Sleep of Girl, Interrupted

Smitty is still on Mountain Time. We've tried convincing him to sleep a little longer, but in the end, he is just like a little boy. I've raised two of those. For Smitty, the night is interminably long. Everybody's sleeping. Even Gracie. There's no one to play with. He likes to snuggle, and he'll do that with wild abandon..."wild" being the operative word. All of that to say that I feel as if I've gone back to the days when babies woke me up at night. When I finish this post, I might just go take a nap. It's hard to get mad at him when he's so darned cute.

The last few days have been pretty mundane. We got the trailer unpacked on Sunday, and then Mike wanted to put it back in the space where it lives when we're not using it. It's one of the things I loved most about our house when we looked at it for the first time. It has an RV pad with full hook-ups. You have to pay good money for that in a campground, and yet there it was right there. It beckoned. Oh, this picture below? No, that isn't the RV pad. That's our driveway. 

I took that picture this morning between torrential downpours. It's been raining almost nonstop since we got home. We're used to it. We've been to Colorado! When we were in Colorado, I was saying, "We're used to it! We're from Portland!" Yes, we love rain. Can't get enough of it. (Not really, but I have to keep telling myself that. Besides, Oregonians just love to whine about the weather. It's in our blood.) 

So here's what happened: Mike had the RV all backed into its slot, but then he decided it was too far to one side, and so he pulled the truck straight forward onto the grassy field...the one saturated from days of rain. Can you guess the end of the story? If you guessed that the truck sunk up to its axles in the mud, then ding, ding, ding! You win the prize. (Prize to follow.) Shortly thereafter, he appeared in the living room, dripping wet, requesting my assistance. He had our Jeep Wrangler chained up to the back of the trailer (combined weight of truck and trailer approximately 10 tons), with the idea that the Jeep would pull the trailer and truck backward and out of the mud. Um, no.

Plan B was to unhitch the trailer, chain the Jeep to the front of the truck (4 tons), and pull it out of the mud that way. That worked, but there was still the little problem of the trailer blocking the driveway. It will be there until it stops raining long enough for the ground to support the weight of the truck...which could be sometime in July of 2014. For now, we're driving our truck and the Jeep out across the field to get around it. Fortunately, both vehicles have four-wheel drive. Here's Mike going off to work this morning. Bye!

Never a dull moment. We want to have lots of stories to tell our nonexistent grandchildren someday.

Now about that prize. I like the idea of telling bad jokes, so here goes:

What do you call it when it rains chickens and ducks? We'll just wait right here for your answer:

Ready? "Fowl weather". Bwahahahahahahahahahaha! (I'll bet you wish you didn't win that prize, now don't you?)

Okay, so here's what else has been going on. Yesterday, I finished up the Home Sweet Home stitchery. I'm only giving peeks now because Erik and Mae do read my blog sometimes, and I don't want them to see it.I'll show you the whole thing after I give it to them.  

For now, I'll just tell you that I learned a new technique for making flying geese yesterday. Some of you already know this, I'm sure. But here's a great tutorial for four ways to make flying geese. I used the "Fast and Furious" method, and it worked great! I've quilted it lightly, and now I'm ready to sew on the binding. 

It's a very small quilt, and I want to label it, but I don't want the label to cover up the entire back of the quilt. Sooooooo....I've been messing with my sewing machine, and I'm just about ready to commit to this new way of labeling it, by using the lettering on my machine to stitch a label onto the binding. I'm following this tutorial from Sew Bittersweet Designs. I've experimented with different lettering, and different messages, and I think I have it the way I want it. Sadly, I don't have a good fabric for the binding. I thought I was going to be able to use a scrap binding leftover from another quilt, but it isn't long enough. Shoot. I guess it's a trip to the fabric store for me today! (Crying in my Poptarts over that.)

Let's see...what else is going on? Since the embroidery is all finished on Home Sweet Home, I started on the third block for my Quilted Snowladies quilt. This one is "Stitching Friends Forever".

Here's how it will look when its all finished:

Lots of stitching in these, and so they take a while to finish.

Today I'm going out to get my hair trimmed. Still trying to even it up, but it has a long way to go. Also, I need to go to the post office to pick up the mail that was held all month last month. They were supposed to deliver it to the door, but said mail has not appeared. It might have something to do with the trailer in the driveway. (Ya think?) Also, I need to stop off at the office supply store to recycle my printer cartridges and pick up some photo printing paper. That stuff is expensive! And that's just about it.

I just have one last thing I want to say though. While I generally try to stay apolitical on my blog, I just want to say that yesterday was Yosemite's 123rd birthday. To celebrate Yosemite's 123rd birthday yesterday, your federal government closed your park. In protest, I am posting this picture of El Capitan that I took some years back. 

That's all I'm going to say about it. If you want to know my political views, you'll have to friend me on Facebook; but beware. I am a social worker, and I am not shy. And today, I'm tired and cranky from being awakened too early in the morning.