The ring, the box, and a found medicine bottle with dropper.

In a January post about Eric’s grandmother Jane, I mentioned her wedding ring quilt that we brought home with us from Topeka.  I also mentioned that my mother had pointed out to me how serendipitous it was that we were given that particular quilt by Eric's parents, what with it being a wedding ring design.  What I was hinting at in that post was that there was recent news of an engagement.  Ours.   On New Year’s Day, Kansas Slim presented me a six-sided wooden box (six-sided to represent our six years of partnership, crafted clandestinely in our terribly cold workshop just weeks before), therein nestled an eternity band.  He asked of me a question, to which I replied, “Yes I said yes I will yes!”  There may have been some tears.  And I'm pretty sure that I squealed.  Because that's what's supposed to happen when you get engaged.

We are to be married this autumn.

Slow Food

From an email I sent on January 18, 2010, but still the gospel.

"I would consider myself and most of my friends unofficial members of the "slow food" movement. For us, it’s less about getting the food quickly into the belly (although there are those moments), and more about the experience of cooking, eating and sharing the food with each other. We all know that home cooked food far exceeds the taste and quality of fast food. But if we stop to think about it, home cooking our food also provides the opportunity for us to slow down, enjoy the way food is prepared, enjoy the taste of the food, and enjoy the communion of sharing the food with family and friends. Food is far too important to us as a culture (continentally, regionally, etc.) to waste all of our calories on the emptiness of a Value Meal. Give me those hours in the backyard of a friend’s house, digging a pit in which to roast a pig (not to mention the hours of roasting after basting, spice rubbing and wrapping the pig)! Give me even more hours sitting knee to knee at a small dining room table eating food that was cooked as part of a local Iron Chef Cajun contest, swapping stories about Lord-knows-what at a dinner party that will end at who-knows-what hour! Give me those moments of staging drive-by-dinner attacks on each other, using made-up recipes that rely heavily upon the cleaning out of the freezer. And give me those moments at friends’ houses, late in the evening when kids are safely tucked away, and the adults are sitting at the dining room table (or the kid’s table, depending upon whose house I’m remembering), testing out a bottle of someone’s homebrew or eating home-brined olives…Yep, food should be slow, not fast."

Breaker, Breaker

On Tuesday, our electrician upgraded the service to The Bungalow.  He also upgraded The Bungalow from fuses to breaker boxes and fixed some wiring that had been worrying him since he had laid eyes it two weeks before during the consult.  We like our electrician.  He is a fellow Panther from Southside High and I graduated with his sister.  GO PANTHERS!  This was just Phase I in The Electric Bungalow Project.  Phase II will begin in a couple of weeks and will be referred to from this point forward as Phase II:  Electric Bungalew.  Sorry.  I would take it back, but it is already out there.

In less than five hours, went from this, this and this:

To this, this, and this:

The Better To Walk On

A little over a month ago, we decided to bite the bullet and use the Quikrete Walkmaker to build a sidewalk between the gate/back steps and the old garage.  The ground is uneven.  And mostly in shade.  Little lives there except for moss...and mud.  Perfect spot for a raised path.

These are the pavers that we had temporarily put down four years ago.

I took up the old pavers and leveled the ground as best I could.

After several weeks and much snow, Eric and I were finally able to get the bulk of the sidewalk made.  We used many 80lb. bags of Quikrete, a wheel barrow, a shovel and two hand trowels.  Back breaking.

And after about a week, we located enough Sakrete jointing sand to fill the joints.

I transplanted several hydrangeas into the area beside the fence, and filled in the bed with erosion-controlling pine straw that I collected from the roadside at mom and dad's place.  I like free landscaping materials. 

Eric and I are pretty pleased with the results.  So is Booker.  Now, to clean and finish out the front of the garage.  Then, to paint.