Tag: compound

Magnetic Poetry 365:304

A little girl came to the door in a group of other little kids. I didn’t recognize their costumes, not being always up on what kids are into, but hers was an easy one.

“Trick or treat!” she said.

“You look great! Are you a witch?” I asked.

“Nooooo.”

I’m stumped. Pointy hat. Shiny black dress. Striped stockings. Is that the trick? I’M TOO OLD TO RECOGNIZE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE A WITCH BUT ISN’T?

It’s the first time in three years we’ve had trick-or-treaters. Maybe things have changed during those years. Or maybe the kid hasn’t embraced method acting yet.

A neighbor came by with her daughter-in-law and two grandkids. The kids are about waist-high and chest-high on me. The last time I saw them, one was crawling on the neighbor’s front porch and the other hadn’t been born.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Sunday night, Tom and I went to Johnnie and Matt’s house because they had a pumpkin carving party. It’s the first time I’ve ever carved a pumpkin. I got lots of help and advice. Mostly, it got me into the Halloween spirit. (See what I did there?) So I actually went to the grocery store and bought candy today. Even though, as I said, it’s been years since anyone ate it but Tom, Tim, and me.

And they came! Lots of them. Some of them wanted to reach into the bowl themselves to take the candy. Clearly, they did not understand that an Aries was in charge.

Now they’re all home, dividing up the spoils, getting it checked out by their parents, and hopefully it will be doled out to them over time. I loved trick or treating as a kid. And a ‘tween. And even a teen, though of course Lynne led me into misbehavior on Halloween night. Such a bad influence…

It makes me happy to see kids out again, dressed up, carrying their little plastic pumpkins and Halloween-decorated bags. I like to live in a world where that still happens.

As for our pumpkins:

Tom did the wolf. I did the Barbie silhouette. As you can see, though Victoria and Jane lurk above her, Barbie magic and Wolf strength are keeping Bella safe. Well, that and Jacob, Edward, and Alice. These six know what it means not to break character. Where’s that little witch?

The next Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn, Part 1, opens on November 18. Thanks to the special set of word magnets Marika sent me, you can expect a theme with the poems and photos for the next couple of weeks. Blame Marika! Like Lynne, she’s a bad influence.

Here are some more pumpkins from the carving party Sunday night:

Under Penalty


I’m sure whoever ripped this off the dog bed and left it on the living room floor fully intended to be “the consumer” but was interrupted by a squirrel or something equally catastrophic. Odds are, one of these two little angels is the guilty party.

Today my house seems like a grandmother’s house. I mean that in good ways. The air is redolent with the scents of baking and of collard greens and zipper cream peas simmering on the stove. Outside, the sun shines gently on the morning glories climbing the fence. There’s a new flower on the gerber daisy, and the impatiens, delighted by the milder weather, have begun to bloom again. I just need some little ones to play dress-up with the dogs and a bit of sewing to do, and I might as well be 135.

Speaking of sewing, Project Runway has finished its regular season and only has the Fashion Week competition left. This means I should be working on a final collection, and I am…

Clueless.

Wishing for inspiration.

Not soliciting inspiration. I can’t create to other people’s specifications in doll fashion any more than in writing or painting. It has to be something that catches my fancy from within.

So I’m waiting…and wishing…

Waiting…waiting…

I was out shopping with Tim on Saturday (you can read about that and other things related to this post on his blog here), and I impulsively spent money I don’t have on furniture I hadn’t planned to buy. But it was ANTIQUE. And a good deal! And I even bargained, which is something I don’t do. I bought a reupholstered chair and love seat that the seller estimates are about a hundred years old–that’s even older than my house (eightyish) and ME (ageless). But I bought them just before Ja-vi Custom-made and Antique Furniture closed for the day, and they aren’t open on Sunday or Monday, so I had to wait until today for them! In Aries Instant Gratification Days, that’s two hundred years.

So Tom said he’d go into work late this morning; then my sister-wife Kathy arrived with her truck at nine, and off they went. Except the shop didn’t open until ELEVEN. If only I could read their web site, I would have known I had to wait another twenty Aries years.

But finally the furniture is here. After Kathy and Tom left, I arranged everything about a dozen ways, because even though the new pieces have their own kind of largeness, they’re smaller than what I took out and better suited to my living room. Finally, I was satisfied, and made a couple of dog-related decisions.


1. I would put my mother’s blanket chest under the window behind the love seat so the dogs can jump on the chest and watch Rex TV (the street) without being on the new furniture and potentially scratching the wood with their toenails.
2. I would put easily-washed quilts on the furniture so that when the dogs jump on it–and they will, blanket chest notwithstanding–I have a shot at keeping dog hair and stink off of it.

I had reckoned without Margot’s burrowing instincts. I went into the living room earlier to show Tim the arrangement, and the quilt on the love seat was already in a big pile. I smoothed it back in place and took a photo of Guinness there.

And here’s Margot in the nest she made on the chair.

Looking forward to Tim’s dogs building forts out of the quilts later today.

Magnetic Poetry 365:290

ETA: Does anyone remember where these vases came from? I had a couple of them when I was a kid, but I don’t know what happened to them. Mine were blue. I found this one in a junk store the other day and bought it for nostalgia’s sake. For some reason, I had it in my head they were free gifts with Avon back in the Mesoproterozoic Era. But I can’t seem to find photos of them online to confirm that.

Joy at The Compound

That photo I used for Photo Friday–of the two dolls: Searching for it led to some interesting discoveries.

I knew I had a photo like it, although the one in my head is not exactly like the one I found. But I also knew it was an older picture. Although the computer I use now has access to all the photos stored on my old PC, when I’m looking for something without a specific date or file location, it can be daunting to approach thousands of photos. The photo I could see in my head seemed to predate the old PC, so I went first to my actual physical photo albums. I have a lot of them, and they’re well organized, but I came up with nothing. Then I have a lot of little random photo albums for pictures that aren’t something anyone would care about looking at–scenery from trips, state of The Compound grounds through the years, bad craft projects, TJB publicity shots. Those albums didn’t have what I was looking for either.

There are several wooden boxes on a shelf in the guest room (also known as the Lisa/Debby Suite) that I never open because they’re a reminder that I’m four years behind in photo organization. (I think a lot of people, like me, now depend heavily on their computer photos instead of having them printed to put into albums.) With trepidation, I started exploring the contents of those boxes.

First, I found a boatload of old family photos that I didn’t know I had. I remember one time my mother made Debby and me sit down with her extensive collection of photos and go through them to take what we wanted. At some point in that process, nostalgia kicked in, and she made us stop. Maybe these are photos that I was given before we stopped, but I don’t think so, because some of them are OLD. As in seventy to eighty years old. And they’re of relatives I don’t know. But some of them are of our immediate family, and those were exciting to rediscover.

I never found the particular doll photo I was seeking. But that’s okay, because: I have a journal that’s been missing for years. I’ve mentioned it on here, usually without identifying what it is, but it’s a journal of thoughts/memories I wrote about my friend Steve after he died. More importantly, it contains my few photos of him. And that journal was in one of those wooden boxes! I can finally stop driving myself crazy over its whereabouts.

During my search, I also found a few more of my mother’s buttons that can be featured on Button Sundays and some TJB-related items I didn’t even remember I had.

I think it’s time for me to take on the project of updating and reorganizing (and yes, to some degree, even purging) my photo and memento collections.

This week at The Compound

For the past few days I’ve been lost in the the world created by Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games trilogy. This is not the kind of fiction I usually read, and combined with medication I’ve been taking for headaches, it’s been a week of crazy dreams. I think my next reading material will be by any author who offers me joy and unicorns.

Speaking of authors, a Fool For Love contributor was in town this week and had dinner at The Compound. You can’t even tell he was brought in under blindfold via armored car.


Josh Helmin of the blog Josh and Josh Are Rich And Famous with Timothy J. Lambert.

We had a great time talking about writing, books, mad-eyed politicians, and a celebrity or two. The dogs gave him a unanimous all-paws-up.

30 MINUTES of Creativity: Month 1

The 30 Days of Creativity folks have kicked off a new series: 30 Minutes of Creativity. On the third Monday of every month, they want you to share your thirty-minute creations with them. You can read more about how to play along here.

Today’s the first day, and the suggested theme is “the future.” Here is where I show you that I can predict the future: Today, The Compounders will experience the deliciousness that is sausage-and-cheese-balls.


Dough.


Re.


ME!