Author: Becky

Today I spent time outside with the dogs and got rid of a couple of dead plants. We got them through winter, but the drought finally took them. 🙁

While I was watching the next-to-last season of “Suits,” I started working on patching the dog quilt that’s so tattered. (Happy International Dog Day!) There’s a white rectangle, stained with rust stains probably from what it was stored with when we flooded, I don’t know, as well as having worn and torn spots. I’m going to cover that entire white rectangle with plaids and prints. I estimate it will take around 36 new squares to cover it. I got the four corners done today (three squares each), so that leaves 24 more to sew on.

Here’s a green plaid square that I sewed on today. Jim said he remembers when this fabric used to be a pair of my PJ pants. I keep fabric like this to use for doll clothes, but it’s coming in handy for this quilt restoration.

After the white rectangle is covered, I’ll begin repairing the squares on the rest of the quilt that are no longer stitched down, or are frayed and may need replacing.

The final season, of “Suits” is not on Netflix. Fortunately, it’s on another streaming service that Tom subscribes to, so I should be able to finish it. No big deal.

When I ran out of episodes and took breaks from quilt repair, I continued to re-read the sixth book in the Neverending Saga. And I realized I missed a huge opportunity to write a good chapter. So… guess I’ll be editing it more than I expected. Which is cool. Mercury retrograde is a great time to finish it and not a great time to start writing the seventh.

I’m determined not to obsessively check weather updates over the next few days, but it’s hard. Hurricane Hilary seems pretty nasty and could bring flooding along the south Pacific coast and also to several western states that normally don’t deal with this kind of weather event. It could also exacerbate the excessive heat the southwest and midwest are experiencing, AND ultimately contribute to the wildfire issues the northwest coast is grappling with. We’ve just seen how hurricane-spawned winds can impact an area as it did with Hawaii.

Since I’m still not ready to jump into writing the seventh book of the Neverending Saga, I’m continuing my binge watching of “Suits.” I spent a goodly portion of my adult life working with and for attorneys in many settings: family and probate, corporate, environmental, commercial real estate, and financial. Still, I can’t say how accurate “Suits” is in matters of law–I’m watching for the characters, narrative arcs, and witty banter. It’s been a good diversion throughout August.

Watching television always comes with a sense of guilt for me. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s because many years of my adult life were spent without even owning a TV. I was never one of those people who turns on a TV as soon as I got home or woke up or settled down for the night. I watched sitcoms in the Nineties so I could join in “water cooler” conversations at work. I’ve rarely been able to adhere to a weekly schedule to watch shows, so streaming services are ideal for me. There are some shows Tom and I have watched together in the evenings. “Downton Abbey,” “Yellowstone,” “The Crown,” and “Bridgerton” come to mind in most recent years, and also a few comedy series, but even with all those, I tend to watch them either when the entire series has completed or at least when a season is complete. In years past, I did that with “Absolutely Fabulous,” “Sex and the City,” and “West Wing.”

Maybe to offset guilt, when I’m watching shows solo, I often multitask by doing something creative at the same time. This morning, I washed a quilt we throw over the sofa in the office and call “the dog quilt,” since it’s mostly to protect the sofa from the dogs. It has lots of worn places and dog-gnawed places, so I’ve brought out the plaid and patterned cotton fabric to begin cutting squares to start patching those spots today while I watch “Suits.”

The mending doesn’t have to be pretty–the dogs won’t care. This will give the quilt a few more years of use, which is better than letting it end up in a landfill.

In the season of “Suits” I’m watching now, a new character showed up and I kept wondering why I immediately liked him and felt like I knew him. Finally I looked him up and realized the actor, Dulé Hill, played Charlie Young on “West Wing” and was one of my favorite characters.

Another character showed up played by an actor who isn’t familiar to me, Scott Lawrence. I looked him up, and he’s been in lots of movies and TV shows, some of which I’m familiar with but never watched.

In researching him, I discovered that a LOT of people think this actor could portray Barack Obama. I see the similarities, but to me, he looks more like one of my Action Figure Obamas–this one:

That’s the 2007 candidate Obama manufactured by Jailbreak Toys®. I prefer the 2018 Factry© President Obama (also manufactured and distributed by Jailbreak Toys®). His hair, like many presidents, shows how the responsibilities and gravity of the office aged him.

Enough playing around. Tom just brought me the clean, dry, folded quilt. Time to start cutting fabric then sewing to the accompaniment of characters who can give me a refreshing break from the ones who live in my head without paying me a dime, despite the wealth several of them enjoy.