Aunt Grace is my grandfather's sister, the only surviving sibling in that family, and one of our favorite people in the world. Look up the word indomitable in the dictionary and you'll find her picture.
Years ago the women of our family went to the national quilt show in Paducah, KY. Grace flew from CA to Iowa and then drove to KY, arriving well after dark. I flew from Minneapolis to Kansas City, then Mom, her sister Donna, my sister Deb, and a couple friends-who-became-family drove to KY together. Moments after we got there, Mom realized she'd given Grace the wrong hotel name/address. Worse yet, the hotel Grace was looking for no longer existed. We panicked a bit. I got a phone book and started calling every hotel in town, explaining the situation and asking them to watch for an elderly lady who was confused and concerned.
Yeah. Don't know who I was describing, but it wasn't Grace. About 11 pm, we heard someone beating on the door of our room, yelling, "You can run, but you can't hide!"
When Grace got to the address she'd been given and discovered nothing but a demolition site, she found a gas station with a phone and called my dad. He told her where we were, she got directions from the gas station guys and drove herself over there. In a strange city. In the dark. She was 76 at the time and had had a mastectomy about a week before the trip. Still had drains in place, even.
That was nothing for Grace. When she was a young woman, her husband came home with a pick-up bed filled with grapes he'd gotten from some farmer for a couple dollars. She didn't miss a beat. Just pulled out a ladder and crawled up onto the roof of her house. Spread screens all over and laid out the grapes to dry into raisins.
When I grow up, I'm gonna be like Grace.
Meantime, I cleaned out my pantry on Sunday. Among other things, it was chock-full-o'empty containers. You know, old cookie tins and wide-mouthed jars—things that could be really cute and useful if only I did something with them other than stuff them into the back of the pantry.
Here's what I did with a tin that once held ginger cookies from World Market.
It took three or four coats of spray paint to cover the original wild markings, but it worked eventually. I used Aileen's Jewel It glue to apply the rick rack. (It should hold through hand washing.) A little small-g-grace for the pantry.
See you Friday. We'll try to get that green project done by then. It's majorly cute.
Yeah. Don't know who I was describing, but it wasn't Grace. About 11 pm, we heard someone beating on the door of our room, yelling, "You can run, but you can't hide!"
When Grace got to the address she'd been given and discovered nothing but a demolition site, she found a gas station with a phone and called my dad. He told her where we were, she got directions from the gas station guys and drove herself over there. In a strange city. In the dark. She was 76 at the time and had had a mastectomy about a week before the trip. Still had drains in place, even.
That was nothing for Grace. When she was a young woman, her husband came home with a pick-up bed filled with grapes he'd gotten from some farmer for a couple dollars. She didn't miss a beat. Just pulled out a ladder and crawled up onto the roof of her house. Spread screens all over and laid out the grapes to dry into raisins.
When I grow up, I'm gonna be like Grace.
Meantime, I cleaned out my pantry on Sunday. Among other things, it was chock-full-o'empty containers. You know, old cookie tins and wide-mouthed jars—things that could be really cute and useful if only I did something with them other than stuff them into the back of the pantry.
Here's what I did with a tin that once held ginger cookies from World Market.
It took three or four coats of spray paint to cover the original wild markings, but it worked eventually. I used Aileen's Jewel It glue to apply the rick rack. (It should hold through hand washing.) A little small-g-grace for the pantry.
See you Friday. We'll try to get that green project done by then. It's majorly cute.
1 comment:
I adore you and everything about you.
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