Well, why not

Today's WikiHow

How to Make a Dress from a Fitted Bedsheet

Steps

1 Find or buy a fitted bedsheet.

I'll finish this up with my own steps 2 and 3.

2 Put it on your bed.

3 Find or buy a dress.

The poem I found today

I like it. I believe I'll be writing what this poem has caused me to remember, to think.
Parole

The lately dead still arrive in the corner of your eye
Past the restaurant window, preparing slow smiles of pride
At achieving their return. They know that without them
You can never be the same, so they cheat for a while.
They keep trying to work a parole to the usual places,
They won't be excluded from them if you are there.

Their fingers have pressed the latch and the door nearly opens,
But then their smile turns embarrassed because they find
It behaves like a turnstile: they think they have admission,
But this door is fixed to prevent them coming back in.
And you just can't help, at all; if you went out to greet them
They would not be there, no one in the street would have seen them.

Then slowly the corner of your eye
Forgets to look.

Alan Brownjohn

You know what they say about the size of the world

Today I met a young woman, Stephanie Llewelan. She told me her name, the names of her three daughters--Sarah, Sammi, and Ava--then asked my name.

Carol Schiess, I said.

She said, Schiess?

Yes.

Schiess is my maiden name, she said. But we're from Utah and Washington, so . . .

But I asked anyway who her people are because our people are from Utah and California. Turns out her great grandfather was Wayne's Uncle George. Her grandfather his cousin Ron. Her dad is Joseph, and I don't know him. But, yes, I know her people.

What do you think of that?

Good numbers--two

Ten years ago today my grandson Bryan was baptized.

That was 02/02/02.

Natural born leader

Christmas 1978. Remember? I do.

Andrew had a part in the Primary's Nativity presentation. He was a shepherd--with glasses. And clearly he was anxious to get to the manger, got there first.

When the others did not follow, he turned and impatiently motioned them, saying, "Come on!" No doubt in anyone's mind that night who was the head shepherd.

The Darrington Boys

At Christmastime, 2011. Charles Xavier, John Fitzwilliam, Edmund Andrew. They live in Pennsylvania, which is not exactly near here.

Charlie is a tall 6-year-old school boy. He is, I believe, a deep thinker. And he reads, like, on his own.

Johnny is a red head, holding his brothers' hands. He's four. I asked him once in a telephone conversation if his hair was still red. "Yes, Grandma Carol," he said with some disgust, "my hair will always be red."

Edmund is the blond, cute as can be, and he will be two in February. He sings around the house. Can't beat that, now, can you.

I think it's called inertia

Our back door has a lock on the knob and a dead bolt. The dead bolt hasn't worked for maybe 13 or more years. Wayne saw no urgency to fix it, I guess, since the lock on the knob worked. He would say he didn't know how to fix it.

Hmmm.

Lately the door shuts funny or doesn't shut. Like, I would come down in the morning and find it not latched. So I began to make sure that I shut it tight, and I looked at the dead bolt. I mean I really looked.

I thought I could see the problem. Fixing it would require removing the brass plate, hammering the dented part straight, and re-attatching the brass plate. That might do it, I thought, if the door hadn't shifted too much.

So the other morning, I followed those steps, and now the dead bolt works. And I am pretty proud of myself, you know.

I said, "Oh Wayne, you could have done that. Why didn't you?" I also said, "Oh, Carol. Forget it. The thing is fixed."

I told Jim, my home teacher, the dead bolt story, leaving out the parts about Wayne.

He said, "I can top that."

Jim: We've lived in our house 20 years. In one place, the roof comes together and forms a little valley that the water runs down when it rains. Under that spot is a metal box [it's permanent], and when it rains, the water drips onto that box. Drip, drip, drip, drip.

Still Jim: The other night we were in bed and my wife said, "What is that noise? Why can't we get rid of that noise?"

Jim is not an old guy, and he's capable, and so on. But he is deaf in one ear and is losing hearing in the other. The drip, drip, drip, drip, does not bother him; he can't hear it.

But the other night,
Jim: So I got out of bed, went outside, and put a big rock on top of the metal box. When I got back in bed, she asked, "What did you do? How did you fix that? That noise has driven me crazy for years, every time it rains."

Jim explained what he had done. They were both happy.

To me he said, "Twenty years, Carol. Twenty years."