Tornado Warnings and a New Sewing Machine

This has been a busy week for us. On Tuesday Bob and I went to see granddaughter Jillian’s kindergarten play. She made the most adorable butterfly, and knew all her lines and gestures without prompting.

On Wednesday I had an appointment with a retinal specialist about the blurriness in my left eye. I have a retinal wrinkle that will most likely need to be addressed when we get back to Mesa, AZ this October. The treatment is surgery, which as a side effect will increase the rate of growth of my cataracts so I can expect cataract surgery in a year or two. Sigh. Growing old is not easy!

On Thursday Bob and I went to daughter Emily’s house where I watched my three adorable grandchildren and Bob helped Anthony with fix-it projects. We returned to the motorhome in time to get an alert from our weather apps: TORNADO WARNING—TAKE SHELTER! We’ve never had a “take shelter” warning so I grabbed Auggie and my purse, called for Bob and we rushed over to Kristen’s house. We didn’t even have a chance to pull in slideouts. We watched the storm pass over us on my Storm Shield weather app and were relieved that we got no worse than a bad storm. Others in the area were not so fortunate. Two confirmed tornadoes hit Mullica Hill, NJ, not far from us. And in Pittman, our son and daughter in law heard a tornado siren, the first time it had gone off in 30 years. Fortunately for them the tornado passed right overhead and touched down the next town over.

On Friday Bob took the MH to a tire shop to replace two tires that were five years old, while I headed to my daughter Catherine’s house to babysit for Jillian for a few hours. We had fun “playing school” and then played Candyland and Chutes and Ladders. She beat me every time.

When I got home, my “new” sewing machine was waiting for me. It’s a Kenmore model 158.1040 from the early 1970s, an all metal 3/4 size machine. And a real beauty. She comes with a rose embossed case, too.

This machine does straight stitch, zigzag, stretch zig zag, blind hem stitch, and a mending stitch. It also makes buttonholes. And it will be much easier to travel with than my big Viking. I’ll have to figure out what to do with my big machine now. It’s just a little heavy to pull out from under the bed when I need it.

Only nine more days until GrandCamp! We are looking forward to it!