Teeny Tiny

Flowers.  Or, rather, the promise of flowers.  Upon careful scrutiny of the area in front of the house I found...


                                                               a purple crocus bud cozying up to the yellow ones...

grape hyacinth buds about the size of a Q-Tip head (with a piece of broken glass heaved up by frost--I live on an old landfill and after 42 years glass is still coming up in the spring)...



 

                squills ready to open (they look like tiny striped violets and are the size of my pinkie nail)...

and a hyacinth bud just poking out of the ground. 









I dug out some fabric scraps and some bias binding to sew up a mask.  It should have had a nose-shaping wire but I couldn't figure out how to put one in.  So once it was done I surfed the web and found a free tutorial of how to sew in a wire.  Tomorrow I'll try again, this time with a plastic coated twist tie that I flattened out and will turn the ends so they're not pokey and then sew it onto the seam allowance so it's protected.

The bird of the day today was this cardinal.  It hopped around from the birdie tree to under the feeders where the house sparrows had flung seed down.  Cardinals like to eat on the ground or on a platform feeder, not a closed feeder.






25 March--Barbara Malcolm, Three Cheers for Murder. 

“Marlene, what are you doing?” she exclaimed.  Cecilia dropped her cup and saucer and turned to grab Marlene’s upraised arm.

 Marlene shrieked an unhuman sound and they began to struggle.  “If only you weren’t so nosy, Cecilia,” Marlene panted, “you might live through this day.” 

Cecilia was surprised at the other woman’s strength.  She kept a tight hold on Marlene’s right wrist as they fell to the floor.  All the time Marlene was talking.  “No, you had to keep asking questions.  Unnh."  She grunted with the effort to shake off the grip on her wrist.  "You probably talked to that old fogey police detective you’re so taken with.”  The two women rolled over on the floor.  Marlene kept talking.  “I might have known you couldn’t keep your nose out of my business.  You make me sick.  Always messing in other people’s lives, just like my mother.  Marlene, you should fix yourself up.  Marlene, you should find a boyfriend.” 

Cecilia tried to use her other hand to get a better grip on the flint knife and cut her palm.  Marlene bucked her body, knocking Cecilia off of her.  But Cecilia still kept her grip on the wrist of the hand holding the knife.  

 “If only Marx hadn’t stopped writing.  Hadn’t found some simpering cheerleader to love.  None of this would have happened.”   

Cecilia tried to remember some of the things she’d learned in Tae Kwon Do to help her subdue Marlene, but Marlene seemed to have superhuman strength.  It was all Cecilia could do to keep the knife away from herself.  Cecilia heard the pounding of feet on the stairs.   “Marlene, you know long-distance relationships have a hard time lasting.  Oof!”  This as she was hit in the stomach by Marlene’s knee.   

 Cecilia gathered all her waning strength to slam Marlene’s right hand on the floor.  With the second blow the flint knife broke into pieces.   

At the sound of the shattering rock, Marlene went limp and began crying and keening.  “My knife!  You broke my knife, my life!”  She curled into a ball on the floor and sobbed.  

 Just as the flint knife shattered the door burst open and Det. Archibald and Lt. Graybow crashed into the apartment, guns drawn.  They looked at the women on the floor.   

Marlene was crying and talking, “Just when everything was finally right, Cecilia, you had to ruin everything.  Just when my life was finally about to start.  I’d gotten rid of “the Y’s”.  They weren’t going to make me feel bad anymore.  Those bitches!  With their perfect hair and their perfect lives.  Flaunting themselves and their success in my face.  I hate them!  They come in my store and, except for Kimmy, at least she’s honest about how she feels about me, pretend to want to be my friend.  Help me make something of my life.  Come teach in my store, says Tiffy.  Come help the homeless children, says Teddy.  Why should I help you?  When you’ve made my life a living hell.  When you’re everything my mother wants and I’m not.  Nothing, that’s what she thinks I am.  Well, I’ll show her.  I’ll get rid of her favorites. Then she’ll have to love me.”  Marlene stopped crying, looked at Cecilia’s stunned expression, and her face took on a look of cunning.  “I stuck them with my knife.  Severed their empty heads from their empty bodies.  One at a time.  Each one in the place they most loved.  The place of their greatest triumphs.  That’s where I did it.  So, they’d know why they had to die.”

My friend, CS, said that her brother was out in his yard trimming a tree and his neighbor came out and hollered at him, from his own yard, that he wasn't allowed to be outside, that we all have to stay in our houses.  That way lies madness.  I took a walk around the block before it started raining and once everything dries up I hope to start raking last fall's leaves that got rained and snowed on so that I couldn't clean them up.  I figure I can rake a bit every nice day and eventually have the yard cleaned up.  We can go outside, in fact we're encouraged to go outside, we just have to avoid people.  This is a very sneaky virus.
--Barbara