The Sewing Mom

Every year, our high school bands does a march-a-thon, a 10 mile march through the streets of our town. The purpose is to help the band members, color guard and dance team, raise money for their spring trip. This year they will be traveling from Texas to California, so mucho dinero is needed! Today is the big day.

My husband and I watched from the curb as the band stepped off at 9 am to begin the big march. This picture is definitely not the best, we were facing into the sun. It was a mere 90 degrees when they started, I hate to think how hot it will be in a few hours. We are going to meet them for their lunch break at the park, so hopefully I can get some better pictures later.

Note: I have received no compensation of any kind for this post. I simply believe in what this organization is doing.

I haven’t been sewing lately, but I wanted to share this information.  Quilts For Kids is a wonderful organization and I have made quilts for them in the past.  This organization that takes donated quilts and give them to children in need of comfort.  These children may be undergoing chemo therapy, or fighting some other disease.  Having these quilts gives these young patients something colorful in an otherwise drab and sterile environment.  

n addition, did you know that many bolts of unused/unsold fabric ends up in land fills?  As someone addicted to purchasing fabric, I find that to be horrendous!  Quilts For Kids works with fabric manufacturers to take those bolts of fabric and use it for making these quilts.  So, not only are they helping children, they’re also helping the environment by reducing the amount of waste filling up our landfills.  The fabric they receive, they cut and will send you everything you need to make a quilt, as a kit.  You only need to provide the thread, batting and the love.

This is a video of Quilting Master Nancy Zieman interviewing the Chicago area chapter leader.

Ok, I’ve got some ranting to do, so if you want to skip over, go ahead!

My mother-in-law has completely lost her mind! Unfortunately, I’m not just saying this and it’s no exaggeration. She’s always been a little wacky, but now, she can’t even remember what day it is, she is having some major issues. She lives by herself in California and we live in Texas, not exactly convenient for trying to help her out. My husband was seriously considering moving her into our home, but, thankfully, he has reconsidered. When I started pointing out all of the things he needed to consider before making such a big move, he decided it would not be the best thing for our own family.

We started some of our research by visiting SSA.gov, the U.S. Social Security Administration website. You see, she does receive Social Security benefits among other things and we wanted to make sure everything was in order. My husband’s father, her husband, passed away a few years ago and it’s important to make sure she would still be receiving those benefits, even if she moved. In addition, we wanted to make sure that her Medicaid benefits would also stay with her. She does require prescription medication on a regular basis and doctor care occasionally. These items are extremely expensive, something we can’t afford ourselves without insurance, so we needed to make sure she was covered, no matter where she lives.

We also followed up on the life insurance documentation she’s been showing us for years. We wanted to make sure it was correct and valid. We see a lot of those television ads for life insurance for senior citizens and wanted to make sure it wasn’t a scam, thank goodness it wasn’t! She currently lives in a privately owned condo and receives state aide for her rent. We’ve been unable to find anything near us that would be anywhere near the same price range which is why we started thinking we would have her move into our house.

In the end though, we realized that having her with us every single day would be very stressful. My husband has never been that close with her, although he talks to her all the time. The fact that she seems to have a stage of dementia, forgetting things constantly, having to be reminded of every little thing, and having to repeat ourselves over & over, moving her in with us, just seemed that it was going to bring too much stress into our home. We have a teenager and it was also going to uproot her, causing her to change bedrooms among other things. It may sound petty, but I just don’t think our marriage and our family would ever be the same if she moved in, so I’m glad my husband changed his mind!

So, we here in North Texas suffered through 40 consecutive days of 100+ degree temperatures.  The record, set in 1980, was 42 consecutive days.  Then there was yesterday, a day that decided to be different.

For the first time in 40 days, our house actually felt cool.  The central a/c has been running pretty continuously, but with outside temperatures hovering daily around 105 – 109, it was tough to keep anything cool.  Yesterday, I ended my work shift and came out of the home office about 1:30 in the afternoon.  The first thing I noticed was the fact that the house actually felt cool.  Next I looked out the window and was totally amazed at the fact that is was not only completely overcast, but actually looked like it could rain, something we haven’t seen around here since sometime back in June.

I picked up my iPhone to check the weather, sure enough, it said the temperature was a mere 90 degrees!  WHAT?!  I was shocked and dismayed!  By 5 pm, the newscasters were telling us that we had failed to break the record of consecutive 100+ degree days because we never broke 100 on Thursday.  I must admit, while the temperature felt so much better than what we’d been feeling for over a month, to know that we missed tying the record by only 1 day, and beating the record by only 2 days was a bit disappointing considering we’d suffered through this heat wave for so long.

Oh, did I mention that today’s high should hit 101?  Tomorrow also.  So, if it hadn’t been for Thursday, the record would have fallen!

I know school doesn’t officially start for a couple more weeks, but I have to tell you, today felt like the 1st day of school!

I dropped my daughter off at 8 am this morning for band camp. This is not just any band, but the Allen High School marching band, the largest marching band (high school or college) in the United States!

The freshman actually started band camp 4 days ago, the upper classmen joined them today. They meet 8-3 everyday. With it being so hot (we just had our 36th consecutive day over 100 degrees), the are marching from 8-11 in the morning out on the football field. They break for a 1 hour lunch at 11 and then move indoors in the afternoon to work on the music. Believe it or not, in just 2 weeks, they will perform their traditional show in front of all the parents and family.