slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    Scenes from my front garden:

    This Virginia Creeper vine grabbed one of my rocks from my collection atop this low wall a couple of years ago and it is still hanging onto it. Those are some strong tendrils!

    I washed and ironed fabric to make masks with earlier this week, and hauled out Mama’s Singer, but before I could get to it my left wrist suddenly hurt so bad it felt like it was broken. After babying it for a day it got much better, then my right hand started hurting, although not nearly as bad. So I walked to my office, and worked there for several hours, and brought home my ergonomic keyboard. Much better. Yesterday I went back to my office for half a day. I get so much more done there, and hardly anyone is in the building. It is locked and you have to be on a list and swipe an ID card to get in. I will go back Monday morning, and haul that keyboard back and forth in my backpack.

    This week and next is my crunch time at work, and it has always been so, but some deadlines actually got moved UP so it is even more stressful as I try to keep up with new processes, policies, and software.

    I was in a Zoom meeting yesterday where the person talking referred to “hair on fire” moments. What a great description of how I am feeling sometimes!

    The walk to work is always nice. This is the iris patch that I got my iris tubers from. They tilled it up a few years ago and some pieces were on the sidewalk, so I nabbed them. I like that the vetch and cleavers are surrounding it.

    The herb garden is doing well. Those pots will eventually have peppers in them. My seedlings are still not growing so I will transfer them to the greenhouse at some point this weekend and start some more seeds.

    Let’s see, what else. Reading “Bridge of Sighs” by Richard Russo, one of my favorite writers. On my library app is “Swamplandia,” which I feel meh about so far, and “The Essex Serpent.”

    On TV, the most recent season of “Better Call Saul” was excellent. I am watching “Star Trek Picard” until my CBS All Access subscription is over. Turns out I was paying for it twice, and it has been so confusing that I just cut off the auto-renewal for both of the accounts. We should buy an antenna.

    Really, there is SO much good TV on that I am overwhelmed with the choices and go back to my books, where I have always found comfort.

    Every April I have anxiety attacks and I used to beg my mother not to schedule our big family reunion at the end of April but she did it anyway. Usually I go to the lake for Easter weekend and get some water therapy there. Only residents are allowed there right now, and I can’t blame them. I miss my sister. Most days I am functioning fine, but some nights I cry and don’t sleep. Once I get through this month, I know I will feel better, even without my normal travel to look forward to.

    Sandy went to the doctor’s office for a diabetes check and he said that there was nobody there except a few staff members and his physician’s assistant. We have been walking more.

    Before the hand issues, I had started playing with wedge weave on the rigid heddle loom. I think that I will only do two rows, though. Not super into it.

  • Saturday morning-slash-afternoon coffee pot post

    Equal Exchange Mind, Body, and Soul. Whole bean coffee. Deep Roots Market volunteers shopped for me today, and I got almost all I needed: mostly a lot of fresh produce and dairy. I was going to get delivery, but driving the car a mile away seems like a pleasure trip now so we picked it up curbside. Co-operatives rock, when they work for their owners, as ours is now doing that as hard as it can! We are good on most supplies, having prepped for possible disaster long ago, and we did a Costco delivery for the things I couldn’t get at Deep Roots a couple of weeks ago. Our freezers and pantry are mostly full, but we were nearly out of fresh food.

    I read back through my posts for the last few weeks and they are really boring. Even I couldn’t get through some of them. The main purpose here is to sweep out my brain, though.

    Work cranked up big time this week and I’ve had plenty to do. My ergonomic situation and inability to get massage therapy requires that I take a lot of long breaks. My original plan was to strictly separate my work hours and my off hours, like I do normally. However, I am considering catching up on some work this weekend, since I sent out a buttload of emails yesterday that are drawing responses today. I did not go to the office to get my chair. I suspect that I am sliding into agoraphobia again so Sandy and I took a walk around the neighborhood yesterday evening. It felt good, and I will do more of it. Let’s see if I can muster up the will to go get my chair.

    My seed starting indoors has been very, very disappointing. I obviously am doing something wrong. The only seedlings that are doing well are the one luffa gourd seedling and the cucumbers. I think that part of the problem is that I am not watering from below like I did before. I just cut down the big new seedling tray so that it fits better into the tray below and am beginning to do that. As soon as the few tomato and pepper seedlings that are growing get their second set of true leaves, I am going to transplant them into larger containers.

    There were a couple of evenings this week when I couldn’t get my mind off regrets, and my anger at the idiots who continue to destroy this democracy. It seems that this virus might take out some of the most stubborn reality deniers, with their insistence that a certain percentage of deaths is okay and that the most important thing is for them to go and do whatever they please. The problem is that they are going to take a lot of innocent people with them. This bit about older and the most vulnerable being expendable is horrifying and I feel like we are moving closer to Nazi America every day.

    Which is why I want to stay home where I feel safe.

    My refunds for my Ireland trip and book workshop/anniversary weekend at Topsail Beach are rolling in bit by bit. I paid for much of my travel ahead of time this year – took it out of my savings. So it is going back to the money market account in the hope that I will repay it and go back to Ireland next year. I just emailed with Lora at Essence of Mulranny Studio and she is putting the non-refundable deposit down for a mixed media encaustic workshop in late May/early June. A few refunds are still outstanding – some from Hotels.com and I have not canceled my plane ticket yet because it was through Orbitz and they are asking to wait until closer to the flight times. I think that my flight insurance will cover the plane tickets because I bought it separately through Orbitz at the same time that I booked the flight. Or maybe I will be able to rebook for next year without losing much. We will see, I guess. Boy do I hate to give up that sweet round trip deal – altogether it is about $700. May is a beautiful time in Ireland with the wildflowers in bloom – however, I have not been there any other time of year, so my bet is that anytime in Ireland is beautiful.

    This has raised my spirits. Investing in the idea that I might be able to return.

    My other planned trip this year is to the Handweavers Guild of America Convergence in Knoxville, Tennessee in late July. I am registered for two tapestry workshops with Tommye Scanlin and Molly Elkind. I made a hotel reservation but I didn’t pay for it. I expect that Convergence will probably be canceled and that I will get a partial refund. That decision will be made soon, and in a way I hope that it will be canceled and it will be settled, even though I will be sad about the missed workshops. Our tapestry guild is heavily involved in this Convergence. Also, it is in driving distance for a change which is nice. Sandy is going to go with me if it happens. The government of Tennessee hasn’t been very responsible about stay-at-home orders, so they may have a late spike, and that is why I am pretty much already over it.

    Which leaves the Dan Essig workshop at the beginning of August at Leslie Marsh’s studio in Topsail Beach. I am resigned to the idea that it too may be canceled. Hopefully Lake Waccamaw will open up to non-residents by mid-summer and we will be able to go to the lake house and see my sister for a while. I miss her.

    We got the stimulus direct deposit and I immediately used all mine to pay for Diego’s dental bill. It is gone! Boy, I was glad to get it, considering so many people have not.

    Now. I can’t believe that I have gone back to this post since this morning and edited and now it is 3:00 p.m.! The whole day has gone pffft!!! It amazes me the way time moves during this time. I thought it would move so slowly, but for me, it is gone in a flash.

    Books: Finished The Tiger’s Wife and The Secret Chord this week. Geraldine Brooks and Annie Proulx have to write more fiction because I have read all their novels and short stories. I will look for Inland by Téa Obreht. I also need to pull my RSV Bible off the shelf and reread Kings to refresh my memory about what the Old Testament says about David. What a bloody history!

    Which book shall I start next? I have so many!

    Diego: his last visit went well, and they did not have to take out his stitches.

    I think that I will use the last of the warp on my rigid heddle loom to play with wedge weave. Seems like a rigid heddle is perfect for packing down the wefts on an angle. Photos later.

  • Yesterday

    Earlier in the day I started over on the Macomber loom with the warps that I had not cut the cross on. I have enough to do another set of curtains, and I spent SO MUCH time winding that warp that I can't stand to see it go to waste. Besides, I am not in any hurry and I could use another straightforward pattern weaving project. I promise myself that I will never ever wind a warp this long again.

    I had originally started tying this warp to the old warp so I wouldn't have to rethread, but the knots were not being cooperative as they were pulled through the reed and the heddles. I decided that it would be less of a pain to just rethread the whole thing.

    And it will be something that I will have to concentrate on without thinking about other stuff.

    Ready to finish up that collage video workshop now.

    Allergies seem better today.

    Later I spent several hours in my bedroom, door closed, dealing with the emotions that bubbled up as I missed my mother, then I started grieving for the situation as it stands now. My husband is driving me a little crazy at this point. He means well but I am used to having more solitude and not having my reading or writing or art making interrupted so often. Thus I finally closed my bedroom door after snapping at him. He has never understood how to deal with my depression, or with my grief. After my mother died was THE WORST. He was just awful. I finally ended up going to the lake house by myself for several days. I was so angry! I suppose that is what is starting up now. I will have to get out into the garden and pull some weeds. That is always good therapy for me.

    I was meant to be a hermit, I think. The other day I told someone that if this had happened when I was a teenager living with my parents, I would have been out in the woods all the time. Probably riding the roads on my bike or in my old car too – we didn't have much to do where I came from. I had my secret places where I would take my journal, my sketchbook, and a pack of cigarettes. Multiple hideouts that I built out of logs and mud or scrap lumber that I found. One of the best was in an old schoolhouse back in the woods. Someone used it store hay in at one time and it was probably full of mice and rats but I never saw any. It burned down when I was an adult and I remembered all the teenagers who used to smoke in there around that old hay and I was sad but not surprised. Another was at Page's Mill Pond in Lake View, South Carolina. I would slip under the barrier that said no trespassing, DANGER, and sit on top of the dam out of sight of everyone. I was so invincible.

  • Good Friday

    I did a search for Good Friday on my blog looking for this photo and boy, have I had a lot of “good” Fridays!

    I always think of Mama on Good Friday. That was usually the day that she planted her garden, and she had a big one that she planted until she hit her late 80s and began having serious spinal pain. This was taken in 2009, when she was 84. Of course I miss her, and would love nothing more in this world than to be able to talk with her right now. She would be 96. I usually visited her on Easter weekend.

    This whole thing has been pretty weird for me in that I haven’t reacted to it the way I would have expected. Instead of freaking out I still feel very numb. It shows in the way that I am not very interested in doing anything that requires much critical thinking. I feel lazy and tired and my allergies are bugging the shit out of me, so I got some Allegra D at the pharmacy drive thru yesterday and I hope that will get me back outside gardening again. Right now all I want to do, and I mean badly, almost irresistibly, is to stay in my bedroom and play games on my Kindle.

    On Monday, I am going back to my office (I hear that only a couple of people are ever in the building) and get my office chair, my ergonomic keyboard, and maybe the student files. If we end up having to work from home much longer I’m going to be hurting pretty bad, beyond what ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and heat/ice packs can take care of. I have to start stretching or yoga and get out of the house to exercise and walk.

    And I am sick, so sick, of email and videos. I think that I will unsubscribe to every email newsletter that I can.

    Also tired of salad already, but I hate to waste my homegrown lettuce from the UNCG garden plot. It looks like it is about to bolt with the up and down temperatures. It was in the mid 80s several times in the last week or so. Today it is 49 degrees at 12:30 p.m. I must have watered my squash seedlings too much. I have the hardest time with over watering. I swore that I would change that this year, but they look so dry to me! However, when I pulled out the sad little dying seedlings I could feel that the soil was probably too moist. The tromboncino squash are the only ones that died, so I still have some redemption time. The tomato, pepper, and calendula seedlings are growing so slowly under the grow light.

    Radish, lettuce (new crop), parsley and carrot seeds are coming up on the front steps.

    Last night when we went to the pharmacy we also got Greek take-out from Mythos Grill. You order on the phone and they bring it to your car window in the parking lot. Boy, it was good!

    Finishing up another scrap yarn washcloth on the rigid heddle loom. I was doing this on the front porch before the pollen storm. Hope to get back out there again.

    Diego had his post-surgery check-up on Tuesday. They have definitely ramped up the Co-vid safety procedures since his surgery 17 days ago. Now I read this morning that cats are definitely contracting and getting lung damage from Co-vid 19, so they are doing vaccine trials on them. This actually broke me and made me cry this morning. Anyway, he is allowed to eat dry food again, which the vet hopes will break loose those remaining stitches. If not, next week she will put him under briefly and take the stitches out.

    My sister and brother-in-law updated their will and asked me to be executor and take care of their cats if they both die, just as I asked her to do when we made our will. I cannot imagine her cats and my cats getting along, so we all have to survive.

    Whew.

    Here I thought that I would write about losing the trip to Ireland today but I don’t think I can do that yet. I will try to write about it later this weekend. I think that I will have a processing day today, since I am not working. I really want to make some collages and books, and yes, make masks, but I am stuck.

    I hope that all is well with my readers out there. I’m sorry if I am not commenting on blogs right now. I can’t seem to do much of that these days, but I do believe that things will get better.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    I haven’t done much other than work from home, cook, and sleep the last few days. I am not going to check my work email this weekend unless somebody types “urgent” in the subject line. I will have to set my limits if I am to work from home.

    I whacked my head really hard on a corner of the upper kitchen cabinets last night. The pain brought me to my knees and I cried, but I didn’t get concussed. Just an achy lump on top of my head. Fortunately I don’t have to brush my hair for a while. It was a reminder that we have to be far more careful than usual – going to urgent care or the ER is NOT a good idea right now.

    It reminds me of this conversation from my past when I used to work at a bookstore and we processed the books coming in underneath a solid wooden table that I used to bash my head on regularly. After one of these times, I said to my boss, “I’ve been going through a klutzy phase recently.”

    He said, “Let me know when it is over so I can tell the difference.”

    I still think that is one of the funniest comebacks I’ve ever heard. But I like a good burn.

    Anyway, despite this lingering mild headache I will try to do the following this weekend: catch up on Crystal Neubauer’s online class and play with collages. Weave some more on the rigid heddle loom as I remove the dog (weaving lingo for abandoned project) on the big loom. Work in the garden here – mainly weeding since I don’t have any seedlings close to ready to put out. It has been chilly this week but warmed up for the weekend. I’ll go to my garden at UNCG and harvest some more lettuce and water.

    Sandy has been hard at work doing a deep clean of the kitchen. I have never seen the stove this clean since we first bought it!

    Diego worried me a bit yesterday, not eating and acting pooky. Last night he threw up the biggest hairball I’ve ever seen, and that was a relief considering that he is ten days out from major dental surgery and infection.

    The Costco online shopping was a really positive experience. I was able to get some items through ordering delivery from my local store that I wasn’t able to get through costco dot com. Big pack of sponges (my husband is on a cleaning binge and I will oblige him cheerfully!), some canned items that Deep Roots doesn’t carry, yogurt, bread, hamburger, chicken stock. Stuff that I normally buy from them mostly and a few more items to make it worth the delivery trip. The person shopping texted me about substitutions. I set the time of delivery at 4 p.m. and he was here on the dot. I tipped him on the app. I was very impressed, and happy to support Costco workers who are treated much better than Amazon workers. A couple of hours later, I read an article in the Washington Post about an attempted strike by Instacart, Amazon, and Whole Foods warehouse and delivery workers. That rang a bell because I had seen Instacart on the online shopping cart app I was using. I just thought it was a name that Costco was using. The delivery person worked for Instacart in conjunction with Costco. Damn!

    I will use Deep Roots Market delivery or pick-up from now on. I don’t need enough items soon enough to do it this weekend.

    Everything is connected. Everything, whether you can see it or not. It is the huge lesson the world is starting to learn.

    Here is one of the poems I keep on my office door. It is comforting to me in an odd way.

    There Will Come Soft Rains
    Sara Teasdale – 1884-1933

    (War Time)

    There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
    And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

    And frogs in the pools singing at night,
    And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

    Robins will wear their feathery fire
    Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

    And not one will know of the war, not one
    Will care at last when it is done.

    Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
    If mankind perished utterly;

    And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
    Would scarcely know that we were gone.

  • Zoom Thursday

    Like everybody else confined to home, I am having a tough time remembering what day of the week it is. I know today is Thursday because I have a Zoom invite to a meeting with my co-workers.

    Work emails that I have been accidentally copied on show me how dysfunctional certain other departments are. Our department rocks.

    Anyway, while I wait for the Zoom meeting to begin, here’s what I’ve been doing: a whole lot of nothin’. I did send a photo of my caterpillar tapestry to ATA for the (now) online small-format tapestry exhibition Renditions, at the last minute because I can’t remember much of anything these days unless I have it on a to-do list. I have some collages calling my name, but I haven’t managed to get up the motivation.

    Budget cuts at work are gonna be brutal. Having to wait for other departments to make decisions until I can do what I need to do is excruciating to me. I’m not a procrastinator when it comes to work – I like to do my part and get it over with.

    A lot of departments also like for me to do their part.

    Sleep has eluded me for the past two nights. Neck pain has increased since I haven’t had massage therapy since February and the ergonomics of my home office space suck. Right now I am sitting against pillows in bed on my laptop. I have a fabric pack with rice that I microwave that works well for a heat pack, and I have a lot of acetaminophen and ibuprofen on hand. I’m trying to lay off the xanax as much as possible.

    I am not feeling panic. I felt panic after Trump was elected. Then we began mentally preparing for chaos. I just didn’t anticipate it taking this form. If one of us gets sick in the next few weeks, I might feel panic. So we are staying home.

    We have decided to stop going out for take-out food and supplies, even for curbside pick-up. I ordered a few more things from our local Costco delivery as opposed to Costco online. We’ll see how that goes. I ordered more of the cat food that only Petsmart carries that the boys like, although they have started, very grudgingly, eating the prescription cat food from Chewy that I ordered several months ago. I put a little of it on one side of the bowl and if they are still hungry after eating the food that they like, they now eat it instead of leaving it in the bowl. Pablocito begs for dry food as a treat! I have to give it to him when Diego is asleep.

    Later today I will place an order to Deep Roots Market for fresh food. They started a bike delivery service and they made the news!

    I realize that the people who pull the items and make the deliveries still put us at risk by them touching them, but we’re doing what we can.

    I will have to take Diego to the vet for a follow-up on his stitches next Tuesday though. I hope that they are following social distancing better than they were the day of his surgery.

    Okay, enough noodling around on the blog. Time to get back to work.

  • Mindless weaving

    This morning I got up at the usual time to feed the cats. They are insufferable now that they are getting canned food. Odd, because they would not touch it for a very long time. I guess it is a texture thing, because Pablocito turns his nose up at the formerly loved dry food that I have ground up with a blender in case Diego decides that is what he wants.

    Then I went back to bed, slept hard, and when I awoke I was shocked to see that it was afternoon. I guess I needed it.

    I don’t watch a lot of TV or movies or videos – I don’t know why. It just doesn’t appeal to me after an hour at most. Reading books is much more my thing. It’s been that way since I was a child. I don’t remember ever not being able to read – according to my family I shocked them as a toddler when I picked up a newspaper and started reading out loud to them. When the library bookmobile came to my little community every two weeks, the librarians had a hard time stocking enough books for me that I had not read. I would finish my stack within a week. So I read the World Book encyclopedia and the classics we had at home over and over again. I especially loved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. My mother easily got me to whitewash our fence by referencing Tom Sawyer.

    You’d think that I’d be smarter, but I guess I burned out a lot of those brain cells from age 15 to 40, when I was self-medicating for anxiety and depression.

    Anyway, I need something to do with my hands while watching TV and I haven’t been feeling the love for what I normally do, which was stitch or crochet. Last night I suddenly realized what I could do with all these cotton warps that are going to go to waste when I cut my abandoned project off the loom. I set my “new” rigid heddle loom on a table in front of the TV that I had warped for a Saori style workshop and started weaving washcloths and dishcloths.

    I got through two episodes of “Better Call Saul!” My favorite show.

    Sandy keeps recommending shows to me, but he really loves horror and war movies. I can’t go there, too prone to nightmares. I guess I will finish “Star Trek: Picard,” then subscribe to HBO again so I can watch Westworld’s new season.

    We are enjoying front porch sitting and listening to the family next door with their five year old son. He is so smart and so cute. They play charades on their porch every evening.

    Tromboncino squash seeds started coming up today.

    Squirrels were digging in my planters on the wall next to the steps so I stuck plastic forks and jagged pieces of plastic that I cut from a sour cream container. I don’t mind sharing some with the critters, but there aren’t any nuts buried there, gang.

    Diego is doing okay. He follows me from room to room. Anyone who thinks all cats are aloof never met my spoiled kitties. I had laid off the pain injections but I might give him one when he is asleep.

  • Gardening documentation

    Hey, there are few pick-me-ups better than harvesting food that you planted yourself. I forgot that I had planted Rouge D’Hiver lettuce (a good winter lettuce variety) at the UNCG community garden plot in November. I haven’t been back until today because of depression and physical pain. I didn’t take my camera because it needed a charge, but look what I found, and a lot of it! Enough that it needed thinning badly so I pulled up whole plants and gave a couple to my new next-door neighbor.

    I need to jot down what I planted or I will surely forget. I set up my wire frames in the plot where the bean poles were last year (thanks, UNCG student garden club for cleaning that up for me!) Down the middle I planted Purple Trionfo Violetto pole beans from Pinetree. These are five years old so we’ll see if they germinate. On both long sides of the plot, Green Arrow shelling peas from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. These are three years old. On each short end, Rainbow Swiss chard, also three years old from SESE. Along the edges, Scarlet Nantes carrots, again three years old from SESE. Apparently I got a little out of control buying seeds in 2017. 2019 borage seeds from Pinetree on the side of the lettuce patch where the fire ants live. :O

    When I go back, I’ll put some newspaper and new soil over a small patch next to the lettuce and fertilize the whole thing with some organic stuff I have around here somewhere.

    Time for lunch, yum!

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    I was up at the usual time this morning because the cats think that they are being starved.

    Yesterday was a busy work from home day because I’m trying to get as much as done possible “just in case.” My expectation is that next week is going to be very busy for me because of work stuff that I can’t really talk about yet. Gah!

    Last night I got a bad headache and sore throat and felt slightly feverish, then of course I went into an anxiety attack. This morning I feel fine. It’s hard not knowing what is allergies, hot flashes, anxiety chest pressure, and what is not. I keep reminding myself that historically I have a difficult time with all of the above this time of year anyway.

    I finished “Forever Amber” and I am having a hard time deciding what to read next. On my Kindle I have a lot of books, including the “Patternist” fantasy series by Octavia Butler. I checked out “The Secret Chord” by Geraldine Brooks from the online library (Overdrive app) and I think that is the only one of hers that I have not read, so I’ll probably pick that one. I don’t want to read my Irish collection now because it will make me sad. In hard copy, I have so many to choose from, but I think that I’ll try “The Tiger’s Wife” by Tea Obreht.

    The governor finally issued a stay-at-home order for the entire state beginning Monday and lasting through April. I fully support it. It will be the first Easter in a long time that I haven’t gone to Lake Waccamaw. My sister and brother-in-law decided to stay there instead of their home in Chapel Hill. The hospital near the lake is crap, and I thought that maybe they would stay in the Triangle to be near the great hospitals there, since my brother-in-law has major health issues. Their reasoning was that they would be less exposed to the virus at the lake, and their social circle is much tighter there, so I get that. Plus, if they run out of food they can fish or throw a gator tail on the grill. (Just kidding about the gator.)

    Crystal had another live workshop on Facebook yesterday and we did three five minute 4×4 collages. We could add contrast to one of the neutral ones, and the other neutral one we are supposed to keep for the next lesson. I am pleased with these and they were so much fun to let intuition rule and not stop to analyze the design. I want to do more of these exercises on my own.

    I think that I am going to have to give up this weaving project in which I am tying on a new warp. It’s good that I stopped and tested how easy it would be to pull the knots through the reed. It will be a terrible mess and even though I think that it is doable, I don’t need the aggravation right now. I am going to warp up something simpler and smaller on the horizontal floor loom, and maybe move the Shannock tapestry loom onto the front porch and see how far I get on “Cathedral” this year.

    Ah, there is so much art stuff that I could do!

    Diego is doing fine as far as I can tell. He is not happy with the pain injections any more and he knows what I’m up to when I lift that skin flap on his shoulders. It’s nice to have him at my side in the “office.”

    Lots of different peppers are emerging now, along with a few cucumbers. This grow light might end up being worth it. I had been afraid that the cats would mess it all up but they have not been interested at all. I got an email from UNCG saying that it was okay to go to the UNCG garden plots as long as we stayed far apart from each other and there were only two or three people there. I’ve never seen more than one other person there at the same time as me, so I think that I will go down there and plant some green beans. It is supposed to get up to 85 degrees today!

  • Week one working from home – check

    Although, honestly, I am surprised that it is Thursday. Feels like Tuesday. I guess that is because I haven’t had a lot of work to do. I have cooked a lot more, and Diego had major dental surgery on Tuesday so needs feline nursing care. I’ve done it so much by now with Squirt, Jazz, Theo, Guido, and Lucy that it feels pretty easy.

    I decided that doing more than one online workshop at a time is too much for my monkey mind, and I’ve spent most of my time reading and playing games and cat nursing. Not great, but it has kept me from freaking out. Tying the new warp onto the loom a couple of inches at a time is good activity too. I can listen to music or audio but still be able to concentrate just enough to make sure those weaver’s knots will hold under pressure. I chose the workshop that Crystal Neubauer is doing live on Facebook for now, because it is closest to what I’m already doing with collage, and I love her work and her book, The Art of Expressive Collage. Most importantly, she and I share the same kind of art philosophy.

    Here is a photo of the 5-minute collage I did in her live workshop yesterday (it might have taken 6 or 7 minutes, shhh). I’m going to try to do a few more tonight. I’ve also been slapping some gesso on junk mail pages so that is the background underneath.

    Art journaling. Well. I don’t know. A lot of my favorite pens are dried out so I ordered some more from Jet Pens today. Maybe that will motivate me to write more. I received my PVA glue from Amazon yesterday, so I’m good for a while with that. We have LOTS of other supplies.

    Diego is recovering well. I can’t imagine the kind of pain he must have been in, and I regret that I waited as long as I did to get him scheduled for the dental appointment. He had terrible abscesses and rot. Six teeth removed and a bone graft. The surgery took twice as long as expected. It makes me wonder what Pablocito’s mouth is like.

    I am giving him opioid pain injections three times a day and he got his final oral medication this morning. Fortunately they were able to give him a long lasting antibiotic injection the day of the surgery. I would have hated to struggle with him to get oral meds down a mouth full of sutures. Luckily he is eating just fine and not throwing it up. I have to get to the store to pick up more canned cat food. They hate the prescription canned cat food I ordered from Chewy. Of course they loved it until I ordered a whole case of it. I have tried to stretch it out by putting it under the sensitive stomach canned food I bought from PetSmart. They love that, and if I can get them going, they will continue to eat the food on the bottom.

    Guilford County is on a stay-at-home order from tomorrow at 5 until April 15. It seems like you can go out to do anything that is necessary so it’s not an onerous restriction. We are trying to limit ourselves to our house and yard. I tried out the online shopping and curbside service that volunteers are doing at Deep Root Market on Tuesday. It works pretty well. Any glitches were because I was feeling frantic about Diego that day and couldn’t think straight.

    It means that I will be working from home for a very long time. I don’t like it as much as I thought I might. The Internet here is so slow. The laptop is not ergonomic like my office is set up.

    It’s been chilly and rainy for the last few days, so no yard work. The weekend forecast is beautiful, so I will get out and plant peas, etc. Some of the hot pepper mix seedlings are coming up under the grow light. I love the surprise of these pepper mixes.

    I have a Zoom meeting at 11 so signing off here. New world and all that.