Be Thankful For The Good People

I hope this finds that everyone had a pleasant and relaxing Mother's Day weekend!  This does includes sisters, aunties, cousins, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, great aunts, and friends who are family (we apologize for sucking you into our quagmire of crazy looney toons)!

My family spent the weekend helping my mother-in-law move into her new digs.   It is roughly two and half hours one way.  She has alot of stuff for one person!  It was back breaking work for sure, but that is what you do for family.  There may be moments where you just want to blankly stare at them, pretend like you have no idea as to what they are talking about and fake some life threatening ailment (like a sprained pinky toe) that would prevent you from being able to take part in whatever it is they are trying to lasso you into.

And it made me think for a moment, actually quite a bit longer, on how soo many people are forgotten by their own family.  I just shake my head when it is considered a burden to keep ties with those who have been good to you.  My sister and I used to go to a nursing home when we were kids that was near our house and just hang out with the residents.  Soo many are forgotten - they are just a guaranteed monthly government check to the family.  Horrible.  We've witnessed that first hand in our own family unfortunately.  By the time my sister and I found out what was going on, we had no legal grounds to step in and change the situation.  Being in New York with said family in Wisconsin, our ability to monitor what was going on was limited.  Upon a visit to Wisconsin is when the situation came to light.

Now, having said that, there are those that it is necessary to keep at an extreme distance because they are pure toxic.  Sad, but there is no avoiding truth when it is punching you in the face with brass knuckles coated in broken glass.  Every family has someone who is cancer to the soul.  Physical, emotional, and mental well-being goes right out the window in their presence.  Actually, your well-being would probably jump out of a plane without a parachute just to get away (while flipping you off for putting it in that position of desperation).  We, however, have a couple of those.  It's an affliction I wish these multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical conglomerates would make a pill for - I would sell all of my yarn for one of those.  As previously said, it was hard for us to monitor what was happening 900 miles away but had never been given reason to disbelieve our family.  However, we came to find out that a family member who lived four blocks from us in New York knew exactly what was going on from the very beginning and chose not to say anything because she knew we would have jumped the next flight out for a beatdown.  She was more concerned about the sperm burping gutter snakes in Wisconsin liking her than the deplorable condition that had been forced upon the very woman who raised her when her own mother threw her out as a child.  And continued to support her throughout her adult life.  Rundown - our two uncles placed our grandmother in a state run facility, sold her house out from under her and rarely, if ever, visited her.  There were pictures of the two of them above her single sized bed in a room she shared with another resident (these are not meant to be double occupancy) and shared a Jack & Jill bathroom with the two other residents (again, in a room that is meant for single occupancy).  The place reaked.  We would regularly call our grandmother's home phone.  How is this possible you ask?  The dead festering rhino scrotum uncles used a forwarding service.  So when we would call, thinking she was at home, it was a phone ringing next to her bed in an 7' x 5' space.  She suffered from dementia and was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's (which we were never told).  She also had suffered a pearl of mini strokes (which we were never told).  She had started to say she was scared to tell my uncles she was talking to my sister or I.  A few other conversations threw up red flags for us so I was able to drive out to see her.  I'm standing on the porch of her home and it looks abandoned.  I call her and she says she's in bed and is afraid to get out.  I try to coax her downstairs to unlock the door.  She says she is not in bed at home.  So I call my uncle and reveal that I am standing on her front porch and where is my grandmother.  Silence.  Surprise asshole.  That is when I found out where she was.  She had been in that facility for over a year and was too afraid to tell my sister and I.  Do you know that a nurse in that facility knew exactly who I was looking for without ever exchanging a word because I look that much like my grandmother. Upon looking in her "room", not one photo of her eldest son, my father, who had passed away.  She was in the dining area and couldn't remember me.  That's when I found out she had Alzheimer's.  She couldn't remember who my uncles were but knew exactly who my father was, then it clicked.  Then she remembered me and my sister.  See how karma works you malfunctioning colostomy bags.  Dump your hard working, unconditional loving mother in a shitbox, you don't exist either.  So the nurse and I had a nice chat.  And she stuck around for my conversations with both of those immoral fecal slugs.  So if you are a ratted bag of crusty hobo balloon knots, karma will not be kind to you, nor will I.  We have not spoken to them since the funeral of my grandmother nor will we ever.  They are deceased.

As for the New York family member who knew all this, she is the worst raging case of the herps in medical history.  She never goes away, ever.  And we have been rather blunt in our conveyance of our feelings towards her - no great mystery.  And sadly, this was not the worst of her offenses against her family, including towards her children.  Parasites have a greater moral center.  Satan is soap-boxing in the fiery bowels of hell shaking his head, flabbergasted, spouting how morally repugnant she is.  One of the last things I said to her was that I found it extremely offensive and rather selfish that she was stealing my oxygen to feed the lungs held captive in the Bastille she punishes her overworked joints into wobbling around.      

So please, I implore you; if you have had someone special be good to you, be good to them.  It doesn't take a whole lot of effort.  If you have two hours to spare to play around on Facebook or Clash of Clans or Twitter or Tumblr or Snapchat or the millions of other apps, you have five minutes to sign your name to a card and drop it in a mailbox.  Not that kind of person?  Send them an ecard.  Send them a smiley emoji.  Come on people - communication has become soo much easier yet no one seems to know how to communicate.  

Spring Is Here So Summer Is Not Too Far Behind!

Just love, love, love the sound of spring peepers as the sun starts to set!  Because that means it is warming up and going to stay that way for awhile!  Yay!  But that also means it is almost time for the WEBS annual tent sale in Massachusetts.  Double yay!

For any fiber lover or spinner, this is heaven on earth.  Our Graceland.  The Vatican of fiber. The Royal Family reunion.  You name it, this is it.  WEBS is a great online source for all things yummy. It may be all sticks and string but ooooooooooo do we love the string!  Cashmere, baby alpaca, merino wool, angora, kid mohair, silk, milk fiber, bamboo viscose; the list could go on and on and on...and on, and on, and on.  And what makes it great for me (Karen) this year is that I am finally going to be able to experience this breathtaking, choir of angels softly singing above me, sunbeams lighting the glorious path to "Ahh-Aaahhhh".

I encourage anyone who is a fiber addict, like my sister and I, have a fiber addict in their family, or if you just have a general morbid curiosity as to who all these odd crazy people are squeezing skeins of yarn like they are checking the ripeness of a tomato.  Trust me, one squeeze of some baby alpaca, you're gonna be running around knocking people over squeezing, touching, feeling, rubbing on your cheek (hopefully face), and emphatically sounding off the Campbell's "mm-mmm-good!" slogan over and over again.  You get hooked (crochet pun - haha) from the first time your gently glide your finger over a soft hazy pillow of superfine kid mohair.  It's like being wrapped up into a burrito made from big white puffy clouds lined with angel feathers.

If anything, come and watch the loonies get all starry eyed over something the size of lemon that costs more than a nice dinner for two.  But my thought is, who needs dinner?

Just A Lil Tidbit Of Info...

So my poor husband had to have three teeth pulled today - all molars.  Yee-ouch!  The first few hours right after were miserable but he is doing much better now.  Yay! Hopefully tomorrow won't sneak up on him and smack him in the mouth.

As his dutiful and loving (and rather awesome, if I do say so myself) wife, I took him to and from the dentist, then left to go have his scripts filled.  Now I have a very short, actually non-existent fuse for people who text and drive.  I've had a lady run a red light and just by a hair miss hitting my daughter and I, a guy would have hit me head on had I not blown my horn and he over corrected and skidded off the road.  Cannot count to the nth degree how many times I've been behind someone who goes from 50 to 25 to 60 to 15 MPH in a matter of one mile because they're busy twiddling their phone.  It can wait people. Seriously.  But lawmakers have put in place misdemeanor statutes for those who are ticketed by the police for being physically unable to remove their hand from their phone while driving.  I am thankful to the police officers who go out everyday, put their lives at risk to keep my family and I safe.   

However, my respect for those who uphold the law plummets when they are the ones busy twiddling their phones and almost hit me head on, such as in today whilst being a stellar wife en route to the pharmacy for my pain ridden husband.  How did I know it was a police officer you ask?  I got a real good look at his uniform in his marked vehicle when it was crossing over the center line coming directly at me while he was texting or tweeting or posting, really don't care, on his phone.  I honked my horn and laid on the brakes.  Had I not, he would have smashed into my front end.

So how do you ticket a cop for texting on his phone while driving in his marked unit in uniform?  Sadly, not the first that I have seen.  I am no perfect angel.  I do stupid things. But I do turn on that nifty little thing every phone has, driving mode.  You text me while I am driving, you get an auto response.  When I get to my destination, then I respond.  If there are people in your life who cannot wait that extra 5-10 minutes for you to safely respond, need to rethink who it is you are responding to and the importance of it all. Just saying.  

I still hold a high level of respect for EMT's, officers, firefighters and civil servants of all kinds.  That respect, however, wanes considerably when you are doing the very thing you have no problem ticketing others for doing, yet come very close to hitting someone head on for doing that very thing you are supposed to thwart.  Do as I say and not as I do might have worked when I was a wee lass but it sure doesn't float now.  

Back In Action!

So, it has been awhile since there has been any type of news dish from one of us. Apologies.  We weren't ignoring you, I promise!  We have been filling our every waking moment to launch our newborn store on Etsy while maintaining our Black Sheep Sisters shoppe.  Whew!

Take a gander and tell us what you think!  We are trying very hard to keep everything functional but cost effective.  Babies can destroy pretty much anything in the blink of an eye, so the third generation handmade blanket is now for Fido.  Our items are meant to take all the abuse a baby can dish out - the 3 P's - pee, poop, and puke - and dirt, and mud, and juice, and lots and lots of drool.

Even then, babies are ever so cute!!  Saccharin sweetness to the brim!!  Eeepp!!

Just follow the link...

http://www.littlelambkinsboutique.com

But we are back to the blog.  Lots to do, never ending with the lots to do!  Especially since I am unsure about going outside.  So far today it started out snowing, then sleet, then warmed twenty degrees and sunny.  An hour later it started raining, hard.  Now I am watching super fluffy downy snowflakes flit to the ground.  Welcome to the spring in the Midwest!