slowly she turned

We haven’t been to the lake since April and will take a short trip down there with a couple of friends soon. We were going to go this past weekend and stay through the week, but between the heat wave and my reluctance to leave Pablocito alone for the first time in his life, we turned around and came back home, unpacked the car, and have spent most of the last few days inside in the cool air conditioning.

I need to get over this about Pablocito. I mean, it’s a valid concern because we have always had more than one cat, always. And now that Diego is gone, he follows me around and is much needier for attention than he used to be. I guess this may be partly my fault, since I have spoiled the hell out of him in my own need for a cuddly kitty. I don’t think that Pablocito will ever be a lap cat or particularly cuddly. He hates being picked up and he won’t sit on the sofa between us. He does love to be petted and will sit nearby. He also loves to play and last night I found out that an emery board was a good toy for him. He used to chase and jump up to bat a wadded up ball of paper but now he ignores that. He’d rather play with a shoestring dangling around him.

Our neighbor who watches our house and takes care of our cats loves Pablocito and I have no doubt that he will get some love and attention while we are gone.

Here’s some great news: I was on a wait list for Bryant Holsenbeck’s Sculptural Papermaking class at John C. Campbell Folk School in August, and I got in! I really did not think that I would get in, and I had already decided that if I had the chance I would have to turn it down. It was bad timing, because in June we got hit with our bill for the Scotland tour, an unexpected expensive air conditioner repair, and Diego’s vet bills. Then I had to pay for Edwina’s week long workshop coming up at Wildacres in September, which I committed to months ago and I would not miss for the world. So onto the credit card it went. When I discussed it with Sandy, he thought for a minute, and then said, “It’s only money.” He’s been writing me checks every couple of weeks since June.

Maybe I should explain that Sandy and I have had separate bank accounts since the second year of our marriage. I think that it has been one of the major reasons we have been married for 37 years. We divided up the bills to be equitable, and it has worked out quite well since neither of us are ones to be told what to do with our money. But I do consult with him on big expenses since we ARE married and legally that has consequences. Certain big expenses we split. The major thing we agree on is staying out of debt. Sandy was in charge of the mortgage and he paid it off early. Our cars are both over 15 years old, but we have been vigilant about taking them for regular maintenance since I had to junk my 1996 Chevy at the beach during the pandemic. I hope that we might get by without having to do a car payment for another long period of time.

Anyway, I’ve studied with Bryant before, and this class description presses several of my joy buttons, and god knows I need some joy making after the past several weeks. I plan to get out the unfinished stuff that I put away from the last class I took with her and make some more wire armatures. I think that I need some instruction to do this better, though. Working with wire feels so awkward to me. I need active encouragement.

I am a bit wary of the uptick in Covid cases around us. It seems like every time I open Facebook one or two of my friends announces that they have Covid. When you consider that not everyone tells about their personal lives on social media, this is significant. We went to Walgreen yesterday to see about getting boosters, and I talked to the pharmacist. Turns out that there hasn’t been a new booster since our last one in October, but they are expecting the next one this fall. He said that getting another of the same one would still be helpful, but the issue is that if we get it now, and the updated one comes out before our trip, we would have to wait three months before we can get it. It is less than three months before we fly to Scotland, so we decided to wait.

It’s hard to believe that our trip is that soon! This is definitely another bucket list item for both of us. We will spend extra time in Edinburgh, and probably take an extra bus tour to northern England (I want to go to Northumberland and Lindisfarne) but for eight days we will be with a group taking trains, buses, and boats throughout the Highlands. I won’t be responsible for any of it!!! It will be chilly for sure, but considering that the heat index outside this week has been over 100 F, that sounds refreshing to me. I much prefer cold to heat.

Anyway, I will be doing a lot of things that I love most in the next three months, and that is the best treatment that I know of for my depression and agoraphobia. Now, my anxiety is a different matter entirely and I have gone back to therapy for that. I will be driving by myself into the mountains TWICE. Agoraphobia is a sneaky little bastard and I’ll do whatever I can to keep it at bay, except maybe go out into this heat today, ha ha. But you have to push through it. You can’t let it win because it will make a lot of plausible excuses and and little by little it will corral you into progressively smaller cages.

I’ve been doing a lot of stitching, and I recently added a lot of the photos to the slideshow on my gallery page. I’ll do an art post pretty soon.

Also reading: “Shuggie Bain” by Douglas Stuart, a well written, gritty, and potentially sad novel set in late 20c Glasgow, and “Penmarric,” an oldie by Susan Howatch set in Cornwall. I finished “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride, and any book that I read now has to be a damned good one to follow that. I waited for it for almost a year on my Libby app. I also “finished” (quotes because I know I’ll go back to it again and again) “Come Walk with Me” by Roberta Wagner. Perfect for keeping my art mojo alive during this tough emotional time in my life.