Feels Like Tuesday, Is Actually Wednesday

It could be a good thing, since I'm eagerly waiting for Friday to go to a quilt show in Madison with my two partners in adventure, Skully & Cookie, even though I don't (and won't) quilt. It could be a bad thing... but I don't know how. Anyway I have to work today and if it's anything like yesterday at work I won't be much disturbed by any pesky customers. I got one article polished, one written, and one started. Today I'll ship off the polished one after one more read-through, polish the second one, and finish the third one. That way I'll get them all off to Erik only 3 weeks late. Good for me! I admire him for not sending me harassing emails. He is a man in a million. I'm loving the weather this week. It's sunny but cool. In the 70s during the day and dipping into the 50s at night. Ahh. This is why I love living in Wisconsin. Now if I were only off so I could wallow in the days, crank open all the windows and let the gorgeous fresh air into every corner of the house, but I'm not so I can't. I know I'd hate being off work and home all the time. I'd miss my little paycheck... oh, I'd better wrap this up so I can walk over to the bank and cash my check before I leave.

September 6--Solomon Islands, Shield. Koa sat bent over the flat stone pounding the fibrous stems until they split. He combed them apart and laid them with the others. His hands were sticky with the sap of them and he worked quickly so that it held the layers together. He laid some of the giant pandanus leaves over his crisscrossed fibers and then rolled stones on the whole thing to compress the sticky fibers together. In the afternoon he turned to the shield that he was making for the shaman. His apprentice had chipped nautilus shells into the tile shapes that Koa laid on the surface outlining a maze and spirit faces. As he worked he sang the story of the mountain and lightning gods so that their power would enter the shield and protect the owner. He missed the days when he wasn't the only shield maker in the village. When Dyak and his cousin Mula sat with him around the clearing. All of them would sing and smoke, hours would pass and the work got done. Koa was too old now but he stayed alive to keep traditions alive even though his apprentice was lazy and disrespectful.

Look at that! Almost like a real story. No action though, that's my failing. One of these days I'll figure it out.
--Barbara

A Miss & A Hit

As you probably noticed I missed posting yesterday. That's because I didn't write on Sunday night. We went to DS & DIL1's for a birthday supper and stayed later so Durwood could play with Porter, our new grand-dog, then I stayed up nearly til midnight reading a paperback and eating Ritz crackers for no apparent reason. Eating crackers late at night is not good for you. The crackers and salt run right to your fattest part and glom on. Then you berate yourself the next morning for being so stupid as to stay up too late because you have a devil of a time getting out of bed and dressed to go walking. Gah. I am often a trial to myself.

September 5--William Lamb Picknell, Banks of the Loing. The loudest sound was the crunch of gravel under Daylight's hooves. Garrett nearly dozed in the saddle. The only thing that kept him awake was the heat. Loggers had left a row of scraggly saplings next to the towpath on the riverbank. The rest of the forest on this bank had been logged off twenty years earlier to feed the building boom down below Erie. The trees were inching back on the heels of the junipers but there wasn't any cool shade and the rasp of the cicadas took the place of birdsong on this hot day. Garrett had stopped a ways back to wet his neckerchief in the dark brown water. It felt good around his neck but the river water wasn't fit to drink. He heard the slosh of the water in his canteen and wished he could ignore the light teasing slap of it on the tin. The gurgle and chuckle of it made him all the thirstier.

I was thinking when I put my pencil down last night that what I had written was a hit, and I still think so this morning. Have a good Tuesday that really feels like a Monday. I just know I'm going to be all screwed up all week because of this.
--Barbara

Not Long At All

Almost immediatly after making the statement in the previous post that I need to finish things instead of start them, I ran across the Special Olympics 2012 Scarf Project info that I'd bookmarked a while back. Naturally I printed off the details and a few patterns, stopped at JoAnn on my way to Cookie's yesterday and bought the Red Heart Soft yarn they call for. I cast on and knitted a few inches. I like it alright but I really like carrying some eyelash yarn along, making it more boa-like for those young (and young-at-heart) athletes who yearn for something flashier. I should check the stash, I'll bet I've got some red eyelash down there.







In harvesting news, I went out and clung to the side of the hill to pick raspberries for Durwood. What I do for love...



















while I did that he went off and picked up the half-bushel of tomatoes he ordered from Sunnyhill Farms and got right to making his own tomato juice. See how excited he is!



















I turned my back for two day, TWO DAYS, and look at the patty pan squash. The biggest one is about the same diameter as a salad plate. If you don't keep an eye on the little devils they just explode. They sure are tasty.

















We got tired of looking at the dead lettuce in the pot by the patio doors so I cleaned it out at Durwood's suggestion and planted spinach in its place now that it's cooler. It's sprouting nicely.

Well, Dammit

It was gray and very overcast and a bit rainy yesterday so Skully and Cookie called off our kite adventure. I wanted to go anyway, thinking that someone'd be flying kites and we could watch or fly and come home if it was too bad but they said no. Yesterday I was furious about it, today I'm just bummed, mostly because it's partly sunny today. Geez, why couldn't it have been like this yesterday? I'd been looking forward to yesterday for months. Months! We knitted for the afternoon but I gotta tell you, knitting in Cookie's living room can't hold a candle to being on a Lake Michigan beach flying a kite or watching stunt kites. So that's why you didn't hear from me yesterday, I was in a pout or snit or a bad mood--probably all three at once--plus I wrote jack Friday night. (And why does my cursor keep jumping away from where I'm typing???? It has always done it so I know it isn't a virus. I try resetting the mouse settings but nothing changes and when I'm already in a crap mood I don't need the cursor disappearing for no apparent reason. $#%@&!)

September 3--Mesopotamia, Administrative Tablet with Cylinder Seal Impression of a Male Figure, Hunting Dogs, and Boars. I can just see him, can't you? All officious in his pristine robes of yellow or maybe green, looking over cargo or a delivery and rolling his seal over wet plaster to certify its receipt. I wonder if the figures of the seal refer to his name or his job. His surname might be Hunter or perhaps Bowman. Maybe he once killed a big wild boar when he was hunting with dogs. Or it might have nothing to do with him at all, just the next cylinder seal in the row in the central office.

There. Now I'm going to go eat fruit. When I'm frustrated I eat. I'm trying to eat better things instead of a bag of Dove Promises or a quart of ice cream. Not that I have those things in the house. (the dove promises are almost gone, and i've had the bag for nearly a week, i think that's pretty good actually)
--Barbara

Easy Come, Easy Go

Well, actually, the "come" part wasn't that easy, but the "go" part sure was. I finished the toe-up Easter Egg Ankle sock the other day. I tried it on. It didn't fit well. I didn't like it.

















I got out my ball winder and turned the sock back into a ball of yarn. Zzzzzip!





















Then I took the yarn to work and cast it on again but this time in the old tried-and-true cuff down method.



















I worked on Bandwagon Block #7 tonight at Friday Night Knitting.









I'm in a "I need to finish things instead of start them" mood. We'll see how long that lasts.

Survived It

I'm hanging on at 60 + 1 day. I have plenty of proof that people go on to have full, even productive, lives after they turn 60 so I'm confident that I'll triumph. Tomorrow Cookie, Skully, and I are going to the Two Rivers Kite festival in the afternoon and I can't wait. We're having a thunderstorm right now so I'm glad it's getting it out of its system so it'll not be raining when we want to be outside flying and watching kites. Another thing that's happening tomorrow but in Sturgeon Bay is tagging Monarch butterflies. We'd like to do that too, even Mom wants to do that, but we've already made plans for the day so we'll put that on the calendar for next September. It said in the paper the other day that they'd be tagging butterflies at the GB Botanical Gardens on Sunday so I called for info but it was a misprint. Dang. Next year. DS & DIL1 have invited this week's 2 birthday girls (Mom & me) and Durwood over for supper on Sunday. We'll get to meet the new grand-dog, Porter, and see how Henny & Penny, the grand-chickens, like their new sister. It's all girl pets at their house. DS is the lone male but he can handle a houseful of females, after all, he survived growing up with me as his mother. Toughened him right up.

September 1--Jackson Pollock, Pasiphae. Like trying to follow someone through thick woods, Leann would catch a line that looked like something familiar but then it would veer off into... into chaos. Horse? No. Guitar? Half and half. A hand and arm became a clarinet became legs became a beaker. She shifted and squinted, got closer, then farther away. She liked it, she did. She liked the colors and the lines. It was hard to explain or describe. She wished that she could talk to Jackson Pollock about it. The painting made her feel the same way she felt when she and Paul rode his motorcycle on the roads up in the woods--free. That's it. The painting made her feel free.

I think that's the first time I really looked at a Pollock. I wished it was bigger so I could see it better. I'm off to shower away the morning walk sweat and get ready to meet for lunch.
--Barbara

Six Oh

That's how old I am today. (Now you're supposed to stagger back and say "that can't be right, you don't look a day over forty.") If you have sixty of something you have a lot of them. Take aircraft carriers, for example. Sixty of those puppies would fill up your neighborhood and then some! Sixty diamonds is a lot of bling. But then sixty dollars might not be enough for a swell dinner with drinks and tip. Some days sixty years feels like an unfathomable number and sometimes I'm amazed that I've lived that long because it has gone so fast and been so fun. I can't believe all I've done with my life so far. I have a husband I wouldn't trade for anything, 2 grown children who couldn't be better who brought me 2 daughters-in-law I'm thrilled with. I got to stay home with the kids when they needed me (thanks, Durwood) and work part-time when my sanity needed that. We have traveled all over the world and SCUBA dived in 2 oceans to visit sharks and squid and teeny tiny shrimp, sometimes all in the same dive. I have writing friends and diving friends and knitting friends, not too many "normal" friends, a bunch of crazy relatives I wouldn't get rid of... and I feel like the luckiest 60-year-old on the planet. (God, sixty. I can't believe it.)

August 31--Johannes Vermeer, A Maid Asleep. Mariette wondered if the meal would ever end. Long ago the fruit and wine had been served with the small cheeses that came up from the country farm with Jan the stableman each week. Herr Vermeer, Papa's guest, seemed to have taken root in his chair over by the window in the weak late summer sun. He kept darting glances at Mariette so she kept her hands in her lap. She kept expecting Mama or Aunt Leda to clear her throat and lead the ladies out to the parlor leaving the men to their cigars and brandy but no one moved. She felt her eyes growing heavy and the drone of the voices sounded like bees in the fields as she nodded off.

Now I have to get dressed and go to work. Seems like today should be a national holiday, doesn't it? And there's a Packer football game in town so I don't even get taken out for my free Tony Roma's birthday ribs tonight. Quel domage.
--Barbara