Top 100 Signs I Married the Right Man No. 87

87. He cleans up creepy, dead animals from our yard so I don't have to.

Let me explain: When I went down to the basement this morning to put in a load of laundry, there was a dead squirrel belly up in the grass. Nora isn't into squirrels (or a.m. kills), so I figured it either fell from a nearby power line or ran into one of the neighborhood strays. But thirty minutes later, when I went back out to put the laundry in the dryer, the squirrel was inexplicably belly down. Hmmm...

I don't know if it was possessed, half-dead, or turned over by another stray, but regardless: I left it there for Bert to take care of when he got home tonight. Ugh. I really can't handle anything larger than mice.

Top 100 Signs I Married the Right Man No. 88

88. When I'm not feeling well, he brings home Chinese food and wonton soup so I don't have to cook. Just like he did in college.

OXOX

Craft No. 9: The Quilt

My sister has an amazing knack for always giving me awesome presents. From the baby bunny she picked out in the hospital gift store on Day One, to the Kate Spade bag that showed up under the Christmas tree a few years ago, she has a history of excellent taste and foresight. For her birthday this year, I pulled out all the crafty stops and – in the spirit of little sisters everywhere – attempted to mimic her prowess. So I made her a quilt.

I’d never made a quilt before, but my amazingly talented friend J. does it all the time - I got one for my shower! :) - and she makes it look really easy, so I thought, "How hard could it be?" Oh man... I tried to pick out fabric myself and failed - that's how hard it can be! So when J. came to visit this summer, I enlisted her help and expertise and finally made it out of Jo-Ann’s with 10 yards of (hopefully) Sister V.-esque fabric. (Picking out fabric for someone else is hard!)

Then I cut it into 2.5”x5.5” strips. Ten long yards of fabric worth. Whew. I ended up not needing all of it – maybe Sister V. will get a set of matching shams for Christmas - but I cut it all regardless. (First quilt, remember? I'm still figuring out how to estimate these things. ;) (This was also when I figured out that quilting is physically much harder than I realized. How do old ladies do it? My hand had morphed into a claw by yard ten. Now I get why they invented fat quarters and jelly rolls.)

Then I had to sew it. I wanted the strips to be random, but with no two adjoining colors the same. (Although a few did sneak in by the end of things. Whoops. I told Sister V. it had more character that way. ;) I started by pairing each color with a different color and sewing them in twos. Nora volunteered to help just in case gravity failed.

Next, I took each pair of strips and arranged them in longer strips on the floor to make sure there was no 'color overlap' with the rows around them. Then I sewed. And ironed. And sewed. And ironed. (Quilting always seems so charming; I never imagined it could be tedious. Next time, I need to set the ironing board up in front of a Star Trek marathon or something...)

Due to my own procrastination, I didn’t finish the borders before the river flooded, so I had to evacuate to Connecticut with my sewing machine. (Bert loves me. He evacuated with the sewing machine and the stray cat without a peep. ;) Like everything else, I kept the borders simple - no corner blocks - so it was just a matter of more sewing. And more ironing.

I ran out of time to drop it off at the quilting shop before I left for Africa, so I left it with J. with strict instructions to, “make any and all decisions necessary to get this sucker finished.” (She knows more about this stuff than me, so the quilt was probably in better hands at that point. ;) And when I got back two weeks later, it was done! And just in time for Sister V.'s birthday lunch! Ta-da! Success!

Whew. And now I can breathe. It was a fun project and I’m happy with the way it came out – the ladies at the quilt shop couldn’t believe it was my first quilt! - but it was a lot more involved than I thought it would be. I will definitely quilt again, but I think next time I might work on something a little smaller. I definitely bit off a bit much with a queen size. :)

And for your entertainment, here are some other things I learned about quilting:

Quilting is for math geniuses.

Sometimes I tell people the only reason I didn’t study engineering was because I couldn’t handle the math. They think I’m joking, but seriously: at Tech, architecture majors were required to take two semesters of geometry AND NOTHING ELSE. (Frightening? You betcha. More frightening? A good deal of those two semesters was spent making paper models of tetrahedrons – a useful skill in modern construction, let me tell you.) Let’s not even mention the fact that I squirmed through high school without ever taking Trig. (I don’t recommend this. It makes Calc a lot harder and Trig ended being one of those mystical things I did need to know later on in life.)

Since this was my first quilt, I didn’t even bother with a pattern. Instead, in homage to my trig-less architecture degree, I created a design I call “Running Bond.” (That is a joke. Running bond is a way of stacking bricks. It is also a really easy way to sew strips of fabric together and pass it off as “modern.”)

Quilting is not a summer sport. At least for people without AC.

Do you remember that terrible, no good, very bad week this past summer when it was like a gazillion degrees and 200% humidity? Yes? Well, that was the week I had to do a lot of ironing. It was like my own personal steam bath. Lovely. In the future (sans AC), I’ll save my heavy quilting for the winter months when the extra warmth will be more welcome.

It’s good to have someone on standby.

I’d like to give a big public thank you to my friend J. who helped me from the start, answered all my inane questions like, “What is binding and do I need it?,” and navigated all the quilting shop ropes for me. You are amazing!

Quilts are priceless.

In the past, whenever I’d price quilts at a fair or country store I’d go into something akin to cardiac arrest and think, “How could they charge that much for a blanket?!” Haha. My naiveness kills me sometimes, but I totally get it now. Between the fabric, batting, binding, quilting, and TIME, I don’t think it’s really possible to charge enough for a quilt. Maybe that’s why they make such great gifts!

I love my sister.

Nuff said. Enjoy! :-*

Commerce No. 5: Shoppes at Susquehanna

One of the little known perks of living in Pennsyltucky is improved proximity to everyone I went to college with. This is especially wonderful when the bestie (aka "the bad cop to my good cop" / "the woman who introduced me to the huz") visits her parents for the weekend, thus cutting the usual drive time of seven hours down to a mere two. (I thought my 12 hour college commute had me well-trained for long car rides, but after 18+ hours to Joburg, I'm down with anything that doesn't involve transoceanic travel.)

We met at the Shoppes at Susquehanna - the smallest upscale outdoor mall I have ever seen - for lunch and a bit of window shopping, before going out to dinner with her parents and grandparents at the Capital Diner - the nicest roadside diner I have ever seen. (Hburg seems to be a land of extremes - always a good thing for your capital city, right?) It was a quick visit, but a good one. I almost feel like myself again. :-*

Cat No. 10: Fleas

In the meantime, let's talk about the unpleasant surprise upon my return: fleas. And lots of them.

I've since been told this is a crazy statistic, but I've owned cats for 16 years and never once had a flea problem. Oh sure, there's been the random flea dirt here and there, but nothing a few drops on the back of the neck couldn't fix. Because I live in the Northeast, I've struggled a lot more with tick control, which in hindsight seems like a cakewalk considering how easy it is to pull the little buggers off. (Gross, I know, but I am the designated "tick remover" in the family. I'm kind of over it.)

Nora was itching the day we got home, but it got worse as the week wore on. And she has the mood swings of a PMSing fifteen year-old, so when she's miserable, everyone's miserable. As in, "let me jump on your head in the middle of the night and scratch for ten minutes so you will wake up and be covered in flea dirt and be as miserable as me" miserable. That miserable.

The neck drops didn't work this time, so I moved on to an all-natural spray from Petco (where the resident pet expert informed me this is a "terrible" year for fleas). It smelled nice and Nora didn't seem to mind it, but she was itchy-scratchy again within a few hours. Next, I broke down and bought a flea collar. This was entertaining since Nora is usually 'free-range' and couldn't walk straight with a collar on, but it didn't work either and - in the end - just made her more miserable. Into the trash it went. (At least that will be flea-free.)

In my desperation, I did something I have never done before.

I gave her a bath.

Well, technically, I have done it before. When she was four months old, I gave her half a bath and swore I would never do it again. (This was just prior to her "Instate Quarantine" Episode, which is a whole 'nother story. Can we say high maintenance?) That's how bad it was then and that's how desperate I was now. A few people online recommended using blue Dawn soap (aka "oil spill bird" soap), which seemed like a cheap fix so we gave it a whirl. I wore jeans, two long sleeve shirts, and fully committed myself to getting absolutely soaked. And what do you know: it worked!

I don't think the fleas are totally gone, but it helped. A LOT. (And her fur is show-cat soft! :) She's going to the vet on Monday for her yearly shots, so hopefully they'll be able to give me a few ideas for future bath-less treatments.

But on the bright side, I think I can consider this Future Mom Training for those guaranteed delousing sessions. (Fun Fact: Sister V. and I caught our childhood lice in Disney World. How terrible is that?) Dunk 'em, shampoo 'em, and you're good to go, right?

And...I'm back!

It is a little strange to wake up on a cold and rainy Pennsylvanian morning with the Susque still high - although not as high - and Nora still driving me crazy and think, "Did the past three weeks really happen?"

I am currently sitting at my Mac, drinking coffee, wearing the first sweater of the season, and internally debating whether or not to turn the heat on. A week ago today, I was sweltering in the back of a very cramped Land Cruiser while riding through the northeastern South African mountains. It is amazing how quickly life moves.

Regardless, I am back with lots of stories, photos, and videos from my two weeks in Africa. Bert and I got back to NEPA last night, so I'll be playing catch-up for a few days, but I hope to have some sort of in-depth post up later this week.

I hope you all are doing well. Missed you. <3

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Tomorrow afternoon I leave for Mozambique, so the posting will be a little light (aka nonexistent) around here for a few weeks. The past few days have been wicked crazy - evacuating, packing, tieing up loose ends, general running around like a maniac - so I'm really excited to finally get on the...er...road. Air? You know what I mean...

However, even though we haven't left yet, I've already had Miracle #1. This afternoon, I abruptly realized that my doctor prescribed me the wrong kind of malaria medicine and immediately went into a frenzied panic. (Why didn't I double-check this weeks ago? Good question...) I was prescribed the night-terror-inducing (but cheap) Doxycycline instead of the sleeping-friendly (but pricey) Malarone. Crapcakes. I called the travel clinic in PA, explained the whole situation, and asked if they could call in the prescription to a pharmacy in CT. The woman wasn't sure if she could, but she went out of her way to check and it worked! (She will be receiving a thank you card upon my return. :)

So after some much-needed and very-calming tea, brownies, and chit-chat with my friend J., I ran to Target and got there just before the pharmacy closed. I wasn't sure if my out-of-state insurance would work, but I gave it to the woman just for kicks and prayed for the best. I knew Malarone usually runs upwards of $150, but our trip leaders had asked us not to take Doxycycline and I had no desire to risk two weeks of bad dreams. The pharmacist went behind the counter for a few minutes to fill it, then looked up at me and said: "Well, I've never seen this before."

(That's one of those things you never want to hear from anyone remotely connected to the medical profession.) I nervously replied, "Oh? You never saw what before?"

"Your insurance acutally covers this. I've never seen an insurance company cover this before."

Hot dog! I don't know why a Pennsyltucky insurance company would be concerned about their clients contracting malaria - the mozzies from the Susque aren't that bad - but I'll take a $25 co-pay over a $183 prescription any day. Thank you, Lord. He truly stays one step ahead of me. <3

(And thank you, Bert, for working hard for that insurance that covers your globe-trotting woman. I'll miss you. XO.)