Monthly Archives: January 2015

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Buckram

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This week Allyson informs me she needs buckram for a project she is working on. I ask her what she is talking about. So she shows me a picture on the internet and it seems to be a type of material. I say google it and see if they sell it at Joann’s fabrics because I would hate to pay shipping on something that is listed at 1.75 and sure enough they do. So I do what every crazy crafter does, I go up there a couple of days later to get her more fur for her fur suit and this buckram for the eyes of the mask she is making. So I ask the girl cutting the material where it might be located. She has no idea and says to check crafts. Well, I wander around over there for a little while and then I get on the internet and type in where is buckram located at Joann’s fabrics. I was surprised to find someone’s post that said “I am making a fur suit and I need buckram, do they carry it at Joann’s?” Someone responded with in the material section by the tent type material. And sure enough there it was. So when I went back to have that piece cut it was a different gal who was older than the clueless wonder I asked first. She was impressed that I found it and told me most people had never heard of it. So I gave her the whole fur suit story. So within two days Allyson had the eyes finished and complete with glasses.

Mole moral~if you know how to ask a question in a search engine, you can almost always find the answer! It’s a good thing I am pretty good at it!

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Labels

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imagesLast week at church Tom talked about everyone having labels and labeling everything and everyone. For some reason this stirred up all the negative labels I have ever had in my life. They all floated around in my head all week which is probably one reason why I had nothing to write about it or even status update on Facebook this week. I’ve been quite and even one of my bosses said I wasn’t myself this week. Even though Tom ended with the only label anyone really has is “the treasured child of the most high God” it didn’t really help me feel better.

Today at church Josh finished up the series and summarized the first three weeks. All of a sudden all the positive labels came to mind. It started with one of my favorites given to me not to long ago. I’ve been a nurse since Jesus was a young boy. Ok so I do have the most RN experience on my floor and only one tech as more than I do. She’s ten years ahead of me in the game. It just cracks me up and it also cracks the patients up when I use that line. It usually gets brought up when they ask how old my kids are and then tell me I don’t look near old enough and don’t believe my true age.

The next one that popped up was CR for crazy Rachel. That also started at work but probably at least seven years ago. They call me crazy in a good way most of the time. I mean how many people run a 1/2 marathon and then a full marathon back to back. Or come into work at anytime between 8 and 3 depending on when one is needed and then take five or six new admissions. Yep CR!

Then funny came along. I first heard that from my counselor when she told me that i am really funny and really good in tough situations with using humor. Ever since she told me that I have tried to embrace my humor and use it to help others.

Next good writer. I have had several people tell me I need to write a book. I don’t think I have the discipline for that so I will stick to this blog. I am horrible at English and spelling and grammar and whatever else goes along with that but I suppose that is what people pay editors for. However I have no plans to write a book anytime soon.

And finally I will end with creative because if I don’t shut up the negative label of conceited will come to mind. I usually deny my creativity but that would be a bold face lie. The Christmas stocking that I did for work (see previous blog) prove that wrong. I am currently still working on the t-shirt quilt from hell. I have learned a lot (the hard way) about what to do and not to do. I am still working on the cake ornaments and they turned out pretty good considering I have never painted a day in my life. I have four left of those to finish. It has come to me in waves as to how to decorate them for each person. For example my niece Sierra we started calling Finster almost from day 1. She has always acted like Chuckie Finster from Rugrats. So on hers I put a picture of Chuckie and wrote Finster Meister because that is what Brian usually calls her. But no I am not creative at all.

So here’s to a better week and some fun Mole adventures to write about.

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Fractions

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It’s been a fairly quiet week or two around the house so not much to write about. And the things I would like to write about involve work and cannot be posted in a public forum anyway. I so enjoy my work, especially since the steroid injection has worn off my left foot and with massive stretching, I have been pain-free.

Anyway I still have not finished my cake Christmas ornaments but when I do I will blog about that. Instead I have decided to start working on the t-shirt quilt for one of Emily’s friends. This is only my third one and the first two were all the same sized blocks which made it really easy. This girls shirts gave me the idea to combine two into one square and four into one. This requires knowledge of fractions to get it all to work out correctly. Each big square will be 12×12 after sewing (12.5×12.5 before to allow for 1.25 seam allowance on each side). The smaller squares will have material in between at .5 inch so see how this becomes I fraction nightmare. We shall see how it all turns out when I’m finished. I guess this proves basic math is used in everyday life. As for the square root of something maybe. The quilt is 25 blocks and wouldn’t the square root be 5?

Mole moral: One never knows when one will use something they learned a long long time ago!

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It’s not a pocketknife, its a machete

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All three girls have spent their money they received from Grandpa John for Christmas. Emily bought herself two new pairs of jeans. Kayla ran out and got her belly button pierced. She has harassed me for years to which I said, I am not signing for it so you will have to wait until you are 18 and pay for it with your own money. Hey she did follow the rules. Now if she will only stop showing it to me because it makes me want to throw up. I cannot stand sticking my finger in  my bellybutton so I cannot imagine having an earring in it. Let me go vomit before I finish typing this. And then there was Allyson. She found a knife on the internet that she wanted and it was within budget. I thought it was going to be a knife that would fit in her pocket. It came in the mail while I was at work yesterday and when I came home Emily said it was a machete. The thing is huge and certainly not a pocketknife. Allyson said it’s not sharp at all. To which Emily said she and dad are planning on going to Johnny’s (Brian’s life long friend and hunting/fishing buddy) and sharpening it all up. I suppose if Allyson can shoot a deer with a rifle, she can own this sharp giant knife with a scorpion handle.

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Mole moral~Always check the dimensions when ordering things off of the internet.

 

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Another day, another cooking disaster

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Today is Dominic’s (Kayla’s boyfriend) birthday. He said he would like New York Cheesecake so I’ve made cheesecake before (Jello no bake) so I say this will be easy. Ok why did I say that? It has been a freaking nightmare. I have to make some sort of sponge-cake bottom. It did not turn out like it should because 1)I beat the entire egg instead of the yolk and 2) when I poured the cheesecake layer into it bubbled up to the top. I thought at that time screw it the batter tasted fabulous and so did the spongy bottom so they should be great mixed together. I forget the pan is hot after the bottom baked and burned my fingers. It has to cook for 1:15 and then cool for 2 and then refrigerate for 6. So with 14 minutes left I go to check on it and somehow the oven has turned itself off! Like there is no heat so I turned it back on but have no clue how much longer it needs to cook. I am scheduled to work a seven am tomorrow so I do not have all night to be fighting with this. It should be really interesting to see how this turns out. The next time someone requests cheesecake I am going back to the Jello brand. The kids were shocked and thought all these years I made homemade cheesecake!

Mole moral-Stick to box food, it’s so much easier!

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Today’s cake debacle

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Today Brian had Dominic help him take the cake around  the house to the basement. Now that seems simple enough, except this is the Mole house. The cake would not fit through our tiny sliding glass door. I swear it is the smallest sliding glass door ever made! When the girls were little we could barely get the Barbie jeep through it and when our deep freeze was delivered they had to take the entire door off. He then measured the cake and the doors in the house. The cake would have fit through the front door but not the door down to the basement. It also won’t fit through the door to Emily’s room. So it can’t go in there either. I think I will put it in the laundry room as Brian would not agree to let it sit on his pool table. It is way too cold to be taking the sliding glass door off so he has put it in the very back of our garage where the only way I could hit it would be to plow through the recycling bin. Otherwise I would be parking in the driveway. I can hit my car, the garage, the trash cans and anything else including backing up through the grass but no way am I risking even bumping the cake. We don’t want to move it a bunch because the rocks keep falling off of it every time we move it. So until I get in touch with the artist and see if there is a way to replace some of the rocks and then use something to get it all to stay stuck I am leaving it put for a while. And with my car behind it, no way can anyone get it out of our tiny garage.

Mole moral  Nothing is ever easy and always makes for a great story!

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The adventure of picking up the cake

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It’s an understatement to say nothing ever goes right with me. So the logical conclusion would be that picking up the cake was a true Mole adventure. When I called the sculpture park and the office is closed until Monday I went into full on panic mode because the auction site said they had to be picked up by the fourth. I also wanted my cake, like today. I call Meg in a panic and she said why don’t you try to find a park ranger and talk to him. She is so smart! So I jump in my car and find the ranger. Now he is in his car on his cell phone and I am standing out in the rain waiting for him to get off the phone. He finally gets out an apologizes for keeping me waiting. i said its no big deal I’m too mean to melt. When he caught my humor he started laughing. So I told him I won the auction and he said let’s go see if anyone from maintenance is still here and we can talk to them and I will show you the back entrance to the park. I showed the maintenance guy my papers and he was fine with me coming back with my husband. So I found the back parking lot which was right next to the cake. Most people parked over on the other side and had quite a walk. So my husband and I turn the cake over to remove the sandbags and guess what? My cake does not have a secret hatch or sandbags. So we removed the concrete blocks that were inside and put it safely in the truck. When we got home we were moving it into the front yard to hose it off when it slipped out of my hands and went skimming down my leg and to the ground. Now my husband saved the day by not just letting him (the cake) fall. The cake was fine, my leg not so much. (His back is now hurting because of not letting the cake fall to the ground.)  My leg doesn’t hurt too bad right now but by tomorrow it should be a hot bruised mess. I had on a brand new pair of jeans and luckily it did not rip a hole in them. My cake has metal around the bottom which is what nailed my leg. So my cake is safely home and he is in the garage till he dries and then will be safely in the basement. My husband is acting about the cake like he does our dog. He can’t stand the thing when I actually I think he finds it really cool.

Yes i am referring to my cake as a boy. Most of the cakes I would consider to be girls but I think the sculpture park was one of the most boy cakes around. And my husband who “thinks the thing is stupid” has already looked at my picture from the spring to see how the top looked and what is missing. He is also figuring out what was used to glue the wood to the top. The cake could use some fixing, I am hoping at some point to meet the artist Nick Lang and see what he suggests.

Mole moral: We own the coolest cake ever!!!

 

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A trip to Salem

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For the longest time Emily and I have wanted to go to Salem to see where her great grandparents are buried and where my dad grew up. Well it’s been well documented that I have a fear of not knowing where I am going so it took my dad volunteering to go with us for us to finally make it to Salem. I have dreamed many times that I have went back there and the place looked exactly the same. Well in real life it has changed a lot! I don’t think I could have found anything without an address. The road from Rolla to Salem was horrible back in the day. Twisty and hilly and I would end up with a really bad headache and trying not to puke. Now almost 25 years later the road has been straightened and flattened so no car sickness. So we discussed going home via St. James as that road is still twisty. And then we drove to the farm. Now the house on the farm that my dad grew up in burned to the ground some years ago and was replaced by a log cabin. My dad brought pictures of how it looked back in the day and the next time he comes over I plan to scan them and reprint them for my scrapbook. He also showed us pictures of the barn that is no longer there. I always envisioned this place in the middle of the road but it was on the corner. I found that interesting because when my grandparents moved to town their house was also on the corner. By the time we got to the farm we were all ready to vomit and said forget going home St. James it’s back the way we came.

Our next stop was the cemetery and yes we took pictures of the gravestones. My dad asked if that was creepy. I said nope we have pictures of Grandpa Millers as well. It’s a mole thing. My grandparents are buried by both of his brothers and their wives. My dad was 20 years younger than his brothers so they have already gone onto heaven. We then discussed what his wishes were when he joins all of them in heaven.

Next stop we found the house in town. The trim use to be green and a car port instead of the garage. So many memories and I can remember exactly how the inside looked. I told Emily a big treat was we always had radishes. She looked at me like I was insane (ok I am) so I said we also had ice cream with fresh peaches or strawberries and candy corn. On my sister and mines birthday she would mail a card. The birthday girl would get 4 dollars and the non birthday girl would get a dollar. It was really really cool and one of my favorite memories. My grandma had pneumonia 7 times one winter (or something crazy like that) and had a breathing machine. Looking back it was probably one of the early nebulizer. Every time I was down there I would work on memorizing the sermon on the mount. I never did get it memorized but can still see the guest bedroom and her bible and the really cool brush she would let us play with.

Our last stop was Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bobs house. They moved to Salem to keep an eye on my grandparents and when they went to heaven my aunt and uncle moved to Arkansas. They both recently passed away. So many memories of all of them sitting around their house talking while my sister and I dozed off. Uncle Bob had a horse and he took us out to the property where he kept it. I can’t remember if we ever rode any of his horses but I do remember petting it.

And that is my trip down memory lane. I had a fantastic time with my dad and Emily. It was a great day. Now some pictures posted in the order that we visited.

Mole moral: My dad is a much better navigator, he didn’t talk super loud and get all excited when we had to turn around or went the wrong way. Unlike my days of screaming during caking!

 

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Rachel takes the cake

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IMG_4653 IMG_4654It was a fun night last night. Brian was in bed, Emily and Kayla were out and Allyson was reading in her room. And what was I doing? I was bidding on the Stl250 cakes. When I first heard they were up for auction I really wanted the      Laumeier Sculpture Park cake. When Allyson and I went to see it this summer we were fascinated with the way it was designed. There were pencils and rocks and screwdrivers and fencing and all kinds of stuff. The bid on that took off and was out of my price range right away.

So I turned my sights on the Harley Davidson Cake because it is orange and my favorite color. I was added to the stl250 cake way to the west Facebook group a couple of weeks ago and what a blessing that has been. I met Andrea and her love of cakes and knowledge about them is amazing. She told me that the Harley cake was originally supposed to go to Fast Eddies so if I looked on the base I would see the Pisia bird.

IMG_0950 Just mentioning that bird brings back one of our most frustrating cake experiences ever.That was the day Kayla, Dominic, and I did a ton of cakes in IL. Alton was a nightmare and the address listed for the bird took us to a subdivision. I thought it was like a real bird statue. We finally found Alton Visitor cente,r they told us the bird was on the way to Grafton on the great river road. When we saw it, we wanted to set the cliff on fire. Its a painting of a crazy looking bird on the side of a cliff. That was also the day I got a new iPhone, took all the cake pictures and came home and plugged my phone in and set it to my old phone settings losing all of my cake pictures. Three hours of research later I discovered how to go back to the first settings and retrieve the photos. I ran into Kayla’s room and sang the Doxology to her and Dominic because that was such a long day we did not want have to redo them.

So back to the bidding. I had a limit and then found out a friend wanted to give me some money towards it. The Harley Cake was quickly reaching my max so with 15 seconds left I bid my max amount of money on the sculpture cake and won it. Allyson was very excited, especially when I told her I wanted to give her the cake when she is older. She is my artist and the cake just makes me think of her.

Brian thinks I am a fruitcake for wanting “some stupid cake”. He does not realize that first of all its art and second of all it represents so much for me. First of all its a reminder i set my fear of not knowing where i am going and went to places in St. Louis I would have never ventured to! Each cake holds so many memories with the people who were with me when I found each cake. All the yelling and screaming when we were lost and the euphoria when we finally spotted one. It was a crazy fun summer and fall and I am sad it has come to an end.