Coffee and Knits

Yesterday, after going to an overpiced garage sale with the eBay Queen.

Definitely overpriced.

I thought I was going to get a box full of yarn ~ not beautiful yarn, just old acrylic for 3.00. When I went to purchase said yarn, a bag of tan and ivory yarn was pulled out and priced at an addition 5.00. Not exactly the bargain I was hoping for.

ANYWAY. We came home to find a bunch of these little buggers on the bee balm I had planted last year.

First: Look at the bee balm:

The blooms are a little old (they’ve been out for almost 2 weeks), but they are still beautiful.

See, I found it growing in the back of our property, and planted 4 super skinny stalks of it last year. 4 single stalks. This year they have taken over the garden, and appear to have cross-pollinated with the pink dwarf bee balm to create a super tall fuschia colored flower! It is amazing!

Rosie loves them too. Don’t mind the weeds… or the pixel ridden photo. I’m trying Picasa out, and well… may have gotten a little carried away with the sharpening tool.

But I digress….

When the queen and I came home, we saw about 20 of these:

Looks like a honeybee, right?

Look again:

Now it looks like a baby hummingbird!

Now it looks like a bee again…

Because I’m a nerd. And because I like to learn about goofy things, I did some research and looked these bad boys up.

Apparently, this is called a hummingbird moth! There are several different species, but our lovely Kansas bee balm pollenating buggies are called Snowberry Clearwing Humminbird Moths. They are just babies as they can get up to 2 inches in size. (I saw some of the larger moths yesterday, but they little ones were around for me to photograph today.)

I think they are pretty darn cute.

Did you watch Oprah’s Farewell show?

I thought it was unbelievable. I am sad I missed out on so much! I was too young to care during the ’90′s, and anything after that, Spongebob, Arthur and the like have ruled 4:00 television.

She showed a few clips from her old shows, and this is one that really hit me.

"Be responsible for the energy you bring to this room."

Or this home.

Or this restaurant.

Or this grocery store.

Or this church.

Or this life.

Be conscientious about the way you treat, act and respond towards people.

Wow.

Amen.

Small children don’t like to clean their rooms.

C. and Q. have been assigned by mom (the eBayQueen) and Dad (TVMan,) to clean their room.

Mom and Dad have left me to watch the boys while they set up staging for Youth Sunday at church tomorrow.

Do you know what I’ve heard

Over.

And over.

And over again?

Every three to five minutes?

"Rachel? Can I have a break?"

No.

No.

No.

NO!

GO UPSTAIRS AND CLEAN!!

"Rachel? Can you call the dog?"

ELVIS!!

Who? Me?

(Elvis is the newest addition to the family. More to come on him and his story another time.)

ELVIS DROP THE SOCK/BABY TOY (more to come on him another time too)/CAT!!!…. okay, he hasn’t grabbed the cat, but anything else he can find….)

SIT!!

STAY!

All of this has left me feeling a bit like this…

Please come home quick parents.

Bring food.

And wine….

Maybe not…. how about coffee?

Recently, amidst all the crazy stuff going on in our household (new baby brother, incredibly ill momma, not so emotionally stable Rachel trying to do just a few of the things The eBay Queen usually does… by the way, her job is REALLY exhausting!) I did find time to read a great book!

Sabriel by Garth Nix

Normally, I wouldn’t say I was into the whole magic/fantasy genre, but this book has quite a few references to death and the dead…I love a good ghost story. Maybe that’s how I dealt with the whole fantasy thing. Whatever it was, I loved this book.

I came about reading it when I learned I am library scum and have to go get my card re-activated because of THIS book:

Yeah… that’s right Baby Q, this was YOUR book… and I found it hidden under your bed. Little comic book nerd. ♥

Anyway, I decided to clean out some of the books I’ve had sitting on my shelves waiting to be read. Sabriel has sat  on my shelf for some time now, (like six or seven years) and finally decided to read it. It kept me intrigued from beginning to end… I had never heard of necromancy before I read this book. Apparently, it was quite popular in the age of the renaissance, and involved bells (just as in the book), magic circles and all kinds of other interesting stuff. Just look it up on wikipedia. Real life necromancers were some freaky dudes! Sabriel was a great book. It takes you along Sabriel’s quest to find her father (both body and spirit), save the world, fall in love and find out how strong she really is. I just found out there are two more books in this series! I will be checking those out soon! Highly recommended reading for anyone into adventure/paranormal/fantasy.

Sunday night, I finally finished a specially requested knit alligator.  Q wanted "a green alligator with an open mouth and teeth, and green spots."  After much searching, I was finally able to find said alligator, minus the spots, in the book  Knitted Toys by Zoe Mellor.  

Time out for Fluffy.

I’m not sure what I’ll be knitting next.  I’ll have made my decision by next Wednesday… I think.

How many of these "I’m sorry, I know it’s been a long time…", or "I am a blogging failure" posts can one girl write??

I’m not sure… but maybe I’m trying to find the answer… yeah, something like that.

In other news, several things have happened since I last wrote.  Here’s an update:

(a.) ~ Our school-building-turned-church is scheduled to be open for it’s first service November 7th!  We are super excited, but a little unsure if it will be done on time.  God does amazing things though, so we’ll see what happens!  The coffee bar is on hold until we see how things work and run at the new building.   We are holding J.A.M every Wednesday at the new building.  It’s for Kindergarten – 5th grade.  I am leading the Surprise Station, which is awesome!   Last Wednesday, I taught the kids a math trick/riddle that always ends in the same number.  Kind of a reflection on how God is always a constant.  It involved counting paper clips, and the kids were divided into two groups – K-2nd, and 3rd-5th.  Which group do you think did a better job at counting?

(Hooray for k-2nd!)

(b.) ~  The eBay business is incredibly slow.  I remember when I used to complain about having to wrap packages all day, and being worried about not having all of them done by the time UPS got here to pick them up.  Now, I’m worried I forgot to call UPS to tell them they don’t need to come because there aren’t any packages.    I miss the days of 50-70 shipments leaving our house.  Meg, come back!!  John, throw us a friggin bone here!

(c.) ~  I’m not married… sorry Grandma.

Does anyone want to guess how much I love this ring?  (Just not sure about all the stuff that goes along with owning it….)  Maybe someday I’ll grow up.

(d.) ~ We are making giant leaps in the sport of cleaning the basement… (yep, I’ve officially declared it a sport.)  Because it’s that exhausting… and because I’m that cool.

(e.) ~  I finally finished knitting a "green alligator with an open mouth, and teeth, and spots."  (Well, I didn’t add spots, but Q loves him anyway.)  I’ll post pictures next time.  Q named him Fluffy, which is pretty funny, because his mouth makes him look like Jaws.

I’ll post some real pictures of Fluffy next time.  My camera battery is dead.

I think that about sums it up…

OH!!

We have new Internet… (much better than our band-width limiting, not very nice… etc satellite.)  We are on Virgin Mobile.  It’s incredibly fast, and we have unlimited downloads. 

Well, unlimited as far as The Queen allows it to be…

Which reminds me….

The Queen has a secret… You should ask her about it.

Yesterday was youth Sunday, and I’d just like to say, that it went AWESOME!  The eBayQueen taught the Preschool-5th Grade "Big House" by Audio Adrenaline… while this kid:

(W., my little brother’s best friend. He’s pretty cool, and a really good kid..)

taught all those little kids a dance to go with the song.  They did great!  We even had a couple of kids doing the worm down the aisle, and another one doing the coffee grinder…  Yeah, ’cause that’s how we Presbyterians roll!  (While John Calvin rolls in his grave.)  Watching the kids dance, and have a good time was so cool!  The Queen was worried that they’d get up there and not do anything, but they did fabulous!

A. wrote the Children’s Sermon, and it was great!  She discussed the way the Bible is more relevant than a newspaper.  She showed the kids how adults use the newspaper (or internet) everyday to get news, but people should use the Bible everyday to learn how to live…. yeah.  I need to work on that. 

After all that, some beautiful songs were sung by the talented youth of our church and one P-Tricky, and we had our Spiritual Starbucks play.  Let me just say, the kids did WONDERFULLY!  I think they had fun acting it out, putting out props, and taking on the persona’s of the people they were representing.  I hope they learned from it, and I think the point was made to the congregation.  (I had a couple of people come tell me it was well written, and had a good message, but wasn’t too comfortable… I think that’s a good thing?  Jesus’ message wasn’t given to make people comfortable.  It was to wake them up!)  Super Tall Pastor gave closing statements, and reinforced the message with scripture, and after it was over, I think the color returned back to the Queen’s face.  She can breathe now, with another job well done on Youth Sunday! 

This coming Sunday, is Youth Sunday at our church.  You know, where the youth lead music, children’s sermon, regular sermon (sometimes…  usually the eBayqueen aka youth leader asks our super tall pastor to do it instead.), and any other things associated with a good church service: ushering/greeters etc… 

I like to help out with the youth. Maybe I identify with them better… maybe my maturity level is just kind of low… whatever, I have fun hanging out with them, and they are fun to talk about Jesus with!   Plus, they enjoy all the goofy YouTube videos that the Queen finds, and all the hip Christian music, that  some of the… well, more mature, members of our church, wouldn’t be caught dead listening to.   

In the beginning of July, the Queen asked me to write a skit about how people like to mix and match faiths to fit their needs.  And so, Spiritual Starbucks was born.  This play includes a barista, several customers, Jesus, a lawyer, and a narrator.  We’ll be serving up several drinks, such as:  Cafe Cults (actually a bottled drink the customer bought from a telemarketer, but is so bitter, she wants it sweetened up.  You know, some special Spiritual Starbucks ice, some good karma, and a Christ cookie.)  We’ll also serve a Nutmeg New Age Americano ~ featuring some of the god within all of us, good intentions, and some Buddha, Jesus, and Brahman sprinkles on top.  But no solid rock…

Finally, after working and dealing with all of these customers who can’t make up their mind, and want complicated drinks made just the right way, the barista gets to go on break and she’s thirsty.  Jesus comes out and he offers the perfect drink:  A Venti Jesus.  No mixing, matching, size preference, temperature preference, etc. required.  He’s all you need, and you’ll never be thirsty again. 

Hopefully this will work out great.  I hope the message is conveyed, and most of all, I hope the youth learn something from it… but there is one problem.

They.

Haven’t.

Learned.

Their.

Lines.

But, I’ll be praying that the little podium we use as a counter for the barista, will also be perfect for holding their lines.

How was your Fourth of July?  Our family had a great day, we went to church, came home and had an awesome dinner of salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and biscuits.  (My momma, the eBay Queen is a good cook.  She’s cool like that.)  I went outside and gardened for awhile… (I need to post some pictures of the garden.),  Came inside and FINALLY finished a book, and was super excited to learn that my Ginger (aka: P-Tricky) had the evening off work, and he was coming to watch fireworks with us. 

And then….

It started raining.

and ruined any plans for fireworks…

We were going to a family friend’s house to watch an awesome fireworks display, but ended up coming home and watching PBS instead.  Don’t get me wrong, it was fun!  But it can’t compare to this:

or this:

We were able to see these yesterday, July 5th.  Because Franklin County is awesome.  Because they didn’t want the little children, pyros, and spoiled knitters (like me) to cry and whine for the rest of the year about their lack of fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Because we’re not going to let a little rain ruin our party… and because we have some seriously patriotic people in our community.  Thank you!