slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    Doesn’t look like I’m going to yoga this morning. I slept late and I have things to do this morning. Sleeping late was so wonderful. I moved into the other bedroom around 4 a.m. and so I wasn’t awakened by snoring or cats using me for a pillow or a balance beam. And then, I had the most beautiful dream. The kind of dream where your deepest wishes come true, and even the obstacles in your way end up being laughed off as fun. I won’t bore you with it, because it would only be meaningful to me, but I’m still feeling it deeply. I’ll have to journal it before I lose it completely.

    I just found out that my city district has changed to District 3. I don’t even know who my councilperson is now. I guess that it IS helpful to read the local news now and then.

    Speaking of the news, I’m very happy that Greensboro College, a small college where I worked for five years, seems to have finally stabilized. It took getting their president to resign, and that brought me a lot of closure because he had hurt my family and so many other people that I knew, directly or indirectly. I always said that I’d fight against him if he dared to run for public office, but he brought himself down, thank God. I’m less and less interested in politics. Now my old boss can get on with his life, since they just found a new interim president.

    I need to cover myself with skeeter repellent, rinse out the iris leaves that I cooked last night (has to be done outside), take those to Susanne, and then pick butterbeans. Once my pulp is ready I’ll be making paper this weekend.

  • I’m sure that I passed the test, but I know that I blew one big slide ID. I hope that the professora is kindly and will note that I at least got the point about the importance of the symbolism in the mosaic. I hate memorizing dates and locations. I can’t remember musicians and titles of songs either, which makes it tough to find songs that I like again. Hey, I did get today’s date right on the front of the blue book.

    Right now I am cooking iris leaves in water and soda ash on the stove. Susanne is going to make the pulp for me tomorrow in her Hollander beater.

    One of my co-workers brought me a copy of Dirty Dancing because she was appalled that I hadn’t seen it. It came out around the time of my wedding and even if I had had time to watch it we couldn’t afford to go to movies and we didn’t have a VCR. I missed a lot of movies from the 80s for this reason. I was what is referred to now as the “working poor.” I can’t explain why I never watched it after that. I liked Patrick in Ghost but I can’t think of anything else I saw him in. I’m a book person, not a movie person like my husband, who sees everything before I do, either online or at the movies. I think that he’s given up on me and movies, and I can’t blame him.

    So if I can get my DVD player to work, I’m going to watch Dirty Dancing tonight. And try to rest my back for papermaking – it has been hurting all day.

    Oh yes, I cooked butterbeans and okra with just Liquid Smoke and salt and pepper. So good! And steamed some broccoli from the garden. I think that broccoli is a vegetable that I will give up trying to grow in the Back Forty, or maybe I’ll try it next year as just a fall crop. I planted these in spring and they’ve just taken up space all summer long for a very small harvest. The tomatoes finally hit their peak but I’m still getting a few. This rain will help the rest of the harvest a LOT but I will have to resign myself to wearing mosquito repellant until frost – it is impossible to go out there for more than a couple of minutes without becoming bug lunch.

  • Educayshun

    I’ve spent too much time daydreaming about traveling and art retreats and such and did not get the kind of studying done that I should have for my exam tomorrow. I glanced at the study guide earlier this week and have been rereading the textbook. Now I look at the study guide and I’m supposed to know dates for the slide IDs. Well, now that I think about it, it probably won’t matter that I didn’t study longer because either they’ll stick or they won’t. It’s hard to believe that I ever thought I’d become an actress because I can’t memorize worth a crap.

    Anyway, I left my class notes at the office, and it’s too late to get them, so I hope that studying them during my lunch break before class will be enough.

    This is why I have recurring school nightmares. I’ve never left it.

    It’ll be fine – a bad grade for me personally would be a B, but as long as I pass the course that will be enough for what I want to accomplish.

    Yesterday in class I was miserably sleepy, the kind of sleepy when you are desperately trying not to fall asleep. I wrote notes and scribbled constantly to try to stay awake, and I fell asleep while I was still writing. It’s not legible, but it was so funny when I saw it that I woke up enough to make it to the end of class.

    Eh, architecture and dates aren’t my thing. I like the other parts, like the cultural, political, and religious history. But show me an apse and my eyes will start to glaze over. I knew this, yet I registered for this class anyway.

    Maybe a D won’t be so bad. Gotta go memorize some dates now.

  • The Italy trip is off again. I’m not totally surprised because I knew that Susanne would have some major hospital bills from this summer. To tell the truth, I was stressing a little bit about spending the money.

    What is ironic about it is that I found out just after I decided to try to spend an extra two weeks there as a volunteer, and got permission for the time off. There will be other friends there volunteering, and it wouldn’t have cost me much more because I would have gotten free room and board for working four hours a day. But it just doesn’t feel the same to me now.

    There are other art trips that I could take, even to Italy, for the same amount or less. Or I could pay off the car. Or I could go to Italy with Anne-Marie. Or I could go back to Washington and do another art retreat. Or at Hampton, Virginia. Or John C. Campbell Folk School. Or Penland. Or take another cruise with Sandy. Or wait until next year to go back to Spannocchia with Susanne. I mean, there are so many choices that I have in my life. It makes me realize how incredibly lucky I am instead of disappointed. Isn’t that wonderful?

    And yeah, I do think that I’ll have the root canal next week, so all my choices are not so rosy! :-b……..

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Sitting out in the gazebo this morning. I’m telling you, when it is not muggy and warm this is my favorite place other than Lake Waccamaw. Which was kind of the point when I bought this contraption last summer – I needed a beautiful place to hang out that was screened to keep away the skeeters, and the only place that I had to go like that was three hours away at Lake Waccamaw. I was afraid at the time that I wouldn’t be able to go there much anymore, so to soothe myself I bought this 9X12 screened gazebo on clearance, and paved it with cardboard, landscape fabric, and then cement pavers. I think that it is one of the best purchases I have ever made.

    Right now I am reading the news and getting ready to finish binding a book then do some more painting paper covers. I have some excellent old free books to play with too – also three record album binders that I’m mulling over how to alter them.

    Yesterday’s yoga was interesting in two ways. One was that I made it through the whole time period because I am in terrible shape. I had a couple of times when I just had to take a breather because my arms wouldn’t hold me up any more or I couldn’t get balanced. The class used easy poses but we moved continuously from one pose to another to live music, so it was a mild work-out. I highly recommend it and I plan to go back. They need participants and it is by donation. Grow Yoga – Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. above the Green Bean in downtown Greensboro. I’ll probably go on Thursday nights because Saturday mornings are fairly sacred as Farmers Market and grocery shopping times.

    The second interesting thing is that there is a small possibility of renting the place with them as a co-op of artists with the same kind of lifestyle interests. It is a beautiful space with a kitchen and hardwood floors with large windows facing the street. J and C said that it is possible that it will be rented to someone else and that they may only have use of it for the next few weeks. I told them that if they could get together a few more people I’d be interested in renting it with them for a studio/gallery space, if it doesn’t get rented to the other person.

    This has been a dream of mine for a long time, but it seems to always fall through, or I’m not able to afford it at the time. I have rented and shared a studio before and I got an enormous amount of satisfaction and work out of it. Then it flooded and that pretty much settled that, since I lost a lot of supplies and early artwork to water damage and mildew.

    I’m trying not to get TOO invested in this idea since there is more than a good chance that it won’t happen, but I have to wonder if this is falling into my lap because I called it to me. I have told others many times that I would love to have a space where I could not only work on my art but show and sell it and teach lessons. This place is close to my house and is perfect as far as I can tell. It’s just that it’s expensive and would have to be split by at least 5-6 people for me to begin to afford it.

  • Gah. Feels like I travelled back in time to last Saturday. Sinus infection comes roaring back and puts my puny self in its place.

    I did go to the yoga session this morning, and I will continue to do this. Zha K and daughter picked me up and also took me to lunch to Fishbones afterward. So the day began well anyway. I’ve been sleeping or lying down with an ice pack since around 2:00.

    Yuck. I have a refill on the antibiotics and will get that filled tomorrow, but I also probably have to face the necessity of this root canal after all.

  • Work potluck tonight – fun, good food. I bound one book that I really like and I hope to bind a few more by Sunday afternoon, when I’ll post photos. The fabulous Zha K and I are going to the Green Bean tomorrow morning to a yoga session. It will be the first real sustained yoga that I’ve done in several years so I’m sure that I’ll have to cut myself a lot of slack. I was always the least flexible person in the room even when I was doing it regularly.

    Broke in Cat’s great hiking boots today, walking around campus. I need to take them to a shoe repair place to have them stretched to fit my boat paddle feet, but other than them being just a tad too narrow I am quite pleased with this score. I’d like to take a little time to hike while I’m in Washington so I need to start getting in shape now!

  • Still not much to say. Not feeling terrible. Not feeling great. I’m hitting one of my busy periods at work so at least the days are going quickly.

    Here’s a little teaser: I should have several new books by Sunday and will post photos and put them on Etsy.

    Made potato salad tonight for a work potluck tomorrow night with organic potatoes, red and yellow peppers from Rudd Farm, sweet onion and huge eggs from a farmer that I need to ask his name, organic sweet pickle relish, mustard, salt and pepper from Deep Roots, parsley and thyme from the Back Forty, and good ole Duke’s mayonnaise. I’ll never give it up.

    I swear, the more that I watch the news, the more that I want to emigrate. Canada would be nice and cool.

  • A rather dull day, but the weather was beautiful. We turned off the AC for the year Sunday night. I’m delighted to spend time in the gazebo again, and I’m pleased with my artwork.

    I just finished Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. I picked it up on the free shelf and wanted to read it because my brilliant 8-year-old grand-nephew read it this summer. It looked good and I would have been really amazed that he could read it, except that he is so much like me when I was little. I don’t remember not knowing how to read. The bookmobile brought me stacks of books every two weeks and I always finished them long before they came back. I loved the bookmobile, and I loved to read. Lately I’ve become aware that I missed a lot of children’s classics, though, and I’ve been picking them up periodically.

    My mother and sister remember being surprised at me picking up a newspaper and reading aloud to them a story about a man that we knew who committed suicide – must have been early elementary school. They sometimes had to keep books away from me, not that there was anything lewd in that house. And my parents were not avid readers at all.

    A big appeal of Inkheart is that the main characters have an unusual passion for books. The father is a bookbinder, the aunt is a book collector, and the daughter and mother simply love to read. It probably seems over-the-top to most readers, but I felt an immediate connection to this love for books.

  • Much Ado About Nothing, or, A Day with Dentists.

    I had the crown replaced with a temporary this morning, which only required one novacaine shot that barely hurt. They seemed to be prepared for my argument against going to the endodontist this afternoon, smiled sweetly, and told me that it would be best to go with the original plan.

    So I came home, ate an egg salad sandwich, decided not to take any pain meds that would mess up this test, took my paints back to the gazebo and painted paper and covers to distract me. Ate a Valium at 1 p.m. that kicked my butt, which took me by surprise because the one I took last night actually gave me the heebie-jeebies and I had to take another one to get to sleep. Sandy made sure that I got into the office in one piece and waited for me.

    It didn’t take long because once she got the crown off, the tests showed that the nerve was still alive. She had planned to do the root canal if the nerve was dead. I thought that it would be the other way around but what do I know. However, she was still 50-50 on whether to do it or not because she said that it might be a chronically inflamed nerve. She gave me the choice of doing the root canal today or testing it again in two weeks. Well, if I had been in the pain that I was in last week I might have said do it, but I really didn’t feel the motivation.

    So, if I have any tooth pain after tomorrow, I’m to go back. If not, she’ll check it in two weeks and if it’s okay I’ll get my permanent crown put on. She showed me the x-ray and explained that it would be a difficult root canal regardless, but if I get the permanent crown first and then need the root canal, it would be even more problematic.

    Then I came home and took some pain meds, slept off the Valium, and woke up with the cats piled up all over me.

    Now I’m going to try to forget about teeth for two weeks. It will be nice to have a beer after work again.