slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Saturday afternoon coffee pot post

    ^^^Pablocito in his nest.

    During which we need to consider what to have for lunch today, since it is already 12:45.

    Things aren’t great in Laurie Land, but I am getting through it a day at a time. The main concern is Sandy – he is in a lot of pain this week and started seeing his old chiropractor on Wednesday for hip pain. He is quite upset and I empathize, having gone through the kind of pain he describes for years. There are other things going on that I won’t go into in a public post, but suffice it to say, the shit is piling up quickly.

    Yesterday I came home from work with a really bad headache, which is not unusual for me to get a headache that time of day, but then I saw my full mug of coffee still sitting on the counter. If you know me at all, you know that I cannot exist without coffee. For many years I drank it all day long, until insomnia put a stop to that. I drew a cartoon poking fun at myself during my college years, in which I always had a cup of coffee or a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Anyway, I drank the coffee at 5 p.m. and therefore I read a book until 4 a.m. At least it is Saturday and I could sleep all morning, but I had just gotten my sleep schedule more on target. Next week I have so much to do that there isn’t going to be the option of sleeping all morning.

    Today I am looking at ice covering the branches of the trees and the back porch steps. I hear the ice fall off the branches with little crashes as it begins to melt and let go. I could probably learn a lesson from the ice today – I just am not sure what that lesson is. Do I let go and crash? Would the breaking apart on impact be a good thing or a bad thing?

    The book that I became entranced with last night is Paper Wife by Laila Ibrahim. I was reading a paperback copy of The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black (aka John Banville), trying to get back to my quest of reading as many physical novels as I can before I get rid of them, especially those by Irish writers, and getting away from screen time just before bed to help me sleep. I had downloaded a copy of Paper Wife to my Kindle as part of the Prime Reading freebies, and decided to read the first chapter to see if I wanted to keep it. Next thing I knew it was 4 a.m. and I am over halfway through the book.

    I also keep a copy of The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats beside my bed for heavier reading that helps me snooze after a chapter but also teaches me a few things. For example, with all the art history that I took, I had no idea of what he was referring to when he wrote about the Pre-Raphaelites. I researched it and learned that was a small art movement that included William Morris and writers, actors, dancers, and artists of the 19th century in Great Britain. Well, yeah. I’m interested.

    Also, I never realized how little I knew about the history of socialism until recently. Somehow I thought that it started in earnest in the early 20th century, not mid-19th century.

    Hopefully I will get some tapestry weaving done today, but there are a lot of things that need to be done in this house that I’m pretty much doing my myself now, and I probably need to do a little of the work I do to earn a paycheck, since next week will be pretty hectic. I got a little weaving during the week.

    Daydreaming about Portugal, but honestly, for me Portugal is a way to get EU citizenship so that I can go to Ireland. And if I stay in Portugal, I will be closer to Ireland. I probably spend too much time noodling around the Portugal ex-pat sites and AirBNB.

    Looks like I may be able to get vaccinated after March 10, and my workplace might set up a clinic for its employees. Now if we could only get Sandy an appointment. He says that by the time he fills out the form online, the appointment slot is taken and he moves to the next available, and the next, and then skips ahead, and they’re gone. This week has had other challenges, so I doubt that he has checked since Monday. I’m going to call on Monday for him. He finally agreed to calling his doctor on Monday, so maybe he can get one there. I don’t know. The other issues are actually more pressing right now.

    It has reminded me of the night when I finally decided to sit down with him for a serious talk about my own health challenges and how I needed more help from him, and he was so distracted (“I think I drank too much caffeine today!”) and obviously not listening that I got angry and walked away. I had a funny feeling about an hour later that I should check on him and found him sweating and gray and in the middle of a heart attack. That was eleven years ago.

    Getting older ain’t an endless picnic in the park, but I hope to get some lunch in today.

  • I am looking at…

    ^^^Outside my “office” window at home. The houses on this street are very close together. Often this space is a driveway that leads to the back yards, where most houses used to have a small garage or carriage house. Most of those have been torn down or converted into something else. We have a 1996 jet ski (not seen here, but just below the photograph) that hasn’t been moved in 12 years. It is a point of contention between my husband and I that has never been resolved. I finally gave up. Our neighbors are not currently at home. They are living in Thailand and Tanzania, and will be back soon. They have all kind of security and if I get up to go to the bathroom at night the motion detector on their house senses my movement within my house and turns on an outside light. Kind of creepy in a way, but it makes for a good night light. Pablocito has a box on a table beside this window where he often annoys me during Zoom meetings by scratching on the curtains and rubbing his head on my shoulder and sometimes biting me on the head. He is scratching on the curtain and purring right now.

    ^^^My messy table that I use for work. This used to be my studio table. I have a couple of folding tables set up for that stuff now. Lots of USB cords. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t transfer my phone camera files to the laptop for a while this morning. Turned out that I had one USB cord plugged into the laptop and a different one plugged into the phone. Duh. I have notes for work here but also a note about how much income I can expect if I retire at 62. Eyes on the prize. There is also a writing pad with a checklist of cleaning tasks that I thought would keep me on target for getting this house deep cleaned. That lasted for two days.

    ^^^I should have taken a “before” photo. How many times have I said that? Instead of weaving yesterday, I made soup and tackled purging and cleaning the linen closet. This was a major undertaking. I filled half of a large garbage bin, mostly with old sheets and pillowcases that no one would want. I kept a lot of them because we have different sizes of beds at the lake house, but lately my sister has been making up the beds for us before we visit. Besides, a queen sheet will fit anything smaller if you tuck it in right. I had some old sheets in there that I found or bought with the idea that I would dye them and weave rag rugs with them. Bye, sheets, hello room for the vacuum cleaner and accessories. Bye, years old lotions and ointments and cough drops and medications and nutritional supplements and samples from natural foods stores. This closet is so tall that it is impossible to do much with the top shelf, but I managed to put a box of heirloom stuff up there and some new curtains with which I intend to replace these curtains that Pablocito is shredding now. I’ll probably wait until we are ready to sell the house so that they don’t get ruined too.

    Prompt from “Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir” by Natalie Goldberg.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    ^^^First, birdies.

    I have a collection of glass paperweights. At one time it was such a delight to search flea markets, yard sales, and antique/thrift stores for them. After a while I decided to stop collecting them because we have so many knick-knacks in our house that it is a dusting nightmare. I gave a lot of my paperweights away, but I kept the ones that had meaning to me. Here are a few birds from my windowsill in my office. The yellow one came from Florence, Italy. Sitting here at my work desk at home, I see the one that used to be in my mother’s living room for years, and the one that she bought for me when she went to Vienna. I will be giving away more paperweights before long, but those are keepers.

    ^^^I found this awesome blue jay feather on my walk home.

    ^^^I played a little with the Diana app on my phone and came up with this.

    Bernie is doing okay, I think. He is chirping in there now. Sandy often plays a YouTube video with parakeets singing and squawking. He sings along. He pecks at himself in the mirror.

    Today, I am going to concentrate on weaving tapestry, and a little bit of cleaning.

    Now, the mental health stuff.

    Another rough week. I got out my neti pot and remembered that my sinuses are always a wreck this time of year. It never used to be scary, though. I’m going to look for my humidifier in the linen closet, maybe reorganize and purge that space.

    I had a panic attack at work when a well-meaning professor would NOT move away from me inside my little office. She hovered over me reading slowly from some instructions she had written down and kept losing her place and getting irritated if I clicked on something before she said to click it. After asking her to let me handle it several times (she was trying to help with a technical problem, and she is the least technically literate person that you could ever imagine), I finally yelped, “Please, I canNOT breathe in this mask!” and she moved out to the hallway, and at that point I lost the thread of the whole thing, but I know that I shut the door and she came back later and asked through the door if I had resolved it, and I basically told her yes. I hadn’t, but I had a work-around. It was not worth having someone peering over my shoulder in a small space for many minutes.

    So, UGH, first panic attack in a long time, and I HATE having panic attacks at work the most. It wasn’t a major one, so I was able to get myself together and work the rest of the day, but DAMN. This does not bode well. I have way too much to do in the next two weeks.

    Okay, </mental health stuff…

  • Sunday afternoon coffee pot post

    On the last dregs of the pot – I got caught up in Facebook.

    Yesterday was a better day. Sandy called an old friend who worked for a bird breeder for years and she advised us that Bernie will be okay as a solo parakeet. He will probably bond with Sandy now that Liz is gone, which would be a very good thing since Sandy enjoys having him around. Bernie has bitten the crap out of him twice when he had to handle him. She offered to clip his wings so that he could have him out of the cage but both of us shudder at that idea. We won’t declaw our cats either. Bernie has a big roomy cage just so he has the ability to flutter about. That was one of our requirements if we were going to have a pet bird – he would be able to do birdie things as much as possible.

    This friend had ninety birds at her house at one time. Can you imagine the noise?

    Anyway, I spent most of the day out of my bedroom and took a walk around the block. Here’s proof:

    ^^^A long cropped shot of the back of our house from the other side of the block. You can see why we have a problem with water flowing downhill!

    ^^^The corner bar.

    ^^^What lies beneath. This is the red clay that our region is famous for. Less than an hour south is one of the oldest pottery communities in the nation – Seagrove, North Carolina.

    ^^^Tapestry progress. It’s just coincidence that this part looks like Liz.

    ^^^Robbie Rabbit is still alive and kicking. What a lucky bunny, because it spends a lot of time in the open and we have foxes and big hawks around here. I hope s/he’s still around when our young neighbor returns from Thailand. He will be delighted to see the baby bunny that he fed is all grown up.

    ^^^Rabbit yoga.

    We made a quick run to Bestway Grocery to get a few items, mainly Smithwick’s ale for me since I ran out a while back, and a Smithwick’s after work is a good incentive to get through the day. I forgot that snow and ice was forecast for last night so the place was fairly crowded, although they enforce their masking rule and people were good about spacing. We double masked. Since we were there I ordered one of our favorite meals as take-out from Fishbones next door: popcorn shrimp burritos. It is such a small space and the patrons were fairly spaced out, not quite enough in my opinion, but all the unmasked people in that small indoor space gave me the willies. Thank God I only had to step inside for a few minutes. I feel sorry for the staff.

    I will be so glad when we can sit at the bar in Fishbones and drink a pint of Smithwick’s there. It is one of our favorite places.

    We had snow around 9 p.m. By the time I got up this morning and looked out the window, it was cold rain and the snow washed away. No ice that I can see. The temperature is just above freezing. I feel for my friends in the northeast who are about to get blasted again.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    Hello world. It is bright and shiny out here. I’ve been spending a lot of time curled up in a fetal position under my t-shirt blankie.

    Yesterday I walked to work. Now I am putting on two masks for four layers. The ones that I make fit my face pretty well. The elastic goes around my head or neck, below my ears. I have very sensitive ears and there’s not enough room for my glasses and my mask on top of them.

    I have to say that wearing two masks outside in winter is a comfortable thing, unless you huff and puff because of lack of exercise and get them moist. Plus I have to drink coffee from my favorite mug, the one that I bought at the sculpture museum outside of Jackson, Wyoming. Let’s not talk about my hair. It looked good the day before.

    Speaking of sculpture, I liked this work of art by Nature.

    Liz died yesterday. She is the white parakeet. We rescued her and her companion Bernie from a relative who was in the hospital and not really capable of taking care of any animals. We don’t know how old they are/were. They didn’t even have names – we named them. My brother-in-law said that he thought that the white one was a couple of years old when he bought the blue one to keep her company in a very small cage.

    At least we gave her a roomy cage big enough to flutter about in for the last year and a half. I am really sorry for Bernie, though, because parakeets are social critters and we do not plan to get him a companion, since we were going to have to find homes for them when we move to Portugal in two and a half years anyway. Sandy plays a parakeet video for them with lots of chirping and squawking and so he played that for Bernie yesterday afternoon. Bernie was quiet most of the time but later he started chirping and singing and squawking with the video. This morning Sandy said that he was frantically looking for Liz. I hear him in there chirping now.

    I am experiencing heavy empathy for Bernie right now. Lonely and confused, in a cage. I don’t like having birds in cages or fish in tanks, and I swore that I would never have a caged bird, but this was a rescue operation. We didn’t even know that he had these birds until he asked us to check on them after he’d been in the hospital for 10 days. I wish that Bernie was not so afraid of us, but I don’t see any possibility of taming him. I have been phobic of birds since I was attacked by a rooster when I was a toddler, but having these two have made me a bit less so.

    Having spent most of my time working on my laptop, reading, or sleeping, I don’t really have a lot to say other than the news about Liz, but I decided to show up. Because showing up is half the battle, right?

    I’m going to weave tapestry today. And maybe make a very brief grocery run. And take a walk around the block, at least. The weather is supposed to be nasty tomorrow. A nice pot of soup would be a good thing.

  • 01-26-21

    Here’s the photo I meant to post yesterday. A wider view of the tapestry since I worked more in the middle of it.

    Today was a bit better as far as work. I checked my work email last night before I went to bed, and that was a definite mistake. I won’t do that again. It set my brain to spinning and I heard Amtrak go by for its 3:15 stop in downtown Greensboro before I fell asleep.

    I didn’t lose my temper, I saw and acknowledged a few mistakes of my own, and I came up with some ideas to fix the problems, as well as explanations for why we could not do some of the things that were proposed. It was helpful to vent a little bit yesterday.

    What was funny is that he mentioned that he didn’t know what they would do without me doing the class schedule, at which point I told him to start thinking about it because after this one I would be doing it only two more times before I retire at 62. He was surprised. Apparently I hadn’t said anything or he didn’t remember. But I appreciated that he said that.

    My friends who were over-the-road truckers sold their big rig and bought a big RV. If for some reason we can’t move overseas, I will buy a smaller RV or camper van. I don’t want a huge vehicle.

    I’m trying to decide whether it is worth it to buy N95 masks now or to double mask with the new variants of covid-19 popping up. We haven’t been going out, but tomorrow we might do a quick grocery trip, and so the plan is to take as many precautions as possible.

    Tomorrow the NC Solar Now guys are supposed to replace the circuit panel on our solar panel system. We have been without solar energy generation for over three months now, which is a bit irritating since it was very expensive and we didn’t notice that it was down for over a month. They were supposed to monitor it. I’m trying to decide whether to be generous and not raise hell or to be assertive about some kind of compensation.

    And, no 2019 tax refund yet, and again, no indication of whether it was received on their end or not.

    “The Given Day” is a good novel that moves right along, so I’m going to forego the weaving tonight and read, then try to get to sleep early.

    I was thinking last night about how Harold and Maude might really be my all-time favorite movie instead of Groundhog Day or The Big Lebowski, then this article popped up.

    44. Harold and Maude

    It’s not ridiculous to say that watching Harold and Maude can change your life. On paper, the film may seem like a dark romantic comedy based on the relationship between a 20-year-old boy infatuated with suicide and an 79-year-old woman who lives each day like it’s her last, but it digs so much deeper than that. Harold and Maude is a celebration of life. Director Hal Ashby wants to eliminate societal tropes like age and gender in order to fully cherish living and appreciate the freedom of it all. It feels like watching a dream that’s speaking directly to you, urging you to understand that life is worth living—not in any particular way, but in whatever way feels authentic. Cult movies are beloved for being weird or campy, and Harold and Maude is no exception, but the appeal goes beyond that. I could go on and on; instead I’ll leave you with the Cat Stevens lyrics that reverberate through the movie:

    Well if you want to sing out, sing out
    And if you want to be free, be free
    ‘Cause there’s a million things to be
    You know that there are.

    —Sean Yoo

  • 01-25-21

    Taking a break to write a post and to remind myself that I am not my job, and of that second agreement:

    Don’t take anything personally.

    “Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

    Often I am frustrated with one of the people I support as an admin. This is the sixth year that I’ve been his support admin in two different capacities. He is a smart man, and personally we get along, but he isn’t good at working as a team. I happen to be very, very good at what I do so it is quite irritating to ask questions and hear that there have been email discussions that I haven’t been copied on. I really need to at least be informed in order to do my job well.

    I guess a silver lining might be this: if he (and others) really think that there is no need for me to know a lot of what they discuss, it won’t be a problem for them when I retire in two years. HA

    The other good thing is that the people that I actually report to as my supervisors are well aware of the problem, so it doesn’t reflect on me badly. And I’m still managing to do a good job despite that.

    I’m finding that my back is not at all happy about this “new” weaving activity, but I have a goal to finish this in time to exhibit in the Tapestry Weavers South exhibit this June. I’ll do a little more after my work day is done – at least fifteen minutes.

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Yesterday ended up being a very good day. I felt some sense of normalcy coming back to my brain. Sandy was very caring, and encouraged me to go back to my tapestry loom. My back muscles aren’t in great shape right now, so when I took a break he gave me a massage. I’m going to set a timer today so that I have to get up every 10-15 minutes and turn it off. It is too easy to get wrapped up in the weaving and then say I’ll take a break after this, oh, maybe after this…next thing you know your back is locking up in the sitting forward position.

    As far as the tapestry, “Cathedral,” goes, this is one that I’ve been working on for five years, with many breaks that have sometimes gone for months. The breaks started with my neck issues, which are now nearly non-existent, and then depression. The weaving is beautiful but what people don’t see is that the tension is terrible and there will be big problems in getting it blocked to lay flat when I cut it off. I haven’t done this before because I’m usually pretty good with even tension and straight edges, so thinking about it can make me really anxious and obsessive and shut me down. Will all this work be a waste of time? Anyway, the photo is a detail of the area I wove yesterday.

    When I went back to it this time, I reminded myself that this is the section that is mostly in shadow, and I don’t need to worry over the details so much. I am using a very painterly approach to this tapestry, blending 2-3 colors of fine wool yarns to create depth of color. Some of the yarns are handspun naturally dyed samples that someone gave me long ago. I’m pretty much through with them. The round metal circles are rare earth magnets that hold the canvas with the cartoon to the back of the tapestry.

    Sandy made blueberry pancakes for lunch and we got Wendy’s for dinner through the drive through window after picking up my prescription from the Walgreens drive through window. As much as I’d like to boycott Wendy’s, I guess it is just not happening right now. It’s the easiest choice we have for food when we are depressed and tired. I like their chicken pecan apple salad.

    Last week’s installing of the pull out baskets in the lower cabinets went well. I didn’t screw them down to the bottom of the cabinets because once the weight of the cans and storage containers was in them they worked just fine without that. If I eventually use them for lighter weight storage I will have to attach them.

    It had the further purpose of me pulling everything out, cleaning, reorganizing, and throwing the cardboard trays I had been attempting to use in the recycling bin. I can see what I need to reorder more easily. I’m putting things that I don’t use in boxes to either go to Goodwill, Reconsidered Goods, or the lake house. As I finish a book, it goes in the box to take to the used book store, the book bus, or I walk it around the block to the Little Free Library. (The problem with that is that I usually find something to replace it!) Little by little, room by room, I’m getting this place cleaner.

    Pablocito is sneezing a lot so we are going to tackle the dust in the laundry room where he spends much of his time on a cushion on top of a cabinet, watching the birds and squirrels and napping. It is one of those rooms that you suddenly realize that there is a coating of thick dust on every door and window sill and lintel, and there are a lot of windows in that room. Surely he is not allergic to cat hair but it makes sense that the dryer lint could be the culprit.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    What a week. It was overwhelming in so many ways. I think that is the second time I have watched an inauguration – the other was Obama’s, before I became disenchanted with the Democratic Party. I admit to shedding a few tears of relief and being touched by the poetry and song. I am optimistic about this administration. Not enough to become a partisan again, but I’m a bit more to the center than I was 12 years ago. Some of my super-lefty friends are so negative that they feel toxic. I no longer have any super-righty friends, and I don’t want any.

    I don’t remember who he paraphrased, but my mentor in grad school would say that to accomplish your dreams they have to be imagined first. Maybe it was from Thoreau. He encouraged us to do projects in which our minds could fly in any direction and build new worlds. I love that philosophy, and I think it is a great starting point.

    However, I am too practical for it in reality. I think that everyone needs to hear what the others are thinking and really listen in order for us to move forward. I’m not saying that the left should get all lovey-dovey with the right. Please don’t get me wrong. I’ve lost all patience with the right. We have seen that the far right has no interest in compromise even with the center right. But what I’ve seen is that the bubbles are real. People on the right believe that Trump won because they are surrounded by people who only think like them. People on the left don’t understand how Trump could have gotten so many votes because they are surrounded by people who see his evil. It takes a very strong personality to reject the culture that you live in.

    Phrases like “Defund the police” and “All cops are bastards” are hurting the cause of progressives and if they can’t see why these phrases are misunderstood or twisted then they need to get a firmer grip on reality. All cops are not bastards, or bad. “Defund” the police is completely confusing. If you have to explain your catchphrase, it is not a very effective one. Nobody is going to support this in enough numbers to make any change possible. That is the left’s delusion.

    Vegans: the world is not going to stop eating meat, dairy, eggs, and honey. It’s okay that you have, and I applaud you for your willpower and caring, as long as you stop harassing my farmer friends. You can get your point across and make this a better world without being assholes. I know many vegans and vegetarians who do. They are practical enough that they don’t believe that the whole world is going to change to a diet that isn’t even possible in most places, but idealistic enough that they know that their actions make a positive difference.

    People on the right need to get over their distrust of mainstream news and listen to people on the left to understand that they are not baby killing anti-Christians. The rhetoric about attacking and murdering Democrats or anyone that opposes the far right is so shocking that, no, both sides are not the same. People on the right are terribly deluded if they still support Trumpism or QAnon, and that appears to be a whole lot of people. Logic is not going to sway them, and certainly phrases like “defund the police” are just going to panic them.

    Considering how divided our country is, it is within reason to have leaders who are centrist. We can’t get anything done with the balance tipping far to the right or left every 4-8 years. I may not agree with all their policies, but I am mature enough to understand that doesn’t make the leaders all bad.

    Some appointees so far have been great. Some, such as Vilsack for Department of Ag, terrible.

    Actually, I don’t have much hope that we will move forward at all.

    My thinking is still well within the philosophy of the Dark Mountain Project – that we have passed the tipping point on climate change and now is the time to make the best of what we have wrought. The world will survive, but as a place without human civilization and it will support a different variety of species, many of them genetically engineered.

    Okay, enough political musings.

    I only watched the inauguration from around 11:30-12:30 because it was a super busy workweek and I was watching it online through the Washington Post as I worked. Later I caught a few more highlights that I missed. It is nearly impossible for me to watch video for more than 20-30 minutes at a time anyway. I rarely watch videos. It used not to be this way. I can’t help but think that it is part of my mental health issues.

    My nerves were cranked up, as a lot of people’s were. I shut down for a couple of hours twice this week. It’s good that I am at home where I can do that. With my panic disorder, good things can overwhelm me as much as bad things. Actually, little things can set me off worse than big things. They pile up.

    Yesterday our department had a Zoom happy hour for the newest two assistant professors and that was fun. I miss getting together with my co-workers and friends, although I probably have adjusted better than most people because of my need for quiet solitude. I enjoy Zoom, but I don’t have to be on it all day teaching or taking classes or having work meetings. This past week I had four work Zoom meetings. I can deal with that easily.

    I’m reading “The Given Day” by Dennis Lehane. It was high on my unread book stack, and I honestly didn’t think about the novel taking place during the flu pandemic of 1918. But so far, it is very good. He has a lot to work with in that time period. I assume that the Tulsa Massacre is going to be covered as well.

  • 01-18-21

    ^^^The view from my office on Friday

    Sort of forcing the blog posting right now. Saturday was a very bad day, beginning on Friday afternoon, actually, resulting in terrible nightmares, and putting me in the hole for most of Saturday. I wrote a private post that morning describing my dreams, trying to work through them. Sandy came through after he found me in my bed with the covers over my head, crying. He made sure that I ate, gave me a nice back rub/scratching, and generally made me feel loved.

    I popped out of it on Sunday, and if I wasn’t on medication, I would probably still be in the hole.

    Last week my focus turned back to purging and organizing, since I can’t get past the artist block. One thing that we’ve been working on is to make it easier for both of us to do things that we have to get down on the floor or squat to do. That is difficult for both of us for various reasons due to age and health.

    A couple of months ago we put the litter box up on a sturdy table in the back room, and the cats adjusted right away. It is much easier now to scoop and clean. Earlier last year we were sent a big fancy litter box system with pee pads by mistake and PetSmart gave it to us. We didn’t use it for months because I didn’t like that you had to use special litter and pads, but once we tried it, it is so worth it.

    Last week I ordered a couple of metal pull out drawers designed to go under sinks and in lower cabinets to see how I liked them. We have a lot of food and pots and pans and storage containers in our low cabinets and it is really hard to squat down and pull stuff out from the backs of them. I put a two-tiered one under the sink and cleaned that out. The other two, shown here, are very sturdy, but don’t stack as well. I put my Golden acrylic paints and Ranger inks in them for now, where I can get to them easily, but I might end up using them in the cabinets, depending on whether the wide ones I ordered fit. They should get here today.

    I packed up a beautiful Japanese tea set that I laid claim to many years ago from the room full of stored antiques in my grandfather’s house. At the time, my sister wanted it for my niece. I said, no way, this is mine, and I promise to give it to Brooke when the time is right. The time is right. I kept one saucer that was extra – it seems that a cup or three were probably broken at some point because they were always missing. The set was so delicate that I never used it. There was ancient sugar in the sugar bowl that I had to clean out. I suspect that this set probably belonged to my Aunt Lib.

    It appears that Diego requires my attention now.