A crafty Saturday

From time to time, we have a Saturday in, to craft. Well, CaDiva and HRH craft, I put on The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for The Mom and pulled out an afghan I have been working on for several years. That is the way of it, you see. I have actually counted out and it takes, on average, about 50 hours for me to finish an afghan. I just tend to spread it out over three to five years. 

On the other hand, HRH and CaDiva do all sorts of crafty projects. I have seen them make candy, Christmas Ornaments, and now candles. Note to the house photographer, when your subjects are forming bees' wax tapers, time your photos carefully. You see they carefully wrap wax around a wick to begin the candle. Then they they roll the wax around and around, shaping and forming it with their warmed hands. Just think about it... now you get it. 

I crocheted and watched the video with
The Mom. We ended the day with Chinese delivered. It was a lovely Saturday except for one thing.

I was sitting beside CaDiva and HRH as I counted out five chains to form a circle into which I did single crochets and chain seven loops eight times. The third round is double crochets into each double crochet for seven times until I get to a chain two space where I do two double crochets a treble crochet and two more double crochets before I start the seven again.


While I'm quietly doing this I have a running normal dialogue with the candle-makers and The Mom. Until the CRAFTY ONES decide to start counting and discussing the numbers of sheets and candles while I'm trying to complete a pattern.

In my head, I'm counting one, two, three "I think there are 18 in the box" nineteen, twenty...Wait, wait, that's wrong. Ok, start again, one, two,  three "Well if we had 20 sheets and they were two each" three, four - wait, no that's not right. One, two, three,  four "See there was a girl about 10 and seven other kids" six, seven, eight... WHAT...

I think I might have caught on a bit as to why it takes me five years to finish an afghan. Six, seven, eight , DANG IT!

MOhrh's Birthday tonight

We spent the evening at The Mom's house with HRH and the PC, mohrh and hrh. It was mohrh's 25th birthday.

Life is just too full to plan a grand, girl trip to celebrate this major plateau, such a shame.

Tomorrow HRH and CaDiva are going to craft. The Mom and I are going to watch the Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel while I work on an afghan.

It has been in the works for a few years. CaDiva originally asked for it, but she thinks it will be too heavy since it is double yarn. HRH has claimed it for herself. But then she claims all the afghans. She still blames me for giving the first one away to some who is not only not her, but lived in another state.

I have been going through the pictures from our first trip to DC. Well CaDiva and my first trip. I actually have been there several times. I'll try writing about that next time, I think.

Elevators, Bridges and Fields of Dreams

 So I decided to take CaDiva to see eastern Iowa back in 2007. Why? Well, we drove in from the west when she moved to Iowa from California. But also, I just think it is one of the prettiest parts of the country anyone can see. Oh, and there is the Field of Dreams. It is one of her all time favorite movies. And it was right there, on the way back from back from the Mississippi. So we had to stop there.

On the way, we had great, small town breakfast and saw some neat architecture. Don't you just love country churches?

 We drove up from Davenport to Dubuque. There is nothing flat about Iowa here. At one point, we looked out from the bluffs and saw three states.

The river and sky are only the second and third most beautiful sites in this shot.

 Then someone said, oh you have to go to the Fourth Ave Elevator. Elevator, like in a building or for farm produce we ask. Oh no, not that kind of elevator. This is the the shortest, steepest scenic railway in the world. Well, that sounds like fun. We got our tickets and walked into a small room with steps to nowhere. Except, they weren't steps, they were the seats.

CaDiva didn't really look out the windows but there wasn't much to hold onto and as short as this was it was really a long ride when you are trying not to look out the windows that surround you while holding yourself to a wooden seat with your butt cheeks.

We needed to get up here from down there.

As I understand the story, there was a business man who wanted to go home for lunch and still have time for a nice lay-down before he had to return to work. So he hired this guy to stand at the top of the bluff and pull him up rather than walk all the way around the bluff to get from downtown to his home.  Pretty soon, other businessmen were offering to pay to get the ride too. One thing led to another and you pretty soon have actual train tracks running up and down this steep hill taking people to and from downtown. Pretty cool, huh?

This, I cannot explain.

We were amazed that the entire outside set for Field of Dreams was still there. The farm house, the field, and at that time of year, the stand of corn higher than an elephant's eye.

Truth be told, she didn't stop grinning the entire time we were there.

But then, it had that effect on most everyone there.

Long day and an early night

So look at these cat pictures and I'll go to bed.

You got me, this one is a dog. Roxy.

Yep, dog again. Cat, Dog, and The Mom...on one bed

Another early night with the dizzies

I so need to get my nails done. The Mom and I got our hair cut yesterday. Tomorrow the handyman is coming. So no nails until Wednesday at the earliest.

Welcome CaDiva to the world of blogging. She has so many stories to tell.

I talked her into it after I listened to The Mom and The Sister sing songs their dad and mom used to sing to them. We are going to lose all of those stories because we never think to turn the video on at these times.

I could tell you about the songs my mother sang to me as a child. But they all had something to do with what happened to children who's mother died and father was no good.  SPOILER ALERT They died alone in the snow.

Any way we have added two new labels, Concerts I have been to and Celebrity Encounters.

Off the top of my head I can say Tom Jones, Lou Rawls, Roger Whittaker, Bruce Springsteen (twice), Helen Reddy, Reba and Cher.

Encounters are mostly political - Ann Richards, Hillary and Chelsey Clinton and Rosalyn Carter.

There may be more but I'm tired and wobbly. So more later, OK?

You know that T-shirt that says, "I may be old, but I've seen all the really good bands"? Well, I think I qualify to own one ...

Periodically I will mention to MiDiva that I have seen this group or that artist in concert and her response is that I should start writing down all the artists I have seen perform live.

So this is the beginning of that compilation -- and I will be adding those recollections when something jogs my memory.

The most recent, of course, was Reba McEntire.  We saw her at this year's State Fair.  The first time I saw her was when I was working at a country radio station in Northern California.  The station had a partnership with a performing arts center and would frequently act as Master of Ceremonies when a country act was scheduled to perform.

This was early in Reba's career, and my strongest memory is of her sitting at a table in the lobby signing autographs.  I remember her as a genuine, nice person and it was such a pleasure to meet her. She put on an amazing show and still does to this day.

Little Horses and other livestock

The Sister lives on an acreage in Carlisle. This tree, as viewed from her deck, is a perfect climbing tree. I remember when I was a girl in Texas we were only allowed out during the heat of the day if we agreed to sit still. There were these trees, Mimosas I think, with low broad branches. You could climb two or three layers up and still be able to lean back and lose yourself in a book between 11:00 am and 2:00 pm on most any long summer day.

 The main reason for the visit was a little further out in the pasture. Little hrh patiently adhered to the guidance foisted on her by HRH. She visted with her Aunt, she didn't insist on running out to the horses. She remembered to be a good guest. She played nice with the dogs. But, come on grandma...get real. There are tiny horses, out there...in the biggest freaking backyard she has ever seen in her whole entire life.

Her Momness and I only made it as far as the first gate.We decided we could see just fine from there. CaDiva made it into the second gated area. But, HRH, The Sister (who is only as much younger than my mother as she is older than me) and hrh walked well into the pasture. She had no fear. No concern at all, and even the most elder and skittish of the horses, walked up to visit with her. There were three horses and one mule in The Sister's pasture. Not to mention a much larger horse in the next yard over.



This was a good day, despite how the weekend started. Little hrh had a lot of confusion as the weekend started the night before. She went out Friday evening with her grandmother and grandmother's friend who had the same first name as The Sister. And she really couldn't grasp the concept of there being two people with the same name and she wasn't quite clear on which one had the horses. After a lovely soft, but late Friday night, Saturday morning rolled around really way earlier than she planned. She tried to explain to HRH how sleepy she was and how she really thought she would stay in bed. Then, about a half a beat later, her eyes popped open and she sat up in bed and said, "I just remembered something." Today was the day she was going to see the horsies. I asked her if she had ever seen a horse before. She said no, but she had seen a movie.

The Sister only made one condition to meeting the horses, hrh was supposed to learn their names. The oldest is Momma. Then there are Annie. I don't remember the brown and white horse's name. But the mini mule was Maxie I think. There was a lot of discussion as to how you got mules, and what happened if one mule got the warms for another mule. So the names sort of got lost in all the other mish mosh. I did better remembering the dogs names, Eli (a standard poodle who is my best bud, although he loves CaDiva best), Bailey, and Stella.

Anyway, back to the pasture. The bag of carrots was depleted quickly. Little hrh may be willing to try eating them now, although to this point she has insisted they were bunny food and not little girl food.

While we were waiting on the deck to for The Sister, HRH, and hrh to finish visiting the little red barn, we were visited by a triplet of humming birds. I only managed to snag a picture of one of them 

We did see this Mom and set of twins walking across the pasture. But, I wasn't fast enough with the camera. They gave me a second chance as we were headed towards Pennick's sweet corn stand for one of the last batches of peaches and cream of the season. I may need to do an entire blog about Iowa Sweet Corn. Unfortunately, I have work to do now. So I'll sign off for now.

Sunday at the Fair - the Reba McEntire Concert

We haven't been to the fair at night since CaDiva came to live in Iowa. But we had tickets to the Reba concert. And so we braved the night time crowd to enjoy a great story-teller with 10,000 fellow fans.

We decided to have dinner at the fairgrounds. CaDiva was still a little timid when it came to eating the rich, fried foods at the fair. I didn't want to glutton my way through the vendors if I couldn't share it with her. I ended up with a lovely brisket sandwich from the Steer-n-Stein. We both had limeades to cool off. Eventually, CaDiva went for a turkey leg. They are so good.

Finally, we decided to get seated at the grandstand. Our tickets were dead center stage, although we were up on the second tier. Even so, we could see the stage quite well. At least we were able to see it until these eight women came to the two rows ahead of us. Fortunately for CaDiva and I, we were to the right of these 26-year-old-wanna-bes who, except for their repeated trips to the beer vendor, stood from the moment Reba hit the stage.

Even after asking them to please be seated, they continued to perform as if they were singing into a hairbrush in front of their bathroom mirror throughout the concert. One of them explained EVERYONE stands at these things. We looked around at the 9,992 other seated concert-goers. And answered, No they don't.

 I'm not grousing for myself here. I'm complaining for the four women seated in my row, directly behind these ill-mannered, over-aged brats. One-by-one these women gave up their opportunity to enjoy the concert in the seats they paid for. One-by-one, each of the women apologized for stepping in front of us as they went in search of someone to find a place where they might be able to see the show even if they weren't able to enjoy the companionship of each other.

Almost as bad, they made me feel like "That Woman", that whiny old woman who was so far out of the loop she couldn't let some young people just enjoy themselves.

I enjoyed the concert as much as you can in an open air grandstand with less then state-of-the-art sound system. I really enjoyed the songs I remembered, and I just enjoyed being there with CaDiva on our Anniversary.

But you can give me one additional gift. If any of you encounter someone describing how she enjoyed being with her "posse" at the Reba concert Sunday August 16, 2015 in Section KL, rows 16 and 17, seats 8, 9. 10, and 11 - tell her next time to sit her butt in her chair unless she agrees to pay extra for the air space above her over-processed hair-do.

Plans for tomorrow

We are going to visit The Mom's sister tomorrow. She has miniature ponies and donkeys. The Sister not The Mom. In either case, I'm counting on getting some serious Aunt points since little hrh is accompanying us to lunch tomorrow.

Oh, sure, she'll give most of the credit to her Grandmother. All of it actually. And CaDiva will drive. So if there is anything left over after HRH and The Mom, she'll probably soak it up. But, I'm the one suggesting we put the third seat up so she can sit all by her lonesome. Well that is more for HRH than little hrh, in that the booster seat takes up way more than the middle half of the back seat.

This doesn't bother The Mom nearly as much as HRH since the mom is down to somewhere between 108 and 114 pounds. But, I'm still pulling for the Aunt points.

I'm planning on loading up some pictures of the festivities tomorrow. But tonight, I'm going to sign off and finish with this Christmas episode of JAG before tucking it into bed early.

Sorry, gentle readers

The vertigo was still bad yesterday. I went to the doctor. I thought it was an ear infection. It isn't. There may be some element of dehydration. But right now, I can only cater to it. That involves sedation and laying on my back with my eyes closed a lot.

Vertego

Sorry guys. I got another vertigo attack today. I'm not in any condition to look at pictures or type out my tale from Reba. Maybe tomorrow.

Home from the Grandstand Show

Tell you the details tomorrow, or later today, which ever. We had good luck catching rides and finding places to sit. We had seats on the second tier but center stage. Unfortunately we were sitting behind the only 8 women who thought, quote "Everyone stands at these things." We were able to see but the four women beside us finally had to get up and ask the venue to find some place else for them to watch the concert.

But now, to bed.

The Punching Pandas, The Donald, and the Iowa State Fair

CaDiva and I got up and out by 8:30 (kind of impressive when you think it through) and she even decided to take the freeway to the fairgrounds. We were a little worried about the electronic sign telling us the exit to E University was closed. We saw cars in that exit, so we took the exit anyway. Well, we we sort of took it, in that we exited the freeway and couldn't get back on.

We didn't exit it in the way we actually advanced towards the Fairgrounds. The traffic was backed all the way from the Fairgrounds on E 30th to the freeway at E 19th. Ok, so you aren't impressed but that is significant in Des Moines. Anyway, we rode along, discussing how this wasn't in the least bit annoying and how we were going to enjoy the fair anyway.

We did decide to get breakfast at the fair rather than pull out of the traffic to find some sort of food. Although, I did point out to CaDiva that I could probably get across the street and back with DD coffee and bagels before she moved to the next block. She didn't seem to find this amusing.

We found the parking lot entrance we normally use, except they were full. (The parking attendants didn't know they were full, they only knew we couldn't use it. I have no malice in my heart for the parking attendants. The fair doesn't pay them nearly enough to stand out in the sun and wait for little old ladies to try and get into a primo parking spot on the basis of being old and gimped up.)The one we needed to go to was all the way back where the traffic jam we escaped was waiting for us. The old parking lot was much closer, more efficiently managed, and just so convenient. But, the Shriner's showed up every time we needed to be golf carted somewhere.

Then we got to the place that rents us the little old lady scooters so I can ride around the fairgrounds wearing a fanny pack and increasing my self-esteem each time I accidentally hit the reverse lever by mistake. They couldn't find our reservation. They did everything necessary to take care of us. And I knew we were on our way because a young man of about 10-years asked me for a high-five. I figured he had a plan to high five anyone sitting in a scooter who reminded him of his great grandmother.

We started out finding a fruit smoothie and chocolate ice cream cone and the Cultural Center. In addition to the fascinating folk and creative art it was indoors and air conditioned.

It also included the only vendor of a salad on a stick.

 We headed back out past the Mid-American Energy mascot on to the wine and art park at the top of the Fairgrounds. Not only did we have a nice wood-fired pizza, we got to watch the grape stomping contest while gaze at the best view of the city while catching several cool breezes.

As always, we had as much fun interacting and watching people as we did anything else. We visited with two women who watched me chase CaDiva up the hill on our matching scooters as I threatened to get a water pistol. One woman said to the other, "There we go in a few years." LOL CaDiva and I are now officially a goal.

This is CaDiva's "would you please find something else to point that camera at" face.

We headed down the hill into the sea of humanity waiting for a pork chop on a stick.We found another shady spot and enjoyed the most luscious pork chops you could imagine while we listened to The Punching Pandas.

Thanks to You-Tube I actually understood the remarks about something called the Whip and NeNe after watching two young women dance to Downtown Funk. I suppose you all know it repeats the line "Funk you up" several times. 

This is Iowa, you sit where there is shade.

I had two encounters with Donald Trump. His helicopter overhead during the concert and his body guards demanding I get out of his way while he wooed my vote. Yeah, I'm a fat, old woman in a scooter. Move me. That would really sell on CNN. On the other hand, nothing else he has done had gotten him off my television set. But still... 

The concert was followed by a group of adult ed ballroom dancers giving it their all in the heat of an August day. I didn't go for the Swing in 4 x 4 time, but the group Tango and the synchronized  Foxtrot were pretty cool.

CaDiva started to feel a little punk, we figured from the heat, so we headed to find another breezy, shady spot.

So we cooled down watching kids dance in the sprinklers while CaDiva sipped on iced tea and I dreamed of lemonade and corn dogs. CaDiva didn't really perk up, so we picked up some dinner at the giant turkey leg and rice crispy treat on a stick place.

We were getting ready to return the scooters when she agreed to wait in a little garden beside the Department of Natural Resources building. Well that did the trick. While I munched on my corn dog and we shared the lemonade in the shade and cool, she really lightened up. She even took a flyer on a corn dog. Of course, she had to when we saw some deranged woman peel the corn bread coating off her corn dog and dip it in ketchup. SHUDDER.

 We sat in the garden watched people allow someone strap them into a wire globe and fling them into the air with giant rubber bands.

Well, CaDiva is out like a light on the couch, and HRH took The Mom to Missouri for Ice Cream today. So I'm going to wrap this up with pictures of the tiny ponies we spotted around the Fairgrounds. I will probably rewrite this tomorrow, because I think I may be a bit disjointed and sort of rambling on. Maybe I am more tired than I thought.