* Thursday to Endeavour: " something that the darkness couldn't take from you."
* Two new posts in the ground that will help me up the step and hold up my laundry line.
* I was in a quandary about a table half painted. A talented fellow rescued me. (I do not want to put anything on the masterpiece!) He did the posts, too.
* The drive to the post office never disappoints. Today, the chickens are bottoms up fluffy into their grub.
* Giving a project to a competent person and saying, "Surprise me."
* A visitor who invigorates me, challenges me, gives me much laughter, and rewards me with a feeling that the decisions I made in the past were correct and worth any pain I encountered.
* Cool mornings. Suffocating noons. Monsoon late afternoons. Cool sunsets.
* Camp chairs that can be moved, repositioned, folded up, stored, washed.
* Listening to exciting tales of his life.
* Preparing for a visitor, I wash the dogs although the humidity will slow their drying. When my room mate comes upstairs (in his flannel robe which always makes me giggle): "I washed the dogs." "Yeah. I could smell them as soon as I came upstairs." Much dashing to find fans and direct air onto soggy dogs.
* A cartoon: Tips to become a better conversationalist. Lesson #1. Ask people questions that give them an opportunity to talk about themselves. "What the hell is wrong with you?" (artist's name illegible)
* I fill the bird feeders and water troughs then go about my work. Later, at my desk, I hear much chirping and splashing.
* To work outside in the early cool of the day.
* The dogs recline full length on the cold floor, sometimes right under my desk chair. "Watch out! I'm moving" is a constant refrain.
* Remembering the root beer ice cube tray popsicles of long ago.
* The county has repainted road markings which enable me to escape hitting bicyclists.
* The coolness created by the fan I put (finally!) in the window is remarkable.
* The paint colors I used in my office compliment the view through my window--I wallow in the visual joy.
* I arrange a bird replenishing place--food and water. Each morning still in my nightgown I carry a hot, steaming pitcher of water to the watering hole. I dump out the ice onto an already established mound and empty the pitcher. Back inside with quilt curtains open I watch the birds congregate and dart around the feeders. The water continues to steam, gradually cooling, until in four hours time it is frozen. I read an article recently about how to keep sparrows from bird feeders. Why would I want to do that? 'His Eye Is On the Sparrow'
* I finally settled on a color for the frames put 3 years ago around the new (then) windows of my office. Now 'desert glow' is beside my mandarin orange walls.
* Finding an actor I had never heard of and viewing his movies in chronological order to understand his development.
* How to clear a room of sleeping dogs...arrange an easel too near an open door so that when closed it bumps the leg and sends the easel and bulletin board flying.
* Tall stalks of eucalyptus dispersing aroma throughout the room.
* The genius of a show runner who limits the number of episodes filmed which helps concentrate on the quality. We all want more of good things. Years ago a friend advised me that one drink is enough--a person thinks they want more but with more the enjoyment and satisfaction diminishes. Restraint.
* It being a warm spring day with dogs rampling amidst the weak grass, I hooked up the hose and discovered the old sprinkler has survived the winter. Halfway through the snow and cold I spotted something oddly shaped in the yard. It was not until the snow had retreated a bit that I realized=the sprinkler! Thus, I sat an afternoon in the sun watching shiny droplets form on young buds and generally remembering the loveliness of a swishing sprinkler.
* Oh! Mr WS! Have we not all at some time in life trod upon Mr Frost's roads? Frost's roads were two in a yellow wood but you had several choices Sunday night. You took the road of a coward. And that has made all the difference.
* 2 minor things that, although minor, slightly detract from viewing enjoyment: Joan Allen is an actress. Joan Allen is left handed. Joan Allen portrayed G. O'Keeffe as left handed. G. O'Keeffe was right handed. Joan Allen is an actress (wasn't she able to act right handed?). Actresses who portray hugely pregnant women but flop, flop, onto sofas. I tell you, as soon as I found out I was pregnant I did not flop for a year.
* Listening to Dorsey Armstrong 'Powerful Women of the Medieval World' and '1215'.
* Reading The Anchoress and Patch Work.
* The Res has such water filling it that there is no beach to the beach.
* Waiting for spring and the green and then feeling shocked when I step out of the door and it is so green.
* A new privacy fence.
* Last December brought a new resolve to me. I will always have fresh flowers in the house. Initially I subscribed at a local florist which was interesting because their offerings disclosed techniques that I was not aware of and use of little known flowers. Now I find fresh flowers at the market and arrange them myself. Such an injection of joy--to see them first thing in the morning, to have their scents waft over me as I sit at my desk. I pause throughout the day to soak in the shade and hue changes.
* It is okay to fall apart. Tacos fall apart and we love them.
* Goal: to sit in the garden while ignoring, denying, the harassment, the pull, of planty tasks. "You bought us yesterday---get us into the soil!!" "HAW HAW we're the tall thistley weeds come to take over."
* Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. A.A. Milne
* He has been gone 4 years and yet I still hide my work, muffle my songs, whisper my prayers, filter my words, turn off the movie. Will I ever feel the freedom to live?
* Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
* The waiting, anticipation, in the time when weather is coming in and not knowing what weather. Are the fragile leaves on the apple trees safe? Will I need to dash out in my nightgown at midnight to knock snow off limbs to avoid another visit from the tree doctor? Forget the food thing, have I got enough yarn? Will the water freeze in the garage? As to books.......well.
* Culloden..........
* Everybody has a chapter they do not read out loud.
* Bedtime reading to my children was a joy. I came upon 'The Cupboard' recently and decided to recipe Banbury Cakes......"roll out the pastry to the thickness of a one pound coin".
* Something never before seen : snow plows on this street.
* Andy Weir : Things did not go exactly as planned but I'm not dead so it's a win.
* "talked off the ledge of a tantrum'
* Leonora Carrington : There are things that are not sayable. That's why we have art.
* Think of your heart as hugging your own blood with every squeeze.
* The modern use of the word 'activist' continues to send prickles of irritation through me. The Oxford Dictionary translates it as 'policy of vigorous action'. Well now, come on. Are we all, living beings, activists? All day long I am in the throes of vigorous action. I fling off the 6 quilts I sleep under, gyrate out of bed, navigate the dog minefield hallway to retrieve kitchen stored pet food.....and so on until blissful bed at which time I vigorously gasp for air aided by a machine. By the way when am I going to be able to sleep under fewer than 6 quilts? One night recently it was the 6 quilts, thick socks that are yummy chew toys for the dogs, my long puffy black winter coat and what my room mate calls my Eskimo Nell hat....and my Canadian mittens (knitted on one is 'eh').
* Great gratitude and mask covered smiles for the tree guy who in record time came to investigate the downed limbs of the backyard's maple.
* Lying in bed, the pre-storm morning light sifting through the blue sheet draped window. The black dog does not stir when I get up so it is back to bed for me--he is my gauge. A bit of a lie-in for us while gems meander through my thoughts.
* The regularity of life amidst upheavals.
* My room mate helps me measure what is proper. "Is it okay if I sit in the sun without a shirt on to healthify my scar?" "Yes." So I do and feel better for it.
* Observing a room and thinking, "Now, what can I remove?"
* Myriad sensations. Warmed blankets. Skin pricks. Antiseptic. Rubbing alcohol. Chatter as professionals walk past my cube. I doze unaided by meds...do they pipe the meds in through the air vents? Disappearing for hours, not dreaming. A chest on fire, pierced by a row of barbed wire. I prattle to the driver : "The nurse put my shoes on me." Home, with flowing drains beneath my flat shirt. Icey mandarin orange segments. Meds and dreamless sleep. All this while outside the snow falls and cars sit unresponsive in the negative degrees.
* News the world thinks important does not penetrate. Even after the heavy duty meds are gone all I want to do is eat mandarin oranges segments and sleep. My room mate refills the vaporizers, feeds the dogs, empties my 'grenades', pushes me to drink water. In preparation we decided that he would not ask me how I am but that when my eyes opened I would recite a litany of ...well...how I am. And with every litany I add : "I am not complaining, just reporting." Close my eyes, drift back to sleep. A bomb next door would not disturb my mandarin oranges and sleep.
* Finally, I am able to open the door to let the dogs out. I inspect my fingernails and wonder how I got the cut on my inner heel. A pale yellow gaunt face reflects back at me. And finally, I take notice of the snow, the cold, the news, the winter garden. I wonder, at last, what is next on this wretched unplanned passage. On my very own A Trip Into the Blue.
* Does the direction knives are hung on a kitchen wall denote something? Horseshoes with ends up or down means something, I cannot remember.
* The early Feb sunshine does much for my non alcoholic spirits.
* Whatever is said about Amazon, I ordered post-mastectomy garments on Friday and they arrived today in time to be washed and hung on the line.
* There are words whose proper spelling escapes me so I just let them lie if I know I will use them infrequently. When 10, I found one whose spelling I needed to remember in order to escape my mother's wrath. We had just moved back to the mainland and I was at last old enough to write thank you notes and letters to mostly never been met relatives in a small Ohio town where they had remained even as my parents had fled. The town has a challenge to pronounce and spell name derived from a Native American language. I displayed my efficiency by combining my Christmas thanks notes with my January birthday thank you notes--or was it procrastination? Anyhow, learning, memorizing, the spelling of the town name helped me escape my mother's irritation. Two words recently have traipsed into my life to force me to specifically remember their spelling:cemetery (a third 'e' not an 'a') and mastectomy (thought it was masectomy--whoops! there goes the spell correct red line). Yipes! I do hope they will not be used in the same sentence in the near future.
* 'Elizabeth is Missing'
* on a t-shirt : What if the hokey-pokey is what it's all about?
* French takeout : 'le click-and-collect'
* The wee hour coldest air of the night insinuates itself into my stretched out tightly wrapped feet needling me to wake. "Ignore. Ignore." I do and only unignore when the weak outside light flits over the stained glass.
* 1971 : "Take down that picture. My MOTHER won't like it."
* I meekly take it down and dispose of it.
* 2017 : I buy again the print ('The Precious Stones:Topaz, 1900). I frame it, hang it. I dance around the room singing the artist's name, properly pronounced.
