that was a little premature

shrimp plant in full bloom

Of course the forecast that said no freezing nights for the foreseeable future has changed now that I uncovered the ponytail palm and the night blooming cereus and moved all but the plumerias back outside Monday. Checked the forecast the next day and my hope (dream) of having a winter that didn’t plunge down to 20˚ or colder shattered. Every day since temps are colder and colder, now Saturday night 25˚, Sunday night 18˚, Monday night 25˚. High chance of rain Friday and Saturday, ice on Sunday. Well poop. The cereus must be brought into the garage, covering it won’t do. So yesterday, Wednesday, all the plants were brought back in the house in more permanent positions 

or in the garage and the ponytail is covered once again. Robin is doing child care for Harrison so it was up to me and 4 year old Paisleigh and we got it done. Mikey moved the cereus and the stag horn in for me so I’m ready. The fruit trees will like it I guess since they need a certain amount of cold hours to produce fruit.

My little project is a sewing project. I’ve had this machine for decades, maybe four as I think I bought it in my 30s. I’ve had a sewing machine of my own since my teens though I don’t remember what kind my previous one was or why I bought a new one. The brain has jettisoned that information to make room for more recent stuff. the one I have now is a Riccar, a good solid machine that I’ve only had to have a major repair done on it once but have taken it in several times for cleaning and tension adjustments. Anyway, it was working fine when I when I made Paisleigh’s name blanket and worked fine on Sunday until it didn’t. The stitching on the top was fine, the stitching on the bottom was full of loops. Something became out of whack. So I cleaned and oiled it, something I hadn’t done in a while and hoped it would self correct the next day. It didn’t. It was even worse. There is no one in Wharton and while there used to be a guy in El Campo that did sewing machine repair he closed up shop years ago. So I did a search for sewing machine repair in Rosenberg, found a guy and took my machine in Monday. He called yesterday morning, machine is fixed so I’ll go get it today after SHARE.

Cat helping me iron seams

As long as I was in Rosenberg I made it over to Shopping Mecca and to the Penney’s because I need a new pair of jeans since I only have one that doesn’t have the knees torn out. Yes, I know, people pay big bucks for brand new jeans with the knees already torn out. I prefer to get mine the old fashioned way. I thought I had two pairs but when I went looking for them in the drawer I couldn’t find the second pair. And so miracle of miracles, they had a 6S. S for short. It’s not that I’m short I just don’t wear spike heels with my jeans. I don’t wear heels, spike or otherwise, at all. Of course I found my second pair in the drawer when I got home with the new ones.

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I keep thinking of the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times”. I have to say living in a time when the stable world order is being purposely trashed by a narcissistic megalomaniac and it has only taken a year for our allies and trading partners to start making new alliances and trade agreements excluding the United States was not on my bingo card. At the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland Secretary of Commerce Lutnick is lecturing European countries for investing in solar and wind in an effort to be zero net in 2030 saying they are choosing to be subservient to China because…batteries. Secretary of the Treasury Bessent in a press conference telling other nations re Greenland to basically "sit back, take a deep breath, let things play out" ie, let us do whatever the hell we want, because "the worst thing countries can do is escalate against the United States" ie we will fuck you up. The other world leaders at Davos are not having it. Trump, 3 hours late, gave one of his usual demeaning insulting speeches/tirades towards everyone who opposes him including his list of grievances and slights, full of lies and his ignorance. Apparently he got schooled behind closed doors by the other member nations of NATO who intend to protect Greenland militarily against any US attempt to take it by force because Trump has backed off, for now, saying they have a framework of a plan that gives him what he wants, meaning NATO nations are going to string him along with further talks until he either dies, Congress gets a spine, or he’s removed from office, because they have no intention of handing Greenland over to Trump. For now additional threatened tariffs are off the table.

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One more warm day and then the temperature starts to plummet. Starting Saturday you’ll find me hunkered down on the couch under a blanket.