21 Years, 10 Months and 3 Passports

We were sitting around the other night talking to a friend visiting from Ecuador. Jason was telling us all about our friends from Tahoe that have moved there and the adventures they've been having. As we listened about how hard it is to get any official paperwork done there, the discussion turned to visas and passports. I saw Ernst get a look of panic on his face. I realized it then too - Did our passports expire? As he ran out to the office to check, I heard him say, "I think they're good til August!!" Nope, they expired in April and we had to get new ones.

My scary passport story happened in Kiev, Ukraine - 20 years ago this summer. We were in line at the airport to leave. We were hot and tired and, after one week in the former USSR, we were looking forward to getting back to Austria. It was the trip of a lifetime, but seven days in Kiev in 1993 was one day too long. We were standing around trying to look calm in front of the gun toting guards, longing to get on the plane and eat food that had been nowhere near Chernobyl.

I was fanning myself with my boarding pass and my passport - my essentials for getting on that precious airplane. Then I looked down and only saw my boarding pass. I started repeating very loudly "OMG, I lost my passport! OMG, I lost my passport!" Others standing in line started helping me look for it, including Milton Henschel and Theodore Jarecz. The OMG statement just kept coming out of my mouth like a mantra. The thought of having to go back to that sad city and find the US embassy and spend another night there - it was just too much to bear. A large man in the next aisle lifted up his foot and there it was! My little blue book had flown quite a distance with my vigorous fanning. Lesson learned - don't use important legal documents to cool yourself unless you're in a country that you'd like to get stuck in for a few more days.

Why the look of panic when realizing we had let our little blue books expire? Because this summer I'll be fanning myself in Ireland and then holding my passport close in Romania! We're going first to Dublin and meeting some friends in the Romanian congregation there. Then it's off to Bucharest to work in an area about 40 kilometers outside the city. Kind of a goofy European vacation, but it was the same price to spend some time in Ireland first as it was to just travel to Romania only. While waiting for our new passports to arrive and getting ready for the trip, I'll have to practice saying "ODM, mi-am pierdut pașaportul meu!"

Stamped in my memory.

Costa Rica is pretty, but don't go in July.

If you smile, the border agents give you more stamps than your husband.

Go to China, just go!

EU country stamps have little symbols of planes, trains and automobiles. Cute.

Polish is impossible, but Poland is pretty.

Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Ein bisschen.

Prague was way better in 1993 before Rick Steves had to go and tell everyone about it.

I'll say it again, go to China!

Pampered pooch pilfers pan of pickled peppers

In truth they were not pickled. The pan was full of roasted mushrooms and bell peppers, but pickled has a better ring to it.

Peppers prepared for people

Ernst came home the other day from Costco with gobs of produce. Great, we love our veggies. But of all the weeks! With four long days of volunteer work ahead of me and a last minute house guest thrown in, what was I to do? The rule should be - you buy it, you cook it. But life being life, I got busy and had a Veggie Chop-a-Thon, because I love to celebrate the fact that my husband lives on plants and never complains about it. I made three dishes that required lots of washing and chopping, dicing and slicing: a yellow curry Thai dish, a nice big salad and a large pan of roasted peppers and mushrooms. I spilled some raw veggies on the floor, but the dog would have nothing to do with helping me clean up. Finally, I had the produce under control, dishes loaded, sink and counters cleaned, floor wiped up and dinner almost ready to be gobbled down. Ernst got a little taste of the roasted vegetables and declared them delicious. I decided to wait for the rice to finish, but man did those mushrooms smell good.

While crashed out in bed, I heard Molly barking. I could see she was in the kitchen and could hear she was very unhappy about something. "Ernst, go help Molly, I think she got her tennis ball stuck under the cabinet." She was not barking at the ball. She was barking at the now cooled pan of roasted veggies Ernst had left sticking out of the oven. Did she want them? That ship had sailed - she was barking because she had almost polished them off and was mad that she couldn't quite reach the rest! That night we all had a plant-based dinner - Molly was sent to bed without any kibble.

Poor pan of pilfered peppers

Pretending penitence for purloining produce

Going bananas over animal prints

The Elephant quilt

Two baby quilts in a row, I could get used to this. Lighter fabric, smaller size, cute prints. Not to mention the huge selection of adorable baby fabric in the stores. Finding the perfect look should have been so easy - a walk in the park.

When I was shopping for the black, white and yellow elephant quilt, all I seemed to find were warm-colored safari prints. I went nuts over a banana and monkey print combo - audibly lamenting that I was not making a monkey quilt. So when I checked out the baby registry for the second quilt, I was tickled to see the parents were going with a safari theme - a warm-colored one at that. The bananas were in! And the monkeys and elephants and giraffes. No lions and tigers or bears, but most of the major players are here. It was back to the fabric stores to find all the animals I thought got away. Of course then I saw some grey, white and yellow elephant fabric I missed the first time. Ugh! Buying all new fabric - it's a zoo out there.

Bananas and monkeys

Giraffes

Mama elephants and baby elephants

The whole collection

After I cut out all the squares and sew the Xs on them, I grab a nice clean sheet to lay them out on to choose the pattern. Even for the small baby quilts, I have to do this on the floor of the living room so I can step back over and over to see if the layout is balanced. That's why I use the sheet, to keep the quilt squares clean and fresh. After the design is set, I stack up the rows and number them for sewing. I come back to the sheet for the snipping process, keeping my quilts fresh and clean until the entire process is done.

All squared up

"Ah, fresh from the wash. Is that lavender Downy?"

Naturally, diet is a touchy subject

Lately I've been rethinking what to call our diet.

Vegan? Sounds like we spray paint people who wear fur and leather.
Plant based? Sounds like we only eat kale and banana shakes.
Plant centered? Sounds like the nursery department at Target.

I'm still thinking, but I hope we never sound like this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lraDNDuFNj8&sns=em

The post closet cleaning spring rain storm

What a wonderful feeling - a purged closet all ready for the hot weather.

• Summer skirts lined up in a row. 
• Summer blouses waiting to be ironed. 
• Sandals waiting to show off my twinkle toes. 

Now if I could just find the umbrella, where did I put the umbrella?

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

An elephant hunt for Noah's quilt

My mission was clear from Noah's great-grandma - make an elephant themed quilt in grey, white and yellow. So many aisles I walked up and down, looking for just that. I saw lions and tigers and bears, oh my did I. But all the safari animals were in warm earthy colors, not right for this baby's ensemble. I even saw some monkey and banana fabric and exclaimed, Monkeys, why could it not be monkey themed? The monkeys had to hang tight, they were not for this quilt.

My elephant hunt continued on - they had to be hiding somewhere. And then they appeared, adorable as can be. White elephants, rows and rows of them, on black cotton. Black is the new grey, right? Like 50 is the new 40? Whatever, I found the cutest fabric for the elephant quilt for Noah from his great-grandma! 

Sticking our necks out for a good cause

"Look what Molly found!" That should have been the clue that my evening was about to get interesting. Ernst came in with a big box. Hmm, what could it be? Buried treasure? A gold watch? An adorable kitten? Nope, this was going to be a very interesting evening. In the box was an extremely lively turtle! A turtle that was clearly thinking outside the box. He wanted out and he wanted out immediately.

I was repulsed and fascinated at the same time. My vision of a tortoise was a s-l-o-w m-o-v-i-n-g creature, not the little whipper snapper we had before us. It was healthy but not very happy! The encounter with Molly was all bark and no bite, at least none that got past the shell.

What to do with a turtle that came with no instructions? We called our neighbors, Hey do you want a turtle? I emailed a friend in Reno who was just saying she would like a turtle. Ernst asked yet another neighbor if he would like a new pet. We wondered if we should put up Found Turtle signs.

Ernst got on Google and identified it as a Box Turtle. He also discovered S.T.T.C. Sacramento Turtle and Tortoise Club. They have 950 members. Who would have thought? We called the founder and she said I could bring the little guy (or was it a girl?) to her house. If she wasn't home, I could put it in the aquarium on her front porch that is strictly for found turtles. Really? There are rescue tortoise people who live in the Greenhaven Area?

Off I went on my adventure with the idea in the back of my mind - Is this some sort of sick plot to kidnap the turtle rescuing public? Pushing that thought away I tried to drown out the scratching from the cardboard box with a riveting NPR interview. OK, I can't remember a word of it, but it helped at the time to keep my mind off a possible escape plot being hatched behind my seat. Hatched - what if it's a girl turtle?

Felice met me at the door and took our little guy into her turtle tested hands. It's a boy, she declared. How old, I asked? No telling, but he was a grown-up. They can live 150 years. And while we had tried to feed him lettuce and apple, they prefer meat and bugs. As I left, she was telling him there were lot of girl turtles there to meet. He'll be kept for one month in case he's a stray and then adopted into a loving home where he can live outdoors - without a dog.

"Yum, yum! Turtle Soup!"

Ready.

Set.

GO!

"Who'd have thought there was a Turtle Club?"

Turning whines into water

Mornings are not my thing and heat annoys me. Not a good combo for getting up early and being part of the RBC drink crew in summer. The past four days had me up in the morning chill, making coffee and tea for the first onslaught of liquids. Then it was onto the main task of our drink team, keeping people happy and healthy and hydrated. I even wore an apron and a baseball cap and yes, the dreaded hairnet. The kind that looks like a spider web. The kind of hairnet that only 0.00000000000047% of the world's females looks good in. That woman is not me. Sorry, no pictures of the arachno-do. 

How did we hydrate the many volunteers at the Rancho Cordova hall build, even in this early blast of heat? Water - lots of it. And ice, we can't forget the ice. Powdered Gatorade mix, a must. Sweet tea for some, unsweetened for those who think sweet tea is for hummingbirds. Lemonade, there just has be lemonade. And the crowd favorite, even for the rough and tumble framing crew? Water infused with cucumber and lemon slices. Spa water, as we called it, was the popular choice from the line of orange cooler buckets. I'll be dreaming of orange buckets and ice running out. Maybe a nice cold one would help?

-

Unfortunately the yogurt machine was broken - a No Go on the Fro Yo.

How I hung out on Earth Day

Monday was Earth Day. I don't think it noticed much difference.

My stubborn refusal to buy paper towels and paper napkins - is it because I'm "green" or just because I'm cheap? A little of both, but it's all good. Reduce - Reuse - Recycle - Refuse to buy stuff that you only use once. (No worries, we still use TP.)

Now that the weather is so nice and warm, it's time to get our clothesline up at the new house. We have a set of two retractable units that will be anchored to the covered patio just like at the old house. They provide lots of room for hanging out the laundry, but they can be coiled back when we don't want our guests whacking their heads on our unmentionables. Installing this is one of the many things on our Spring Summer-to-do-List. Until then, I have to make due with a rack type dryer from IKEA. Now if we could just find that big box of time we lost in the move...we know it's somewhere...as soon as we unpack it we can get to work on that Spring Summer Fall List.

Needing more elbow room.

Needing more elbow grease.

photo credit - nasa.gov

It's a jungle out there

Oh, the joys of cutting up and sewing with new fabric! Even the elephants line up and cooperate. Not quite ready for its debut, here is a little sneak peek at a jungle inspired quilt.
Instead of dealing with the interesting people at the Goodwill Store, I did this one the way most normal people do: I shopped at the fabric store. It was fun to walk up and down the (organized) aisles and find just the right fabric to pull this one together.