It's Party Day!

No, that's not right.  It's Family Supper day, that's it.  These people are our family, not strangers we need to impress... so why do I wind myself up over it?  I don't know.  I need to chill, clean the bathroom, and get over myself.  The food will be good--a couple appetizers, chicken on the rotisserie & a pan of rolls--we don't have to make all the rest, and the company already likes us, so what am I doing obsessing over it?  Huh?  Can you tell me?  There's no future in trying to make an elegant presentation because that's just not us.  We're the homey types (as Durwood reminded me yesterday).  We don't have crystal or good china or fancy linens.  We have glasses, stoneware, and a clean table with repurposed kitchen towels as napkins.  That's just us.  Where is my head these days?  *frowns...shrugs*  Did I tell you that we got a "nasty-gram" from the city about the small heap of garden-cleaning-out-sticks, etc. I put at the curb?  Seems I put them out after the last official "stick picking up" date so if I didn't remove them in the next 48 hours the city would do it for me--and bill me.  I was getting the idea that the stick truck wasn't coming on my own and would have tarped it up and hauled it to yard waste yesterday anyway, but sort of resent that the city felt it had to waste time and money--and tape to attach it to the door--giving me a note.  The pile was so small that it fit into the back of Beverly.  *tsk*  D'you think someone complained?  The turds.  Our walk along Baird Creek yesterday was nothing less than a spring idyll.  I took a minute-long video and I'm going to see if I can randomly click some buttons on this thing and attach it so you can enjoy it too.  Skully put one on her blog last week (just clicking here and there until it magically appeared, she said) and I wanna do that too.  I wanna, I wanna, I wanna.  (dear lord, i am such a maroon)  [If all you see are pictures and no video, I didn't figure it out.]  Did I tell you that I have to work today?  I do.  I suspect that I won't be busy (at least I hope not), I'm just not in the mood, although customers do make the day move along at a quicker pace or at least make it seem that way.  I was happy to learn that I have a few regular readers among the knitters.  Thanks, peoples, it makes me feel less like I'm blabbering into the void.  I know that Aunt B's out there reading my wanderings but it was good to learn that VJ, TS, ZM, TG, and MH are reading along too.  Welcome.

May 12--Louis Comfort Tiffany, Bowl.  All I said was, I want a bowl of fruit, or I'd like some fruit, and look what he did.  It's enamelled copper, gorgeous, but pretty useless.  I wanted something to eat and he gave me art.  That's the problem with living with an artist.  They are unable to follow a logical path.  Artists seek out the twisted paths, they can stumble over the obvious, like my needing a snack, and charge off on a tangent.  It took Louis over a week to design and fabricate the bowl.  I could have starved.  I asked for a plum and get an enamelled bowl that I can't put fruit into.  But it's pretty.

I just don't "get" things that are solely pretty.  Things that are utilitarian AND pretty, now those I understand.  Paintings and sculpture, yeah, I get them.  Stuff that looks like it could serve a purpose but doesn't?  Not so much.  But then I'm at that stage in my year when I'm ready to scrape everything out of the house onto the yard, sort out what I reallyreallyreally love, and only let that back in.  I've assured Durwood that he'd totally be on the "let back in list."  Totally.  This week anyway.  I'm not making long-range promises.  Yeah, right.  Make the most of your day, and if you can't, let me know how you managed to slough off.  I need lessons.
--Barbara