Rude Awakening

This morning at 1:47AM the smoke alarm in the hall outside my bedroom started to chirp its "low battery" sound. For a nanosecond I thought that I could sleep through it but knew that I was doomed. Luckily I had some 9-volt batteries in the cabinet so there I was in the middle of the night dragging a chair down the hall to stand on it to change the battery in the stupid chirping smoke alarm. Tomorrow I'm going to put new batteries in the rest of the smoke and CO alarms in the house, just in case. Or maybe I'll go do that right now while I'm thinking about it. I did go back to sleep, thank heavens.

I was amazed to see an orange day lily blooming today. I was sure that any remaining buds would have given up the ghost with the frost we had the other night but there were actually two pale orange flowers today. The cat was on the retaining wall when I went out to take this picture and it hurried away but not too fast. It kept looking back to see what I was up to but by the time I got into the house it was gone.

I confess that I skipped the next figure in the 3-D book and went on to draw this rose. The other one was a maze of ramps and roads all woven together that I didn't get farther than the third frame before I collapsed in frustration. I do not draw to be frustrated so I moved on. The rose isn't bad, not great, but not terrible.

Then I got out the 10-Steps: People book and drew the next four facial features, this time the side view. I don't think that the nose looks like a nose but I'm happy with the eye, ear, and mouth.

While my supper was heating in the microwave I looked out and there was a single Junco pecking around in the seeds with a few Sparrows so it was a darned early-arriving Junco that I saw the other day. Hopefully this one is a scout and it'll be a while before the rest of them come dragging winter behind them.

I got out the paints and made this watercolor of a sunset that I saw when I was up at The Clearing week before last. It's not too bad. A week ago today I came home from TC and already that week up there seems like it was longer ago than that. Time sure flies. My neighbor, LJ, commented the other night that life is like a toilet paper roll, it goes faster the closer you get to the end. So true.

I knitted a few rounds on the Get Off My Lawn! Sock tonight but I just couldn't get into the groove so I went downstairs and dug out a bag of yarn leftover from a shrug I knitted years ago and cast on another one of those big yarn/big needle caps that I've been cranking out the last few weeks. I can't stop!

Today I tossed a pair of pants that just doesn't fit. That's so annoying.

--Barbara