dinner disaster, done all I can do, drawing dissatisfaction

Back to more pleasant topics, sort of. I fixed dinner Friday night, my night. I bought a little eggplant Tuesday and decided on the spot to make eggplant parmesan so Friday when I got out my recipe I had to go back and get another one and the mozzarella plus the tomato sauce since I lost all my homemade sauce when we lost power for three days during hurricane Beryl. The recipe I have is for baking the eggplant beforehand in stead of frying it and calls for chunky tomato sauce. Anyway, it’s a process and I started early. There’s no such thing as commercially available ‘chunky’ tomato sauce so I also bought a can of diced tomatoes to add in which turned out to be a big mistake because the end result at dinner was terrible. I should have use either stewed tomatoes or just plain spaghetti sauce. Anyway, I not only threw out the leftovers but also the recipe. I need a new recipe for eggplant parmesan.

Last Wednesday I got out the big boy chainsaw and worked on the pecan tree by the back of the barn cutting up the fallen big stuff and what I could reach that wasn’t weight bearing and made this neat stack of cut logs.

Then Saturday I went to work on the tree close to the house. There wasn’t nearly as much to deal with since none of the big stuff has fallen, still dangling, and made this not so neat pile. If I could carry it, I didn’t cut it up into smaller stackable pieces. 

Now I need to get someone who does tree work to get those big hanging limbs on both trees down, cut up, and hauled away.

Yesterday I mowed the little backyard and around the tree fingers holding up the limbs on the tree closest to the house, cut to the ground all the hackberry, and pecan trees that had sprouted up this summer in amongst other shrubbery some of which I swear I cut last spring and poisoned the stumps. I still come in hot and sweaty even though it’s not getting as hot. Now that I’ve done all I can do on the trees I can turn my attention to the overgrown flower beds.

Speaking of overgrown, this is the half acre next to me that belongs to the Wicked Bitch of the West. I think this lot has only been mowed twice this whole year. It’s easily thigh high.

A week or so ago the wind knocked the bird feeder off the platform which has happened several times but this time the bird feeder broke. I went to the feed store for a new one and the cheapest ones they had were $44 and not that attractive. So I went to Tractor Supply and got one for $15. 

I put four little nails around the perimeter into the platform to keep it from falling off. I like this one but the four slots that feed the seed into the little circular tray aren’t high enough to let the spanish peanuts and the bigger sunflower seeds easily pass through so I’m going to take my dremel tool and grind the openings a little larger.

I finished the butterfly and penciled in the scrappy leaves in the background. My original thought was to do the leaves in watercolor but the paper in my sketchbook is not very heavy so I decided watercolor wasn’t a good idea and went back to colored pencil but after I got one and a half leaves done, I very much didn’t like it and erased as much as I could so that now it’s faint which I like better but still not best pleased. Now I’m trying to decide how to proceed, I could probably get more of the colored pencil off if I continued to use the erasure. I’m going to sit with it a couple of days. I’ll have to finish the other half of the one leaf and maybe pick a third and then darken the pencil lines and maybe I’ll call it done.

the photo I’m working from

the finished butterfly

where it stands now

lies, dirty lies, dangerous lies

This is long, folks, sorry. I’ve been writing this for about a week and a half and every day it just gets worse, the things Trump says, the lies and false accusations he and his rabid followers make about Harris and the Biden administration, they are just plain nasty and frankly, unbelievable and yet a large part of the population believes them.

Trump, self proclaimed sexual abuser and adjudicated rapist is now claiming to be the protector of women saying we will be happy, healthy, confident, free, and no longer thinking about abortion if elected. He’s also getting more and more extreme, advocating that a day or ‘one rough hour’ of intense police brutality will put an end to crime, you know, because the message will get around. Aaron Rupar, a journalist I follow on social media, basically called a Trump’s rally in Wisconsin a hate fest laden with heinous dangerous lies against immigrants, legal and undocumented, saying with relish “getting them out will be a bloody story”. And of course after the disaster in North Carolina Trump is lying that the governor, a democrat, is refusing to send aid to the republican areas of the state (which is something Trump did to various democrat regions asking for federal aid after a disaster, California after wildfires and Puerto Rico after the devastating hurricane Maria for example), that President Biden has refused to take Georgia’s governor’s call when in fact Biden has talked to him several times, has accused Biden and Harris of ignoring the devastation when Biden already had FEMA personnel on the ground before Helene hit. 

Since I wrote the above about a week ago Trump’s rhetoric and campaign against immigrants has gotten even worse. He intends to not only deport illegal residents, he will revoke the legal status of other immigrants and deport them as well. His lies about Biden’s hurricane response now include accusing Biden of stealing all the money from FEMA and using it on illegal migrants. What he’s referring to is a separately funded program, the Shelter and Services Program, part of Customs and Border Protection but administered by FEMA, set up under his own term as president. Secretary Mayorkas has called out Trump’s lie saying that FEMA has all the resources it needs to help those affected by hurricane Helene.

The fallout from his and Vance’s lies about the Haitian community in Springfield OH that has resulted in bomb threats and hate towards the small legal Haitian community that helped revitalize the town has now been directed at one businessman who defended his 30 Haitian employees as being the best he has. Jaime McGregor, a two time Trump voter, who owns a factory making tractor parts is getting graphic death threats directed at him, his family, and his business, credible enough that the FBI showed up and directed him to start taking certain precautions. McGregor, who has never owned a gun, now does and he and his family have been taking shooting lessons. Story here. 

MAGAts are spreading malicious memes about Harris’ proposal to give a $25,000 down payment credit to qualified first time home buyers with an emphasis on first generation home buyers claiming that if any member of your family; parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles; own a home you are ineligible, a claim that is patently false, and that your tax money will go to allow illegal immigrants to buy homes instead when it is against the law for illegal residents to access any government aid programs.

MAGA republicans are also lying about the excellent economy…continued job growth, record low unemployment, rising wages, inflation down, stock market at an all time high (and yes I know a lot of people are still struggling but that's as it ever was)…with Marco Rubio calling the just released report fake and when Trump was asked if he would acknowledge that the economy was improving replied, ’no, it’s not’.

All this is just a drop in the bucket of Trump’s vileness. I haven’t even touched his disastrous plan to increase tariffs on all imports which economists say will be devastating to the economy as will his mass deportation plans, his continued and increasing incoherence, his litany of complaints about how poorly he is treated, his refusal or inability answer questions replying instead with a word salad that has nothing to do with the question, his support of Putin and other heavy handed authoritarians, his intention to refuse to come to the aid of our allies, his desire to abandon South Korea, his denial of the brain damage sustained by 100 of our service members in Iraq when Iran bombed our base there calling the attack during his presidency ‘a very good thing’, and on and on. 

And while we mostly focus on how unfit and old at 78 Trump is to be president, and rightly so, what we need to be talking about as well is how fucking scary J D Vance is if Trump is elected and becomes completely senile or dies in office.  Besides his archaic opinion of women that their only role in the human experience should be childbearing and homemaking, his dismissal of women who work and their contributions to leadership, education, medicine, science, technology, the arts, etc.; his belief that people without children, who he calls sociopathic, psychotic, and deranged, should not be able to vote and should have their taxes raised and should be punished; he demonizes immigrants and supports Trump's plan to rid the country of them, is a christian nationalist and absolutely will implement Project 2025. The republican party has already requested information from different departments about employees in a bid to determine who won't be loyal to Trump. 

I have no doubt that if Trump gets elected republicans will do everything they can to shitcan him and install Vance.

When it comes right down to it, Republicans are more about power than the country, more about staying in power than the will of the people and they fully intend to force their unpopular world view if they gain the presidency and majority in Congress and will engage in threats of violence, voter suppression, and intimidation at the polls to achieve that end.

Once again, I urge everyone to check your voter registration to make sure it’s active, understand the assignment, and get out there and vote.

 

another truckload, anoles and toads, I visit

Last weekend I finally got all the debris piles off the ground and in the truck ready to be dumped on the burn pile if and when we can burn again, cut the rest of the canopy and small non weight bearing branches that I could reach on the second damaged tree cut up with my baby chainsaw and also in the truck. 

Now I’m ready to get out the big boy chainsaw and go after the big fallen limbs and the bigger non weight bearing dangling limbs. Once I get that done then it will be time to get more qualified help to get the dangling limbs cut loose and on the ground. Once on the ground, I can deal with them.

Saturday while Robin and I were out walking Minnie and we got to the end of the street, my friend’s 8 year old granddaughter was out in the yard. Miss Ellen! She came running over, look what I have.

These two anoles were quietly just sitting in her palm, making no effort to escape. The day before she showed me two toads in a glass jar half full of water she had scooped out of the little pool in their front yard. I told her not to leave them in the jar as they would drown but to let them go after she was through watching them which she did.

Sunday afternoon I went out to my daughter’s place about 20 minutes from here out in the county to visit and to get some fresh eggs. 

My grandson Mikey and Audra and their daughter, my great granddaughter Paisleigh moved back here from Arkansas in August and they recently bought a 35’ travel trailer, two bedroom and 1 1/2 bath, to live in until they get more permanent living quarters built on the property. This gets them out of Sarah’s house and gives them and Sarah and Mike personal and private space. So I drove out to visit and see the new trailer. Paisleigh gave me a grand tour and then wanted me to color with her.

Later Sarah and I and Paisleigh were sitting out under the canopy when Paisleigh announced she had to go fix her hair. She ran into Sarah’s house and came out with this bow on her head and her little pick bead bracelet on. 

Then she announced she was going to fix my hair and she put the bow and bracelet on me.

After about five minutes I took it off. Oh no, Gramma, she says, you have to wear it so I dutifully put it back on.

A few miscellaneous pictures. Current progress on the drawing.

My neighbor’s Halloween display. It’s been up since mid September.

The top part of the yellow bells shrub over at the shop yard that gets full sun. It’s as tall as the banana trees next to it.

blast from the past, burn ban, rain but not on us

This little tidbit from the NYT newsletter this morning amused me: “Crowds of people are lining up outside a suitcase shop on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to get their turn with an exciting piece of technology: an analog photo booth from the 1970s. The booth, called Old Friend, snaps four photos, which take about three minutes to develop. The throwback has resonated particularly with members of a younger generation. “It’s cool to think that this is how our parents took their photos,” one visitor told The Times.” I still have the strip of photos Marc and I took when we first started going out, falling in love.

It’s been pretty uneventful around here this week. I got two more debris piles in the truck 

and plan to dump them on the burn pile today but no burning as they did call for a burn ban but not until yesterday. Still have two more piles to go in the truck and that will be everything I’ve cut so far so next I’ll cut the rest of the canopy off the second tree. After that I’ll get the big chainsaw and start work on the bigger branches that aren’t supporting the weight of the hanging limbs.

Wednesday I had a follow-up appointment with the EP, all is well, made sure I had the follow-up TEE scheduled for next month after which he will take me off the eliquis and put me on plavix instead for 6 months so a slow weaning off the blood thinners, told me to come back in 6 months. Drove through some very hard rain coming back, going 45 in the far right lane on the highway and still could barely see the lane markers ahead of me while people in bigger vehicles sped past me on the left. Fortunately I drove out from under the downpour fairly soon. This is what the sky looked like when I got home.

Another cool front came through yesterday, even dipped below 60 last night and nice and cool this morning though it’s already warming up. It looks like a nice low humidity blue sky day out there today. Doors and windows currently open listening to birdsong.

I haven’t worked on the drawing this week so maybe I’ll make some progress this weekend. I sat down Tuesday morning to work on it but realized after the first five minutes or so my mind was not focused on it and put it aside for later. I’m trying to finish the book I’m reading since someone is on the waitlist for it and the sequel to the last Preston and Child Pendergast novel has arrived at the library and is being held for me.

Time to get out there and take advantage of the day.  

shoes again, drawing, burning, streaming

And this is why I don’t like buying shoes online. My orthos came yesterday and they feel great and I like the way they look but I think they are a half size too big. My feet measure 9 1/2”. My current sandals, size 8, according to the chart on their website, measure 10 1/4” toe to heel. The chart on the ortho website also said 9 1/2” feet, size 8 but the shoes measure 10 3/4” toe to heel. So now my quandary is do I send them back and reorder 7 1/2 or order 7 1/2 and compare the fit and then send one pair back for a refund? I have 60 days to return them. Here’s a comparison of the two size 8s and how they fit.

Thwarted again Friday when I tried to torch the burn pile for the third time still with no success and it’s been 3 weeks since we had any rain. The first time it had been nearly a week after rain and I used my usually successful method of twisting up newspaper, sticking it in near the bottom in three places and dousing it with trimmer fuel and lighting the paper but the debris was still too wet. Second attempt a week later same method still wouldn’t light. Yesterday I used the newspaper and charcoal lighter fluid and liberally squirted it all over including the paper. Fuel burned, paper burned, debris did not. It should have gone up like a torch. My grandson Mikey came over Saturday with some old diesel fuel and got it to burn so today I emptied the truck and then used the diesel fuel he left for me and torched it again because all signs point to a burn ban starting tomorrow.

I’ve started a new drawing, well, I transferred faint outlines to the page in my sketchbook, a buckeye butterfly. Here’s my first day of working on it, one of four wings

and today’s effort

but when I was working on the first wing Friday I was thinking I really can’t call it a drawing since I didn’t draw, only traced the main lines, more like working in a coloring book so what do I call it, a coloring? But today as I was working on the body of the moth, I did redraw the shape more accurately from the faint outline so I don’t know. Maybe the next one, I have another butterfly lined up. Or maybe something different. Once I get the buckeye finished I plan to add a little watercolor background.

Other than going to SHARE Thursday mornings, working on the butterfly, and burning tree debris I haven’t done much else. We’ve been streaming Continuum on Prime. We’re not quite to the middle of season 2 of 4. In the future of 2077, corporations have total control and with high-tech surveillance the police, called Protectors, keep the population on a very short leash and tightly controlled; no dissent allowed, books are contraband, history is treason, people are constantly in ‘citizen debt’ (think of company towns on steroids). A terrorist group trying to break the hold of the corporations is sentenced to die but instead escape via time travel and a Protector is inadvertently taken with them. But instead of the 5 years in the past they planned, something went wrong and they went back 65 years. Liber8 is still trying to prevent corporate takeover, Protector is trying to preserve her future, the genius responsible for all the tech that keeps the population under control is now just an 18 year old kid. And lots of other stuff mixed in. It’s really good if you like sci-fi.

 

shoes and shells, mostly shoes

Some women are crazy about shoes, Imelda Marcos comes to mind. I’ve never understood the fascination, preferring to go barefoot whenever possible, shoes are utilitarian to me. While I like a pair of nice flats for the few times I dress up I don’t wear heels, haven’t since my mid-30s and back then only when dressing up, and never spike heels. Despite the shoe industry’s promotion of them in advertising, four or five inch spike heels always seemed like the American form of foot binding to me. Not quite as crippling but serving the same basic purpose; small dainty wobbly steps, me at least, and no running for your life. 

The last time I bought a new pair of shoes (and by that I mean real shoes not the cheap $14 dollar sandals I have bought every year or two at Walmart that wear out quickly) was in 2017 before our trip to Hawaii that are really worn out now.

 

This year I have bought 3 pairs of shoes, all sandals. Since my open toed black flats for dressier wear had worn out I went shoe shopping last spring to replace them. I ended up with some black sandals because my ingrown toenail had flared up and all the closed toed flats hurt. I think I’ve worn them twice so far. Early summer I really needed new everyday sandals, tired of the cheap Walmart versions, and shopped online and bought some Earth Origins slip-on sandals which cost more than I have generally paid at a shoe store and have worn all summer. 

I like them well enough but they only have one strap with which to tighten the fit and have stretched out a bit and my left foot has started to skew at an angle on the foot bed so I started searching for new sandals and Sunday I bought a pair from Ortho online. This is the most expensive pair of shoes I have ever bought, over $100 and that was 20% off, but they have three straps with which to tighten the fit and I like the style better than the ones I have now. I was FaceTiming with Jade and dithering about buying the shoes and how much they cost and as we were ending the call, love you, she says, and buy the shoes. So I did. 

Now I’m waiting for them to arrive and hope they fit and live up to the claims on their website.

I wear sandals as long as weather permits. I even, gasp, will wear socks with sandals, but I do have some winter shoes. I have a pair of ankle length moccasin booties that I bought probably in my 40s and have worn a hole in the sole of one of them but I just put some thick insoles in and still wear them. I have a pair of Sketchers that I like that a friend gave me probably 5 years ago because they were too small for her and some gym shoes that I bought right before I stopped going to the gym about 12 years ago that I hardly ever wear. I have some hiking boots I bought years ago when I went to Scotland in 2016, also that I’ve worn only a handful of times. And of course a pair of black cowboy boots, I am after all a Texan. There’s a few other pairs of shoes lingering in the back of my closet that I don’t wear anymore like the blue suede Cole Haan sandals I wore to a wedding two years ago that I bought at a resale shop and are really a half size too big, some worn out huaraches that I loved even though the heel was narrow and tended to twist my foot if I wasn’t careful, some dressier not sandal brown leather slides that started to hurt my feet the last several times I wore them.

I should probably buy another pair of enclosed winter shows. I like the sketchers and I’ve bought adidas in the past but here’s my main complaint about shoes with laces…they won’t stay tied. That aggravates the shit out of me. How hard is it to sell shoes with laces that stay tied. I have to tie them normally with a bow and then take the loops of the bow and tie another knot and still they will come undone. Maybe I’ll check out the kind that have elastic laces you don’t tie.

Autumn was in town and spent the day with me working on a project. She’s making decorative belts, one for her and one for a friend, from chains and seashells. Mostly I just supplied tools and an idea or two. Yesterday she glued jump rings to some of the shells Pam had collected (they didn’t all get thrown back into the Gulf) and made some from wire that she could insert into the olive shells, a loop on the end of a straight section about 3/4” long, and arranged them how she wanted. She has to wait until the adhesive cures before she can flip them over and attach them to the chains with smaller jump rings.

Later we went out to see the partial eclipse of the full moon since we had a clear night but when I asked the All Knowing Oracle what percent would be eclipsed and how long it would be, 8% at the top edge and another hour, not worth the wait so we came in.

the significance of water

More signs that the season is changing, that the planet is continuing its path around the sun. I saw some snow on the prairie in a pasture the other day, the sun has moved enough so that it shines through my east facing window and into my face through a break in the foliage of the photinia as it rises in the morning while I sit at my desk reading and writing requiring  me to wear my ball cap until it gets higher, and the season of beautiful sunsets is starting, witness the one last night.

I was musing about the significance of water in dreams. I wouldn’t say that it is a frequent element in my dreams but I have had some memorable dreams throughout my life in which water was featured. When I was around 8 or 10, I woke up one morning convinced I could breathe underwater and it took awhile to shake that certainty that the dream I had had of swimming underwater without needing air had left me with. Another one I remember from my early 20s married to my first husband involved finding him with another woman and I left walking down a road with him following me in a golf cart trying to talk me into coming back. I ignored him until the road disappeared into a body of water and I couldn’t go any further. I waded around in the water before deciding to go back but when I woke I knew that it was over and I divorced him about 6 months later. Another dream involving water probably in my 30s I was at a beach watching as all along the shoreline were artists facing the water painting on easels when a huge wave came and washed over us all sending everyone tumbling and I was immersed in the water which didn’t recede. There was more to that dream but that’s the part that I remember. And now this most recent one. Certainly there have been more involving bodies of water but these are the ones that have stuck with me.

Curious, I asked the All Knowing Oracle what water in dreams represents. Apparently it’s a common theme and can represent any number of things.

“Dreams about water are symbolic of your emotions during your waking life. They're said to be linked to the deepest recesses of your subconscious mind and your intuition. Water is also associated with fertility, creativity, emotional well-being, renewal, purity, and new endeavors.”

Another list of possible connections.

• Emotions: Water can represent your emotions, and how you feel about life. 
• Subconscious: Water can symbolize the unconscious mind, and the depths of your psyche. 
• Life: Water can symbolize the source of life, and the wellspring of growth and vitality. 
• Fertility: Water can be associated with fertility, creativity, and new endeavors. 
• Purity: Water can symbolize purity and cleanliness. 
• Flow: Water can represent change, flexibility, and rejuvenation. 
• Birth: According to Freud, water in dreams can be closely linked to birth. 
• Overwhelming emotions: Tidal waves or flooding can symbolize overwhelming emotions or a sense of being overwhelmed. 
• Personal growth: Dreaming about waves of water could symbolize a desire for personal growth. 
• Need for connection: Dreaming about waves of water could symbolize a need to connect with nature. 
  

I don’t know what was going on in my 8 - 10 year old life but I think I can discount emotions, life, purity, birth, and connection but change, feeling overwhelmed, and this last one, fertility as in new endeavors maybe relates to the transition I’m going through probably giving up glass as an artistic medium and working in watercolors and colored pencils instead. Although the rest of the dream is a big what the hell was that all about or maybe the challenge involved.

Anyway, interesting stuff.