I've spent the last two days making my computer work with the new inventory, making sure our site is linked to me and not Linda, making sure all the emails come to me… Steve has come home to a very stressed woman for two days. My ear is tired from all the tech support BUT things are looking up! I think (knocking wood) I've got most of the kinks worked out.

There is, in fact, something new on the site. I've uploaded 4 new tutorials. Click on the 'Lessons" link on our menu bar and you'll find them.

Also, I went with mom today to buy a rock. A 2+ ton rock. I'll take a photo tomorrow so you can see it in her yard. Mom loves rocks. We have a pile of her rocks by our driveway that will make it down to her house later.

The center of this pile is composed of rose rocks from Oklahoma:

…and this concrete 'pie'. It's a tradition in our family that when we have leftover concrete we make paving stones. And when there's time, we write in them. This is one Mom and Christy wrote in in 1990.

I say that a lot. I believe that this is true but there are days, lots of them, when I'd like to be less busy. I don't think I've got any of those sorts of days coming up in the near future, but that's OK because "it's good to be busy!"

The business end of the Piece O' Cake website is now mine. Linda was ready not to be tied to shipping any more and I cannot blame her. She's a bit older than I am and when I'm where she is I don't know that I'm going to want to be tied to shipping either. But that's many years from now for me. So Linda is doing a happy dance – looking at a calendar that is hers to toy with. She is going to have time to do lots of stitching!

I, on the other hand, have spent the weekend figuring out how to blend the new workload into my life. Lorna, my DIL in Sherman, will be on staff now. You may be hearing from her if you order from our site and I'm happy about that. But I still write our site and have my fingers in the data stream. My hope is that if you order from us/me, you won't notice any difference at all. Know that your emails will now come to me and I hope to be at least as good as Linda has been all these years. I have big shoes to fill.

I've been glued to the computer this weekend but I also spent some hours digging in the dirt at Mom's. I promised to work on her yard when it got wetter and cooler. Well, it did and so I'm honoring that promise. I like to work in the dirt so I've enjoyed this. Mom sits out and visits as I dig. She would really love to be the digger but at 79 with a bad back that's not happening. She does get to prune the tall roses. You might want to pray for the roses :-). I'll send pictures of her yard later.

Steve did honey-do's for me this weekend. Top of the list yesterday was hanging our bedside lights:

Hanging these porcelain lights has been on the agenda since last January. Mom's surgery, recovery, her and Christy's move, house-buying and remodel, Christy's life and death… all of these things delayed hanging the light. Needless to say and I happy to have them up. It feels like life might be getting back to normal. I really like normal.

We bought the LICHTs from MUD Australia when we got our dishes over a year ago. They were a special order, blue inside and white outside, that came wrong the first time. We had to wait weeks to get the correct lights and it was worth it. The new ones have been sitting in the closet for months, patiently waiting to be hung.

I like to read a bit before I go to sleep. Last night, for the first time in a long time, I didn't have to read by flashlight. Life is good. (I do have an iPad2. When I read from it no light is required. But I like to read TIME at night too which required the flashlight several nights a week. Didn't love that.)

Today Steve got back in the attic to run the cable and ethernet to the 'new' Piece O' Cake office. Remember the Murphy bed Steve built last summer so that I could move the web business to our smaller, 3rd bedroom? This room is the new POC office. My studio is still where it has been, right off of our living room.

The trick for me will be figuring out how to keep all the balls in the air – work and home. I'm not going to complain because those are the balls we all juggle. So here's hoping we all keep our balls in the air :-).

I saw this on the walk back to Judy's car after the lecture yesterday. "This" plastic construction fence looked like "that", dupioni silk. It practically glowed in the sunlight. I wonder who else noticed?

I left Pennsylvania on Friday and traveled to Poughkeepse on Friday. It took all day to travel what might have taken 3-4 hours by car. I had to fly to Chicago, then to Hartford, followed by a 2+ hour drive to Fishkill, NY where my hotel is. It sounds worse than it was because I took advantage of the shopping and eating opportunities in both the Pittsburg and Chicago airports. 

The Pittsburg airport has a sock shop that I was looking forward to visiting. One of the perfect finds was a pair of B/W striped knee socks that I wore today:

Picture these legs with a black, below the knee skirt, a B/W striped t-shirt, and a black cardigan. The ensemble was both cute and memorable. I watched as people first noticed my legs, then me, then my legs again. I expected this reaction. I generally don't dress to be noticed but there are days when I embrace the grins I get. Seriously, you don't put on socks like this if you can't take the interest they generate.

I'm in NY to lecture at the Duchess County Quilt Show and to teach a class tomorrow for the guild. Before today's lecture Judy took me to the Walkway over the Hudson. It's a 1.28 mile bridge that used to be a for trains only.

In 1974 it was 'crippled' by fire (I have the brochure) and 35 years later a grassroots nonprofit began the work to make it what it is today… a really fine walkway over the Hudson River. My socks and I went much of the way across before heading back to the car. 

 It was a beautiful day. Lots of people, and dogs, out for a stroll.

The bridge starts over land. It's fun to see the houses from above but I'm not sure I would want that many people looking in on me.

There is another working bridge not far away. There is barge traffic on the river but not so much today, a Sunday. All in all, this is a very nice place to visit.

Tomorrow I have class (my last in 2011) and then I fly home on Tuesday. Oh happy day! I've talked to mom most days and she is really looking forward to me being home. Steve is also looking forward to it but I think my mom is more. I'm finding that it is really nice to have my mother nearby :-). Isn't it funny, the turns your life takes…

I taught a class today in Donegal, PA. After class I needed to go pick up a prescription for what appears to be a lingering sinus infection. While waiting to be picked up I spied a spider web covered in rain drops on a small, not very impressive bush.

Isn’t it amazing what you can see if you keep your eyes open!

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Harley Christopher Goldsmith was born in the evening on October 1, 1981. He was big – 10 lbs 4 oz. Forget those little bitty baby clothes! He was cute and we loved him from the outset even though I don’t remember that he slept at all for at least a year. Sleep deprivation is what I think of when I see little babies which may be why I prefer older kids.

We set out to raise him in a non-sexist, non-violent environment. Christopher had dolls AND trucks. As he got older and was making every stick into a weapon I came to realize that boys really are different from girls. We finally had to arm him with a He-Man sword on his 3rd birthday so that he could defend himself when playing with his similarly armed friends.

I’ve written on the blog about Christopher before. Most of you know that he is married to Lorna and that they have 2 children and that he is currently working on a PhD at SMU in British literature.

Some of you know that he was a National Merit Scholar who, as a freshman (with a great scholarship) decided to quit college and soon after get married – at 19! He worked full time at Starbucks for 3 years before deciding to go back to college to get a degree. He worked full-time while going to school full-time and still managed to be a good husband and father. I am very proud of him!

When Chris quit school at 19 I was beside myself. We knew that the path he had chosen wasn’t the easy one, it definitely wasn’t the path we had planned for him. It was hard to be supportive when we thought he was making bad decisions. But we always loved him and let him, and then Lorna, know that we were there for them.

As it turns out, Chris chose the path that was best for him. He’s happy and doing what he loves.

At his surprise party Saturday night (planned by Lorna) I got to visit with one of Chris’s fellow grad students about having kids while in grad school. We had our two boys while Steve was working on his PhD. It was hard. Money was incredibly tight. And then there was that sleep-deprivation thing. But we were were young and (more) flexible then and the joy of having the boys more than made up for the money we didn’t have.

Among our peers, we were the nearly the only ones having kids that early. (I 25 when Chris was born and 29 when Jeff came along.) The trend was beginning then to wait to have a family and it’s a trend I understand. But what I told Chris’s friend was what I believe is true: waiting for job security, money, or a house can be a long wait and does not necessarily make child rearing easier (unless you can buy your way out of sleepless nights).

I loved having the boys around in my 30s and 40s. When the time came, Steve and I were both proud and happy to send them to college (and in Chris’s case, college and marriage). We were not quite 50 then. Now Steve and I love being together as a couple in our empty nest while we are still relatively young. Honestly, the nest feels pretty good, not empty at all.

My first thought when I said to myself “my baby is 30!” was that I must be old. Then I realized that no, I’m 55 and hope to live to be 111. I’m just beginning the second half of my life with two fine sons, an excellent daughter-in-law, two magnificent grandchildren and a spouse who I love and who loves me. Life is definitely good. And I’m not old yet :-).

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad