Reporting from Santa Rosa

Our mini-vacation didn’t start out very relaxing. By the time we cleaned the house, packed up all that we needed (or thought we needed) to bring and hit the road, it was almost 5 p.m. We arrived in Santa Rosa two hours later to find that sometime in the last few weeks a power outage caused the breaker to the refridgerator to trip and turn it off. So we had a very nasty mess of mold and mildew to clean up first thing. Eeeewww!

The floors were really gritty, too. Probably because there’s been a painter here off and on the past month and the yard right around the house is currently more dirt than lawn, so a good amount was tracked inside. Nothing a couple hours of sweeping and mopping couldn’t handle.

Once that was done, THEN we could relax :-) It’s been raining most of the time since we arrived, and you know there’s nothing like snuggling up with a good book -- or a quilt project -- while the rain pitter patters outside.

Hubby isn’t making much headway on his list of outside chores. It cleared up enough Monday afternoon for him to plant 10 of the 13 citrus trees that friends gave us. I'm glad he's getting some enforced down time; he really needed it. Although he hasn't been completely idle, puttering around taking care of things inside.

I spent Monday working on pieced pillowcases I plan to give as Christmas gifts. No pattern, no rules...just fun sketching some ideas and then playing with the fabric and seeing what happened. I used to be a very by-the-book quilter but in the past few years have enjoyed the freedom of doing WHATEVER I FEEL LIKE. (lol) I’ll post pictures after Christmas (wouldn’t want the recipients to see what they’re getting!).

It feels so incredibly GOOD to just spend a day sewing for fun. Not thinking about all the other things that need to be done. Now THAT is relaxing!

We also went into Belgrano last evening and tracked down some cheese. It's not cheddar but at least it has flavor. Also stopped at an heladería and had the best dark chocolate ice cream -- yummy! Ice cream here tends to be sweeter than what I'm used to and even the chocolate varieties have a fruity flavor (hard to describe) but this was deep and rich and cocoa-y which translated into a blissful ten minutes :-)

We're reading stories about how cold it is in the U.S. with widespread snow and ice storms. Not missing that at all! On Saturday it was close to 100° and the sun is just so intense (reminds us of Africa in that respect). The rain has cooled things off considerably; I was actually cold on Sunday evening since we didn't think to bring sweaters and it dropped into the 60s. The daughter lives in northern Indiana and had no sympathy, however. She said, "Mom it's zero here. That means we have NO degrees!" hahahaha Guess it's all a matter of perspective.

Found a cyber cafe that allows us to plug in our own computer which is really nice, and how I'm able to post in the midst of our time away. Yay for cyber cafes!