Hats - A Thing Of The Past?

Anyone remember the old days when you had only one kitchen faucet and one bathroom?  We even had an outhouse down at the barn, one with no door.  I guess that was so if you fell in, someone could hear you yell.  Our lights were few, and push button to boot.  You had to push the top button to turn it on and the bottom one to turn it off.  I'm not saying our house was old, but it was built with square nails.

There was no fireplace and no air conditioning, but we did have a big floor furnace upon which we stood if we were cold, only as long as Mom hadn't done the laundry.  Our dryer was a wooden contraption that sat atop the furnace, draped with everyone's underwear.  If there was a knock at the door, there was a mad rush to throw it all in my bedroom, the closest to the heater.

Thankfully now, all our bathrooms have doors and the dryer is a white box on the back porch, which I still call the back porch instead of the laundry room.  So in thinking about all this ancient stuff (which now appears in antique stores everywhere) .... what happened to hats?  

I don't think we went anywhere, especially to church, without a hat on.  Was that just to cover up our not-washed-and-curled hair?  Seems to me we women wore hats everywhere.  Nowadays, you never see a single hat on a woman.  We have definitely gotten away from a nice habit.  I mean really, who wants to fix their hair every day?

After seeing one of my friends wearing a nice hat at an Elks function (cowboy hat of course), I decided to get back in the swing.  Come to find out, she SELLS these very cool hats at her sister's flower shop.  That's rather weird, but I stopped in to see what she had.  The variety was amazing.  Of course some made me look like a l930's gangster, not really the look I was going for.  

Cooper wasn't the least bit impressed and just barked at me.  Maybe that was a sign.  At any rate, here's my new Wyatt Earp special, to go with my other ten hats which I'm determined to get OUT of the closet.

In the meantime, I've gathered some information on the local state of affairs.  I mentioned kids here got free computers.  They also got free internet installed in each house.  When the free money came out, any family with NO kids got $4,200.  If you had two kids, add another $1,000 each payment.  That eventually adds up to over $6,000 free money.  By the way, I got a measly $296 total.  But of course it has to come from somewhere, right?

Kids were also getting free breakfast and free lunch at school.  When I was a kid, we paid 25 cents a day for lunch.  If we couldn't afford it, you went hungry.  When the schools closed down here, they began to pay the families for those lunches they were not getting.  Friends of mine are STILL getting automatic deposits to their bank accounts every month for around $300 for missed lunches, even though school is back in session.  No word yet on whether that will be taxable money.

Add to that windfall the child tax credit of over $700 for my friend, again automatically deposited into his account.  That's just one person.  Imagine the amount of money being thrown at probably 80% of California residents.  Remember ... SOMEONE will have to pay for all that in the end.  

I try not to think about it.  Instead, I went to work on this newest quilt.  It's all crooked because I haven't sewn the squares together yet.  This one will take some time since it has lots more of that needs-to-be-exact sewing.  At least it's keeping me off the streets.  I'm still working on the bird quilt also.

Here's something I picked up off the internet for your puppy pleasure, that is if you have a puppy.  Most of this stuff is just common sense .. I mean really, who gives their dog canned cranberry sauce or pie filling??  Apparently today's dogs aren't the same as yesterdays.  We fed our dogs all the leftovers from the dinner table because dog food was a luxury.  At least it was all cooked!!  We never lost a cow dog.  Maybe they were just tough.

In between sewing, I cut up some of that ham I bought and put it in this crustless quiche.  The last crust I bought tasted rancid ... even though a frozen Marie Calendar's.  It puffed up like a balloon until I took it out of the oven where it collapsed completely.  No matter, it tasted wonderful!!  

Don't tell anyone but I gave small pieces of ham to Cooper for three days.  He's still alive.  I did switch that up however, as he's now getting the leftover steak from the Lodge meeting.

I'll probably spend most of today waiting for deliveries.  Every single one that said it would be delivered in five days is now two and three weeks behind schedule and I can't figure out why.  None of this stuff is on a ship out in the ocean.  It said it was in stock in Missouri.  So why is FedEx and UPS so far behind??  Anyone know?