Molly and My Slipcovers

I’m having a bad night. I suspect I’m about to lose a dog that I’ve learned to love in a short time. We’ll know more tomorrow. Ugh. I’m trying not to think about it.

I used to be a cat person. I had one cat I dearly loved. Her name was Molly. She lived to be 21. She had an interesting life in that I found her on the farm that Saturn Corporation purchased. I lived in Franklin, Tennessee, and the farm was in Spring Hill, Tennessee. It was truly another life ago. Molly was one of the Haynes Haven farm cats, and when General Motors bought the property, we had to find homes for the cats and kittens. Molly had kittens and she was in pretty bad shape. Members of the UAW helped with the kittens, and eventually Molly did not have mama responsibilities and I took her. I learned shortly thereafter she was diabetic. Molly was an insulin dependent cat for all of her 21 years. Yes, she lived to be 21. In fact, she lived longer than Saturn Corporation survived. Pretty amazing. She looked just like Chrissy. I knew her so well, I could look at her and determine if her blood sugar level was in trouble.

Molly also went in for a flea bath one day to Cary Veterinary Hospital in Cary, North Carolina, when we lived there. Somehow, there was a mistake made and they attempted to spay her only to learn she was already spayed. I have never been so angry. I actually yelled at the vet. If you know me, I’m pretty laid back so you can only imagine how angry I was. Someone had harmed my pet.

Another time, still in Cary, North Carolina, Molly and I were headed to the vet and a car pulled out and hit us. The man was very nice, but again, I was scared for my cat, and I was not as nice. It turned out he was the CEO of Burroughs-Welcome which later became Glaxo Welcome and now Glaxo Smithkline. He normally had a driver but he was driving himself on this day. I told him he should have stuck with NOT driving.

And yet another time, we moved and she was let out by Mike’s son and was missing for 13 days. I found her under a vacant house. Two friends, Herbie and Patricia Quick, and I got her. I took my shirt off and walked home in a sports bra carrying Molly wrapped up in my shirt. She lived and thrived.

Molly lived in Franklin, Tennessee; Cary, North Carolina; Leesburg, Virginia; Basking Ridge, New Jersey; Acton, Massachusetts, and Boca Raton, Florida. She rode in her cat carrier in the front seat, and when I pulled up at Wendy’s for her grilled chicken, she would stick her paw out the cage anticipating the chicken as soon as I placed the order. She knew! Finally she lived in Virginia where she is now buried in our back yard.

Obviously, this cat was a survivor with many lives.

If you have cats, you undoubtedly have gotten up in the middle of the night and stepped in cat puke. This happened to me last week. I woke up when I heard the cat–Chrissy– throwing up. I got up to clean it up…stepped in it, said a bad word that rhymes with smit, cleaned it up and went back to sleep. The next morning, I saw that she’d thrown up on the chair as well as the floor. She’d thrown up on my WHITE slipcovered chair. Yikes.

Here’s one shot of the damage. It smelled like fish. She managed to get it on the ottoman cover, the chair cushion cover and the chair cover. Very thorough but she could not help it.

I got slipcovers so that I could wash them if this type of thing happened, but I always wondered “would they really wash up well?” It was time to test them.

I took the slipcovers to the laundry mat, and I put the $5 in coins in, turned the machine on hot with a Tide Pod, and I crossed my fingers. When I brought them home, I hung them across the clothes line. I could not tell top from bottom. BUT, this story ends well. They cat puke and fish smell were gone. I wrestled those slipcovers on and I’m happy with the result!

I’ve got that chair dressed up for fall. The living room is so pretty this time of year.

At any rate, yes, slipcovers (at least slipcovers that are well made…thank you Danette Mayfield) do wash well. I did use a steamer on them to help relax wrinkles, but it was not difficult, and as you can see by the picture, a few wrinkles do not bother me. Cat puke bothers me. Wrinkles do not.

The Quilt of Many Colors

Last winter I started making a quilt top. I love old, scrappy quilts where nothing matches. Mine is not old and scrappy, but very little matches on it. A friend on Facebook suggested naming it “The Quilt of Many Colors.” I liked that name and that is what I call this quilt top. Here it is…

What I”m working on today is a 5″ border of a small black print that will go all the way around the quilt. I’ve laid the fabric beside the quilt.

Finally, the quilt will be edged in a black and white stripe fabric…

So the whole thing will look something like this..

And the best thing yet, is that this quilt will be backed in this fabric…

I’ve tried making a quilt top before with little success. There are some really good quilters in Mendota, and I am intimated by them. I saw my cousin, Alisa Lamb, put together one of these quilts with triangles sewn together for her daughter, and I thought..”I can do that!” So..I did. I’m also going to sew the 5″ border on it, but that’s it for me. I’ll be taking it to someone to do the actual quilting, put that cute dog backing on it, and to add the striped binding.

After this, I’ve gained even more respect for quilters who do the whole thing.

I rent our guest house as an AirB&B, so this quilt will go in that space. With white Euro shams, white bed ruffle, white pillow shames, it should work pretty well.

Best of all, I finally made a quilt top!

Update! So after I wrote this I planned to just whip out the machine and sew the borders on the quilt top. But no…wait! Because I have the attention of a gnat, I sewed the right side on the wrong side of the quilt. Here’s what it looks like and I”ll be spending the evening seam ripping.

The New Website

I decided to opt for a new theme for this website. If you blog, you’ll generally purchase or find a free template to use. This is a free WordPress theme/template called Twenty Twelve. I actually had someone else create my old site. I didn’t want to do that because I want to make some changes to this on my on. It means I”ll have to learn how to do a few things. I can do it. Tonight I created the header graphic and inserted it. It wasn’t hard and I can change it easily.

Next up, I want to change the position of the header. I want it to be at the top of the page instead of below the page titles. This will require learning how to change the Style Sheet (CSS). I’ll work on that later this week.

I want the site to be cheerful yet simple, and I love polka dots. My mother called polka dots “poky dots” and I was mortified whenever I heard this come out of her mouth. Now, I get a good laugh and a fond remembrance of my wonderful mother. So…I went with a polka dot background, and I’m inserting them here.

Here’s to Mom and Poky Dots!

Side Effects of My Shingrix Vaccine

In May, I received the first of the two-part series of the new Shingrix vaccine. I’d had the old vaccine about six years ago. The CDC recommends anyone over age 50 get the new vaccine as it’s far more effective than the old vaccine.

At any rate, I received the second of the two-part series on Monday. I had been warned about side effects on the first vaccine but, outside of a sore arm, I had none, so I dismissed the warnings as being a bit extreme.

Yesterday, I did feel a little achy and tired in the morning, so I took Advil and laid around a bit. However, in the afternoon, I went to into town to help a friend with interviews. About one hour into the interviews, I felt terrible — so much so that I got up and left. I headed home and the 17-mile drive from Bristol to Mendota seemed like 100 miles. I could not wait to get into bed. I took two Advil, fell sound asleep and got up this morning feeling great.

I’m glad I received the vaccine. I have a high school friend that almost lost her vision in one eye because of shingles. She still travels to Duke University for continued care of her eyes. My mother had shingles, and I recall her talking about how painful it was. I do not want shingles.

And..the warnings? They are not extreme. If you take the vaccine and you work, take it on a Friday so that you have the weekend to “feel bad.”

The Restart

I started this blog in 2012. I was leaving my job and I thought I was reinventing myself. Maybe I thought I’d be a world famous blogger. I am not sure. Whatever my intent, I did enjoy it, and I met a lot of people. Then I took a turn, and I became a small business owner. Never did I realize that by taking that step, I’d discover a confidence that lived inside of me. In 2015, when I made that step, I stopped writing in this blog — with the exception of a few entries here and there. Truthfully, I didn’t like the way it looked. I didn’t like what I thought it would be. While I had the desire to write things down, I didn’t like doing in on the fluffy site that I’d loved just a few years before. It no longer felt like me. I’d changed.

We closed our 4th season with our small business this year, and I’m not going to waste the 8 months or so we have before we reopen. I want to accomplish some things. I decided to start with my blog. I wanted a new look…so tonight…I wiped out the old and I started with a basic theme which, maybe I’ll customize a bit. It’s not pretty but that will force me to learn new things to attempt to make it look better. I’d like to change the name, too, but I am not going to do so as I’ve got that website domain prepaid.

I’m going to enjoy redoing this website, and I”m going to enjoy writing in it.

I realized that there are almost no sites where people talk about aging in the sense that we all age. We just do it. There’s mommy bloggers, health bloggers, book bloggers, home dec/DIY bloggers, fashion bloggers, etc, but I seldom see anyone who is my age. I don’t want to talk about aging either, but I want to be a person that didn’t stop at a certain age. It’s not a dirty word. When a person stops growing and changing, they stop. My hope it that when you call me on the phone, I don’t focus on our birthdays or my health and your health, but instead, we talk about the books we’ve read, the movies we’ve seen, the places we plan to visit, what we learned this week or the room that we plan to paint.

Let’s go.

Garden Day May 28 2018

It is Memorial Day and since the river was not suitable for kayaking, Mike and I had “Garden Day!” It started at 7:00 am. Like all “Garden Days” we have, it began with a trip to Home Depot or Lowe’s. We go more to Home Depot than we do Lowe’s since Lowe’s moved from Exit 7. We had to get some mulch for the back yard.

My back yard has been a source of great enjoyment or great neglect depending on what I’m doing during the summer. This summer I believe, even though we’ll be kayaking ALOT, it will be a source of great enjoyment! Here’s what I’ve been doing.

I cleaned my fence a few weeks ago. It was filthy with mildew. I did a blog post about how I do that a few years ago; and surprisingly, ~~a lot of people~~–oh okay one or two– have sent me emails thanking me. I am serious. Really!!! Apparently, there are people who do not live in an area where they must fight mildew each spring and are not as experienced as we Mendotians!! Here’s the post called “Cleaning Your Vinyl Fence.”

Since I’ve never mastered weedeating, Mike came behind me yesterday and weedeated the border garden area. It left me with sort of a blank slate. I’m intermingling green beans, green peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers in this back yard. The cukes are going in a pot on the stairs. And flowers everywhere.

One of the problems with our back yard is that it is fenced in for the pets so it has to meet their needs first. It keeps skunks out, and it provides us an easy way to let River out to use the “facilities.” The funny thing is that he will not poop in this yard. He refuses. Dr. D’Amato’s place which is just up the road? Now, there’s a good place to poop!!

While I want it to meet their needs, I also want it to look nice. Here’s one of the problem areas. River has dug himself a bit swath to lie in during the evening when he goes outside to sleep. He loves to sleep for a few hours out in the back yard.

So..for me to have anything back there that looks decent, it’s going to have to have a trellis protecting it or be in a pot. I’ve got green beans planted out there … an heirloom pole bean that will grow up the bamboo trellis I made. I don’t put mulch around seedlings. Behind the green beans, I planted cosmos and a few zinnias. I think the small bamboo trellis’ will be enough to deter River from messing around over there.

I’ve even got the Foxglove protected by topiary things. River would love to roll on these. Not happenin’ little buddy!

Got these labels to put in the ground. This reminds me what is a weed and what is flower, and it also lets me know if someone decides to dig around and move stuff. River isn’t my only digger. I have cats. Z is for Zinnia. PB is for Pole Bean. C is for Cosmos.

See how well they work?

Lots of hanging baskets this year. This is a bleeding heart. $10.99 at Cecil’s Market! I think I’m going to have to figure out a way to repot this thing.

I went back in the barn and found a bunch of baskets that I bought TEN YEARS ago. The one in the picture below that is in the center is one of them. I planted Black Eyed Susie seedlings in them. They’ll be pretty this summer. 4

Here’s the seedlings…soon they will climb all over that basket with happy yellow flowers with brown eyes.

I’ve got a lot of New Guinea Impatiens. I’ve been finding the best selection at Walmart. These are planted right outside my steps and apparently snails don’t bother them. It’s a good thing because there are a zillion snails out on the patio at night. I used to stomp them, but a physician friend gave me a new perspective and I allowed them to live; but then this year, because they ate my basil, I went back to stomping them.

And here are the succulents I’ve repotted. I am selling these at Adventure Mendota for $2.50 per pot. I think Mike thinks no one will buy them. Bet he’s wrong. I’ve got about 20. So when I’m $50 richer, he’ll be sorry!

And I love these little pot stands I found at Walmart for under $4 each. They will keep the pesky snails away from my pots. Those green plants you see below are Mandevilla that I over wintered. They look healthy but where the heck are the blooms? They’d better get busy are they will find themselves in the compost pile. Did ya hear that ya lazy girls!?!

Hope you and your family are having a great Memorial Day!!

My KIVA Adventure!

I’m part of a five-person team rolling out KIVA – crowd sourced lending with zero interest — in Southwest Virginia. I woke up this morning and I am 52 percent toward my goal of raising $9,000. For any of you that have contributed (not donated–KIVA is a loan so you will be repaid), thank you.

Here’s my KIVA story…

https://www.kiva.org/lend/1501114

It has been a real adventure. Look at my hair at the podium. It was so hot. I was sweating. This was at the 2018 Southwest Virginia Economic Forum at UVA Wise.

Helping any of the five KIVA participants in Southwest Virginia is helping Southwest Virginia as we reinvent our economy. If this works, and I believe it will — although I’d recommend a smaller loan than $9,000.00 — we’ll have a tool that will enable a small loan for someone who might not otherwise be able to get that loan. Perhaps they are needing a commercial mixer for their cupcake business ran from their home; maybe they need a new piece of equipment for a home cleaning business, etc. Lenders to KIVA are people who are interested in finding a way to make the world a better place.

Everyone should be able to earn a decent living. KIVA is just another tool in our toolbox.

All I Need Is Sweet Tea

National Tourism Week was last week and this week, Mike and I had commitments everywhere. (We own a small kayak company www.adventuremendota.com if you are reading this and do not know us.) This afternoon, however, I took some time and washed the mildew off our vinyl fence and then started washing the house. We live on the river and mildew is always present in the spring and summer. However, since we have vinyl siding, it’s a pretty simple process of just spraying it off with a bleach/water solution. I also cleaned the porch and decided to take a few pictures. These pictures are so small when I entered them in the blog. Ouch! Sorry!

Just a swingin’. See that puddle under the swing? That porch is clean!!! I love the bridal veil hanging basket. Those were just $10.99 at Cecil’s Market in Bristol, VA. I went crazy and bought five.

And here’s one of those $14 chairs from Lowe’s. Honestly, sometimes plastic is just better. We can scrub this and stack this and so on. Want to know about those cute pillows? They were $13.99 at Tractor Supply. I am trying not to buy junk, but I had to have these. The girl in line in front of me said “you could make them!” I told her “no, I cannot, and I sure cannot for $13.99.” Obviously she mistook me for someone who can sew well.

And here’s some of my pretty hanging plants…that sad little center basket has seedlings that I stuck in old, old hanging baskets that were in a corner of the barn. They have been in there for YEARS! I reached down and picked them up with some trepidation because I was worried a snake would be curled. I think once the seedlings take off, however, they’ll actually look pretty. At least I’m trying.

I sure like my plants. Look at that clean, yellow vinyl.

I was in Michael’s and saw fake succulents that look so real. Sorry, I’m not buying. The real ones are so easy and they breed and grow like crazy. Real is definitely better in this case. Besides they are FREE!

And basil? I love basil. This basil came from Walmart (Yes, I am a Walmart Woman.) However, there are tiny little seedlings in the pot that will join their Walmart counterpart.

I hope I can start posting here more. I actually need to revamp this as just a blog roll on the RiverCliff Cottage AirB&B I’m going to do. However, that has been slowed down as a SKUNK died near the HVAC and we didn’t know it for a few days. This has left RiverCliff Cottage with a unique smell that not everyone will appreciate. I’ll be going over and airing that out this weekend.

Thank you for stopping by.

Dark Days of Winter

I love snow. I hate winter. We have no snow, so I am hating winter.

I have spent more time than I should on Pinterest and decided I need a new kitchen. It’s not going to happen — at least not for a year or two. I have had a white kitchen and the cabinets turned yellow, but that was 20 years ago. I assume things are much better now. At any rate, I want a lighter kitchen. At the same time, I’m grateful for the kitchen I’ve had for the past 19 years.

But…at this time of year, I am always a little down. I’m very busy so that helps but still….yucky. I normally turn to organizing, but I don’t even want to do that. What does cheer me up are green plants. I so miss Evergreen Garden Center’s Bristol location. I used to walk through the greenhouse during the winter and enjoy the way it felt, smelled and looked.

I started moving plants into the kitchen. The first thing I did is have Mike put these two small shelves up. I got them at Lowe’s, and while they can’t hold more than about 10 pounds, I like that they are “floating” and you can’t see the hardware.

I did not mean to leave River’s picture there, but there it is. I took the old sifter that reminds me of the grandmother I am named after and put a plant in it. I put an old mixer that also reminds me of her beside it.

Now, when I walk by it, I think of her. She always smelled so good because she had a “bubby” bush and she kept the dried bubby flowers in her apron pocket.

Put some plants on the cabinet. I’ve been rotating them with others in the house so they don’t start to look “poorly” as it’s not the best location for them.

Made a little vignette in the corner and put a plant there as well.

The Sweetest Girl Ever DeeDee got me those little piggy salt and pepper shakers from Magolia Market. I love them. I think of her every time I go get dog food from that jar. The little house plant makes me happy as well. Here’s a close up.

Oink.

Here’s something else I finally put on the wall. Neth made me this clock during his freshman year at college. Two years ago!!

I love it.

These are the worst pictures ever.

I even put plants in my pot rack. Pot racks are out of vogue for the moment, but I still have mine. My kitchen isn’t bright like I want it but it is warm and friendly.

I’m feeling better just looking at those houseplants!!! Does winter make you BLUE, too?

January Weather In Virginia

Our weather has been crazy lately. Less than a week ago, we were right in the middle of multiple days of below freezing weather. The river, which is low due to lack of rain, transitioned to a white popsicle. She’s a “purty” thang!!

So that picture was on January 5, and this is the scene today in my backyard. Today is January 9. What you see on the clothesline is my mattress pad. It was sunny and 60 so I hung it out to dry — and dry it did!!! Weather in Southwest Virginia is always interesting!

It as so nice outside that I put my houseplants outside for some sunshine and a good watering. These are a few of them.

I think they enjoyed it. The taller of these plants is a Fiddle Leaf Fig. Do you know how hard it is to find a Fiddle Leaf Fig in the Tri-Cities? Once in a while Evergreen gets them, but I’ve never been able to get there in time to get one. I called a couple of florists and they thought they could get one for me, but they never called back. So…Amazon to the rescue. I never dreamed that I could get a healthy house plant and get it from Amazon, but folks….it worked. I took pictures of it the day it arrived but I can’t find them. It was mid-August. The plant has grown at least 12 inches since that time. So, the lesson here is that even though it’s always best to shop local, sometimes you can’t. When you can’t, Amazon does a fine job — even with houseplants.