Just a Little Green

Even though it snowed (yes, again) yesterday afternoon the grass in the backyard evidently is ignoring the snow in favor of Spring.  It's turning green.  Obvious, irrefutable green.  Ya.  Hoo!  I was so demoralized when Durwood yelled that it had started to snow that I went down into the basement to hide out with my fabric and sewing machines.

A few months back my pal, Skully, shared a pattern for a soup bowl holder that I really wanted to sew up.  Durwood eats soup 'most every day for lunch and the bowl gets too hot to carry barehanded from the microwave to the table, so he has to get out potholders and carefully carry the hot, slippery bowl across the room.  This holder is bowl-shaped, padded, and all cotton so you set your bowl into the holder, ladle in the soup, pop it into the microwave to heat up, and then carry the whole shebang to the table.  I bet it'll keep your soup hot longer too.  I grubbed around for a scrap of fish print for the outside and solid-ish the inside for him and then decided that I might as well make one for me too so I found the remains of the chicken fabric I used to made DIL1's egg-gathering apron from for mine, since I eat some variation of chicken soup almost exclusively.  I don't have anything against other kinds of soup it's just that Fast Chicken Soup from Pam Anderson's recipe is so quick and easy, and I don't really have to think beyond figuring out what veggies to put in.  Simple.  Easy.

Our most recent ex-renter rang the doorbell yesterday and asked me to fill out an IRS Rent Certificate since she lived next door for a few months of 2012 and all of 2011.  She said she'd be back to pick them up, so I hurried to fill them in.  She never came back.  She'll probably come today when I'm in the shower or when Durwood's napping, since today is tax day.  This is her in a nutshell.  Maybe I'll tape them to the door or clip them to the mailbox when I leave for work...  I'm going to miss our current renter who is house hunting; she pays her rent and on time too.  I know I've said this before but I do not like being a landlord, don't like wondering if the tenant's taking good care of the place, don't like taking a chance on a new tenant who might be a deadbeat or move in a crapton of relatives or trash the place.  I'm also tired of mowing and shoveling and home maintenance.  I'd lobby for moving into an apartment but don't want to give up my flowers and garden yet, and Durwood wants to keep the duplex for the income anyway, so here I am stuck being the Ethel Mertz to everyone else's Lucy Ricardo.

April 15--Gustave Loiseau, La Place de la Bastille.

Do you know what Paris
smells like?
I hope for baking bread,
wine and perfume.
I suspect it smells like
diesel, stagnant water,
too many people.

Singapore smells like
curry and tigers,
Penang smells like
snakes and the sea,
Manila smells of
gunpowder and honking horns.

Aromas transport me back
to places I've been, unexpected
olfactory mini-vacations
in the middle of my days.
~~~~~

Okay, today's the halfway point in my own personal poetry parade for April the Poetry Month.  I'm enjoying it, I hope you are too.  Time to leave the serenity of this corner of my life and rev up my day.  Monday on!
--Barbara