Collecting a great gift bag for new homeowners

I have no idea why my brain decided to think about this today, but for some reason I was remembering when we first moved into this house in 1993, and how more than once as we were settling in, I found myself having to make unexpected store trips to get items that seemed SO OBVIOUS NOW but which we'd completely overlooked when planning for our move. So without further ado, here's my list. You may notice it's not full of things like $300 monogrammed bath towels, or solid gold lamp finials. This is down and dirty stuff you find really handy when you're getting settled in your new home.

Oh wait, there is one ado I want to further: My one big hint for making Moving Day less hellish:

When you're packing your furniture, put the beds in LAST, so they're the first things placed in your home. (Know where you want to put them before moving day, too). And take all the clean bedding you'll need in the car with you - don't for God's sake bury it in the middle of the moving van! Then, when the beds have been brought into the house, put them together FIRST THING, and make them up with the fresh bedding. Then proceed to move your stuff. At the end of that exceedingly long day, you will SO thank yourself for fixing up the beds first - they're ready to fall into when you most need them!

OK, stuff for a goody bag for new homeowners:

Masking tape, one or more widths

a box of adhesive bandages, various

microfiber cleaning cloths

a small calculator

rubber bands, various sizes and widths

tape measure and / or yardstick

pad(s) & pencil(s)

clothespins (honestly, these are CRAZY useful in all rooms of the house!)

two or three spray bottles (you can give them baking soda and vinegar, great less-polluting cleaning compounds, too)

used toothbrushes for cleaning grout and crevices

A box of sandwich-size sealable plastic bags, and / or one of big garbage bags,  will always be useful, too.  A few folds of clean newspaper, clean cotton rags, plastic cleaning bucket...use your imagination! You could also get gift cards at the closest pizza parlor for your exhausted and starving new homeowners. 

Now I have to go scrub off all the Martha cooties I feel like I've attracted...

Freedom of speech

Journalist Leigh Phillips has an excellent article on Ricochet about free speech in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo atrocities. If you've seen some of the Hebdo cartoons and thought, "Hey, the world *would* be a better place without that shit," you really really

REALLY

need to read this.

Blasted cats!

No matter how recently she's been fed, no matter how long I brushed her fur and murmured sweet nothings in Her Imperial Ear, no matter how few minutes ago it was that I stopped what I was doing for me and petted her for a solid ten minutes - if I put her down on the floor in a fit of exasperation, O'Keefe adopts the Supreme Martyr Posture and facial expression and sits by my chair with her despairing gaze cast down to the floor. Emanating those evil Martyred Cat waves at me, silently. In her mind, she is the Most Abused, Most Starved, Most Neglected, Most Unloved Cat in all the universe. And I am the Evil Mom doing all those terrible things to her. Simply because I refuse to pet her 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

SHE DRIVES ME CRAZY!

What -

well, yes, okay, she was the sick one that kept me awake nights about 6 weeks ago because I was so worried she was dying - or worse, I'd have to decide to have her put to sleep.

What's that got to do with it?

It appears that

a couple of people have somehow, miraculously, stumbled across my blog! So I thought I'd better post something. The freshest thing I have is that I finished reading The Girl on the Train by Paula Dawkins last night. It's on our local library's Mystery Book Club list soon, if not next meeting, so even though I originally requested it because I'd read a review, now it also saves me from having to say about Yet Another Club Selection, "I didn't read it." (There have been some problems with the list. They're getting straightened out. I am not the only one who's rejected The List.)

Anyway - I spent most of this book being really irritated with the main character. As in, if I wasn't bloody well DETERMINED to finish a damn book for the club, I probably would have quit somewhere about page 100. This is a personal thing (of course) I mean it's not because it's not well-written - it is *very* well-written - and it's not because the plot didn't make sense or was inconsistent or unbelieveable. The author did a terrific job, actually. She also used multiple points of view but the changes were clearly marked, and she used present tense which should have been distracting, but it wasn't at all.

No, it was me, and it's a fault I recognize in myself in real life, too: I don't like spending time with people who have character traits of my own which I also hate. This probably isn't unique to me. And maybe my irritation with them is a sign that I really need to work on myself a lot more. (I can hear you: "Ya THINK?")

Also, I'm not someone who tries to figure out the solution to mystery novels. I just go along for the ride. I mean, if I figure out whodunnit, the author has made it thumpingly obvious. In this one, I did NOT see the answer coming. I think I said out loud, "Well damn."

So I can recommend this book because it's very well-written, I think it's a good mystery, and the problems I had with it I believe are all my own. Go for it!

What is it about NaNo...?

Once again, NaNoWriMo has sucked me in. This time, it's April's Camp NaNoWriMo, wherein you can set your own project and word count goals - well, technically November's NaNo doesn't have power over you, you could set your own everythings there, too, but when I participate in November I go by the original rules.

In this one, I'm not. I'm working - rather, re-working - the novel I failed to finish in November 2013. It has bugged me ever since because I really like the thing. So I'm giving it a second chance, I'm just not doing up the whole big NaNo rah-rah thing, enlisting a "team" of friends to prod and praise me along the way, etc etc. Just trying to do it ... um, well, I haven't been doing it for the past three nights so I should really get off this thing and Just Do It.

But what is it about NaNoWriMo that's so compelling? The years I skip I feel guilty and like I'm missing out on something at the same time. There's that almost-irresistible pull...OK. Off to WRITE!

Should have put this in the previous one

But I hadn't run across the Book Riot piece that made me think of this: do you keep a list of your favorite words? Maybe a tiny piece of paper tucked in the back of your wallet, or a sticky note on your laptop desktop...in your diary...or just in your mind?

I have just a handful that I've thought to write down, and remember. Here are some of mine:

leafy

niggle

plausible

(And no, the first two weren't inspired by Tolkien; they were on my list long before I remembered that story I read 35 years ago.)

I really, really love "leafy." And I'm lucky to live in a leafy neighborhood! (Means tons of leaves in the fall but that's OK, too.)

Doesn't look like this right now, but it will before long! I have to believe it will become Spring for real, any day now!

Took an online quiz...

Can't get the results panel to show up on here correctly so I'll just paste the text...and I see the background now extends over to the right side column - however, it's readable so I'll settle for that. Yes, I am that determined to brag. LOL

You Have Mastered the English Language!

You either aced this mock-exam or got a lot more right 

than you did wrong, either way - Color us impressed! Your

 knowledge of the English language extends beyond a

 solid foundation of grammar and spelling, and into a 

finer understanding of syntax, diction, and rhetoric. 

Reading comprehension is also something you're skilled 

with, something most who are take for granted. Try to 

keep those grammar-based pet peeves in check whilst 

sharing your vast knowledge with the rest of the world!

Jupiter and Europa

NASA photo, my dialog

Hittin' some yard sales

Well, actually, an estate/moving sale and a garage sale, but anyway. It was my exercise for the day, a mile and a half (I was surprised it wasn't more - but then it was very hilly). I scored 7 Cherry Ames books (sans dust covers, and there are two of one title - that'll teach me to read the titles before scooping them up!), a tiny bird book that's lost its cover, so I'll have some fun re-covering it, a box cheese grater, and a brand-new 6" x 6" sketch book. That ate up my $10 cash. Walking to sales is a really good idea - not only is it good exercise, it keeps me from buying a lot of things, or any big things.

Still chilly here - 45° - but sunny and breezy. I heard my first cardinal of the year, but could NOT find the bugger even though there aren't any leaves on the trees yet. He was laughing at me, I'm sure.

At one curb I noticed what seemed to be an over-abundance of official markings: the concrete curb itself had been embossed with the contractor's name; there was a "this drain leads to river" disk, and right next to it was a manhole cover over a storm sewer access shaft. The cover was iron, with the Seal of Omaha:

I stood and stared at this for several minutes, trying to figure out what all the various images mean. But it's the one in the center that baffles me. It seems like it *should* be a buffalo head, but what's that object running down the middle of it? In white in this image - stamped in iron it just looks like a blob. Could be a not-quite-stuffed bag of wheat, maybe? I can't figure it out. Yay, city symbols!

In the rule book, right after

the rule that says the trainee grocery checker who's been holding up 13 customers for 15 minutes gets switched for the fast, experienced checker immediately after you move to a lane with a longer line, is

the rule that says the day after you bookmark a new blog because of a brilliant post you found through a favorite writer, the brilliant blogger walks away from their blog and forgets all about it for six months.

Yeah, I know privileged First World problems. I don't think of them as problems, though. If I remember, and try, I can relax into the thing and enjoy watching the people in the slow lane, and delve into the brilliant blogger's Archives and get to know more about them.

The little dickens

This forenoon I found a tiny little pink pill on the floor of the bathroom. This, after another fairly calm and easy pill-putting-down-the-throat. The little stinker! I gave it to her downstairs, and she had to go all the way upstairs into the bathroom to get it there. Going to have to be more careful. Trouble is, I have no idea whether it's this morning's or some earlier one. So I just discarded it, and we'll resume on schedule tonight.

The little dickens. She is looking and acting more like herself, though still thin; but this morning she ate her 2 Tbsp of Fancy Feast AND her brother's 2 Tbsp of Ocean Fish Formula so I'm taking that as a good sign.

Little things

Nothing big, here. O'Keefe and I are kind-of getting used to the administration of one tiny pill down her throat, two times a day. She doesn't like it, and neither do I, but perhaps we'll get to where it isn't so hard on both of us.

I got apps in for Medicare parts C & D yesterday, which was a HUGE relief. Just dental and vision coverage left to find.  So I felt like a grownup the rest of the day!

It's in the high 50s and sunny today! My mood can use the light. And the slightly longer days...oh, wait. Krep. We go back to CST - or do we leave it for DST? I can never remember - this very night. Well, when one's retired (have I mentioned that I'm retired?) the whole "losing an hour's sleep" isn't really an issue any more. I just need to remember to adjust all the clocks. I am so ready for Spring.

Some new kind of equilibrium, I think

Good news/bad news re: O'Keefe's blood work. Good news: no diabetes, her kidneys look good. Bad news: there may be something bad going on with her liver, but what the vet wants addressed first is hyperthyroidism. So, two tiny pink pills a day, morning and night. Two weeks of that then more blood work to see if it's helping. If so, she'll stay on that dose for life, or until it stops helping. I read the possible side effects of this stuff and they're pretty horrendous so I'm going to be keeping a close watch on that!

In more good news, O'Keefe seems to be feeling better, is up and walking around, going up and down stairs, though she is weak and may rest in the middle. She's eating Fancy Feast and drinking water. The vet says a Tbsp. of vanilla ice cream a couple times a day won't hurt and might help her put on some weight. She's not sleeping all the time like she was doing - this is a cat who *doesn't* lie around 16 hours a day sleeping, normally. Sometimes I've wished she *would* because instead she likes to bug the hell out of me with constant demands for pettins and attention.

Anyway, the intense worry stage is on hiatus for a couple of weeks. I don't think she's going to miraculously become her younger more vigorous self, but maybe I can make the decline easier and slower than what I saw over the weekend.

Still nothing noteworthy

Had a most successful Game Day here yesterday with my friends. We ate, laughed, and played 7 Wonders and Mille Bournes.

Overshadowing it for me is the illness of my little girl-cat, O'Keefe. I've got a 1:15 pm appointment at the vet's for her. Here's hoping it's something transitory and/or treatable.

MY sock #10 is just a few inches away from completion, then showing off the matching heels (accident! I'll never be able to do that on purpose) yesterday I clumsily let one of the needles slide all the way off about 25 stitches. ARGH! It'll take my 3rd Hand (magnifying glass on an articulated armature), a crochet hook, and large quantities of patience to fix that.

March 14th I'm entering a pie in Omaha Atheists's Pi/e Day Pie-off. Because Pie! Also, Pi. My pies aren't beautiful but usually they're tasty. Hmm. Maybe I should practice...heh.

Update: O'Keefe's got Feline Leukemia Virus. Waiting on further blood tests tomorrow. I have a sad.

Not doing much

Decided tonight was the night to start a knitting project other than socks; got out the dark green alpaca I've had all ready with needles special-bought and the pattern ready to go, got started on the easiest part of a billed cap, the headband - got about four inches done and discovered I'd screwed it up - that's when I learned that alpaca tends to marry itself as you knit. I ended up just cutting the wonky part off to start anew with a new end...not tonight. Crud. Well, now I'll know to be more careful. It's a pretty simple cap, no lace or cables, so if I keep my head it shouldn't take too long to finish.

No drawings, but OTOH

I got out of the house today. Went to Spielbound and played Pandemic! with three very nice guys. Hope we can do some more board-gaming in the future. Speilbound is a non-profit gaming cafe.  A really cool place for Omaha. Or, anywhere, really.

I thought about taking a sketchbook and pen along but then decided naw, I'd rather just play games.

Drawing a day, Feb. 10th

Had mystery book club tonight, a perfect opportunity to try some character sketches. Boy, am I bad at it. You'd never recognize these lovely ladies from my drawing.

Drawing-a-Day, Feb. 9th

Having been put to shame by a dear friend who - unbeknownst to me - took me up on my suggestion for this ordeal, and who brought her EIGHT drawings to game day yesterday, I decided I had to get back in the saddle and try some more. I decided also that I need to scale back my ambitions lest the drawings eat up all my hours every day. Therefore, ta da:

It's a very old Persian (as in, before it became "Iran") copper bowl with lid. I noticed the intriguing way it peeps out from the shadows on my bookcase and decided maybe I could manage that. Simple shape, additionally-simplified surroundings, so there. In the middle I thought it was a waste of paper but somehow I did get it looking *just* good enough to post.

So I'm back in!

Well, that de-escalated quickly

Didn't take me long at all to run out of enthusiasm for a daily drawing, did it?

Well...

there could well be no drawing for today. I have had an extraordinarily arduous - for me - day. First I went out to dig the car out of the two feet of snow it's been buried in for three days. I got 90% done THEN decided it might be a good idea to start 'er up and run the heater to get rid of the ice covering all the windows - but the battery is dead. Completely dead. So I sat down in the garage and thought about it. I was already tired and sore. I'd have to call the emergency guys, wait for a truck to show up to jump-start the battery, wait awhile for the windows to melt, and THEN go to the grocery store.

I gauged my energy remaining. No. Way. So I decided to rest a bit, eat lunch, and take the bus to the store and the taxi home. Leave the car business until tomorrow. Getting to the bus stop was physically challenging (remember, it's me we're talking about - Ms. Sedentary of 2014). Snow was piled up four feet high no matter where I tried to walk, so my shoes got soaked. At the disembarking spot, same thing - though most of the way from there to the store (two blocks) was clear.

Anyway, I'm home, the groceries are put away, and I am really, really tired. Little to no interest in doing art now. *Maybe* later, but probably not. Ah well.

Drawing-a-day, Feb. 2

Signs of improvement over yesterdays' entry. For one thing, watercolor paper works so much better with watercolors, innit? This is a little better, too, because I remembered to erase as much of the preliminary pencilling as I could. It's far from perfect, but it's better.

Just two things hold me back from being a great artist: the inability to see what's really in front of me, and the inability to get what I see onto the paper. LOL

However, that's enough ado. Here's today's effort:

I think the real value of this exercise will turn out to be its keeping me humble. Oh, so humble.

Drawing-a-day, Feb. 1

I warned you. I said it'd be bad. Just sayin'.

NOW I remember there's a reason they say to use watercolor paper for watercolors. Duh.

Well, it's supposed to be a murder mystery book cover.

The best thing I can say for this is that it sets the bar for the rest of the month very low. Shouldn't be hard to show improvement over this thing.

Books read in January

In Jan. 2014, I started keeping track of what I read in a little notebook. I just entered the title and author of each, and I assigned a “grade” to each book. 

1 - didn’t finish

4 - very good, but probably won’t read it again.

5 - best ever (LotR, for example), will read again

Anyway, now that I’ve got the list, I’ll review each month’s books very briefly here.

January 2015: 12 books; of which at least four are re-reads. The doubtful ones are the Christies; if I’ve already read those it was decades ago and I had forgotten the plots etc. Completely.

5 - Exploring JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit - Corey Olsen (“The Tolkien Professor” online): I’ve listened to all of Prof. Olsen’s Tolkien podcasts on iTunes and will probably listen again, eventually. He’s a Medieval Lit PhD who brings both his rigorous academic training and his passion for Tolkien to this book. It is very enjoyable for a Tolkien nerd like me, and will reward many re-readings in the future.

4 - The Mother Hunt - Rex Stout: I love Archie and Nero and I don’t think I need to give my rundown of the plot or anything for any of these; much more skilled Stout fans have great posts all over the internet.

4 − 13 at Dinner - Agatha Christie: see the previous comment re: Stout; the world doesn’t need my recap of the books. 

5 - As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust - Alan Bradley: the newest Flavia de Luce mystery from Bradley and like all the rest, *superb*. I adore Flavia and I was worried that transplanting her to Canada (to her late mother’s boarding school alma mater) would ruin it - particularly since I am completely mesmerized by Dogger and he of course got left behind to care for her father and sisters and the crumbling family manse. But I needn’t have feared - Flavia is more than equal to anything the world seems bent on throwing at her! And in this one we get more information about her mother’s mysterious past. Going to stop now; Spoilers!

4 - The Secret Rooms - Catherine Bailey: This is a non-fiction work about England’s biggest, one of its oldest, ducal estates, and the mysteries held therein. The blurb and jacket are a bit misleading, as they hint that it’s a ghost story. It’s not - it’s a deep dark family secret story, that is nonetheless fascinating (except I skipped the extensive descriptions of WW I battles and equally tedious marathon about a certain mother’s wartime machinations on behalf of her son - these simply didn’t interest me, it’s not the author’s fault). But the revelations had my jaw dropping several times. Also, as a glimpse of just what kind of life the aristocracy led before WW I, it was a real eye-opener. It’s unbelievable, the wealth, and the arrogance that equaled it. I for one am right glad the system pretty much crashed after WW I. Never will I look at Lord Peter Wimsey’s brother the Duke of Denver the same way again. 

5 - Death on the Nile: It’s Christie, in Egypt. What more do I need to say?

5 - Unbound - Jim C. Hines: this is the third book in the Magic ex Libris series, and I gobbled it up like popcorn. That’s not to say it’s light & airy; Jim doesn’t back down from confronting the implications of  the tropes he’s dealing with - just one example - Isaac’s friend the dryad warrior Lena Greenwood’s origins as basically  a character created for the benefit of horny male readers. The Magic ex Libris books combine several of my favorites - books, libraries, strong smart talented women, and every damn hobgoblin (including I think hobgoblins themselves) you can think of. A rip-snorting read. There’s another to come and I can’t wait to see how Libriomancer Isaac Vainio emerges from that one.

4 - Over My Dead Body - Rex Stout

5 - Help the Poor Struggler - Martha Grimes: this is a Richard Jury book and I am hopelessly enslaved to Grimes’s characters, regardless of whatever unevenness of plot, circumstance, attitudes, anything. I’ve got the whole series and I’ll be going back to them every so often until the day I die.

5 - The Deer Leap - Martha Grimes - see previous.

5 - The Five Bells and Bladebone - Martha Grimes - see 2 previous.

5 - Mrs. McGinty’s Dead - Agatha Christie: Probably read this years ago and forgot it. It’s a nice Poirot with him deliciously out of his comfort zone, staying in an ill-run, ill-heated, chaotic country B & B whose mistress hasn’t the slightest understanding or talent of cooking. The mystery’s pretty good, too.

So that was my reading for January. I’ve got The Shining Girls on my nightstand because we’re discussing it in the mystery club Feb. 10^th.

Fool, rushing in

(a watercolor I made up long, long ago)

It's the depths of winter (even though it's been pretty mild here so far), and I'm cabin-crazy. My urge is to bury myself in blankets, fortified with hot chocolate and a six-foot stack of mind candy in the form of books, and British TV mysteries, and just not be seen outdoors at all until April. It wears on the mood, it does.

Also it's hard on the health. This is my most inert, junk-food-crazed time of the year. And the least social. Really, why DID I not get into the Hibernate line B.B. (Before Birth)???

Anyway, in a desperate attempt to not devolve into a puddle of primordial ooze here, I'm going to give a "Month of Drawings" a try. (If you google that you might find something, but I just made it up right here so whatever you come across has nothing to do with me.) I'm going to spend February trying to do a drawing a day, and post it here. Fair warning: they're likely to be drek, but I am going to go at each one with the best of my abilities. Not just scribble something to fill out the day's check box. And I will go further: I'm going to draw actual people, places or things, not *pictures* of people, places or things. That will probably mean I'm going to have to go out of the house sometimes. *shudder* It'll be good for me. I might expand the OK subjects into mere designs for things, too, like designs for end papers of books, or placemats or something. I have two more days to prepare myself for the ordeal. So do you. Good luck to both of us!

A passing thought

The BBC must be one of the yarn world's biggest assets.

Found an illustrator whose work I LOVE

Vince McIndoe's his name, and I love his almost-retro style!

Makes me want a whole library of novels with these pieces as cover art.

Life in the slow lane

is just fine with me.  Dominating my thoughts this past week have been the horrible events in Paris, though the response around the world is very heartening. I only hope leaders don't just use these despicable murders as further excuses to deprive the people of our liberties. Time will tell - but one can hope that even the most venal, conscienceless pol will look at the millions flooding the streets in support of "Je suis Charlie" and take pause at what might oppose them if they are not wise.

Anyway, aside from following that unfolding story, I've not done much this week. Got Season 8 of Doctor Who and marathon-watched it all in two nights; I think I love Peter Capaldi's Doctor. I've never been very fond of Clara, but I do like the prickly interplay of those two characters. I do wish Pink hadn't left the scene - maybe they'll bring him back, somehow.

I've read two books this week: the newest Flavia de Luce, As Chimneysweeps Come to Dust (LOVED it - like all Flavia fans, I think, I was a bit nervous about her decamping to the Canadian girls's school but oh my it turned out quite well). Keep 'em coming, Mr. Bradley!  The second book is non-fiction, The Secret Rooms, by Catherine Bailey. It's kind of advertised as a possible ghost story, in a real ancient family ducal seat in Britain, but it's really the story of that ducal family's history and in particular the generations just before, during, and after WW I.  I really enjoyed it until she got to the part where she was detailing - and I mean *detailing* WW I battles and the behind the scenes machinations of a particular mother - I skipped a LOT of pages there. In the end it's a fascinating look at how those people really lived before it all fell apart after WW I - mind-boggling wealth and arrogance OMG it's GOOD that it fell apart (and I am again reminded it was GOOD that the American colonies scraped Britain off their shoes like horseshit).  Ms. Bailey (except for the boring war details) is a good history writer for popular readers and I will be watching for more from her.

I got hung up knitting Sock 7 - discovered I need to tink like, 7 rows so I can start decreasing for the toe sooner, but tinking is SO fiddly and tedious. So I picked up the CoBaSi sock (Sock 8) again and got a little further on it. It's certainly not perfect (you can't see the other side) but I really don't care - I am needing socks, and I'm not out to show off my knitting expertise (since I don't have any). I try to learn more with each sock, though.

This is reminding me of a soccer jersey, and it's odd because that pleases me, even though I have zero interest in any kind of sports. Psychology, go figure it out. I can't.

Happy New Year!

I opened last year by putting this picture:

as my laptop desktop image. Eight days later I was in the hospital (just for 26 hours, but my they were an exciting 36 hours - those that I remembered)! I thought maybe I'd tempted fate. Then I remembered I don't believe there is such a thing, LOL. But that image and challenge just embodied my feelings at the time - I was ready for 2014 to be amazing! In many ways, it was.

And here we are, in 2015. This time, I've put this:

as my desktop. It was taken in Paris, I don't know where, exactly. But isn't it lovely? I can lose myself in that picture. Go drifting down a willow-shaded stream hazy in the summer sun, to the background of bumblebees humming and birdsong. That's kind of where I am right now. If it changesI can always change the desktop.

Best of 2015 to all!

Made out like a bandit, I did

Had a lovely lunch with my two sisters-in-law, where we (traditionally) exchange gifts - by this time we are all giving each other the same things (meaning there are three sets of the identical objects being traded) because we know the others like them, so that's kind of hilarious. It's the lunch that's important - no, I'm wrong - it's the *company* at the lunch that's important.

Had a lovely Christmas Day dinner at my one sis-in-law's home, with her son's family and the other sis-in-law and *her* grown kids. Lots of good food (lasagne! Another delectable family tradition), lame jokes, banter, and watching the ten year old and the two year old zoom around.

And I was *buried* in gifts from my son & his family! They just kept showing up on my doorstep, day after day! And what gifts!!! The Firefly board game! (swoon)  The Pandemic board game! (squeeeee!) The Tolkien Professor, Corey Olsen's "Exploring JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit" (I debated how to treat the font in that title. If I remember I'll look it up in my handy grammar and punctuation book and let you know how I did)!

[And now I'm wondering: Is italicizing and underlining *grammar*? Or punctuation? Is there a third rail in English usage? Something else to look up. Post a comment if you know. I check comments daily because I've got the comment filtering setting On.] [No one ever comments, but I live in hope.]

Short catch-up post

My energy level has improved considerably since that last post. Since then I've gotten cookies baked, presents store-bought or handmade wrapped and in some cases mailed, a lovely luncheon enjoyed, and lots of reading done. I finished Bill Bryson's One Summer: America 1927, and enjoyed it a lot (despite one friend's scathing critique of Bryson's research quality), and Alan Cumming's autobiographical book Not My Father's Son (this last was a cheat on my TBR pile; I sat down the minute I got it home and read it all in one sitting - now I go back to the TBR pile in proper order).  I'm working on Asia's Cauldron: the South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific by Robert D. Kaplan. For bed-time reading right now I'm working on Christie's An Overdose of Death.

I started Yet Another pair of socks, to alternate with the sock I've *almost* got done. I got tired of that one, and this pair excites me because 1) I'm again making it up as I go along - no pattern - and 2) I'm using two colors! Whee! Wide dark green and natural white stripes in a knit 2, purl 2 rib (except for the sole, which will be smooooth stockinette). It's also the first time I've used the CoBaSiyarn (cotton, bamboo, and silk) so I'm interesting to find out how long-lasting it is in a sock.

And so goes my tha-rilling life.

Low-karma week

Having a hard time doing any of the many things I have on my To Do list this week. Don't know if the grey, clammy weather has anything to do with it, but that's not going to get better; looks like we have maybe 5 straight days of grey cold rainy crap coming up, segueing partway through into grey cold snowy crap. Oh joy.

Oh well, my library book pile is up to 9 volumes now. I could always hide in bed for days at a time.

This week's Project

This was what my dining room windows looked like yesterday morning:

This is what the dining room looked like last night:

And this is what it looks like now:

I made some shelves! I'll remove the clamps tonight (I glued a board to the foot of each side plank for stability). They're not finished or painted, because I'm not sure where they will ultimately end up. The main two things were: get rid of those god-awful sheer curtains at the windows, and get a shelving unit up to put the little houseplant babies on. And open the wall up to be lighter. It faces east, over the neighbor's driveway to the side of his house, and it's entirely canopied by huge oak trees from his yard, so it tends to be dark in the dining room. 

I made up the shelves as I went along. As always with anything I build, it's pretty half-assed. But if it works, I'm happy. 

Ridiculously chuffed

Since last May, I've been trying to change my diet and activity habits to reduce some bad-trending numbers in my health assessment. Cholesterol and blood sugars, mostly. Yesterday I had a fasting blood draw to check the cholesterol levels. Today I got the results: My good cholesterol (HDL) dropped 2 points, 51 to 49 (both within 1 point of the "50 or higher" desired level). My total cholesterol dropped 41 points. My Triglycerides dropped 46 points. My bad cholesterol (LDL) dropped 29 points. The cholesterol/HDL ratio dropped from 5.3 to 4.6. The Total, Triglycerides, Bad, and ratio are all still higher than desirable. But if I lower them as much in the next 6 months as I have in the past 6 months, they'll all be down in the Normal range.

I was really anxious about this blood test. I have been working hard but I was thinking, please please oh PLEASE, let me lower the bad ones by 5 points! Just 5 points! On my more optimistic days I thought maybe I could make that 10 points.  So today's results have got me OVER THE MOON! OVER THE MOON CARL!!! (I don't watch The Walking Dead so I really don't have the ticket to use that meme but I felt like it, so there.)

What have I done to get here? Changed my diet, mostly. I mean, that's almost entirely it. I have reduced my beef consumption, bacon consumption and cheese consumption by like, 85 - 90%. What meat I do use, is more of an accent or a garnish. I have fish (cod, pollack, frozen; tuna, salmon, canned), chicken, rarely pork. Once in a great while I go crazy and go to Village Inn and have Pigs in Blankets LOL. Woo hoo do I know how to live, or what??? I've increased the proportion of fresh or frozen or canned vegetables and fruits I eat per day. Like, I've doubled that. I've reduced by about half the amount of bread I eat (which really kills me, but since I make my own, eating less of it per day means I have to bake less often, so there's that). I TRY to either ignore dessert cravings or have a pear or apple or some canned fruit - that's really hard as I have a giant sweet tooth.

In fact, I buy almost no processed foods, I make most of my meals from scratch using fresh, frozen or canned straight stuff. I like my cooking better than Corporate America's. And with my adjusted plate I know I'm eating a well balanced diet. My problem is, I eat too much of that wonderfully healthy food. And my main problem is after dinner - after nightfall. When I'm sitting here watching a DVD or Netflix, knitting, or playing solitaire...it's almost irresistible to go out there and graze. And I'm an experienced cook & baker so it doesn't take long to create something Bad in a very short time (cookie dough, anyone?). I've been working on that for some time now, and I have to say I have failed often enough to start considering the drastic measure of installing a chain gate with a sign: No Admittance After 8 p.m.). I have the hardware. It could be up in like, 20 minutes. But the idea is so humiliating that maybe, just maybe, I can threaten myself with it into behaving myself, late-night-snack-wise.

So keeping with the diet methods I've had is the first component of my plan going forward.

The second part is staying out of the damned kitchen after 8 p.m.

The third part is exercise. That, I told my health coach, is the Piece of the Puzzle I haven't been Pounding in Place. (That was earlier today on our monthly phone visit, right after I'd eyeballed these wonderful new numbers. I was a little giddy.) So we arrived at a goal - a realistic and achievable goal - for my exercise from today on: one hour aerobic per week, and 3 times per week strength training. I mean really, that's pretty minimal. I should have no trouble doing that. Yet it's BEEN my goal for like 6 months. I haven't DONE it yet. So now I'm hoping my curiosity will be an additional incentive: My health numbers have improved so much, just changing my diet, how much better will they get if I add in the exercise?

Oh, I haven't yet mentioned my BMI. It's horrible. It's in the LOOKOUT YOU'RE GOING TO DIE OF FAT range. It's identical to what it was in May (this was not a surprise). I'll be very interested to see if staying out of the kitchen after dark and exercising every day will have a beneficial effect on my weight, too. Whaddya wanna bet? Likewise, the blood glucose levels, which didn't get measured in yesterday's test. They were "borderline" last time; I am even more concerned about those than I was about cholesterol, I mean I am flat-out fucking terrified of diabetes.  But I am confident that if I follow this plan of mine, my blood glucose levels will revert to normal, too.

Stay tuned.

I mean to behave.

House plant update.

Ageratum doesn't transplant well. It dies. Ah well, worth a try. The thin-leafed deep raspberry-colored plant is also struggling. I don't know if any of the slips from that plant will make it. But, the Swedish ivy, geraniums, and bi-colored (white and jade green) vine are doing well. The begonias look a little tough, but they're going for it. I can trim out the dead bits once they're established for sure.

I moved some of all of them (except the dead ones) up to the sewing room window. They seem happy. I put a bicolor in the bathroom, but the light there is limited so I may move it.

I'm going to go looking for string-of-pearls and Philodendron, and maybe one other houseplant, in a couple of weeks. This is an oxygen-enhancing effort, as well as a home-enhancing effort. It's been a long time since I had plants. Didn't want them. Now I do. And so it goes.

OK so far, but I can do better

I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't have any trouble keeping up with my son's family (including my 6 year old granddaughter) over my Thanksgiving visit last week. This is a distinct difference from previous visits, when my excess weight, general inactivity and resulting lack of fitness kept me breathless, sweaty and sore, and lagging behind in general. I did try over the past year to up my physical activity, and while I never managed to develop a regular (or even very frequent) workout habit, I did get out and move around more.  This included the first two weeks of October when I tried to do without my car, relying on shank's mare, buses and taxies to get places. And when I do drive, I park much farther from the store's doors than I ever used to, just to get the extra walking in.

Anyway, as I said earlier, my daughter-in-law's cooking is absolutely fabulous in every way, and she's got her family on a mostly-vegan (except for her daughter) diet now, with occasional juice fasts. I have no objection to joining right in and the deliciousness certainly makes that easy. I'm inspired to eat a LOT more fresh vegetables and fruits, cut back on the carbs (SOME--I will NEVER be anti-carb), and just eat less in general. And quit eating at 8 p.m. - that's a biggie for me. I do fine with sensible breakfast and lunch, and even dinner. I just need to stay out of the kitchen after 8 p.m.

Another thing I've drifted way far away from in the past year is planning a week's worth of meals ahead of time. I sat down this afternoon and did that for this coming week. First I did a full inventory of all the food and condiments, herbs and spices, that I already have. I just looked for recipes that sounded fairly easy and good, and didn't worry about whether I had the ingredients on hand. As it turned out, the only thing I lack from the menu I made was parsley! I need lots of salad goodies, and to replace my dairy stuff, so I still need to hit the store.

Tonight I made Moroccan Pumpkin Soup, from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, by Claudia Roden. This is a big, gorgeous book full of mouth-watering recipes and I've barely scratched the surface. For this recipe, I substituted some roasted acorn squash I had in the freezer for the pumpkin. I had some tortillas left over so I heated up a za'atar mix (lots of thyme and sesame seeds, with a dash of sumac) in a small amount of olive oil in my cast-iron skillet, then browned a couple of tortillas in it. The combination of soup and flatbread was really good, and I'm glad there's enough left over to repeat the dinner tomorrow night. (I didn't take a picture; neither my food presentation skills nor my photography is good enough to make food look very appetizing.)

I have a fasting blood draw tomorrow. I'm feeling a bit pessimistic about it, but we'll see. Perhaps I *did* reduce the carbs and cholesterol, and increase my physical activity enough over the past 6 months to improve my numbers. In any case, I'm going to be working hard to do a more concentrated and methodic job of that going forward.

Home again, home again

Just got home tonight from visiting my son & his family over the past 8 days. Too wiped out to post anything else now. But have been inspired, as always, by my d-i-l's delicious and healthful cooking plus some reading about what the scientists are learning about the effects of inactivity (aka "sloth") on the human body have evoked a feeling that I really, seriously, must change the way I live my life. I've been working on it for several years, and I've enjoyed improvements, but I've never gone into it whole-heartedly. What they're finding on the health front is damned scary, and I think I'm ready to ratchet up my game.

More later.

Socks socks socks socks

I finally finished Sock No. 8 last week,

(it looks a little cooler after it was washed and blocked) so had nothing on needles. I pulled out the Zwerger Garn Opal Sport:

to make a pattern called Edwardian Boating Socks (which I can't share a picture because I don't have the copyrights to any of them - but when they're finished I'll post the heck out of my own photos). I bought this yarn because it was the closest I could find to the colors in the Tenth Doctor's TARDIS. That pattern looks really really cool with variegated yarn and I have high hopes for this pair.

And it started out really well. Then I hit the actual pattern. This is the first time I've tried a pattern using a chart and I buggered it up twice, and right now I've tinked it back to the last row of ribbing (which went perfectly this time). But it's not going to be a TV-watching project for me. I'll have to have all music and videos off and really concentrate to get the chart right.

Which is a disappointment because I wanted to take it along on my trip to California to keep my hands busy en route and during quiet times with the family. So I decided to start a plain vanilla pattern (like the one I made up for the Trekking 474 socks:

and decided to use the WüllenStudio Desperado (colorway) I bought because I love the turquoises and khaki and cocoa with just little dashes of forest green now & then:

so this is what I'll take on the planes with me. If I can fit it in the one carry-on bag I'm taking.

I have so much sock yarn and I do need socks - I need to keep pushing to work my way through the stash.

This is me, saying Yes.

Last Wednesday, I got the November Omaha By Design e-newsletter. One of the articles was a call for volunteers to go downtown yesterday morning and participate in a photo shoot for a promotion of Complete Streets. That's where a city works to make their streets safer and more attractive and friendlier to pedestrians, bicyclists, and mass transit riders. They were having the police block 16th Street off between Capitol and Chicago Streets. They’d have us park our cars in a close grid right across the street to show how much room cars take up, then have the bicyclists with their bikes, the city bus and its riders, and some pedestrians.

This sounded like exactly the kind of thing one gets retired for, to have some fun like this. So I signed up, and yesterday morning, I made my way downtown, and found the right corner, and parked my car where they directed me, and then we all stood around in the 20 sunny, windy degrees and waited while the organizers and photographers figured things out. They thought for a few minutes they were going to have to draft one of the policemen’s cars to fill out the 30 vehicles, but then someone else showed up and all was well.

They had a big BIG jack platform on a flatbed truck, and the photographers and director of Omaha By Design, Connie Spellman, rode it up until it was oh, I don’t know, 15 feet high? So their eye level would be 20 feet or so? I don’t know. They were way high up.

They had 30 of us gather in front of the block of cars, and that was when I found out that 30 people, average age maybe 35, are incapable of counting off. Mind-boggling. We had to do it three times. During the fourth, I turned to look behind us, and witnessed a zombie, stiff-legged, arms stretched out front, eyes vacant, jaw lolling, shambling through the grid of cars to where we stood for the photo. It wasn’t actually a zombie, of course, it was just a guy IN JEAN SHORTS AND A TEE SHIRT IN TWENTY-DEGREE WEATHER come to see what all the fuss was about. What little discipline we had was, of course, shattered. But we re-grouped, and the zombie stood behind us - behind *me*, actually, and the volunteers and Number 31 (which he yelled out with great enthusiasm after Number 30 had called his number) proceeded to enjoy some 20 minutes of joshing around.

Someone asked him why he wasn’t properly dressed for the weather. He said he saw the commotion out his hotel window (16th Street ends at the back of the DoubleTree Hotel) and when he saw that block of cars he KNEW that what we needed was zombies, so he raced right down to help us out. He said he’d flown in to Omaha for the Motley Crūe concert Thursday night. Somebody asked where he was from & he said “Elgin.” (I assume Illinois?) He said he’s found Midwestern people are way, way more friendly than - someone pressed him: “Than where - New York?” but he finished his sentence saying “Well - than me.” I told him we weren’t going to do this for him every time he comes to town so he shouldn’t get used to it. That got a laugh.

Then the organizers had us disband and re-group as cyclists, bus riders and pedestrians, and Number 31 high-tailed it for the hotel double-time without even a wave. I think the cold must have finally got his attention LOL.

Next, I was a pedestrian. We were to pretend to be crossing the street, in front of the single-file cyclists and the 10 bus-riders oddly clumped together *in front* of the bus. The guy in front of me was movie-star handsome and I noticed he always faced toward the camera’s direction with a gorgeous smile. I teased him: “Making sure they get your good side?” and he immediately started vogueing, very funny. He must’ve been there with office-mates because several others started hoo-hah-ing him for it.

Then they were done! It took less than half an hour in all (from we volunteers’ POV) and it was a blast. I went off to have a rare breakfast at the pancake house and didn’t find out until later that they were giving us tee shirts. Connie mentioned it in an email later; she said she’ll get me one, too. I just wish we’d got Number 31’s name & address so he could get one too. He really MADE that little event, for me.  We're supposed to get a picture and if I do, I'll post it here. Connie already said I could.

And there's our Elgin visitor, in the blue tee shirt, right behind me with the gray hoodie.

Thank you, ESA!

Background: When Curiosity was going to land on Mars, I stayed up for it, watching NASA/JPL's live feed. It was stunningly emotional. (I fell in love with Mohawk Guy along with probably 90% of the world's female population. I wouldn't presume to guess about the male portion.) But mostly I sat here, alone in my house in the middle of that August night, weeping with joy and pride and astonishment. I had "kind of" seen the first human set foot on the moon. Now I'd seen Curiosity land on Mars. 

But with the time difference between here and Europe I didn't feel like trying to figure out when, exactly, Philae would touch down on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The closest a quick try got me was about 2 a.m. here. Nope. I'll read about it in the headlines tomorrow, I thought.

I slept, got up and did the usual morning routine, and sat down with my coffee to do the daily news and blog-run. Right now, I can't remember how I even got there, but the first thing I saw was a Twitter post: 

Spaceflight Now ‏@SpaceflightNow  36 sec ago

    Philae is on the comet! #CometLanding

36 seconds? I missed it by 36 seconds? Well, hey, guess what, I DIDN'T MISS IT THEN!!!! Unbelieveable. I was apparently MEANT to share this joyous occasion, just like last time, joyously weeping over my coffee. 

Then I went hunting for what I'd written about Curiosity's triumph. 

Nothing. Not in my blog, not in my journal, nothing. 

And now that I think about it, this is all I'll write about this morning's occasion. I just don't have words adequate to the event. 

But by some wacked-out stroke of good luck, I didn't miss it. That means I'm 3 for 3: the Moon, Mars, and 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.  I am SO delighted to live in the future!

Here's a brilliant idea

I wish someone would take this idea and run with it: A web site where you could sign up to set up whatever regular contributions you want, to the charities you want, and get off the lists of everyone else - you should also be able to specify that you get NO additional solicitations from charities you already contribute to. I can't think how the web site would sustain itself, though. Maybe the charities could pay them half of what it would cost them to MAIL solicitations to non-interested people. That way the web site would pay for itself and the charities would save money.

Waiting until the very last minute

as usual, I finally got those plants potted up that I want to keep as house plants or overwinter to re-plant outdoors in the spring. I've had the pots ready for two weeks, just couldn't muster the interest until it became obvious yesterday that we are about to get our first real winter blast.

And as usual, I thought I could get this AND plasticking-over the windows done today. Nope, heh. The plants took freaking *forever*.  The windows will have to wait until tomorrow. But then that will be two important projects (= they've been driving me nuts for weeks) DONE for the winter! And I can go on to the next one, which is sewing a skirt in time to take it to CA with me later this year.

Anyway, I took pics of the plant-potting ceremony. Trashed the dining room for a couple of hours, but it's all cleaned up now. I haven't had houseplants for decades. I just didn't want anything else alive that I'm responsible for, but now I want pretty plants here & there and I want their oxygenating effects during the winter.

Getting set up:

Halfway done:

And done:

I used cuttings of the geraniums and Swedish ivy, hoping they'll take hold so I can replant them for the front stoop in the spring. I also took cuttings of the little green & white vine and the tall, lovely red-purple plant whose name I don't know, thinking maybe the vine will do OK but the red thing is iffy. We'll see. I also have some Wandering Jew I got via craigslist. I still would like to get some Philodendron and String of pearls for houseplants. So yay, this project is over except for the watering.

I can tell when I'm tired.

It's when, as I try to put together some project and I'm clumsy, stupid and incompetent doing something that should be simple, if not easy. *sigh*

I fear another trip to Lowe's is in my future.

Yesterday

I had volunteered at the county Democratic HQ to drive people to the polls yesterday, or deliver ballots to the election commission. I put a lot of miles on the car, had two really interesting conversations (one with a grade-school classmate I hadn't seen *since* grade school), delivered two ballots and performed two "agented ballots." The latter involved going to the election commission office, signing my name as an "agent" (we're limited to doing two of these per election so they record it), receiving and then taking the ballot to the voter, helping them if need be to fill out their ballot, then after they've signed (if possible; if not I don't know exactly what I would have done - called in for instructions, for sure) and sealed the envelope, taking the ballot back to the election commissioner's office.

I won't go into details about the voters I did the agent service for except to say it was an honor and a privilege, and if the droves of idiots who stayed away from the polls could have witnessed these folks's determination to vote, they would *maybe* have felt the shame they should have. One of them had sent in the application for the absentee ballot (and if this person didn't qualify no one would), but never received the ballot. The voter called up the EC's office and asked what happened, and was told by "a young woman" that "Oh, we were really understaffed that day and some of them just didn't get sent out." This young woman was lucky it wasn't me doing the asking. Her ear may never have recovered. Her supervisor was lucky, too, because shortly after that call I would been there, in person, screaming into said supervisor's face about how many hundreds of thousands of people have died for our right to vote and they have ONE JOB DAMMIT, which is to make sure everyone who wants to vote gets to vote and it is a sacred trust that they should be ready to die to ensure. OH my were they lucky it wasn't me on that phone call. It's elevated my blood pressure right now just thinking about it. I reported it to the party volunteer coordinator and she said she'd heard similar things about the EC office and would bring it up at the next Dem. party meeting. Not nearly as satisfying as screaming in a miscreant's face, but I suppose it will have to suffice.

They said I could go home (4:30 pm) because they didn't expect many more calls for rides/ballot delivery before the polls closed at 8 pm, but once I'd got home and had just sat down to eat dinner, they called saying they needed volunteers for a "special project" County Dem. HQ wanted - to go to the polls just before closing time and stand by the line (if any) and be sure no one left without voting, without being encouraged to stay and vote. This sounds like a) probably a good idea and 2) nothing I was remotely interested in doing at that point. So I turned them down. By then I knew I was really REALLY tired.

But, I feel it was a good day's work. Oh, and I had mailed in my ballot a couple of weeks ago so I could be free to do the driving thing.

No, your eyes were not deceiving you

I deleted Oct. 31st's post because it was nothing but whining about what is, after all, a minor infection. If I don't want to become one of those old ladies who only talk about their health issues, I have to nip this shit in the bud right now.

Here's a pretty picture of one of my cats:

The long and winding road

to making a temporary shelving unit out of materials I already have, for  plants, this winter, in the blue room upstairs (I found out last winter that once the maple tree's leaves have dropped, the light is EXCELLENT for plants.)

Is it my convoluted brain? Is it the 10 years I spent in the DEQ Planning Unit, despite the fact that I never had any course work in Planning (mostly biology and other sciences)? Anyway, every damn thing I want to do seems to have its own House That Jack Built complications.

OK, I want to dig up several begonias, a couple of the geraniums, the ivies, the little white and green leaved thing in the hanging pots, and also plant some free Wandering Jew vines I got via craigslist, and put them in pots to over-winter in the Blue Room. But there would be too many to just put on the sewing table like I did last winter. So: a temporary shelving unit.  I've procrastinated for weeks. Today, it turned out, was the day. But I had to Plan, first. So:

1. Draw up a plan for the unit, using materials I already have.

2. Build the unit, assemble it in place upstairs.

3. In the garage, assemble the plant pots: river rock in the bottom, a layer of gravel, and half the amount of potting soil (the rest to be sprinkled in once the plants are planted).

4. Pot up the plants and put them in a protected spot on the back patio. when the maple leaves have fallen, move the plants to the Blue Room for the winter.

Also, I need to divide the irises and replant them in bare spaces in the flower beds, and elsewhere depending on how many there are.  So, after potting up the first set:

5. Cut off iris leaves to about 6" high. Dig up the corms, cut apart and replant both in present iris bed and the spaces where the potted plants were before.

6. Also: Cut off Hosta flower stalks and leaves to about 6" high for the winter.

OK, so I had a Plan! I went out into the garage to commence to begin. The first thing I discovered was that I should have gone out there and checked my *actual* wood inventory instead of thinking I knew what I had. BIG SIGH. The plan called for 8" wide boards. I only had 3 1/2" wide boards - and I don't have the tools to butt boards together to make wider planks. So, a trip to Lowe's was added to my round of errands.

So much for using what I have. On the bright side, though, I could have the guy cut the planks for me, saving me quite a bit of work. There will still be some sawing to do but the lumber guy did help a lot. 

But as always, my ideas of what I could get done today were totally unrealistic. I wonder why I persist in doing that. Oh well, back into the fray tomorrow!

When will I ever learn?

I've committed myself to spending Monday afternoons helping a Certified Master Gardener do groundskeeping at our local branch of the public library (presumably through the end of the growing season). I arose yesterday feeling like something unspeakable rolled in sand (to paraphrase an old saying of my  mom's) thinking I'd call the MG and beg off, but by the time I got to the bathroom I'd decided to just go, and do it, and quit being such a wuss.

So I did. On tap for yesterday was the delivery of a dump truck-full of mulch to be spread over the two flower/ornamental tree beds on either side of the main library entrance. When will I ever learn that any given yard job is going to be MAGNITUDES more work than I think it will? Ye gods, am I out of shape. One and a half hours of that and I was utterly spent. I could hardly move. The MG guy is amazing - he's my age but he's never let himself go to shite like I have. I kept at it until I really thought maybe I'd have to stop the car on the way home (a five minute drive) and rest - and so I quit then. When he returned my wheelbarrow and push-broom this morning he said (when I asked) that he'd got the job done by himself, working there until 5 pm. I feel like such a heel. And what's sadder yet is that right now I'm in the best shape I've been since - oh, since I retired, let's say. I've been far more active and conscious of my sleep habits and physical exertions this year and I can really tell the difference in my strength and stamina - and yesterday's 1 1/2 hours was me pushing myself hard the whole time. WHAT a slug!

So, I know what I have to do. Will I do it? Probably more than I have up to yesterday. I do know that for today, I'm flattened, too. And my own yard is yelling at me about how the sycamore leaves (those the size of dinner plates, with 6-inch long leathery petioles) are covering the yard already. And and and other yard chores too numerous to mention. Egads, I'm in a hole today. Fresh air, exercise, and the exercise of civic responsibility is supposed to make you feel good about yourself - didn't work, this time. Maybe next Monday...for today, it's Tea and a Book (by Wylie Becket):

An unexpected visitor!

In my yard and my neighbor's yard yesterday! Since moving here in 1993 I've never seen one here. What a treat. And so dignified.

He went off down the sidewalk at a leisurely pace, looking around like a tourist. I hope he finds his preferred location without interference.

Coming up on an inactive period, I think

I generally have what I call "troughs." I think it's a mild form of depression. Not mild because it's weak; indeed it keeps me inert for days, sometimes weeks. But I call it mild because it's not really a painful depression. I don't experience severe emotional pain, or really, any at all. It's a state in which I just *love* not doing anything. Not going anywhere, not working on any projects. Maybe reading, watching my library of DVDs, or Netflix. Maybe knitting and listening to music. But not going out if I don't have to, not going out of my way to be with people. Just kind of shutting down like a clam. And I LOVE it. It feels GOOD. I can't imagine how I lived all those years not being able to go with this need, but I did, as does everyone: you have to go to work. You are obligated to attend to family and friends. Now that I'm alone, and retired, I can indulge this need much more than ever. And when the current trough is almost over, I know it because I develop the urge to clean, to cook, to visit, to get out and do things. To make ridiculously overoptimistic To Do lists.

But right now I just want to coccoon. Literally: I've started putting plastic over the windows for winter. There are some yard things I really need to do, too. Not that I feel like it but I'd better, if I don't want Spring to come as a horrid surprise (assuming there will be snow to melt and reveal the consequences of any neglect I perpetrate).

So if there's not much bloggity for awhile you'll know why. I'm being utterly boring and there's nothing to write about. You might want to subscribe by entering your email address in the box in the right margin, and then whenever I post you'll get a note saying I've posted. That way you won't waste time coming here when in all likelihood there won't be anything new.

Going to make a cup of tea, get a blanket, and a good book (I'm reading "Walkable Cities" right now.)

ETA: two hours later: I'm even contrary with my OWN edicts. No sooner had I posted the above than I had a sudden burst of energy and have been going up & down stairs, laundry, cooking, cleaning, changing the closet from summer to winter clothes...I've quit trying to figure out my own psychology. There is no rhyme or reason.