the long weekend

Too long. I've been letting the days get away from me in unproductive ways. Making things is not always a good thing. But, I'm out of string. I made all the masks I can stand for a while.

I was sitting at the machine, debating whether to get up and wander in circles when my eyes fell on that little double stack of IKEA drawers. What was in all those drawers?

Surprise, surprise. I did NOT get rid of all my machine thread. Big and little spools and cones of King Tut cotton quilting thread. Bottom line bobbin thread, actual bobbins - the finicky special ones just for my Janome. I remember buying three packages of them from a little quilt shop that been closed and gone a long time.

While looking in the closet for the good quality quilting fabric, I found a crazy log cabin waiting to be finished. Loud, fun.

I did what I could with Baily judging me from the ironing spot. Will you look at the chaos?




He just gave me a good laugh. He stands on the vanity, drinks from the leaky tap then looks longingly at the bathroom window and then at me.

I'm trained, so I know he wants to sit in the open window so I open it. It's two stories up, but the screen is tight.  He made the bold leap, settled on the ledge and the sky split open with lightning and thunder. He fell back into the trash.

someday, shopping

FaceBook kept putting ads for French Market bags on my feed. Some nice to look at, but who knows made of what. A few touted they were made of recycled fishing nets. And the prices!

Anyway, things have been slow at the night job. The flow of calls had all but dried up. Idle hands and all that. So I looked closely at the pictures. I found a basket with cones of cotton string and a rayon/bamboo blend, my J hook and I got busy making it up as I went. Did I mention that I don't really know how to crochet? That is, I don't know what these stitches are called and have no idea how to follow a pattern. Taking something as one dimensional as a piece of string and building something useful with it has always intrigued me.

There was a little trial and error. Some ripping out and starting over ,and unexpected assistance from three cats who I thought were well past the kitten-with-string stage of life. Silly me.

So this came to be during a George Clooney kick. Over two nights, "Descendents" and "Michael Clayton". George demands perfection although I may go back in and do some strategic reinforcement at what might be stress points.

There's string enough for just one more. I think.

Someday, some shopping.

after the storm

Which didn't really even affect us...much. People lost their homes, lives even, in other parts of the state. I heard a crack, thud and splash around 9. It happens in heavy weather, the trees have grown close, crowding in.

Around midnight there was a roll of thunder so deep and wide, so long the house was vibrating. I started wondering about other possibilities. A train was derailing nearby, a jet was coming in for a crash landing on the roof. Fun stuff. Nearing midnight, my phone kept waking me with tornado warnings, but when I looked at the radar map, we were on the edge of impending doom and only getting licks of mayhem. I fell asleep and slept soundly through whatever happened between midnight and 6:30. Then I got up to make coffee, never really thinking I needed to do a damage assessment.

I've been writing here since 2005 so I'm pretty sure most readers are sick to death or at least overly familiar with pictures of my swimming pool. My blue heaven.

Jim came into a small insurance settlement the year after we moved into this house. He was injured on the job and as a result, had to make a big change in how he made a living. I know a lot of men would have made self-pity purchases with that kind of money, trucks motorcycles and the like. Jim bought me, us, the family this pool.

He built all the decking around it that makes it look in-ground.  It has had the same liner since the day it was set up in 1999.  All props to a company that probably struggles because their product is so awesome. Thanks for all the years, Splash.

It's too soon to tell, but we've patched a few small cuts in the liner in the past. Tomorrow, the pool guy, Colin, will get in, clear away the debris and we'll make an assessment. We just joked, at least we got ahead of the fornicating tree frogs this year.

Spirits linger

Make what you will of the imagery. I believe in Spirit.

I woke up to a wash of bright sun and knew it was not going to last. Took this quick and dirty picture just before the cloud cover slammed shut and a quiet rain began. No chance for a better shot.  I'll pin him up on the board with the other Littles for now. It was all about saving that one scrap.

For unknown reasons, Easter in our non-religious family evolved into a mini-Christmas where the boys were more excited by one or two small, but coveted toys than they were about the candy. Coloring (and eating) the hardboiled eggs was all me. In that spirit, Colin shopped for a small pail of treats and toys and left them at Charlie's doorstep on his way home from working the overnight shift.

While we were still in New York, visiting and feasting with family was a given. Someone always made a ham, something I never cooked. Get dressed up? Not that I can recall. Church? Never.

It's very disturbing that in the name of religion, people will be defying local ordinances and going to Church there to further propagate this pandemic. Probably a lot of people who ONLY go to church on Easter and Christmas while decent people stay at home and practice loneliness to keep families and unknown healthcare professionals safe. These selfish fools will be clogging up the hospitals and morgues in two or three weeks. Damn them all to hell, if you believe in that shit. Think I'm biased against the biggest racket ever created by man? You betcha.

Although neither were affiliated or practiced any religion, my parents tried foisting church hypocrisy on us before we were old enough to call it out for the bullshit it was, hauling us somewhere vaguely protestant where I'm sure my Dad sat in the car and smoked

New shoes (and clothing) for Easter was a common financial burden for so many parents back then. All I wanted was a new pair of sneakers, not another pair of patent leather flats that I might only wear that one Sunday and wouldn't even fit come September when school started. I used to daydream about painting my feet black with my Dad's shoe polish just to see if anyone would notice.

Appropriately, weather from hell, aka Alabama, is bearing down on us, the worst coming after dark tonight. I am settling in with things to occupy my mind and my hands. An image of a French Market bag floated by on the web. I blinked and said, I can do that. Why didn't figure in.

a day on the cusp

Here's that culinary industry from the day before. I'll eat the leftovers at every meal until they are gone.
~What to eat when~ has never made sense to me. Unsupervised, I served my kids grilled cheese and chicken noodle soup for breakfast and Cheerios for dinner. Whatever, whenever. We are true omnivores.




Yesterday, it was so cold in the morning I really didn't want to get out of bed. The furnace was turned off and I had left all the doors and windows wide open. The down comforter and duvet were all aired as well. Bed never felt so safe and comfy, but 930 was the limit.
I find the longer I lay in bed, the more miserable my bones feel. I miss the anti-gravity of being in the water but the pool is in a terrible state and weeks away from spring cleaning.

 Today, it bounced back to 70 and sunny and demanded attention. My mailbox garden is overrun with those irises and a gardenia bush that had better give me some blooms this year. The peonies are puny looking but there were buds. I put all these anomalies down to my poor stewardship and climate change.

The lawn is scrubby but thick. A shock because we never really got the leaves off it in the fall, just mowed them to shreds and let them fall.

This is the grove. The four crape myrtles set to the points of the compass. Still recovering from the chain saw butchery inflicted on them two years ago. I think they might bloom this year.

I sat on the lawn behind the mailbox, pulling weeds and hacking out tubers of iris. Baily and Salem inspected the work then scampered across the street to visit my neighbor's daffodils. They both seem to understand the need to look both ways even on our quiet straightaway.

I scratched up enough bare dirt to hide some sunflower and morning glory seeds to go with the zinnias that self-seed so well each year. I miss planting marigolds and such, but I won't go shopping. I may never go retailing again. It's been thirty days since I last went into a store and I don't miss it, much, but if Colin wasn't doing all the necessary provisioning, I'm sure I'd be singing another tune.

The weatherman promises that the South is going to hell in it's Easter basket tomorrow with "tornados" being the lead word in all the forecasts. Timing is everything.