While we are on the subject of Steve

I sure won the husband lottery when I married Steve. At the end of my epic Journey this is what I found. he had sent flowers to NM to be there when I got there, a dozen multi colored roses complete with a little recorded message that played when you pressed the white spot on the heart. It was a beautiful surprise and the roses lasted for days and days reminding me of what a good guy I married. There was another bouquet too! My Mom, before Steve's roses came bought some yell0w roses,my favorite! So when I went into the room that was mine for the next two months there was another big bouquet looking so perfect I doubted they were real and had to take a closer look. What a treat to be showered with roses! I tell you nothing makes you feel more special than unexpected flowers! The best are the ones that come to the door completely unexpected. The doorbell rings and you are annoyed because you look like hell and don't want to answer it, but you do because it could be important...and there they stand with a bouquet of flowers just for you. Its like being queen for a day, no?

Born in the USA

I tease Steve a lot calling him a first generation American or a Canadian. This because his mother was Canadian and moved south as a child and became a naturalized citizen as a young adult. Recently Canada amended its laws and as a result Steve is eligible for Canadian citizenship. But you really cannot find a more true blue American. He gets sappy when they play the National Anthem and he has had a life long fascination with Washington DC and the American Presidency, it almost borders on obsession! He has been told to cease and desist by the secret service more than once! Its actually not as sinsiter as it sounds, but it is true. Once in DC a secret service guy who was clearing the road for a presidential motorcade told Steve he could not talk to him "because as it says on my hat, its SECRET!" Shortly after George W rolled by in his limo and smiled and waved right to us as we stood on the street corner. But better still was the time when the secret service singled him out in Hawaii, noting that they had spotted him in the throng more than once when president elect Obama was coming out of the gym at KMCB. Steve cannot be faulted though, Obama should not have singled him out for a handshake and brief conversation the first time, thereby encouraging Steve to return again with his camera and son hoping for another such encounter. When the Secret Service guy pulled Steve aside and told him he "was starting to get noticed, and not in a good way" Steve decided to leave off stalking the president. A good choice I think.

Home is where the Air Force sends me

First let me start by apologizing for the sideways picture. Sometimes my camera and computer do things without being told to and I have not figured out how to undo the damage. Its much easier to beg forgivness than to figure out how to fix it.







This is the last of the blocks that represent me. I chose a wee house because I am such a homebody. I have heard people complain about being stuck at home, bored because there was nothing to do. I just cannot fathom that. There is always something for me to do at my house. I may be tired, or restless, frustrated, but never bored. I genuinely like being at home, and I have had plenty of them too! I have lived in no less than 16 houses/apartments, 10 towns, 6 states and three countries. I am not counting all the extended stays in hotels and billeting between moves! The weird thing is that no matter if I am living in stairwell houseing in Europe, a Hale in Kailua, or a split level duplex in Nebraska, my house has always felt like home to me. The one constant is the china cabinet. We have changed our furniture over the years, but not the china cabinet. Its been with us for almost our entire marriage and has been in 9 of my 16 homes. We even hang our Christmas stockings from the knobs of the china cabinet. Some of our homes have had fireplaces, and some have not, but they all had the china cabinet! All this moving around has surely taught me that Home is what and where I make it. Its been easy up till now. Without Zach this house somehow does not quite cut it, even with the china cabinet. I am looking forward to his visit in a few months and wonder if this new place he has never seen will feel like home to him at all. I know it will at least finally feel like it to me.

Guess Who's coming to Dinner?

When we lived in Lubbock Steve took part time Job at Dimba's Chick-n-Sea. That's how we came to know Stellah and Alex Dimba. They were born and raised in Kenya, but both emigrated as young adults and met each other in America. We lived only a block apart, so Stellah and I started exercising together every morning. We grew to be good friends those 3 years we lived in Lubbock and so now whenever we pass through Lubbock we stop at Dimba's for a bite to eat and a chance to see our old friends. This summer was no exception. Zach and I had gone to Lubbock to spend a day shopping and we stopped in to see the Dimba's and that was when we made plans to join them for dinner at that their house when we went back to Lubbock a week later to pick Steve up at the Air Port. They have cousins who live in Lubbock and they were coming over for dinner too. We had gathered around the kitchen helping to prepare the meal when we saw the cousins pull up in their car. Little Kia, pictured above with Stellah and her daughter Connie came tearing into Auntie Stellah's house. She turned to look and saw me, Steve and Zach standing there and she shrieked "There's White People in there!" and ran right back out to her mother. There was a pregnant pause in the house as what had happened soaked in and then almost as if on cue we all busted up laughing! Poor Kia, somebody really ought to have warned her. She was quite traumatized and cried for several minutes, I think more of embarrassment than anything. Once the shock wore off she was dancing around the house as if nothing ever happened. I bet she remembers us for a long time, I know I will never forget her!

Where the Buffalo Roam

Growing up on the flat, crispy eastern side of New Mexico I got used to people complaining that it was ugly. Mind you, the locals never said that, it was always coming from somebody who grew up around trees and running water. They had a fixed notion of beauty and to their unaccustomed eyes the beauty of the llano estacado was not readily apparent. But those of us raised on the high plains knew there was beauty to be seen in all 360 glorious degrees. What I could not have realized until I left the plains was how much I would miss being able to see all around me, my view never impinged upon by a mountain or forest. I could not have known how very claustrophobic I would feel when my line of sight was slashed to ribbons by trees zipping by as I traveled down a road, or how frustrated I would get when I would catch a glimpse of something I wanted to see better but never could because the road led me down into a valley, the object of my curiosity cut off every time...

When I go home I revel in the austere landscape. The beauty there is sublime, and always rewards the one who bothers to look, a sunflower caught in the last rays of the sun, Johnson grass silhouetted against a variegated sky are easy even for the uninitiated to recognize as beautiful, but consider the chartreuse buffalo gourd nestled in velvety taupe colored leaves, that is also the beauty of the llanoEstacado. Its there, just waiting for you to open your eyes and see it.

Let me count the ways

Ok, this one is pretty much a no brainer and I will thank those of you in the peanut gallery to stifle your snickering. Yes its a crazy quilt block but it actually represents me on many levels, not just the obvious one; let me count the ways...



1.The center block features Keys, my nickname is Kee, so there.



2. Each seam is embellished, I am and have always been a Lilly guilder, if a little is good, more is not nearly enough, any of you who have seen my Christmas tree know that I am speaking truth and light.



3.My first real attempt at quilting was a crazy quilt.



4. My first brush with quilting greatness was Judith Baker Montano and a Crazy quilt Conference in Omaha. I could not afford to attend, but a Friend got me through the door because I volunteered to be a gopher...I got to chat up Judith for a while, we talked about kids, not quilts interestingly enough. JBM by the way literally wrote the book on crazy quilting. Another name well know in the Crazy quilt world is Betty Pillsbury, she lived across the street from me for 4 years while we were stationed at Offutt AFB in Omaha. I actually got to sit in on her class on ribbon embroidery at the conference, and that is about all the time I spent with her in all those 4 years. We waved from across the street when we were outside at the same time but nothing more...



5. And of course there is the crazy thing...both the good kind and the bad. The good kind that lets me cut loose and have a good time, and the bad that riddles me with anxiety over the dumbest things...



All in all its probably the most accurate of all the blocks I chose for myself, but in the interest of full disclosure, I need to tell you that I had to actually make another crazy block for my quilt. The one pictured above would have been perfect but in a fit of distracted zeal I trimmed it too small, slicing the seam allowance clean off...making the do-over block that will actually be in the quilt even more an accurate representation of me, since "oh crap" seems to hang in the air around me as I sew almost all the time.

Boomerang

I was going through a period of self discovery several years ago and was talking to Steve about what I ought to focus my attention on. I have dabbled in so many things that I enjoy I was not getting really good at any of them. I have tried to learn something new everywhere we go, its just a way for me to keep stretching myself. Some of them have stayed with me and others I have let go. Its been a good plan pretty much, giving me a great breadth of experience, if not so much depth. But if I were to master something, what would it be? That's the question I put to Steve and what he said really resonated with me " You always come back to quilting." He was right, no matter what I dabble in, I always come back to quilting. So a block in my diary/family tree quilt about my love for quilting had to make the cut. As I was looking through the Diary quilt book at the quilts pictured in the book, all made by various quilters I laughed at how many of them included a pin cushion block in their own quilt. I guess it's a motif that speaks to all quilters, even fresh, new aspiring quilters.

This summer I had the pleasure of coaching my niece Brandy through her first quilting project. We went to the store to lay in supplies and headed to the notions department, a place I have loved all my life. There we pored over all the notions, the tape measures and seam rippers and hem gauges choosing the things a beginning quilter would need. Then came time to choose a pin cushion...there were two choices, the classic tomato with strawberry emery, or a new design, a big colorful five petaled flower. I waited and watched while Brandy made her choice, I really did think she would go for the big bold flower, but no...much to my delight she opted in on tradition and went for the classic, that bodes well for the little grasshopper, she chose well!