The End of the Rainbow

A while back, I wrote that I was taking part in the Mother's Day Project, and then I updated that I had started it, but was not liking my first try at it, so I needed to undo and redo "my" name.


Done. As I wrote previously,

I want to choose a rainbow of colors for the letters of her name, because the arc of a rainbow is like a bridge that carries us over the hard times, and sometimes all we have is the hope that we will get through the hard times, so I think that's what the colors will represent for me.

I thought about stitching other things, symbols, objects around her name, which was allowed, but it didn't feel right for some reason. The colors felt like enough for me. Her name will go with the others on the bag, and when it's my turn I'll carry the bag, and I'll think of her and the other women.

What we're doing? It may not change a thing. But who knows?

There's a song by my favorite group, Depeche Mode, called Black Dress, and the chorus goes like this:

You can't change the world
But you can change the facts
And when you change the facts
You change points of view
If you change points of view
You may change a vote
And when you change a vote
You may change the world

Working on the rainbow, in the garden

Saturday night, I got out my thread to pick colors for the Mother's Day Project. I have a lot to choose from, left over from many projects over many years of cross-stitching:

As you might imagine, it took me some time to pick eleven colors, for the eleven letters in Jaime Jaenke's name (by the way, Anne and I conferred and agreed that is the correct spelling, not 'Jamie' as in the original square, and she sent me a new square). I want to have a rainbow of color, as I wrote about in my first post about this project. Here's the lineup I chose:


I did think about getting started then, but it was late and I decided I wanted to work on it with a clear head, and possibly better light. I'd like to do this right, basically.

I got half of it done last night, then worked on it more today before admitting to myself that I didn't like the way it was coming out. I was using too many threads, so the lines are thicker and hard to read, almost as if it's blurry. I think I'm going to start over, but for now I put it aside to look at again before I decide for sure. Sigh.

I love a three-day weekend, especially when I have a long list of things to do, and for once I really kicked my to-do list. I didn't get to everything, but then I also did a few things that weren't on the list, so overall I'm quite pleased. And it would have been a little unnatural to get to everything, wouldn't it?

One thing I wanted to do, and tried to, was find new shoes for work. I went to three stores on Saturday, but still struck out. The closest I came was one style that I would have bought if they had my size. They had 9W, and 9 1/2 medium, but no 9 1/2 wide. The 9w seemed almost long enough, but I just wasn't sure, and you know, for $80, I'm just not even going to try. Makes me sound cheap, but there you are. That's a lot of money for shoes that might not fit. I'll have to think about where else to go, because I've been theorizing that my shoes being older and less supportive might be why my foot has been bothering me. The pain has lessened, but not completely gone away, which is tiresome. I don't want to mail-order shoes; considering how hard it is to find comfortable ones, the shipping costs and time back and forth really add up, but I'll run out of shoe stores soon. It's a dilemma.

I have some sore spots tonight, and will have more in the morning I'm sure, because I went up to work today and planted my little garden patch. It's so cute! I planted cucumbers:


and more cucumbers:


(There were two types of pickling cukes, one like I grew last year and one different, so I thought I'd compare them; I really like cukes, and I'm curious.)

Green peppers, I did them last year too, with slight success, perhaps this year I will be slightly more patient about not picking them before their time:


Peas! I hear they're a little harder to grow, but boy, I love'em, I have to try:


And basil. There were a bunch of different types, I had no idea. I basically picked one at random. It smelled right, how bad can it be? (If you know, don't tell me, I don't want to know. Today is not the day to disillusion the novice gardener about anything in any of these photos, in fact, and thank you so much. I'll be much more ready to be philosophical about mistakes I may have made at a time distance from them, and when I'm not so achy from planting, too.)


I have a bit more room, so I may add more "crops" later, but this is a fine start, and really if it ends up being the whole enchilada, that will be fine too. The only other thing I was planning to get was a catnip plant, and they didn't have one. I got one last year, and the thing was so easy, it just grew, and every so often I'd pluck a few leaves and bring them home for Pan to eat. (Don't worry, I wasn't trying to be mean to Harold, he just doesn't like fresh catnip. He likes the dried stuff, but if offered the fresh stuff, he sniffs it and then looks at me like, "OK, what now?" While Pan gobbles it out of my hand. Different strokes.)

That catnip plant from last year, by the way? We had such a mild winter, it didn't completely die. When we went into the garden a few weeks ago to clear out the tomato cages and cucumber trellises, there were live leaves on it. Hilarious.

Hope is a bridge

One of the things I mentioned recently that I wanted to blog about was the small part I'm taking in a project. This is a web-based project, so to speak, that I first read about on Franklin's blog. It seems an appropriate subject for Mother's Day, though so far all I've done is the thinking about it, the pre-work, so to speak.

Anne wanted to do something about the war, not exactly a protest but in a sort of take-notice way, and had the idea of sewing the names of the female soldiers who have died in Iraq onto a tote bag. She asked if others would be interested in sewing some of the names, and the project has taken off from there. (The links above are to the project's website and to her blog, but you can read the original post on her blog here; she describes it much better than I do.)

At the time, 79 women had died (although tragically another has since been added to the list). The name I was given is Jamie Jaenke.



She died last June (2006):

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a sailor who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Jaime* S. Jaenke, 29, of Bay City, Wis., died June 5 as a result of enemy action when her HMMWV was struck by an improvised explosive device in Al Anbar province, Iraq. She was assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 25, Fort McCoy, Wis.

The incident also resulted in the death of Petty Officer 1st Class Gary Rovinski.

I found out a little bit about her via my friend Google (*some sites spelled her name Jamie, some Jaime, so I have to find out which to learn if the cloth is correct).

She was an EMT before she became a Seabee.

She had been in Iraq since January.

She had recently moved to Iowa; she was the first woman from Iowa to die in Iraq.

She wanted to open a stable business after she came home, and now her friends are finishing it as a tribute to her.

She had worked as an EMT, and she left behind her parents and a nine-year-old daughter.

She was a single mother, so her parents are raising her daughter now.

Dear lord. I am 38, and the thought of losing my mother even now gives me the chills. A few years ago, after a friend died, I had a dream where my mother died, and I saw her spirit and called out to her, "But you promised you wouldn't!", and she just looked really sad, and I woke up crying. I can not imagine losing her at the age of 9. I don't know how I would have survived that. I mean, you do, I guess, people do, but you're never whole after something like that. Are you? How could you be?

So, I haven't started the stitching yet, but of course that isn't going to be much. I mean, in a physical, literal sense, all I am going to do is sew over the typed name on the square of fabric, and send it back to Anne. I want to choose a rainbow of colors for the letters of her name, because the arc of a rainbow is like a bridge that carries us over the hard times, and sometimes all we have is the hope that we will get through the hard times, so I think that's what the colors will represent for me. When I select the colors and get stitching, I'll have camera at the ready, and post again.