World Diabetes Day/4 year anniversary

I'm a day late with this, sorry.

Yesterday was World Diabetes Day, a day to inform people, a day to take a stand and let people know we desparetly need a cure for the millions who suffer from this deadly disease. I live in a back assward country where 1/2 the population is obese and diabetic, were there any functions here? Who knows!! Nothing was published in the papers here, I won't know if there were any gatherings, functions, displays nothing until maybe a week from now.

I was put on another expensive diabetes medication this summer called Victoza. It is an appetite suppressant in the pen injection form that works in conjunction with insulin. I was given some sample pens to make sure it worked and it did. I went to fill the prescription and it is $325.00 for 2 pens! Are they fucking nuts? Yes I did have to get a few pens to hold me over until I can find a dr., hospital, clinic here in hell that has it.

It's also my 4th year of being smoke free, YAY me!

I did stitch a little bit yesterday on a project called Give Thanks by Hinzeit, this is what it will look like when I'm done. I'm also participating in the stitchathon over at one of my groups again.

Trying to plan out my Thanksgiving meal. Will it be a healthy version, who knows but I do know I still have to watch what I eat. I am still active at SparkPeople

So, there is another post from me. Amazing aint it?

Deja Vu

Thank you for your comments from yesterday. Sometimes it gets frustrating when I write and write and there aren't any comments. I know lilfe gets busy but even a "hello, I'm here" is nice. Yes, I know I'm bad with even reading blogs.

So, it's 3 years later, Deja Vu. Some of you from the Cross Stitch Crazy board know what happens to DH every 3 years and it's that time again.

For the second day in a row I've done my mile in 20 minutes, WOO HOO. Still no more weight loss, gain the pound, loose 2, gain 3 loose 3. I stayed the same this month. I did well on Thanksgiving, ate only what I should and only gained 1 lb and my blood sugar stayed under control.

I stitched last night for 2 1/2 hours and did 300 stitches! Woo Hoo. It was the last day of our Stitchalongathon on Needle nook. I didn't finish Be Merry, but I'm closer.

DH's friend claims that BA (British Airways-my FAVOURITE airline) is going to resume flights back here. WOO HOO if they do! UPDATE-Ummm, yeah, I checked the BA website. Don't think I'll be flying BA. They leave here at 09:00AM on EACH flight, 5 days a week, arrive in Heathrow at 2PM, i'd fly out at 4:15PM get in Boston at 6PM-Yuck. THEN, on the way BACK HERE, I'd have a 12 HOUR layover in Heathrow and get in HERE at 5AM. I think NOT!

Aint it amazin'

Look what happens when I sit down and stitch:

BEFORE & AFTER stitching for 3 1/2 hours

This week is the stitchathon at Cross stitch crazy but I'm not participating. There are too many ladies that think this is a diehard contest and if you don't stitch 1000 stitches or more a day then your nobody. I used to participate to see how many I could stitch, NOT to beat everyone on the planet then laugh. I'll probably stitch more tonight.

I fixed left over chinese food for supper last night, don't know what is for dinner tonight.

I was playing around with Amtrak time table, $152 round trip to go from Boston to Utica, NY plus it takes 10 hours. No wonder people don't take the train, it's longer than it is to drive. $648 to fly from Manchester NH to Albany.

Then I played around with another map. Picked out a driving route from home to Kennebunkport Maine. There's a Popeys's chicken place at a rest stop on I95. That would be good for a day's enterntainment.

Everyone needs to run over to Helga Mandl's Yahoo group and sign up for her new SAL. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wXSw/ The chart will be released on May 20 and it will be a set of 4 season charts. Everyone needs to over load her board like everyone does the SanMan board and snatch and run with the patterns.

35.2 at 3PM, it's hot.

Still in paradise

Ho hum, another weekend. At 12:15 PM today it's 96.6F/35.9C. I did my morning walk at 8:30AM when it was only 87.

Today we find out if our son is a free man! He has his LAST probation hearing and hopefully he will be FREE AND CLEAR and can get a new VALID DRIVER'S LICENSE and will be able to drive again! I am so excited and can't wait to find out. I will definately be saying my prayers all day. It will definately call for a celebration when mama gets home!

Another weekend here, not much planned. We'll probably go back to the lamp store and get Velda's lamp on Thursday then go grocery shopping. It's almost time to get my ticket too.

It's stitchathon time on Cross Stitch Crazy, this month is only a week. I don't know if I will participated or not. I know I used to post large numbers once or twice a week but there are some that post over 1,000 stitches a day EVERY day, really not worth posting a measly 200. Then there are the ones that stitch for 6 hours a day. I used to be able to do that but I guess my brain cells are dying because I can't concentrate much anymore. I did stitch on another exchange project last night, I know I sat through at least 3 hour long tv shows and a couple 1/2 hour shows.

Last night I fixed a mixed bean salad. Chick peas, kidney beans, corn, pimentos, sliced onions, sliced green bell pepper, white beans, chopped tomatoes with chilies. Mixed that up and plopped it on lettuce. There are tons of leftovers for tonight.

Happy April

I know it's April Fools Day but I just don't have any funny stuff to add today. One year I called my son and told him I was at the bus terminal, come and get me. He got ALL excited and happy then I said April Fool. He then got REALLY pissed off and mad and told me that was not one bit funny at all.

The Yankees game was rained out yesterday so hopefully they will get to play today. Unfortunately it doesn't start until 7PM so I won't be able to "watch" it.

Since it's a new month, it must be time to clear my stitching table off and start a new month of stitching. I need to tally up the stitchathon counts for Needle Nook in the next couple days but give everyone a chance to post their counts first.
I need to decide on pretty fabric and matching floss to stitch an exchange project, a couple of floss colors for another gift project and make sure I have the right fabric for yet another exchange project. Unfortunately that doesn't fit in with my Selfish Stitching year theme on Needle nook but at the same time, I don't HAVE to do these projects.

Last night we had the last of the BBQ beef with ranch style beans and coleslaw. Tonight we'll clean up the vegetable stir fry & rice. Then hopefully we can go back to just vegetables or small salads.

A new week

Ok, so I am locking the patio door when I went to bed "last night" at 2AM. I noticed water on the patio, very unusual for 2AM. I go get some shoes, plod around, the water is growing into a little "lake". I walk around the side of my patio to see water bubbling up out of the ground in the neighbors yard and it's running on to my patio. Well to be quite honest, at 2AM there is absoultely nothing anyone can do except let it bubble until 5AM when someone is available to come fix it. Swell, so that means I won't have any water in the morning. So I get up at 8AM, I can see on the patio bricks we have out there that there was at least 3-4 inches of water on my patio but it has receeded quite a bit and appears to be fixed for now.

(let me explain to my new readers, I live on a walled in, self contained, private compound in a major metropolitan city in "the middle east". If something needs to be fixed, we call maintenence and "they will send someone". Our weekends are Thursday and Friday and the work week is Saturday-Wednesday. We don't celebrate any holidays what so ever except the muslim holidays, and most "western" or civilized holidays are forbidden, banned, illegal and not recogonized)

Last night we had pulled beef bbq, a recipe that was on the back of a box of Lipton Onion Mushroom soup mix. It was quite good. I had left over beef cubes so I will fix those tonight instead of heating up the bbq mess.

I sat for another 3 hours last night and worked on my hardanger project. I like the bottom 1/2 of this project a lot better than the top half. Not really much more and it will be done.

So far this month I have done well with my stitching and I think that is mainly due to the SALS on a few boards and the Stitchathon on Cross Stitch Crazy and Needle Nook. I just hope I can keep up the stitchy mood.

2, yes 2 more days until the boys come out to play!!!

Return of the blob

Last night I sat down to stitch something, anything. I looked through my UFO/WIPs and pulled out my Blob WIP. When I picked it up it looked like this: I stitched for almost 3 hours and it looked like this: The top picture is more like the real colors. I've also stitched more on it tonight . Here is the 2 hour progress I made on it on Tuesday night. It's called An American Christmas ornament and it is a freebie pattern from Eterna Silk. This stitchathon is doing wonders for me.

The internet is beyond shitty anymore. It is taking anywhere between 2-5 mintues for pages to load and much longer if anything blinking or animated is on the page. There is no longer a "good time" or a "bad time" to be on, it's horrible 24/7. We even have "HIgh speed" !

We had the corned beef, cabbage, potatoes & carrots yesterday. The corned beef came out ok but it was WAYYYYYYY to salty this go round, but then I don't use salt every day so any additional amount is salty to me. It was even pretty good as leftovers tonight. There is still a couple days of leftovers left.

Happy Saturday!

Another weekend come and gone. Not very exciting, vacuumed, got the airbubbles taken out of our waterbed since it takes both of us to do it.

I got a lovely gift Friday morning, If you're squeemish, you might not want to read this. DH & I were sitting at our computers this morning. We hear this cat screeching noise at the patio door, he got up and said Annie wants you (she is one of our cats), I go to the door and there she is VERY proudly holding a limp bird in her mouth. I stood there looking at her and she drops it, steps back and just looks at me flicking her tail back and forth. She then picks it up and just very proudly stands there. DH opened the door, she shot in, ran to the kitchen and scooted under the kitchen center table we have. She came out about 45 mintues later just as proud as a peacock. AT least I suppose she knew where to take it. She's the hunter of all 4 cats, she loves to bring me gecos and large bugs. There aren't any rats or mice around here so I don't get those. She doesn't want to give them to DH, she prefers to give them to me. I did tell her thank you but please don't do that again. She strutted around the house the rest of the day. She thinks she is the princess around here. She is unique in that she has one full green/hazel eye and one eye that is 1/2 hazel and 1/2 blue and the colors change with her moods and lighting. Her full name is Little Orphan Annie, she and her 3 sisters and 1 brother were born under a bush in our front yard and mom abandoned them when they were only about 3 weeks old. We found nice, loving homes for 3 of them so we took in Annie and her brother. They will be 6 years old in April.



I am almost done with my March 17th project, just a few more stitches, I just couldn't stitch any more last night I was tired.

I am doing so well with the stitchathon, it is just what I needed to get my stitching ambition back! I have stitched just about every day which is wonderful for me.


I make up a package of Lemon poppyseed muffins this morning. The annoying part is they have to put an arabic sticker on the boxes, I have no clue if it is a list of ingredients, instructions or what it is but they put their stupid sticker right over 1/2 the English ingredient list and 1/2 the instructions. I had to run the box under water to try and peel of this stupid sticker. I did save the boxtop though for my grandson's school. I need to get off my butt and make my hot cross buns before lent is over.


Thursday evening we had the last of the chicken fajita chilli and Friday we had yummy home made shrimp stir fry. I want to make crock pot pulled beef bbq, I found the recipe on the back of a Lipton Onion Mushroom box. It was actually for pulled pork but since pork is forbidden and banned here, i have to use beef.

The Spot is back

He came home and was sitting at the patio door around 2:30AM. I got up because dementia cat was screeching in the hallway because she woke up and no one was around and there was Spot kitty sitting at the patio window. He looks just fine, no cuts, broken bones, he's not dirty, he's just really spacey, more than normal for him. He went out again this morning when DH put him out but he did come back in with his sister when I got up around 7. He is just strange, like he's lost and doesn't know where he is. He did ask to be held so I picked him up.



I'll probably be stitching a lot again to day. I think (or at least I HOPE) I got my stitching mojo back!



It took 3 calls but maintenence did come and "fix" my a/c on Wednesday. I started calling at 3:2o PM and they finally showed up at 6:10. It worked real good Wednesday night but it doesn't feel like it's working good now.

Woooooo Hoooooo!

I feel good, yeah yeah, I feel good! I got a great work out today! I don't normally exercise but with the right music and stuff that needs to be done it was GREAT! Up and down stairs several times, clean down the guest bathroom, daily cleaning of the litter box, sort through this pile while swiveling hips to music, dust, shake hands in the air, vacuum, to Louie, Louie, Tequila, Born to Be Wild, Hot, Hot, Hot, Shout!, Na Na Na Na, Hey, Hey goodbye & the Macarena, phew, what a work out! Kiind of like the soundtrack to Flashdance used to be for cleaning. The cats were petrified by my gyrations, arm waving and singing so they ran the other way but it feels good and my house is clean!

I stitched last night too, I started working on the opposite side of my Autumn Biscornu but I think I may put that away and start on my March Coloring page from Tranquil Stitchers. This will be great for my March Stitchathons on Needle Nook and Cross Stitch Crazy. I did choose the Irish Creme Sampler from Casey B Designs but didn't realize that until last night when I was looking at the posts, HAHAHAHAHAHA NOT going to happen. I need to stitch up my son's girlfriend's March 17/Birthday project so I can send her a picture of it.

Such sad and tearful news from Cross Stitch Crazy, our dear friends husband passed away on March 1. She is such a graceful lady and seems to be so at peace with her husband's passing. I was in non stop tears when I read her message. She is such a sweet lady, I just wish I could comfort her in some way.

As far as dinner last night HA! We had 1/2 a large papaya each which I don't think you are supposed to eat a papaya on it's own, we came to that conclusion and I think the piece we got was on the other side of good, it was sort of mushy but ok. Papaya, strawberries and something else. Tonight our friend said she was coming over with ponsit and spring rolls, mmmmmmmmmmm!

How much longer until baseball starts? I've having withdrawls here! Our poor son said we won't be going to a game this summer, he can't afford the tickets. He has bought tickets for us the past 2 years to pay us back for taking him twice a year for several years. For me, it was a manditory Mommy thing to take him to the games when it was so easy to go, such a rush for both of us to be at Yankee Stadium or Shea Stadium, Fenway Park was horrible, very unfriendly people there, Skydome in Toronto was awesome.

My baby got his birthday present on time and he loves it. My guy will be 2 tomorrow so we got him a fancy wagon, no more of those "little red wagons" anymore, this one has a sun shade and cup holders, places to stow stuff. I miss my kids!

Oh yeah, today is also the anniversary of my divorce from my first husband, we were married 28 days.

Happy March

Ok, well my photobucket is back open again and I can see pictures from other albums as well. Let's hope it stays that way for awhile.

Ok folks, step right up, be the first one on your block to own these! Brand new, Limited time offer (and probably ONLY in this country too!) Yummy Vanilla Fresh, Cappuccino Mint, Lemon Lime and Chocolate flavors. What am I talking about you ask? How about those flavors in Close-Up toothpaste? I already have the Chocolate, took that home with me last summer, nobody wanted to try it though. Yes, I did buy the Vanilla Fresh and the Cappuccino Mint, Cappuccino Mint is ok, does taste like cappuccino, I tried it. I guess those aren't as bad as the "Barf" brand of laundry detergent, scouring powder, bleach and other cleaning products from a few years ago that they sold here. Yes, I bought some of those too.

This was brought on by our Thursday shopping excursion. We stopped at our local older than dirt and dusty too department store where I picked up some DMC Metallic threads on spools made in West Germany and some neon looking floss which is an unknown brand. Had to blow the dust off everything first though.

Then went to the grocery store where I found the toothpaste. Still no saltine crackers, haven't seen Miracle Whip in a couple of years, no decent adult cereal without 5 lbs of sugar. Those stupid baggers annoy the shit outta me. They put two things in a plastic bag, tie it up and put it in the cart, they put cat food in with people food, so I step in and tell them fill the bag! 1 roll of paper towels per bag is insane, put that box of tissues in there too! GEEZE gimme a break! They scowl when they see me come through their register, I tell them how to pack my groceries and stand there and watch them. I don't need 100 plastic bags from every trip to the store. I am going to start saving the bags and taking them back and then see what they do.

I did get stitching done! I finised the stitching part on that biscornu thing I was working on. Now I am adding beads, there are little "bulls-eye" looking symbols on the pattern but nothing on the chart or on the picture of the finished project to tell me what it's for so I am adding beads. Now I need to make the back side or something for the back side and make it into a biscornu and mark that off my WIP list.

Ok, so March is the Stitchathon on Cross STitch Crazy and Needle Nook, so let's see how much stitching I can actually get done this month. I am not going to set goals because I know I won't meet them. I am not doing this month's SanMan SAL project, it's cute, but I have other things to get done.

Last night's dinner was baked salmon with fresh dill, garlic, green onion and butter, steamed cauliflower & carrots and macaroni salad. Thursday nights' dinner was the last of the beef stew that I put some curry powder in. It was REAL good with the curry powder. I told DH last night that I am tired of eating! All I want to eat is maybe some sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and simple stuff like that. No more big meals. I don't have snack stuff in the house anymore so maybe smaller meals will help us both.

Feb 18

PLEASE EXCUSE THE TYPOS, FOR SOME STUPID REASON, MY SPELL CHECKER DOES NOT WORK.

More damn stupid censor bullshit. Now my photobucket account is blocked by those assholes. ACCESS TO THIS URL IS NOT ALLOWED! Fuck you! That is MY photo album. Geeze. Not to mention it's getting difficult to get into my blogger because it's in Arabic sccribbling across the top main page so I have to fucking clue how to get the page to come up in English no matter how many times I tell it ENGLISH in my setting page.

I am a Great Aunt! My niece gave birth to a boy last Wednesday. Ryan was born on Feb. 13 at 7Pm weighing 6 1/2 lbs and 19 3/4 inches long. My Sister is a Gramma! I can pick on her now.

So last Thursday, on Valentines day (that is NOT celebrated in this country) we went to the grocery store. I wore my bright pink pants under my black ninja robe. The candy and sweets isle was crowded with people buying candy, the plant/flower area has a couple lovely Valentine arrangements sitting out, there were plenty of red roses sitting in a vase. I didn't check the price because that wasn't what I was looking for. We went out to our favorite Italian resturant for dinner and I had on my bright pink pants with a darker pink top under my black ninja robe. Then we went over to the grocery store to see if they had stuff the other store didn't. They had LOTS and LOTS of Valentine candy. They had heart shaped boxes of chocolates in plain view, they had teddy bears in their display cases, they had red flowers. What a bunch of morons.

Now there is NO FLOUR in this country! I bought the last 2KG bag of flour the store had the other day. I also bought a bag of something called "Kitchen Flour" for pastries. I have no idea what the difference is but I'll have to try it.
Speaking of cooking, last week I fixed Fish and chips and mushy peas on Friday, MMMMM it was good, I finally figured out how to cook the mushy peas right. Saturday was leftovers, Sunday was stir fried vegetables & tofu with shrimp chips over noodles. Tonight will be leftovers from that. Tuesday will be Chilies Rellenos.

We got our Discovery Channels back finally! I bet anything Orbit didn't pay thier re subscription fee to those channels. So now we have Discovery, Discovery Science, Discovery Travel & Leisure, Animal Planet. That adds 4 more English channels in addition the the 6 we already have. Yes there are more channels on the satellite system but only 6 or so that are worth watching.

This past week was the stitchathon on Cross Stitch Crazy. I was really hoping to get the stitching done on my San Man SAL project but as usual I didn't get much done. I only stitched 3 days and didn't put many stitches in at all. 500 stitches total if I'm lucky. In the past, I could have done that many plus more in one day. I need to shut my computer down and unplug it in order to get anything at all done.

This week we are doing a new SAL at Needle Nook. It will be an Awareness SAL. I chose the Breast Cancer Awareness theme for February so I will be working on the Breast Cancer Mandela for B's MIL who passed away in October.

I also need to get busy and start stitching a Sue Hillis project for the SAL at Tranquil Stitchers. I am going to stitch My Heart bleongs to the Sea for my DH

General rambling

If you are easily offended by personal hygiene talk then you should close out now, this is just a warning.


So you've heard the saying smelling like a rose? Well I don't know what the difference is in the exact same product made in the USA with the product made here but last week I bought a small package of Carefree personal hygiene wipes, supposed fragrance free. Well they're not! I do like roses, but not when certain body parts smell like roses, UGH!

The SanMan message board went down yesterday and came back up this morning. The only thing was the board was dated back to October 14, before I left the states. I feel sorry for Sandy since she just cleaned up the board, had a lot of her freebies throughout the year reposted, that was a lot of work to do. Now most of the ladies on that board are more concerned about their post counts than they are about all that hard work being lost! What a lot of nerve some of those ladies have! I also don't think 1/2 of them actually READ anything, they are adding their names to contests that ended back in October.

Another smoke free day! I went outside to bring the cat in for the night and it just stunk out there, it smelled like someone was burning a truck load of cigarettes in my front yard, my nose must be extra sensitive now that I've quit.

I sat down and stitched a bit on a new piece that Is tarted yesterday. It's called An American Christmas by Lady Bug Lane designs. I've had the pattern and the silk flosses for several years now and decided to stitch it up. At least I'll get a few stitches done the last couple days of the Stitchathon at Needle Nook.

April 18

Another weekend is here, not much exciting happening.

YAY YAY! A-Rod hit is league leading 8th home run in last nights game. WAY to GO! The Yankees won that game too 10-3! A-Rod now has a 17 game hitting streak dating back to last season. I hope he keeps it up. The Yankees are in 3rd place so far this season.

I put my anniversary project aside since I was being nagged on one of my boards to stitch on Scooba Dooba, LOLOLOL. I'll stitch on Scooba Dooba for a couple of days then get back to my anniversary project so I can finish by the end of the month. I have to rip out the top left corner of the border and re stitch it so it will look even. It's also stitchathon time on the CSC board.
Here is my anniversary project so far:
I need to take out the top left border and re stitch it so it looks even on both sides
This is where I am after stitching on Scooba Dooba a little bit on Tuesday:

March 1

Phew, what a stitching day! I started my SAL project at 10 in the morning, took a few breaks and finished the project at 10:30PM. 7:03 total stitching time, the project actually went fast. I'll get around to making the needleroll sometime. There were 1381 stitches in this, this is a great start to my stitchathon month!

Friday I will finish my March Sampler

It was grey and overcast today, very windy too. If this was anyplace else, I could have said it was going to rain, but not here.

Another Wednesday

And of course the internet is messed up. It seems to happen every Wednesday lately. It takes forever for pages to load.

I started another monthly Sampler project the other day. This one is March Lucky Leprechaun by The Monkey Works. I'm stitching it on 28 count hand dyed fabric with DMC threads. Here is what I have stitched so far. Only 3 more bands and the stitching will be finished.

March 1 starts monthly stitchathons on 2 of my boards so I've got my projects lined up. On the 1st I start a SAL project with another lady on CSC, America Needleroll by Eventide Designs. It is very nice and it looks like it will be a quick stitch.

February 27

I skipped a few days but when nothing exciting happens, there isn't much to talk about. I had a major headache for 5 days and nothing touched it. I took my tylenol, excedrine migraine and nothing worked. It finally went away last night.

I finished my February Cupid's Heart sampler from the Monkey Works Designs. This one took a long time to decide to finish and it feels like I'm getting worse on the hemstitching finish instead of better.
I started the March Sampler on Monday.
I spend 2 days getting all my stash re-organized and kitting up projects for March. March will be a month long Stitchathon on 2 boards I belong to so hopefully I can get some serious stitching done.

H & I were discussing vacation dates on Sunday. I was surfing the airline sites looking at flights and prices and of course they aren't cheap anymore. I am trying to get out of here on or around June 1st and when I told him I put in a return date of October 16, HE said it would more like October 27!!! I couldn't believe it! I'll actually get a REAL birthday in the USA!! Woo Hoo! Of course we still won't fly back together, we do NOT fly well together at all. So one of these days we need to go see a travel agent and get these reservations done! Maybe a longer vacation means I can participate in more stitchy exchanges on my boards!

It's been 90 here during the day and a little humid, so winter and spring are over.

February 13

My father has surgery today to implant a pacemaker. I have lit candles and said many many prayers that all goes well. It's so hard to deal with being 6500 miles away. I know I will jump everytime the phone rings today and tomorrow.




Monday was the first day of the monthly Stitchathon at one of the boards I frequent. This is a big stitching booster for me, it helps me stitch more and get things done. Yesterday I finished the stitching part on my Blackwork SAL and put in a few beads. I stitched the February pattern with House of Embroidery Threads Snaps. I really like the color and this one stitched up fast.
I saw MORE new designs from the Nashville market and added a lot of them to my wish list. There are some VERY pretty designs out there!
I put my beef brisket in to soak in the brine and pickling spice so it will be ready for Corned Beef on St. Patricks day. For some reason, they don't sell corned beef here so we learned to make our own.

The neighborhood brats were at it again yesterday. About 5 of the heathen monsters were outside kicking a soccer ball into bushes again, riding a bike across everyone's yard and laughing. The other day I went outside to see what was going on and they all just stopped and stared at me like I had 2 heads. Then they decided to move my irrigation hose (poop water) in my yard so it would drain onto my patio. Luckily I went out and moved it so it would drain into the "flower" patch by the road. They thought that was real funny that they did that. Then they started chasing my cats and throwing stones. I went out and said to stop it. They thought that was hilarious. So I had had enough, I took my phone outside and "pretended" to call security to come stop them. As soon as I said security and pointed at them they all ran like the little rats that they are. If this keeps up I am going to take my camera outside and take their pictures which is something they don't like. Then they stood in my drive way harrassing my cat that was sitting inside the living room window and making faces. These little bastards had better stop if they know what is good for them or I will call the compound manager.

This morning the "gardner" guy came buy at 9:15 to clean the yard. He is not a real gardner at all, he's a guy from a third world country that works for about $100 a month cleaning the yards, sweeping the street, watering/trimming the trees, bushes & flowers around the houses and picking up trash. My husband pays him extra each month to keep the patio clean, wash the car and pay extra attention to the bushes & trees. So at 9:15 he comes buy, sweeps the patio, straightens up the chairs and table, brushes the table off with the broom, and takes the trash bag to the curb. Now if I wait, he will be back again between 3 & 4 and sweep the patio again. The patio doesn't really need to be swept 2 or 3 times a day. If I have my patio door open and the screen door shut, he still sweeps all the dust up and will not gt the hint that I don't want that mess in my house. He doesn't speak or understand much English so it's hard to tell him not to.

January 21

This is NOT a good day to stitch at all.
Got up, checked email and boards. I got my days mixed up again which is nothing new. One group is starting a blackwork SAL project and another group is starting a stitchathon. So I thought I would check the fabric I cut the other day one more time and start stitching. The fabric is too SMALL AGAIN by atleast 3 inches all around. So off I go to cut another piece. Get that cut, sit down to stitch. Annie cat jumps up in my lap, a white cat that sheds when she breathes and likes to roll around in the dirt so she is always dirty. She tries to rub up against the WHITE fabric, so I let her out. Sit down again, Roxie starts screeching to go out, if you do NOT let her out, she pisses and shits on the floor, so out she goes. Sit down again, put in a couple stitches, realize Hey, it's NOT Monday, it's only Sunday. Put that project away. Let Spot cat in. Drag out Liberty Angel, try to find exactly where I am on this damn project, get settled to stitch. Stitch 7 stitches, change colors, spot cat jumps up on my stitching table and lays across the paper that has my threaded needles in it, put him out. Put in 6 stitches of another color. I HATE this kind of stitching and this project has so many of those. 5 stitches of this color here, 3 stitches of that color there etc. I'm about ready to toss it. Spot cat comes in, jumps on the table again and sprawls out knocking stuff off the table. I give up. Straightened up stiching table and walked away. It's only 2 PM.
I plodded on with Liberty Angel and got maybe a whole 100 stitches done today. not a whole lot of progress there.

YAY YAY YAY! I got to talk to my daughter on IM and all her birthday presents arrived! I am so happy they did! I got her a Vera Bradley lunch tote, a nice bouquet of flowers and a gift certificate to an ONS! Her husband and son got her a GC to FAshion Bug. I just love spoiling my kids!
I sat down to stitch after midnight to starty my SAL & Stitchathon and got in almost 180 stitches before going to bed. Good thing I checked it, I was off by 1 thread and it would have messed up the whole thing.