Reading my book again. Primary take away: it’s really good and I shouldn’t give up (good thing that’s my takeaway because I checked Query Tracker this morning and there it was in red : 49 queries, 100% rejected). It’s also good to reread to catch more typos or content questions.
Mixing cowries and pawpaws? Must research a little more and then fix.
Still life. I’m gonna make a heart for myself. What do you think of that?
I continue to populate this one with windows and roof outlines. With all the dire climate news this and last week, part of me wants to either : fill in all blank areas with scarlet red stitches or surround the piece as is with some of the Global Warming sections I have downstairs. They’re full of hot colors, swirls for storm maps, out-of-control vegetation — all overstitched with words like “hoax” and “try raking the forest.”
What is THIS?Sweetspire everywhere!
Happy fourth everyone! I may listen to Frederick Douglass’s speech as read by James Earl Jones over on YouTube later this afternoon.
Today’s walk generated six haiku. Since that’s too many for my monthly recap, here they are. I’m posting from my phone (where I have yet to figure out how to single space), so I’ve employed slashes to indicate line breaks.
Can I just admit / I do not like paprika / either smoked or sweet?
Look down for a change. / Mica chips in the sidewalk / offer sly beauty.
Mia Farrow tires / of Harry-Meghan stories. / She’s a racist now?
Code switching is not / new. Can we stop pretending / that it is? Jesus!
Since New York Lucy / said pacing is a problem / thirty pages — gone!
Every morning: a / red dot, but there is no call. / It’s a ghost. I swear.
So my car fob went missing a while back, possibly as long ago as our trip to the Berkshires in early February. I checked every pocket. I looked in bowls and baskets. K took down the suitcase from the birthday trip and I checked its every pocket. No luck.
This was such a sustained case of “Where’s My?” that I had a chance to develop a new search trick. Get this, rather than looking in every zippered or unzippered section of every purse you might have used recently, carry all your bags out to the car in a fistful and see if the door unlocks. A short cut!
I regularly use: two hobo dog-walking bags (that I made), a smaller zippered pouch (that my mother-in-law made), a beautiful new voluminous bag that Ginny gave me recently. I occasionally use two other small-ish shoulder bags.
Even if my trick arose out of a pathetic lifelong flaw and will only work with car fobs, I’m very proud of it.
The loss didn’t hamper my style for two reasons. One — I hardy go anyway these days. Two — I could borrow my husband’s. However, given my predilection for losing things, using my husband’s fob came with an unspoken but shared concern that I would eventually misplace it too. Then we’d be out some bucks.
So not ideal.
Anyway, this morning five seconds after I announced with a weary sigh that I didn’t think I was gonna find my fob — ever — I found my fob.
It was in one of my BlueQ zippered pouches. I use these funky little pouches when I travel for things like dental floss, thread nippers, and hair clips. This practice was necessitated years back when I started using a messenger bag that one of the boys left behind, a big roomy thing with no inner divisions (clearly not designed by a woman).
Is she still taking about bags?
It’s a shame you can’t fake the belief that a misplaced item is not coming back. Otherwise, I’d have feigned my fatigue and said it’s gone with breathy resignation five weeks ago!
PS. I’m not wringing my hands over this. It’s kinda funny, really. I am still thinking about a post of Grace’s from 12/28/2014, linked to her most recent post. She talked about her beloved dog, Tay, who recently passed, and how she was a little immune to shaming words, and to praise as well. How healthy is that? I was inspired.
Another harder reflection was to note the date, see my absence from the long line of comments, and to wonder what life-sucking drama was playing out in Salem then. My sister was born on the 27th of December, so chances are I made the effort to see her on that day, but rarely a year went by without her making a stink about being neglected around her birthday. It’s a time of year I’ve historically dreaded even as I tried to prevent her lonely victimhood with generous gifts. I am going to resist the temptation to pull out a journal and see the particulars.
The rake is cold in my hands, the absence of gloves testament to how often a gardening task happens without forethought.
I hear my oft-repeated assertions of the last several weeks: “I’m not gardening this year. I’m just not.” If there was a sound track for a husband’s eye rolling, I’d insert it here.
Every year, the satisfactions make themselves known and why do I forget? — the soothing rhythm of movement, the visible results, the smell of dirt.
Yes, lots of plants have suffered lately, particularly newly planted shrubs, making investments rather less than ideal. Will it be mind-meltingly hot again this year? Will the body find itself pleading with the heavens for rain?
We’re supposed to get some more snow, a right nor’easter heading toward the Cape, heavy accumulation predicted for west and south of here. So after I cleared the sedum of dead leaves, I thought the better of it and slid back a protective layer. They’re hardy buggers, but still.
I could spend an entire summer caring for what’s here and filling a few containers with annuals. I think that’s what I mean by “not gardening.”
