Gifts of Grace - July

Here is July's applique/embroidery block from Val Laird's Gifts of Grace. I think I should have made the lettering a more toned down gold but I like it anyway. I love mushrooms, especially red ones with white splotches.

 We actually have summer here today.  I think in BC summer must be like Forrest Gump - "Summer is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get." So today is 28C (@86F), too hot to really do much. I cooked a roast that we can eat cold for dinner with some cole slaw. I've given up on Deli meats. I mean I never paid much attention to them before. I thought they were higher quality than packaged meats. Then one day I asked about the salt content in the turkey breast because of my renal diet. The kid at the deli went in the back and brought out this wrapped, supposed, turkey breast and showed it to me. Turkey breasts aren't round like that and they don't come in a Maple Leaf wrapper. And they don't have a way high salt content. Well, I guess unless they fed the turkey lots of potato chips maybe. So I guess deli meats are reconstituted turkey bits slammed together, cooked and wrapped. Ick.

We were hoping to get the boat in the water today. But yesterday we pulled it out of the shed and husband fired up the engine. The engine works fine but the hydraulics don't, which means you could sit by the side of the dock and rev all you want but the engine won't lower into the water so you're not going anywhere. So he's working on that now.

We try to involve Michael in these things when possible. A lot of the time he rolls his eyes and is annoyed that we are asking him to do things he doesn't want to. When we were done testing we asked him to drive the truck forward a bit into the garage (the shed is behind the garage). Because we'd been working with water the grass was sodden and the back wheel spun. Michael was upset but DH showed him how to put the truck in 4WD and explained how that works. The truck went ahead smoothly.

When we'd finished and the boat was back in the shed and the truck in the driveway Michael was looking at the spot where he'd spun the wheel and he was VERY upset that he'd done that. I told him it would have happened to anyone, it happened to DH when we first put the boat in there. Michael just shook his head, got down, and began pulling tufts of grass out of other places and trying to cover up the mud *LOL* He was fixing it. Gotta love him. It took quite a few reassurances for the rest of the night to get him to finally say okay. Once he stopped mentioning it I hope it really was okay, that he wasn't still feeling bad about it.

 I did vacuum on Friday and I did get my book finished. Now I'm almost done another book I started on Saturday. Darn this reading habit. I was told about this new book. It's called House Rules and it's about an 18yo boy who has Asperger's Syndrome and is arrested for murder. A lot of what the book says I know is true and I know I am extremely lucky that Michael doesn't have all of the more trying difficulties that this mother has to deal with. And yet there are things that are the same and I'm nodding my head and saying yes to myself. It's a sad read, for me, but it's also gratifying in that it confirms that I'm not imagining things, I didn't cause things, things just are what they are.  And some things make me smile because I know the disorder, I know the literalness and inability to lie that goes along with it.

I was glad to see that this book and another one that I have ordered in, when available, aren't on the library shelves. They are out being read and hopefully not by people who deal with Aspergers but people who can learn from the books.


Today's gratitude is I'm grateful for libraries... if there weren't libraries I'd go broke buying books.