I Should Have Mowed Yesterday

 




Because it rained all day today, nearly non-stop.  *sigh*  Oh well, I have hopes for tomorrow.  But the maple trees on the street are bursting with color, especially the one down the hill from here.  My tree is pretty much naked now but the others are finally chiming in and turning.

A few weeks ago my assistant found this suet cake feeder on the patio and thought we should hang it back up.  No amount of reasoned argument that we have a double suet holder so the birdies don't need another suet cake for snacks convinced him, so we dug around in the corn bin, found a couple tiny cobs that fit in there, and hung it from the perch of the other suet feeder so it's close to the ground.  This chipmunk learned very quickly to take advantage of the proximity of the corn and made short work of it.  This is the second batch of corn and I fear it's the last of the small enough to go in there cobs.  I'll be putting the feeder away once it's empty and probably spending an hour or an afternoon telling OJ why that feeder isn't out there anymore.  He's a tough taskmaster.



I decided to "dress up" for my doctor appointment yesterday so I put on the tunic and pants that I made last month.  They fit and look quite nice.  I found out that I have pleurisy, inflammation of the sac that the lungs are in.  (I thought pleurisy went out with rickets and scurvy.  Evidently not.)  Don't ask me how I got it but last week's antibiotics knocked it down and the doc assured me that a steroid shot (in the booty, my choice) would take care of the rest.  I've got cough pills  (Rx) and cough syrup (OTC) to tide me over until this @%#$& cough goes away all together.

Yesterday the cleaning lady came and I was telling her that I'm donating the furniture left in storage.  She asked what there was and when I said "rocking chairs" she perked up.  So after she finished cleaning, she and I drove out there and she took the rocker with arms and is thinking about taking the bed.  I'm so glad; I know she'll love them and take good care of them.  She also helped me see if the hall tree that DD wants fits into my car so I can take it with me when I go visit next month.  It does!  See?  So that's tucked into the garage until I leave for IN and KY on my first solo long drive trip.  My SIL, ARA, stopped this morning and in the course of our conversation I told her about donating the stuff.  She was looking for a big table to do puzzles on and I mentioned the walnut gate-leg table that Grandpa built, so when she left I went too (the storage is on her way home), showed her the table, and they're coming to get it on Saturday.  Hooray!  She's thrilled to have something that Grandpa built and I'm glad because I know that she and TW will love having it.






Also yesterday I finished knitting the Appleseed Coaster.  I plan to knit another one so I've got the pattern down pat before casting on the Appleseed Mitts in wool and alpaca to go with my Slip-Stitch Cap for the winter.  I should probably wind the yarn before I go to The Clearing.  Once again I've learned that if you knit on a project it grows.  Example:  the Woodland Plain-Old-Sock.  Waiting rooms, watching TV, if I knit around and around the sock gets longer.  Imagine that.  And the self-patterning yarn is endlessly entertaining.

This afternoon I went downstairs and fired up the lotion and lip balm factory (aka the laundry area) because I was plum out of both.  Plus I might have promised OJ that I'd make him some "spicy lipstick" last week.  It's very satisfying to make this stuff.


October 10--Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, The Farmer's Wife.  Her back ached.  Hours spent bent over cutting grain was torture.  She dug her fists into the small of her back and groaned as she straightened up.  "When can we afford a farm boy?" she asked.  "Never," her husband grunted as he gather the cut stalks into sheaves.  "We need to make our own farm hands but you aren't doing your part."  She glared at his back.  "I am too tired and I refuse to be like rutting animals just so you can have sons.  What happened to the romantic man I married?"  She never saw the open hand that smacked her.

You know what?  Even with one person in the house the laundry piles up.  Maybe I forgot how long it'd been since I did the wash last but the chute was full the other day.  Huh.  Guess who's doing laundry right now.  Last night before bed I finished reading through my manuscript and making notes.  I confess that I have more work to do on the last quarter of it than I thought I did but finishing that read-through is a giant leap toward having a completed manuscript to take to the writing conference in Madison in April to pitch it to the agents that attend.
--Barbara