep on being annoyed.   I’m trying really hard to accept………..and ignore………what I can’t change.

I can’t stop stores from putting out Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving – but I can refuse to decorate my home, or do any shopping, or talk about Christmas, or make plans …………until I’m ready.  I can unsubscribe from facebook friends who start talking about it before I want to hear about it.

I can’t control the weather.  I can stop watching the news more than once a day, I can ignore dire predictions of a winter to end all winters (Oh, my GOD, we’re all GONNA DIE!).  

I can’t control the stupidity on other forums I read.  But I don’t have to respond.   

Maybe if I can remember that it’s not up to me, I won’t get so pissed off when people don’t do what I think they should.   

days before we got Max. And how lonely I was.

There weren’t any toys on the family room floor. There were no sheets or blankets on the furniture. When it got dark, the house was closed up and I didn’t go back out. I didn’t get frustrated not knowing what this creature wanted or what he was thinking.

And I didn’t get puppy kisses, or happy dances when I got home. I didn’t have friends and I didn’t go very far.

I guess I’ll keep him . Cuz I can’t imagine going back to living without him.

Back a few years ago, there was a thing that people did on blogs – where are you from? I started it and never finished it, but the part I did stated that I am from quilts, from fabric cut into small pieces and made anew into something better, stronger, more beautiful. I grew up with quilts, watching my mother cut fabric and sew tiny pieces together to make blocks, thread needles and sew tiny stitches to hold the quilt top to the back, lying on the living room floor to pin the back, the batting and the top together.

I made my share of quilts through the years. I started with a piece of fabric that had a Raggedy Ann print, on top of a plain back, quilted in straight lines from one corner to the other. I made a pattern called Grandmother’s Flower Garden for my best friend, another one for a friend’s baby – that one was tiny hexagons sewn by hand.

The last quilt I finished took over 8 years. Quilting was a love I shared with my mother – she used to say that while she was finishing one, she was planning the next. She taught me everything I know about putting a quilt together – about planning, choosing fabric, sewing seams just so.

When she died, I didn’t pick up a needle for 5 years. I had started a quilt, a Double Irish Chain, for my best friend. She got married the weekend before 9/11 – and my mother died a year later. The quilt was pinned, and the quilting was begun. I had to move, from the home I’d called mine for years, but that’s another story. The quilt was rolled and packed, and pulled out a few times, but very little progress was made. It hurt my heart to work on it, and I found excuses to let it lay.

After we moved into the house, and the excuses didn’t really fly any more, I brought it out and finished it. It felt good, it was the closing of a chapter in my life. Or so I thought.

My best friend’s daughter is getting married. I adore that girl, she’s a rotten brat but I love her like she was my own. On impulse, I offered to make her a quilt as a wedding present, and she was thrilled. She chose, of all things, Double Irish Chain.

We chose fabric, I bought some fun things like marking pencils and a template for the squares, floss to sew the corners down, everything I could think I’d need.

Pressing the fabric was the first step. Something about folding the fabric over the ironing board opened a door in my heart, a door that’s been closed for 10 years. Memories have been washing over me for the past week – memories of the snick my mother’s scissors made as she cut fabric on the dining room table, memories of my niece sewing blocks on Mother’s machine, of the three of us pinning her quilt together, tying it off, sewing the borders. A niece who no longer speaks to me, she was such a big part of my life.

I thought the pain would be less as the years went by. And then I cut a piece of fabric – and opened up a wound that will apparently never heal.

Trying to get back to what passes for normal around here. I miss Anna. I have a doll she made, and I’ll have another next week. It helps a little, to have something that she made, that she loved. But it doesn’t make the hurt go away.

I’ll get there. Somehow