Greater Love Hath No Blogger...

... than she'll go outside to top up the birdbath and pause to take a photo of the sunrise clouds.  But I couldn't resist, look how pretty they are.  And do you see that the birdbath is even more frozen than it was yesterday?  Yup, me too.  I wore so many clothes to work yesterday that I didn't get cold sitting there.  I wasn't without customers, though, either.  I had 3 paying ones and a couple of visitors.  Woohoo!  (it's a happy "woohoo" when it has an exclamation point and a sarcastic one when it has a period, just thought I'd clue you in)


Back when it was warm (in mid-November) I made an appointment for today with a different doc since I was fatally peeved with my previous health care provider.  I needed to do a fasting blood test so I had to be at the lab at 8:15 this morning--when it was -18 degrees outside.  My car, Beverly, was in no mood to go trundling around in that cold.  Not that she didn't start, she remote-started like a champ, but as soon as I asked her to move she groaned and complained every foot of the way.  Even though I asked the lab tech to poke the needle in my hand vein first since my elbow ones hide and roll away, she was SURE she could hit it so I wimped out and let her.  She hit it a glancing blow and then had to pull back and try again.  That hurts (sorry if you're squeamish) so then she went to my hand and, zip, was done in one stab.  Now I get to go back out to see the doc at 2:00, I have a chiro appointment at 3:45, and yoga's at 5:30, which means I go out and come back, go out and come back, go out and come back over and over on this coldest of days.  Good planning, Barbara.

We have 10 accordion files that we keep the year's bill receipts, etc. in.  Near January 1 I go get the oldest one, dump the contents into a bag, and take said contents to work with me to shred over the course of a day, then I relabel the file for the current year.  I took the 2004 ones with me yesterday and got to work shredding.  I dumped the last of it out of the bag and a little orange-ish bead tumbled out.  I noticed that it was flat on one side and had a lot of "cracks" in it.  I put it aside because it rang a bell waaaaay back in my head.  It suddenly occurred to me that years and years and years ago I had lost the amber stone from a ring I bought in Cozumel when I was there with a dive pal.  This was that stone.  I must have been wearing the ring when I put something into the file and didn't notice that it was lost until it never occurred to me to check there.  I still have the setting.  I plan to take it to a jeweler to have the parts reunited--when it warms up a bit, maybe Friday.

January 7--Paul Klee, Boy in Fancy Dress.  It took nearly a thousand small rectangles of color to make the picture the way he saw it in his mind.  He sat hunched over his work with the glass nippers in one hand, the other hand dipped again and again into the bin of glass scraps.  He cut himself often, the tiny peieces had sharp edges and corners like razors; he bled for his art.  Late in the night he looked at what he was making and thought his pieces looked like fingernails.

Man, it's cold.  I'd put on more clothes but I know that the doc's going to want to weigh me and I'm already wearing jeans, I'm not putting on another layer or six.  You stay warm.  It's supposed to be over freezing by the weekend.  Time to break out the shorts!
--Barbara