God Loves Us SNOW Much!

Greetings from snowy Riverhead, New York!  Rita and I are on a housesit/road trip here.

They have been having snow pretty much nonstop since Christmas.  I can't upload my pics from my camera due to camera/computer incompatibility so I grabbed some off the internet.

If you look at the eastern most end of Long Island you will see a light house. This is Montauk.  We went there the other day and had 200degree views of the Atlantic.  No whales or seals showed up although they were advertised :)

We are in the town of Flanders which is about the size of Byrdtown, SC but Riverhead, NY is a couple miles west.  We found an awesome quilt shop there where we got a fabric/quilt fix :)

It is snowing as I write this.  Please pray it stops and we can get to our ride (The Hampton Jitney...a tour bus that runs back and forth to NYC) in Riverhead tomorrow am.

The home we are staying at is on the dead end of a road so it will not be plowed. YIKES!

There is a neighbor/friend of the home owner I can ask to take us to the Jitney and pick us up tomorrow night..  If you know Donnamo, you know I will not hesitate to ask her to do it.  Pray she will acquiesce! 

I am reading The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim, which I am loving.  It is set in Korea around 1900 when Korea was overtaken by Japan.  I missed that lesson in high school world history so it was news to me.  It is a fictionalized account of the author's mother growing up in Korea.  In that place and time women had no rights or education but the Japanese changed that and Najin, her mother, was able to get an education.  I am always amazed and awed at the way women were devalued and treated in the past in every country and culture I have read about except Christianity.  Jesus treated women with honor and respect over and over again in the gospels.  Now that I think about it, the Old Testament has a good record as well.  Abigail, Hannah, Sarah, Ruth, Deborah, Esther, etc.... are all examples of God's favorable opinion of women.

Hope to get some feedback from my faithful readers.....so please leave a comment :)t

By the way, the title of today's blog came from a church sign in Hampton Bay.  Call me crazy but I don't think it will attract New Yorkers who are snowsick to that church :)

Lucy and Ethel Go to Meadows of Dan

As my peeps know, Ethel and I are up at Sallie and Andy's log cabin house sitting for the week. I brought Ethel along to tend to the wood stove. Everyone knows, Lucy could never master that!
I am in charge of feeding cats and dog and cleaning out the litter box....very low tech.
So here is Ethel keeping us nice and toasty. She has done a good job even on days it was 80 outside.

Sunday we visited Mountain View Methodist Church with Sallie's neighbor/friend Lynda. They have a bluegrass praise band! How cool is that?

Here is a closer, darker view of the band. We sang These are the Days of Elijah and other current praise favorites :)

Lynda took us on a scenic tour on our way home. This is Mabury Mill a favorite on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Yesterday we went to Floyd, Va the home of Schoolhouse Fabrics a three story brick school building FULL of fabric and other notions. Floyd is an artsy town with interesting shops we enjoyed browsing through.

Ethel (aka Rita) quote: "When someone tells you something is ten miles away. Those are "mountain miles" aka curvy roads and it will take you 3 and 1/2 hours to navigate them."

Ethel got her name by locking her keys in the car on her way up here during a stop at Fancy Gap. Her solution to prevent this from happening again is to put her keys on her dog's leash and attaching it to her purse. This contraption leads to all kinds of hilarious "situations." In fact after a twenty minute search for her seam ripper which was found under her chair....I may actually concede that she is LUCY and I am Ethel.

So Sallie, not to worry Lucy and Ethel are setting fires in your hand made log cabin.

Do you have a Lucy friend to keep you in stitches? I am so glad I do......right now my heart is so merry it is about to burst.

Good Things Cheap

Okay, yesterday made one week since we arrived at the house sit. We "celebrated" by going to a quilt shop in Raleigh....Curtis was SO excited. Donna spent way too much money!

Then we went to the grand opening of Ollies in Cary, NC. They had been advertising on tv and in the paper so we figured "what the hay". A big attraction was their motto: Good Things Cheap. In fact that is my mantra: I love good things cheap.

What we didn't know was yesterday was the GRAND OPENING....donuts, coffee, popcorn...and a Dixie Land Band in addition to huge crowds. There must have been a hundred (okay maybe 12) men in "suits" obviously from the corporate office which is rumored to be "up North" in the words of one customer.

I abandoned my shopping cart on the first "aisle" which is really a misnomer....aisles were more like paths with shoppers trying to navigate...kinda like rush hour traffic.

Curtis did manage to "bag me" a new cushion for my outdoor chaise lounge. Some obviously wild animal has been clawing my old one to pieces so a replacement piece was needed. That's all we got Ollie.....but I did meet and greet some nice people in those crowded paths you call aisles.

Then I went to TJMaxx.....(Do I have the best husband or what? He brings a book and contentedly reads while I shop. He even said "back so soon" when I got out of the quilt shop. Whatta man!)

I love me some TJ and I rarely go now that I have one in Florence. When I had to travel to Charleston or Columbia, oh, I made special trips. Now that is available....not so much; like hardly ever.

I tried to remember what Big Mama said was "IN" on her Fashion Friday Blog. Something about pink being a hot color this spring, something about scarves, and ruffled knit shirts. I did manage to buy one cheap scarf, some new terry slippers (we won't talk about how old my old ones are) a NEW BATHING SUIT....I have been wearing the one my friend Bobbie gave me for at least five years (and I still like it...but when you go to the pool everyday you need a change of swimwear).

Looking in that full length mirror in the dressing room.....now that is a sore sight for my eyes....yuck....I will be going to the gym in a minute...."Tone and Tighten"..... here I come!