Bite me, Sotterley Quilt Ladies....or the Weekend at Oma's

This post will probably put a curse upon the six raffle tickets that I purchased for the Anne Arundel County Fair 2007 blue ribbon quilt, but I don't really care.

Thursday, the kids and I drove down to Maryland to see Oma, arriving around dinner time. We made a stop at the McDonald's with the groovy play area in Middletown, DE (groovy until the outside temperatures hit the upper 80s, then it's a miserable sauna; note to self: plan alternate route for the summer months.)

Friday, Oma's dance card was already booked, so we made plans to go to the Sotterley Plantation's quilt show with Lorrie, who actually seems to enjoy Thea's and Micah's company (and mine, too, despite being housemates for about ten years). Sotterley is gorgeous, just a really pretty house and grounds; Mom, Thea and I were there about two years ago in December for a Christmas-themed event and we had a blast touring the grounds, picking up stamps on a "passport" to the event that could be redeemed for a prize from Santa and Mrs. Claus at the last stop. There was a horse-drawn wagon ride around the grounds.

The Quilt Show wasn't that sort of event. It had rained the night before, so the grass where the cars were being directed to park was a near-swamp. We paid our admission fee ($7 per adult), got the map (a necessity for Thea) and started with the outbuildings - only one of which had quilts, the others were vendors. Micah was buckled into his containment device, the orange umbrella stroller, Thea was counting ribbons on the quilts and needlework pieces; the day seemed off to an auspicious start.

Until we got to the main house, that is. After purchasing six chances for $5 on an absolutely beautiful quilt, I horrified the person selling the tickets by telling Thea that, if I won it, I would wrap myself in it, grab a pile of books and never emerge from my room. That lady looked like she swallowed a bug or a fried pickle (more on that later). What's the purpose of a quilt, if not to use it? Then we had to park the stroller to go into the main house to see the quilts, so Micah was on the loose. And he promptly went in, ran over to a small quilt artfully displayed over a large embroidery hoop stand and smacked it. No harm done, and I picked him up - he was running loose because I was putting the camera in my purse, finding a way to hold Bunny Bear and getting organized before grabbing him to carry him through the house.

The white cotton gloved lady on duty in that room took the smacking of the quilt rather well, but in the next room, another biddy with white cotton gloves decided that she had to make absolutely, positively certain that Thea would not lay her little hands on any of the precious quilts, so she hounded Thea about half a dozen times, asking if she had pockets in her pants (no, pockets are not standard on cotton knit stretch pants from Gymboree, and if she had used her eyes, she would have seen that) and telling Thea to put her hands in her pockets and not touch anything. (Thea had already gotten her marching orders from me, and I don't need some blue-haired biddy trying to buck the chain of command, and Thea is remarkably good at looking and not touching. Telling her one time was ok, two times not that much of an issue, but beyond three biddy lady needed to push her own "mute" button or let me do it for her.)

So at about the sixth or seventh time, this prune squawked at my child, I had had enough and told her that this child wasn't going to touch the quilts and to stop pestering Thea. Both Lorrie and I felt that the enjoyment had been sucked out of the house tour, where the white gloved ladies seemed to outnumber the visitors and be in the way of viewing the quilts so we went back outside to tour the grounds. Thea took some nice photos of the garden using my camera, Micah tried to remove a few stakes from the garden, but otherwise did not run wild.

On the way back to the swamp where the car was parked, we asked the two guys collecting the entry fees (poor suckers obviously conscripted by their Quilt Nazi wives) where could we find a child-friendly restaurant nearby. St. Mary's County has changed a lot - there is now an Outback, a Ruby Tuesdays; it's gone from rural/quaint to being almost anywhere else in the US. Near the Outback there was a Cheeseburger in Paradise, so that got our vote. And it was pretty good: Micah ate almost all of his grilled cheese, Thea got macaroni and cheese, I had some sort of salad with coconut, pineapple and chicken on lettuce with a curry dressing. Lorrie got fried pickles, which just seem like something that came about as a part of someone going on a culinary-inspired acid trip. Right up there is fried Oreos. Blech, blech, blech, phtooey. (In all honesty, I have no right to write this, because I couldn't even bring myself to try one.)

The coconut and pineapple layer cake for dessert almost made me able to forgive the Quilt Nazis, but not quite (for that the magic formula called for coconut, caramel and chocolate to be present.) Both kids zonked out on the ride back to La Plata and Thea awoke in a thoroughly grumpy mood and it took some work to get her to snap out of it since I try not to smack some sense into my children when friends and family are around no matter how richly they deserve it.

I read in the quilt show program that the group that runs this event needs a board of about fifteen members to be able to successfully plan and organize the show; it has nine members now and a few will be retiring so the group is desperate for members. Maybe if the members were less obnoxious, others would want to join. Stay tuned to see if there is a 19th annual Sotterley quilt show in 2009.

The next day we took Oma to the National Lutheran Home in Rockville for the Ladies' Auxillary's Spring Festival. The Spring and Fall events are sort of a ritual for us; my grandmother used to volunteer at the Home in the stamp room. I remember her bringing backs of the torn off corners of envelopes, which she soaked until the stamps came off and then she put them between sheets of newspaper and then put the newspaper under the table pad on the dining room table to flatten them. I used to go poking through her bags of stamps as a child, hunting for foreign stamps for my album. My mother took me out of school for the afternoon for the Spring Festival; once upon a time it was held under tents in front of the old NLH at 18th and Douglas Streets, NE in Washington.

Nowadays, it's indoors - and it doesn't seem to hold the same thrill it did when I was little, but we still go because we can see Miss Ida Mae, who is almost 101 and who attended Sunday School with my grandmother, and the former neighbors from Hyattsville who live in the independent living community on the grounds surrounding the Home. All of this entails about an hour's travel, some of which is on the Washington Beltway, which works Mom's nerves (and her BP, too) even when my driving is not the problem, she's always on the watch for the other idiots on the road.

Part of my mission was to pick up a couple of nap quilts for baby gifts - these nap quilts and the children's book Sheep in a Jeep have become my almost standard baby gift. Unfortunately, given a choice of five by Eleanor, I bought four of them so I'm stocked up - though I may not be able to part with the sock monkey quilt. It is just too funny and makes me think of 7th grade home economics with Miss Castle. We had to buy those brown socks with the red toes, I think Mom and I went to G.C. Murphy's to make a sock monkey doll. The sock monkey fabric is far cuter than the one I made in 1972 or so. I also wanted to get a picture of Thea with her 100 Good Wishes Quilt and Eleanor, but I packed the quilt along and forgot the camera (and the cell phone, so sort of Freudian slip re: technology I guess.)

That evening we went out to Oma's Special Park (which the locals call Laurel Springs Park) so the kids could blow off some energy after the long car ride back to La Plata. I like that park better on weekdays without the hordes of people. Micah got run over by some older child, completely knocked down - and the little beast who flattened my kid didn't apologize, didn't look backward so he got an earful from me (nothing impolite, just a reminder to watch of for those smaller than he, and that saying sorry for making someone fall is considered the polite thing to do; pretty good for me considering my instinct was grab the brat by the scruff of his neck, waggle my finger under his nose while giving him a lecture on manners.)

Sunday we got to see Christine and Elise, which was nice. Micah and Elise got to hang out and play with each other, babbling nonsensically but each seeming to 'get' what the other was saying. Trying to get the three of them to sit on the couch to take a picture was nearly impossible - to get a good print I'd have to cut and paste from about ten pictures to get each of them looking at the camera, smiling (or at least not pulling a face) and sitting still.