A cunning hat

When JayG received the gift of a cunning hat  I was overcome with the desire to knit one. I found a web site (that I can’t find now, but if you’re interested, let me know and I’ll check my notes) whose author had Firefly on disc and a HD large screen TV. She counted stitches. She extrapolated data based on average head measurements. This was my kind of knitter! So I found a willing victim recipient, bought the yarn and the needles and sat on it all for about 3 1/2 months. (Hey. I was busy.) I started knitting on the way to Pittsburgh and finished it on the way home and hated the way it looked.

It's supposed to look like this:

So I ripped it out and started over. And this is the final product.

You can tell Sweet Daughter's not afraid of anything, walking down the street in a hat like that.

The non-event?

I did not go armed to church, but carried the rest of the day. This included lunch at a family restaurant in a rather more urban area than I am used to. One woman and two men OC'd with 4 children under 6 years of age with them ... and nothing happened, other than they tipped well.

I went through my usual day and the only funny look I got was at the dump, but I think that was because I was wearing a dress, not because I was wearing a gun.

OC Lunch tomorrow

UPDATE: Time changed to 1:00.

The instigator behind lunch tomorrow has been OBE, so I guess I'm the default cruise director.

The Globe & Laurel, and Dougherty's are both closed on Sundays, and so the next on the list was Jimmy The Greek Family Restaurant. Unless you've got a better idea, let's meet at noon 1:00. E-mail me by 10:30 11:30 or so tomorrow morning at dethosp at Gee mail dot com if you think you can make it (bring the whole family! Sweet Daughter will be there with me) so I know how big a table to get.

Hope to see some of you there!

Busy

One of our neighbors took pity on me this morning. He saw me mowing the front yard on Thursday with a (gasp!) push mower, and inquired as to the status of our riding mowers. Neither one was working. So he came over this morning and did some troubleshooting and gave me a first rate lesson in mower maintenance. First he charged up the battery. The mower started, and died. We commented on the age of the gasoline and poked around a bit. The air filter look okay, but I cleaned it anyway. Then the neighbor noticed a stray piece of fuzz, or something else suspicious, and popped the cover off. We found this:

The critter nest covering the air-cooled engine might have had something to do with it not running. We put in fresh gas and changed the oil, and low and behold, it seems to be working great. I'll find out for sure tomorrow afternoon.

This afternoon was spent doing errands in town, and I OC'd. Kohl's, Target, the mall (from one end to the other (including JCPenney and Chick-fil-A) and Lowes. The only comment I got was from the cashier at Target.

Her: "Nice gun."
Me: "Thanks!"
Her: "Are you a cop?"
Me: "No. SD, what's the best defense against a bad guy with a gun?"
SD: "A GOOD guy with a gun!"
Me : "Cops can't be everywhere all the time, and it's my job to keep her safe."
Her: "You can do that?"
Me: "Yes. Open carry is legal here without a permit. I also have a permit so I can carry concealed."

So, yay. A positive experience and maybe someone new is considering options she didn't know she had.

UPDATE: Lunch on Sunday?

The Unofficial "Hey, Look! Nobody is Running Away Screaming When I Open Carry Day" is this Sunday. A couple of us located in the DC/Fredericksburg area are planning on getting together for lunch in the Stafford/Quantico area. Anybody want to join us?

Any input on time and place? I know nothing about the area, but found these:

Dougherty's Tavern

Globe & Laurel Restaurant

Jimmy The Greek Family Restaurant

County Fare

I know nothing about any of these places ... I just did a search on "Stafford VA dining" and these came up. Let me know if you have any preferences, otherwise I'll draw a name from a hat.

Forty-eight

When I turned 35, my father informed me that I was officially middle-aged. I begged to differ. Since he was 72 at that point, I told him I wasn't there yet -- and he almost made it to 95. Both of my mother's parents (born in the 19th century) lived into their 90's.

But today I completed my 48th trip around the sun. There's no denying I'm middle-aged -- whatever that means. Most of my contemporaries have kids in college, not kindergarten. I'll be 60 when Sweet Daughter graduates from high school. Hopefully, I'll be able to pass on some of what I've learned to smooth her path just a little, and encourage her to find her own way, wherever that takes her.  And if nothing else, maybe I can pass along a little wisdom from the Duke.

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learnt something from yesterday."  ~John Wayne

You make the diagnosis

Sweet Daughter and I did our annual strawberry picking trip yesterday, and it was HOT. We got home in the early afternoon and Shorter Half was getting ready to go troubleshoot why the riding mower wasn’t working. After cooling off a bit, SD asked if she could go play in the wading pool, so I went outside to fill it up. I noticed the lawnmower battery plugged in to the battery charger just outside the door, but didn’t see SH. I walked around behind the house and saw him flat on his back. This, I believe, is what they call a “clue” that something might be amiss as was the fact that he was in the grass, in the sun, was sweating profusely, and had his left forearm in the air with the hand curled up like a claw and didn’t answer the first couple of times I called his name. Near as we can tell, he was sitting down in the shade, stood up too quickly, started walking, got dizzy and passed out, and fell on his hand.

SH was convinced it was just soft tissue damage, but I called our Friend-the-Paramedic who advised us to head into town to the urgent care center. In under 5 minutes, Sweet Daughter threw together a “go bag” that consisted of a paper box lid, 5 stuffed animals, two packages of cheese crackers, a bottle of water, and two other small toys. She did a great job -- those toys (and snacks) kept her busy for the first two hours of our wait. The last hour was spent with us girls outside and SD using the box lid like a sled to slide down a small hill.

During those 3 hours SH got x-rayed, splinted, and other assorted tests run. Now he has to go make an appointment with a specialist to get it set properly. The question is, is his hand broken in 2 or 3 places?

Click for a better view.