what we've been watching

Tales From the Loop - a sci fi series of 8 interconnected episodes. The townspeople who live above ‘The Loop’, a machine built to unlock and explore the mysteries of the universe, experience things previously consigned to the realms of science fiction. In episode one a young girl comes home from school one day to find her mother, who works at the Loop and was conducting an experiment, and her house have disappeared. While searching in the woods she meets a boy her same age who sets out to help her find her mother. He takes her home to see if his mother who also works at The Loop can help. I really enjoyed this series. The episodes are quiet and thoughtful about human interaction under bizarre circumstances. Available on Amazon Prime.

Phillip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams - a sci fi series of 10 stand alone episodes based on Dick’s short stories, each very different from the others. I’m a sci-fi fan so I liked this series. Available on Amazon Prime.

In Your Dreams -  set in South Africa, best friends Lloyd and Marcus reconnect with childhood friend Dineo who is now an antiquities dealer. She has recently found an ancient artifact that when held and magic words are said cause the person’s next three dreams to come to life and which they have to vanquish only to be faced with their greatest fear. If they survive that, then their greatest wish will be granted. I really enjoyed this six episode series. Available on Amazon Prime.

Interior Chinatown - the plot is a little hard to follow and some of the action seems far fetched but I guess not for the premise which is that everything that happens is being orchestrated as a TV show by a mysterious group of Chinese mystics in this 10 episode series. Willis, a waiter in the family Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, is bored with his life and sets out to find out what happened to his brother, the Kung Fu guy, who disappeared 12 years previous while working with the police. Willis teams up with ‘Chinatown expert’ Lana who is assisting the famous detective duo of Green and Turner to solve crimes in Chinatown. It has a great cast and worth watching. Available on Hulu.

Troppo - season 1, set in Australia. In season 1 Amanda, recently released from prison for a murder she committed at 17 is trying to rebuild her life as a tattoo artist and private investigator in her hometown where she is reviled by just about everyone. She is hired by a woman who wants her to investigate the disappearance of her husband. She teams up with another outcast, Ted, an ex-detective falsely accused and held in jail for a horrible sexual crime against a 13 year old girl. Released finally for lack of evidence he eventually fled his family and job because of continued verbal attacks and threats. Ted, who just wants to drink his misery away, reluctantly agrees to assist Amanda and is slowly drawn into their collaboration. Amanda is also investigating the apparent suicide of one of her few friends. As she and Ted make headway in their cases they are constantly harassed and threatened by the local police officer. We’re enjoying this one a lot as the truth about Amanda’s crime is revealed. Available on Amazon Prime.

Troppo - season 2. Amanda, freed of the crushing guilt about the night she killed Lauren, has become less caustic, Ted has found purpose in life again and their partnership and friendship has become solid. They are hired to prove the innocence of a murdered man’s son by finding the real killer, Ted is trying to reconnect with his family, and Amanda wants to prove Ted’s innocence. Available on Amazon Prime.

Only Murders In The Building - we’ve watched all four seasons, starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez. How can you go wrong with a cast like that? Three true crime aficionados band to gather to solve murders in their building and the last two seasons also starred Meryl Streep. It’s very good. Available on Hulu.

musing, meals, streaming, and spring

Another picture of my dwarf redbud tree in full bloom.

For practically my whole life I have been taking art lessons, either in school or out, or making, from craft kits as a kid to sewing as a teen to exploring different mediums in college to finally as an adult building my own art studio making etched and carved glass for architectural installations and small cast glass sculpture for over 40 years. We retired from the etched glass at the end of 2017 after the house flooded and we spent the next two years dealing with FEMA and the Texas Land Office for funds and getting that half of the house repaired. Since then I have made some cast glass sculpture and even took two watercolor classes which I enjoyed but I have also had extended periods of complete lack of motivation or desire to create. I’m in one of those times now, going on a year and a half this time; I don’t draw, I don’t watercolor, I don’t make models for casting. The last piece I made was the Coral Reef box that I completed September 2022. I keep thinking I still have some work in me that I want to do but I’m not motivated to go over to the studio or getting out my watercolors. Am I done? Marc mentioned the other day that he was going to close the business bank account and put that minimum $5,000 required to not have a monthly service fee to better use, like earning interest, and I’m fine with that. Last year there was no water in the studio due to a busted pipe from our new very cold arctic vortexes that have been hitting us the last three winters and the horridly dry and hot summer and now the pipe is cracked again. So, I don’t know. I guess we’ll see. Right now I’m happy enough to watch the birds, read, write, work out in the yard, volunteer, go to yoga and spending a couple of hours a day in the studio means not having the time to do other stuff.

We finally fixed and ate all three of our HelloFresh meals and they were without exception very good. We tried the soy glazed steak with zucchini stir-fry and jasmine rice with scallion ginger oil (10 ingredients), penne with spinach and grape tomatoes, garlic butter breadcrumbs and parmesan (9 ingredients), and apricot, almond, and chickpea tagine with zucchini, basmati rice and chermoula (14 ingredients). The pasta dish was very similar to one I make only a little fancier. I’ve never eaten chickpeas that weren’t in the form of hummus or falafel, which I really like, and I’m not that impressed. The tagine was very good but I’m not likely to add canned chickpeas to my staples in the kitchen.

I mentioned we had watched two episodes of Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Prime and that it was nothing like the movie and at that point we weren’t sure if we were going to continue watching it but we did. It’s one season of eight episodes and it’s actually pretty good. It’s not just about two people working for an unnamed powerful secret spy organization given missions, it’s also about two complete strangers paired together as partners with their cover being a married couple and their developing relationship. Anyway, the last episode was the only one that mirrored the movie and it ends in a cliff hanger intentionally so as to let the viewer decide how it ended. It also sets up for a possible second season but there is no indication at this time that there will be one.

I was able to get out in the yard yesterday, a cool but pretty blue sky day and the wind had mostly died down. I pulled up one of the two remaining cabbages and clipped all the little broccoli sprouts that come out after you harvest the main head and then pulled all the broccoli plants up and continued turning and weeding the dirt in preparation for planting the spring garden. Not sure what I’m going to plant besides tomatoes. The mustard greens are bolting so I need to pull those up. I never thinned my carrots and I have no idea how they are growing since I haven’t felt around the tops. I’m thinking they probably aren’t even as big around as my little finger.

Minnie and Cat enjoying the pretty weather outside today, cat in the shade on the right, dog in the sun on the left.

Still nothing much happening in the yard here but over at Pam’s house the white crinum lily started putting up a bloom stalk a week or so after the freeze here

and the fig tree is putting out new growth.

The cuttings I took when I pruned back the yellow angel trumpet to cover it for the deep freeze have started putting out roots 

as have the fire spike but the small branch that broke off the pink angel trumpet when I moved it into the garage is still stubbornly refusing to root.

A small cluster of pink 10 petal anemone.

 

quiet day, road trip, Marcmas

I trust everyone had a good day Monday whatever that means for you on Christmas. We had our usual quiet day. It was nice out though a little cold after two days of rain. I walked Minnie to the end of the street and got swirled into some of Rocky’s grandkids and their new bikes, scooters, hoverboard. Miss Ellen, Miss Ellen, it’s Miss Ellen! as they swarmed around me. Then I fed the kittens, two of which are starting to let me pet them before I feed them, I even have been able to pick the two tabbies up (one at a time of course) and put them in my lap for more petting. The brown tabby is quiet and had a quiet purr but the gray tabby is very vocal and purrs loudly and readily. The female still won’t really approach and will still only let me pet her while she eats though she is allowing more petting before she moves away.

We watched three movies Monday. First was Asteroid City which I had heard about and thought it would be good but it was not. It was weird and boring and I kept nodding off so if you haven’t seen it, don’t bother. Then we watched Everything Everywhere All At Once which was much better but half the dialog was in Mandarin (with subtitles) and it moved really fast and was hard to follow sometimes but we enjoyed it. And then last we watched a Christmas movie, (not your usual sappy Hallmark kind, more like Die Hard kind only with Santa) Violent Night with a drunk discouraged Santa who manages to get left behind by the reindeer at a rich person’s house while he sits back and relaxes with expensive whiskey when the house is attacked by a group of criminals intent on killing everyone unless they tell them where the money is and Santa saves the day drawing on his previous life as a warrior. Santa was played by David Harbour who played the sheriff in Stranger Things. 

Yesterday my daughter picked me up and we went to Austin to spend the day with the twins. A pleasant surprise when we got there Marc’s sister Lisa and her son Andy were there. Lisa lives in Dallas and Andy lives in Tulsa and they were in Austin to visit another son Greg and family and were headed to Houston from there to visit Marc’s and Lisa’s mom who is in hospice care now. After they got on the road Sarah and I and Jade and Autumn went out for lunch at a vegetarian/vegan coffee/restaurant place. I ordered a coconut curry with broccoli, onions, potatoes, jackfruit, tofu dish served with brown rice. It was OK but apparently a popular dish as I saw at least three other people being served it. I ordered it because of the jackfruit which I was curious about but I could not have told you which piece went in my mouth was the jackfruit. Mostly it just all tasted like the curry sauce except for the broccoli which still tasted like broccoli. Of course I didn’t take a single picture of the girls though I did take a picture of Autumn’s boyfriend’s dog who had curled his big self into the cat bed.

But here’s a picture of a picture that Bryan took of us all with Jade’s little polaroid type camera when he got off work.

Today is Marcmas, another trip around the sun for him. Our son is coming to visit and he and Sarah are going to take us out to lunch. That’s the plan anyway.

maybe finally cooling off a bit and other activity

The shrimp never made it into gumbo as we ate them for dinner that night.

This month or more of triple digits preceded by 2 months or more of high 90s has altered my perception of 'comfortable'. I was outside around 6 PM one day last week and it was almost pleasant. It was 92˚. This morning when I went out before 8, it was almost cool outside though I failed to look and see what the temp was. Sitting on the deck this evening it was comfortable, low 90s (with the benefit of low humidity). I looked at the forecast and no one need worry that I might swoon and fall and hit my head on the 23^rd. The high temp has been upgraded to 95˚. I knew it was too good to be true. This morning though when I went out about 7:30 it was definitely pleasantly cool at 76˚. This is a real improvement since it hasn't dropped into the 70s in months.

My big activity Sunday was scrubbing all three bird baths clean of all the algae and crud that had built up. I had to use a steel bristled brush though to get through it all. It just laughed at my plastic bristled scrub brush. They haven't been this clean since they were brand new.

Yesterday afternoon we watched three episodes of Reservation Dogs, a series that follows the lives of four Native American teenagers growing up on a reservation in rural Oklahoma. It's streaming on Hulu and maybe Disneyplus. There's three seasons and we just started season two. It's described as a comedy, and it is, but it's also much deeper than that. I recommend it if you're looking for something to watch.

Some miscellaneous pictures...

Sunrise coming through the glass in the back door.

This frog hangs out by the hose bib in the backyard. Generally I only see the movement out of the corner of my eye when it leaps away but this day it leapt just a short distance and let me take a picture. It blends in well don't you think?

My datura finally started blooming.

Bees drinking from the birdbath.

This sunset was awesome. I took a lot of pictures and it was hard to settle on these three. Top: looking southwest. Middle: looking west, Bottom: while all that was happening, this was looking east.

the knee, the ants, and the soul crushing heat

Knee report: still a little swollen, still yellowish green from knee to ankle, still tender to the touch, still have a lump where there shouldn't be one, still does not pain me to walk or bend though it burns a little below the kneecap in the mornings. So later I will go to the online patient portal and send a message to my PC doc explaining with pictures and asking if I need an x-ray.

It has been so hot this past week, mid to high 90˚s with a hot dry wind from the south and getting worse. The next seven days 98˚ – 103˚, mid August temps and it's still just June. Rain is predicted for those same seven days so fingers crossed we'll actually get some because I've been spending my days moving the sprinkler around and it's nearly impossible to keep the things in pots from going into heavy droop every day.

So, with the knee and the heat we've been watching more TV in the afternoons. Currently we're streaming the Last Man On Earth on Hulu, a post-apocalyptic comedy about a virus that killed off the entire human population except him and he drives around the US with a loud speaker putting up signs that say 'alive in Tucson'. Two years later a woman shows up, a week later so does another one. We're only 4 episodes into the first season and there are four seasons. The other show we're watching is The Flight Attendant on Max, a murder thriller about an alcoholic flight attendant who wakes up in the wrong hotel, in the wrong bed, next to a dead man and has no idea what happened. We're 3 episodes into the first of 2 seasons.

The double orange daylilies are done, well, all but a few of the daylilies are done, the elephant garlic allium has gone to seed so I cut them down, the clasping leaved coneflower had also gone to seed so I pulled it out. The zinnias are still blooming. I've been collecting the gone by flowers for next years seeds and omg, I've already got far more than I collected all of last summer.

Here it is the middle of June and I have not so much as gone over to the studio and tidied up after completing and shipping out the last piece I have made of pate de verre cast glass last September and I currently have no desire to go over there and do that or think about new work. Part of that is because I still don't have water over there from last winter's deep freeze that cracked the outside pipe (even though it was wrapped) that brings water into the shop. My first attempt to seal it with FlexSeal paste didn't do the job. I had thought I would apply more but haven't and right now it's heat stroke hot out there (real feel 107˚), hot enough that I will let it be instead of asking Rocky to attend to it. And without water over there there isn't much I can do. I could do some model making but no functioning toilet because no water so I'd either have to pee behind the shop (which I have done many times), run to my sister's house or run home. So once again I wonder if I am completely done with making sculpture out of glass. It doesn't help that my cold working equipment is old and failing and expensive to replace.

Here's the other thing I've been doing...trying to find and seal up where the ants are getting in. Sealed up the pantry and three days later ants were in the dry dog food bowl. Thought they were coming in from under the metal threshold in the doorway between the kitchen and dining area so I pried that up, caulked every crack that even maybe looked like ants could somehow get in from, nailed the threshold strip back down and was good...for two days. This morning they were not only back in the dog food but back in the kitchen cabinet where we keep the oils, vinegars, spices, and baking stuff (I've sealed cracks in there about three other times). So I think I've identified where they are getting into the cabinet this time, way back in the far very hard to reach corner. I can only surmise that ants are teeming inside the walls of this house.

So, yeah, I'm going to caulk the cabinet and then settle down for more streaming.

a (not so) hidden danger, a task completed, and being lazy

Cat is hiding in the yellow butterfly ginger next to the bird feeder this morning while the chickadees, a wren, and a cardinal issue their warning calls. 

I had just filled the bird feeder and set out the cracked corn and peanuts. She's been going out with the dog and me first thing in the morning, the dog to do her rounds and take care of business, me checking for stink bugs on the tomatoes, and Cat poking around the flowers and when Minnie and I head back into the house she follows and comes in with us. This morning though it's foggy and wet and I did not go out with the dog and so Cat is hanging out under the ginger having followed me out when I was setting out the bird and squirrel food. The birds have given up. They'll come back after Cat comes in.

Another storm came through yesterday afternoon though we barely got any rain out of it while it poured on the other side of town at my daughter's house. I checked with Abby and then checked the radar and there was a big storm over El Campo so I didn't go to yoga last night. Which is well because grandgirls Jade and Robin came over and y'all will be glad to know that the roof is finally clear of leaves, downed branches, and overhanging limbs from the trees and I did not have to get up there and do it. Jade said she would and so she did. 

She not only shoved all the debris off, she swept it clean and pruned off all the branches from the crepe myrtle, magnolia, 

and chinese fringe flower that were brushing the roof or nearly.

Jade was here and Autumn was in route because they are leaving today for a week or so in Costa Rica to celebrate their birthday on Thursday when they turn 25! Some of you have been reading about these girls from the Granny Camp days and now they are going to be 25.

All these storms blowing through have made our mornings nice and cool though the days are humid and warm up fast. Apparently we're going to have a wet summer this year, far different from the long hot dry one last year when it was already getting into the 90s in February. I'm starting to see little baby pecans falling off the trees which is good I guess, just as long as plenty stick and grow, as my neighbor Gary says if they all developed they would be too heavy and break branches.

We've been watching The White Lotus on HBOMax (which is now just called Max) and watched the last episode of season two last night. The White Lotus is a hotel and the season follows certain of the guests and hotel employees during their week's stay. It's really good but if nudity, including full frontal male nudity, sex, gay sex, offends you then you might not watch it. There's a lot of sex and nudity and early in the first episode of the first season is a close up of a guy holding his penis up jostling his balls because he thinks he has cancer and wants his wife to tell him if they're swollen. The first season is set in Maui, second season (different hotel, same name) is set in Sicily. I know I've emphasized the nudity and sex but it's not really about that. It's mainly about the people with really good character development, their relationships, familial and otherwise, contentious and otherwise, power struggles among themselves and between the haves and the have nots. One character carries over into the second season but both seasons have surprising endings. It's been renewed for a third season which won't be out until the end of the year at the earliest. There's a couple of trailers on youtube if you want to check it out.

And that's about all I know. I went to the Farmer's Market on Saturday and bought some okra, a cantaloupe, a flowering plant with sky blue flowers, 

and a small bag of cookies. Sunday I did some housekeeping, vacuuming the house and cleaning the little bathroom. If I did anything yesterday, I don't remember. I'm in limbo right now, needing to shift my mental energy from outside work to inside work and by that I don't mean housework but some sort of creative work.

 

rain, religion, and Nope

Next Tuesday is the last cardio drumming class and Kayla will be heading back to her university to complete her study program. It's been a lot of fun and I'll miss the weekly class. I suppose the other women in the class will also, maybe especially two women who generally sit behind their ball and bucket drumming instead of standing and doing the footwork...the marching, the knee lifts, etc...as well as the arm movements and apparently I've been providing them with some side entertainment having fun watching me from behind. They aren't being mean or snarky just getting a kick out of watching me as I sort of dance a little in place, having fun getting into the music while I follow along with the drumming patterns. I guess I'm that kid in line at the ballet recital doing my own thing while the other little girls do the plies.

We finally got some good rain with the latest cold front dropping us down in the 50s again, about 4” total over three days. No rain predicted today though it's still overcast but it is starting to warm up. I finally ordered some orange oil on line which I need for my fire ant eradication program, dish soap and orange oil kills the shit out of them, better than the poison pellets I tried, and it arrived Thursday. Just in time since the rain has driven all the ants to the surface and huge mounds have appeared at the edges of my flower beds and in the yard. Too wet out there today to do anything about it but tomorrow they're all in for a big surprise. Now if I could just get rid of the grackles that have found my bird feeder just as easily.

Yesterday was Good Friday which is just another day to me having shrugged off christianity in my early 20s, and really have eschewed all religion since. As far as I'm concerned that whole Jesus died for my sins so I'm saved no matter what I do so I might as well be my worst self because, hey, I'm saved is nothing more than a 'get out of jail free' card. What the actual fuck? Be bad and suffer no consequences, except for that whole hell and tossed in the lake of fire thing which my evangelical cousin has reminded me will happen if I don't see the light. As for the suffering he was required to endure, if any of it is real which I doubt considering the religion was invented in Rome in the 4^th century, incorporating ancient myths (virgin birth and the dead and risen god is one of the most ancient god myths) and picking and choosing from wandering prophets eliminating all women's voices, was it worse than being hanged til you're almost dead, disemboweled, then being drawn and quartered or some poor soul captured by a sadistic bastard and tortured for days on end or having your body parts blown off by an IED? Humans are great at cruelty so if we are made in the image of god then that god is cruel (and don't get me started on having faith in god's plan). But hey, if it all gives you some kind of peace, then by all means go ahead on. I imagine my own personal understanding of the nature of life and the universe sounds just as wacky; just please, don't try to force others to adhere to your beliefs by legislating them.

We watched two more episodes of season 3 of The Mandalorian yesterday and I'm sorry to say, this season is not nearly as good as the two previous. Episode 6, the most recent one out, with Jack Black and Lizzo and Christopher Lloyd, was just plain ridiculous. We did watch an obscure (to me) 'neo-western sci-fi horror' film, Nope a while back. Kind of a kooky little film about a brother and sister trying to make a go of their father's horse ranch out in the wilds of California, a cloud that is not a cloud, and their suspicion and attempt to get the 'money shot' of the aliens they are convinced are there.

Being basically housebound for the last three days I have no current pictures except one I just took of my potatoes growing.

spring marches on and a trip to the theater

While I still have not had the time to get back to digging and planting the four tomato plants I bought Monday, I did walk around the yard and the shop yard taking pictures.

The pink climbing rose on the white crepe myrtle tree beside the garage,

the bluebonnets in the front yard,

the red bud tree I planted in front of the shop,

and the wisteria on the shop yard fence is just starting.

One of the things we tried to do Monday when we went shopping and bought the new washer and dryer was turn in the last of our old electronics that had been sitting around (an old iMac, two keyboards, and a printer) for recycling at Best Buy, only the store had closed so Wednesday we drove to the one in Sugar Land that was next to the Costco, our other destination, where we stocked up on a bunch of stuff. Today, the trunk of the car is filled with the flattened cardboard boxes from SHARE yesterday. I usually take it straight to the recycle container but it was drizzling when I left and I've got quite a bit of cardboard myself, like the box the water heater came in, so I'll add all that and do it today. The drizzle was supposed to be a storm front moving through bringing cool weather. If it rained, it didn't rain on us but it was a bit chilly this morning though two days from now we'll be back in the low 80s.

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My daughter Sarah works at a print shop and they do the printing for schools and businesses and theaters, etc. One of the theaters is the small theater-in-the-round, Main Street Theater. She occasionally gets comped tickets and so last Sunday she took my sister and me to see the current play by Thomas Gibbons, who (paraphrased from the playbill) explored the impact of race and racial equity on society through his play that was inspired by actual events that took place at the Barnes Foundation, “one of the world's greatest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, and modern art”.  Permanent Collection is about an eccentric collector of Impressionist paintings and his Morris Foundation/gallery that upon his death he bequeathed to a black college and a new black director. The stipulation of the will, however, said that the displays could not be changed ever. The new director wants to display some of the African art that is in the collection as well as some of the other art kept in the storeroom that no one ever sees. He clashes with a white employee who has devoted his career to this collection (and perhaps thinks he should have been named the new director instead of an unqualified stranger) and wishes to honor the terms of the will, no changes to the gallery or art displayed. The undercurrent, of course, is that of racism and while the white employee claims he is not a racist, insulted to be called racist, that his objection is based on the educational value of the display and honoring the wishes of the founder, he still says things, makes a proposal that made the audience gasp. On the other hand the new black director seems hypersensitive to subtle acts/words of racism and quick to make the charge, understandable as the opening shows him being pulled over by the cops on his way to his first day at the Foundation for driving while black in his Jag which could very well have led to his death by cop as so often happens in real life. The white guy resigns, lawsuits are filed, protests are staged and in the end nobody wins because attempted negotiations fail, neither side gives in, the foundation goes bankrupt, the director is replaced by the creator's black personal assistant, and the collection is moved to another part of town albeit with no changes. The idea of the play that caused the head butting was who now owns the art/gallery and what rights do they have related to that ownership? Does the original owner who collected the works, established the Foundation, set up the gallery and controlled how the collection was displayed and who could view the art and when, have permanent control in perpetuity after his death (it was after all stipulated in the will that the display of the collection could never change) after bequeathing the Foundation to another institution when half the collection remains unseen in the storage room? The play was very good and had a 'talk back' session afterwards that we didn't stay for since we had at least an hour's drive to get back home.

 

a day with Robin and other miscellaneous stuff

Waiting for the next front to come in which it did on Friday and it rained. Saturday was cold and windy and wet, Sunday was a gorgeous day, perfect for working outside but I had plans with my grandgirl Robin, so OK, Monday, I'll get back out there Monday, except it rained off and on all day. Damn, can't work on the vines, can't play with my new toy.

Robin wants to sew an oversize hooded jacket with bunny ears, so we drove to Shopping Mecca to shudder the other Evil Empire but their good lord saved us as they are closed on Sundays which I had forgotten. On to the nearest Joanne's for a pattern and fabric only they didn't have the only pattern that looked suitable enough so we segued to crocheting. She also wanted to crochet a hat so we looked at ALL the yarn until she selected some and a crochet hook and then we spent the next hour or so looking at all the paint and brushes and markers and sketch books and cake decorating stuff and cookie cutters and fake flowers and scrapbooking and stamps and christmas ornaments and every other other craft thing before finally looking at all the fabric until we decided we had seen it all. I had no plans to buy any fabric but how does one resist? I found a nice bolt of cotton that I really liked, thought it would make a good summer skirt and really I need another one because (here's the justification) I've about worn out the two I wear all the time (only sort of true).

Years ago when Robin was still a kid and was coming for her summer visits I taught her how to crochet but we never really got any farther than a basic chain stitch but she picked it up quickly. She also took to sewing faster and better than her two older sisters. Anyway, once home she found a video tutorial for crocheting a hat/cap and started on it. The yarn she picked out is blanket yarn, big and soft and fluffy and a pain in the ass to crochet even if you know what you're doing.

But she persevered and got a good start on the hat band and as it was getting dark she gathered up her stuff and headed home. 

About midnight I got this picture.

She watched the video again and soldiered on through without any guidance from me. That's her mom, my daughter Sarah, in the picture as the hat turned out too small for Robin. Plenty of yarn left, she's going to try again.

Did I mention it rained all day yesterday? About 4 PM I started texting Abby that I wouldn't be coming to yoga last night and before I finished I got a text from her: Skipping...too gross out. We were of like minds. So since I wasn't going to yoga we started watching a new series, The Peripheral on Amazon Prime, based on The Peripheral (The Jackpot Trilogy) by sci-fi author William Gibson. Set in a technology altered future Flynne, a young woman trying to hold her broken family together, discovers a secret connection to an alternate reality as well as a dark future of her own (paraphrased from a search description). We've only seen the first episode which had some pretty hairy parts so if dystopian brutality puts you off you might want to skip it. It's intriguing though, centers around virtual/alternate reality and time travel in a way.

The only other thing we did was meet with the guy who handles our investments because I had to take a mandatory draw from my IRA as the government only lets you put off paying taxes on that for so long so we're opening a new account with that and reinvesting it.

10 AM and still only 49˚ out there. Overcast but should start clearing soon. Burn ban has been lifted so that's on the schedule for this week.

I've mentioned that Cat wants to be part of the puppy pile but when she plonks herself down so she's touching both Minnie and myself, Minnie is having no part of it. Up her head goes and she moves to the other end of the couch. The other night sitting on the couch with Minnie laying under the blanket on my left and Cat in my lap, Cat moved stealthily leaving her back half on my lap and slowly gently laying her head on Minnie's blanket covered body reaching across it with her front leg. Minnie never noticed and there we all stayed until it was time for bed.

short stories, part whatever

One of the yellow butterfly gingers is blooming.

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The county lifted the drought induced burn ban two weeks ago and so last Friday Marc emptied the piled high truck bed onto the already higher than me burn pile and torched it. Meanwhile, I was picking up all the branches still laying around because, face it, what was the point of picking them up before with no place to put them. I have a small pile ready to go in the truck now that it's empty again.

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Grandgirl Autumn left Thursday morning, heading back to Austin. We got all her mending done except for replacing the zipper which I'll try to get done or find someone to do it. I hate putting in zippers. She had taken a week off her part-time job as barback at a small Marriott Hotel and wondered if they missed her or if she was going to get fired. She called Friday afternoon to tell me that not only is she not getting fired, they called her into a meeting to tell her how much they appreciated her work, her friendliness, her helpfulness, her attitude towards the guests, that they thought she was being underutilized and so they were only giving her Wednesdays for the next two weeks in order to train her as a bartender (this is the job she wants for the interim while she waits to see if her application to the Peace Corps is accepted). They had already hired someone to train as the bar back to replace her and Autumn, knowing that the bartenders were too busy to do that, volunteered to train the new guy.

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We're still hitting low 90s though next week we're supposed to drop down to high 80s and low humidity. Until we get there, hot afternoons are spent in the house and so yesterday we watched Enola Holmes on Netflix. The actor who plays Enola is the same that played Eleven in Stranger Things and she's really good. Enola is a young child when her father dies and her two older brothers, Mycroft and Sherlock, leave the estate for London. Raised and educated by her mother to be a strong independent free thinker who makes her own choices in life, she wakes up on her 17^th birthday to find her mother has left during the night. When her brothers return to handle affairs and claim the estate and turn her into a proper young lady, Enola runs away and her adventures begin. It's a really good movie.

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I finished the box a week ago and it's been sitting in the living room for us to enjoy before I start packing it up for the gallery. I think I'm going to add one little piece of coral, not the one I removed, in the back to fill a hole that probably only I notice and only from a certain angle, but that's me. I'll head over to the shop later to get that done and clean up and pull out all my boxes and packing materials.

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We get some strange donations to SHARE sometimes. Two weeks ago we got an 18” long by 4” diameter log of gouda cheese. That's just too much even for the biggest families we get so one of the guys cut it up and handed it out to the volunteers since we wouldn't be able to give it out once the wrapping was compromised. Last week, we got four 18” x 4” logs of colby cheese. What the fuck! Anyway, Jan handed them out to us volunteers and I took one, took it home and cut it up into six 2” thick chunks and handed it out to family and neighbors.

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And finally, from the Department of the Absurd, I saw this at the grocery store.

Dog water. Flavored dog water. Because plain ole' tap water or puddle water isn't tasty enough?