lunch at the Greenway, martini night

It was somewhat of a lonely morning when we got up on Tuesday (2/27)…no Elsie climbing up on Michael’s shoulder to softly bat at his face to tell him to ‘get up’!  No kids snuggling together in the living room (it was a cold 37 degrees in the morning).  But we both agreed that we did the right thing in not allowing Elsie to suffer any more, so we just kept moving.  Michael had an early morning appointment with his AAA rep to talk about some kind of train vacation this summer, and I worked on Mary Ann’s quilt while he was gone.  He got home in time for me to pick up Mary Ann: 

Joanne 

and Anne 

(I think Deb is the odd name out for this group!) to head into Charlotte for lunch at the Greenway Restaurant at CPCC.  

OMgoodness…it was FABULOUS!!!  

Here's what we all got:

white bean & garlic soup

Mary Ann had the filet with fingerling potatoes

Joanne had scallops & coconut shrimp

Anne & I both had all scallops

raspberry tart w/ shortbread cookie crust, chocolate/hazelnut chantilly cream, berries

We got home just after 1:30 and I putzed around the house until 2:30 when Joanne picked me up.  She had some things to get done in Lancaster and I rode along to keep her company and get a chance to talk (since we RARELY see each other).  It was a delightful trip and visit, and when I got home before 5 PM I really wanted to take a nap, but made myself do some work instead  :~).  I finished up the final row of Mary Ann’s quilt:  

Michael was out all afternoon golfing; he didn’t get home until 7:30….they finished playing by the light of a nearby motel.  My honey didn’t care since he came in with a 79…..WOOT WOOT!!  I spent a good bit of the evening cleaning up Mary Ann’s quilt (weaving in ends, ripping out basting, trimming) before joining my honey in front of the boob tube.

You missed Monday night (2/26) which was martini club.  We had a wonderful time at Barb's house...

and under our new 'food format' (which means that hostess can make whatever they would like), Barb said she was so relaxed she had time to read a book!!  The food was wonderful (can't believe I forgot to take a picture of her million dollar spaghetti....it was out of this world!!) 

the ladies divine 

and the salad bowl game was lots of fun (here we are...thinking up our words):

I'm really looking forward to March!

Elsie

The last 4 days have not been good ones my friends.  

Elsie (our kitty) has always been more of a throw-up-y cat than I was used to, and Michael and I have known since we had her spayed that she was a special needs kitty (she only has one kidney and her organs were not exactly in the normal places, she had a broken tail and a club paw).  

But for 15 years she has been such a love-y and good kitty.  

Last Friday she started throwing up.  Michael and I didn’t even realize how much until we started talking about it at bedtime and realized how much stuff we had both cleaned up.  

The last few bits I cleaned up had a pinkish tinge.  Elsie stopped eating and drinking on Friday, and her behavior changed as well.  

Instead of sleeping for 18+ hours a day  :~), she just couldn’t seem to settle..she kept wandering around and wandering around…it seemed like she was trying to get comfortable.  

So, we made a Monday morning visit to the vet and said good-bye.  To say it was heart wrenching is a vast understatement.  Michael and I had only been dating about 2 - 3 months when we first met Elsie…so she has been ‘our’ cat from the beginning.  One of my ECQ quilting buddies had rescued a pregnant cat and we told her we were interested in a kitten.  When we went to pick out the kitten, we took Chloe (my dog at the time).  All of the kittens ran away from Chloe and hid behind a screen, but after a couple of seconds…. Elsie came back out.  She was still hissing and spitting and stabbing with her paw, but she came back out so she was the one.  We named her Elsie after the Borden cow (ok, if you get that reference, you are officially old  :~).  She managed to get along with 2 dogs (both Chloe & our current dog Cookie), to play and chase and mock fight and cuddle up with.  

As a matter of fact….she climbed up on Cookie Sunday night while I was reading in the living room.  

She weathered the 2 day trip when we moved from Connecticut to South Carolina like a pro, and loved exploring our new house.  I am so glad we enclosed the deck last year so that she had a new place to explore and to visit the ‘outside’ world.  She always, ALWAYS found the newest, soft thing to lie on…generally the latest finished quilt.  And she was like the ‘princess and the pea’….always finding the deepest pile of soft things to take a nap on.  

So basically,  Michael and I have spent the last 4 days loving on Elsie as much as we could…but with each day it became more and more apparent that this wasn’t something that was going to get better.  So, yesterday morning we said our good-byes…

and we are bereft.

Tara's gift of mini-quilts

You might remember my Connecticut friend Tara, who got married last October:   

She and my friend Mary Jo are in a sewing group together and the group decided to make a gift for her.  Since she works at home, they got her a mini-quilt rack and made quilts for each month…something to brighten up her home office.  Here are all of the pictures:

this is Mary Jo's on the quilt rack!

Wasn't this a terrific idea?

desk cleaning

Michael left for golf Saturday morning 92/24) and I spent the day doing sucky, but necessary life things.  My desk started out like this:  

and now looks like this:  

I still have a stack of greeting cards to go through and match up envelopes...I will probably give most of those away to a local nursing/assisted living home.  Cleaning out my file drawers should help with keeping my desk a bit neater....many papers piled up because my drawers were so full there was no room to file anything!  My recycle and shread boxes are certainly a lot fuller this morning!  Desk cleaning and file drawer cleaning (3 down and 1 to go) were a necessary beginning to doing our taxes.  Our personal tax info is all pulled together, but I still have to do my tax stuff for Quilt Devo.  Michael had a performance in the evening and said they got 1/2 of a standing ovation…the other 1/2 of the audience was a group of ‘really old people’, who couldn’t really stand up  :~).

One beautiful picture before I go….BG is doing a block of the month, and finished her February block…I LOVE the colors and the block: