Fall & Fires

I love fall. I like the crispness of the morning. The heat of the afternoon. Beauty all around me. But, I think I like most of all the rain and fires fall brings. I love the crackling of logs burning. The hot licking flames as the fire rages and then warm glowing embers as the fire subsides. I cozied up to a fire this afternoon and watched - then listened to it burn. This while the rain pounded down upon the skylight. Fall is here - and I love it!

Mending My Ways

Last Christmas my mama went all out (well, all out for us) and bought me and my sister Ivanna a beautiful little sewing machine. It is a "brother" and is a basic model. It's very light and compact.

My former sewing machine was a singer - much heavier - and much older. The singer wasn't old enough to be cool though. And after breaking three times while in my possession it was time to say good-bye.

The brother is great, it can do all the small easy things - plus some of the extras. And so, I couldn't believe that it had only been out once since getting it! This is October folks! That means it was getting used about once every 10 months. And I enjoy sewing.

So a few days ago I got all the mending that was in my pile of "need to get this done as soon as you possibly can" - which included three pairs of pants - one blouse and one shirt. I was able to get it all completed in a short while about an hour and a half (I did have a few hick-ups along the way.)

I will certainly be sewing more in the near future. I have the machine out and fabric waiting to be stitched!

(And I wish I took pictures for you! I decided I need to get a camera because papa's camera is NEVER around when I want it! Or the batteries are dead.)

Trapped With No Way Out (okay so there was a way...)

Last night my family went to a movie - I mean my whole family. And we made a night of it! Leaving the theater I saw an exit sign, quickly double checked that it wasn't an emergency exit and then said "Let's go this way." You see, even though my leg is a bunch better I'm still trying to "save steps" as I've started putting it.

My reason for picking that exit was, we were parked on the second floor of a parking garage - the exit was on the second floor. The other exit required that we go to the first level. Clearly, this would save two flights of stairs to navigate! Hurray.

We went out the door into the dark night. It seemed a bit strange because no one else was out there. But I saw an exit sign down an "open hallway" upon another door. After everyone was in this "open hallway" I opened the door with the exit sign on it and went through. My papa had the sense to keep the door open because we realized there was no handle on the other door we'd just come through. Meaning, you could go out, but not back into the theater.

This door had a handle on the inside and after walking down half the flight of stairs we decided this staircase wasn't leading us where we wanted to go - after all we wanted to end up on the second level! So we returned to the strange "open hallway."

We continued along on this dimly light path for a bit and found three more doors close together. Two of them were side-by-side with an "EMERGENCY" sign writing on the ground pointing, we thought, to one door, but couldn't exactly tell which one. So we picked the other door.

Inside we found a staircase extremely similar to the stairs we opted against taking. With one difference. These stairs had another set of stairs running the opposite way. There was a platform opposing us, and the staircases mirrored each other. Anyway, we decided, this is was it!

We got to the bottom of the staircase only to find that the door was locked at the bottom. Odd, very odd! We went back up to the top of the staircase - only to find that door was also locked. We tried it again... yep locked. Down we went again... that door was locked!

My mum was a bit nervous but said "I'm not afraid because we have dad and Uriah with us." Then Ivanna was said "We may have to call 9-1-1... or perhaps we'll have to beat down the door." The second idea seemed like a rather unlikely possibility as the doors appeared very heavy duty to me. "Or maybe" she continued "we could pull the fire extinguishers, I'm pretty sure that sets off an alarm or something."

Meanwhile, Uriah had leaped over our set of stairs onto the mirror set. Raced up that set of stairs and opened that door. He ran through that "open hallway" and set us free!! I saw a guy open a back exit to the theater with his key and we said "hey, wait!!" (an so on...) But he looked at us weird and then shut the door before we could reach him.

Ivanna went and knocked on a door to the theater and someone opened the door. She told them we weren't able to get out that way and so we were allowed to go through the theater to exit the other way.

Down a flight of stairs to level one, back up a flight to level two, and finally we arrived at our car.
Exit complete. So much for saving steps huh?

Last Night

A few weeks ago I tore my calf muscle. It caused a considerable amount of "slow down" for me. I was on crutches for about a week and then I've been limping around. But, everyday I'm getting better and look forward to walking naturally (without the limp) very soon!

On to the story!

So last night Ivanna and I took a little drive because we wanted to talk about a few things that had happened during the weekend. In a good way, of course.

Suddenly, Ivanna turned to me and said

"So do you want to go walking downtown?"

I looked at her puzzled, and said

"Huh? Are you serious?" (Of course, downtown hasn't always been my favorite place. I realized though, that it's driving down there that I really hate.)

She shrugged her shoulder at me.

When I said

"Really, I can hardly walk."

she busted up. Somehow she'd forgotten.