The Making of a DOCTOR WHO Quilt

I had made quilts for all of my late husband's grandchildren except the youngest one. I have to admit when the last grandchild of my late husband said to make a "Doctor Who" quilt, it wasn't so easy to design it. In my grief, I was hardly being creative anymore. 

A phone booth? I hadn't been watching that long-running "Doctor Who" series, but I found out the phone booth is where the characters go to call the police. Then I read about the little space figures that are in this long-running TV series from the UK, and I wondered how I could use that in the quilt. I had a pocket from one of my late husband's shirt. Not so sure how it would be possible. 

How do you turn a phone booth 

into a quilt?!

Her father made this cardboard phone booth for her.

I started with the phone booth and used jeans fabric for the structure of the phone booth. Jeans fabric is easy to piece you just sew on top. Then the jeans seemed a little harsh, or masculine, so I added some lace. 

My deadline was to give it to this wonderful young lady before I moved from Plant City where she lives. I found some flannel material with those "space figures" in them for the back on the quilt. 

One Thanksgiving

Granddaughter as an infant stole her grandpa's heart. 

A quilt with a little of her late grandfather in it--a pocket from one of his shirts sewn to the back for the use of a cell phone! Her cousins had those grandpa shirt pockets in their quilts. Gradually I got some of my creativity back. I bought flannel with space figures for the back of the quilt and blue and white poke-a-dot fleece for texture and a little warmth for the top and for the side binding. The phone booth sign came from
http://www.spoonflower.com/tags/doctorwho; however, I am not sure they still have it. 

I set out to design it with great tools.

Near the end I had to rush to Lakeland's Fabric Warehouse for help.

Becky and Brandon to the rescue. I hadn't been sewing much since my husband, her Grandfather, passed away last June. This helpful staff came to my rescue and refreshed me on how to use this great Swedish quilt-making machine, a Husqvarna Viking.

I had slept by my husband's hospital bed in a single bed. After the hospital bed left the house, the master bedroom became a sewing room, with a single bed in it. Didn't do much sewing however, until I made up my mind to finish this project before I moved next month. 

I used the stool from the pub table from the den to sit on as this height helped me not have trouble with my carpal tunnel syndrome in my wrist. Yes, I missed that pool table for quilt assembly, but it came together on that single bed. The top of the phone booth even has a place for a pen and a tablet.

Tonight  I heard that this granddaughter is pleased with it! 

"A Christmas Memory"

One day recently while substitute teaching I read a thoughtful piece by Truman Capote. I almost cried, but I was with students and didn't think it was wise.  “A Christmas Memory” is about his friend who calls him Buddy, an elderly cousin and what they did to get ready for Christmas. They made and gave away fruit cake and went to the woods to cut down a tree and decorated it with homemade ornaments. They made each other kites for Christmas. 

The reflection ends:

This is our last Christmas together. Life separates us. Those who Know Best decide that I belong in a military school. And so follows a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons, grim reveille-ridden summer camps. I have a new home too. But it doesn’t count. 

Home is where my friend is, and there I never go. And there she remains, puttering around the kitchen. Alone with Queenie.  Then alone.  (“Buddy dear,” she writes in her wild hard-to-read script, “yesterday Jim Macy’s horse kicked Queenie bad. Be thankful she didn’t feel much. I wrapped her in a Fine Linen sheet and rode her in the buggy down to Simpson’s pasture where she can be with all her Bones. . . . “). 

For a few Novembers she continues to bake her fruitcakes single-handed; not as many, but some: and, of course, she always sends me “the best of the batch.” Also, in every letter she encloses a dime wadded in toilet paper: “See a picture show and write me the story.” But gradually in her letters she tends to confuse me with her other friend, the Buddy who died in the 1880’s; more and more, thirteens are not the only days she stays in bed: a morning arrives in November, a leafless birdless coming of winter morning, when she cannot rouse herself to exclaim: “Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!” And when that happens, I know it. 

A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.

Thinking about Christmas 2013 

with my late husband. 

The kites are flying. 

So glad for my faith

in Jesus Christ and that 

my husband is with Him. 

Returning to Substitute Teaching

THE PAST IS WHERE YOU LEARNED THE LESSON. 

Middle school and high school students around here recognize me as the substitute teacher who raps at the end of good classes. I so wanted to return to this a month ago--to have a normal life instead of staying home with all the grief reminders here.

You see I missed the transitional meeting on June 27th when Kelly Services would accept all the sub teachers who have substituted with the county schools last school year. The 27th was the day before my late husband's memorial service and I just couldn't go.  I called Kelly Services and rebooked for August 6th and thought everything was then set. Then there have been a series of phone calls that had not gotten me anywhere. I practically memorize their phone message.

Kelly Services Now Handling Substitutes

"Thank you for calling Kelly Educational Services.  

Press one if you are a substitute employee and need to cancel and assignment. 

Press two if you are an administrator and need to cancel an assignment or modify an assignment. 

Press three if you need substitute payroll. 

Press four if you are interested in becoming a substitute. 

Press five if you have technical questions. 

Press zero if you have any other questions."

Nothing to press for a transitional sub. I usually called four, five and zero and people would get back to me hopefully--or not. Yes, each one learned that I was supposed to be at that meeting in June, but had had to cancel due to my husband's death.

DON'T GIVE UP IN THE MIDDLE.
School came and I wasn't substituting. Very unusual. Lots of phone calls again. Lots of bureaucracy. Had to have my finger prints taken on Sept. 2 for $95 and assumed that I would be on board that next week. Didn't happen.

Sept. 9 I got a "no-reply" email from Skillsoft Support called "Welcome to Kelly Learning Center" with detailed information to Carole Johnson (not my spelling) on how to take Kelly classes and set up my computer. I needed help for my Mac I thought. It turns out this did help me modify my Mac computer so I can get in to substitute, but I am transitional and did not need their Kelly training. A Charles emailed me Sept. 11 that within a day he would be back to answer my questions.

I have escalated your issue to the appropriate department 

to be handled via telephone. 

You can expect a follow-up within one business day. 

Oh, yes, I did (in my mind) have an escalated issue!!! It wasn't one business day because Joel called me earlier Sept. 16th and we talked about how I had gone to Kelly Services for substituting and did not need other training  and I thanked them that they had helped me make my Mac computer ready. 

Friday Sept. 12 two people from Kelly Services promised to call back and that Friday I had been given information on the location of Kelly Services in Tampa--had almost thought that Kelly Services was not in our area that they were in some high rise somewhere in the galaxy.

Actually Suite 117 in Tampa

Yesterday morning,  September 15th, by 11 am they hadn't called back.  So Monday, Sept. 15,  I gassed up the car and traveled the familiar I-4 route to the I-275 North and got off on the exit that would eventually bring me to Kelly Services after almost an hour. Walking in Suite 117 someone said I looked perplexed. (Well actually I had an  escalated issue!) A gentleman, possibly the boss I had talked to on Friday who recognized my name, said they would investigate. I stayed in the reception area--not invited back to a cubicle. I started taking pictures and explained to Melissa that I was going to blog about getting into substituting with Kelly Services. She said she hoped it would be good. It is!

Melissa

Name tag will last me until 3/18!

Someone came out and asked for my birthdate. Someone went to look for that picture that had been taken August 6th and no one could find it. Then Dareaus took another picture.

Finally a new name tag was brought to me and they said that I would receive a call within 48 hours that I could sign on in the computer to substitute teach.

To celebrate I rapped for Melissa and Dareaus who liked the raps and said they would look me up on YouTube. Thanks Melissa and Dareaus, Carol and others who helped!

I am not angry with Kelly Services and they have been polite to me as they tried to get this transitional sub back in the system.

During the month I thought I should rightfully be substitute teaching while I waited for answers from Kelly Services.   But the LORD had other plans for my time:

• Time with my grieving dog Ziggy.
• Time to adjust to widowhood and make the house my house instead of our house.
• Time to get out and about.
• Time to start coaching four women on caregiving by email.
• Time for a dental, vision and medical appointment.
• Time to apply to refinance the mortgage.
• Time for friends.
• Time to arrange for more YouTube videos of my raps.
• Time to do homework for the Grief and Share group I go to one night a week. 

THE FUTURE IS WHERE YOU APPLY THE LESSON.

What have I learned? There is life after caregiving and the death of a spouse. You just have to jump back in even if it isn't easy to jump back in. Sometimes you just have to go in person to an office to get the results you need and to cut through the bureaucracy. Sometimes you just have to have faith and believe that it will all work out, that money will come to you when you need it, that the LORD will provide.

Maggie called about 4:55 pm today to tell me I could put my pin in, set up my profile of the schools where I wish to teach. I did that. Within a half hour, I had been called for a school that I like.

SO HAPPY THAT I CAN SUBSTITUTE TOMORROW

AT A SCHOOL I LIKE AND THAT LIKES ME.