Lucy's Story - July 4, 2003 to July 10, 2012

Lucy at 4 1/2 months old

 It all started in 2003 at a charity auction for the Children's Heart Fund in Sacramento, California.  One of the items up for bid was a pick of the litter from a breeder of Siamese cats.  Now, mind you, I have always been allergic to cats so this was definitely not on my list of items to take home.  However, when the bidding for this $250 pure bred Siamese cat started, no one raised a hand!  Well, I thought, if someone will just start the bidding, this will be really good.  So I raised my hand and bid $120 just to get things started.  To make a long story short, I bought the pick of the litter from a Siamese cat breeder for $120 that night.  What was I thinking!!

In August, Sara and I got to pick out my kitten!  Lucy was so very calm and actually licked my hand when I picked her up.  How sweet, I thought.  Little did I know that she would not always be so sweet but would totally capture my heart.  She was only six weeks old and the cutest little thing! And my allergies were really pretty under control with her.  I have heard that Siamese have a different cat dander and not so bad for allergies and it was true with Lucy.

What do you want?  

Just resting here.  Let me know if
you need me.

Oh, yes.  Forgot to say why she was named Lucy.  My mother passed away early in 2003 and I must have had her in mind because Mother's full name was Virginia Lucile Harmon.  "Virginia" just was too many syllables for a cat's name, so "Lucy" it was.

I had never really had many pets so was totally clueless about how attached I could get to this little critter.  She was what I called my "puppy cat" because she followed me everywhere.  And Siamese do not meow like other cats.  They talk to you.  Lucy and I would have amazing conversations in "Siamese."  She loved quilts.  She could tunnel under a quilt on the bed and disappear for her naps for hours.  At 10:30 each night, Lucy would come to tell me it was bed time.  How a 12 pound cat can take up so much of a queen size bed is amazing! She definitely took her half out of the middle!

Lucy must have
seen this.

Got to keep this
quilt from floating away.

Just inspecting.  Nice quilt!

Oh boy!  You finally put
in a tree for me to climb.

 I could go on and on about my life and adventures with Lucy the Cat, but Lucy was one of the best life coaches I have ever had.  It is a fact that our pets live for the moment.  They are not concerned with the past or the future. They do not have any "could of, would of, should of" moments.  On Tuesday, July 10, Lucy got sick and passed away very unexpectedly.  I will miss her so very much and will probably cry easily when something reminds me of her funny little habits.  But I will try not to dwell in the past or worry about the future.  As Lucy would say to me in Siamese, "Savor the moment."  Rest in peace, Lucy.

"I am the queen
of the house" pose

Camp Grandma 2012

Camp Grandma in California 2002

Now that the Garden Walk is over, it is time to start planning activities for Camp Grandma 2012!!  Every year since 2002, my family has tried to get together for some fun and adventure and cousin bonding time.  The beginning years were held in Orangevale, CA at the pool in the back yard.  When I moved from CA to Indiana, the adventures have expanded with travels here to Indiana, a week on the beach in Kauai and, last year, exploring Yellowstone National Park.

Swimming at the
 Ferguson's 2008

This year, 2012, my daughter Jennifer is coming from Idaho with her four sons, Greg, Chris, Michael and John and with Greg's darling wife, Brooke.  I am soooo excited to see them all again.

Adventures for this year are still in the planning stages but I just secured a reservation for a 34' double decker pontoon boat with slide for a day on Lake Monroe!  Other ideas include a day up in Indianapolis at the Children's Museum and River Walk, a trip to Center Point to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center, maybe get up to Indian Field to a baseball game or even down to Holiday World.  Not so sure about Holiday World.  There is also the Creation Museum over in Cincinnati and the aquarium there.

The Dayley family on
Poipu Beach in 2009

12-passenger van for getting
 us all to our adventures.

Maybe we will just hang out here in Bloomington and the kids will finish making their board game.  Last year I could not find my Monopoly game so these kids proceeded to make their own game with some poster board, colored paper and legos.  They named the houses and such after streets in my neighborhood and called their game "Gramopoly."  Gotta love it!


So July 25 Camp Grandma 2012 begins!!  Can't wait!

Garden Walk 2012

So last year sometime, I got a call from the Bloomington Garden Club.  They have a Summer Garden Walk each year and wanted to know if I would consider putting my yard on their Garden tour in 2012.  Wow!!  There are six gardens featured each year so this is really special.  Anyway, I have been working, working, working in the yard trying to make it look worthy of being selected for the Walk.  Tomorrow is the preview day so I needed to be done with it today.  So here are some pictures of what the visitors will experience in my little place in the forest.

 This is the view of the back deck looking from the stairs coming down from the upper deck.  Lots of pots of flowers (because I am really not a "gardener")  They called my landscape a "container" garden.

 And here is the view from the hot tub looking back at the forest.  After 2 hours of tennis this morning and 5 hours of yard work and mowing, the hot tub really sounds good right now!

And this is the view from the driveway looking toward the front porch with the rock fountain in the foreground.

And this is the west side of the house, the one that gets the most sun.  The roses and dahlias are really pretty this year.  The little bench is for those Kodak moments like when Sara goes to her first prom.  We have had very little rain so the new sprinkler system is making my yard look like an oasis in the dry desert.

I am really excited to have the yard in the Walk but am feeling a bit nervous that it will not be as special to the visitors who come as it is to me.  This is my favorite spot for that latte in the morning or to work on the binding on a quilt.

Wish me luck!!

Using Up the Scraps

I love scrap quilts!!  Love, love, love them!   This is a log cabin quilt made entirely from scraps!  My obsessive compulsive behavior sometimes leads me to some really fun adventures.  This one started when I was having trouble disposing of scraps of fabric from quilting projects.  I decided to cut the scraps into one-inch strips and make as many log cabin blocks as I could.  The fabric had to be able to be categorized as a "light" or a "dark".  And the piece of leftover fabric had to be at least one inch wide and 1 1/2 inch long.  So I started with a one and half inch square and just started building the log cabins.  Lights and darks.

Now, I really thought I was going to run out of scraps and then I would know how big this was going to be.  However, there seems to be an endless supply of scraps that fit my criteria in my sewing room.  In fact, there are 324 five-inch log cabin blocks in this quilt and probably enough scraps left to do it again!  Do it again?  Oh no, I don't think so.  Not right away anyhow. 

It is time to move on to some other quilt projects that have been waiting patiently.  So off I go to the cutting table to make more scraps.  TTFN!

Happy Birthday, Michael Dayley

 I think I finally figured it out!  Been playing with Picasa for a couple of days now and found out how to upload a picture.  At least, let's say, a picture looks like it is going to upload to my blog.  Yippee!! 

The process of learning how to get a picture into a blog took many paths over the past few days.  I am not one to dwell in the past.  So pictures of the past are really not something I spend a lot of time on.  But, wow, it was really fun looking at all the pictures I had saved over the years!  Some of them, I have no idea who is in the picture or where I was when that picture was taken.  Does everyone have pictures like that?  It was very nice to get all the pictures organized into folders.  Still have some work to do on that and need to get all these pictures stored somewhere in the "cloud" so I do not have to worry about which hard drive and where they are.  Anyone out there have a really good way to store pictures digitally?

Anyway, back to the picture above.  Today is my grandson Michael's 14th birthday!  Happy Birthday, Michael.  This is my favorite picture of Michael, buried in the sand on the beach in Kauai a few years ago.  Hope you have a terrific day, Michael!

Now I am off to Friendship Stars sewing bee with great quilty friends.  TTFN

First step into the Blog World

Here I go, jumping into the world of bloggers. I have no idea where this is going to take me but I have to give it a try. There are so many things I want to share with my family and friends. Like, for example, this last weekend, my tennis team from the IU Tennis Center were in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to play in the Midwest Regional Championship for USTA. Now we did not win but we did not come in last either. And we are officially the 7.5 Women's Combo league 2011 champions for the state of Indiana. Thank you to Debbie (our captain), Susan, Sarah, Katie, Carol, Sharon, Mary, and Jocelyn for being such a great team.

Now I have to learn how to post pictures to this blog. Wonder why the tab for adding pictures from my iPad is not working? I am off to do some more research on this. More later! TTFN!