Hard To Find

It was hard to find things to take pictures of this morning.  It's the fourth? fifth? hundredth? gray and dreary day in a row so there's no sparkle of the rising sun on dewy leaves or the glitter of a tree changed from green to red-orange.  Just bare branches with silent crows, and the last brave honeysuckle blossom on the nearly naked vines.  *sigh*

I took a picture of the empty peanut wreath before I filled it again because Durwood called me on Tuesday to say that a squirrel had figured out how to get up there for peanuts.  He said it got up on the arm of my Emma's (Adirondack) chair, took a running leap from the chair arm across to the birdbath, bounded off the far edge of the birdbath to the top of the suet feeder, scrambled up to the top of that crook, leaped to the crook holding the peanut wreath, then hung upside down to jiggle out a nut, dropped to the ground, ate the nut, and started all over again.  He said he wished he had a video camera handy but I suspect he'd have been laughing too hard to hold it still.  I'll buy a bigger bag of peanuts next time so the bluejays, red-bellied woodpecker, and the squirrels can all share.  I don't mind.

Last night's chicken pot pie was everything we'd hoped it'd be, rich and flaky and delicious.  The cranberry sauce tasted a lot like the can it came in; we trashed it after one bite.  The good news is now we've got 3 more pot pie suppers for when no one wants to cook.  Score!  And since there's cranberries galore in the groceries around here, I'll be whipping up some homemade, whole berry cranberry sauce to freeze which won't taste like the can.  Maybe I'll zest and squeeze a few oranges to add to the sauce; that'd be good, don't you think?

Henri Regnault, Salome.  Come here, big boy, she seemed to say to him from across the room.  Edwin felt his shirt collar get a little tight as he gazed at her smoky, dark eyes.  He stumbled a little on his way toward her.  He couldn't take his eyes off her soft pink lips.  They looked shiny and wet like she had just licked them.  He wanted to touch her lips.  He wanted to tangle his fingers in her dark curly hair.  No one else in the room seemed to even notice her but he couldn't look away.  The closer he got the more the sweat rose on his face and his trousers seemed to shrink.  Soon he stood before her, drinking in her lush sensuality, wanting to lay his hands on her silk-covered thighs and sink into her fragrant bosom.   "I'm sorry, sir," the museum guard said, "you have to stay behind the velvet rope."  Those words were the germ of Edwin's plan to have her all to himself.

Ooh, baby, come to Papa.  I like Edwin and his sweaty crush on an oil painting.  Can you tell I just read a novel about an art forger?  I am nothing if not derivative and suggestible.  Hey, I have to work today.  I see oatmeal in my future, dressing in "outside" clothes, and a drive across town.  You, um, survive your day.
--Barbara