slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • 2020 Wrap up

    Well, there won’t be anything exciting in this post, as you might guess. But it is a tradition for me.

    In January, I only posted once, on New Year’s Day, with my aspirations for the year ahead. Of course, nobody could see what was coming. Sandy retired on Dec. 31, so this was his first year of retirement. I moved my studio from the front room to the dining room and bedroom, and the front room became our living room again. This meant that I purged a lot of stuff, but of course, it has still not been enough.

    In February, I posted a lot! I was really into collage, and was traveling to Chapel Hill to meet with a small group from the Triangle Book Arts group who were doing an online class with Melinda Tidwell. I was also working on a caterpillar tapestry for the ATA Renditions exhibition, an unjuried small format tapestry exhibition done in conjunction with the Handweavers Guild of America’s Convergence every two years. I was getting together with new friends that I made through the Tiny Pricks Project. I was also very depressed, but that’s nothing new, especially in an election year. We saw Gordon Lightfoot in concert. We voted for Bernie. I got a haircut in February, and unfortunately rescheduled my massage appointment because I felt sick. I haven’t had either since. My friend Jeanne expressed concern on Facebook about her husband getting pneumonia. It turned out to be Co-vid.

    March 2020: The shutdown. I finished the caterpillar tapestry and was still going strong on the collage. We went to our last social outings for a long time: a seafood dinner at Full Moon Oyster Bar and an Irish band at Oden Brewing. Then UNCG and the state of North Carolina shut down for several weeks to allow the health system to catch up before the full brunt of the virus got ahead of their capabilities. I started working from home on March 19. Diego had major dental surgery. I was trying to start seeds inside. At that point I still hoped that I’d go to Ireland even though the retreat had been rescheduled to 2021. The Topsail Beach workshops and Convergence in Knoxville were still on. I thought that I’d be able to get a lot of artwork done and did some online Facebook activities with Crystal Neubauer.

    Jeanne’s husband did not make it. His death from Co-vid made me understand secondhand how terrible this disease was, both on the person and on their loved ones.

    April 2020: Gave up on seed starting under the grow light. I started sewing some masks. I tried to tie on the next set of warp threads to the previous threading on the Macomber loom, but had too much trouble with the knots going through the heddles and pulled it all out. I noodled around on my Beka rigid heddle loom, using the warp threads to weave useful things like dish towels, but also wild Saori style stuff. One day, maybe this weekend, I will cut them all off.

    May 2020: Reality bites. Bought plants from Weatherhand Farm at the drive through farmers’ market. Spent a lot of time on the front porch and moping. Started baking sourdough bread like everybody else was doing. I eventually let this go.

    June 2020 began with posting about the George Floyd murder and protests. We spent a week at Lake Waccamaw during the time I was to go to Ireland. It was good to be with my sister and her husband. I did some of Roxanne Stout’s Notebook Journeys class, and some more collages with Crystal, but my artwork pretty much ground to a halt after this. Fireworks going off nearby in the middle of the night every damn night. I am glad that we don’t have a dog.

    In July, I finally finished this collage, “Illustrated Question Box”. See the top photo for the beginning of this one. I mounted it on a wooden panel and I’m very pleased with it. I decided to work from the lake house for two weeks since the wi-fi there is actually better than the wi-fi here, and it helped me to have some solitude and to see my sister. And boy, did I have a lot of work to do, with our history class schedule going almost completely online or in hybrid format.

    In August, I began working in my office on Fridays. I set up my workspace at home ergonomically and actually starting feeling better physically than I have in years, as far as my back and neck and hands go. Sandy and I took a road trip to Town Creek Indian Mound, which was reconstructed under the supervision of my grand-nephew’s grandfather, Joeffre Lanning Coe. I enjoyed taking photos on a hike through the woods there.

    Went back to the lake in September, then a few days at an AirBnB near Sparta, North Carolina. We went to Stone Mountain State Park on the way. We were either brave or foolish enough to eat inside a few restaurants during this month. At the time that area didn’t have a lot of infections. It was an extremely red area and there were lots of Trump signs.

    We hunkered down in October. My friend Pat Bush died. She had been sick with various ailments for so long. I harvested the “beautiful beans” that she gave me the seed for. I finished another collage, and did a fun collage workshop with Leighanna Light online. And I began writing about my fixation on moving to Portugal.

    In November, I was all about Portugal and finishing moving the photos from Flickr to WordPress. I was obsessed. It was easier than thinking about what was happening in this country. I signed up for three more online workshops, all of which I took in person from the artist in some form, and I’ve barely looked at them. Susanne and I got together on the deck outside her studio and dyed and leaf printed some papers to go into our books. I made more masks for gifts. We ordered a take out Thanksgiving dinner from Deep Roots Market. No family gatherings this holiday season.

    I’m not even sure that I need to recap December, as it was mostly about me finishing the Flickr move and worrying over Sandy’s health. More obsessing over Portugal. When will we be able to travel overseas again? Staying awake at night thinking about what I can get rid of, what I will try to take with me, how will the cats adjust…and will we even be able to do it by the time that I retire in May 2023?

    It will be interesting to compare what I write tomorrow against the yearly wrap-up for 2021. Who knows what could happen? Nothing surprises me after this year.

  • Around the block

    A couple of photos from my walk yesterday.

    ^^^This is a bit disturbing.

  • Slight movement

    I spent most of the past 24 hours in bed, and boy am I feeling it. I was really surprised when I slept eleven hours last night, mostly solid. Sandy remarked that it is because of depression, and I suppose that he is right. Another reminder that depression is not sadness, because I don’t particularly feel anything at all. Sandy’s doctor wants him to wait 2-3 weeks before seeing him for his muscle weakness – he wants time for the statins to get out of his system.

    My massage therapist is out of business now…so I guess it is up to me to get pain free again, and that won’t happen by laying in bed for hours.

    I finished watching The Queen’s Gambit. This is why I don’t binge good shows. It’s so hard when you finish one and can’t decide what to watch next. I happen to be between good books also.

    I did get a little bit of house cleaning and purging done. I vacuumed the curtains behind my bed instead of taking them down and washing them, and the molding around the window, and the plaster walls around it. Hopefully that will help with the allergies.

    Searching for some particular pages in all my collage stuff proved to be frustrating, and so I purged a bunch of junk that I had at one time thought that I would use in collage. The truth is, it was just junk, junk that is easily replaced at any time, so into the recycling bin it went. A few more things went into the donation box.

    I cleaned off and organized my studio table so that it is ready to go this afternoon. Guess I’d better get to it!

  • No. It can’t be Sunday already.

    More than anything, this is a test to see if WordPress behaves on my Kindle. I finally wrangled the Tapestry Weaver South site away from its old hosting company. They knew we had moved the site, but yet they kept bugging us with spam and then emails to update the credit card on file. The person in billing kept sending me the same message even though I kept saying cancel our account. I really hate outsourced customer service. Anyway, the account I thought was canceled is now canceled, I hope.

    I am being lazy today. I glued dictionary pages to some bookboard pages to start on Sharon’s class. When I got overwhelmed with ideas, I decided to do that instead and then maybe I can jump off a word on each page for collage and embellishment. I just need to get the ball rolling somehow.

    Boy, do I have a lot of earrings to give away. I have a lot of onesies that will be good for hanging off pages or the spine of a book. At least the bowls on the dresser are sorted and clean, and I have thrown some junk in the trash and put a few things in the boxes. Now I realize, ick, these curtains. They probably need washing in the worst way. I see a cobweb on my inkle loom. I bet that top shelf is covered in dust.

    I need a housekeeper and a cook and a personal trainer.

    Feeling unsure about Portugal now that people are complaining about how damp and cold the housing is on one group, and in another group they are talking about how awful the mosquitoes are. Oh well, no place can be perfect. But one of my big wishes was to pick a place without many skeeters. Maybe I’ll end up in the PNW after all.

    My brain feels cooked. I don’t know why, other than Pablocito being a pain all night.

    Hopefully photos tomorrow.

  • Saturday coffee pot post

    Pablocito posed in perfect lighting for a photo shoot yesterday. Sandy started taking photos and then I took some from a different angle. I love the Batcat shadow.

    This also had the purpose of being my “before” photo of the chest of drawers, which hasn’t been cleaned off since at least 2017, since I found a receipt and an Amtrak ticket stub from that year. But the photo really doesn’t show just how bad this spot was. There’s a reason that I have shied away from cleaning it for so long, despite swearing that I was “going to do it today!” It not only has piles of dust and cat hair, but many bowls and containers that have a mishmash of coins, earrings, buttons, miscellaneous shit that I pick up in the parking lot for found object art, shells, rocks, beads, various toiletries, hair bands, and barrettes. That is just so far. I am sorting those bowls out now and I apologize for the coin shortage this year, people. Turns out that I am responsible. I will turn them in.

    Also, that oil painting of the lion cub on the wall? I painted that when I was 16. There was a bit of a rebellion in my art class. Several of us wanted to paint animals and abstracts. Our teacher didn’t want us to, so we did it anyway and she wouldn’t help us. She was really put out with me by the time I quit, which was soon after this painting. I didn’t want to paint landscapes, tobacco barns, still lifes, and flowers any more, at least not in her style. My mother was pissed at me too, because the art teacher was her friend. I found this in the back closet when we cleaned out her house.

    Here’s the progress I made yesterday:

    Pablocito isn’t arrogant and regal. He is actually quite a goof.

    Diego often grooms Pablocito but it seems to be a dominance thing because it almost always ends in a fight. This time it didn’t. I’ve noticed that this issue seems to be the pillows. If Pablocito is on a pillow, Diego has to have it. Last night he wasn’t on a pillow.

    We had crab cakes, broccoli casserole, and corn for Christmas dinner last night, which we ate on the sofa while we watched an episode of Schitt’s Creek.

    I did some laundry and the plumbing held up this time! At first I let it drain into the old washtub in a couple of buckets. I had no idea how much water a washing machine uses – those buckets filled all the way up on just the wash cycle and then I had a time getting them out the door because they were so heavy I had to transfer the water to smaller containers. So I tried putting the hose back into the drain for the rinse cycle and it didn’t overflow for that load or the next two loads. Hallelujah, a Christmas miracle! Thank you, Baby Jesus!

    Not sure what is on the agenda today. It is really cold outside. I think that I will try to organize and clean up my studio space a little more and sew more masks. I put more books in the box to go to McKay’s and to Boomerang Books. I have two boxes that are filling with miscellaneous stuff for either Reconsidered Goods or Goodwill. I’m going to pack a box of some family heirlooms for my niece Brooke whether she wants them or not. Her son can help her sell them if she doesn’t want them.

    It feels so good to get rid of stuff and clean up the dust.

    I end this post by giving thanks to the Co-vid testing people at Cone Health – Sandy was tested on Christmas Eve morning and got an email with his negative results on Christmas night! Way to go, health workers! I wish that I could give you all big raises!

    He was feeling much better yesterday so I hope that his symptoms will eventually go away now that he has stopped taking statins and he has been doing low-impact exercises to a video once or twice a day. From what I’ve read, this may take a while to build his muscle strength back once the toxicity is out of his system, and there could be some permanent damage. Hopefully we will know more once he sees his doctor.

    This is why I have resisted taking statins for my cholesterol. The difference between us is that Sandy had a heart attack ten years ago, and he loves sausage.

    He was so relieved yesterday at how much better he feels after only two days off the statins that I realized just how upset he has been for weeks and was covering it up. He said that the reason he doesn’t complain when he feels bad is that if he starts he is afraid that he will never shut up, like taking the finger out of the hole in the dike. I told him that I will never mind if he needs to talk about his health.

    God knows I do.

  • Merry Christmas from the (O’Neill) Family

    My favorite Christmas song. I just can’t abide the syrupy bouncy ones any more. I do love some of the old crooners like Sinatra and Clooney, though.

    One year, we had a receptionist that was quite mentally ill and very angry at me and the office manager. That December she had gotten another job on campus and was just working out her sentence in the history department. (She was miserable in the next two departments she worked in as well, until she had her final meltdown and left the university.) She played “Oh Holy Night” on repeat until I thought I’d lose my mind. The day she walked out for good (early, of course) I put on every hokey stupid funny Christmas song I could find on You Tube for the rest of the week.

    Sandy and I saw Robert Earl Keen play this live at Ziggy’s about ten years ago. I won tickets on a Facebook promotion for the “VIP section” for any show I wanted to see on their schedule. It was a hard strange choice between George Clinton and Robert Earl Keen, but in the end, I thought that REK would be easier on my nerves at the time. The VIP section meant that you got to sit at a table at the side of the stage next to the bar. I’m sorry that I never got to see George Clinton, but I had several chances and didn’t take them. He has local roots so he has played around here a lot. I can’t stand for long periods of time – the pain is terrible – so I don’t go to many small concert venues. Plus, I really really really hate crowds!

    This has turned out to be a coffee pot post. We are drinking a Christmas blend with vanilla and clove that was a gift. It smells heavenly.

    I am super concerned about Sandy now that I’ve done what everybody says not to do: googled statins and muscle damage. He downplayed his weakness and pain for a long time because he attributed it to getting older and being out of shape. Thank God he finally called the doctor’s office and we are talking about it. He was worried about sounding like a hypochondriac. This is why when other women friends complain about their male partners being babies when they are sick, I have nothing to say. It is the opposite with Sandy. Besides, everybody knows that I’m the hypochondriac in the family. (Kidding, not kidding. There’s a little bitterness in this joke.)

    Hopefully he will recover after the statins get out of his system, but he has been taking them for a very long time.

    I couldn’t find the Pillsbury Orange Icing rolls that are a Christmas tradition in my family, and I wasn’t going to shop a bunch of different grocery stores for them this week, so I have Annie’s cinnamon rolls in the oven. They are good too. I talked to my sister on the phone for a long time yesterday. She made sure that she got the orange rolls, damn her. She and Tim are at the lake while her daughter and grandson do Christmas at their house in Chapel Hill. No extended family time for any of us during the pandemic. Man, those cinnamon rolls smell wonderful!

    A major cold front came through last night and the high is supposed to be in the 30s today after a deluge of rain and wind yesterday. Tornado warnings in some parts of the state and snow in other parts. I don’t know if there were actually any tornadoes. The low is supposed to go into the teens tonight so I’m going to cut all my lettuce and we brought the lemon tree off the porch.

    Yesterday I caught up on rest and did some clean-up, but mainly chilled out. We still have plumbing problems but at least both toilets are working now. It’s the outgoing pipe from the washing machine and kitchen sink that is slow, slow enough that when the washer drains, it is too much and it spills out all over the floor. I brought in the old washtub and wringer that I had bought for papermaking several years ago and I am going to drain the washing machine into it until we can get a plumber to clean out these pipes for us. We have tried everything at this point, but it keeps happening again. When I replace this washing machine, I am shopping for one that has mechanical, not computerized, controls on it, even if I have to buy a used one. All I need is wash, rinse, and spin.

    I am going to watch the last episode of The Queen’s Gambit today. I’ve stretched it out as long as possible. Also, finishing the Patternist series by Octavia Butler, which despite my revulsion at all the incest and rape, I understand why it is essential to the basic theme, and I grew to appreciate the entire story arc more as I worked my way through the books.

    Next up in reading: Your Spacious Self. I can’t decide on my next novel and I keep starting one and putting it down to start another. I have a lot to choose from here, though.

    Will cook a few dishes today, nothing complicated, and sew masks, and cuddle with kitties. Feliz Natal!

  • Christmas Eve, 2020

    I am hardly even pretending that I am celebrating Christmas this year. Honestly, it feels like any other day. I did turn on the Christmas lights on the front porch, which I never take down.

    The good news is that the Flickr project is officially done. I don’t have to worry about my links being broken when my Flickr Pro expires. It would have made me very sad. I backed up the photos, but they are scattered on various Google Drives and an old laptop, and in no kind of order. It was a long, sometimes tiresome project, but the pandemic presented the perfect time to do it. I relived a lot of great travel experiences. There were a few years when the posts fed my depression, but I kept going and I did it.

    I think that I have mentioned that Sandy and I have been concerned about his health. He talked to his nurse practitioner on the phone yesterday and he recommended that he stop taking his statins and go get a Covid-19 test. So I rode with him to get his test. I was surprised that he had to go inside the Women’s Hospital, which has the dedicated Co-vid ward in Greensboro, after seeing all the photos of people getting tested inside their cars. They did the nasal swab, not the long one that goes through your nose to the back of your throat. So we really will be isolating for Christmas, since it will be several days before he will get the results. I am not getting tested unless he tests positive.

    That is a bit stressful, but honestly, neither of us thinks that he has Co-vid. His muscle weakness is scaring him, but this has been coming on for weeks and not getting better. He is short of breath, but other than that he feels okay. No fever, no headache. Just fatigue. He has been doing a very low-impact exercise video for 15 minutes once or twice a day for a few weeks to try to strengthen his legs. Actually, this reminds me a whole lot of his high-altitude problems when we were in Colorado and New Mexico a year and a half ago.

    I made a couple more masks, but I have to wear elastic around the back of my head, or they pop right off my ears. If I make the elastic looser, it is too loose. Tighter, and pop! The elastic around the back of my head is a good solution for another reason. I can wear my mask around my neck when I don’t have it on, and pull it up quickly when needed. I don’t care about it messing up my hair. Hell, I forget to even brush my hair some days.

    Anyway, hoping not to have cooties for Christmas, but it’s always a possibility, even when you are as careful as we are.

  • Painless Festivus!

    It’s a Festivus miracle!

    Frank Costanza: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.

    Cosmo Kramer: What happened to the doll?

    Frank Costanza: It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!

    Kramer: That must have been some doll.

    Frank Costanza: She was.

  • Woo hoo, Tuesday!

    Yeah, I know. But it IS an early payday for me. I am making way on being debt-free, although I will probably need to hit this home equity loan again once the pandemic is over for house repairs and yard work, maybe a used car or car repairs. The tax refund from this spring with the big credit for the solar panels has not yet been deposited in my account yet. It is frustrating, but it was partly our fault for forgetting to sign the forms. At least we know now that they received it. For months we couldn’t even get an answer to that. That’s the part that I was mad about.

    The so-called stimulus is a joke and doesn’t begin to meet the country’s needs. Of course we can use $1200 right now, but we don’t need it. The unemployed and people who are losing their businesses and health insurance sure do. Economists say it is not nearly enough and needs to be targeted. I give a lot throughout the year to charity and people in need, so I won’t feel guilty socking $600 into the Portugal fund. I don’t know what Sandy will do with his $600.

    The solar people came yesterday and found that the circuit board for the panels was blown and has to be replaced. It is all under warranty. We are considering asking them to add another two panels, since twelve don’t quite cover our needs in summer, and now with Sandy retired and me working from home, we are using more energy cooking, etc. than we did with the earlier estimate.

    I’ve done okay with my daily housekeeping goals, although I forgot to go outside one day, and I haven’t done any artwork, just catching up on the blog project. Once I am officially off work for the holidays and finished updating the blog, that should ramp up.

    First I’ll finish sewing a bunch of masks, since I have those pinned together and set up, and we need them. I don’t know where so many of ours disappeared to, but that’s another reason that we need to get this clutter under control. (I suspect that several are buried somewhere in the man cave.) Then I will get going on that blanket made from Sandy’s old shirts and pants and get back to one of Sharon Payne Bolton’s online classes. I found a bunch of faded prayer flags that I had hung on the greenhouse in the back house, and those should be interesting in a collage book.

    Christmas lights are plugged in on the front porch, and I may light some candles, but that’s pretty much it for Christmas decorating here in Casa O’Neill.

  • Welsh Roots

    I finished “How Green Was My Valley,” a coming-of-age novel set in a small Wales mining village, at a time when workers were beginning to strike against the mine owners. My great-grandmother was named Martha Washington David, from a line of Davids that immigrated to South Carolina from Wales in the early 1800s.

    Anyway, it set me thinking about maps and names, and how it seems that the Welsh often have what we consider to be a first name for a last name – like David, Thomas, James, and John. One of my direct ancestors is named David David. Variants of John’s son are common in the English speaking world, and Jones is a major line in my family.

    In a parallel reality I am a historian researching names.

    The funniest one I found last night was Hypolite LeFevre. He was from Middlesex, England.

    Anyway, here is a map of the area around Swansea where the Davids came from. Looks like a beautiful place to put on the bucket list. I found these maps on a great site: A Vision of Britain through Time.

    I love the language and the names of the places, but I can’t imagine learning Welsh.

    Owen David was born in Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, Wales in 1711. He died in Cheraw, South Carolina in 1788. Pembrey is in the bottom right corner of the second map.

    Thomas David was born in Llanfihangel Aberbythych, Carmarthen, Wales in 1622.

    David Davies was born in Denbighshire, Wales, and married Anna Ellen Morgan in Llanrhidian, Glamorgan, Wales in 1618. His father’s name was David Rees, and his alternate name is David ap David. I assumed “ap” means “son of” and kept going back.

    The farthest back this line is traced in familysearch.org is Jenkyn David, father of Ieuan Ap Jenkyn David, who was from Llantwitt-fardre, Glamorgan, Wales, whose first wife, lo and behold, has a first name from “How Green is my Valley”: Angharadd.

    Each child from this marriage is listed as having the last name Davis or Davies, but their parents and ancestors hark back to the old naming conventions.

    Let’s look at Angharadd Verch Philip Jeven, born in Gwydir, Caernarfonshire, Wales in 1550. Her father was named, you guessed it, Philip ap Jeven Gwilim. So “Verch” must mean “daughter of.” Her brother: Rees ap Philip.

    So that’s my Welsh lesson for today, courtesy of the Church of Latter Day Saints. If you read this far, congratulations!