I think I never posted any photos from Jim’s visit in March. I was pretty much a homebody; Tim and Jim did more going and doing this trip, and even that wasn’t a lot (though it did involve a jaunt to that shopping mecca, the Galleria). Mostly, there was: cooking, eating, talking, spoiling dogs, and playing cards.
We figured out a way to work around Jack. He stayed with Debby during the day, except to eat breakfast and dinner at home, and at night, he slept here. We handed over the master bedroom to Jim, because it has its own bathroom. That way, once Jim turned in for the night, he closed himself in, whereupon Jack came home. The first night, other than sniffing at the bedroom door, Jack seemed mostly unaware that we had a visitor, and they never saw each other face to face. It’s a shame that a dog who is so smart, loving, and good with us doesn’t like or trust but six people, and Tom is the only one of his six-pack who’s male.
The other dogs, however, were delighted to see Jim and give him lots of love.
Delta and Anime on the living room sofa with Jim. Jim is the one who gave Delta her name, and this time she gave him more affection and attention than on his 2017 visit.
Anime got her time in with him, too.
As did Eva.
Cards and apple pie.
Lynne and Minute were here this past weekend, which meant more cards, more food, a bit of errand running, and I read four new chapters from the Neverending Saga aloud to her.
Minute slept through the chapters; fortunately, Lynne did not. =)
In progressive rummy, low score wins, so it was a good night for me. That is NOT usual.
I have more dog stuff to share later. Another update: On Monday, the pile of tree limbs and other tree debris was finally picked up from our curb after the storm of May 16. After doing only a little driving around after that storm, I’m not surprised it took so long. There were a LOT of piles in front of a lot of homes.
It began with this oversized sketchbook I bought once at Ross. I don’t know why, because I don’t sketch. I’m not sure how artists use sketchbooks, but I assume after sketching, they tear out pages and do something with them (for example, I have a nephew who’s an artist, and sometimes he sketches when he’s in a restaurant or coffeehouse, and then gives the sketches to his servers, which I think is very cool).
Since I like to fill empty sketchbooks with my coloring pages, and many of my coloring books are oversized, I decided to use the large sketchbook for that purpose. I wanted it to have a more personalized cover, so I collaged it. The collage is full of things that reference memories, friendships, interests, and my fiction. Since the front cover of the sketchbook was of very thin card stock, I glued a sturdier sheet of cardboard on the inside front cover so the collage wouldn’t weigh it down and damage it.
I began to fill it up in 2022 and 2023 with the coloring I did. I used only the front pages, and when I came to the end of those in May of this year, I didn’t want to stop using the book. I still felt very attached to my collaged front cover. I decided to start at the end of the sketchbook and put new coloring pages on the back sides of every page until I got back to the beginning of the book. This is the last page in the book that I did when I was coloring up a storm–I mean, literally coloring pages during daylight hours when the storm knocked out our power for six days.
Thursday (tomorrow) is the New Moon in Gemini (one of my favorite signs because of all the fantastic Geminis I’ve known through the years), which means today is the Dark Moon. I was watching Kevin’s video from Body Mind and Soul, and he suggested pulling an Oracle or Tarot card today. I opted to pull a random card from the Celtic Astrology Oracle Cards and got Fox. That’s interesting because according to the book’s guide, my birthday falls during the time of the Fox (and a favorite Gemini feels a very deep connection to Fox).
