A Stranger Parent…and a little extra

I’ve been busy.  Really busy.  So I’m sad to say I haven’t been in my new sewing room to really get started on everything.  The best I’ve been able to do is get my quilt fabrics into a few bins.  What could possibly be taking me away from the bliss that is sooooo sooooo close?

I’m a stranger parent.

And a little overwhelmed at the trial by fire on this new exchange program we signed up with.

And…oh yeah…that dude in my car!  I have to update you on that.

Through the insanity though I did find an opportunity to visit a quilt shop after dropping off my exchange student at a required event this past weekend.  What a sigh of relief!  For not being a super serious quilter I sure have been finding a lot of joy visiting quilt shops.  This was Pieceful Heart Fabrics in Lisle.  Cute, cute, cute with A LOT of fabric.  It is sorta in an out of the way corner of a strip mall and I completely stumbled on it just by chance.

What is it about being able to sniff out fabric?  For some reason I must have a sixth sense or something.

So about that dude in my car.  Yes.  Can you believe that?  That was a grab from our video surveillance camera.  It shows him right before he opens my door.  He sat in my car for about a minute just rummaging through my glove box and console.  Fortunately I must have disappointed him because he couldn’t find anything to take!!  Lucky me.  I guess the one day I hit the ‘Open’ button instead of the ‘Lock’ button on my key fob turns out to attract someone to my car looking for something to steal.  I wish there was a way to re-color the lock buttons on the inside of the car.  If the door is unlocked you’ll see orange.  How easy is that to see if you’re a burglar!

But how bold!  This is just outside my office window and we can’t for the life of us figure out how we just never saw him.  Nobody believed me when I came in and said I think my car was broken into.  Sure enough.  We rolled back the video and there he was.

Tomorrow will be three weeks with our new exchange student.   She is from Paraguay and has been a complete handful.  We joke that Jim finally got to meet her after she’d been with us for three days.  It’s just been a weird transition.  We signed up to be the last family to host her but unfortunately for us she confided in me that she didn’t know much about what she was getting into when she signed up.  Great.

So what does that mean?  Testing…testing…testing!!! Like she has her own rulebook.  So it’s been tough.  I had to put the kabash on attending a late night birthday party of a 23 year old sister of a friend from school.  Seriously?  What 23 year wants to hang with a 17 year old!!!!

I’ve figured out that she knows a few key phrases like ‘birthday party’, ‘bowling’, ‘rent a movie’….you know…those harmless activities…but the real story is ‘driving around town’, ‘dancing till 1am’, ‘hanging out with friends doing whatever like chasing down effeminate ice skaters (johnny wier) or a singer in a band at a concert’…whooooo we’ve got a hot one on our hands.  Wish us luck!