Who goes there? Please leave comments so (An Aries Knows)!
Whatever way I’m facing when I wake up, I see art. I was going to try to capture that in a photo, but as soon as I sat on the bed, the Nap Committee called an emergency meeting.
Tim’s dogs Penny and Pixie and our dog Guinness. Margot was of course under the bed listening to Morrissey through her earbuds.
Prompt from FMS Photo A Day.
Current Photo Friday theme: Natural Light
A good model finds his light.
Tim and I are going through all the short stories we were sent for the Best Gay Romance 2014 anthology and that is a big thing on my plate. There are so many good and intriguing stories; it’s going to be tough to pick only a few of them.
At Craft Night this past Friday, Lindsey was breaking down meal plans for a ten-day raw food detox she and Rhonda planned to do. At the same time, I offered her the Bottlecap painting she inspired. She wanted to pay for it, and somehow in that discussion, I decided I wanted to do this detox thing with them. So we bartered, and Lindsey added a third person (ME!) to her grocery runs and meal plans in return for the painting. End result: I’m doing this detox thing. I have to modify it some to keep my blood glucose levels where they should be, and I’m not really detoxing so much as I am giving myself a break from meat and starches. I’ve also thrown in a few things that aren’t part of the plan (like ground flaxseed, upon recommendation of Geri and Tim), and dashes of cinnamon, a spice that’s supposed to be good for pre-diabetics and diabetics.
Even though I’ll still cook meals for Tom and Tim, it’s AWESOME to look in my fridge and freezer or at my kitchen counter and see that someone else has divided up three meals a day for me–and it’ll be this way for TEN DAYS! I always said if I won the lottery, the only rich person thing I’d ever want would be a chauffeur. But I could get used to this meal planning/cooking thing falling to someone else. Thanks, Lindsey; it’s nice to be spoiled.
It’s the end of day one of this adventure. I’ve never felt so freaking full on a day that wasn’t a holiday. I thought I’d show you what lunch looked like today. This was on my plate.
Prompt from FMS Photo A Day.
Craft Night. Good friends, a hearty meal, Starbucks, a house full of dogs, and sewing.
Prompt from FMS Photo A Day.
I managed to do this every day in February. I wonder if I will in April? Today’s prompt is “play.”
This little garden ornament from Debby doesn’t say “play” to you? Maybe you should literally “play” a video I made. A minute with a little magic.
2022 ETA: Sorry, the video I created to go here was deleted by the hosting site, and the computer it was on died long ago.
Prompt from FMS Photo A Day.
Sometimes you just have to thumb your sore, itchy nose at all the pollen and sit outside with your iced coffee and a book or two while your dogs laze in the grass. Birds provide most of the sound–including the occasional VERY large bird framed here by trees and power lines.
Even that sound is okay. It means things are running as they should in the world.
That Hemingway novel reminds me of why I shouldn’t loan books (though I still do, from time to time). I was quite the Hemingway scholar as a young woman because I had two great Hemingway professors. After I left college, almost every trip to the bookstore netted me another Hemingway novel, story collection, or biography. That slowed down when I was a poor graduate student. But when Scribner’s said they’d be publishing another posthumous novel, The Garden of Eden, I bought it as soon as it was released–my first 1st edition Hemingway. Not long after, at a party at our house, a friend brought a guy I hadn’t met who was also a Hemingway buff. We were discussing the book and I agreed to let him borrow it since he couldn’t afford to buy it, and after all, my friend vouched for him. He never returned it. So this is my second copy of the novel. People who steal other people’s books suck.
Do you see the little light snapped to my Nook? Not being used outside, of course, but it’s one of my birthday presents from Lynne. It’s a gift to Tom, too, because I always have to read at least a little in bed before I can fall asleep, and my lamp bothers him. The little book light doesn’t seem to disturb him at all.
Here are some other birthday goodies from Lynne.
There’s the cake, of course, that she made.
Pressed pennies from her family’s Disney World trip back in December.
A lovely glass ball for the garden, a little terra cotta bear that you put in your brown sugar to keep it moist (ew, that word), a Venus McFlytrap Monster High doll (love her glasses), and…those damn coasters. Because everything in her house was packed up at Christmas, the coasters didn’t make a holiday appearance. But now they’re back in circulation, ready for me to concoct some fiendish way to pass them along again to her or Laura sometime in the coming months.
When my mother moved from Houston before the turn of the century (I love referring to time that way), she left a lot of pots that had once had flowers or plants, and I figured most of them were long gone. Then one year I was shocked when some green stalks I hadn’t paid much attention to suddenly produced the most amazing flowers. I called her and asked what they were, and that’s when I learned to identify amaryllis.
Some years it would bloom; some years it wouldn’t. One thing we do is just leave it alone; it seems to know what it’s supposed to do without any input from us. The years it appeared, I always saw it as the official sign that we were in full spring–and that was usually early to mid April.
It’s early this year.
I’m always glad to see it because it’s like a gift from Mother–and that’ll be even more appropriate on Tuesday.
It’s been a hard week for the dogs because I’ve spent so much time taking pain medication and sleeping. Actually, this is great for Margot and Guinness, because they are old and sleep is what they love second only to anything edible. But Tim has been away working, and Pixie and Penny are younger and more energetic. They had a great time last weekend because Sugar was with us, too, so there was lots of romping. But the week has been slower.
I felt better when I woke up today. I made the bed. Cooked some breakfast. Let the dogs out. Took care of some online business.
Then I decided to go out with the dogs again so Margot could dig holes, Guinness could vanish wherever she vanishes to, Penny could stare down the street (if staring were an Olympic sport for dogs, Penny would win the gold medal forever), and Pixie could burn energy chasing imaginary squirrels and real lizards. When I got tired of sneezing, we came inside, and I took a shower.
When I got out of the shower, I heard the telltale jingling of collar tags that means there’s playtime happening. Which is when I remembered: Last night, Tom went into our bedroom and realized some dog had thrown up a little on the bed. So he put the sheets and spread into the washing machine and put one of our older quilts over clean sheets. Older quilts = little tears and worn-out places. Little tears and worn out places = dog heroin.
I don’t know how much bedding we lost before we got Margot and Guinness past the terrible twos. And threes. The best guess is: lots.
I estimate that since the girls grew up and out of such behavior, I’ve lost about a quilt or pillow a year to Rex/Pixie or Pixie/Penny combos. With that in mind, I wrapped myself in a towel and dashed into the bedroom. Yep.
Here I’ve piled up the pieces.
Here are the faces of “innocent until proven guilty” who’d like to speak to Rex’s attorney before answering any of my questions. See how sweet they look on a different quilt as if to prove they would never do what I’m accusing them of?
A little late in wishing you all Happy Pi Day. Tom and I had a slice of Key Lime each. Tim had apple–he’s an American boy.
Thanks, Kroger!
Some of the spam comments I get on this blog are unintentionally hilarious so I often peruse them before I delete them. Today included a new favorite:
“This text is worth everyone”
No punctuation, nothing else, just that. I want y’all to remember that my writing is worth EVERYONE. When the planet decides to shrug us all off, probably this text will remain. With the cockroaches. And Cher.
Here, let me distract you from that hard reality with a pretty photo of Tim’s azaleas and roses.
