FOUR
Four trick or treaters. I actually stayed home this year and bought candy to hand out. I put a sign on the door that said in big green letters “I’M HOME!”. And I got four kids who all came at the same time. Don’t ask me what they were dressed as, or even if they were in costume. It’s like twenty degrees outside. Those kids were dressed as ads for a coat sale!”
Happy Halloween, I guess!
but I did get paid for the whole day I went in to work on the day of the blizzard, even though I only worked three hours. That’s a pretty nice thing for my boss to have done, no? Thanks Mark!
You don’t have to call it a miracle if you don’t want to, but I’m going to call it one.
Each Teen Missions (TMI) team is on the field for 4-5 weeks. At the end of that time, teams go to a week long “debrief” before returning home. A number of teams attend each debrief. My team’s debrief was at the TMI base in Ndola, Zambia. We attended debrief with the two other Zambia teams. I’m telling you this story about Abner because he has started his “100 days” until he comes home countdown.
As part of the debrief program, each of the teams puts on an hour or so long presentation which shares, in part, about the team’s history. Leaders are generally involved as well, even if in a very brief way. Our presentation started with some Boot Camp stories. One of these stories was about our first “team S.B.” (An S.B. is a kind of punishment. You “serve” your S.B. by losing free time and working instead. If a leader is the one to get the S.B. the entire team has to serve it.) Our first team S.B. was given to us well into Boot Camp on leaders’ day on the obstacle course. We were given the S.B. because a leader was dropped attempting to scale the 12 foot wall. That leader? Abner. Abner, our head leader. Abner, one of the obstacle course judges! Soooo, one of our presentation skits was recreating that “hands up eyes up” moment of failure. It was all too realistic in that it appeared that Abner was dropped again. Only this time, instead of landing in soft sand, he landed on concrete. And hit his head. His head bounced back and sent a loud popping sound throughout the room.
As everyone sucked in their collective breath, Abner grabbed his head, but then he laughed and shook it off and got up. He came over and stood next to me. I felt the back of his head and could already feel a lump forming there. He assured me that he felt fine and I continued to watch the presentation (which was awesome, by the way). About 15 minutes later, a very disoriented and frightened looking Abner came up behind where I was sitting and said “Mama Lou, I can’t remember anything!” At first I thought he was yanking my chain. Afterall, he knew who *I* was, right? Well, he wasn’t a good enough actor to pull off the frightened look in his eyes so I knew something truly was wrong. I took him outside and began to try to sort out what was going on.
“We’re at debrief?” he asked incredulously. “We’re in Ethiopia already?” (his last team debriefed in Ethiopia. WE were in Zambia.) I attempted to reorient him. It didn’t go well. He kept talking about being freaked out that he was already in Ethiopia. He had absolutely no memory of anything from the past week. I did a quick neurological exam on him which yielded nothing disconcerting. I wasn’t overly worried about things at this point. I figured he’d get his memory back and that we’d probably just have to monitor him until he did or until his condition worsened. I didn’t have any idea how long it might take for his memory to return. After 10 or 15 minutes of making no progress with him, I was up for my part of the presentation. I decided to stop our presentation and to let everyone know what was going on at that time. We sat a very upset and confused Abner in a chair in the middle of the room. We laid hands on him and prayed. The kids were all very scared to see Abner looking so frightened and talking like a bit like a crazy person.
I took him back outside to try the reorientation process again. Almost immediately he began to get his memory back! Within 20 minutes he began to laugh and to look like himself. He lost the frightened look. We worked our way back from his approaching me and telling me he couldn’t remember anything through the whole week. He remembered everything. Except the actual hitting the head event. (I don’t know if he ever remembered that! I need to ask him.)
Anyhow, twenty minutes after praying for him, he said he felt fine, and he looked fine. I had him go back in to see the kids so that they could see he was 1) okay and 2) see that their prayers had been answered almost instantaneously. Abner was still a bit foggy for a day, but within 24 hours he truly was fine. Except he was worried that he’d “suffer problems with (his) brain.” He asked me if I thought he’d have permanent problems with his brain probably a hundred times. Poor Abner.
Abner is mostly fine. He’s in Mozambique. Suffering post-concussion headaches. But otherwise his usual insane self.
He’ll be back stateside in February. Which is probably none too soon for his mother who is probably still worried sick about her baby Abner losing his mind…
(P.S. I am sorry if I used references that mean absolutely nothing to you! There’s so much background information that could be given. But the point of this story is not that you understand all about debrief and boot camp and S.B.s, but that you get an idea of the miraculous nature of Abner’s recovery.)
Hurry home, and be safe, Abner!
This photo was stolen from Abner’s MySpace and uploaded to Flickr!
Halloween is my least favorite “holiday”. I never have particularly liked it. I never enjoyed trying to come up with a costume. It was toooooo stressful!! And I have an over active imagination. I always have. So I steer clear of scary things. I was always just a little bit nervous when out trick or treating. I didn’t like things jumping out at me. I don’t even read scary books. It’s too easy for me to get completely drawn into a book as though I am part of the story. When I was in the 4th or 5th grade, I read a book called “The Amityville Horror”. I didn’t sleep well for three nights after reading it. That was the last scary book I have ever read.
When I was in junior high school, though I did it against my better judgement, I went to see the newly released movie”Halloween” with my friend Bird (her real name was Carrie) and her brother, Larry. He drove us in his Volkswagen bus. I’d never seen a scary movie before that. I even avoided movies like “The Wizard of Oz”. I did see the derivative movie of that called “The Wiz”, and was scared to death by the motor cycle riding monkeys and the bouncy clownish tile pillars that came alive in the basement of a parking garage. I’m still freaked out a little by the memory of those things. Ughhhh. Shiverrrrrr.
I don’t know what I was thinking going to see Halloween. But I put on my brave face. I remember watching most of the film through my fingers. And I remember going to the car after the movie and the windows were all steamed up. I made Larry go and wipe them off to prove that the “steam” was not on the inside, but was condensation on the outside.
I had made plans to spend the night at Bird’s house. (Gosh, I wonder what ever happened to her, anyway.) I was freaked out the whole night. Her house had the identical blinds on the windows that Jamie Lee Curtis peered through in the movie. I laid awake the whole night staring at those blinds just waiting for something bad to happen!
So, what brings all this scariness to my mind tonight? I saw that “Gattica” was going to be on TV. I thought I’d watch it. I’ve seen it before, and enjoyed it. I love the futuristic/sci-fi genre. So, I tuned in. And it wasn’t too long before I realized that I’d made a mistake. The movie I was actually watching was something called “Gothika”. And it’s scary. But I’m watching it because now I need to see how it ends.
I hope I sleep tonight.
This probably should have been my first Chiwala sky posting. But I think it will be my last. There are only so many sunrise/sunset pictures you probably want to see! But just a few more notes on the subject before I leave it. The sun seems to set in equatorial Africa more quickly than it has anywhere else I’ve been. It drops below the horizon like a big red ball in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. You can actually see it moving. And the moon rises just as quickly as the sun seems to set. Also on occasion, it too, is a big red ball. Now, when the sun slips below the horizon, the dark comes hard and fast. And what is revealed then is a glittering array of starry jewels which are splashed across the sky so thickly that they look like a cloud rather than individual stars. It looks like someone splashed a glass of milk across the night sky. You don’t realize that you “know” your own sky until you are under a different one. You absolutely know you are not at home when you look up at the sky in a different hemisphere. I am used to the Big Dipper, not the Southern Cross. The last time I saw the Southern Cross was in the skies over Papua New Guinea back in 1986. It was just as breathtaking in the African sky.
The sunrises and sunsets were tremendous at every location where we stayed. But as I’ve mentioned before, the skies in Chiwala really put on a show.
I tried to take pictures that did this heavenly display justice, but failed. You can only get a glimpse of the wonderousness of it in these pictures I have shared. And I put off trying to get starry night pictures believing that the night sky would be the same in other locations. It was not. I don’t know what it was about Chiwala, but the sky was different there. It was bigger. It was brighter. It was more colorful in the day. And it made me want to sing “How Great Thou Art” at night.
(Chiwala Sky – 3, originally uploaded by Blah Blah Blog)
For those of you who live in areas that routinely get lots of snow, blizzards, etc., please just go on about your business…you probably won’t find this posting at all interesting! But I’m a So Cal native, so this was an exciting day for me!
We’ve been under a blizzard watch turned warning here in Colorado Springs for the past two days. I had such anticipation last night that I had a hard time getting to sleep. it was like the feeling I used to get on Christmas Eve when I was a kid! Anyway, I woke up at about 3:00, and jumped out of bed to look outside! The snow had already started! I was able to get back to sleep, which was a good thing, because I had to work today. I probably should have just stayed in bed. As it turned out, out of a staff of hundreds, only 26 of us actually made it in to work. I hear we get some sort of special something in appreciation. I hope it’s a snow plow attachment for my car. I really didn’t think it was “optional” to go. I have a history of getting to work regardless, though. I actually have a commendation from then Governor Wilson of California for faithfully going to work in the ER of the hospital I worked at in South LA during the Rodney King riots! What was I thinking? But that’s another post for another time. Back to this morning….
I had to push nearly six inches of snow off of my car before I could head out to work. Though I didn’t expect that I’d get stuck somewhere and freeze to death, I put a down comforter in my car. Since I’m from CA, I always have my emergency stuff in my trunk, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a big warm blanket! I also put boots on and packed work tennies. I slipped around a bit, but was able to pull my car out of the parking area behind my condo.
I made it to work without much difficulty, only to find that almost nobody else had! The MRI tube sat silent. There was no one manning the CT scanners. There was one person in X-ray. I didn’t even check mammography. I didn’t see many patients either. Though I heard that one man showed up for an MRI at 7:00 and was completely not understanding of the difficulty that the tech had in getting to work. He left angry.
The snow continued to fall heavily, and I wondered if I’d be able to get my car out when it came time to leave. I did remember to pull my wipers up and out so I knew those wouldn’t be frozen down and that I’d be able to scrape my windshield.
Shortly after I arrived, my boss arrived. The nurse scheduled at our other location was unable to make it in, so I was sent down there as there were patients that were still being expected that needed direct nursing care. I made it down just fine, again wondering about my car being buried in the parking lot.
I spent a total of three hours between the two places. One by one each of the expected patients dropped off the schedule, so I went home.
(Glad I’m Almost Home!, originally uploaded by Blah Blah Blog)
And as I drove, the winds started. I shot this picture out the front window of my car (no my windows are not tinted) on my street about 500 yards from home. I pulled into my driveway and got stuck. I had to rock myself out of the 14 inch pile of snow I had plowed into and I backed out of the driveway. I ended up parking on the street, but I’m stuck there.
I am scheduled to work tomorrow. I may have to wait until the snow melts to go! I won’t be stuck long. We’re expecting 60 degree weather on Saturday.
Boy, the weather here is psycho!
(Chiwala Sky – Sunset 2, originally uploaded by Blah Blah Blog)
Some days my heart yearns for Zambia. I am thinking of Zambia today. I loved the muted tones of periwinkle and peach and violet and gold in this picture. Sometimes the sky in Zambia was an explosion of colors so intense that it robbed you of breath and made you feel unbearably alive. Other times the sky was gentle, warm, and soft. This was one of those sunsets. A sunset that wrapped you in its delicateness. A sunset that gave off a sigh of comfort and contentedness.
Not, this isn’t some big “pump you up” self-help posting. Just a funny story I have to share with you about my recent need to “dig deep” and “be brave”.
I was invited to an Oktober Fest at a co-worker’s house. The party was last night. There would be many people there I did not know, and being naturally shy, just going to a party like that requires a certain amount of pulling myself up by the boot straps. I planned on going a little bit late, so that I wouldn’t be among the first to arrive. I got dressed and headed out.
It was dark by the time I arrived, but there was no mistaking the Italian cut of the suit on the man who arrived just before me. And he assisted a woman out of their vehicle who was extremely well-dressed as well. My heart sank. I hadn’t even thought to ask what the dress would be! I assumed it was casual. And while I was dressed nicely, I was in jeans. And it was much too far away from my house for a quick run home to change. As I saw it I had two choices: 1) Leave 2) Stay! I know! Brilliant deduction, right? I was kind of sick feeling.
As I sat in my car having an internal dialogue about leaving versus staying, I texted a friend for support, and decided to go in. I pulled myself up tall, and told myself that nobody would care that I wasn’t dressed up.
And when I walked in the door, I quietly laughed to myself. Nicely Dressed Couple were the only two there that weren’t dressed at least as casually as I was! In an odd twist of fate, the couple who unknowingly made me feel badly about how I was dressed was the same couple who were the ones whose dress made them stand out! Odd twist of fate, no?
Is there a moral to this story? Proabably. How about “things are not always as they seem” or maybe “just stop worrying about things that don’t matter and have some fun!”?
A follow up on my post “It Takes a Village“:
If you didn’t read the comments, it turns out that Mitchell had developed pnuemonia. Who knows how that happened. The kid is healthy like a Wisconsin farmboy.
Poor baby. No wonder he was a little under the weather!
Again I say…
Get well soon, Mitchell!
Not too long ago I received this from my father:
One day a florist goes to a barber for a haircut. After the cut he asked about his bill and the barber replies: “I’m sorry, I cannot accept money from you; I’m doing community service this week”
The florist is pleased and leaves the shop. Next morning when the barber goes to open there is a thank you card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door. Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he goes to pay his bill the barber again replies: “I’m sorry, I cannot accept money from you; I’m doing community service this week.”
The cop is happy and leaves the shop. Next morning when the barber goes to open up there is a thank you card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door. Later a Republican comes in for a haircut, and when he goes to pay his bill the barber again replies: “I’m sorry, I cannot accept money from you; I’m doing community service this week.”
The Republican is very happy and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber goes to open, there is a thank you card and a dozen different books such as “How to Improve Your Business” and “Becoming More Successful.”Then a Democrat comes in for a haircut, and when he goes to pay his bill the barber again replies: “I’m sorry, I cannot accept money from you; I’m doing community service this week.”
The Democrat is very happy and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber goes to open up, there are a dozen Democrats lined up waiting for a free haircut.
And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between left and right.
Come on, LAUGH! Whatever your political bent is, you have to admit it’s pretty funny!
Thanks for the laugh, pops!
Do I go for safe? Or do I take my chances that I’ll be sorry? Two nights ago I pulled a package of chicken breasts out of the freezer to thaw. I should have thawed them in my fridge, but instead I put them in the sink and planned on putting them in the fridge before I went to bed. I intended to cook the chicken last night for dinner. Well, I forgot the chicken and it sat in the sink overnight. I don’t keep my house particularly warm (the default on my thermostats is currently 50 degrees) so I didn’t think that being unrefrigerated overnight would pose a problem (I’m wayyyyyy too used to all the kitchen miracles I experienced this summer!). I forgot to cook the chicken last night, so I made it tonight.
I hesitated when I opened the package. I thought, I wonder if this will make me sick. But it didn’t smell bad and wasn’t slimy or anything, and the packaging of the chicken I buy is pretty much hermetical, so I proceeded.
Nothing fancy, I just poured a can of mushroom soup over it and popped it in the oven. Chicken cooked this way has a particular smell. And it’s a smell that makes my mouth water. As my meal cooked, I wasn’t getttin’ that smell from it. Didn’t smell BAD, just didn’t smell quite right…
It looked delicious. But I figured that if I have to ask myself “if I get sick, will they be able to cover my shift tomorrow?” that I should probably take a pass on the chicken.
Too bad. It really did look delicious. But it made for some extremely pedestrian material for my blog, no?
Individually, each person in my family is completely equipped to be able to care for a kid with a fever. But as a group, we require a caucus and a conference call!
Mitchell, my five year old nephew has a fever of well over 105. My Mom (who raised six kids and has helped in the raising of eight grandkids) called my sister to come home from work to take care of him. While my sister is on the phone with me getting advice (good call, I’m a nurse) my brother Phil is on another phone with my sister Liz (good call, also a nurse). I give MY advice, which I know to be good, but feel the need to express to Whitney that she should do whatever Liz says because I don’t have any kids, and Liz does.
Final count? One grandma, one mom, two aunties (one also a mom), and one uncle (a dad) are required to come up with a plan for feverish Mitchell!
So, Hillary, in this case, you were correct, it takes a village. But it only takes a village because the village is there…
Get well soon, Mitchell!
Spammers really go to great lenghts to try to squirrel past ISP filters, don’t they? AOL (my ISP) lets you open e-mails but will disable links on all mail, and disables photos on unknown senders. You have to actually enable them to view them. I like the layer of protection. This past week I got two e-mails that I didn’t recognize but felt the need to open, just in case they were personal e-mails meant for me. The first one was from a sender in Austria. The name roughly translated Evangelical Alliance of Innsbruck. And the subject line read: Progress. It wouldn’t be unlikely that this would be for me. So I opened it. This was the body of the e-mail!
There was a lack of communication with a notoriously difficult neighorhood association.
When it hits, I’m knitting all the time, starting and finishing projects with passion and single-minded focus. and I want one so so badly in my neighborhood! The sooner we raise the money, the sooner we open.
I knit while watching TV, I knit while breastfeeding, I knit while waiting for meals, I knit at traffic lights when I’m driving. and I want one so so badly in my neighborhood!
an exercise in the experience of sitting here.
The same can be said for my teething birds; they’re useful, they’re perfectly-shaped, they’re elegant in this amazing way, even when stuffed inside Truman’s mouth. He’d never been consulted, you see, on the previous bad press. No one had interviewed him before painting him as the villain. We didn’t, really, talk.
I predicted today that, in five years, consumers will begin to re-embrace film and that digital cameras will level off in popularity.
The car keys would have to be given up for the entire month of July.
It’s entirely manual and requires an adaptor to work with my newer-model, everything’s-automatic camera. She had one lying, unused, in a neighbor’s garage.
You just can’t do that kind of thing in a car. There’s the brilliant red shawl, using some of this gorgeous candy-cane yarn and lots of leftover “reds” noro silk garden.
My nanny co-share buddy, Patty, had recently gone to work for Flexcar and was administering a “Low Car Diet” program.
The whole errand took about an hour and a half, likely the same time it would have took in the car, and my body has never felt so fit. Right there, next to me, was an interesting-looking headline on the Portland Tribune. We didn’t, really, talk. You realize we’re going to change the world, right?
And this was the picture that was buried within the text!
(ED Drugs, originally uploaded by Blah Blah Blog)
The second e-mail’s subject line read: Hi! This is from John. So of course I’d open that! It was from JOHN! But it wasn’t from my friend John, it was from the same folks at the Evangelical Alliance, and it was the same weird sort of note with the same ad for drugs for erectile dysfunction! Since the information was sent in photo format, it couldn’t be scanned for keywords like “Viagra, Cialis, Levitra”, etc., so it would sail past any filters! Brilliant. Notice how the the reader is instructed not to click on the link to RXNN.ORG as it’s just a photo of the link!
If people really wanted these ads spamming their e-mail boxes, wouldn’t they turn their spam filters off, or scream at their ISP to stop the supresssion of the freedom of speech? What makes these spammers think we’re sitting here just waiting for someone, anyone, to get clever enough to make it past all the filters so that they can finally get their underground message through to the ignorant masses?! I wonder if anyone actually buys medications this way….
The Round Robin Photo Challenge for the week of October 18th is “Very Scary.”
(Very Scary, originally uploaded by Blah Blah Blog)
I know! I know! This isn’t a picture you’d immediately look at and say “now THAT’s very scary!”. UNLESS you’re afraid of heights. Which I am!
The Atlantic Ocean pounds the western coast of Ireland’s Aran Islands. I can’t even tell you how high these cliffs are, but they’re REALLY REALLY high. I’ve never seen surf so rough or ocean spray so high. This is one of the wildest and most fierce landscapes I’ve ever been privileged to be able to experience. The surf, the wind, and the complete lack of safety precautions (you could walk right out to edges of those cliffs, where, you are seriously warned, people get blown off and are dashed on the rocks below all the time) combined to make this one of the “scariest” places I’ve ever visted.
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WordPress (my blog’s host) is kind enough to offer all sorts of statistical information to me. One of those is under the category of “Search Engine Terms” and is sub-titled ”These are terms people used to find your blog.”
In that list are the usual suspects that are always there, such as “teardrop campers” and “find your wings lyrics.” But I often find some fairly strange things that people have searched for only to end up at my blog. Today some search engine directed someone to my blog who had searched for “chocolate and narcan.”
Individually, sure that makes sense. I’d write about chocolate. And I’m a nurse, it’s not unfathomable that I’d write about Narcan (and in fact, some day I will because I have a thing or two to say about heroin!). But chocolate and narcan?
Search within my blog itself for the same combination and you won’t find anything!!
Hmmmmmm.
Back in 1983 I purchased a vinyl record album. I didn’t even own a record player at the time. There was this band whose music I’d heard on the alternative rock radio station (KROQ) out of Pasadena (CA) and I couldn’t wait until the record hit the stands in the United States. The band was from Ireland, and their name was U2. So, the minute that record showed up at Tower Records, I had to have it. The album was called WAR, and to this day it is one of my favorites, though I now own it as a CD!
And now, I am an even bigger fan. I recently learned that Bono and I share a passion…Africa, “stupid” poverty (the kind of poverty that finds 1 billion people trying to live off of a dollar a day, not the average poverty that you find in first world countries like our own), and people dying from diseases that are treatable (like malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV, to name a few). My sister, Diane, went to a leadership seminar at our church while I was in Africa. Bono was one of the speakers. I hear that he was inspiring. I’m sorry I missed it. I was impressed to learn that he reaches out in all directions with his “message”, including to the church.
Yesterday I watched the Oprah show. I don’t generally watch Oprah, but when I heard that Bono was to be on and that the focus was to be Africa, I did. Today he launched the RED campaign.
RED is different from most charities. Different retailers like the Gap, Motorola, Apple, and Converse are donating real money, not piddly cents here and there, to fighting AIDS, malaria, and “stupid” poverty in Africa. The Gap is donating 50% of the profits from “RED”. Fifty percent. That’s REAL money. And they have most of their clothing for the RED line made in Lesotho which gives a whole bunch of people good jobs and enables them to buy their own medicines. So the Gap is hitting the issues from the inside and the outside. The money is donated to the Global Fund. The Global Fund is an international grant organization. Take the time to check out their website (link below).
You probably shop at the Gap anyway. You probably wear tennis shoes. You probably have a cell phone and an iPod. If you are not a person who gives to charity, then do THIS:
If you’re shopping, and all things are equal, buy RED. It can only help.
Kudos to Bono, for a fresh and creative approach to standing in the gap…(pun intended).
Links:
Florida Today has made it possible for those of us outside of their circulation area to get copies of the print version of the John Torres series on Teen Missions in Zambia. The cost is $8.48, and that includes everything, like delivery and taxes. If you are interested in ordering up the four part series, click the link!
Order the Zambia “Orphans & Angels” series from Florida Today
For anyone who hasn’t enjoyed the online series, there is a link in my blogroll! I encourage you to read about what some really special North American kids did this past summer.
Chiwala was the first village we visited after spending a few days preparing at the base in Ndola. I don’t know if it was the excitement of finally starting our work after months of preparation, or if the sky in Chiwala truly is the most beautiful sky in the world. But we were treated to amazing sunrises, breath taking sunsets, and night skies that were a testament to the Almighty God and his love of beauty and his creativity in creation. This was one of the “sunset shows” to which we were treated. This picture is an accurate representation of what we saw. It is unretouched. The sky was that orange.
(Chiwala Sky – Sunset 1, originally uploaded by Blah Blah Blog)
Kayla is my sister Diane’s best friend’s daughter. She’s 16 and trying to raise money to go to New York with her school choir. She’s working pretty hard at it, not just asking for handouts. For example, her latest endeavor is to deliver phone books (somebody has to do it!). That doesn’t exactly pay so great. One of the things that she is doing is making purses! And they’re CUTE. She crochets the exterior and lines them with T-shirts that have seen better days. I bought two. I am keeping the purple and green and fuscia one lined with a Sponge Bob T and I am giving the green and rust and cream one lined with a matching T to my niece. Here’s the thing….I would buy one of these even if it wasn’t helping Kayla reach her goal. A goal, by the way, that her parents think will be a great experience for her. It’s not as though they’ve said “you can go if you raise the money, but we think it’s a bad idea and we’re not going to pay for it.” So, here’s a picture of these ever so cute purses (the one I’m keeping is turned inside out, in case you weren’t sure!). If you are interested in buying a Kayla original Rag Bag then leave a comment. I’ll forward your info on to her. She’ll even make them special order. If you have a favorite T-shirt that you can’t wear anymore, but can’t bear to throw away, perhaps she’ll turn it into a purse for you! And what the heck, I haven’t done an unpaid product endorsement (UPE) for awhile, so let’s make this one of those!
(Kayla’s Rag Bags, originally uploaded by Blah Blah Blog)
