MEMORIES

Last week I decided to have a quick, easy dinner, and stopped by the Tortilla Factory in Roseville. We have been going to this place ever since we moved here almost 28 years ago. What you can buy us carnitas (roasted pork) by the pound, get some beans, avocado, salsa fresca and tortillas and make great burritos. When I go pick up the carnitas meat, which is already done, I have had a tendency to pick off pieces and eat it on the way home, and then cover it up like I have never been nibbling at it.



What I remembered last week, was that about the time this picture was taken of our girls when they were small.
I had discovered a lump in one of my breasts. I went to the doctor and she scheduled a biopsy with a surgeon.
It was supposed to be a day procedure, and I would go home in the afternoon. The surgery schedule that day got messed up with emergencies, and mine got postponed until late afternoon. Meanwhile they premedicated me with
two things, one of which made me itch. This was an especially hard time for me, because my girls were small, and John's mother had just had a mastectomy a year or two earlier, and undergone treatment.

I finally got my biopsy done, which was thankfully a benign adenoma, but I had to stay that night because it was done that late. The next day, John came to pick me up, with both girls, and had stopped by Tortilla Factory on the way to the hospital so I would have a good lunch.

OH HAPPY DAYS!

The beginning of this week was terrible. It began last weekend on my discovering the dishwasher was not operating properly. John first told me to take a look and see if the trap was clogged up (it wasn't). I discovered it went through a whole cycle with no water coming out. I looked under the kitchen sink and discovered a leak in the pipe connections. John came in and examined the dishwasher, juggled a bobbly thing on the bottom around a while and got the water going again. The kitchen pipe problem has been a problem off and on for years, and had caused the floor to sink in the middle it has been waterlogged so often. John has fixed it off and on and gotten it to stop. But this time he couldn't. He worked on it for 3 days, which is hard for him because he is a big guy and has to lay down on the floor and work overhead. It really frustrated him and made him mad this time. Finally Tuesday, he called a plumber to come out and he replaced all the pipes, and put in two traps to cut down on problems. He also fixed an outside faucet that has been leaking for years, but we had it wrapped up pretty good with duct tape, and when he took that off it sprayed water all over. It was such a relief to get those two problems taken care of.

After the kitchen sink was fixed, I broached the subject with John of putting in a new floor under the cabinet. I told him I would take the old one out myself, if he would replace it. Finally, I have an even floor, with no leaks in there.

This was how ugly it was after I ripped up the sodden particle board floor, and my new pipes.










And this is how it looks with my new floor in, topped with linoleum that matches the kitchen floor:








That was the first good thing that happened this week. The second was that got my sewing room cleaned up so I can work in there again. After having 3 weekends of company, two sets for 4 days each, I just kept tossing things and tossing things in my sewing room. It was so bad, I could barely walk around in there. But I finished it up. This is about as good as it gets. I would have to have a room about 2-3 times this size to get everything off the cabinet tops. I am thrilled. I have a place to sew, and a place to cut things. I can get to the closet again relatively easily.


This is the view with the doorway into my sewing room, the lighthouse lamp John made me, the dry sink he made me a long time ago, the quilter's
tower is on the left, that spins on a lazy daisy device, and has drawers on all four sides.







View of closet and all the drawers of fabric.









Another wall, with the cabinet that John built me and I painted in a patriotic theme, with Lady Liberty on the front.








View of my sewing space/cutting area. All the bins underneath are part of my Civil War Fabrics and the giant ones under my sewing machine are red, white and blue.