Thursday, March 28, 2013

A Fork in the Road

The past week has been a whirlwind. I had planned on showing you pictures of mine and Linda's finished BOM quilt. That got pushed to the back burner. A week ago I was hit at the fork in the road. I got a call that my uncle was in the "dying process". If you remember last year while we were snowbirding he got gravely ill, was hospitalized, then to a nursing home, then a Rehab center and then it was decided he needed Assisted Living. We found a nice facility and I moved him in. All was going well until, in January, he decided was NOT going to take his medications anymore! He was on heart medications, insulin, water pills, well you get the idea. He just kept going down hill. Last week he was having difficulty breathing, walking and was confused. He would turn on the stove in his apartment and then turn on the air conditioner. He was also under Hospice care. I had a Hospice worker call late Saturday night and tell me that his confusion was worse, he had fallen and cut his head open, along with he could not find his dentures. Hospice was there 24/7 until the time of death on Monday, March 25. I am so very "Thankful" to all the Hospice workers for making him as comfortable as possible. I got all the arrangement made and now I am in the process of moving his things out of the  Assisted Living Center. I have to have them out by the end of the month. I have been spending whatever time I can packing and purging. Today we are down to furniture. Our son and grandson will be helping me move it out. Then I just have to clean out his refrigerator and I am done. Whew!
That is not all that has happened this week. Hubby guy has been having many health issues. He has COPD, Congestive Heart Failure, and a  form of rheumatoid arthritis which has been causing him much pain. We went to see his doctor yesterday and had blood work done. He has Diabetes! He has been having some depression issues but this has taken it over the top. It has been a very difficult week. Please pray for him.

I will be back with those pictures...soon.

Till then...Piece!
Paula

Monday, March 11, 2013

Going through the "Change".

Did you notice I have gone through the change? Whew! It was tough. The sweating, the hot flashes, the memory loss, then....it came to me  Hugs and Stitches! I wasn't really liking my blog name and had some nasty comments about it. So, I went through the change and came up with a whole new title. Whatda think? Family says it is so me. You see, I am a hugger. I love to get hugs and I love to give them.

It has been a busy couple of weeks and lots sewing has gotten done. You see, about 2 years ago my friend, Linda talked me into doing a BOM with her. We got off to wonderful start but came to screeching halt at block 4. Why? She was in school, doubling up on classes to finish sooner. I was south for the winter and didn't want to go ahead without her. Needless to say, it got stuffed away. When we got home early this year I was going through UFO's. I came up with a plan. Called Linda and she liked my idea of, let's get together once a week and sew a block. We can have this baby done by May. It was agreed that she would come over every Thursday evening and we would each do a block. The last week of Febuary is her husband birthday and that would fall on our Thursday night sewing time. So we decide to get together on Tuesday. Thursday evening Linda calls and her husband was tired and went to bed right after his birthday dinner so she wanted to come and sew. Alrighty! She had a long week-end off from work. Also, her birthday is Feb 29! A leap year baby she is. As it turned out we sewed Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday! We got down to 2 blocks to go. We have been having a great ime doing this and having many fun talks and many serious talks. We also discovered many errors in our pattern. Mostly cutting errors. In most cases we were lucky and one of us would catch it but 1 or 2 still slipped by us. We sewed our last block this past Thursday and now we are down to squaring them up and stitching them all together.
Here are a few pictures of us while on our mission. We even had Mary from our group come and play one night while she worked on a baby quilt.

Linda looks Sew Serious!


 
 
Matching up those seams and flapping my jaw, as usual!
 


Laying out blocks! A very scrappy quilt. Not sure if this is mine or Linda's. But they look the same.


Got a haircut! She doesn't like it but I think she looks fabulous!

Mary working on her baby blanket.

Getting ready to square it all up. We had to of have had a good time...look at the mess!

In between the sewing I did some cleaning and re-organized  a closet. You are  lucky I don't have a picture of the before.


Look at the room I have to go buy new clothes!

I have hardly any sweatshirts left! Why are hubby guys socks on MY shelf?

We had a rainy, sleety snowy night and woke to this.


A beautiful winter wonderland, if was December! I am thankful for our neighbor who plows out our driveway. That leaves the front walk for me to do. Man! That snow was heavy. Just look at these poor trees from all that weight.


We have 6 of these in the back and all of them look like this.

Went the doctor today to get lab results. Looks like I need to change my eating habits. Rabbit food diet for me.  :(

Have a great day!

Hugs