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.

harvest, dangerous rhetoric, weird dreams

It’s a good thing I took my picture of the cotton field when I did because it’s been harvested the last two days.

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Now that Trump was fact checked during the debate about his untrue hateful claims that hardworking, tax paying LEGAL Haitian migrants, who were invited to come fill factory jobs, are eating neighbors’ cats and dogs and geese from the pond in the park and ridiculed soundly on social media for saying it, he and his rabid supporters have tripled down on the claims to the effect that Haitians are being targeted in the community with vandalism and verbal attacks making them fearful of even leaving their homes. Not satisfied with that, when the mayor of Springfield OH had the audacity to state unequivocally that the accusations of pet eating are completely unfounded, agitators called in a dozen or so bomb threats against various government buildings and schools. While no bombs were found it did disrupt the city and cause a lot of fear. Nice going assholes. Trump and his hate filled minions are getting more dangerous by the day and are showing us exactly what we can expect if he gets elected. 

I do feel that Harris has the popular vote but we all know that is no guarantee she will win when it is the electoral college that decides who our president will be. It is crucial that people check their voter registration frequently since republicans are throwing people off the rolls left and right and doing what they can to restrict early voting and voting by mail. Now that Kennedy has switched parties in a bid to become part of Trump’s administration if elected, he has sued 10 states, especially swing states, to remove his name from the ballot in an effort to send his potential voters to Trump. North Carolina just allowed his name to be removed 5 days after the deadline for removal causing millions of ballots already printed to be destroyed resulting in delaying the mailing of absentee ballots scheduled to be sent out the same day shortening the time allowed to receive and return ballots by mail. It’s even more crucial that Harris voters do not let these tactics prevent them from voting.

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Pictures from the yard to wipe the nasty taste of republican politics away. The surprise lilies are opening,

the white philippine lilies surprised me with blooms this morning,

and the indigofera.

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I enjoy having a cocktail in the evening before dinner but I have refrained a few days before and after the different procedures over the summer. For this last one, I stopped a week before and now two weeks after the procedure I have still not had a drink, thinking I would wait until my heart tissue had grown over the watchman device, a process that takes about 45 days that will be confirmed by the follow up TEE. I’ve noticed two things since I stopped having my evening cocktail. One, I’m sleeping much better, which I like, not waking up nearly every night for hours of sleeplessness. Usually I wake up about 2 AM and it’s generally 4 AM before I get back to sleep. The second thing is I have been having the weirdest fucking dreams almost every night. I mean weird crazy shit and I’m not so sure I’m liking that. 

Last night I dreamed that I went to SHARE and they had completely rearranged things so the building was empty except for tables around the perimeter and people would now have to go to each table and ask the volunteer for whatever food item that table had. I thought this was a bad idea and asked one of the volunteers to step out for a conversation in which I expressed my views and he said they were going to try it out anyway. As I walked away heading home the street became flooded, the water getting higher and higher until it was about chest level when the street turned into a sort of concrete canyon where I stepped out onto dry ground but I was surrounded by water and the only way to get home would be to fly which I did. My sister was there flying beside me when we came to a building with a window just above water level and we managed to open it and step into the bathroom of a stranger’s house. We went into the adjoining room to tell the people that everything was flooded and we came in through the window wanting them to follow us and show them. Then I left with a friend to go borrow some guy’s sailboat and we would spend the day sailing. We got to the building where the boat was and the guy was helping get it rigged but it was taking forever. I tied the line from the sail to the mast with a bowline knot which I wanted him to notice and remark on it but he never did. Then another guy showed up and it gets a little murky, something about not getting the rigging right but the first guy, the one whose boat it was, and I started flirting and I’m thinking, this is the one. My friend gets angry when I tell her he is going to go on the boat with us because this was supposed to be just the two of us. I go off the bathroom (?) to change or something and when I come back everything is still not ready and I’m getting impatient because it’s getting late and he is putting together food for three when there are four of us. It’s almost 2 PM, I tell him, he says it's fine and to help and make the sandwiches. I’m trying to figure out how to put the three sandwiches together in a way to feed four people when I wake up.

I mean really, what the fuck was that about? I may have to start drinking again.

hurricane, the debate, Texas snow

Monday I was all ready to start going back to the yoga class twice a week in El Campo but I accompanied my friend undergoing cancer treatment to her appointment in Galveston for a liver scan, a two hour drive there and a two hour drive back, and didn’t get home until 3 for a late lunch after which I had about an hour before I would have to leave again. So I didn’t go but I am planning to go tonight.

Monday evening it looked like TS Francine was going to skirt the coast before making landfall somewhere around the border between Texas and Louisiana giving us two days of rain but yesterday it had moved farther away from the coast while it strengthened into a hurricane. This morning it’s already past us and landfall has moved farther east heading for New Orleans. For which I’m grateful since I’m still dealing with the damage from Beryl. As for rain, we got about a five minute shower around 5 PM Tuesday. 

So, of course, the debate was last night. We didn’t watch it. I just cannot tolerate Trump’s voice, his butthole puckered mouth, his accordion hands, and his constant stream of lies, conspiracy theories, and hateful rhetoric but now I kind of wish I had seen Harris’ masterful handling of Trump. I did monitor social media and my grandgirl Autumn watched it and we texted back and forth so the following is gleaned from what others have said and an article from NPR. Trump was Trump and he got played like a fiddle by Harris. Harris had clear answers to the questions while Trump, as usual, did not answer a single question, the closest he got was saying he had ‘concepts’ of a plan for healthcare which he did not elaborate on, but instead went off on his riffs though Autumn said he was a little more cognitive than he is at his rallies. While he tried to goad Harris, she never took his bait but she cleverly pushed every one of his buttons during her clear answers and then stood by while he reacted. The moderators gave Trump more speaking time and more chances to speak in rebuttal than they did Harris, which on the face of it was unfair and unbalanced, but it also seemed to be giving the man all the rope he wanted showing the world how unhinged and completely unqualified he truly is. And he really didn’t like that the moderators fact checked him. Harris’ prosecutorial style put Trump on the defensive and he wouldn’t even look at her during the debate. A poster on social media wrote that he practically ran off the stage when it was over. One commentator later criticized Harris for not controlling her facial expressions, her looks of humor and disbelief at Trump’s responses but did not criticize Trump for his facial expressions of disgust and distaste when Harris was speaking. Because we women are supposed to be pliant and demure I guess. In a call to Fox this morning Trump said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do another debate (I guess not) even though he previously tried to goad Harris into one on Fox and of course he thinks ABC needs to be punished. 

Even so, the media is still saying that this election is neck and neck and that Trump could still win according to the ‘polls’. I don’t give much credence to the polls especially this election cycle because people under a certain age don’t have land lines, over which most polls are conducted, and they don’t answer calls from unknown numbers on their cell phones. I know I don’t. We can’t get complacent though, we can’t assume a victory. We still need to campaign and get out the vote and most importantly, vote. Be sure to check your voter registration regularly because red states are removing millions of people from the rolls and in Texas and Florida, the governors are actively using the police to conduct raids and voter intimidation.

I finished my drawing of the tallow tree leaves but haven’t started on the watercolor yet. I may do another drawing of something else first before I put my colored pencils away. The page in my sketchbook is 8.5” x 5.5”.

Some pictures from the yard…yellow bells aka esperanza, porterweed, morning glory bush (one of my favorites)

and it’s cotton harvest time, the field at the end of my street.

first fall day, lilies, and progress

Between Friday and Saturday I’m four piles of tree debris down, two on the burn pile, two in the truck, and three more to go. I’m not done making piles but I want to get the ones I already have either burned or moved over to the burn pile first. I’m only burning one truckload at a time so that the bonfire doesn’t get too big. Fortunately this stuff is very dry despite the rain we’ve been having and it goes up fast.

This picture of the back of my property past my property line is for Sabine who asked if I could leave some of the tree debris for the bugs and what not. It’s the Wild Space I refer to that is really part of the field behind but all this wild growth has grown up from not being mowed completely when they hay the field which they’ve only done once so far this year I think. 

Saturday was a beautiful blue sky day, low humidity. When I woke up it was cooler outside than inside for the first time of the coming fall season or what passes for fall around here. I opened all three doors to air out the house. Today is just as nice. Monday it starts to cloud up again and by mid week more rain is predicted. Even though it got hot later, up to 90, and supposed to hit high 80s today, nights are down in the 60s.

Walking around the yard, admiring the oxblood lilies popping up everywhere in the front

with Cat following me around,  

I noticed these. 

Last spring I dug up a big clump of surprise lilies (what Ms Moon calls hurricane lilies) that never bloom, or just one flower once in a blue moon, and replanted them where I thought they would get more sun and were less crowded. Two of the clumps are sending up bloom stalks. The third is a no show so far so I guess they aren’t happy there but I’m going to have at least 13 blooms!

Current progress on my colored pencil drawing of the tallow leaves. I had put in the dark gray shadow that shows in the picture but it just did not read as a shadow from the curled up edge of the leaf on my drawing and I really didn’t like it so I took it out altogether. Still need to work on the stem a bit but this leaf is essentially finished.

My only task today is to torch the burn pile if it’s not too breezy as I think I overdid it yesterday. I didn’t feel like I was exerting myself all that much just dragging dead branches out of the truck and tossing them on the burn pile or walking back and forth between debris pile and the truck and the stuff isn’t heavy but I was hot and sweaty when I came in and I definitely felt it later. I’ll spend some time working on my drawing and maybe sit out on the deck and read.  

sore muscles, rainbow, and other miscellania

I was really feeling achy for a couple of days, a little discomfort in my chest and back, and so Tuesday morning I called the doctor’s office and spoke with the nurse just to make sure that this was either normal or something to be concerned about or just from lack of any exercise for months which I had been used to doing. She spoke with the doctor, should not be experiencing any discomfort from the procedure, did I try any pain relief and if it continued to call back and they would schedule a stress test. So I took ibuprofen during the day which helped and by the evening felt fine so I decided it was option #3 and did a slow and modified version of my yoga routine before bed. I slept all night, waking only once to go to the bathroom and felt fine the next day. The discomfort has not returned but by end of the day Wednesday my arms and other parts of my body were so sore! Regardless, I did my routine again Wednesday night before bed and went to class last night. Just three days in a row of yoga and I already feel better, still have sore muscles after a long period of disuse but even that makes me feel better.

We’ve been getting rain nearly every day since Monday for which I’m glad because we really needed it, a little over 2 1/2” so far this week. It’s been much less hot if not exactly cooler but that is about to change as we are getting a first real cool front this weekend and will have lows in the 60s all next week, highs in the 80s. It was drizzling/sprinkling a little when I left yoga class last night and saw this on the way home. At first I stopped and pulled into a side street and took a picture through my windshield afraid it would fade before I got home, but it was still there when I turned into my street so I stopped again and got out and took this picture over the cotton field. It was a double rainbow, the one on top very faint but you can see it in the upper right corner. The color bands don’t really show up that well in my picture but they were very evident looking at it.

I haven’t worked much on my new drawing. The ink came and I got my print. Here’s my progress so far on one leaf which still needs a lot of work.

I guess I’m going to get out there today and load up the truck again even though I haven’t taken the accumulated metal to the recyclers yet. I’m more interested in getting rid of two more piles of broken tree debris. I took these pictures yesterday of one of the ‘legs’ holding up the hanging limb on one of the trees.

And last, walking around the yard earlier yesterday I spied this tiny just hatched anole.