School is open…

and we have been getting ready with new clothes and school supplies for my youngest grandson who is in 9th grade this year. He is the smart one of our bunch. ;o) He is not as enthusiastic about going back to school as he has been in previous years. He has grown like a weed this past year, all his new clothes seem to be twice as big as they were last year. They’re not, but it seems like they are.

I have been sewing on quilt tops. I just have the last three borders to put on the quilt top for my youngest sister that my mom started for her. This is going to be a joint effort. Mom started it before she died, I worked to complete the top, and my sister is going to try her hand at quilting it. It is a pretty top: Hexagons stitched to a square background and sashing added between the squares. I will take a photo before I send it to my sister and post here.

Barbara has one quilt ready to bind, and only has three blocks to go for another of the tops she has been working on. I think she wants to quilt the squares and then sew the squares together in this second quilt. I will help with that as she has not been feeling well with this last round of chemo she has been getting. We will make pictures of the finished quilts before she gives them away.

The new chemo is called the “red devil” and from what it is doing to her, I believe they have the name correct. Her hands and feet dry out something terrible and the skin peels off in chunks like a callous. They hurt her, especially when the old dead skin peels into fresh live skin. She has been putting ice packs on her head during chemo and she has not lost her hair. One of the nurses told her to try it and see if it worked, and so far it has helped.

The weather here is cooler, and I am glad. Quilting is better when the weather is not as hot. I am doing more quilting now that the weather is better. It also helps that I am feeling much better than I have in a long time.

We had really bad weather earlier this year and large hail that damaged almost every home and business in town and most of the cars. It has been months and they are still replacing roofs and windows and siding that was damaged. We had damage to the roof and siding and every window on the West side of the house. The siding and windows on that side has been replaced and we had a new metal roof put on that should last the rest of our natural lives. We had double-pane storm windows put on and are replacing the rest of the windows of the house as we can afford them. We have just ordered a new window to replace the big picture window on the front of the house. The old one is not a storm window and ‘sweats’ like crazy all winter, so the new one will stop that.

I ran across an old email address for a girl I used to email years ago. She had moved and I had computer problems and lost a lot of my email addresses. But I ran across an old letter from her that had an email address on it and I thought I would write and see if by chance she still used that address. She did! I was so pleased. She and I have written several times since then. She is a precious person and it has been great catching up on our lives since we last wrote. We used to attend the same church until she moved with her family to another state. I have thought of her often and I am so glad we connected again. I found that she also suffered from cancer since we lost touch. But she is doing well now, Praise God!

Speaking of cancer, I can hardly count on both hands just people I have in my circle of family and friends that have – or have had – or have died from this terrible disease. My heart goes out to them and to all who have suffered from this thing and to their family and friends. My prayer is that a cure will be found and that no one should have to go through this again.

Well, it is getting late, so I will close and leave you with this thought: "Life may not be the party we hoped for... but while we are here we might as well dance!"