slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Sunday afternoon coffee pot post

    At this point, I really should switch to herbal tea. In fact, I have been drinking hot herbal tea in the late afternoon and evening lately. I guess it was all that reading about life in Wales that made me want hot tea. Last night I drank real tea and I was awake until 2:30, but part of that is that I can’t turn my brain off. In the morning, I sleep like the dead. If I am left to sleep on my own schedule, I sleep for 9-10 hours.

    The first thing I did was to move over the photos from Jan. 2018, and I remembered why I suddenly loaded so many photos to Flickr again in 2018. I discovered a setting where my photos would automatically save to Flickr, and went crazy with it. In a way, I’m glad. Even though it is making more work for me now, I enjoy seeing the photos again and if that encouraged me to blog more, it is worth it. I’ll get it done before the end of the year. It took me 45 minutes just to do January 2018!

    Looking at the photos of my cloth weaving makes me want to return to it. I wore a sewing machine slam out doing the denim blanket, but I also enjoy hand sewing the small squares and as long as I don’t get obsessive over it it is a nice portable project. I took out the panels that I sewed for Sandy’s shirt/trouser blanket and I think that this is a UFO that needs to be finished over Christmas break.

    One of the things that kept me awake last night was that I think that I figured out at least one of my foot issues – Leddenhose Disease, a type of plantar fibromatosis. When I was diagnosed with Dupuytren contracture in my hand in 2012, the surgeon asked me at that time had I noticed any nodules in my feet. Apparently the two often happen together. I had a nodule appear on the bottom of my foot below my big toe under my arch about the size of a pea this summer. Now it is the size of a marble, but it is far enough under my arch that it doesn’t hurt when I walk. So my other pain issues may stem from this. Dupuytren contracture runs in my family – both of my parents had it and my sister has it. I had surgery on mine only because I was already having surgery for De Quervain’s tenosynovitis in the same wrist. It didn’t hurt but eventually it would have made my fingers curl up. It looked more ropelike than a round nodule like this one so I didn’t make the connection. I figured that it was some kind of ganglion cyst.

    I found some more Futuro arch supports that I like online and they have helped with my nighttime pain a lot. I can wear them with and without shoes, so I don’t have to wear shoes in the house now. Here is a link to the Amazon page. Walgreen’s stopped carrying them, so I had to go with Amazon.

    Obviously I will need to see a podiatrist at some point but not now. It can wait.

    My artist neighbor across the street just knocked on the door and left a framed collage of his and a bottle of wine on our porch! He is a successful artist with an established art clientele, although his main business is faux finish painting interiors. We talked again about doing an art studio sale together when the pandemic calms down, which is very exciting. He has been very encouraging about my collage work. This gave me quite a lift. I do love my neighbors here.

    Update: Just dusted the molding and walls over the closet door and door and transom window in my bedroom. Those places you don’t see the dust collecting until it is choking you. Wow. It was bad. Those are the kind of tasks that I am concentrating on – the places you don’t notice any more.

  • Evening follow-up

    Here’s what I got done today other than preparing meals and washing dishes and making the bed, which don’t count. I cleaned the ceiling fan in my room, which is harder than it sounds. I noticed that some artwork I had leaning on the molding over the closet doors were really dusty too so I got them down and cleaned them and put one of them in a frame. I still need to clean that area but it’s hard on my neck to clean high places so I’ll do it tomorrow. I took a walk and put two books in the little free library. And I finished transferring the photos from Flickr to the end of 2017. I had hoped that I had stopped putting photos on Flickr by that time, but I didn’t, so I will plan to do January 2018 tomorrow and clean out the refrigerator for my house cleaning task.

    This is a painting that I did in Mary Beth Shaw’s workshop in Petaluma in 2012.

    This is one of those accidental shots that I looked at and thought hmmm. There might be a good abstracted composition in there.

    Now I’m going to watch another episode of The Queen’s Gambit and read How Green Was My Valley.

  • Saturday coffee pot post

    Feeling kind of flat, but I am trying to break my spell by making a big list of tasks that need to be done around the house, with checkboxes so that when I do a simple chore I can check it off and feel like I have accomplished something. I am going to try not to retreat to my bedroom every day until I have accomplished at least a task or two on the list over the next month.

    An hour of artwork/play is on my list for my every day tasks, as is reading, watching TV/movies, and blogging. I have to do these before I play any games. Also, I have to go outside and take a walk or work in the yard every day.

    I won’t have to go back to my office for three weeks, thank God, because the virus is so virulent that it is truly frightening to leave the house. My office feels pretty safe, and we have a zealous housekeeper on our floor that keeps our bathroom squeaky clean, so it’s not so bad. Hardly anyone is in the building. In a way, it is a safe way to get out of the house for a while and talk to a couple of different people. I am still working from home but our winter break is Dec. 24-Jan. 1, and there are two weekends in there. We don’t get it all paid holiday – we have to use a couple of vacation days or make it up – but it is still SO MUCH BETTER than any job I ever had. I plan to put a message on my email and really shut down, because when you work from home and the people you work with are on salary instead of an hourly schedule, it is necessary to draw boundaries. There is not much that can happen that can’t wait until Jan. 4.

    We did another grocery trip to Bestway on Thursday night, and I think that should do it for a little while. I have to go to Walgreens for a prescription today, but I feel pretty good about both those places, as well as Deep Roots Market. I have to remember not to be chatty with one of the Bestway cashiers, who has pretty much shut me down twice now with negativity. We will probably go back to having groceries delivered again from Deep Roots or Costco. The only reason we haven’t done Deep Roots Market the last couple of times is that I wanted Smithwick’s ale, and Sandy likes some really unhealthy frozen meals. Hey, it’s his body.

    What worries me is that Sandy really likes to go out and do errands, and sometimes announces that he is going out to buy something that is not essential and can be ordered online. Then he gets mad when I object. I have convinced him so far to order his new headphones and a new router online, and although we don’t really want to order stuff from Amazon any more, that way got us our orders quickly when other orders are stuck in DeJoy postal limboland around here. He is vigilant about mask wearing, but I don’t think that he keeps up with the ones that are clean, and of course, masks are not totally preventative.

    That router has improved our wi-fi so much. One reason we decided to get a new one was that our solar panels went incommunicado on Oct. 21. At first I thought it was because the company changed monitoring apps. Then Sandy thought it was a bad port on our router. But none of these things have solved the problem, so NC Solar Now is sending someone to take a look at the box outside on Monday. Fortunately this happened in a low energy month. I would have noticed it right away in July or August because of our electric bill. One thing is for certain is that I need to keep a better eye on the monitoring app. I am glad about getting the new router anyway.

    I felt really good after my virtual appointment with my TIAA (financial) rep on Thursday, because she said that I have saved enough to be able to retire at 62, and that I’d even be able to do it at age 60 if I really wanted to or lost my job to a budget cut. So May 2023 is my retirement goal now. A couple of years ago I was told the same thing, but with everything that has happened I wanted confirmation.

    It’s good to be frugal. Also not to have children.

    We are definitely going to have to spend some money on this house once the pandemic is over, though.

    I am booking my ticket to Dublin (and then to Portugal) in September 2021. I have to do it before the end of the month or lose my $542 credit. That means I will still have to pay $135 plus baggage and insurance, but at least I will have it settled and can stop thinking about it at 1 a.m. If the prices don’t change before I call them. I’ve seen them change in the middle of looking them up. I have to do it through Orbitz, unfortunately. This will probably be the last time I use Orbitz.

    My brother-in-law is okay after his surgery, although they were not able to fix his heart after six hours. He will have to take a ton of meds instead. He was home the next day and when I called my sister yesterday he was taking a bike ride, ten days later. Amazing. We won’t see them for Christmas, but we seldom do Christmas at all any more since my mother died. Sandy got in the habit of volunteering to work on Christmas to let the workers with family have it off, and he got holiday pay. This year he is retired but it is too dangerous to get together with anyone inside.

    Okay, back to the Flickr project, now on late 2017. And I am going to plug in some Christmas lights – I do like that part of Christmas.

  • A cold rainy day

    Here it is Wednesday, with icy cold rain falling outside. Fortunately the ice is not sticking here, but it has rained a LOT and that means water flowing through the Back Forty from two directions, which culminates in a pond in my next door neighbor’s back yard. This, despite an effort to redirect the water to a large burrow under that garden bed. It’s not a big problem for us any more, but I feel sorry for the next door neighbors. They are not there right now, though.

    In the middle of a big rain, that curving path looks like a stream. I have considered the idea of digging a trench and filling it with lovely river rocks to make a rain garden and help with the drainage, but since we plan to sell the house in a couple of years, I won’t do it. I used to mulch this path and others throughout the Back Forty with wood chips, only to find them all deposited at the side of the house after a hard rain.

    I am now working on 2016 – finished the big train trip to Glacier and Oregon. That was a marvelous memory to relive. That also means I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for the Flickr project!

    The continuing uncertainty about travel and the vaccine is making me cranky. I miss my art retreats. They truly are sanity savers, and doing them online is just not the same.

    Work was busy and frustrating yesterday and this morning. It shouldn’t be this hectic in mid-December. I’ve transferred my ranting about work to a private post, but it was good to get it out of my system.

    I am now totally committed to reading How Green Was My Valley and stayed up way too late last night because I lost track of time. Also, I had forgotten what a witty and well-written book Harriet the Spy was! Thoroughly enjoyable adult re-read. Started The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix and I am trying not to binge it.

    My life feels so boring right now. I’m sure a lot of people feel the same way. But it is better for it to be boring than being in the middle of a civil war or dealing with serious illness, so I’ll try to keep that in mind.

  • Saturday schmatterday coffee pot post

    I am up to May 2015 on the blog project, so I need to get a move on to check it off my list.

    This week I was fatigued and sleep-deprived. Yesterday was my office day and I left at lunch, took a three hour nap, worked a couple more hours from home, and then slept from midnight to 11 a.m.!!! Sandy has been feeling weak and fatigued also. He does a low-impact aerobic video for as long as he can every day. I’ve had foot problems that wake me at night, so I’ve laid off the exercise other than some light walks.

    Sandy is making us waffles right now and they are really good! We use Klondike Power Cakes Flapjack and Waffle Mix, which we bought in bulk at Costco a while back. It is the best commercial mix that I have tasted, especially for a whole wheat mix.

    Considering physical problems now and in the future, we moved the litterbox up on a table in the back room where we can deal with it easier. This means that some major cleaning has to take place today, as one of the cats didn’t get the message or forgot. Diego is good with it now, not sure about Pablocito yet and he is the dumber of the two – not saying that Diego is smart.

    So this goes on the list of things that we want/need to do to the house when we are ready to let contractors/repairpeople into the house:

    -Replace laminate floor in back room with linoleum.
    -Figure out and fix the ongoing plumbing problems in the sewer line
    -Fix the leak in the bathroom sink
    -Put knobs/handles on the kitchen cabinets.
    -Fix the kitchen drawer and panel under the sink.
    -Pull out trays in the bottom kitchen cabinets.
    -Replace the ceiling fan in the kitchen to something simple and easy to clean.
    -Change the closet sliding doors in my bedroom from metal to wood, make them open and close easily and quietly.
    -Strip and refurbish the antique door I bought and put pressed or stained glass in the windows, and replace the hollow ranch style door that is there now.

    I am going to hire a landscaping contractor to clean up the back forty, take the rest of the maple tree down that has been broken halfway by invasive vines, and keep the yard in shape for when we put this place up for sale. I will keep my little garden plot, but I am finally giving in to Sandy as far as making the rest of it a more “normal” yard. We can’t deal with it and I can’t find anyone reliable to help. The permaculture guy who said he was coming back stopped returning my texts, and the guy next door broke his finger splitting wood for us. The guy who cleans the yard on the other side mowed our tiny little bit of grass for $20, then came back to say that his price had gone up to $50 for at least two hours work at a time. And he really doesn’t know plants – he called the cypresses that he planted next door pine trees. And I didn’t ask him to make a special trip or cut our grass, just to spend an extra hour cleaning up along our side of the property line for $20, which was his asking price at the time.

    One way or another, I am going to GTFO of this country, and that means getting rid of our junk, our collections, and getting the property in shape to sell it after the pandemic is “over” and I reach social security age.

    My hope is that by next week my work will have settled down as faculty and admin staff start taking off for the holidays and I can relax and just respond to a few calls and emails a day. Do some art. Do some garden clean-up and clutter disposal.

    I finished watching “In the Dark” and will start “The Queen’s Gambit” next. Sandy and I watch an episode of “Schitt’s Creek” together every day. In reading, I finally finished the second book of Octavia Butler’s Patternist series: “Mind of My Mind.” I will move on to the third, but first I am re-reading “Harriet the Spy” which I was able to borrow from archive.org. What a hoot. It and “My Side of the Mountain” were my absolute favorite books growing up. I also loved the Three Investigators series.

    I can’t do politics right now. I am so disgusted with half of the American people and their willingness to destroy everything that we built in order to get their way no matter what, or willingness to be silent about it, and this election won’t change that. It’s not even about the political leadership any more. It’s about the people who allow this travesty, these crimes, to happen with no consequences. It’s about people who see cruelty and crime happen right in front of their eyes and claim that it isn’t true. So, I am not on Facebook much any more. It might be up in the background, but I don’t look at much of it.

  • Monday morning

    I never got around to the mask sewing this weekend. I did make myself get out and take a walk each day. Part of my routine is choosing at least three books to put in the little free library on the block. Either that, or I’m putting them in a box that will eventually go to the used book store for credit or cash.

    I read more of the Patternist series by Octavia Butler. I’m having a hard time getting through these. They have an interesting premise, but it feels so offensive and twisted. I’ve picked up How Green Was My Valley again, but that one looks to be sad as well. I downloaded The Water Knife on Google Books as part of a NC Humanities Council statewide read. Scary. Maybe I’ll have to find something else.

    Even if we don’t end up moving to Portugal, I’d still want to leave North Carolina. The Western US is still attractive to me, but the increasing wildfire activity is frightening, not to mention the overdue cataclysm due for western side of Oregon (earthquake/tsunami).

    It will make me feel better to downsize some stuff. This means that my niece and nephew may be getting some family heirlooms whether they want them or not. I already did this with the Sanford/O’Neill side of the family and shipped boxes all the way to California, and she might be getting some more. If I have to, I will leave some on the doorsteps of a few NC residences. 🙂

    I keep telling myself that if we end up staying here, we are still lucky. This is a very good area to live in. Good neighbors, good restaurants and entertainment, liberal politics, and a paid off mortgage. We are pretty well set financially – not rich, but solidly middle class so far. I hope it stays that way.

    Which reminds me, I have some phone calls to make about the solar panel loan. I’m probably going to pay it off. And I am ordering take-out shrimp burritos from Fishbones. Bye!

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Now, actually in the morning!

    ^^^My next-door neighbor’s house. I have the nicest, coolest neighbors on this street!

    I need to get back to moving the photos, since I found that I posted a lot more photos in 2014 than I expected. The nice part of this was reliving my first visit to the Oregon coast at Pam’s cabin – it was maybe the best travelogue that I ever did. It was organized around this poem that was posted in front of a house in Portland. The bad part was that I know that afterwards I was falling apart. I was drinking so much that I almost got taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, and I lost that awesome purple fedora that I am wearing in some of the photos. Instead of writing about my pain and grieving, I either posted nothing or I posted a visual journal photo, so you won’t see any of that on the blog. I was furious with my husband. I was helping to clean out my mother’s house, and that was major. My sister did most of the work since she was retired. Between the emotional anguish and the allergies from dealing with packed mildewy mousy closets, deciding what to keep and what we had to let go, it was a rough time for both of us.

    That’s why I was avoiding 2014. It dredged up a lot of memories of grief, anger, and shame. 2020 was very, very bad, but other than my wonderful trips out west, ordinary life in 2014 was worse. I did not cope with it well at all. I think that it is important to acknowledge that now.

    One reason that I’ve thought of this time lately is because I have cut down on my drinking so much. I figured that I would want to drink more alcohol during the pandemic, when the opposite happened. Occasionally I will have two beers in one evening, but usually I have one beer around 5:30 and then I don’t want another. Sometimes I don’t drink any alcohol at all. I used to drink a lot at home. Sandy hardly drinks at all any more and he has never drank at home much. I enjoy my porters and stouts and dark ales, and I talk a lot about Smithwick’s red ale, which I consider to be a little taste of heaven. Surprise! I am more of a social drinker than I thought.

    As bad as it has been, I am actually much better as far as my mental and physical health goes than I have been at other times of my life. The years 2002-04, 2007-08, and 2014 come to mind right off the bat. Sandy mentioned one time that he and I are actually well suited in personality to deal with having to stay home. That is somewhat true, in a way. I am not the kind of person who needs to go out much around town. When I’m in Greensboro, I mostly stay home or go to work. Sandy and I miss going out to eat in restaurants, but we still get take-out once or twice a week. My biggest grief has been missing the art retreats and big travel trips that were my sanity savers.

    I thought that working from home and not being able to get my monthly massage was going to be murder on my back. I have actually been in much less pain because I have a good office chair and I get up and walk around a lot more frequently. When my back does hurt, I can lay down flat on my bed for a hour and that usually does the trick. My neck pain is almost completely gone these days – I need to knock wood here – and I don’t remember the last time my neck hurt. So I will be very reluctant to go back to the office on a regular basis.

    I do need to get more exercise and I’m going to try harder to make that happen. My hips are getting stiff again.

    It looks like from the timelines I have seen posted that I am in this for the long haul, unless my high cholesterol is considered heart disease, and my BMI crosses the line of obesity (I stopped weighing myself – it may have by now) I will likely be in the very LAST group to get the vaccine. Wow. But I accept that. At least I won’t have to worry so much about other people being sick or contagious.

    Okay. Back to finishing the 2014 posts and moving on with the day.

  • Saturday coffee pot post

    Should I even pretend that I don’t go back to bed after I get up to feed the little monsters at 8 a.m.? Nah, I want you to think better of me than that. So let’s pretend.

    I didn’t want to get up from my last dream this morning. For once, it was helpful. I dreamed that Sandy and I were visiting some friends in the mountains, and I wanted to go hiking, but no one else wanted to, and I was annoyed about it. Then I realized as we were packing up to go home that the little cabin we were staying in was mine. There were clothes and furniture in it that I had brought on my last visit. I didn’t remember it, so that concerned me, but the overwhelming joy that I felt when I realized it was wonderful. There was a pair of high top purple chucks (Converse sneakers) on the floor. “Are these mine?” I yelped. Yes, they were. I was so happy. I brought in some trays of seedlings that were going to get frozen, and put them next to the window.

    As I cleaned up, I told Sandy that I didn’t want to leave yet. “We’ve got all day,” he said. And I knew that I could drive back to this place whenever I wanted, since it was a hour’s drive away. Far enough to get away, close enough to be doable on a regular basis. I could leave my stuff in there and not have to pack up to go back and forth.

    I’m taking away a couple of things from this. This house is mine and I can (and usually do) whatever I please here, and so I need to remember that when I curl up in the bed and daydream about hiking. I am not going to be able to hike anywhere if I don’t stop curling up in the bed in a cocoon waiting for the world to change because I won’t physically be able to do it! There are plenty of beautiful trails and neighborhoods for me to take safe walks by myself. I am in control of this.

    The other is that I absolutely need to buy a pair of purple high top Chucks.

    I am really tired of this emotional roller coaster where one day I feel hopeful and motivated and then severely depressed for three days or more. Today should be good, and I’m rolling with it.

    This week I accomplished a couple of major tasks at work so I feel a lightening of weight.

    I sewed enough masks to give to the co-workers that I saw at work on Wednesday and Friday, and I have another stack in different stages of construction ready to sew.

    I made it through the tough part of moving the photos over to the blog, the time period when my mother grew sick and died. I honestly never thought that I would grieve so much over missing my mother, but I still do. I am up to August 2014 now, when I made my first trip to Pam Patrie’s lovely cabin on the Oregon coast, so those will be some good memories to bring up. I canceled my renewal to Flickr Pro, so I have until Jan. 3 to finish this project. I can do this now. I think that a few hours on a couple more weekends will be enough time.

    It is cold outside today, but I am going to make an effort to get out for a walk. I’ll set a goal of moving 2014-2015 over to the blog, and sew a few masks. We need some new ones.

    I am settling in with the acceptance that we probably won’t be able to travel overseas this summer, and I am considering booking the ticket for early September or over Christmas break. Those are the two times during fall semester when things slow down because I am mainly waiting on other people to send me stuff.

  • Photos from Penland, June 2001

    I found these two photos from my trip to Penland in June 2001 where I took a beading class from Sonya Clark. Popping them here so that I don’t lose them. If I find more, I’ll have a place to put them, but I have a feeling that most of them were lost in the great hard drive crash several years ago.

  • Sunday coffee pot post at noon

    ^^^Definitely one of the items I will move with me to Portugal.

    A mostly visual coffee pot post today. I had a rough night last night – both of my Achilles tendons were aflame and kept me awake for much of the time. Both of them. When I did fall asleep I dreamt of a first day on the job as an assistant manager in a Kmart, where I had to work on the floor for ten hours with this pain – the worst part was ending up in retail management again. I guess that I should see a podiatrist, but I suspect that it is the result of padding around home barefoot or in slippers without arch support since mid-March. I have a very high arch and I don’t like to wear shoes in the house. I have on shoes now, trust me.

    Yesterday I made a few masks and pinned up a bunch to sew today, although I doubt that my foot will like pressing the pedal of the sewing machine. The first mask I sewed together the wrong sides, so I cut out a strip of fabric to applique hand over the exposed seam.

    My studio tables are a mess. I am seriously considering cutting back on the variety of my media. This will include selling my large looms and focusing on collage and book arts. I’m going to share my mother’s sewing machine with Lisa. She just found out that animal control has been called to take out her feral cat colony, so I suggested this to give her something else to do.