Better

I'm in better spirits today.  When Durwood got up from his nap yesterday afternoon I went out and mowed all the front and side yards and the backyard around the garden and patio, and I swooped over and mowed down one tall, big-leafed weed but the rest of it I left.  If odd paths show up in the weeds I'll go out and deal with them then.  Once I had that done I lit the grill (charcoal, not gas) and grilled some country style pork ribs.  Oh yum, I love pork.  We need to not have it often because I just gobbled up my serving.  Durwood microbaked a tater and boiled the golden beets I bought at the Farmer's Market.  All delicious.  Going to the movie was a good idea.  It was National Lampoon's Summer Vacation.  I'd never seen it.  I don't have to again.  It was okay, but then I'm neither a slapstick fan nor a Chevy Chase fan so I might not be the target audience.  It was funny enough and it had pretty scenery, just not my cup of tea.  I did like spending the evening with Cookie and her folks.  Having a big root beer and an order of sweet potato fries helped too.  In two weeks the movie is The Big Lebowski.  I've never seen all of that one and I wasn't sure I liked what I did see, but it's DS's all-time favorite movie so I'm looking forward to it.  I finally delivered the last of my 2011 "Facebook Pay It Forward" promises last night.  I had every intention of accomplishing that in 2011 but then Mom pulled her little stunt in late October which threw the rest of my year into a cocked hat.  I kept the note on my bulletin board and I've been gradually nibbling away at it.  I made Lala a lap duvet at Easter, I made DD prayer flags in June, and I made Cookie a zippered pouch on Saturday.  All done, all delivered, now I can cross that off my "should" list.  Whew.  (I'd thought about making a painting for each of them but I mostly suck at painting so it might have been a good idea to not do that.  Sewing's something I can do, sometimes well, plus I have all that fabric...)  Today's Photo A Day theme is "big."  I was wondering what I had that was big (besides me, although I'm almost 2# smaller than I was last Monday... !!!) and I thought of my Maple Tree Scarf.  It's my own take on the Sky Scarf idea--you pick an hour to look at the sky (or in my case the maple outside my window) every day and knit 2 rows of the colors you see.  I love the winter part with its infrequent snowy white rows and the brown/black/variegated bark rows.  Since summer's pretty much one long green I put all my greens, solid and variegated, into a bag and I'm changing them out at whim.  I like it--and it's 62" of scarf as of today.  That's 28 weeks worth of really looking at that maple tree, 28 weeks of one row down and one row back each day.  I'm looking forward to the autumn colors but I can wait, don't want to hurry summer.  It's already one big scarf.

July 9---Albrecht Durer, Adam and Eve.  The shop smelled like old paper.  There were books and posters everywhere.  Prints were hung on every bare wall and pinned to the ends of the ranks of shelves.  Tilda loved the place.  She loved books and old prints.  She was even charmed by the drifts of small bits of paper that covered every flat surface like dandruff.  She imagined, like Charles Schultz's Pig Pen said, that it was the dirt of the ages.  That maybe Shakespeare or Ovid or King Tut had touched those paper bits.  Monsieur Michel sat under the buzzing light behind the antique cash register, paging through journals and reading the obituaries to see who might have libraries to sell.  Behind him in the place of honor was a Durer engraving that Tilda would have given more than she was worth to possess.  Every time she saw it another creature revealed itself to her.

Don't you just love old book shops?  I do.  They smell great, all musty and papery, and there are treasures to discover on every shelf.    Ah, books.  Oh, look at the time!  Gotta get ready to keep the world safe from SCUBA diving.  It might be a red shoes day too.  I'll see.  A bientot, mes cheries.
--Barbara