WoW

It's amazing; put one foot in front of the other, just carry on, and the most unexpected person rocks your world. Laura agreed to help me out today, and so I picked her up at the usual time and asked the usual question, "How's work?"

Well, she doesn't work there any more. Her news was delivered in the style to which I've become accustomed, first I must ask the right question. Here's the Reader's Digest version:

Laura resigned her job at Chipolte, and has fallen back on her weeding route to pay the rent until she moves on. There is an organization, WWOOF, and she will work at one of their jobs after she finishes a job in Texas. She is packing up her apartment as we speak.

She laid out her plan for me and I couldn't see any faulty thinking. I did ask if she'd told any of her siblings, and she laughed and said they all were too busy to listen to her, except Bekka. We shared a mutual laugh over the old memory of the next two oldest spinning a big plan of relocating to Seattle to become the next programming wizzes, and Laura could tag along.

That's my big news. Except yes, she has green hair this week. She says it was orange for a while, but I'm spared that.

So, I may have enjoyed our last shopping trip for awhile. It is spring, but still far too early to plant mandevilla. When the monumental overnight rains had subsided to a hard sprinkle, we did plant the seeds I'd saved, and my birthday gerbera daisy that the cat made himself sick over. 

Laura told me she had her second vaccination shot yesterday, and I thought she was a real trouper to turn out and devote a day to me. "Oh, I'll be fine!" she said. "The last one barely bothered me!" 

On the way home I was hungry. "Would you like a hamburger?" I suddenly asked. I was in a through lane and needed to be in the right lane for the hamburger or the left turn lane to continue taking her home. She knew where we were and recognized my dilemma. I could hear the wheels turning in the passenger seat.

At the last possible moment she said "No, I need to go to bed."

So I will return to my job of weaving towels. I reached the half way point of the grey this morning.

And look, it's Saturday

 Whenever I think I should write another post, the thought is crowded away with another, what on earth should I write of?  There is a new normal for all of us, deadly stifling, stifling difficult to write about. What new subject to whip to life this time? Oh, yes, it is Saturday!

I went to the grocery store this morning. I've made my life incredibly easier these last many months by shopping for a month of groceries in one go and enlisting Laura to carry it up the steps. Then she cleans my whole house and does her laundry in the time it takes me to shelve the goods.

Sometimes we have a five week month. Actually, four times every year the "month" is five weeks. That's like leap year; it's necessary to keep the world on schedule. And for old retired people, all the scheduled money comes to the bank sometimes four weeks apart, and sometimes five. 

The rent payment may be late this month; I'll make it the same day May funds become available. Since the business disordered management cannot move to the modern world of electronic funds, it arrives at the whim of the post office. Sometimes the payment is a week early, sometimes a week late. 

I will not budge and move funds from savings to pay the rent on time. It's far more satisfying to see if Theresa has the nerve to assess a late fee, whereupon I will report her sins to New Jersey and the late fee is erased. As long as she continues smoking and the smell oozes from every orifice of that building, I'll be safe from late charges.

Where was I?

I went to the grocery store. Now I'm back. The extra loaf of bread and pound of butter are shelved. How I need a haircut. Monday.

Here is the amaryllis we're tracking for the Weaver. When I shelve mine, she'll shelve hers. Mine had five leaves. In turn they drooped to the table, turned brown, completely limp and snapped off at the bulb. The next leaf to go will be the one on the right. It will be awhile; the leaf feels sturdy to me.

My job for the balance of Saturday is to hem the black towels. Not the fun part. At the end of the first weaving project you learn now it must be finished. The several hundred raw threads from each end must disappear somewhere. Sigh.

Then back to weaving. I've scheduled a run of dark grey towels next (bobbins already wound!), and I'll finish the warp with lavender. And that's what I'm doing on Saturday.

A mere four inches

A lot of us went to bed and woke up expecting snow. I pulled the curtain aside and saw the grass covered with snow. Eventually, after cat duty and breakfast, I got out to see what I could do with the broom.

This load of snow was so wet and heavy I could only leave a streak of bristle marks along the top. Of course the snow shovel, as well as the tote of salt, is in the shed. I was expecting a delivery and common decency meant I must clear the way. I puzzled for a minute, and remembered the short, short shovel behind the door. Don't ask.

After I'd pushed a lot of snow through the rails I thought to put the camera down by the deck and take a picture. It's about four inches of cold, wet stuff. Enough I was not about to go in for a ruler. All I have to say is, this time last year my bulbs were up and in bud.

I expect to read a lot of blogs tonight with the topic of the Chauvin trial. How far there is to go, but justice was met here. The distance to go is the change in policing tactics. And so much more. What can change to make decent housing possible and good parenting possible, and good education possible. 

A sea change is still required.

In for a dime, in for a dollar

What do I do all day? Sometimes I wonder, myself. I'm not anti social; I'm fine with solitude but enjoy being with people, rubbing shoulders, chatting, knowing what friends are up to. But, I'm covid-cooped. This is the first time in my life I've sat back and followed orders. It's time to take covid the shoulders and shake some sense into it.

Winter essentially is over; I've made it through the need to remove snow just to go up the road.  A hopefully long and wonderfully warm spring, summer, fall waits. I stand on the deck, breathing it in. This spring I have no doubt what awaits. Work. My happiest occupation.

I'm exhibiting at all Peninsula Flea events this summer and fall. I signed on tentatively, wanting very much to participate, but needing everything to fall into place. And it has. A space in the barn became available. I can set up by myself and cover the booth myself. I can do this!

To that end I've begun accumulating equipment I need and that I can handle. The biggest score to date:

Look at that chair! When I saw it I dutifully scrolled to the end of the page, in the event an even better chair was available, then hastened back up the page and bought it. It is so light I can carry it myself. It is so firm I can stand up like a person, not like a struggling old lady. Look at the amenities. A table that can be a desk. On the other side, an array of pouches to hold everything. Hooray.

The chair arrived at the beginning of the week. I set it up, surveyed it, and realized I am totally in exhibitor mode. Back to the computer to begin accumulating all the "stuff" I need to be an exhibitor the first Saturday in June. Thinking of all the towels I must weave, that is the same as tomorrow!

I am so in the need of cherry blossoms of my own that on a run for toothpaste and toilet paper, I made the last second decision to drive through the cemetery for the trees. I was past the main entrance, and elected the service entrance, a fast and crazy left hand turn onto a dirt drive. 

Bump, bump, thump, thump, I was glad I was not and never will be the occupant of a coffin. The dirt tract went on forever to meet up with a concrete tract. Even on a grey day, the pictures were fine, though.

Good morning

The morning inbox was awash with Boye steel hooks of every size. Thank you; I am so grateful, especially to know their original owners may have left off using them, but they still are in the collections of new owners, and probably will be attracted to another at the proper time. The Boye size 0 is on its way from California, View from my Window in Tehachapi.

I must add a probably long remark about what I do when I knit. I watch television. I am not sure how this works. I have a 17" television, to the sheer dismay of most who have seen it. I think it simply keeps things in perspective. 

The service is called Roku. It's like cable, without local news, which I miss. The amount of money required for television "entertainment" is staggering. But that's not where I was headed.

Of everything available on Roku, I use Netflix the most, and have enjoyed watching so many shows that have been recommended. For a time I was watching Last Tango in Halifax. I know it ends somewhere, but I haven't checked that out. I had to quit watching; every episode was a new disaster, and even reducing it to 17" was no good. Every show another fight, another death, another relative.

I quit Last Tango for Outlander. I watched a couple of episodes prepared to scoff at all the mistakes in presenting the lives of 18th century rural peasants. But what I do know about dress, about the history of clans, which the British treated rather like Americans treated Native People, was ringing true. 

Every episode of Outlander is a new adventure, and most are fairly rough. It was a rough time. I was in for the long haul when I saw the tax collecting episode. Claire, the female protagonist is commandeered into the tax collecting group for her skill as a nurse. Claire wanders into a group of woman in one village and is fit into the group "waulkin" the wool. 

A length of woven woolen fabric is being fulled by waulking. The length is rolled or scrunched its length on a long table and the women on either side pick it up in unison, slap it on the table, pick it up again further down its length, slap it on the table and so on, in time to a waulkin song, like a sea shanty.

I have omitted so far, the rest of the fulling process, which is moisture and heat. The wool has been saturated in warm urine. And so we have the three components of fulling, heat, moisture and agitation. Claire even has a pee into the communal pot of new heat and moisture. And this is how waulking occurs, to my knowledge.

The show goes intensely into the infliction of pain between two warring cultures, and there came a time when one show's action kept me awake far too long. And then I realized Outlander had become as predictable as Last Tango. Each new episode was another murder, kidnapping, extreme loss.

I had to know where it ends. I took to friend google and wound up on my other friend, Wikipedia, which has a one line synopsis of each episode. I read and read and read to catch up to where I am, and then read ahead a bit, then scrolled to the end. Yes, there are hundreds of episodes. 

For the present, I'm off Outlander, too. Picture from Google.