Happy Birthday to Me

Have you seen that movie? It was one of my very first dates in high school. Of Mike, the guy who took me to the Bedford Mall (well, his father drove) to see it, my mother would always say, "I wish I could put him on ice!" Meaning, of course, that I should marry him even though we were much(!) too young to consider any such thing. Though technically, in NH, I was legal to marry when I was dating him...with parental permission and judicial waivers...At any rate, my mother picked us up at the end of the date and when she heard I had eaten chocolate ice cream (we had strolled around the mall for a while) she said, "Annnnnnnnnnna! You can't eat chocolate ice cream without getting it all over your face." While true, you can imagine how hard I was wishing for a hole in the floorboards to spit me out onto the road below. When I think back on him, he's probably most like the dude of any of my boyfriends: intellectual, physically large head, quiet, dark, and handsome. But, being from NH, he could ski and the dude, not so much. Of course, I haven't skied since I went away to college lo those many years ago making the dude's lack of shushing skills a moot point.

Wow...what I meant to tell you about was the fabulous gift I got from Paula D. (We were once F&S exchange partners. If you can imagine my exact opposite in the stitchy world, I'm pretty sure it is Paula: seven kids and a husband who is a pastor? preacher? how you say in English? I don't know, I'm still hung up on the seven kids--I can't even handle the one dog. Really, just today the dog got so mad at me because I wouldn't let her out to chase rabbits that she spilled my beads for "Martini" all over the floor. "Look, Mama,* I made the floor sparkly!")

Paula stitched me Lizzie*Kate's "Autumn ABCs" and finished it as a pinkeep with sage green beads around the edge. PUMPKIN! How perfect is that? She also sent quite a package including Just Nan's "Frightful," (more pumpkins) LHN's "Moon and Stars," and Sheepish Designs "That Dern Parrot," which turns out to be one of those patterns I didn't even know I wanted that I am in love with. The envelope also held two skeins of silk mori that match a skein of Northern Lights, two skeins of Crescent Colours, two of Six Strand Sweets, (which are my first. I know! Did you even think I had any stitching virginity left?), some gold very fine braid, and a postcard from the Gulf Coast of Alabama.

Thanks so much, Paula. You've outdone yourself!

Paula also did a really good job for the tourism bureau. When the dude saw the postcard, he asked, "Is that what Alabama looks like?" I told him it did along the Gulf Coast, and he decided we should visit Alabama some day.

*I actually hate when people say I am a dog mother. First, she is--or I am--the wrong species. Also, dogs are easier than children since you are allowed to crate a dog and leave it home alone. Social services frown on you doing that to children. We're teaching Stella to learn our names: "go upstairs with Anna," the dude will say--we are certainly not mommy and daddy. Though, like our heroes Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis, we sometimes call each other mommy and daddy. No we don't. Why would you even believe any part of that sentence?