All of my tomatoes are very acidy! ACK! I'll have to remedy that next year. The slice of tomato that I ate a while ago left a burning sensation on my lips. EW! It tasted great though : )

I have sooooo much black thread on my floor from all the sewing I have done for this show....I could probably make an entitre pair of pants out of it!

The Full Monty opens on Sept 10th and I've gotten over the biggest costume hurdle. I had someone else make some of the breakaway pants for me and he did the crappiest sewing job I've ever seen in my life! One of the actors got cuts on the back of his legs from the raw velcro edges. So, the four pairs of pants that this person made.....I HAD TO REDO EACH OF THEM ! It took me many hours to undo all that velcro, sew on seam binding and resew the velcro. I figured out that on 7 pairs of pants I used about 21 YARDS of velcro and on the shirts about 1 yard! I am the VELCRO QUEEN! : ) It's all done now, 7 pairs of breakaway pants and 7 breakaway shirts! YAY FOR ME!

I still have many pieces of wardrobe to gather together and fit but that's a piece of cake compared to fixing someone elses bad work.

I am STILL waiting for the breakaway thongs to arrive in the mail. Hopefully they will arrive on Tuesday.

I think this show is going to be fabulous! I've been able to watch some rehersals and laughed my ass off : )

I'm off to eat dinner and drink more wine and revel in the fact that I got over the damn costume hurdle! : )

As we slide into "back to school" season I find that I seem to have misplaced summer! It flew by so quickly : (

Some good things: The garden is producing alot of nice plum tomatoes! I go out to the garden every day and pick at least 8! I get them before they fully ripen otherwise the critters get them first! There is a large platter on my kitchen table where the tomatoes are ripening. I can hardly wait until there are enough to make a nice tomato and red onion salad! YUMMY!

I'm working on The Full Monty as Wardrobe Mistress! I have people helping so it's not overwhelming and I'm loving it! I am learning how to delegate and which people have the best skills. The breakaway pants have proved to be quite a challenge but I think what we did will work just fine....let's just hope they hold up to all the rehersal and performances!

My Father In Law is having alot of difficulty with diabetic wounds on his toes....he's in the hospital now. I'm not sure what he's going to do. The choices are: major vein surgery (to improve blood flow to the toes - even though the 5 stints previously inserted haven't worked as well as expected), amputate toes, or continue having the nurse come to the house everyday to care for the wounds. The fear is that if the toes do not heal that infection could spread up his foot into his leg and then amputation may be the only choice. We won't know anything for sure until my Husband talks to the Dr., which hopefully will be today.

So, now it's time for a shower, a bit of sewing, then off to the theatre.

SPRING IS HERE! Today is the first really nice spring day so I was inspired to work in the garden. My FIL began this garden years ago but he's too elderly to work it so I'm taking up the task. I love having the fresh veggies and herbs and I'm willing to do the work.

I've already measured (outside is about 98' X 45' with a large area inside for planting - 26' X 40'. I transfered the measurement to graph paper and plotted out where the trees (there's many fruit trees but they need alot of TLC.....let's just say that the birds around here are well fed!). This garden gets direct sun all day!

The library had a great book, The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward C. Smith. He lives in Vermont so I figure the info will be appropriate for NJ as ell. I am using alot of the information from this book and my knowledge is growing an growing.

Today I began a compost heap. I got 4 large metal stakes and pounded them into the ground so there is a space approx. 4 X 4. Then I put chicken wire around it. First layer was leaves. We have TONS of leaves here, nice dry and brown, perfect for compost. Then I added a bit of fruit scraps and peels. Now I've got to get some manure and keep making piles. Hopefully I'll have a hot compost pile and plenty of nice fertilizer for the garden! I'll need to work on it a bit at a time to get it working proper and my hope is to be able to use some of this for planting in May.

I also began preparing one section (3' X 15' ) of the garden. Last week I dug up alot of the weeds from that section. Today I put down a layer of leaves then covered it with thick black plastic and weighted the ends down with wood scraps and bricks. I am hoping that will kill any weeds remaining.

I'll snap some photos later.....after I've had a nice hot shower and wash the garden grime off of myself!!

Well, it's been a long month or so. My Mother In Law passed on Jan. 5th. She chose to stop dialysis and three days later was gone. My husband, Father In Law and the other two siblings were at the hospital during her last three days and he told me that she was in agony most of the time. Finally she was given sufficient amounts of pain meds so she wasn't in as much pain.
My Father In Law is now spending his days going through all of her belongings, which were many. She kept everything and had two closets full of clothes, plus clothes piled on the floor of the closets. They are gone now, he packed them up and donated them. Now he's going through all the other things she had. This is a long process because he is nearly blind now so he really cannot see what it is he is looking at so every so often he will ask me to identify some items. His vision is so bad that he was holding an 8 X 10 photo of his own son and couldn't tell who it was. And he is keeping lots of crap too. Junk jewlery, cards from 20 years ago, papers that are useless.
He has been very willing to ask for and accept assistance, which is a big change. I think he realizes his physical limitations and we are alot alike in that we like to keep busy. Being idle is not something that comes easy to either of us.
So my focus has been around home lately and I am happy to be able to be there for him and my husband. Although the entire family had gotten used to the fact that my Mother In Law was frequently in the hospital for lengthy stays, she always came home. I think that up until her last days the finality of her decision hit them. I do know that the Dr. spoke to her and told her that stopping the dialysis means she would die in days and he asked her "don't you want to stay here for your children and grandchildren?" and she said "no".
While helping my Father In Law go through her papers I found, in a small wire bound notebook, a diary of sorts that she wrote this past summer/fall. Most of it tracked how she was feeling physically, not being able to sleep, being in pain, being dizzy, things of that nature. But she also wrote how she really wanted to die. As long as I've known her, about 9 years, every time she would go into the hospital she would tell my husband "I should just die, go to sleep and never wake up" and he told me that she always said that to him when her health wasn't good, which was most of the time.
I find it sad that she couldn't find any reason to stay here. I have learned a great deal more about her after her death from relatives and friends. She used to be an active lively woman. Never got the hang of housework but she had friends and family who loved her. She liked to dance and dress up for halloween (they called her "The Queen of Halloween"!.....sound familiar?!), bowling was one of her favorite things as well as travelling. She was independent and could be stubborn (but I think that was a means of survival now that I know more about her history). The woman I knew was in declining health, showed no interest whatsoever in taking care of her health and spent a great deal of time in bed or in the hospital. I wish I could have known her as a younger woman, I think we would have had a better relationship.
Anyway, all of this got me thinking. What is it in me, or what is lacking in me, that I couldn't see past her choices and know her for herself? Why could she not accept what I had to offer? Why did she think I didnt love her (she wrote this in her diary)? Am I that judgemental? Do I lack compassion? I I like to think that I am not but this thought is like a scab that I keep picking at.

Tonight, after we arrived home from visiting my Mother In Law at the hosptial and a visit to Friendly's, I immediately went up to my In Law's part of the house because the door had been forced open by the high winds we are having and I knew it would be really cold. I closed the door and turned the heat up. The phone rang and I picked it up, it was my Sister In Law. So I'm chatting with her waiting for Father In Law to climb the stairs so he can get the phone and talk to her. He makes it up the stairs and I hand him the phone then walk down to my part of the house.
My husband tells me this: He was outside letting the dog in and was knocking on the window because the dog was doing some cute thing and he wanted me to see it. He said he saw me standing in the house, behind the door. The door has a glass window that goes from the top to half way down so you can see if anyone is in the kitchen. I told him I was upstairs on the phone and he says but I saw a woman in the window and it looked just like you. Again I said that I was upstairs on the phone and man did he look spooked!

Maybe it was me....while I was on the phone I was thinking that I need to be downstairs and make sure my son changes into pj's and brushes his teeth.

Wow, maybe I can be in two places at one time! : )