slowly she turned

Hopefully I won’t forget to click publish on this one like I forgot last time. There’s a lot going on and not much interesting to write about, not that I feel like I can share publicly anyway. I scheduled a lot of annual doctor and dentist visits this week and next and boy is it tiresome. Especially now that the robots send me multiple texts, emails, and calls to remind me of the appointments. Really, it is overkill. I turned my phone on to airplane mode this morning to sleep late and as soon as I turned it back on, up popped another text, this time for the dentist. Our robot overlords have finally taken over, and it is a scary scenario, people.

We finally caught the edge of that heat wave beginning Thursday night and received a good thunderstorm, complete with flash flood warnings. I’m glad that we don’t live in a flood zone because it seems like we get a flash flood warning with every sizable rain storm. While it’s good to have a notification system, the story about the boy crying wolf seems applicable here. My little garden, despite the early problems with critters nibbling it, is doing better. I planted a couple of Marketmore cucumbers and I’m training them up vertically. A critter ate the bottom leaves but the rest is doing fine. One of them is on a wicker stool that I trash picked winding up a lovely metal plant thing-a-ma-jig that I also trash picked. It was full of styrofoam that I had to cut out of it and it made a mess that was hard to clean up. I stay conscious of the problem of plastics and toxic materials in our environment. I was handed a plastic cup of water last weekend so I poked holes in the bottom and transferred a couple of Sungold tomato seedlings into it, hoping to get a plant for late fall. They will need to grow a little faster!

Anyway, right now we have the problem of an awful smell in our house that I now suspect is a dead critter in the crawlspace. It is much less today, thank God. We’ve been cleaning out the bottom cabinets in the kitchen to try to find it. Either a dead critter or a rotten potato, maybe? I found a mouse nest with no mice behind some stuff under the sink. It had been pulling dryer lint out of the garbage. Pablocito probably took care of that problem weeks ago. So far we haven’t had any luck finding the source of the stink but it’s been a good opportunity to deep clean and get rid of some stuff. I boiled cinnamon on the stove last night to make the smell more bearable and this morning I hardly smell it at all, although that blessing might be due to stopped up sinuses. Ah, the joys of a 101 year old house. It’s got character and history, but there’s no way to keep the varmints out.

So, other than deep cleaning and such I’ll be continuing weaving on this^^^. I began the eye this week. I also bought an online class from Laurie Doctor. I know, I know, I’ve got a problem with buying online classes and never getting past the first week of them. I always think that this time will be different. A large part of her teaching is how to set up your art practice and make it a daily practice. I find it hard to do that because my sleep is precious in the morning and I flop after work each day. I’m going to try to find a good time to schedule an hour for studio practice each evening.

One thing good that happened amid the shitty week that we had, was that my gynecologist recommended several things to relieve my hot flashes and night sweats, and one of his suggestions was gabapentin. We have a big bottle of 300 mg gabapentin that was prescribed for Sandy when he had shingles that he said didn’t help so he stopped taking them. It is 2.5 years old but the doc said to try it and see if it helps, and y’all, this is a magical pill. Not only has it stopped my night sweats (mostly) but it has helped my restless legs. I sleep THROUGH THE NIGHT. I don’t hurt. I don’t feel like I need to turn over constantly or stretch or make sure my knees don’t touch or get up to do yoga or crack all my toes and knuckles. The only thing is that I sleep so hard that I am groggy in the morning. So I have an appointment with my G.P. Monday afternoon and I’m going to ask her to prescribe me a lower dosage, since the bottle says not to split the capsules.

I’ll close this post with a couple of photos of art from our favorite deli, First Carolina Deli on Spring Garden St. The kid’s art is in the women’s bathroom. I keep thinking that I will do a tapestry using children’s art as a cartoon.