Cold & Windy

This afternoon I went outside to move leaves since the neighbor's trees decided to drop ALL of their leaves over the last couple days.  Those trees hold onto their leaves every autumn until all of the other trees have dropped theirs, people have raked them, and the city has picked them up.  Then those two very tall maple trees let 'er rip and fling their leaves to the ground.  See?  Not a blade of grass is visible in the side yard.

I used my battery powered leaf blower until both batteries were kaput and moved the back section of leaves over to the blueberry bushes and got the leaves raked and sifted in around my three sad little blueberry bushes to act as winter protection.  I'm hoping my across the street neighbor comes over with his riding lawnmower/leaf collector like he did last fall but I'm not holding my breath.  I'll move the leaves tomorrow as long as the two batteries hold out, then I'll come in and sew or read until they're charged up again.



In the afternoon while the batteries were charging I cut out two flannel dresses.  I'll make one with the small plaid for the front and back and the big plaid for sleeves and pockets, then later I'll make the other one the opposite.  I couldn't decide which one I wanted so I'll sew up both of them.  I can always use more flannel dresses to wear.  I'm already freezing and it's barely November.

After supper I went downstairs and sewed up that pair of pants that I screwed up week before last.  This time I followed the directions to the letter and now I have a pair of khaki pants.  I have more pants and leggings cut out but I want to sew one of the dresses first.

Instead of writing for 15 minutes today I spent my 15 minutes reading the manuscript/book on my Kindle.  I've already found an avenue I neglected to explore, namely, the roof.  No self-respecting derelict hotel in the Caribbean would have a roof that doesn't leak.  I even have a character say that the roof has been leaking for years.  I need a roofer, even if all he/she does is replace missing roof tiles, I need a roofer.



This morning I filled the birdfeeders and the Bluejays came in droves.  Well, at one point there were five of them on various feeders.  I sure like the way they look and their raucous personalities.

2 November--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire. 

Sonia managed to hold her head up as she left that night in the center of a fluttering circle of consolation.  In her dark car she allowed herself a few moments to cry and then her tears turned to anger.  By the time she had driven the few miles home she was seething.  She was so distracted by her anger she nearly hit one of the island’s wild donkeys that had decided to amble down the center of the main road in the dark.

She tried to slam the door when she entered the house but the humidity had warped it.  Transferring her anger from Irina to George’s neglect of the repair, she stormed out onto the patio.  “I don’t understand why you always have time for your little band of birders and that wet group of reef fools, and you can’t take ten minutes to fix the back door.”

George stared at her for a moment, his eyes glittering in the reflected moonlight.  “What happened at the meeting?” 

Momentarily silenced by his perception, she fell into the chair beside him, dropping her purse on the tiles.  “That Russian bitch said my poems were tripe.  Out loud.  In front of everyone.  And then she proceeded to hammer home the point in every way she could think of.”  Tears glittered on her lashes.

“But you always say you don’t think they are very good when you write them.”

She glared at him.  “That is so that you will tell me I am wrong, that they are indeed good.”

“Ah.”  George fiddled with an empty glass on the table, making an interlocking series of rings that shone like mercury in the blue light.  “She made you angry.”

“Yes she did, but first she hurt my feelings.”

George reached over and held her hand.  “I’m sorry you were hurt, my dear.  Don’t listen to her; your poems are lovely.”

Sonia jerked her hand away.  “Too late, George.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s too late for you to say you like my poems.  That Russian czarina took all the pleasure out of writing them.”

George heard the squeak of her voice as tears spilled down her cheeks.  “Oh, dear, don’t cry.  You’ve always said you didn’t think you were much of a poet.  Besides, you had that lovely one about your jonquils published, didn’t you?  That should tell you that Irina’s judgment isn’t the final word.  Your poems just aren’t to her taste.”

Sonia had taken a paper towel off the table and was dabbing her eyes with it.  “I am sure I look like a raccoon.  That’s sweet of you to say, George, but she said all those mean things in front of my friends.  You should have seen the looks on their faces as she ripped my words to shreds.”  She wiped her cheeks, the crackle of the cheap paper the only sound in the windless night.  “Half of the women, Irina’s little groupies, wouldn’t look at me and the other half looked at me as if I had, well, farted.”

George tried to smother his laugh but failed.  “Oh, Sonia, you’re a naughty one.”

She began to giggle.  “It has been years since I’ve said fart.  Mother would be mortified.”

George felt as if the Cold War was re-engaged and the Iron Curtain re-hung on their little desert island once the grapevine began to hum.  It was obvious that battle lines were drawn when he and Sonia went to the More for Less a week after Billie’s party.  Small groups of women huddled at the meat counter and in front of the produce whispering as they passed.  Sonia didn’t speak to the women in the produce department.  He questioned her with his eyes.

“They’re Irina’s friends,” she said as they rounded the corner and stopped in front of the cheese display.

When they reached the meat counter a pair of women, who looked to George remarkably like the ones that they had passed earlier, crowded around Sonia cooing their sympathy and giving George appraising looks.  She sent him off to pick out some cans of soup so the women could cluck and simper without the bother of George in the area.

Dimitri and Irina had much the same experience in Warehouse Foods.  Little clots of Sonia-supporters looked daggers as they passed and Irina’s sympathizers shot her meaningful looks and squeezed her hands.

Dimitri didn’t understand how the fact that their husbands had been professional adversaries years before made Irina and Sonia enemies.

George was equally puzzled by the almost instant choosing of sides that the women did.  Why did it matter to them what he and Dimitri had done?  And why, if the governments of superpowers were willing to become friends, couldn’t their wives?

It was so gray and bleak today I couldn't get my spirits out of the dumps.  I can't make it on one sunny day a week and I sure didn't like being pelted by ice balls while out blowing the leaves.  Nope, didn't like it at all, plus they hurt when it's as windy as it was today.  They sting when they ping into your tender face.  Today is why people go to warm places in the winter.
--Barbara