Chicken Butt

It's a two-fer day!

I hung my Christmas stocking sis made for me today. She used some pieces of mom's favorite sweaters that she wore all the time. I made the MoM pin on the pocket in sixth grade. It is layers of construction paper glued together, sanded, and laminated. I always focused on the fact that I meant to write Mom and accidentally wrote MoM. Later when I mentioned this, other people assumed I'd meant to do it and that it looks good this way. It is slightly painful to me still. When I can look at the pin and not see my mistake I think I'll be a healthier person than I am now.

(Click to enbiggen pics)

I love this stocking. My sister does not consider herself artistic or crafty. I love that she made it anyways. The shape is a bit lumpy and we mock it sometimes, but I love that sis made it for me and I think of mom and sis whenever I see it (unless I'm too self-involved, then I see the glaring MoM first). Tomorrow would have been mom's sixty-eighth birthday. Christmas cheer is much harder without mom.

Mom in pictures

One of the many projects on my list is to scan in all the photos we picked out for the photo boards at my  mom's memorial service. At Christmas my cousin's husband gave me a CD with a bunch of family photos he scanned a while ago. Today I looked at them for the first time. I uploaded a set to Flickr with some shots of my mom.

She died on May 1, 2002.  cannot believe it's been five years since that horrible time.

Snowy day

I haven't posted any pictures for a while. The snow is so big and fluffy today I had to snap a few pics before heading to the office. (Worked from home this morning.)

Edited later the same day: I decided to just show one larger pic instead of three tiny ones. Click the photo to see the others at flickr, but they are all basically the same.
 

Not so random pics

Okay, new category of post. As a chance to learn how to use my new-ish scanner and hopefully keep all my posts from soundly like a whiney twelve-year-old dictated them, I'm trying something new.  When I can't think of anything in particular I want to write about I'll choose a photo from one of my many shoe boxes of undocumented photos. This isn't a random process because I don't want to post pictures of people who have asked me not to or that I think may not approve. I may change my mind on that though, because most of my pictures are of people and there are some awesome stories I'd like to share.

For today, this is a house that sat along Route 49 between home and U of I. I think it was in Morris. What an awesome yard. It was overgrown and filled beyond normalicy with yard crap. Some of it was neat, most of it was pretty standard garden fare. All combined it was a dazzling display. I wonder if it is still there and in a similar state. You got to assume the neighbors hated it.

Anyone else remember this house? Anyone else have a picture? Anyone know if it still looks like this?