Am I officially a grown up now?

Big things are happening in real life which is why I haven't been around the old blog lately. We've just begun the home buying process, and since this will be my first home purchase ever it's a very BIG deal. Until about three days ago I was pretty sure we couldn't even afford to buy a house, as my last delve into the whole confusing mess was sometime early last year, but then I started to do a little research. It is most definitely a buyer's market now, and I hadn't paid much attention at all to the $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers that was put into place by the stimulus bill passed earlier this year, but hey, cool, we qualify. How about that? Plus, we're currently paying waaay too much in rent and actually buying a house and paying the mortgage/insurance/property taxes every month would be CHEAPER than renting this too small apartment. Now that's crazy.

So we're looking for a cute, little place with lots of character (and I mean real character, not the real estate code word "character" which means "old and needs a lot of work") just across the border in Wisconsin where money goes a lot further in a house. Look for updates as the home search begins...

6 months old today

Miss Piggy
Originally uploaded by cheripop

"Uplifting obit" is not an oxymoron

I know it sounds strange, but reading this obituary was the highlight of my day:

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(NANCY) LEE HIXSON of Danville, Ohio died at sunrise on June 30, 2009. She was born Nancy Lee Wood in Cleveland on April 17, 1944, baptised at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Valley City Ohio, and confirmed at St. John's Lutheran Church, Independence Ohio. In addition to being a teetotaling mother and an indifferent housekeeper, she was a board certified naturopath specializing in poisonous and medicinal plants; but she would like to point out, posthumously, that although it did occur to her, she never spiked anyone's tea. She often volunteered as an ombudsman to help disadvantaged teens find college funding and early opened her home to many children of poverty, raising several of them to successful, if unwilling, adulthood. She also enjoyed a long life of unmentionable adventures and confessed she had been a rebellious teen-aged library clerk, an untalented college student on scholarship, a run-away Hippie, a stoic Sunday School teacher, a Brownie leader, a Grange lecturer, an expert rifleman, a waitress, a wife once or twice, a welder, an artist, and a writer. She was in earlier years the president of Rainbow Systems Trucking Company, Peninsula Ohio, and she drove tractor-trailers over-the-road hauling freight commodities to startled customers from Minnesota to Florida. She was the CEO of the Cuyahoga Valley Center of Outdoor Leadership Training (COLT), where she lived in a remote and tiny one-room cabin in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Despite the lack of cabin space and dining table, she often served holiday dinners to friends and relatives and could seat twenty at the bed. She lived the last twenty-three years at Winter Spring Farm near Danville where she built a private Stonehenge, and planted and helped save from extinction nearly 50 varieties of antique apple trees, many listed in A.J. Downing's famous orchard guide of 1859 - among them such delicacies as Summer Sweet Pearmain, Sops of Wine, Westfield Seek No Further, and Duchess of Oldenburg. Her homemade cider and wine were reputed to cause sudden stupor. She befriended countless stray dogs, cats, horses, and the occasional goat. She was a nemesis to hunters, and an activist of unpopular, but just, causes. In short, she did all things enthusiastically, but nothing well. After moving to Danville, she bravely suffered with a severe and disabling disorder and a ten-year battle with lymphoma that ultimately took her life. She was often confined to the home where she continued to tirelessly volunteer and donate her limited resources to needy teens in the area, always cheered by their small and large achievements. Sympathy and big donations may be extended at this time. She was predeceased by her father Dwight Edward Wood of the Ohio pioneer Wood family of Byhalia, who died in the Columbus Jail having been accused of a dreadful crime, and by her second father Ted A. Cznadel of Danville who adopted her, loved her and raised her despite it all. She is survived by her dearly beloved son, her heart and soul and every breath, Christopher Daniel Hixson of Akron, (a sterling citizen who rose above his murky childhood with a scandalous mother), and by his loving partner Mitchell Kahan. She is also survived by her mother, the opinionated and stubborn Ann Gall Cznadel; by her brother the Rev. Dr. Thomas R. Sluberski, a Lutheran minister and professor, most recently of Rio de Janeiro; by her gentle, ecological brother Gregory T. Cznadel, a quality manager of Cleveland; by her talented sister Linda R. Cznadel Hauck, a librarian from sea to shining sea, of San Luis Obispo; by her genius nephew and godson Matthew Hauck of Minneapolis; and the other half of her heart, her patient friend and backstairs lover of thirty years, David Paul Bleifus who resides at the farm. Ms. Hixson traced her lineage directly through eleven generations to Governor William Bradford of the ship Mayflower and the Plimouth Colony, and was in the process of membership to The Mayflower Society. She was a long-time card carrying member of the ACLU, the Democratic Party, and of MENSA. The family wishes to thank Dr. Gene Morris for his care, understanding and sense of humor through it all; Dr. Paul Masci of Cleveland Clinic Wooster; and Dr. Skip Radwany and the nursing staff of the Palliative Care Center at Summa for their compassion as Lee shuffled off this mortal coil. Cremation has taken place. Immediate family and friends will gather at Stonehenge on a sunny summer day to celebrate her life. Interment is in the family plot at Brinkhaven Hilltop Cemetery in Brinkhaven, Ohio, where she will await an eventual and probable slide down the cliff to the Mohican River below. In lieu of flowers, please pray for the Constitution of the United States. "Now Voyager depart, (much, much for thee is yet in store)…" - Walt Whitman

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Written by the deceased herself, it's a glimpse into one woman's life and the small and not so small things that were really important to her. Most of it made me smile, but I was really touched by the detail about how she saved the 50 varieties of antique apple trees... and how she lovingly described each of the important people she was leaving behind... It's nothing at all like the generic Mad Lib type form obits that most people get when they leave this mortal coil. I'd like to think that I'd have the presence of mind with smidge of self-deprecation to write my own obit one day. It's also just a good exercise in taking a moment to think about what's really important in your own life and how you'd like people to remember your time on this earth.

I found this via the 37 Days blog. Check it out.

Happy 4th!

The day didn't quite go as planned. It was rainy most of the day, so the fair at the nearby naval base was out. So what else could we do on the 4th of July, but go to the mall and get a photobooth strip with a patriotic border?


Oh, and have fun in the parking lot with sparklers we got at a garage sale sometime last year?

Yeah, we know how to party.

Again with the dolls

I have doll number two in the works, and she's pretty ambitious. I didn't follow a complete pattern (more like putting together various pieces of separate patterns and modifying from there) and have had to rip apart and redo more times than I care to count. She's had three different sets of legs... poor girl.


This is Harriet (well, prototype #1 of Harriet). I'm not very pleased with her face. It's a fine face, don't get me wrong, but it didn't turn out as I envisioned it would. She's a bit more serious looking than I wanted and her eyes too far apart. (Embroidery on a partially stuffed doll head is hard! You can't just erase the eyes because they're not quite right...) Still, she's a lovely little doll, and I think she deserves some clothes. A pink dress with poufy sleeves and a white pinafore perhaps? Oh, and she'll get a big bow in her hair. That barrette is mine and just to hold things in place for the moment.

Time flies

Miss Kate is officially five months old today. It's been five months? That's crazy.

Her latest favorite thing is the rainforest jumperoo. Her little toes finally touch the ground and now she bounces in that thing for hours. She also enjoys having discussions with the stuffed frog hanging above her...

And sometimes she falls asleep in it...

Introducing Laura

Named for Laura Ingalls Wilder, of course, one of my early idols.


This was only my second attempt at making a doll, and I'm pretty impressed that I managed to wrangle the yarn into something that resembles hair.


Her body, dress, apron, and boots were all made from thrifted pillowcases. I had the embroidery thread and the stuffing. The only things purchased to make her were the eyelet trim and the yarn for her hair (since I wanted her to have brown hair and that's the only color of yarn I don't have lying around). So altogether she probably cost about $3.50 to make. Not too bad.

For all the yardsale fanatics out there

Like me

I stumbled across this website a few weeks ago and it's pretty amazing. You enter your location, the day, and the mile range you want to search in and it brings up every "garage sale" craigslist ad that meets the criteria. When you live in the suburbs of Chicago that's A LOT of garage/rummage/yard/estate sales! This is the map for this Saturday, for example.


Crazy.

Once you have this map you can click on each arrow to view the ad. You can delete stops and when you're down to your chosen few... the site automatically calculates the route for you using Google Maps. It's pretty nifty. We've used it the past couple of weekends, but there are some lessons learned: 1) The printed directions don't include the street number of each stop, so make sure you write down the exact address of each sale. 2) If you decide you want to skip a sale or two while you're out you better bring another map source along - figuring out a different route using what you've been given is virtually impossible.