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.

misc pics, some good news among the bad, more art stuff, more October skies

A few miscellaneous pics that have been piling up to start. Cat draped across my leg while we watch tv in the hour before bed.

Goldenrod.

Leopard frog rescued from the probing paws and nose of Cat. This one was in the house, stunned but unharmed.

Once again my inbox is overflowing with no desire to wade through all the horror. Delete, delete, delete. I don’t need to read ten essays on something I’m aware of and have no control over. And speaking of that continuing horror, Trump, not satisfied with destroying the economy, terrorizing the undocumented population we rely on for so many things, punishing blue cities and states for not voting for him by withholding federal funds, punishing his outspoken critics by having the DOJ file frivolous lawsuits against them, ending scientific research, trashing relationships with our allies, slashing access to healthcare and the social safety net, refusing federal aid for disaster relief, and destroying overseas markets for our farmers has bulldozed the East Wing of the White House without going through the lengthy process of making changes to the People’s House to replace it with an enormous garish fake gold plated unnecessary unwanted ballroom because he’s jealous of the one Putin has at the Winter Palace. Turning the Oval Office into a bordello and paving over what used to be the Rose Garden just didn’t do it for him. I did read one analysis yesterday that this ‘movement’ will all collapse within months of Trump’s death. I just hope I outlive him and am here to see it.

So on to better news, fellow blogger Joanne of Cup On The Bus, that wonderful weaver of kitchen towels, my friend who has suffered trauma after trauma after trauma and who resiliently always perseveres, who last posted August 1st is accounted for. Her long absence from blogging had me concerned and I emailed her October 13th. When she didn’t reply within the next day or two as she usually does I began to think maybe the worst had happened. Those of you who also follow Joanne will be relieved to hear the worst did not happen, just more trauma from which she is stubbornly working her way through. She replied to my email Tuesday. She resolved the pain in her leg issue with a minor (as these things go) vascular surgery and two weeks of rehab. However, four days after getting home she fell and broke her hip so is currently back in rehab flat on her back with weeks still to go. “Not wonderful but I can get through it”, she wrote.

Very busy yesterday at SHARE and I expect next week to be just as and next month more so when the cuts to SNAP take effect. No money to feed American citizens who are suffering from Trump’s ‘economy’ but $20 billion to bail out Argentina because their president is a wannabe Trump.

Ok, ok. Enough. After finishing Paisleigh’s skirt sans hem I got my mending done, patching two bottom fitted sheets which had tears and worn through spots. The first time this happened I consigned the fitted sheet to garden use covering plants and kept the top sheet (remember the extra top sheet from when I cleaned out the linen closet? Yeah, that one) but since then two more sheet sets tore. I know my heels are calloused from the cheap outdoor gardening sandals I wear but really? So I used the extra sheet for the patches. Now my tan and maroon fitted sheets have big blue patches because I wasn’t tossing them. Good sheets are expensive.

I’ve also finished the fourth page in the art journal, the one with the background done by transferring the color from foil. Can’t decide if I want to add watercolor over the marker leaves or leave it as is. Probably as is and can try that on another page. 

And I’m starting another art card of red bud tree leaves and I think I want to do one more bird, a wren or maybe a tufted titmouse and then I think I’ll be done. I got all the previous ones packaged.

And more October skies, 16th - 18th.

sewing, arting, remembering, and more October skies

It’s been a busy few days starting with Thursday when I have to get up early, have my coffee and breakfast, showered and dressed and out the door before 9 am to get to SHARE. And busy at SHARE, not overwhelming but steadily refilling baskets with the appropriate amounts of an assortment of canned goods (meat, vegetables, beans, fruit, soup, ravioli, pasta sauce, tomato sauce), raman, crackers, mac and cheese, juice, spaghetti noodles, instant mashed potatoes, snack bars, and instant oatmeal. And that’s just part of what they get. The guys that fill the orders add rice, dried beans, snacks, drinks, cereal, milk, eggs, desserts, bread, fresh produce (depending on what gets donated that day), coffee (if we have it), meat, and other miscellaneous things. There is a shelf where people can select three items that has things like ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, peanut butter, salsa, cooking oil, flour, sugar, cake or pancake mix, miscellaneous donated canned goods, etc. Another shelf of personal hygiene items like soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, deodorant, etc, where they can select two things. The families we serve can only get the full complement of food once every three months but by law anyone who asks for food gets food from the very limited USDA list. We also provide clothing, sheets, blankets, pillows, appliances (one a year), and miscellaneous household goods like dinnerware, glasses, anything and everything that gets donated when people are clearing out a house.

Friday I finally started on making Paisleigh’s long skirt that she wanted because her Granny and her Gramma both wear long skirts sometimes, a simple gathered skirt with pockets. 

I got it gathered with the waistband sewn on and one pocket pinned on so when she and her dad dropped by that late afternoon I held it up to her to check the placement of the pockets which was fine except even though I measured her waist and added two inches, I wasn’t sure the waistband was big enough. Damn. So Saturday afternoon, I undid everything I had done Friday and sewed the pockets on (easier before gathering), regathered the skirt, and cut another longer by another two inches waistband and sewed it on, ran the elastic and finished except for hemming for which I need Paisleigh to get the length right.

Saturday morning I also had to be up early fed, dressed, and out the door before 9 am for the art journal workshop I had signed up for at Hesed House. The woman who was putting it on provided the mixed media sketchbook, paints, markers, glue, magazines, stencils, stickers, etc. She planned for us to do three pages each using different techniques. The first page was picking out an affirmation from a set of cards she had or some other thing like a favorite scripture and write it down with black permanent marker. Then we wet the page and just splotched watercolor on it letting it spread however. My first page:

The second page was going through the magazines and cutting out a word or words and pictures and doing a sort of collage in a horizontal format using the things cut out and decorative tape, stickers, colored markers, whatever. My second page:

The third page was picking out a stencil and using a sponge brush with acrylic paint (one color), picking a watercolor  color and painting a repeating shape (circle, square, rectangle), then use markers to draw on it, then pick out a smashed bottle cap (the point being to show how to include bits of trash) and glue that on (I didn’t want a bottle cap so I used a sticker), and finally to spritz diluted paint in spray bottles over the whole thing (I used a brown that was so diluted it’s hard to see). My third page:

Since we still had time, she showed us a fourth technique for making a background. Water soluble markers colored on a piece of foil, wet the page with water from a spray bottle, place the foil color side down onto the wet page and press it down transferring the color to the page. I intend to draw over it but time was up.

Sunday, we drove into the city for our friend Dick’s memorial gathering held in the event room in Kathy’s residential building. So many people we haven’t seen since the covid lockdown and the last open house, since Dick’s health started to fail and they worked in the studio less and less; the other artists who participated, other artists who worked in other media who always came, collectors who came every year to see what was new and to maybe buy, those who came who were neither artists nor collectors but friends and familiar faces. So many people we hadn’t seen in nearly six years and likely will never see again, too many other deaths reported of spouses and in one case a daughter, the community we had been a part of for 25 years. Dick and Kathy were the magnet that drew us all together.

And once again, more October skies, 13th - 15th, blue sky days.