More Stormy Weather

Hello and happy Tuesday to everyone. We have rain predicted to start falling in a little while with a chance of severe storms, so I’ve gotten all my errands done this morning and will stay home the rest of the day. It is hot and humid out there and I don’t do well with humidity as we all know. We’ve been busy with Mom this week. She seems to be fixated now on the fact that Dennis and I are living together. 🤷‍♀️ She wants to know why that’s necessary!? She has asked us that every day for the past five or six days. When Dennis told her we’ve been married 46 years, she didn’t believe him. She thinks we’re just living together.  I wondered why she had been so rude to me the last few days. Every time I did anything for her or suggested anything to her she would say, “well I’ll just wait and talk to Dennis about that, you don’t know anything about me.” Apparently that’s the newest thing going on in her mind. It’s so sad. It keeps us on our toes though, because we don’t ever know what’s going to be next. Last night she thought the entire family was all living together in a huge house and we had put her away somewhere and are pushing her out of the family. She wanted to know why I was there when we’re not even married and she wasn’t allowed to be. Oh my goodness!

On to happier things. I finished another wheelchair blanket for the facility Mom lives in. I think the colors together turned out well together.

And another wheelchair blanket. It is done in my Mom’s favorite colors. Both blankets are made using Caron One Pound yarn from JoAnns’s. The peach color on the outside is from a solid color skein and all of the other colors are part of a variegated skein. As I said, my Mom would have loved this. Anything that was in a peachy tone she would have thought was beautiful.

You see my model in the above picture and both puppies on my lap early this morning. We’re taking care of Lizzie for a few days. It’s been so much fun and the girls are loving it. They are both cuddle bugs. They really like soft blankets too.

Here we were on a car ride on Saturday. Both girls love to ride in the car. I don’t know why I always tilt my head up like that unless it’s because I can’t see out of my bifocals to take a picture otherwise! Lizzie always puts her head on Dennis’s shoulder as he’s driving and Zoey is constantly on the alert for anything moving.

Connie from the blog “Far Side Of Fifty” sent me this wonderful sock yarn the other day. I love to use Patons Kroy Socks. It knits up beautifully with nice patterns and makes very hard wearing socks. Thank you so much, Connie. I appreciate you thinking of me in the middle of everything you’ve had to do recently.

I thought I would show you a photo of Dennis‘s new truck topper. We’ve used it for one camping trip and it makes things so much easier than the tonneau cover we had before. In fact, since he has an 8 foot truck bed, we could even sleep back there if we needed to. I think that sounds like fun, but he’s not nearly as excited about that as I am. He does really like the topper though. 

That’s about it here. Dennis is volunteering at the open door mission today and tomorrow. He’s usually there eight or nine hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’ve just been getting some errands done and doing a bit of cleaning today. Now I think I’ll sit down and knit on my current pair of socks. I must confess to the fact that I’ve been playing on my iPad more than I’ve been crocheting or knitting lately. For some reason, I’m addicted to Spider Solitaire and a block building game, as well as Wordle. I’ve been on quite the winning streak with Wordle though, and I hate to mess that up!😂 This is fairly unusual for me, as I would usually rather be crocheting or knitting than anything else. I’ve decided that I’m allowed to do this once in a while and not to beat myself up for it though.

I hope all is going well with all of you. I think we’re getting into the hot and humid days of summer in the Midwest. We’re both getting excited about heading toward the mountains at the end of the month. If all goes as planned, we should be gone about a month. Take care everyone.

Blessings, 

Betsy

Stormy Weather

Surprise! We did go camping after all. Dennis unhooked the lights from the "topper" or "canopy," whatever you call it where you live, from the truck battery and jump-started it with the car. Zoom! It started right up. No problems all week. So this morning he's back at the shop with it, and hopefully they will wire it right this time. I'll have to get a photo of it for the next post for you. It looks really nice and was so much easier to camp with. Especially during the storms we had. We had much more room to just throw things in to get them out of the weather.

On Tuesday morning severe storms were predicted around noon. Whoo-boy! They were some major storms! Five inches of rain fell both at the campground 25 minutes from home and at the condo too in less than an hour. Major flooding all over Omaha and the surrounding areas. The difference? We had no hail at the campground. The condo got 2 1/2 inch hail. If we had stayed home, Dennis' truck would have been destroyed. It ruined many, many roofs, and even broke off pieces of the hardy plank siding of Mandy and Brad's house and broke their neighbors windows. I guess it was good we were in the camper! We had no leaks and the winds didn't move us at all. It did break some trees off in the campground. These were the same storms that spawned tornadoes that killed five people in Iowa. My heart goes out to them.

We were there from Monday about noon until yesterday, Thursday. It was so nice and quiet all week and then on Wednesday night lots of campers started filling up the spots with campers, vans and tents for the long holiday weekend. And dogs. Lots and lots of BIG barking dogs. We were glad to come home. You know we love dogs. All kinds of dogs. But not dogs that people allow to bark constantly for hours at a time.

The drawback though? I had no internet to comment on your posts with. Normally my hotspot on my phone will work and I can use the laptop to comment, but it didn't work this time. My phone won't let me comment at all. I did read all of your posts, just couldn't comment. I've tried to touch base with all of you this morning. Since we have no other camping adventures planned until we leave for Spokane late next month, I should be able to keep in touch now.

Susan q. asked what the pattern was on my last post for the donation blanket. It was the "Every Which-way Blanket" which is free on Ravelry and I added a few rows at the top and bottom to make it a little longer for the wheelchair.  I also do a lot of granny squares for the donation blankets. There are so many options when you make grannies.

Moving on to last night when we woke up at 1:30 a.m. with the tornado sirens going off. Five simitaneous tornado warnings were up for the Omaha area. One was right over where we were camping yesterday. We were fine here in the condo, but the two biggest storms went about 1 mile north of us and approximately 2 miles south before moving into Iowa.  What in the tarnation is happening this year? It's been pretty quiet since we move back to the midwest three years ago until now. THIS is the reason I agreed to move west when Dennis was offered his job by a headhunter 31 years ago! We had spent most of the spring/early summer in the tornado shelter. Last night we had straightline winds of 94 mph in our immediate neighborhood! It was crazy. Lots and lots of rain again. We've had more rain in the last 3 weeks than in the past two years combined!

But...we're home. Safe and sound so far and no more storms predicted until Sunday. Whoo-hoo!

More news! This happened yesterday! Piper graduated from Elementary to Middle School. Just how did this happen?

How did she go from this...

to this in just a few short days?   Ha! It does seem like just a few days doesn't it?

Papa is on his way right now to pick her and sweet Lizzie up to spend the day with us and this ruffian below. Zoey, not Papa is the ruffian! :-) Zoey is a great camper. She loves to watch out the windows and play in her pen that we have for her. She just watched the world go by and uses us for her personal ladders when needed. Please ignore Papa's unbuttoned shirt. This was just before the storms rolled in Tuesday and it was getting pretty hot. Look at that deceptive blue sky. That sure didn't last long!

I did start this during the storms on Tuesday. It will be another wheelchair blanket. I like the colors. The different creams, grays and pinkish squares are from the same skein of yarn. The lavender is a solid skein. I'll get the ball bands and give you the names next time when it's finished.

And I better finish this off before our girls arrive. They'll keep me busy all day long. I pray that you'll have a peaceful and safe holiday weekend. No storms either. Pray for the peace of the middle east. My heart breaks for them.

Blessings and love,

Betsy

Oh well🤷‍♀️

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”  Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭28‬ ‭NIV‬‬

I’m holding on to this verse today for various reasons. The one I can share with you is this one….

so much for our camping trip today through Thursday. The topper for Dennis’s truck finally came in and was installed on Friday.  We had waited four months for it to arrive. We were so excited to go camping today after church because we would finally have room in the back of the truck and things would be protected. We could put our chairs, the grill, etc., back there with no more worries about them getting wet or blowing out. We got everything packed up last night and ran by the storage lot on the way home from church today and turned the refrigerator on in the trailer. We came home and carried everything down twenty stairs to the garage, got the meat from the freezer and put it in the cooler with some ice until the refrigerator got cold enough. 

Then…. Dennis went to pull the truck over in front of the garage so we could load everything in it and it won’t start. The battery is completely dead. He said that when he got into the truck Friday afternoon to pick it up from the shop, everything was in metric.  Kilometers, liters, etc. He reset it all but when he tried to start it just now it was all back to metric. Apparently when they installed the topper they crossed some wires somewhere and of course they’re not open today. We’ll have to wait till tomorrow and call AAA. If they can come jumpstart the truck, he will take it over to the shop and see if they can figure out what happened. If all goes well, we may still get to go camping tomorrow, but who knows? I think we’re doomed. Every single trip we’ve planned this year has had something go wrong. 

Mandy is relieved since severe weather is predicted for this afternoon and tonight in the area we would be camping. I just watched the weather forecast and it was predicting severe storms tonight, Monday and Tuesday. Maybe this is the reason we weren’t able to go. 🤷‍♀️ I don’t know, but it’s sure a lot of work to get things packed up. Then we needed to haul everything back up the 20 stairs! 🥵

I do have a couple of things to show you since Wednesday when I last posted. I finished the wheelchair blanket I had just started. All with stash yarn. I just finished it last night, so it has not been washed and blocked. I also had my toes done with my sister and niece yesterday. Do you see them peeking up there at the bottom of the picture? I have only gotten red nail polish once before in my life. I guess I’m not a very daring person. I decided to be bold for a change! 😂

I am also starting the toe decreases on another sock. The cuff is a 2 x 2 ribbing and I always use the Eye of Partridge heel. Otherwise it’s a plain vanilla sock  using Kroy Socks in the “Seventies Stripes” colorway.

I guess it’s been just another day in the life of the queens! You never know what’s going to happen at our house. On a positive note we have no responsibilities for the next three days if we do end up staying home. Of course we will be checking up on Mom, but other than that we have no appointments scheduled.

Take care everyone and stay safe if you’re in the path of the storms the weather guy is talking about. I’ll be back soon. Keep watch and pray because the Day of the Lord is drawing near.

Blessings and love,

Betsy