Mellow Friday

Yesterday was a slow day at work so I decided to work on a table topper for my eating area. I have a glass table and like to put on something with color. Since January, there has been a pink/Valentiny Day mat with pieced hearts on it.


So, yesterday, I began piecing together some blocks with stuff I had on hand and as I finished the first one, I realized that I was using some left over fabrics from the Think Romance quilt. It dawned on me that I could just use some of those blocks and get the table topper done, quicker.

I pieced the tabletopper, then flopped it onto the longarm for quilting. Now I need to stitch on a binding. Here it is:


You can’t see it but I did a panto across the three pieced blocks and put in wreaths on the green. Pretty pleased with them. Since this is not an item intended for heavy duty work, I just used some pink linen from the godforsakenwalmart bargain shelf for the backing.

Husband turned 50, yesterday. He is so busy working that he hardly looked up. I understand the title company handling the buying of our Oklahoma house has our paperwork and money, the utilities are set to be switched to our name and all is proceeding as hoped. Let’s pray that they don’t find something dreadful at the walkthrough.

I was assigned a new case from one of my favorite judges, yesterday. Lately, I have not been getting too many new cases, but lawyer friends tell me no one else has, either. It appears to be a particularly challenging case and I like that. Since the judges have discretion to select the guardian ad litem of their choice, I always wonder what they were looking for when they send a particular one to me (and what it says about their opinion of me). I used to get a ton of CHINS cases (children in need of services or children in need of supervision). They are very challenging cases and the new one is like that. However, all of a sudden, I began getting many, many custody cases. I can’t imagine why – you have to be a real diplomat to deal with parents in the middle of WWIII and I’m no diplomat. The common factor in both types (other than involving a child) is that the parents frequently don’t have an attorney. I suspect the courts sometimes use GALs to keep things on track and make sure things are going as they should. We can’t give legal advice to the parents (although they all want us to) but we CAN explain the process so they have a better idea about what is coming next.

I also tend to get cases where the parents aren’t doing their job or the child is just out of control – I suspect because the court knows I will put on a motion to transfer custody if need be. As often as not, I can withdraw the motion but sometimes it takes that possibility to get a parent to insist that their child go to school or cooperate with counseling or anger management. I’ve got a HUGE fan club, as you might imagine.

Son sent an e-mail, yesterday, entitled “From the streets of Manhattan.” My heart began doing weird flip flops for fear I would open the e-mail and discover a horrible picture of terrorist carnage that he, apparently, narrowly escaped (non parents have NO idea what planet motherhood looks like). Instead, there was a darling picture he snapped of a Samoyed strolling down the street. AND HE THOUGHT OF HIS MOM!!!!!

I’m beaming.

Older daughter just learned she is heading out to godforsakenlosangeles for several months. I stayed up late researching earthquake fault lines in the area. I am trying to find an online site to show crime statistics, also. I hope she doesn’t get recruited by a gang or get forced to have cosmetic surgery. She better not bring home some nancy boy movie star for my approval because that won’t do, either.

Off to bind the table topper.