Now I Can Finish the Rainbow 🌈!!!

Below are some updated pics of the rainbow denim chenille quilt. I attached red, orange and yellow. The blue row was a fail so I’m doing a new one. I also needed more green and purple denim squares and about a yard of solid purple 100% cotton. I got the yard of purple cotton at my Walmart run that I did after Kevin and I got back from Corpus Christi Friday, along with groceries. Then I took Evita this afternoon to the thrift store  that has 25 cent Wednesdays. Today was $1.75 day. I got purple and green denim pants to make into squares. Below is my cat Alex making them into a bed before I cut them up. Evita picked five things for herself, and I also got this absolutely enormous Forrest green strapless formal in size 3X. It’s made from satin and chiffon, and that’s one of my favorite colors. They say that thrift stores are the new fabric stores, and that is really one hell of a lot of hunter green satin and chiffon for $1.75. I cut it up and folded it all up. I put the zipper and boob enhancers in my sewing kit. 

 

Lucky in Love

 Selfie of me and Kevin from about 6 months ago ⬆️ 

This past Saturday, when I was driving home from dropping Evita off, I had really bad driving anxiety. I just pushed it out of my head thinking, as long as I just get home- I won’t have to drive for a week. Kevin and the boss were doing all the driving to Corpus Christi and the little towns in between. But then early Sunday morning, Kevin had a flat tire, so I had to drive. I hadn’t told him about the driving anxiety the night before. I just dealt with it. Then I noticed there was a big smudge on the windshield in my field of vision. How did that happen?  I have no idea. It was on the inside too. If it was there on Saturday, then I must not have seen it due to the fact that I was only driving in daylight. Perhaps it was just more noticeable in the dark. Or maybe it was new, I have no idea. There were also no 24/7 stores nearby that we could go get windex. I only had to drive to the boss’s house, because he was going to drive everyone to the little town we were doing inventory at. Then, there was a road closure in both directions about three miles from the boss’s house. The navigation couldn’t figure out a new way to go. It just kept repeating “make a u-turn, make a u-turn.” Finally I just had a massive panic attack. I had to pull into a c-store so we could switch drivers. Kevin insisted he knew another way to get to his house. But that just gave me more anxiety, because I never did add Kevin into my car insurance. It’s just me and Evita as listed drivers. So I was like, please be careful.  

Inventory in the little town took four hours. We bought windex and a cheap roll of paper towels at the store we worked at. Went back to the boss’s house, cleaned my windshield. I drove the 30 something miles from his house back to ours in Waller. Now with daylight and a clean windshield, (and no road closures), it was easier but my driving anxiety came back. I finally just burst into tears and told Kevin about the anxiety I had Saturday evening and how I was glad I wouldn’t have to drive for a week. I was in tears the whole time I talked about it with him, when this whole day long I had managed to not cry. 

With my mother (and my late father), crying is this ultimate failure that makes them beyond mad. If I ever went to them crying about anything and happened to be dating anyone at the time, one of the threats they’d spew was, “Don’t ever cry like this in front of your boyfriend, he’ll break up with you!”  So part of me just assumed total failure of the relationship. I assumed Kevin was mad at me for this. We got home and I subconsciously started sizing up my belongings in case I had to pack up and leave. But the most unexpected thing happened. Kevin laid with me on the bed and told me he was extremely proud of me. I didn’t know what on earth he meant. Proud of what?  He then explained that I had this bad driving anxiety, but I still drove anyway. I made it there and back, safely. I fought through the fear. I was like- oh. Oh?  Is that a perspective on this situation?  It is?  Kevin said I was a fighter. He has called me that before. 

The total opposite of what the older people in my life said would happen (I say it like that because it definitely wasn’t just my parents that instilled all this extreme fear in me).  This experience really solidified my love for this man. He can see me at my worst and still have this perspective that is positive. No one has done that for me before. 

Homemade Senior Pictures

This morning, I picked Evita up and we went to the park so I could take my own “senior pictures” with my iPhone. The scenery at the park is so pretty that I didn’t feel the need for a professional photographer. I thought of asking someone to photoshop out the fact that she’s wearing two different socks, but I’m not going to. She’s literally been doing that her entire life. On another note, Kevin and I got back from Corpus Christi last night and are headed right back there this upcoming Tuesday through Friday. Corpus looks a lot like Galveston. Same state, same coast, so why not?  The only thing notable was this bridge. Kevin called it the evil knevil bridge and said “You gotta jump!”  

 

Creativity for the End of August

Look at how full my cone of miscellaneous beads is getting!  Now, I have mentioned that I go to garage sales. And if they have a lot of beaded costume jewelry, I lowball them for all of what they have, and cut it all up to make different jewelry with. I got this idea from a facebook group-

Someone asked what to do with their miscellaneous jewels. 

The last garage sale I went to didn’t have jewelry, but she did have gallon ziplocks full of craft supplies for $2 each. In one of them was about a dozen tubes of “seed beads”. I honestly despise seed beads, but I’m keeping tree colors just in case I ever want to make Tree of Life pendants. But the pink and red spaces here are actually those seed beads. I applied hot glue, poured the beads on to it, and let it dry. Over a towel of course. I was very careful not to spill them. I have to be careful for my cats!  Although my cats would probably have just as hard of a time seeing these things as I would!! 

Secondly, my denim chenille quilt made from old rainbow colored jeans is underway- I finished the red, orange, and yellow rows. I also did a blue row, but including squares from that blue shirt from the last 25 cent day I went to, kind of ruined the whole aesthetic. So I’m doing another blue row soon. At least that shirt was only 25 cents and gave me great buttons. 

I’m also taking to heart all the patchwork advice I’ve gotten in my beginners sewing Facebook group. My corners look way more even than the ones in my first two quilts I gave

to Evita for her birthday. 

Last but not least, I made oatmeal cookies from a recipe from my dad’s old cookbook. I froze about 2/3 of the batter for later. 

 No more creativity for about a week and a half. We are going to be busy until the end of the month. I might come home from work tomorrow or whenever and bake some more of the oatmeal cookie dough. Instead of raisins. I put almond slices. And instead of molasses I put vanilla extract. 

Movie and Quilt

 Kevin and I have a three day weekend.  We are off tomorrow, and then have to go to Corpus Christi twice over the next two weeks. We are local Tuesday and Wednesday, then in Corpus Thursday and Friday. Then back for a one day weekend. Then little country towns Sunday and Monday, and back in Corpus for the next three or four days to end August. 

Today we watched the movie “Changeling” with Angelina Jolie. I’ve seen that movie before but Kevin hadn’t. It’s about the disappearance of a 9 year old boy in 1928 named Walter Collins. The LAPD returned the wrong kid to Walter’s mother, and when she insisted it wasn’t her son, they committed her to a psych ward. Later, they determined that Walter had been a victim of the infamous “Chicken coop murders”. The killer Gordon Northcott confessed to killing Walter, but the confession was all over the place. Sometimes, killers falsely confess to murders they didn’t do. They actually want to be the ones to have done it. I know, it’s weird. Their psychology is backwards at best. Angelina deserved an award for this scene alone. They never found Walter buried in the graves Northcott dug for his other victims. 

This brings me to my famous insistence that a lot of missing people might be alive out there. Could Walter still be alive?  Nah. He’d be 105.  Was he definitely a chicken coop murder victim?  No. His biological father was a criminal and in prison for theft at the time of his disappearance. It’s possible that someone associated with his father took him, and it’s possible that someone random took him and he lived several more years. Unless you find physical evidence like the body or a lot of blood it’s always possible. If someone goes missing, lives several more years after their disappearance, and then dies of anything, I still consider that as someone who could have been found alive obviously. Even Walter’s mother still believed him to be alive somewhere until her own death in the 1960’s. She never gave up. Poor lady. 

On a happier note, you know how I found all these colors of jeans at the thrift store and envisioned a rainbow denim chenille quilt?  The red and orange rows are done!  Not only that, but my corners are pretty even!  Here it is with the other colored denim squares on top. I do have purple, but not sure where. I’ll find it. 

I can’t believe I’m actually pulling it off. 

Weekend of Tidbits

Mitchell decided he needed to guard my sewing kit.  (The hat box is my sewing kit.) 

I got a crockpot recipe for three ingredient apple pie/crumbly cake. Two cans of apple pie filling at the bottom of the crockpot, topped with spice cake mix and pats of butter. That’s what it looked like in the beginning. The end result looked like awful, gloop/shit but it tasted AMAZING. Yup we had it a la mode!

On another note, I’ve been reading my dad’s old Fanny Farmer Cookbook. Years ago I said with the advent of the internet, I no longer needed cookbooks. But now when you google a recipe, you get enormous articles preceding them. It will go over the history of the recipes, the biology of pecans (or whatever), or that maybe some historical figure liked to eat it,

I mean they just write about EVERYTHING when all I want is a recipe. I’m putting blank notecards in the pages of stuff I like. Maybe I’ll hand write them all for an index card box like my grandmothers and some of my aunts did. 

Feast Day

 My mom is Greek Orthodox, and has gotten pretty religious in the last couple of years. She went to church on Thursday. And tonight is at a big dinner party at church, for a holiday which is basically the feast day of the Virgin Mary. (Or, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary). 

My own religious beliefs are complicated. Despite being Greek Orthodox, my parents decided to send me to middle school at a private school associated with a Baptist church.  Then in high school, we moved to Arizona and I went to public school again. The rest is history! But whenever the Virgin Mary comes up, I think of a girl I knew in high school in Arizona. She was very devoutly Catholic. Extremely religious.  She mentioned several times that she was going to be the next mother of God. She claimed that God told her she was going to be the second woman in history to become pregnant as a virgin. All she had to do was just practice becoming more and more holy and then one day, poof!  

I remember a medium size group of us scoffing at her. Kids of other Christian denominations tried to get theological with her about why God isn’t doing that again. To my knowledge, she never became pregnant. But here’s the thing- 

Looking back on that after 30 years?  It’s so obvious what she was doing. She was obviously being sexually abused and the “God told me I’m so holy I’m going to be the next pregnant virgin” was a cover for “just in case” she did actually become pregnant from the abuse. I want to punch myself now that I’m older and wiser, because it’s just so obvious now. All the religious debates we tried to have with her when what we should have done was alert the school counselor. 

I don’t know what ever happened to her, and I can’t find her on social media because she had a very common name. 

Stuff I did today

I took all of the finished beaded jewelry I made out of my bead stash and organized it into this hanging accessory organizer that I got at an old garage sale for a dollar. 

I sewed the wrong sides together of sunflower fabric and green leafy fabric, turned it around and ironed it, and tacked it onto the wall over the window above my desk. There was just a sheet up there before. I have a seething hatred for curtain rods. I approve of the space at the bottom being uncovered, so I can put stuff up there, see what it is, and therefore not forget that it’s up there. (Classic ADHD symptom)

Cleaned the microwave!  It was gross!  

Decided to change the sheets on the bed when Mitchell made himself comfortable on my 25 cent smiley face pillow case pillow. 

Scrubbed a soy sauce leak off of the bottom shelf of the fridge. Then condensed two bottles of olive oil and put the remaining soy sauce in an olive oil container. 

 

Person Missing

 

This woman Brianna Sutherland is currently missing from an indigenous community in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The organization that shared this poster stated that she is 5 foot 7 inches tall and weighs 475 pounds. 

Someone commented, “She’s hard to miss!” To which someone else responded, “Totally uncalled for!”  

Yeah it is uncalled for, and mean. But then quite a few people commented that she is camping out in a specific location. It’s more than enough people commenting this to be believable. 

But here’s the thing, and I’m not saying this to be mean or make fun of her in any way- I’m just pointing out a fact. You wouldn’t notice her as the woman on the missing person posters if she *didn’t* weigh almost 500 pounds. If you were driving by and saw someone camping under a bridge or whatever, you’d probably just think or say “homeless person” and move on. The fact that so many people are making the connection is *because* she’s hard to miss. I’m just saying!

In any city, any state or province, in any country and in any point in time, a person who is a missing person might be living under a bridg, and we would never know it, even if we approached them to help them out. Most of them probably look so different from their age progression photos, and the chances are that most people driving by that bridge haven’t seen all missing person posters anyway. I’m a firm believer that there are so many of them just hiding in plain sight- which is easier to do if you’re of average size. 

Luckily, it looks like Brianna is about to be found, and hopefully she gets the help she needs. 🤞🏽 

Bad Kids

 Kevin is not the biggest fan of kids who misbehave a lot. He coined the term “shithead kids” for them. When we were first getting serious, I asked how he felt about having a teenage stepdaughter. He said that Evita is a great kid- “not some shithead kid”. And now we use the term jokingly if we see one in public or otherwise. 

I recently listened to Trace Evidence talked about The murder of Shirley McAvoy   She was a mother of two who was murdered in 1990. Her kids were in 7th grade and 3rd grade when she died. She had been missing for a couple of months. One of her kids actually found out about her murder from a shithead kid on the playground. He told her, “Hey I heard they found your mom.”  She said she perked up and got excited for a minute, until the kid started describing the scene in great grotesque detail.  I told Kevin about this and said, “That was a shithead kid.”  He said, “Yup!  That’s the working definition!”  

How terrible and what a horrible kid. I wonder if he ever found her on social media years later and apologized. I can tell you that most people in my classes growing up all apologized to each other for any bullying we may have done. 

Go, Class of 2025!

 Today was Evita’s first day of her senior year of high school. 

I’m so glad my baby is growing up!! 

Tidbits for a Thursday off

I forgot to mention these purple lingerie pants that I got yesterday at 25 cent day. I took the lavender lace off of the side of the pants and put that plus some elastic pieces from the waist band in my sewing kit. I also kept the purple silky fabric. 

I’m also making queso in the basketball.  To make crockpot queso, chop a block of velveeta into cubes and stick it in with a can of tomatoes + chiles.  You can also add a can of actual chili, but I didn’t since Kevin is a vegetarian.  I later added onions and poblanos.  Then Kevin called from his errands out to tell me he wants to take me out to a nice restaurant tonight. So the inner part of the crockpot I’m just going to wrap and put in the fridge. 

Kevin and I have a few days off, so I’m working on a lot of things here at home, including my writing.  Last year, I participated in NaNoWriMo but quit on the fifth day. This year, I’m getting ahead of it by setting aside time about every 3-4 days to write 1,667 words of my book. My book is emotionally heavy, so a daily commitment is too hard for me. I did write the 1,667 words two days in August so far, and it’s only the 8th. I also did a nice post on my other blog- which I will share soon, but not yet. I did finally have the guts to share it with my friend Julieta Duvall, and here’s the advice she had for me:

Ok so I might. But I’m not ready to really do anything with it yet except add more posts. If the Wordpress “daily prompt” is something I can answer while still talking about my past work with kids, then I’ll do that a few more times. 

 

25 Cent Day at Family Thrift Outlet - Amazing Finds

Hooray!  I finally was able to make it to 25 cent day at the thrift outlet store. I got several pairs of jeans to cut up for denim chenille squares- most in the regular denim color but also in black, red, and purple. I got two suit jackets, and what I plan on doing with them is just to take them apart to see how they’re made. I use to know how to construct something similar many years ago!  I just don’t remember, and taking a couple of them apart will jog my memory. I also got some things to wear around the house, and a yellow smiley face pillow case.

These are some things I got that I want to alter, or transform. 

This is a basic knit skirt that is a little too big around the waist and reaches my ankles. I want to take it in, and shorten it so it’s calf length. 

I just want to take off those sleeves and make it sleeveless. 

I only bought this because it was formal looking. It might just be a tulle stash. 

I was going to do something with this then my daughter said she wants it. 

I’m just going to cut the top off and make this into a skirt. 

I can do a lot of things with sheer fabric that has daisies on it. 

I can make this into a halter top and use the bottom for headbands or something

We are actually going to hang this on the wall as a tapestry. I love this. 

I could wear this or I could alter it into a more fitted shirt. 

Cute scarf, many possibilities. 

Round tablecloth just going to be used for fabric. 

I cut the buttons off of this and saved the rest for the blue row of the rainbow denim chenille quilt. 

 

This is thin denim so I saved the elastic and shoelace in my sewing kit and saved the rest for squares. 

Not pictured, I also got a large scarf that’s plain black sheer. I can do a lot with it.