So life throws you curves. We all know that. But some of us have more balls hurled at them from unseen directions then others. My life is like that. As you may have guess by now, the Florida trip that I was so anxiously planning for did not happen. Sad. The why it didn't happen is *almost* funny now, in retrospect. Almost.
I helped out my friends who own
Uncommon Threads at their booth at
Maryland Sheep and Wool over the first weekend in May. Or maybe it was the first weekend of the beginning of the consumption of earth by the fires of hell. Not sure, it's a toss up because it was ELEVEN BILLION DEGREES outside. In a three sided tent. In the sun. In a field. With a kajillion percent humidity. In other words, it was hot.
I am a delicate flower. I don't do hot. By the third day of hot, after eating my lovingly prepared turkey sandwich (shout out to Daun, who makes killer lunches), my body decided I was done. I won't go into scary details, but I will tell you that Howard County Maryland has cute EMTs and that Howard County General Hospital and Howard County Fairgrounds are entirely too far apart, even with the ambulance woo-woos blaring.
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There, see! I just checked -- over 14 miles. Crazy!
So anyway, heat exhaustion and dehydration. Then when I do get home (thanks to my cohorts for waiting for me so I had a ride home from the hospital) my family doctor sends me back to the hospital the following day. And forbids me from going to Florida. Okay, forbid would be an overstatement. Let's just say I was strongly discouraged from traveling to the land of sunshine & nephews for 10 days. So I cried & cancelled our reservations, disappointed a boatload of people and now I'm sitting at home, freezing to death in the cold, damp, dreary Pennsylvania spring. ugh.
But that was not the only life change that happened this week. I also resigned from the board of directors of Autism York. Not that anything bad or sad happened, but that I need to focus on my Grams and the Beastie for the next few months & I can't, in good faith, commit to running events like walks or festivals when they both could need me at any given moment. So yeah, after four years I'm done. I cried about that too. A lot. When I started we were a few moms with $50 in an envelope. Now we are this incredibly amazing organization that helps hundreds of individuals on the spectrum, families and professionals every year. We raised nearly $40,000 last year and every penny stayed in our community helping those impacted by autism. It was my baby for a long time and now it has grown up and is going to move forward without me. That doesn't mean I won't be volunteering occasionally but I will be receiving services instead of helping to provide them. I haven't quite adjusted yet.
Then last night my best friend, Leigh Ann, brought me lo mein noodles. And a fortune cookie.
And the cookie said this...
So, time to start some new goals. And I have a good one. Details to come tomorrow (or soon, in case tomorrow has other plans)
So lately my list of must-read blogs has been growing & growing. I'm hoping this weekend to give the happy needle notebook a bit of a revamp & with luck I will get a blogroll going so I can share with you the amazing talents of so many crafty people.
But I do like to look at pretty things. And actually, I like to make pretty things too. Lately I've been a dollar store demon. I most recently acquired some very cute independence day decorations and decided to break out the old glue gun and get crafty. I made two wreaths for two of my dearest friends.
Also in my dollar store adventures I have found the best bad-ass straw cowboy hats. I got myself one with a black band. I wear it everywhere, especially in the car. I love the looks I get as I drive with my too-loud, too-young for me music blaring, windows & sunroof open, sunglasses & cowboy hat on, driving my mom-mobile. I rock a little.
I also bought a book this week. The first non-crafty book I've purchased since I bought my kindle. It's A Patriot's History of the United States
. I'm politically very moderate. I don't generally talk about politics, especially in a public forum. But I have heard good things about this book and I do love history. I bought the paper version because I can think of several people who might like to borrow it when I finish reading -- although it's over 700 pages, so I might be reading for awhile. I'll give you a review as I plow my way through.
The wonderful folks at Covergirl & Olay have teamed up to create the Simply Ageless Collection. I was lucky enough to get a sample of this collection from BzzAgent and wanted to share my results with you.
Now I will admit, I'm not a big fan of having my picture taken, or worse yet, taking it myself. So after about 100 images I managed to find three I'm not too embarrassed to share with you. 
Next photo shows an improved me, just four minutes later. I used a bit of the corrector under my eyes, the concealer on the red patchy places and then the foundation over the whole shebang. I very sparingly used the blush. In truth I usually never use blush, my Welsh heritage insures that I have my own built in blush at a moments notice, but since it came with the collection I have been using just a touch of it. It's a nice change to have blush under my cheekbones instead of just in my apples.
