Concert

I went to a concert tonight--on YouTube.  It was great.  I propped up my iPad, searched the pianist's name (Adam Swanson), and there he was live-streaming two hours of ragtime piano.  He played some Christmas music but mostly he played rags, and the Christmas music he rag-ged up.  Remember that movie The Sting?  The songs they played were ragtime.  I really enjoyed it.

There was a pair of squirrels dashing around each other, taking turns leaping onto the feeders, and generally being squirrels.  This one had the lion's share of time on the suet cake feeder.  It always checks the suet pellet feeder first and then retires back to this cake feeder.  Seems to me that it'd be easier to eat the suet cakes than the pellets, the holes in the cake feeder are bigger, but they always go for the pellets first.  And they're both the same flavor--fat and corn.

I started another preemie hat this afternoon after taking a walk.  I meant to knit through the concert but ended up just watching his fingers fly across the keys.  I'm in no rush.

20 December--Barbara Malcolm, The Seaview. 

Chapter 25

            The plumbers arrived the next morning.  With Calvin Brooks' crew in the Seaview, the place buzzed.  People worked so hard and fast that leaps toward completion were made every day.  The energy of it spurred Luke and Stanley to pick up the pace and by the middle of the week they were finished scraping and ready to put on the primer coat.  Neither of them had ever heard of putting on a primer coat before painting but I assured them that doing this one extra step would keep them from having to paint again quite as soon.  They looked at each other and must have come to a silent agreement because they nodded at each other and then turned to me.

            "We are in favor of doing anything that will get us out of the broiling sun faster," Stanley said.  It was the first time I had ever heard his voice not in song.

            I was impressed and entertained by the constant music that accompanied the two young men.  They had found a place to wedge their radio up under the eaves on each side of the hotel and it had kept them scraping and bopping and singing for two weeks.  Now it would accompany their painting.  I had come to really enjoy their music, a mix of reggae, rap and calypso.  It was cheerful and it gave me energy.

            Since we were replacing the existing pipes and not running new ones, all Calvin and his crew had to do was take out the old rusty metal ones and slide in the new ones.  In a few places they had to drill out the holes but mostly it was a case of out with the old and in with the new.  By Friday both of the upstairs bathrooms were ready for all the new fixtures to be installed and three of the four guest rooms waited for little corner sinks to be put in for ease of guests' washing up.

            I tried to stay out of everyone's way, sitting at my sewing machine making curtains and using the scraps to make table linens.  For the guest rooms I set in a wide strip of colored fabric six inches from the hems.  At first I thought I would match the color strip to the room's color but then I realized that would be too predictable, so I mixed them up.  Not that it really mattered, all of the windows were the same length, and I could change my mind.  I had bought plain white sheets and cotton blankets for the beds so I cut out simple leaf and flower shapes of my five chosen accent colors and machine appliquéd them onto extra pillow cases to dress the beds with.  I had chosen to buy modern metal bed frames that reminded me of the old iron bedsteads from my girlhood but these would be less affected by the salt air than the old iron would have.

            I was anxious for the second cargo container to arrive even though I was not looking forward to another couple of weeks of tippy-toeing around Mr. Gomez' prissy and priggish ways.  I just knew he would make what should be a straightforward task of matching the contents of the container with the items on the bill of lading into a grand production.  I had already told Edward that I hoped he would again consent to being Mr. Gomez's right-hand man.  Since Edward enjoyed organizing things, he thought it would be fun, or at least he didn't cringe when faced with the prospect of days danced to 'Nando's tune.

Today's toss was another game.

Writing went okay this evening.  I went and had a COVID test this morning so that I get a clean bill of health for going to DS's on Christmas day.  I'm still determined to go--as long as everyone else's test is negative too.

--Barbara