How The Engineer Spent His Birthday This Year

Yesterday Morning – 6.3.2016 – on the occasion of The Engineer’s Birthday . . .

The Artist: How do you want to spend your birthday?

The Engineer: I want to take you to that quilt show you just told me about that’s this weekend in Waynesville.

So we took a nice, leisurely drive over to Waynesville, NC

Shady Ladies Self Portraits

And attended the Shady Ladies Quilt Show.

The Old Rice Barn by Evelyn Case

The Old Rice Barn 2 by Evelyn Case

Crabtree Barn by Lisa Heller

The Engineer especially enjoyed the barn quilts

50 Stude by Marilyn Sullivan

and the quilt of the old car
(The quilt is not for sale, but the car is.)

At an even more leisurely pace, I shopped in the boutique, picking up some hand dyed fabric and a couple of other women’s UFO’s (I’m bad to do that) among other things like a quilted eyeglass case for my shiny new sunglasses and a quilted notepad for my pocketbook.

Later in the truck . . .

The Artist: I’m sorry I took my time looking around.

The Engineer: No need to apologize.

The Artist: But it’s your birthday, and I spent a couple of hours of it looking at quilts and shopping. That doesn’t seem right.

The Engineer: It’s really okay. I enjoy watching you look at things that really capture and fascinate you.

Now I ask y’all: Did I pick a good one or what?

(Remember when asked how he wanted to spend the day and he said he wanted to take me to that quilt show? Well, I did hear him mutter under his breath at the end of the sentence: “I’d rather get it out of the way today than to have to dread going tomorrow.”)

But still . . .

We went to eat at one of his favorite restaurants in Waynesville, a place we enjoyed many meals with his dad before he died. They gave The Engineer a free big ole’ scoop of ice cream. (And brought 2 spoons.)

And I came home and backed him that pound cake he likes so much. Even let him eat a lot of the batter (which really isn’t all that unusual, actually).

Happy Birthday, Andy. I really enjoyed your special day, start to finish.

Of course any day spent with you is special-with-a-capital-S.