Energized

I'm feeling decidedly more upbeat this morning and it's scaring me a little bit, LOL.

On the night of the 2nd, our hot water heater began to leak out of the bottom. It's 22 years old and has served us well, but what a way to wake up! At 1:30am I woke up and thought it was rather cold in the house, sure enough, the pilot light had gone out on the furnace. When I went to relight it I heard water ... not a good sound when there shouldn't be water running anywhere!

I looked at the hot water heater to see water running out of the bottom. Thankfully it's near a drain but still there was some water on the floor. I saw the shut off valve and knew I could never reach it so had to wake up my husband. We shut the water off and tried (TRIED being the operative word) to go back to sleep. My husband fared better than I did. I knew that this was something that couldn't wait, which means money earmarked for other crucial things was going to have to be spent on a hot water heater.

Thankfully one of our oldest son's best friends is a licensed plumber and he came to our rescue, installing the new water heater my husband bought at a fraction of the price it would have cost to call a company to do it.

I was afraid to think of what else could (and the way things were going, would) be happening. But other than the lack of checks in the mailbox, so far things seem to have leveled out. My cold is almost gone and I'm losing weight again after the holiday nibbles.

My quilting is keeping me sane at the moment. We were hoping to pick up a badly needed check from a company that owes us a lot of money but we're getting the runaround, which has thwarted my optimism a bit, but still I remain hopeful. The new projects and old ones that are nearly finished are keeping my mind focused on more positive and enjoyable things and for that, I'm thankful.

So today, I plan to finish the quilting on the Happy New Year table runner, which can be used for another week or so. I need to make a Happy Birthday runner since our oldest son's 21st birthday is coming up (though now I hear he and his buddies may go camping for the weekend) and our daughter's birthday is at the end of the month. With 8 birthdays in our house, this will be a well used runner!

Just a bit of the quilting is left on the border and then I'll get the binding on the front. I'll save sewing it to the back for TV watching tonight. I have a baby quilt that also only has border quilting left, I'll finish that before beginning the quilting on the one I basted over the weekend.

I do have another quilt out to mark and baste and that one may get a bit of attention, too. I'm in no hurry but still have in mind to get that finished sometime this week. I'm enjoying the celtic applique border so much that I may opt to spend time on that today instead of marking/basting this other quilt. We'll see what the day brings.

I'm really having fun with these message table runners...and plan to come up with some for each season. To make that easier, I'm going to print out a full set of letters, capital and small, so I don't have to print them out each time. That may be on today's agenda as well.

The house is in good shape, so I'm hoping for a quilty day. You've heard of "Calgon, take me away!" for me it's "Quilting, take me away!"

And so I go. Happy day, everyone!