Welcome to my pad!

This is my porch. It's a concrete slab and I sometimes call it a patio. The stool is my first woodworking project as a married woman. Karen was little and I sat her down on the floor in the basement in Mickleton while I sawed and hammered. She got to play with little pieces of wood and had a hammer at her disposal. That means this stool is just about as old as Karen. If it's still around when you come to visit you can check out my toenailing. I knew *how* it was supposed to be done, but this was the first time I tried it. It still makes me smile when I look at the results - they're not very pretty, but it held up well enough!

I had a rocking chair I bought when Karen was an infant. It's where I nursed her and her brothers. I had it a bit longer than the stool and it wore well, but it was left out in the weather without protection for a year -- a few short months before moving here it fell apart and Karen disposed of it. I was so disappointed the rocking chair didn't make it -- I'd always imagined myself as an old woman sitting in it on a porch somewhere. One afternoon, on one of our "let's fill the cupboards before the move" trips, as we came up the sidewalk I saw a blue tarp covering a bulky item on the porch. I thought maybe the tenant association had done something. I was half afraid to peek underneath the bright sea of blue plastic for fear of being disappointed because as we got nearer to the porch the size and shape of the drape suggested it could hold a rocking chair. Slowly and gingerly I lifted a corner of the tarp and found this rocking chair with a gold bow on it. Karen had brought me her own. When asked how she managed to get it there, she told me she made an early trip that morning so it would be there when she brought me. (Excuse me, I'm having a "moment" again...)

I'm ok now. Let's go inside.