Hotel Life

The snow has stopped, for the moment at least, though they had said it would snow all day until about 6pm.  It wasn't snowing at 4:15 this morning, either.  Guess how I know that.

I'd forgotten how hard it can be to sleep in a hotel room. The bed is too soft and slopes towards the edges, and I tried to find the balance between sleeping in the middle and stretching the C-PAP tubing enough to pull the machine off the bedside table.  I did okay, actually.  No C-PAP was harmed in the making of my night.
The microwave almost was, though. It's not working because the door won't catch, apparently.  That's the message on the front when I try to start it: "door". But the light inside works exceptionally well. Once I got up and turned it a little sideways in its cubicle, everything was hunky-dory.

At 2:42, my phone rang.  J-Man woke up and found my message.  Yes, the phone was by his bed, but he slept through 3 calls. (!) He was fine, no fever, and the power was still on. I reminded him to plug in his cell phone when he actually got up, and then we both went back to sleep.

At 4:15 I woke up again.  One of the lab gals  said that someone had volunteered to shuttle people from the hotel to the hospital starting about 6am, but she has to be at work at 5, and she wasn't sure if she could make it.  I'd told her to call me and I'd throw some clothes on and drive her up there in my 4-wheel drive, because I could go back to bed and sleep all day if need be.   

I got up and checked my top to see if it was dry.  In my haste I forgot to pack daytime clothes for today, and about 8pm I realized I had packed extra socks and underthings, and I could really wear the jeans again for a few hours, but I had no shirt to wear. Did you know shampoo is multi-functional?

When I realized she wasn't going to call, I fell back to sleep.  At 6:15, some alarm went off. And off. I think someone tried to go out an emergency exit, because, although there was running, there was a lot of laughing and no smoke. Part of me thought about staying awake until 6:30, when the continental breakfast was served, but the sleepy part reminded me I had a package of bagels, and some cream cheese and boiled eggs in the fridge, and the much-appreciated coffee pot in the room.  Once everyone left for work, it got quiet again and I had the best sleep between 6:45 and 9:23.

After calling Jack and reminding him (again) to plug in his cell phone, I poured my coffee and pulled out the cream cheese and boiled eggs.  I noticed the eggs were cracked, but hey, it was a bumpy ride and I made lots of trips from the car to the room. They weren't just cracked, they were burst.  As in frozen-burst.  As was a can of diet Coke.  The cream cheese is frozen, too.  I think maybe I turned the refrigerator thermostat a tad too low.

But the coffee was nice and hot.  I stirred in my sweetener and let it sit a moment while I placed the cream cheese container on top of the coffee pot to warm.  The eggs are in their plastic baggy, floating in a sink of warm water.  The coke is sitting on a washcloth on the bathroom counter, steadily fizzing and leaking.  And my  biodegradable plasticware has started biodegrading.

I don't think I get out enough.

Here We Go Again....

No, that's not the picture from December.  That's today, as I was leaving to drive to the motel down the road from the hospital.  Just once, I would really like to stay home during a snowstorm instead of go to work.  Just once.  I believe this is my 4th one--third one in less than a year!

We knew it was coming--and it's supposed to be worse than the last one. I left J-Man at home with a 102 degree temp and Tandi for company. He says his temp's gone and he feels much better now, which makes me feel better about leaving him. After all, I don't even work until Sat. and Sun. nights, but with the prediction being 10-14 inches this time, I'm not sure the snow plowing will be done in time. The snow wasn't even supposed to start until this evening, but when I got out of the grocery store at 2:30, it was already snowing AND sticking. And it's supposed to keep snowing until about 6pm tomorrow night.

Thank goodness I had already reserved a room.  I must have seen a dozen employees here already, and the parking lot is filling up. Since I was bringing food, I booked a room with a refrigerator.   There's a microwave, too, and even though it's not working, the one in the little dining room of the motel is. When I went to heat up my Lean Pockets, I heard tales of people who have come because they can't travel any farther.  One gal is here with her husband, 2 children and a bun in the oven. She thought to buy a gallon of milk and had one bottle with her for the baby, and they stopped at a chicken place to get chicken and fixin's--but the servers forgot the chicken part of the dinner.  I offered to bring them some of my food (I brought LOTS), but she said they were fine.  Another gal was getting stuff out of the vending machine to snack on.  It wasn't much, she said, but then she thought about the folks on "Survivor" and those who might be stuck in their cars and said she was fine, too. Perspective.

I'd thought to make it a bit of a party--got snacks, got a scented candle, a couple of paperbacks, even brought a movie, but there's no DVD player in the room. (Was I overdoing it just a little?)  But hearing those few stories reminds me just how serious things can be. I'm hoping we don't lose power at the house. If so, I'll leave and go get J-Man and the dog and bring them back here.  And lots of food for stranded travelers. 

That's looking out my window and up toward the roof.  I can't figure out how to quicken the shutter speed a little so you can see those big fat individual flakes coming from the dark sky, but that's pretty neat, too.

This is what it looks like outside my window right now.

We'll see how it looks later.

Frozen--by Indecision

This has been my weekend off--the 3 days I was eagerly anticipating. I daydreamed of getting so much sewing done, working on paper crafts to send in letters to my girls. I planned to quickly pack up the rest of the Christmas decorations and use the dining room floor to lay out my daughter's string quilt and sandwich it. I was going to make cookies to take back to work Tues. night. I wanted to stitch up a quick table topper to give my neighbor in appreciation for her taking care of Tandi when J-Man was in the hospital.

Are you laughing yet?

Well, the weekend hasn't been a total loss.  I got in an extra nap, got the bathrooms cleaned, culled through some more quilt magazines, did some real cooking and not just re-heating pizza, though that was done, too. Christmas will get put away today.

But when I got into my sewing room and began poking around, I came across even more UFOs and baggied projects I'd fogotten I had.

A couple of years ago, when I was co-leader of our quilt bee, we played quilt bingo, from the Fons and Porter  Sept/Oct '06 magazine. I collected the blocks to put together some community quilts for us to donate, and then forgot about them.

Last night I found them, and was trying to figure out how to put them together. I decided black sashing would look the best (though the photo in the link shows red sashing and it looks good), but couldn't decide on the width or the layout. And, as usual when you have several people making blocks, they don't all measure out at 10 1/2". 

I was thinking on point would be more interesting than just squared (though it looks pretty good in her photo), and might disguise the uneven sizes. But what should I use for setting triangles if I use black sashing?  And I don't have enough black fabric anyway, so I got online and ordered some, because I've already checked our local quilt shop in the past and they rarely have solid blacks.  So I put that one away.

Pulled out the balloon blocks and decided to frame the blue squares with darker blue sashing and then just scatter the balloons over all.  Except--you got it--I didn't have enough blues in a shade that wouldn't clash with the cloud fabric. Found more at the Fat Quarter shop and ordered that with the blacks.  Put them away.

Found these:

Rejects from the Christmas sweatshirt vest made 2 years ago. I was thinking of maybe trimming the tree block back and making a small wall hanging, with little Christmas buttons or charms on it, but then again, maybe it and the holly leaves would look good on Christmas bags, which I didn't have the time nor the inclination to start. So I put those away.

Tucked under a bunch of other projects, I found these little blocks:

They had pieces of a brown sashing that had been trimmed down in preparation for cutting apart, so I got out the seam ripper and took off the rest of the sashing. I vaguely remember planning on using these in a swap 2 years ago, but they didn't make the grade.  Should I just stitch them together  and add a couple of borders for a Christmassy table topper? Or a runner? 

And did I really want to unpack the 2 suitcases of Christmas fabric to find something I could use?  Nope, it was too late at night.

I don't even remember making these blocks, much less what I was going to do with  them:

They're made from Christmas fabrics, but I don't think I like the varying widths of strings in such a small block.  It makes them look awkward, and I can't seem to find a layout I like.  If I made 1 more, I could just add sashing, which would minimize the awkwardness and, with the addition of a couple of borders, would have a respectable table topper for next Christmas.  But then, I'd have to unpack those 2 suitcases....

Okay, what about a table topper for my neighbor?  I found a cute little pattern at a LQS and thought I could pull from my overflowing scrap baskets to do it, but it takes 80 small 2" squares.  Not 2 1/2", which I already have bags full of, but 2".  I'd need to either cut new ones or trim the old ones. At this point, I threw up my hands and went to bed.

And, after dealing with 3 disoriented patients Thurs. night, 2 of whom required restraints, my back is still sore, so I haven't gotten down in the floor to sandwich DD's quilt.

So.  Nothing accomplished.  Does this happen to anyone else? 

Bright Spot

The best part of January?

These appearing in the grocery stores:

I have one blooming, and one only budding.  Don't know what color the second one will be, but the scent is filling half the house right now.

Sorry, Tandi, these are for Momma.

Leaking Brain Cells

The good news is--Rose, my baby truck, is okay! After stopping by the auto repair shop on my way home from work this morning, I called our auto service to arrange for the truck to be towed to the mechanic's.  The lady asked if I'd tried to jump start her.  Well, no, just tried starting her up and stopped when she started making weird noises.

So when the tow truck got there about 9:30, he attached the jumper cables.  After about 3 false starts, she got her second wind and started right up!  Woohoo!  Way to go, Rose!

The driver advised me to let her run 30-45 minutes before turning her off.

Well, sure.  

Here's the disturbing news. I pulled up a couple more leftover Christmas decoration stakes out of the thawing ground, came in and answered the computer-generated call-back to assure them the tow truck came, changed into my nightgown and went to bed.

With the motor still running.

Woke up all of a sudden at 2:30 pm realizing what I'd done.  Five hours later.   Jumped up, ripped off the C-PAP, detoured by the bathroom, and dashed  stumbled into the living room, where my darling super-husband told me he'd realized the same thing about noon and went out to turn my car off. Which was a pretty good feat, considering there is still a small mounded barrier of ice-crusted snow blocking the gravel drive, and he has mobility problems. My hero!

Then he told me I could never say anything about his memory again. I promised.

Of course, I can't guarantee I will be able to remember that promise.


Now I have to go check my gas gauge.