Quilter Returns Home at last, Home at last

Simply amazing how delightful it is to be home.  Honestly, I tried to create some bloggie stuff while we were gone but I could not remember what I did before to add to the Threads.  Oh well. I hope you missed me !! 

Brandy and I had decided to head out a couple of days early for several reasons.  Clearly, we needed the rest, but, most importantly, we decided to stop and see some friends along the way --  in Baton Rouge we had lunch with a dear friend, Betty Lee.  Then we headed to Ocean Springs to have dinner with our new friend, and my sister's old friend, Betty Sue. We spent the night in Ocean Springs and then headed on down to Shellchase, our beach house.  I am planning to do this type of thing more often in honor of my sister--stop and smell the roses, see the friends, hug them all.  Remember, one can never have too many hugs. 

Just walking into the house was calming.  The Plan:  do some sewing, walk on the beach, watch some movies, and, just plain, relax.   Well, first, I forgot the cord to the sewing machine.  So much for that part of The Plan.  It rained from the moment we arrived until the day we left. So much for the "walk on the beach" part of The Plan.  Skip to part three of The Plan, watch some movies.  We did that in spades.  We probably watched 7- 8 movies that first day.  I did not even knit-while-watching. Where was Dianne?  Who was this person and what was she thinking?  Relax?  Obviously, I was exhausted and in La La Land when I made out that Plan.  By day two, the real Dianne emerged.  I decided to repaint the entry, kitchen and dining room.  (A while back I had found the original paint for those rooms in the basement and had carefully gone around the room "fixing" the scuffs and dirty places.  The next day it looked like someone had put band-aides all over the walls.  The paint had obviously faded over the years.  What a mess.)  I started painting around 6 a.m. and stopped painting around midnight.  Lookin' good.  The problem? the floors were not lookin' good compared to those nice freshly painted walls, so, I headed to the store to get cleaning supplies and then back home to scour the floors. Brandy was sweet enough to help so we were able to finish sometime around 1:00 am.  The next day we left for Lakeland, all relaxed from our weekend at the beach, yeah, right.


As far as the show was concerned, it was a good show for us.  I took nearly 150 books with us and sold all but eight books.  That was really fun.  What always amazes my daughter and me is that we always have a 10' x 10' foot booth but it never, and I mean NEVER goes together the same way.  There are always "issues."  Of course, there are always issues with  a Mother/Daughter Team.  This is especially true when that Mother has an entirely different approach to life than the Daughter.  Somehow, we survive but I am always relieved that neither of us owns a gun....

Then there is the Heading-for-Home Plan.  We left Lakeland on Sunday and got as far as our beachhouse. Smoooth and according to Plan. This New Plan included getting up early the next morning, getting all of the sheets washed and back on the bed so we could have lunch with yet another friend, take care of a couple of errands, and then head to Ruston.  Well, first,  our lunch lasted until 3:30 in the afternoon.  Hey, we had not seen this incredible gal in years making for some serious catching up time.  Now, after lunch, we still had those errands to run.  Since it is about an 8-9 hour drive to our house, revisions of  the New Plan were in order.  We now had a New New Plan which involved heading back to the beach house and leaving the next day.  Tuesday morning, we were gonna be good....get up by 5:30 and leave by 8:00.  Close--we left at 9:00.  By our standards, we were ON TIME.  In fact, we were practically ahead of schedule....so it could not hurt to stop along the way at some shops. Did you know that Florida strawberries were ripe? Gotta get some of those.  Wait, that sign said Lousiana strawberries are in.  Definitely gotta get some of those.  Look at that cute shoe shop....hey the GPS had said that we should arrive home by around 6.  So what if we are a couple of hours later than that....midnight is not too bad.   A couple of shops and a nice dinner later, we  are on our way.  Ooops, where is my cell phone?  Uh oh, I left it in the restaurant.  Jeez, what was the name of that restaurant?  what town were we in?  how far back do we have to go?????  After several calls on Brandy's phone, we found answers to those questions, and the phone.  It was going to put us over two hours later.  I do not know about you but driving until 2 a.m is not all that appealing to me.  So, we stopped at a hotel and arrived home around 11:00 in the morning.  Did I mention that Brandy had a customer to go see that same day.  Of course her car would not start and when we tried to jump start it, it caught on fire? 

I think I will stay away from Plans and head to the beach.....I need to relax......