Little Dramas...don't make them Traumas

I'm sitting in an almost empty hotel room killing time.  Most of my travel stuff is well organized and placed in the truck ready to travel.  We brought the dog with us and she is really sure we should be with all our stuff.  She gets a bit dramatic when she thinks we might be in danger of being left behind.

Ol' Abner is having seriously extreme dental work this week.  Half the work was done yesterday and he had to return to the prosthodontist's chair for another marathon of poking and grinding and insertion of more temporary teeth.  This process of repairing damage from years of smoking, grinding teeth while sleeping and an aversion to dental floss has taken a little over a year.  Deep scaling and surgical repair of his gums was completed by the periodontist and he's had good reports on his upkeep since.  He's learned to love the floss.  Preceding this set of appointments, prep work involved measuring and molding.  We thought he would come away with caps and crowns and implants that would last for the rest of his life.  He has temporary caps on his top teeth now and will have temporary caps on his lower teeth at the end of today.

Guess that means we'll have to make another trip to replace the temporaries.  Let's hope that can be accomplished in a one day trip.

Meanwhile, I think the dog and I may just go for a walk.  There is a lovely walking path with ponds and bridges nearby.  When we are there, she doesn't seem to care if our stuff is with us or not.

Metamorphosis

A phone call from daughter and middle grandchild in the midst of irrational exuberance resulted in a short trip down memory lane last week.  They were in a store contemplating the purchase of pre-cut 5" squares of cloth.  Daughter called to asked how many squares they would need to make a quilt.  Just like that, with no reference to said quilt size or choice of pattern, the question was asked.  Of course I inquired whether the intent was to complete a pillowtop, lap quilt, table runner, place mat, or small wall hanging.  NO, NOT a dinky little thing like that, (they set me straight quickly) but a full size quilt worthy of gracing their respective beds.  Notice I use the "bed" word in the plural.  The plan called for each to make a quilt for her very own bed.  Furthermore, this ambitious exercise would be accomplished totally by hand.  A vague mental calculation of the cost of one square times several hundred required to construct just one quilt and I tactfully suggested they might want to cut their own squares.  That led to types of cutters best suited with realization that I owned multiples of the things they would need to begin.  

I offered to prepare a small care package with some starter supplies for them and trotted down to the basement to gather extra cutters, mats, patterns and instruction books.  Of course I couldn't resist sharing a few choice pieces of scrap fabrics.  As I sorted through my "glorious collection" of fabrics (as Ol' Abner calls my "stinkin' stash"), memories surfaced of projects completed years earlier.  I couldn't resist including the remaining five or six yards of a fabric older than my marriage.  It is an olive green with bright orange tropical design from which I made a full length halter top culotte, oh so many decades ago.  It was one of those purchases made when the price was so right that all the remaining fabric on the bolt was bought for a pittance.  That's one swatch of cloth we won't have to move again.  Now I can just wonder what it might become!