slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    I’m drinking my coffee on the deck this morning, thanking God for, among other things, the fact that I don’t have to worry about whether any of my cats are involved in the screaming cat fight going on across the block.

    Theo is yowling at the back door. He was obviously an inside-outside cat in his previous life. He got out the other day by mistake and now he is relentless in his demands for total freedom. He will not get it in this household, not on purpose.

    I had to move my chair away from my regular spot on the deck because I was greatly upsetting Mama Robin, who rebuilt the nest next to the back door in the crook of the gutter. As I’ve said many times, our lives are controlled by critters. So far the critters have not decimated the garden. My theory is that the rabbits enjoy the violets that I didn’t yank up this year more than the beans and peas, and that even though I was pissed at Sandy for removing the logs around my growing beds, the absence of slugs is going to make the garden less attractive to the raccoons. The squirrels will always be here though – there are maples, oaks, and walnut trees all over this neighborhood. I do like the squirrels when they are good though and I like to chat with them. The other night I heard a possum fight. You’d never know that I was living right beside downtown Greensboro from my writing.

    The grand re-opening of Elements Gallery last night was grand indeed; it was packed with wonderful art and people. It was exhilarating to know that I am a member of this tribe. I was supposed to work at the gallery today, and was looking forward to it, but they got a little behind on the renovations in the back and we could only get a temporary permit to have the opening last night. The hope is that we will be in permanent business by mid-week. The manager, Lorrie, pumped up my ego and I am grateful for that. I was feeling a bit stuck.

    I didn’t stay for the whole evening because my allergies are seriously kicking butt, so if I missed you, know that I am grateful for your attendance! I went to bed appallingly early without supper and slept for about twelve hours. I discovered recently that anti-histamines are causing my restless leg syndrome to worsen significantly and that has been bad news for my allergies this spring. However, I cannot say enough how happy I am to figure out what was making it so bad – I was truly miserable. I found that a heating pad on my back helps too. Now I’m waking Sandy up with MY snoring.

    Speaking of Sandy, he came home Thursday with something he has always wanted – a shaved head. I was having a great time calling him cueball, Daddy Warbucks, Kojak, and then last night he wrapped himself up in his big black bathrobe and he saw it before I did – he looks just like Uncle Fester. So we’re going to have some fun with this and take a few photos. I guess I’ll need to buy an eyeliner pencil.

    I am feeling a wealth of blessings this morning. I have so many choices of fun things to do, now that my hands are better. The hard part is deciding what to do first. I could work on the third tapestry on my copper loom so that I can take all three off and mounted or framed for the gallery soon. I could finish warping the loom in the studio and start weaving that fabric – not sure what it will be! Maybe bags? A shawl? I bought a book on making bags from small handwoven pieces. And, drum roll please, my NEW sewing machine arrived Thursday night so I could spend all weekend learning how to sew on it! I bought a Brother CS-6000i from Amazon for $164.00. The reviews on it were very positive.

    The trick here is not to get overwhelmed by the goodness and have a panic attack!

    Lots of other stuff happened this week too – my mother finally got her MRI results back and she will have an epidural shot on May 19, so I am relieved that she won’t have surgery at her age. I’ll still go down there but it will be for a few days rather than a couple of weeks. I’ve been saving up sick time at work for this possibility – my sister is overwhelmed with her work, husband’s health, and the care of her grandson, and my brother started a new job last year and can’t take off much time. He is going to start spending a night or two a week at her house, though. This summer I’m planning to go down there more often – somebody will have to pick those peas and butterbeans and corn! Mama asked the doctor what she was supposed to do with her cane when she picks peas. Yep, she is a character and keeps on going no matter what. She says that her pain medication is finally making her feel a lot better now, another thing to be thankful for.

    We have had all the ductwork removed from our house and the air tested. So most of the asbestos is gone now. I ran into a problem with my home equity loan by starting the work before the appraiser came though. They said that since there is construction going on I’d have to pay for a second appraisal after the work is finished and it would have to be closed by an attorney. @#$%! I don’t want to pay an attorney for bureaucratic bullshit so we are going to finish with the ductwork, stop to have it appraised, and then continue with replacing the furnace and air conditioning unit with an Energy Star system. I’m very happy that we are finally in a position to not only do this needed work, but to do it with a system that will be energy efficient and much, much healthier. But we have to get that loan, and I’m not inclined to pay any more than I have to on silly stuff.

    Okay, my coffee pot is empty. Time to go to the farmers’ market and begin my wonderful weekend!

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    I have a lot of continuing projects going on, and I don’t like to repeat myself so often, so I haven’t been posting lately.

    I visited my mother over Easter weekend, and went to church with her Sunday morning, even though I swore never to do so again. That might give you the idea – my mama is not doing very well and going to church with her was one of the only things I could do to make her feel better. She is in loads of pain – we think a pinched sciatic nerve – but she is also loaded with arthritic joints and osteoporosis. Amazing because she has been so active all her life, and we had plenty of dairy consumption at our house! She had an MRI the week before my visit but the doctor was on vacation this week so it has been a frustrating week waiting to hear what he recommends when he gets back. She is 87 and none of us want to hear that she has to have surgery because of the risks involved. It broke my heart to see her walking with a cane and in such misery, but still going, going, going because she just can’t stop herself. I will be planning to go down there a lot more often this summer once the semester is over and the gallery opening is over.

    Miss Jazz stopped eating on Good Friday, and it was downhill from there. She ate a little now and then but not enough to sustain herself. Sandy tried several things, but it was her time to go. She still went to the litterbox (note: not IN the litterbox) and to the food dish and then laid down beside them. She drank loads of water and we gave her chicken broth to drink. It was clear that her liver had failed, though, so Sandy made the decision to let her go on Tuesday morning. We were both with her and it was a peaceful passing, but of course when you have had an animal companion for 17 years it leaves a huge hole in your life when she leaves it.

    And, of course, the weather has been scary for a while, but our area was lucky and the tornadoes came close by but not through Greensboro. I was obsessed with tracking them.

    Greensboro Farmers’ Market Inc. barely won the vote of the selection committee. Now they have to get through the Parks and Rec committee and the City Council. There have been so many lies and innuendo goobering up this process that I don’t have any faith in politicians doing the right thing based on logic any more. It couldn’t have been more obvious that they had the best proposal – it should have been a slam dunk.

    Today we are going to the Liberty Antique Festival, an event so large that we never manage to get through all of it before fatigue and sun and aching muscles sent us on our way. I love this festival! It is by far the best I’ve ever attended, although I don’t like the food. We always buy some fudge for the trip home.

    Then we are going to Zaytoon for a community dinner honoring our friend Masoud. So I gotta go if we are to get all this in today!

  • The Jazz O’Neill Fan Club World Headquarters

    From my first website, “Jazzcat Productions”:

    MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW

    THE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

    by Jasmine O’Neill

    I was found as a small kitten trotting down a busy major thoroughfare in Greensboro, N.C. Sandy was with a friend at the vet when he spotted me and discovered I was up for adoption. Of course he was entranced with my beauty and took me straight home. Since then, I have lost my friend and mentor, Sharkey, and unfortunately have had to put up with two new toms, Guido and Squirt. I occasionally lower myself to groom them. They sometimes appreciate my acts of charity but are mostly annoying creatures. And worst of all, they sometimes take some attention away from ME with their crude antics. But enough about them!

    Here’s a picture of ME and Sharkey. As you can see, Sharkey understood his position in life as it related to ME. More creatures should spend time meditating on that. Jazz and Sharkey
    Jazz at the loom I am the director of feline resources at jazzcat productions. Here I am inspecting a warp on a loom – it seems that I have to do everything around here! So, I am not only gorgeous, but a very important career cat as well.
    This is a photo of ME and Guido before he became fat and obnoxious. Jazz and Guido

    My Favorite Actresses

    Michelle Pfieffer as Catwoman Julie Newmar as Catwoman Eartha Kitt as Catwoman

  • Miss Jasmine “Jazz” O’Neill, 1994-2011

    Miss Jasmine “Jazz” O’Neill
    Rest in Peace
    Summer 1994-April 26, 2011

    She was our princess and one of the smartest cats we ever knew. She was tiny and fearless and totally all about Jazz. She was Sandy’s baby girl.

    Here is a link to the “Jazz O’Neill Fan Club World Headquarters.” This came from one of the very first web pages I ever made.

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Wow, was this ever a long week! But it has been a wonderful week, in its own way.

    I debated whether to mention this, but I don’t think Sandy would mind. We hit a rough patch, and last week I really thought it was over. But we managed to talk honestly and thoroughly to each other, without a counselor, and said some things and listened to some things with our full attention on each other, and worked it out. Aren’t we lucky? It could have easily gone the other way had we not stopped and concentrated on our partnership and its problems and its benefits.

    Change is hard, and the change I was heading for scared the crap out of me. But it is better to take the leap and make change if you are miserable with the way things are. Really, if the present situation makes you unhappy, what do you have to lose? In our case, we both had to push some resentment out of the way and chip out some of our hard shells to be able to really focus, and we both had to compromise on a few things, and now I can say that even though it was scary and hard, I am so thankful that we did it. Because neither of us was happy, and now our future looks much brighter than it did a little over a week ago. I really thought that by now I would be writing about being newly separated.

    Anyway, we weathered that storm, and the big storms that came through the southeast yesterday. I’m still looking at the photos and news about the Carolinas getting pummeled by tornadoes. Some of the damage was in Robeson County, where I’m from.

    We went to the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market yesterday morning and bought a variety of tomato plants from Handance Farms, including Cherokee Purple, Early Pak 7, Rose, Brandywine, and Mortgage Lifter. The tomatoes are Sandy’s project this year. I suspect that it will be frustrating, since last years’ tomatoes bore the worst devastation ever from raccoons and squirrels.

    I have planted a variety of (lima) butterbeans and sugar snap peas and replaced a few herbs – English thyme, sage, parsley, chamomile. I bought an alpine strawberry to grow in a pot. My lettuce mix is coming up, but mostly in clumps so I’ll be separating and replanting some today. I have eight broccoli plants to plant – I will have to protect them from getting munched on by rabbits by putting some plastic juice bottles with the bottoms cut out over them. The problem is that these can get too hot in the daytime so I’m going to punch a few more ventilation holes in the sides (in addition to the top) with my cropodile. See, I knew that thing would come in handy one day!

    I moved some volunteer lettuces yesterday. Last Sunday afternoon we worked on the front yard, where I dug up some volunteer flowers and moved them to the strip between the sidewalk and the street. My rudbeckia (black-eyed Susan) volunteers that I transplanted last year reseeded and I hope to have a whole area of those cheerful faces. At least I imagine them with faces. Must be a childhood book or movie memory. I also noticed some dill volunteers.

    I love volunteers. We haven’t gotten any tomato volunteers this year for the first time because the critters did not let any of the tomatoes even get pink before they stole them.

    Now we need to do some major clipping. And by we, I mean Sandy, with my direction. I have been forbidden to clip for medical reasons. I have an “oriental garden tool” that I’ve been using for digging and weeding this year, and it is so much better on my hands! I bought it from Pinetree Seeds and it was well worth the money – this trowel will never bend out of shape!

    Sandy and I have also started walking again. One night we walked with the Piedmont Hiking and Outing Club, a group that we walked with probably ten years ago. We are pretty out of shape and felt even this mild exercise in our muscles. We have to get some exercise though, for a variety of medical reasons. I have developed pretty severe restless legs syndrome and discovered that antihistamines were making it 100x worse! So I’m struggling with allergies too – the trade-offs that you have to make sometimes are tough.

    Today I’m going to bind a couple of books and start getting my inventory ready for Elements Gallery, which opens on May 6.

  • Back Forty update

    The first harvest was carrots, and they have been eaten. These are mostly baby leeks, probably with a few green garlic bulbs in there. I’m going to chop them up, make cock-a-leekie soup and freeze some of it for stock. They had taken over some prime garden real estate and had to go. I did transplant about two dozen of them into one of the raised beds for this year.

    Also planted field peas. I found a bunch of saved Dixie Lee peas – I sure hope that they germinate because I love them the best. And broccoli plants. Sandy planted tomatoes. We weeded and pruned some. It was a good afternoon in the garden.

  • Puget Sound Sunrise tapestry finished

    Well, almost. I’m going to weave another half inch of blue to turn back for a hem at the top. And I’m trying to decide between the names “Puget Sound Sunrise” and “Port Townsend Sunrise” – I like the second for the preciseness of location, but the first for the sound of it, and that more people around here would recognize the words.

    I left it alone for a while because I couldn’t figure out how to weave those top clouds. I took out the very dark cloud I began with and I am much happier with the results.

    I didn’t use a cartoon for this tapestry. I usually had the photograph up in front of me to refer to. But sometimes it is best to strike out on your own and trust your brain. Weaving is not painting and has its own peculiar challenges – I left the days behind long ago when I thought that every image I created had to match an image in real life. Sometimes the little bit of OCD left in me nags at me and I have to push it away and have faith in my hands and eyes. So I didn’t refer to the photograph much when I wove those top clouds, and that helped me break through the artist’s block.

    Here’s the photo:

    I think that I’ll do another one based on this spectacular sunrise since I have many photos and it changed so much over the course of 30 minutes. But I’ll need to dye some more silk first. I am out of that luscious purple.

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    I’m surprised that I haven’t posted for a whole week. Not much has happened. I’ve pretty much been lazy – my left hand is not much better and my right hand started acting up. So I’ve gone back to the braces about half the time. I really hate those braces.

    The Back Forty is calling me – it is so hard to stop myself from digging and planting. Some wildflowers are coming up in the front yard and I’m considering transplanting them. Violets are everywhere and I gathered them on my walks from time to time, popping the blossoms into a freezer bag for a natural dyeing project later when I can handle it better.

    I’ve been pretty depressed this week, actually. Gardening has been my major anti-depressant for some time now, and the food activism and volunteerism has been a thoroughly disheartening experience this past year. We’re still waiting to find out who will take over the operation of the GFCM. I still find myself hoping that the real farmers will relocate and set up a real local market some place else, and let the resellers keep that market.

    I plan to plant the small spaces that I have left in the back yard with butterbeans and field peas and herbs. Those, along with leeks and garlic and carrots, are the only things that do well and don’t get eaten totally by the critters. It’s turned cold again so I’ll wait a few more weeks to plant those.

    We decided to take out a home equity loan to pay for the new furnace and ac unit, pay off the little left on the car, and a few other things that we’ve needed around here for a long time. I can have the payments taken out of my paycheck every month and it will be cheaper than the car payment was. Now that we are itemizing our deductions it seems to be the smartest thing to do. I think that Sandy and I are pretty safe as far as keeping our jobs for a long time.

    With that in mind, I took a plunge and put down a reservation for a beachfront house at Sunset Beach for my family to get together in this summer. My aunt and cousin and cousin-in-law are coming to North Carolina, and this seemed to be the time to do it. It had to be a large house, but it is one of the older ones down there so the price was fairly reasonable. Still, it was almost twice what I expected once the tax was added in and I sort of got myself into it without understanding the real cost. Fortunately there will be plenty of people to pitch in, mainly my sister’s family, so I feel excited instead of stressed about it now. I felt like it was time for me to take the lead in planning one of these family vacations since this has always been my sister’s realm.

    Who, by the way, is looking at a house at Lake Waccamaw this weekend, just down the road from my cousin’s house. I hope that it will have room for me to park a tiny house there when I retire. Another big dream! I doubt that I’ll ever get to retire!

    I cleared out half of my closet yesterday and took the clothes down to the donation bin at Deep Roots. Now I have room to put some shelves in the other half for studio supplies. I’ll stack boards on books, this time only a couple of shelves up from the floor so that I don’t have another shelving crash disaster.

    Today, my goal is to finish the taxes, then make some alcohol dyed and painted papers. Watch the movie Juno. Eat leftover beef stew (beef from Rocking F Farm, carrots and rosemary from my garden, onions, garlic, potatoes, mushrooms from Deep Roots) and make sauce for lasagne or spaghetti with ground turkey from Deep Roots. I’m going to make this a better day.

  • Another new book

    This is another tiny book for which I made the components in Albie Smith’s class at An Artful Journey, then bound it later at home. The cover is made with a thick gesso stenciled on bookboard, then painted. The stitch is “French twist” or “herringbone.” The paper is Stonehenge and will stand up to wet media and collage well. I stenciled and painted the colorful signature page covers.

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Feeling kind of blue – I can’t tell any difference in my hand after three days.

    The Hand-to-Hand Market was fun, but I guess that I can stop expecting to sell books at these one-day events. I did sell a Squirtly print and a Squirtly card, which did not make up for the very inexpensive price of the space, but at least I sold something! I will have to make more of these since they seem to be the only things that I sell here in Greensboro. Hey my buddha kitty Squirt, out there in the universe, thank you, buddy!

    The best part of these events is becoming a part of the artist community in Greensboro, which will continue with another group of fabulous artists when Elements opens in May. I always enjoy seeing my friends at these events, artist and non-artist! Tristin gave me some words of encouragement, saying that she had heard a lot of positive comments about my books and that they wanted me to be a part of future events. Really, at this point of my life, I am not devastated when my work doesn’t sell at fairs and events. I’m doing it to feel the excitement and energy of being with other people who share my passion for creativity. But I can’t say that I’m not a little disappointed. As I said yesterday, I’d like to stop selling online, but I have had more sales online than I have had at events. Maybe the gallery will change that, although I am approaching it as a place that will cost me $50 and a day of work per month to have fun! That way anything that I sell will be a wonderful cherry on top.

    Today is a yellow socks day, which is sort of the equivalent of Powdermilk biscuits. I wear them when I need the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. We need to organize and maybe try to do our taxes, which will be more complicated this year because of Sandy’s medical bills last year. And we simply have to stop procrastinating about giving Miss Jazz her fluids. I don’t know why we dread it so much – it is really not that bad and she even seems to enjoy it.