prep day

We marveled at how big this egg was, the biggest chicken egg we had ever seen. Cracked it open…a double yolk. Do double yolk eggs produce twin chicks? Must be awful crowded in that egg.

I am reminded on mornings I feel resistant, like this morning, that the hardest part of yoga is rolling out your mat, or getting your butt to class. 

This week has been prepping for Thanksgiving. My standard contribution is the dressing, a butternut squash casserole, and cranberry sauce. Monday I roasted the butternuts, scooped out the cooked flesh from the skin and put it in a container and set out the bread to get stale. Yesterday I cut the crusts off the bread and cut it into cubes. Today I fry the bacon, make the cornbread and set it out to get stale (which I should have done yesterday but just now remembered), cut up all the vegetable stuff for the dressing, and make the cranberry sauce. Tomorrow it all gets put together and baked before taking it over to my daughter’s house for our late afternoon meal with family.

I was surprised to find I have 13 books on my list that I have not posted so while I’m doing all that here are the first five to consider.

The Last One At The Wedding by Jason Rekulak - Frank has been estranged from his daughter for three years when he gets a phone call from her. She’s getting married and wants him to attend. First of all, this guy Frank is a real jerk, never happy about anything and still trying to control his daughter. He doesn’t turn into any kind of decent until close to the end. His daughter Margaret is marrying into a wealthy and influential family and Frank is suspicious from the beginning since she and her fiancé Aiden have only known each other for 6 months. The weekend of the wedding arrives at their private camp in New Hampshire and the day before Frank leaves he receives an anonymous photo of Aiden with another girl asking what Aiden knows about the girl who went missing. When one of the guests at the camp is found drowned Frank, suspicious that something nefarious is going on, spends the few days trying to convince Maggie to call off the wedding and leave with him but Maggie is unconcerned but Frank is determined to unravel the truth and save his daughter.

Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeny - Grady Green is an author with four books under his belt and the day he learns his most recent is a New York Times best seller his wife Abby goes missing. She was on the phone with him when she saw a body laying in the road and stopped to see if she could render aid and that was the last time Grady had any contact with her. The next year proves to be disastrous for Grady. He can’t write, he can’t sleep, he can’t think about anything but his missing wife, how much he loved her, how she was his whole world, how everything has fallen apart since she disappeared. He runs out of money, he loses his house, he’s losing his sanity, and fears he is about to lose his agent, Kitty, when she calls him into her office. Kitty proposes Grady go live on a small Scottish island with a total of 25 residents for three months in a little cabin she has inherited from one of her other authors hoping that the change of scene and the solitude will enable Grady to get his act together and write another book. She even fronts him money to live on so Grady and his dog Columbo travel to Amberly Island because he really doesn’t have any other choices and because solitude is what he needs and desires to write. Let me just say that Grady is a thoroughly unlikable man and the first three fourths of the book is him whining over and over about all that he has lost (and it was getting tedious). But weird things happen on the island, all the residents that he encounters seem to already know who he is, and he is convinced that he is seeing glimpses of his wife or else he’s hallucinating from lack of sleep. When he finds an unpublished manuscript written by a previous inhabitant of the cabin he concocts a plan that he hopes will give him back his life but then things really start to unravel for him. The last fourth, though, when as they say, the plot thickens, had me staying up late at night to finish.

Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov - Shea is a minister to the Queen sent to supervise the building of a tower ostensibly for defensive purposes against the neighboring country and it’s Crown Prince. It is being built with the aid of unstable high tech brought by the Drakiri refugees. He meets a Drakiri woman who tells him of an ancient legend about a Mimic Tower, the destruction it caused, the mounting danger the tower being built represents. When he discovers a portal to a dead world, Shea must decide what should be done to save the world he knows, what is real, what is a reflection of what was real, even the nature of reality. The author has a very flowery writing style that took some getting used to. I don’t know if I recommend this book or not. There’s one section about one of the characters that really didn’t have anything to do with the continuation of the story, I thought.

Death Of A Snob by M. C. Beaton -  a Hamish Macbeth novel. Hamish declines to go to his family’s home for Christmas because his aunt who lives in America and who he doesn’t get along with will be there. Instead he is talked into spending the holiday at a health resort on a small Scottish island by the owner Jane who thinks someone may be trying to kill her. Someone does die but it’s one of the other guests and Hamish must convince the detective from Inverness that it is indeed a murder and not an accidental death and solves the murder in the process.

By The Light Of Dead Stars by Andrew Van Wey - Thirteen year old Zelda’s parents are killed in a car crash, one that she survives. Her uncle Mark who lives in Spain sees an apparition of his sister returns to the US. Zelda’s parent specified in their will that it was their desire for Zelda to be cared for by her uncle instead of her paternal grandparents. Now the two of them find they are both facing very different lives while learning to trust and depend on each other and move to the small community of Greenwood Bay in northern California for a fresh start but something evil lurks in Graywood Bay, something that thrives on pain and suffering and is trying once again to become manifest in the real world. In summer school making up a failing math grade Zelda makes immediate friends with Ali and Maura and it falls to the three friends and an old eccentric man in his creepy falling down house and creepy sculptures in his junkyard to save their community.

 

vocal hawk, wet Cat, night market, cracked pecans, missing sign

One of our local red shouldered hawks was perched high in the leafless catalpa tree in my neighbor’s yard calling over and over this morning. It was much too far away for me to take a picture so here's one from the internet. 

image via: https://www.republicaneagle.com

Well, it finally happened. Cat fell into the old turtle pond. She goes out in the morning and jumps up on the rim of the pond and then would leap over to the small platform in the middle that Big Mama would sun herself on. With no turtle I moved two of the water plants that were in separate containers into the pond and coupled with the one that was in there, they have grown to cover the entire surface of the water and even cascading over the rim in one spot and completely covering the platform. Didn’t stop Cat from jumping up onto the rim frog hunting. The pond is only half full right now, so much having evaporated from the drought and I keep telling myself I need to add water. So Thursday morning I opened the door to the little backyard and let Cat out and went to take my shower. Passing back through the room I noticed a big wet spot on the table and wet spots on the floor and on my desk. What the fuck? And then I saw Cat, her legs and belly soaked. I surmise she either slipped or miscalculated her leap to the rim and landed in the pond on top of the water plants which kept her from going completely under. Obviously she managed to get herself out.

The Moonlight Market at Hesed House was last night from 5 pm to 9 pm. I took my new work over there Friday; two more framed watercolors, the watercolor notes cards, three of which I cut the painting from and placed in free standing magnetic acrylic frames which added to the previous printed notecards, framed larger prints, and the two framed watercolors they already have. 

Besides their regular venders in the Market, they had 22 booth spaces for other local artists/craftspeople on the grounds lining the walkways, lots of extra lights, coffee vendor set up in the Art House, and a beer vendor on the grounds, barbecue and taco food trucks, live music on the deck behind the Welcome Center and indoor market. Sarah came and picked me up and we got there about 5:30 and there were already so many people there. We looked at all the stuff…jewelry ranging from silver wire to beads to clever little designs made from plastic clay to old silver flatware; scrollwork of clever little boxes with drawers and trays, snowflake ornaments, wood puzzles, and the ever present crosses; some very clever candles made to look like cookies or candy or succulents or fruit loops floating in milk with a spoon and I can’t remember what all; bread and other baked goods; organic body products; paintings and other art; succulent pots made from a mix of cement, paper, ground up wood, and I don’t remember what all he said was in the mix; pottery; hydroponic lettuces and micro greens; bedding plants; cut flowers; some leather work; I don’t remember what else but it was a very well curated assortment. We stayed until about 7:30. It was a fun evening with my daughter, someone who I don’t get to spend much one on one time with. Did I take any pictures? No, of course not.

We finally got a little rain and by little I mean that literally. One small brief shower Friday afternoon and one small brief shower yesterday morning amounting to about a quarter inch total, maybe but it was enough to clear the air and damp down the dust for now. I took Minnie to the vet last Thursday about the chewing and scratching and licking and she needed her nails trimmed anyway. So, yeah, fleas. She got a shot for the itching and a chewy for the fleas which also prevent heartworms and intestinal parasites which I gave her when we got home and thought she had eaten it but when I got up Friday morning, there it was on the floor where she had spit it out. Dog! It took me three tries putting it in her mouth before she finally chewed it up and swallowed it. I guess it wasn’t very tasty. Anyway, all that nonsense has stopped and she no longer has to wear her shirt.

Also Friday I got the first 8 pounds of pecans cracked so shelling in the evenings is what I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future until I get enough shelled to share with friends and for our own consumption for the year+ (in case next year has a paltry harvest). 

Whatever is left I’ll sell including all the ones I pick up over in the shop yard from the neighbor’s trees that overhang the fence between us.

One more thing. There are three north/south roads that go all the way through Wharton. The one on the west and the one on the east extend past Wharton in both directions, the one in the middle extends from my neighborhood on the north side to the river on the south side. This middle road, I use often and on it has been a house with a big Trump sign on the fence since before the election. Driving by Friday I noticed that the sign is no longer there. I have no idea why, if a different person now resides in that house, but perhaps it’s the same person who has become disillusioned. Personally I hope that this is one more indication that Trump is losing his support even in small agricultural communities in Texas.

 

a day or two of livin' the life

Dew laden spider web lit by the morning sun.

Sunday afternoon when I was walking Minnie down one of the two streets that bookend my little neighborhood I saw an iPhone laying on the street. So yeah, of course I picked it up. It wasn’t damaged and I carried it with me while we finished our walk. Once home I took a picture of the back of it with the intent of posting it on the various Wharton city/county chat groups on FB but before I could do that, it rang. I picked it up, slide to answer, do you have my phone? I’m thinking why else would I be talking on it but said yes. Are you at XXX Yes, XXX on XXXXX street. I’ll come get it. By the time I walked out of the house and around to the front a little white car was parked in front. A young man got out, thank goodness for ‘find my phone’ function, they had been tracking it as it was moving around, apparently noticed it was missing about the time I found it. Yes, I was walking my dog. Asked him if he could tell me what the picture was, his little girl, and I handed it over. What do I owe you he asked. Nothing. He seemed surprised that I didn’t want a reward. Anyway, I’m glad he got his phone back.

It must have gotten cold enough one of our nights in the low 40s last week to trigger the trees. I noticed yesterday that the tallows had quite a few red leaves instead of the ones that fall one at a time, the gingko leaves are fading to yellow, and the pecan tree leaves are very yellow and drifting down even though (checks notes) it’s already 80˚ at 10 am. Such is fall on the Gulf Coast plains of Texas.

I ordered my favorite rice last week, organic short grain brown rice. I don’t really care for long grain brown rice, would rather just have white jasmine if that’s the only other option so I have to order it on line. I can’t buy it at any of the stores around here. Used to be, the local grocery store in my neighborhood and some of the little organic foods stores carried it. Then that stopped. Whole Foods carried it in loose bulk but I’m not so sure they still do. Regardless I’d have to drive into Houston and I’m not doing that. Costco had it a time or two but not for several years so I order it from Lundberg Farms, 12 pounds worth which comes out to 8 quarts, about a year’s worth for us. So one quart jar full in the pantry and 7 vacuumed sealed quart jar’s worth. 

Blogger Mitchell of Moving With Mitchell posted John Lennon’s song Power to the People, recorded and released in 1971, an anthem and call to action for social and political change, that the power of governance belonged with the people, not a small ruling class of elites. It was relevant then during the years of social turmoil and the VietNam war and is even more relevant now, 50 years later, while the Republican turned fascist authoritarian Party, the MAGA movement, dismantles our democratic government, suppresses the vote, throws due process out the window, eliminates the social safety net and access to healthcare, moves even more money from the common people to the already obscenely wealthy while propping up an obviously ill disgusting bully of an old man with dementia as the figurehead. This isn’t really about all that but about the music of the 60s and 70s when we were young and protesting and fighting for social and political change. Where is that energy now? Where are the young musicians and song writers expressing rage against the destruction of our democracy, the loss of our civil rights, the disappearing of people into facilities never to be heard from again, the warmongers bombing boats and killing people with no proof whatsoever that there are drugs aboard? 

Other than that, I’ve been good about doing some yoga every morning except Thursday when I don’t have time but have class that night and Saturday, I gave myself a day off and I can already tell a difference. That and I’m working on another little painting. 

it'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic and an anniversary

Toad lilies.

You might remember last fall about this time I dug up my last few struggling toad lily roots, put them in a pot and brought them inside for the winter and was so happy when they put out new growth this past spring. I used to have a fair sized group of them until we started have temps in the 20s or teens every winter even if only for a few days. They would freeze down to the ground and come back but fewer and fewer until last fall. Well, they grew all summer and are now blooming. I’ll bring them in again for the winter and hopefully they’ll go in a bigger pot next spring.

One of the funniest things I read earlier this week after the Epstein emails were released was Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, claiming that the Donald Trump mention therein was not the president but a different Donald Trump. It’s a very common name she said. Even Holy Mike has repeated that nonsense.* Never mind all those photos of Trump and Epstein buddying it up or the women who named him as their rapist when they were 14. Apparently that was just some other guy who looks exactly like the guy who tarted up the Oval Office. 

*Turns out that wasn’t true but from a satire site.

Now of course, Trump thinks that by directing the DoJ to investigate all the democrats in regard to Epstein that that will take the pressure off him, or else he thinks democrats will all of a sudden not want the Epstein files released. Wrongo dude. Democrats raped little girls? We want them punished too. And speaking of the Oval Office, one of the first things Trump did when he returned to office was remove the Resolute Desk because he said it needed to be refurbished. Has it been returned? No, it’s currently on display at Mar A Lago. 

As if that’s not enough, now the Trump administration is going to require every SNAP recipient to reapply, you know to root out all that fraud (which should make all the self appointed food police out there happy because poor people are spending a few dollars of SNAP money on chips and sodas) even though SNAP recipients already have to reapply every 6 months. In other news, according to JD et al undocumented residents, you know the ones who do the lowest paying jobs that Americans won’t do, are responsible for the housing shortage because they are buying up all the homes. I don’t think I need to go into why this is one of the more ridiculous charges MAGAts have made against these people.

Moving on…

Thursday, November 13th was two years since my sister died. Sometimes it feels like it’s been much longer than that and sometimes it’s like 2 years already? Bottom line is that while I miss her and I think about her a lot, I’m not grieving anymore. I can think about her without feeling sadness.

So my little dog has been chewing on her back end to the point of making the skin raw. She’ll get one or two fleas which I comb off her every day with a nit comb but I don’t think that’s it. She’s had worse fleas without this gnawing on herself. I was giving her a brewer’s yeast/apple cider vinegar chewy that is touted to make her less pleasing to fleas every day for two months so I thought maybe that was it and stopped that about 5 days ago, gave her a bath, but so far it hasn’t stopped the chewing. Yesterday I put her little fleece jacket thing on her to prevent her from being able to get to her skin but it’s far too hot for that right now so today I used it as a pattern and made one out of that lightweight sheet I used to patch my sheets a while back. Unless she’s sitting in my lap or next to me on the couch or outside I’m making her wear it hoping to get her skin to heal up and break the habit.

I’m finally starting to see some butterflies migrating through. Today while I was out picking up pecans I saw a sulfur, two queens, a fritillary, and a monarch on the orange cosmos. The queens are a bit smaller than monarchs but these two were very small, smaller than normal. I wonder what that means.

Earlier while I was cleaning up after breakfast Sarah came over with Paisleigh and Harrison while their dad worked on a car across the street and then they were going to run errands. Harrison isn’t walking yet but almost. He’s able to free stand for a few moments before he loses his balance. Did I take any pictures? No, I did not.

broken, less, dreams

Fall asters.

I know there’s at least one wren around. There was one calling loudly Sunday morning and then later in the day when I had the door open but was over in the shop yard working on clearing growth from the fence between the shop and the neighbor (again), a wren flew in the house. This happens fairly often when the door is open, they are such curious little birds. This particular wren found it’s way into the little bathroom and in it’s confusion against the window knocked a little vase/container off the window sill that I kept miscellaneous stuff in...scissors, nail file, hair stick, stuff like that and I found it broken beyond repair on the tile floor.

I’m particularly unhappy about it because it is irreplaceable. I bought it in Cuidad Acuña, the border town across from Del Rio on our way back from a river trip. We had crossed the border for a little relaxation on our way back to Houston. It was not just a little vase that I really liked but a memento from my river guide days.

I’ve been feeling a little less, less energy, less limber, some of the yoga asanas are a little more effort. Ever since the medical extravaganza summer of ’24 when I had to just sit on my butt and rest and recover for months my home practice went out the window. Once I was able to go to class again it took about 6 months to feel like I was almost back to where I had been but I feel like I’m losing ground. So since I couldn’t seem to get my home practice started again in the mornings I decided to do it before bed which happened only a few times because, the hour, hour and a half, after dinner is when we watch TV and by 10 I’m not very interested in doing a 30 minute yoga routine before I climb in bed. So I finally gave myself a stern talking to and have restarted my home practice in the morning between taking my meds when I get up and my first cup of coffee. I have to wait 30 or 45 minutes because of one of the meds. I started on Sunday, so now, today four days in a row, even the days I have class in the evenings, I have done my routine, changing it up a bit every day. Today was the hardest, the hardest to make myself roll out my mat and the hardest to get through it. But I did it. So maybe I’m over the hump and tomorrow will be easier.

Yesterday was a busy day for me…yoga, breakfast, grocery shop, made tuna salad for lunches, lunch, went to the Evil Empire to get the thing I forgot to get when I went Monday, walk the dog, feed the cats, and finally sat down for 30 minutes before I had to get up and start dinner. Except that Mikey called, he and Paisleigh and the skirt were across the street and the little girl was waiting for me to come over. So he brought her over and I adjusted the elastic in her skirt so it fit better instead of falling off her non existent hips. While I was doing that she was going through my sewing box and found the zip lock bag of accumulated buttons. She wanted a button on her skirt so she picked out a pink one and I sewed it on the front of one of the pockets. Then she wanted to wear it over her jeans which she did. then she ate all my strawberries while I peeled the potatoes for dinner and then she was ready to go back to her dad. Of course I didn’t take a picture.

After dinner I fell asleep during whatever show Marc put on and when I went to bed I fell asleep immediately and slept for 9 hours and dreamed these long involved dreams all night long. I’d surface just enough to know I was dreaming, being aware, watching it unfold without directing it and then I’d sink down again. This went on all night. Little snippets…being on deck of a sea going ship with rotten boards and almost falling through with rabbit or little dog on a leash. There was also a boy with a little dog/rabbit on a leash (I forget who had what) and then the shipmates grabbed his dog/rabbit and started to eat it so I tried to hide mine under my shirt until we got wherever and I could get off…walking down a long ass hallway of a ‘castle’ with small rooms one after the other on either side until the hall opened up into a small living room with chairs and a couch and an old lady sitting there…sitting in someone’s office interrupting her work while I tried to find pictures of my old work to show her after telling her I was changing my medium to metal and showing her two pictures of that but I couldn’t ever find the album of pictures on my phone (this seems to be a recurring motif lately, can’t find what I’m looking for on my phone) and it was taking so long she lost interest and asked me to leave so she could get her work done. There was so much more but that’s all I remember.

My most recent little watercolor…woodland violet 4” x 4”.

things missing and the full moon rising

The first Thursday of the month is usually a slow day at SHARE, maybe 25 - 30 orders for food because people have gotten their SNAP benefits. As the month goes on the last Thursday is usually the busiest because that money has run out. Yesterday was horribly busy with 50 or 51 orders for food, mostly large families, a few one or two person households. The first Thursday is also when Jan places her order from the regional food bank and she said the list of available stuff was dismal. We expect it to get worse. But according to Holy Mike Johnson after Tuesday’s drubbing republicans are “delivering for the people” and they are “delighted to run on our record”. Yes, please do that. Keep doing that all the way to the midterms.

We’ve been adjusting to the fall back of time. Last week driving home from yoga in El Campo it was still daylight. This week it’s dark. Wednesday was awesome though. Coming back to Wharton I’m heading east and the full moon was rising big and beautiful, clear and detailed. I pulled over to take some pictures but my phone camera just doesn’t focus on the moon, or at least I don’t know how to make it do that, but here’s my attempt to show you what I was seeing. 

Where are the birds? Where are the squirrels? All last winter, spring, and summer the birds emptied the bird feeder every day, the squirrels ate the handful of peanuts I put out. Every fall has been watching the birds tank up for winter but several weeks ago they just…are gone. It will take three or four days for the small bird feeder to empty but I never see any birds except for a few white wing doves now and then. The suet balls are being ignored as well. Where are the cardinals, the chickadees, the titmice, the wrens, the finches? My neighbor at the other end of the street says the same. I can understand the peanuts still out there, the squirrels have a veritable cornucopia of pecans available to them now but why have the birds disappeared?

The birds aren’t the only thing missing. Momcat has not showed up to eat eight days in a row. The three boys and now Ghost stay close to home though Lovey and Twin will cross the street to my house but Momcat was a roamer. She would follow me on occasion when I was walking the dog and I’ve seen her on occasion on the next street over and I’ve seen no sign of her little body in my various walks with the dog so we are thinking, hoping, someone has adopted that sweet friendly little cat and quite frankly I don’t want to hear any other outcome so consider that if you plan to comment on her disappearance. She has had shelter, food, water, and affection as a shop yard cat and it wasn’t unusual for her to not show up to eat at feeding time but never for this many days in a row so she must have found a new home.

My night to fix dinner and I have no idea what I’m going to make but here’s a picture from a previous meal sautéing shallots and celery. They just looked so pretty, that pale pink and pale green.

 

the past 5 days

Halloween came and went. I didn’t take this picture on Halloween but earlier in the month and it seemed appropriate and I intended to post on Friday but when it came right down to it, I didn’t have much to say. We don’t ever get any trick or treaters here, never have had a single one since we bought this place and were here on the day, the street having no children. That has changed a bit, three or four houses with children now but we years ago stopped buying candy and keep the porch light off. Even so, if these kids trick or treat they don’t do it on this street, going elsewhere or to parties or events like Trunk or Treat at churches or organizations, you know, for a safe Halloween, taking the place of roving bands of kids. 

So if your kid is bouncing off the walls this product spied at the grocery store earlier in the week might be useful for sugar induced mania, or just kids being kids getting on your nerves, a new mother’s little helper, calm those kids the fuck down. In case you can’t read the label it says “Supports a calm and relaxed mood.” Better alternative than codeine cough syrup I guess which you can’t get over the counter now anyway.

Thinking about Halloween when I was a kid, one of the neighbors would make popcorn balls, which was always a favorite, and some people would make cookies. None of that now. Homemade treats are now suspicious as fuck. And more along those lines, reading on social media when the topic of gifts of food like welcome to the neighborhood cookies or pot luck dinners at social gatherings I’m astounded at the number of people who won’t eat anything someone else made, acquaintance or stranger. Has that always been a thing or is it just part of the new culture of fear and suspicion that has overtaken this country.

I now have three full boxes of pecans and almost half of a fourth. Picking up pecans is kind of like a meditation, walking slowly, gaze cast to the ground. I used to walk a grid, now I just wander aimlessly and now that leaves are starting to cover the ground I use my feet to swish them around; step, swish, step, swish with the other foot. When that isn’t effective enough Marc will mow and mulch the leaves. Probably 90% of these came from the one undamaged tree from Hurricane Beryl. Surprisingly enough most of the 10% came from the tree that lost five major limbs, maybe a handful from the one that only lost two limbs. 

I finally shortened the very first skirt I made all those years ago, not quite ankle length but within a few inches. Pockets were an afterthought so it has patch pockets and I didn’t care for those because they gape open. I only wore it once because it was too long so I cut four inches off it and redeemed it but I’m not taking it apart to put in side seam pockets like I did the other three skirts. I’ve about worn out one of them so we’ll see if shortening this one will make it more wearable.

What else, I went ahead and hemmed Paisleigh’s skirt based on the measurement I took and my fears of the waist being too small were totally unfounded. It’s so loose she can barely keep it on and it’s supposed to hit her mid-thigh. So I need to shorten the elastic. Upside is, it will fit her for a while as she grows by just running a new longer piece of elastic in the casing.

Anyway, I’ve put a new curtain for my closet on the back burner again and have decided to frame the cross stitch so I put away my sewing machine to get out my watercolors and colored pencils (little painting in progress). Besides picking up pecans every day, I dug up the pink crinum lilies and planted them at the end of the flowerbed as intended, picked up sticks in the yard, raked most of the leaves out of the barn, dug up the little sinkhole in the little backyard to see why it was forming to discover that the concrete cover that provides access for sucking out all the crap (literally) from one of the septic tanks had shifted exposing a half inch gap so I covered the gap with a concrete paver and filled the hole I dug back in. These tanks are only about a foot below ground. The weather has been perfect for getting stuff done outside.

I could write about the horrible wall to wall floored white marble with black streaks clad remodel with gold (of course) fixtures and crystal chandelier of the Lincoln bathroom and how cold and hard and uninviting it is and I can’t imagine being naked in there. Or that Trump is remodeling the Kennedy Center with I imagine the same tasteless result as if he thinks artists won’t play there and people won’t attend because of the current decor instead of the fact that he has MAGAfied it. Plenty of money for his tasteless renovations all to the glory of him but no money to make sure the American people get a decent meal. Or his tone deaf Gatsby themed Halloween party. And that’s being generous. I’m sure it was completely intentional, we’re rich and fuck everybody else. Let them eat cake, except we won’t even let them have cake. Or that Trump and the republicans knee jerk reaction to everything falling apart in tis country is the Democrats fault and all they have to do is capitulate and reopen the government but how the hell they are expected to do that since Johnson has sent House republicans home and refuses to call a session where he’ll have to swear in Grijalva. I could write about all that so as to have something profound to say instead of detailing the minutia of my life but what’s the point.

So, now, the last of the October skies, 28th - 31st. When I conceived of this, photographing the sky every day for a month, it seemed like a fun little project. Some days I only took one picture, some days multiple pictures because it was constantly changing and it was difficult to select just one for that day. Some days the camera had a hard time focusing on the skyline. But what I didn’t expect was that a whole month of the sky, day after day, would get a little boring. I mean how many times can you show a blue sky day or one with big white puffy clouds. I don’t get up early enough for sunrises and we really didn’t have that many colorful sunsets this month. I may post some of the alternate pictures later but for now, this is done.