Join me for a Saturday in the Lou

(No, not 'loo' as in the UK... that would just be wrong... 'Lou' as in short for St Louis)

It was a gorgeous fall day..

with a foggy start
that beautifully muted the landscape.

I decided to combine an errand downtown with a trip to the flood-walls

and a walk along the trails by the riverfront.

Is it just me - or is there something very European about the paths?

SO peaceful and serene.

The Arch was my destination - well the bookstore - and, while I didn't find the book I was looking for, I didn't come home empty handed either.

So much fun to see clouds going through the 'legs' of the Arch!

I took another walk up and down the Arch steps

while I enjoyed all the different types of transportation converging in one place - barges, boats, trains, trucks and cars. (The trains are on the lower deck of the bridge; cars and trucks on the top)

I returned home along city streets, with a stop at a favorite folk art store


through neighborhoods that beg to be explored some more on a different day.

There were touches of color that made me smile

and wonder what meaning they held for the people who put them there.

And a message that, for all I know, has implications I wouldn't necessarily endorse but, on the surface, made me smile even more and take some comfort in the thought.

How was YOUR Saturday?

Fashion tips

Remember my recent lament about not being a scarf person?

Maybe I'd do better concentrating on footwear -

and the minute I find either of these in my size - I'm there!

(OK, so I'm kidding about the Dorothy shoes, but would LOVE the boots!)

Good luck with whatever goal you have for yourself this weekend!

Word

When told the reason

for Daylight Savings Time,

the old Indian said,

"Only a white man would believe

that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket,

sew it to the bottom of a blanket

and have a longer blanket."

True that.

It's tomorrow.

Speed dating

Yeah; it felt like that.

I’m buying a new car.

I went into the dealership knowing exactly what I wanted: make, model and specific features.

I told the sales person assigned to me what my requirements were and, since I was on my way to work, told her she had about 45 minutes to show me what she had on the lot and convince me why I should buy a car from them and not go someplace else.

OK, maybe I was a bit brusque but, not only is that how I roll … I had done my homework, didn’t have time to listen to bullshit and, at my core, resent having to pay more for a new car than I paid for my first house.

She showed me the 2 possibilities on the lot, assured me that “the good ones go fast” and I’d better “snap up one that was available” – even though both colors were atrocious.

I’m sure there’s someone who wants a car that’s either turquoise (calling it ‘teal green’ didn’t fool me for a minute) or rotting pumpkin orange (euphemistically named ‘copper’) but that someone is SO not me!

When I told her that neither of them would work and asked her to check the shipping invoice to see when other color options were coming in, her first response was “Why wait? I’ll bet you’d learn to like whatever you got.”

Little sister, what I’ve got is about 35 years on you, so trust me when I say - I’ve tried that, I didn’t, I’m not willing to settle and I’ll wait for what I want.

Speed dating: yeah, it felt just like that.

I didn’t buy anything then either.

weighing in...

on the Kardashian debacle - come on - you knew I would!

No one can ever truly know another persons motives - and frankly, with all the important world issues facing us today, I think it's beyond stupid to spend more than 60 seconds ruminating about the private screwed up lives of immature screwed up celebrities.

That being said, let me go on record as thinking:

a) you can't be a media whore, willing to sell your image and soul for every venture, in every form of print and visual medium for every news outlet on the planet - in order to further your financial self interest - and then be surprised or cry 'foul' or 'poor me' when they notice when you fuck up.

Miss Kim, IF you're living in hell, it's one of your own making and you have no one but yourself to blame.

b) you can't refuse to change your last name, refuse to move where your husband is living, refuse to change your schedule to accommodate a life together and refuse to allow him any role in your life save that of being a tall prop and piece of arm candy without people thinking this was never intended to be a true marriage.

You wanted a big party, with all the attention focused AGAIN on you; the fact that there were consequences and expectations for your behavior after that must have come as quite the shock!

c) didn't your parents ever teach you that the time for serious deliberation is BEFORE you get married, not a month afterward?

Oh, I keep forgetting, you don't have a mother, you have a manager who's got the same self absorbed gene you do!

And
d) Shame on all of us for continuing to keep these fools on the front pages!Their 15 minutes is WWAAYY over.

We have real problems facing real people all over the world.
While I appreciate the entertainment value of having caricatures of human beings to distract us from them, it's time to move on.

Don't know what the 'true' motives were behind this charade of a relationship; don't know and don't care.

What I DO know is that I'll never buy or read another magazine, not even while standing in the line at the grocery store, if ANY of the Klan is on the cover.

But don't feel too sorry for Kim, there are plenty of people still out there who need the diversion and I'm sure the family has already called Central Casting to send over another desperate sports figure to be next in line.

I can't help but think there's a HUGE celebration party going on in Minnesota at the Humphries house!

Mom and Dad, he seems like a basically good kid; but get Kris some therapy so he doesn't fall down this rabbit hole again!

O, I C

I honestly don't know how Sarah Palin does it.

I'm not talking about living in the deep State of Ignorance, although that's a pretty remarkable feat in and of itself.

No, I'm referring to wearing such tiny glasses.
Trendy, yes; attractive, definitely; practical - get serious!


My eyesight is failing.
Another one of Mother Natures ironies - just when getting older allows us to see truths and realities of life more clearly, we're lucky if we can find our damn dentures in the glass or the keys in the door!

My attempts with bifocal contacts have had mixed, and mostly poor, results but, for vanity sake, I still make the attempt to start the work day without glasses.

Truth be told, the part of the day I look forward to most is getting home, taking my contacts out, removing all eye makeup and 'resting my eyes'.

Frankly, in my book, that makes me one step away from crawling into a fleece body bag and watching Lawrence Welk while gumming an egg and biscuit for dinner!

I blame all the sewing I did at an earlier stage of my life.

I LOVE antique samplers.

I love the peace I found while designing and sewing reproductions of them.

It was a contemplative process - counting threads and finding the rhythm of making "X's" was simple and satisfying -two things my life wasn't at that point.

There was also the added bonus that, at the end of whatever time I had to spend in the pursuit, there was some tangible result to show for my efforts - not at all like house work, parenting or social work!

GI Joe has told me that his earliest memories are of us on the couch; me sitting nearest the lamp sewing, him and his brother watching "The Wonder Years", Greatest American Hero" or "Kate and Ali".

By the time each of the boys started preschool, they had heard, multiple times, the explanation that samplers were originally used to teach girls not only the domestic arts but the alphabet, at a time when they were being denied a formal education.

Which would explain why, when GI Joe was in 1st grade, he looked at me sadly one night and said "If you still haven't learned the alphabet by now, Mom, I could help; I got to go to school".

A friend and I even attended a convention in Colonial Williamsburg with a 'hands on' component during which we learned extremely intricate stitches found on samplers in the 1600 -1700's in Great Britain and in early American versions.

We laughed at the women who brought HUGE lamps from their hotel rooms but the ones who had lighted magnifying glasses on chains around their necks practically made us wet ourselves.
Imagine my chagrin when I started needing to pack a magnifying glass in my work bag so I could decipher some of the more blurred and intricate information on medical charts.

I'd cry but that would smear my lenses - and I wouldn't be able to find the box of Kleenex!

Wordless Wednesday