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.

fall fell, sewing projects, fuckery, October skies

Our first real cold front blew in last night bringing us lows in the 40s and 50s and highs in the 70s for the next week and another clear blue sky day today. It’s still very breezy out there. Did I say breezy? It’s windy out there.

Sorting through stuff. Went over to the studio to get my gold and metal leaf and the box of acrylic and oil paints I have but never use. Might get rid of the oil paints, probably will since I have no desire to use them, too messy, but the acrylics can be used in the art journal along with the metal leaf. Haven’t started another page yet so I’m trying to decide if I want to take care of some other small projects as long as I have my sewing stuff out, one of which is making a new curtain for my little closet.

When the house flooded after Harvey and I had to remodel the two rooms and the little bathroom, the configuration of which is a short hall (about 5' which opens into the bedroom) with the bathroom on the left and a storage closet of all shelves on the right and the back wall of the room was a closet the width of the room and only one window to let in light. That room was dark and claustrophobic even though it is a large room. So when Rocky was working back there I had him take out the large closet and rebuild that back wall to accommodate the etched glass panels that used to be the entrance to my old shop and turn the storage space into a closet. The only way to put a door on the new closet though was to install a bi-fold door which because of the off size of the opening would have to be custom made so I just hang a curtain on a tension bar there instead. Right now I’m using a shower curtain but I have three saris that I’m thinking using one for a new curtain.

Back between my first and second marriage I was involved with a guy for a short time who went to India and brought me back the saris for which to sew something for myself, something I never did.

Part of the problem is I don’t know what they are made of or how to wash/clean the item once made. I’m pretty sure the green one with the gold threads is cotton and the purple with the now tarnishing silver threads I think is maybe silk, the third one on the right I have no idea, silk maybe, but it is so light the whole thing (approx. 4’ x 7’) probably doesn’t weigh more than a large feather and that’s the one I’m thinking of using.

Another project is making a small pillow out of the cross stitch piece that Pam did that I have.

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You can skip the next two paragraphs if you don't want to read about some of the current fuckery.

Fucking Ken Paxton, Texas’ Attorney General, is once again wasting our taxpayer money on one of his frivolous lawsuits. Now he is suing the makers of Tylenol claiming they hid the risk of autism and ADHD to fetuses when taken by pregnant women, another one of “we’ll get (manufacture) the proof ” RFK Jr.’s brain worm fever dreams. There is zero proof or credibility to that claim but that doesn’t stop our Kenny and of course Trump bought into it. What makes this particularly ridiculous is that republicans don’t believe in consumer safety, constantly slashing oversight and consumer protection regulations.

And in just a few days, SNAP payments will be suspended, not just reduced but suspended. The republican excuse is because of the government shut down they refuse to negotiate an end to, preferring to blame the democrats for not caving on taking healthcare away from many Americans by allowing the ACA tax credits, which make it affordable, to expire so that they can give bigger tax breaks to the rich, people that obviously don’t need it. The USDA, the agency under which SNAP falls, has about $6 billion in reserve for this very contingency and they also have the power to transfer already allocated funds from one program to another but they are not going to use that money. Why? Because Trump told them not to. They are fine with children, the elderly, the disabled, and our veterans and active duty personnel of the armed forces going hungry in a bid to force democrats to fold. So basically republicans are saying you can have healthcare or food but not both. Federal workers suspended from getting paychecks because of the government shut down are already straining the resources of food banks. It’s going to get much much worse. Explain to me how this is making America great.

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And so to end on a better note, more October skies, 24th - 27th.

art, rain, more art, weekend activity, and yes, October skies

I finished the red bud leaves card Friday

and Friday night the seemingly impossible happened. It rained! Finally a storm big enough happened. Didn’t give us a whole lot, maybe 1 1/2” and in the middle of the night with wind, lightning, and thunder and the attendant neurotic dog preventing me from sleeping which was sort of ok as I listened to the rain with the window open and the earth sighing. 

Saturday I picked up over 5 gallons of pecans. Added to the handful or two or three I’ve been picking up the last few weeks I now have two full boxes. The one the right was Saturday’s haul.

Speaking of art, Barbara Rogers of When I Was 69 shared this video of an installation Andy Goldsworthy did in a gallery in England. He is one of my favorite artists and this short film is about putting together this installation as well as his thoughts on his work in general.

Back to the mundane, Sunday I finally took care of two things, first I cut a piece of 1/4” plywood and glued the four tiles I got in Portugal lo those many years ago. Now to attach the hanger on the back and put it on the wall. 

Of course now I'm thinking I should have done this configuration. Easy enough to redo it.

The other thing I did was cut two pieces of 3/4” plywood to replace the wood shelf on this little potting table under the eave of the barn. The original one is rotted. I had to cut two pieces because I didn’t have a piece of plywood wide enough but that’s ok because I plan to cover it with a piece of vinyl flooring leftover from the bathroom remodel in the hopes that it will protect the new wood from rotting, or rotting as fast.

This morning I cut the vinyl and tacked it on. Those white spots are glare from the sun.

And more October skies, 19th - 23rd.