7 Quick Takes

---1---

The 4 kids who are home all went to the midnight show to see Dark Knight Rises last night.  I heard them come in safely and go to bed around 3 a.m.  I am so sad to hear about the tragedy in Aurora, CO this morning!  I can't imagine what kind of desperation or hate drove the shooter to his actions.  He and the families will be in my prayers today.

---2---

Yesterday, my kids woke up after 10 a.m. having gone to bed at a reasonable 10-11 p.m.  I think I'll have the house to myself most of today since they went to bed after 3 a.m.!

Do you think they store up all this sleep to help them get through the school year?  I wish it worked that way!

---3---

In the summer of 1986, Mom and I were shopping for my wedding and she bought me 10 place settings of everyday china for a gift.  I've always loved it, and when the young 'uns came along and started breaking it, I bought a couple of sets of sturdier stoneware that I don't particularly love and packed away my beloved Blue Danube.  The time has finally come to put away the stoneware and break out (poor word choice!) retrieve the Blue Danube !

Now I have to find replacement pieces because it's out of production and hard to find, but I'm going to use it and enjoy it because Mom would have wanted that, and it will be a happy reminder of her every day.

---4---

Ok, so that made get teary eyed.  I had sort of forgotten that the 5 year anniversary of her death is 2 weeks from tomorrow, even though I discussed it with my dear friend with whom I had lunch the other day.  Her mother died just a couple of weeks before mine and we bonded that summer through our shared grief.  That's just the way it is---you forget for a while, or remember without pain, and then something suddenly strikes a chord that brings back the suppressed pain.

---5---

On a much lighter note....Author/blogger Melissa Wiley and her husband, comic book writer Scott Peterson are now co-writing a web comic called Into the Thicklebit, which looks like it will be a lot of fun.  Stories of their adorable children will feature heavily, I think.

Lovers of children's and YA books, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and DC comics should be reading their blogs. :-)

---6---

What do you do when you have tons of free time without the kids?  There are always a zillion and one things I want to do while they're underfoot (not that mine are young enough to be underfoot) or around and talking at me, or asking me to drive them somewhere, or when I have laundry to do and food to prepare.  But now that I have practically the whole day to myself, I'm wasting it on the computer.  The internet belongs in the same category as Target:  a giant time sucker of a black hole.

---7---

Katie and I spent approximately 3 grueling hours, made only sightly less grueling by the addition of sangria at noon, making a simple shirt for her out of an Ethiopian blanket.  We were copying designs on a website (that makes simple shirts out of Ethiopian fabrics, probably by Ethiopians), and it still took forever.  And she's not sure how much she likes it, or if it needs to be modified.  I'm going to make her wear it all day today (when she wakes up) to find out!

She'll be wearing it while we start working on a slipcover for a yardsale chair that she bought.  Prayers would be appreciated.  Thank heavens there is still plenty of sangria!

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