A Very Thoughtful Gift

The other day Dear One and I made a trip to a big box store to get a few "critical things" in case we need to hunker down for a while.  Things on that list were things like Vitamin B-12 and Vitamin D3. Peanut butter. Vinegar for cleaning surfaces. Also a giant box of nearly fat-free frozen French fries!  Guess who found that item to be "critical"?!!

While we were filling up our car with gasoline afterwards, we received a phone call.  One of the great blessings of being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that we all have the blessing and responsibility to minister to one another.  There are passages of scripture what tell us we should love one another and serve one another.  We take that commandment very seriously. We are assigned to specific people through revelation. We are blessed as we serve and we can bless the lives of those we serve.  Dear One ministers to families and I get to minister to sisters.  In turn we are ministered to by brothers and sisters.

Now back to the phone call.  It was my ministering sisters who wanted us to know that they had been to our house and had left a gift hanging on our door.  I love gifts!  I especially like surprise gifts.  This is the gift we found when we got home an hour later:

This was such a thoughtful gift: toilet paper, tissues, Tylenol, hand soap, and cough drops!  All in a lovely bag.  I am going to leave them together in one place so in case we need them, they will be right there and ready for use.

This gift made my eyes wet to think of their kindness and the thoughtfulness that went into providing it to us.

It made me want to go out and do likewise.

Health Kick: Lemon Water

There has been a lot of talk about lemon water being so good for your body. I decided to try it.  Well, I had tried it before but fell off the wagon for some reason.  As I am writing this, I have fallen off the wagon again...or at least it has been three days since I last made some.

My version is made with hot water.

Into an 8-ounce glass I put 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice then fill with water as hot as I can drink...which is basically as hot as the faucet sends out.  Drink it down.

Many years ago an elderly gentleman was visiting in our home....like more than 90 years old elderly.  Being a foolish girl I asked him how he lived to be so old.  He said (in his somewhat heavy Dutch accent), "Every morning you need to drink a glass of water, hot what you can drink."  That is why I make lemon water with HOT water.

So the most recent time I made this lemon water I asked Dear One if he wanted some.  He thought a moment and said, "Yes.  Put in a little sugar."  Not what I had in mind for a healthy kick to start the day...but, of course, I did it.

Can you tell which one has the sugar in it? 

Healthy Thursday: 5K Walk!

A month or six weeks ago a friend invited me to participate in a 5K walk for diabetes.  Family and friends have fun in marathons, half-marathons, lots of 5Ks, and even Century Bike Rides.  Surely I could do a 5K walk, so I put it on the calendar.

This morning I left the house with my stroller at about 8:45AM and drove reasonably fast to the starting point, signed the waiver (which include animal bites and falls!!!), used the facilities, picked up a bottle of water and a banana and headed out 8 minutes before the crowd was scheduled to leave.

There were lots of things to see along the way:  a youngster soccer game, some plants I had never seen before, some stone railway markers....B 137...no idea what that meant, for quite a while. In fact, until I saw a B 138 which I thought must have meant I had walked a mile. I did not know what the B was for, though.

Boston  138 miles to go!

Multiple bridges, a couple of road crossings, and 50 minutes later I came to a sign telling me I had reached the turnaround point!  That made me very happy!  Probably a quarter of a mile back down the track the rest of the walkers passed me, moving fast.

Interesting plants.

At the turnaround point I stopped and sat on the stroller seat, pulled off my shoes and removed as much gravel as I could then returned the shoes to my feel, and headed back to the starting point.  I hoped the trip back would go faster.  After a while the friend who had invited me and the Walk organizers caught up with me going to the turnaround.  They must have stopped for a while there, taking down the sign, and then headed back to home base.  They passed me some time later.

WRJ 5 marker....almost done!

When I came to the stone marker I saw on the outbound trip, I noted that it said:  WRJ 6.  OH!  I got it then:  it was six miles to White River Junction.  The other side of the marker said B 138...must mean 138 miles to Boston.  Duh!  This used to be a railroad track that had been turned into a hiking trail.




Eventually I did get back to the starting point.  There was a woman there with a camera who told me that now I got to have my picture taken...not something I really enjoy but she said she took everyone's photographs, so I let it happen.

End of the Line!

Several people smiled at me and I was handed a beautiful yellow chrysanthemum and told, "Congratulations!"   That was so nice. I love flowers.  Of course, I think it might have been a relief to the organizers to have me cross the finish line because then they could comfortably go home knowing all the walkers had come in.


It was a nice day.  Shins and ankles recognize the effort!

Whoopee!

Today was a real changeable day: I woke up early after a very bad night...leg cramps, nightmares, too much pain everywhere,  etc.  I had a meeting to attend but had to beg off and spent a good deal of time in bed but by noon I felt a little better and started working with the knitting machine again...the one that the very kind lady on FREECYCLE gave me yesterday.

The first few strips I knit with the machine nearly made me tear my hair out, but I kept telling myself that I was smart enough to do it...same as yesterday.  That really didn't help very much, actually.  Eventually it occurred to me to try YouTube, and voila!  There was a whole course on using the newer version of the knitting machine.  The final strip attempt today was 36 inches long...needs to be 48 inches long, so I am making progress, though still a long way from getting 6 strips completed.

In  the interest of sanity I stopped with the Incredible Knitting Machine around 2:30, picked up my bag of sock projects as well as the spinning workshop mitten project and went to Elsie's for knitting group.  It was SO GOOD to see her and Sharon and Cameron again. It has been a whole month since I was there with them.  Last week Elsie had a wonderful class at the library teaching kids to knit. She had 8 kids and one mom--7 girls and one boy who, by the way, picked up on Elsie's Continental knitting style and learned to do both knit and purl that way!  Good for him.

Anyway, after knitting with Elsie, Sharon and Cameron and watching Cameron's slide show of his trip to Ghent, I batted out for a shortish set of errands to include getting another skein of yarn for the strips and border of the homeless blanket. I do not believe it will be completed by Monday night, but will be much closer.

So, after coming home I worked a bit more on the last strip then picked up the mitten project. and WHOOPEE!!  I finished the first of them. It looks a little funny and it fits a little funnier, but I love it.  I showed it to Bob and he said..so? in a very sweet and gentle way.   I told him he should be impressed because it was the first project knitted with totally me-weighed/blended/carded/spun yarn.  I am so happy to have it done.  Parenthetically, I was so sad to hear that Bonnie, one of our spinners, was run into by a unthinking woman who was having her dogs drag her down a ski slope.  When she ran into Bonnie she broke Bonnie's shoulder/upper arm.  Bonnie's doctor says it will take about six months to heal before she can start spinning and knitting and weaving again.  So sad.  Plus she has missed her trip to Alaska and the Iditarod.

Mitten photo will be here soon.