Booty call

Last night a blue Ford Fiesta, quite possibly the World's Smallest Car, pulled into my driveway and when the doors opened, four people were violently ejected, propelled by the force that the stress of 14 hours of driving can produce in two adults and two small children. By the time we hit the Maryland border, I could no longer feel my feet or my ass, my hair was falling out, and I think I may have lost some teeth. Harper was practically catatonic. Only Devon was happy, with her Yo Gabba Gabba DVD on endless repeat.

We drove to Kentucky to visit some of my husband's family, and I took two days away from them to drive down to Tennessee to see my brother and sister. I need to update the Cherry Pie blog, but for now I will tell you that Jon is doing great. He is back at work full-time, he's been cleared to drive a car (but not a motorcycle), and other than a brief mention of his weekly chemo drip and a med-alert bracelet, you'd never know he was fighting brain cancer. We got to spend a lot of time together just being siblings and not clinging to each other in fear that one of us wouldn't be here soon. We still fear it, but we just weren't letting it be the primary topic that day. I think his life right now is all about being normal, and he doesn't want to be a cancer patient all the time. I can't blame him.

Naturally, any visit to my sister's neck of the woods means an after-hours trip to the quilt shop where she works. As I was picking out what I wanted, and was mulling over a fat quarter bundle, she said, "Keep in mind that you're getting a discount," and I asked how much and she said "Thirty-five percent." I said, "Really? That's more than last time." She asked what it was last time and I told her: twenty-five percent. Her boss had just told her to give me whatever discount she gave me the last time I visited, and she thought it was more than it had been. Got to learn to keep my mouth shut.

I didn't buy as much this time, but I got a few goodies:


A bundle of black and white fat quarters, for a quilt I'm planning for someone.

Some random yardage.

A layer cake. I had sworn off pre-cuts, but I really wanted a bit of all the fabrics from this line.

For applique. Kelly gave me some lessons in the kind of hand applique I want to learn, and I will need some of this to hold down all the crazy shapes I'm gonna be whipping out any minute now.

Bonus points for you if you know what this is!

Oh, and as promised, here are some shots of my roommates:

Yep. She let me sleep in the same room with all that. And how did I manage to make it out of there without swiping anything? Because clearly, I could have gone into some of those stacks and she would never know. I guess the main thing that tamped down my klepto tendencies is that I love my sister and would never do that and blah, blah, blah. But here's another. Sunday afternoon she whips out a stack of handbags she had made as samples for the store and said I could have them. ALL OF THEM. Check it out:

When I drove back to Kentucky, much of David's extended family was there and he wanted to show them all the wonders of his new car (I don"t know what they are, because I'm too girly to see them) and he told me, back in the house as we were visiting with everyone, that he showed everyone the trunk, where I still had all this stuff stashed. So I said, "Did you see my booty?" And damn if he wasn't the only one who didn't look at my butt.