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Today’s my birthday, and our current plan is to celebrate it in a couple of days when David (my brother) will be visiting. We’re really looking forward to seeing him!
A friend is moving to Europe, and Timothy’s happily brought a lot of her plants in pots to the Hall. She will be so missed, but it’s exciting that she and her family (including her, her husband, and their dogs!) are embarking on this new adventure.
I finished a mystery I was reading on Friday; I have unlimited respect for Louise Penny and her work. Her characters are like friends I rely on for humor, sanity, intelligence, integrity, and compassion. The most recent novel’s written with her usual deft ability to lure readers back to a world they’ve visited for twenty books. The plots can be heart-stopping, sometimes heartbreaking, but there’s comfort that somehow, all will be well in the end. This time was no exception except that The Grey Wolf ventured a little too close to a reality that frequently costs me sleep and peace of mind. Maybe because a lot of the current real world exhibits very little humor, sanity, intelligence, integrity, and compassion.
The next novel in the series is due by year’s end, and I hope to be a little better prepared in heart and mind. Maybe reality will cooperate and improve, as well.
After finishing Penny’s book, I looked forward to a very different novel for my next selection, the fifth in a historical fantasy/supernatural series, Deborah Harkness’s The Black Bird Oracle. I was racing through it before it came to a natural stopping place at my bedtime. I fell asleep easily, but the last section I’d read made its vivid way into my dreams with its concept of “bottled memories.” Literally, a human (or ghost, or witch, or vampire, etc.) can choose to pour their memories into a bottle and seal them inside before…well, whatever comes next.
What came next for me was a 4:30 a.m. wide-awakeness and seal-breaking on some of my own bottled memories. ETA: Over the following days, I published a series of posts that I later made private. If you read and commented on those, I can still see your comments and I thank you. I was grateful to have the opportunity to express thoughts and feelings about some of my memories.
This photo included items connected to memories in my bottle that became part of those now-private posts.
Looking forward to more visitors near the end of this month, and there are still things we need to do around here. But a big project that was way overdue was getting help with our yard and flowerbeds (we don’t actually grow many flowers except in pots, unless Tim plants any around our large tree in the front yard), but we do have shrubbery and we have the Mexican petunias (aka ruellias or wild petunias) that grow outside the kitchen window, as shown in this photo from last September:
Looking back, here are a few shots of the back of the property, including this one from 2023.
And later in 2023, when we had a large, dead tree removed.
Even with January’s snow, you can see it became a kind of jungle back there. The dogs thoroughly love it that way, but it was a problem for me. It was so overgrown that I couldn’t easily follow them and clean up behind them. Also, Anime loved the stump of that removed dead tree and was eating the bark and the mushrooms that grew under the bark.
Last week, we called back the yard crew to have the stump ground down, and then, as well as cleaning out that part of the yard, they worked on all the beds, front, back, and sides, and everything looks so much better. We still need to finish mulching that back bed, and we have plans for filling in spaces back there with pots/potted plants currently scattered elsewhere on the property to get color and texture. We’ll see how it looks compared to today’s photo when I take another at summer’s end.
Along with finishing the short series I watched on Netflix, I’ve finished one little project today related to future hospitality. I’ve also handled paperwork for a license I hold. Other than cleaning out refrigerator leftovers and organizing others for lunches and dinners until the leftovers are gone (a couple of days), I’m planning on reading a recently published book by a favorite author and thinking a lot about something I found on social media in the last couple of weeks.
In relation to that, this is the writing I do: occasional commentary on (mostly) strangers’ social media; rare emails, usually short though sometimes longer; this website, which often includes poetry, occasionally flash fiction, but is mostly exposition of one type or another; and fiction. What I guess I must evaluate is what of the above points are true, because some are; some are with qualifications; and some are not at all.
Jim left for the airport before dawn this morning for the second leg of his vacation. I missed him instantly. After he left, I ate breakfast, napped, and spent time outside with the dogs. Then I continued this week’s house and home theme by removing everything from the breakfast room cabinets pictured above, cleaning all the contents and dusting the shelves, then Windexing the glass doors. And POLISHING THE SILVER, as That Old Woman™ (Tim’s trademarked name for my mother) would have wanted. I also cleaned bathrooms, did a load of dishes (the dishwasher is probably in shock over all this attention), and a load of laundry.
It’s a LOT more fun to hang out with Jim and the Houndstoothers than do housework. I need the staff of Downton Abbey.
Me and two of my writing partners on the night Jim cooked stroganoff for us.
From The Tiny Book of Tiny Pleasures:
It was the last night of Jim’s visit, so we did Thanksgiving in March for fun!
On the menu: turkey breast, cornbread dressing, fresh green beans, fresh squash casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, and rolls.
I also prepared a dessert table for the pies we’ve been eating since Saturday that included apple, peach, and Key Lime, but we forgot all about dessert because of the lively conversation. Family and friends: what it’s all about.
One of my house and home projects is to clean the display cabinets in the breakfast room, including the glass shelves and doors, but especially because I’m way overdue to polish the silver. I got a tiny head start today by polishing the butter dish given to my parents on their 25th wedding anniversary by Aunt Lola and Uncle Gerald.
Jim is visiting, and Saturday night, after a game of cards, he retired to his guest room, Tim went home to bed, and Tom and I were almost finished washing dishes (he washed; I dried and put away) when I noticed some water leaking out under the dishwasher door. We almost never use the dishwasher, because when I cook, I wash as I go; other times, we take shifts washing up afterward depending on who cooks. It’s recommended that you DO use your dishwasher, at least once a week, but with only the two of us, it seems like a waste of water. Plus I’m one of those people who finds dishwashing relaxing.
Apparently, for some reason, water was pooling in the bottom of the dishwasher. We hadn’t had any backup into our sink and no problem with the garbage disposal, so we weren’t sure where the water came from or how long it had been there. Tom and I together used two of the small cups I save from our laundry detergent (to use as water cups when I paint) to bail water from the dishwasher into a tub, which we emptied outside twice. Then he used towels to soak up the rest and dry out the dishwasher, then threw the towels into the washing machine. And we crossed our fingers, hoped for the best, and went to bed.
This morning, I woke up to find he’d moved about half of the contents under our sink onto the kitchen counter. The rest of that stuff was in a movable rack we keep under the sink. We’d cleaned out a couple of filters inside the dishwasher Saturday night, and he cleaned out a hose that had some gunk in it this morning. Then I cleaned and partly reorganized under the sink.
Tonight after dinner, we had the real test: doing a load in the dishwasher. All went as it should normally, so we’re hoping that’s the end of the drama. I’ll finish organizing the cabinet under the sink Monday.
I suppose my theme for the week will be house and home projects: cleaning, maybe some organizing, and a few other things that have been on my to-do list for a while.
Wednesday got away from me–a whole lot going on at Houndstooth Hall at the moment. I read a stunning poem by Lynne Shapiro in Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems, and it inspired me to begin a character poem, but I’ll need to finish the poem later and will return to this post to add it when it’s ready. (ETA: Done! See bottom of this post.)
In the meantime, this is Shapiro’s poem.
Your Dead Mother
Dangles from the sky
Like a slim moon
Strung on a string
Silvery blue dress
Pleated like a curtain
Shimmers in your
Room at night
As cocktail gloves
And long fingers
Reach down to caress
Your sleepy head
Composing my poem also made me think of this sculpture that was our late friend Steve’s, which always has a place in our home.
ETA:
Below is the poem I wrote using the word list and title from Write The Poem. It’s a scene that’s maybe two novels away in the Neverending Saga, though it’s been planned a long time. It’s as if whoever put this list of words together could see into the future. My poem is the reason I thought of Steve’s sculpture.
Nighttime
Darkness holds a secret.
He’s in his fourth decade of keeping it.
Less than two decades since four collaborators
joined him in the shadows.
Sleepless, he keeps vigil over her in the dim room.
He wants to whisper,
“She is the one who cradles you in the moon’s crescent.
Even when the sky is moonless, she is there.”
His silence ensures she will not become wakeful.
The black secret will not touch her.
Because of Photo Friday, I didn’t post anything about crafting yesterday, but I did work on something. As I’ve mentioned, the large sketch book where I collect my completed coloring pages will be full soon, even though when I got to the back of the book, I began putting colored pages on the backs of used pages. I wondered if I had another sketchbook as large as that one, and I do, but the front cover isn’t made of reinforced paper or cardboard, so I don’t know if it will hold up to collaging and a lot of use, like the current one.
It’s an old sketch book of our late friend Steve’s. It only has a couple of sketches he started it in, but I’d forgotten I used it back in June of 2012, when I did the 30 Days of Creativity challenge. If you were around then, you might remember that I’d sketch something on a page, then use it for a backdrop with my wee plastic ram being a director of dolls or action figures, etc., doing scenes from different movies. Like, for example, one I did for the movie The Secret Life of Bees. On Friday, after running errands, including having photos printed from those 2012 challenges, I added the photos and explanations to the original sketches. Like this.
After a visit to Texas Art Supply on Thursday, I also started something else that I finished today. I’d found sticker books there with words and phrases that could be turned into poetry (like Magnetic Poetry, but more permanent).
I love these and put together a poem in my Inspire journal (all its pages are related in some way to the Neverending Saga and its characters). I finished that page today. I’m glad I did something creative to end the week, because today (March 8) is Riley’s birthday. One of the ways to resist, overcome, and stay steady when the world is full of chaos, confusion, conflict, and catastrophe, is a far more important “C” word: CREATE. I know Riley would be the first to agree with this. His life was often a series of struggles, and that’s when he sat at the piano or picked up a guitar and turned it all into music and lyrics. And even if the world, or at least some part of the world, will never acknowledge this, humanity does need art and find it healing. Sometimes it feels like the real division in the world is between haters and healers. I’ve learned a lot about that in the last couple of months.
One more thing I did today, in recognition of International Women’s Day, is post this composite to Instagram, described as “just a few of the women who nurtured, mentored, and taught me over the years, expanding my heart, mind, and soul. I thank them and all the others whose photos I don’t have.”
Current Photo Friday theme: Underneath.
Bridge over Buffalo Bayou, downtown Houston, October 2007.
A bunch of assorted flowers, marked down to $4.99 at the grocery store, became my mood-elevating craft project for today, with assistance from antique half-pint milk bottles, a tiny antique vase (lower left) from Debby, and a recycled liqueur bottle (front and center) from Timothy. I might also have been inspired by the Netflix series I’m watching.
I send those flowers with birthday memories for my mother (born March 4), and birthday wishes for Timmy, born March 4, and my never-let-me-down-once-since-we-met-at-age-eighteen friend Debbie, born March 5.
Plus I never slept last night–maybe a couple of hours from 9:30 to 11:30 this morning–and if I choose to continue work on Book 7, it’s suddenly going to turn radically different from what I thought.