Hello!

Hello, friendly blog readers!  How is everyone this morning?  Excellent, I hope.
Today is General Conference, which, for those of you who do not know, is a bi-annual meeting of the leaders of the church to which I belong, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  It is televised on a local channel for those of us lucky enough to live in Utah, ;).  For those not so lucky, it is also available on BYUTV on cable and satellite and online at www.lds.org.  It also comes out in print next month.

Conference is always a good time.  It's like going to church in your jammies, or whatever.  We lay about on the front room floor watching and, I admit, sometimes falling asleep.  It's those voices.  And that speech pattern.  Especially if you have grown up with it, it is just so soothing.  One minute you are listening to President Eyring wax eloquent and the next thing you know, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is singing the closing hymn.  Of course, I NEVER fall asleep during Conference.  Ever.  Cough, cough.

Anyway,  I look forward to it twice a year.  It is nice and relaxing, and it is an excellent reminder of what we need to be doing to live a happy and fulfilled life.  Look it up if you are interested.  You might be pleasantly surprised.

In other news, life has been crazy busy around here.  A couple of weeks ago, I hit a bead while sewing on a wedding gown and completely jacked up the tension on my sewing machine.  I took it to my brother to have him repair it for me, and canceled my appts for the rest of the week.

Well, I jacked it up so well, that he has had a really hard time fixing it.  So, I have been using my domestic sewing machine at work, which is slow.  Like, painfully slow.  It drives me bananas.  It is pretty speedy for a domestic machine, but it still goes about half as fast as my industrial.  Not only that, it is lacking a few of the amenities of said industrial, which add to the speed at which I can get a dress done. 

So, after taking a week "off" I had to play catchup.  Well, catching up with a slow machine is not super easy.  For the past two weeks I have had my regular appts, plus spreading out the appts that I had canceled.  This means that I have had to work 8-6 for several days, which sucks.  I know, boo-hoo and all that, but I am not used to it, and neither is The Small One.  She gets fractious when I am gone that much. 

Please.   The Blessed Child loves me.  Don't be jealous.

So, you add my busy work schedule to that of The Man of the House and, well, you get a bit of a mess.  He is working in the great big city to the north just now, so he has a much longer and unpleasant commute.  He gets home a bit later than usual, I get home a bit later than usual, The Small One is a bit more fractious than usual.  Well, you can see where this is going.  Disarray, lousy food and cranky people who just want to sleep.  The Man of the House wants to veg.  The Small One wants to play with TMOTH.  And me?  I just want to sit on my chaise and knit and read Facebook or Ravelry.  The Small One sees me enough on my days off and whatnot, that at the end of the day, it is her daddy she is interested in, far more than me.  Bless her heart.  So, sometimes, I do get to just sit on said chaise.  But, sometimes, I do have to rescue TMOTH from the rowdy clutches of his little princess.  Everyone needs a break, right?

Last night, TMOTH and Small One were in the front room, getting things ready for a camp-in.  Laying out sleeping mats and bags, etc.  While they were thus occupied, my mom came in, having been gone most of the afternoon and evening.  With her came my nephew, who is 7 years old and The Small One's best friend.  He walked into my room to tell me how he had gone to the Holi celebration down at the Krishna temple.  He hadn't gotten two words out of his mouth when from the front room came this shout

"OH MY GOSH!  YOU DIDN'T TELL ME YOU WERE COMING!!!!"  and a blonde blur rushed into my room and wrapped her arms around her cousin.  He hugged her back and she said "I haven't seen you forever!!! Come look at my paintings!  Come see what I have in my nursery!"  And she dragged him off to reacquaint him with her life.  Cutest damn thing I have ever seen.

Now, lest you think that it has been months or whatnot since she has seen this boy, let me undeceive you.  It has only been a couple of weeks.  But, as I said, he is her best friend, so she was extremely happy to see him.   Also, he is usually here every other weekend, so it was a bit of a trial for her to have him gone that long. 

He returned a bit later to finish telling me about the Color Festival.  With small girl in tow.
This morning?  Yeah, she won't leave him alone.  Bless his heart, he loves her too.