Time Traveling
8:37 a.m. - 2007-12-26


I finished my Christmas sewing and am now in the waffling stage where I am trying to decide on my next project. The first thing I am going to work on is the pale blue T-shirt I cut out for Abby over a month ago. It will be a pleasure to sew on something thin instead of the thick and difficult handbags I have been making for Christmas presents. We had a nice Christmas Eve at my dad's house. My nephew, who has been on a six-month tour of the world, left his tour to fly home for a surprise visit to my dad, so that was a lovely Christmas present for everyone.

On Christmas Day, we had to drive out to West County to the BIL's house for dinner. We picked up the EG's on the way. Grandpa gets to sit up front in my usual place, because of his knee surgery, so I sat in the back with EG and engaged her in conversation about her childhood. She remembers just everything, and talking to her is as good as taking a trip on a time machine. I asked her what her childhood home in Wisconsin was like and asked her to describe it. This was most interesting, especially when we got to the one bathroom that there was in the big old house. She said it had a claw-foot tub and was a big room, but there wasn't a hot water heater then, so all the hot water had to be poured into the bath from kettles heated on the stove. There were no deep luxurious baths taken because you were lucky to have 4 inches of warm water. She said people then bathed on Saturday night so that they would be clean to enter church the next day. She also said that the sewing machine was kept in the bathroom, and to iron clothes, they placed boards across the top of the huge bathtub for extra ironing space. They did the wash on Mondays and ironed all day on Tuesdays. It must have been a big job because she told of her mom, grandmother, and aunt all ironing at the same time at different ironing boards to get the job done. I asked her why the sewing machine did not rust in the steamy bathroom, and she said there was never enough hot water in the tub to steam the big room up.

So now Christmas is over and it is on to the new year. I am going to restart my exercises and the South Beach diet and see where that takes me.