I Learned A Life Lesson Yesterday

"Don't knit angora yarn when you're wearing black pants."  Remember that.  I was sitting in the dead quiet dive shop listening to an audiobook and happily knitting when I put the knitting aside to go potty and realized that my black capris were covered with fuzz.  Cov. Erd.  So covered that when I ran my hands down I made little rolled batts of fiber.  Eesh.  I'll be wearing jeans today.  Jeans don't attract lint like whatever cotton/Lycra fabric those black capris are made of.  I thought they were denim but they're evidently not a smooth-finish denim like the blue jeans ones.  Lesson learned.  But I have to smile thinking of the fuzzies that will be on my future sticky grandbaby when she/he uses that blankie.  That's okay, we can just shave or dunk the little tyke when it gets an angora beard and angora paws.  Babies clean easily.

A couple came to look at the duplex yesterday after work.  I think they liked it.  They seemed to not want to leave, especially the guy.  He liked that there's a basement, washer and dryer, and a yard for his son who comes on weekends.  He was eager to know when he could drop off the tenant applications, so maybe...  I'm not saying it out loud but fingers crossed.  You too.

You know you're getting old when you go to Tony Roma's, order a full rack of ribs plus sides, and make 3 suppers out of them.  We ate our fill there, had half of what we brought home Monday for supper, and finished them last night.  Can you imagine doing that when you were in your thirties or even forties?  I can't.  I'd have scarfed them all down at the first sitting or maybe had a couple left for a snack, but not made 3 meals of them.  With veggies and a starch.  Monday we had Sunnyhill corn and carrots & kohlrabi; last night we had wax beans and (eeeee!) instant mashed potatoes.  OMG, they're so good, and that's so embarrassing to type.  I have to tell you that I could have made a whole pot of those fake, flaked potatoes and just gobbled them up.  It was hard to not just inhale them.  We rarely have them anymore, only when we just don't freakin' care but Durwood says we need a starch, but they sure taste good--and bad.  Maybe that's the attraction, they're baaaad.

August 15--Jacometto, A Woman, Possibly a Nun of San Secondo.  She glides through the vivid landscape, the riot of color of the town, in her black gown and white head scarf.  She could not be more different from the other young women.  Their clothing echoes the colors they live in:  terra cotta of roof tiles, green of olive trees and grape vines, yellow ochre of the parched hillsides, the hundred shades of blue in the sky.  I watch her go about her business, a part of the scene but not.  She speaks to the vendors in the market, they sell her things, answer her questions but I see that their lives do not touch hers.  She holds herself aloof.  Never have I seen her arm in arm with a girlfriend laughing, just enjoying life.  I am intrigued by her aloofness. I'll keep my eye on her.

Hmm, I think that "I" might be kind of creepy, and that can't be a picture of a nun, that woman's neck is exposed, even the nape of it, and her left shoulder is uncovered.  No self-respecting nun would ever be that undressed.  Not ever.  Never.  Ooh, look, I have time to have a relaxed breakfast and dig up a cooler bag to keep my lunch from freezing in the arctic refrigerator at work.  It's turned OFF and the thermometer I put in there says 13 degrees.  I think it's broken.

--Barbara