Thanks for letting us know!! I saw this post at 8:02 and kicked the kids off the TV so I could see it. After waiting through the *Poo Puppet* and the Pet Mood Collar, (puhleeeeze) Dave came on with his amazing hat. I wish I had one to get a *bird's eye view*!! coronabarb

Oh Joyce- that is amazing! Thanks for sharing!

Sally, yours is an OXO. They are so big that they are awkward to store. I do hope I use it enough to justify the space it takes up. I will not stick it in the dishwasher until or unles someone says it's OK. About the sewing machine: I actually just got a Kenmore model 16221. I sold the predecessor to this model when I worked at Sears so I know it well. It has a horizontal drop in bobbin, needle threader, and thread slicer. It came with more presser feel and stitch selections than I will ever use. It is so quiet and smooth! Kenmore machines are made by Janome so I'm sure the quality is acceptable. I HATE the presser foot release lever.... there isn't very much to it. Nothing to really grab hold of. The motor is smooth and I like that. I may not keep it though. I REALLY want an old fashioned Singer Featherlight or something similar. Something metal (and beautiful) that can survive me! The Kenmore is plain white... not pretty and I know it will smash to pieces the first time I tumble it across the room!

My mother was raised on a small farm in rural RI until, as my grandmother put it, "The bulls started getting over the fences," and they moved to the city. (You probably know what Grandma meant; it took me until I was an adult to figure out that my mother had 'blossomed'.) The HS principal in the city didn't know where to place her; she'd already finished his HS curriculum in her one-room schoolhouse. After a year, she graduated at 16 and lied to get a job. My mother worked her entire life until she was dying of leukemia at 73. She was sole support of herself and her parents through the Depression, rising to be personal secretary to the personnel director of Sheppard's Dept. Store in Providence. She married my father near the time her beloved father died of the stroke that had incapacitated him in his forties. They started a small business in Chicago that flourished during WWII -- and which exempted my father from service, although two of his brothers served. My father was unfaithful during my mother's difficult pregnancy with me. She refused to live with a mistress in her life and threw him out when I was two. She eventually agreed to sue him for divorce when I was six, hoping not to have to say in public that he was an adulterer. That was the law then, and yes, it was reported in the Chicago newspapers -- not because we were prominent, but because it was scandalous. My father would not pay the alimony or child support ordered by the court, so my mother brought her mother to live with us and care for me, and found a job. The first job at hand was saleslady in a dress shop where she sold to the ladies with whom she'd formerly golfed at the country club -- when she was not working in the company or entertaining my father's clients. Then she found office work, where, as a divorcee, her bosses considered her 'fair game'. When I was in junior high school she became a realtor and then a broker. She excelled in what was then still a man's world. Soon she was the top grossing salesperson in residential real estate for a large realty company in Chicago and the suburbs. She cared about people, and they loved and trusted her. My mother never remarried, although there were offers. An old beau continued to propose for decades. She once she came close to accepting. He was what passed for 'landed gentry' in RI, and 'close' with money. The plans foundered when she asked if she should ship her quite new washer and dryer out East, and he scoffed that his mother had used a washboard. Last straw. After she became ill, Mom heard from the lovely man who had been her first beau. Her parents had said she was too young back then. He was now a widower. He came from the East to see her and to give her the sweet diamond ring he'd bought for her so long ago. He still had a studio portrait of her and all her letters! He said he had told his wife before they married that he loved her but would never stop loving my mother. (Who says men aren't sentimental?) I had a loving mother who was also a phenomenal person who triumphed over desperate times.