Short But Sweet

Gray Kitty has taken to climbing up on the table via a dining chair to see if there are any tasty tidbits (Dave lets him drink from the dregs of his cereal bowl sometimes and once he got ahold of a tiny piece of hamburger that I dropped on the floor and he figured out that it had come from the tabletop). I don't mind his being on the table, but I worry because he has arthritis in his back and hips and he could hurt himself if he jumps down. We pick him up and put him on the ground, but a couple of times he's evaded one or the other of us and has jumped down. To prevent that, I pushed in the chair he normally uses to get on the table. He jumped onto the chair and then sulked there between the table and chair for awhile after he realized he couldn't get on the table. Poor spoiled little kitty. 

Four blocks of the new quilt in progress, a shadow quilt (sometimes called an illusion quilt). I'm using crumb blocks,  the Pantone color of the year called nocturne, and a turquoise blue shade from a fabric line called Grunge Basic. I'm afraid I may run out of the blue shade and I really don't want to have to buy more. 

Forgotten Things

 

I was combing back through some old photos on my phone, looking at this time last year and the year before. This photo of a quilt top (needs to be quilted) came up from last year. I had completely forgotten about making it. At the time, I was disappointed in it (too visually busy) so I folded it up and put it away. I have only a guess as to where it is now. I should probably find and quilt it. 

Sigh.  

Today is Monday. It's been godawful hot the last couple of days, 103F/39C yesterday, 104F/40C today. The next few days will be the same, then it will drop into the high 90s (98, 99, etc.) 

We did not go to the protests on Saturday, but we should have. Kelly and Kevin made signs and went, as did Grace and Chris.  I'm proud of my friends for getting involved like that. I'm more of a check writer. Lots of places (like Healthcare for the Homeless and The Trevor Project that helps LGBTQ+ children and teenagers) are losing funding so that Elon Musk and his cronies can continue not to pay taxes, so sending money is a must. Dave and I send money and then I get online and read the reddit forum where people who voted in the current regime cry about how their Medicaid is being taken away and how their families are being deported. (Don't worry, fox news will tell them that somehow Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton are at fault and, trust me, those people who voted for their own destruction are dumb enough and racist enough and misogynistic enough to believe it.)

We had my mother over for lunch (Il Vicino take out) on Sunday. Lunch was good except for a brief foray into politics and another into what will happen with my mother's jewelry when she dies (I don't wear jewelry). Anyway, the pizza was good and we shared a bit of cheesecake and tiramisu for dessert.

In the afternoon we went out to Walgreens to pick up a prescription and when we got home (since I had gotten no sleep the night before and was nodding off on the drive to and from Walgreens) I lay down for a nap. I got up long enough to wash and dry my pajamas (I did not have any clean) and when they were done, I put some on and went back  to bed and I pretty much stayed in bed until now, about twenty-six hours later. (I was up in the night last night for several hours, but I fell asleep again around 4 a.m. and slept all day today.)  I haven't been feeling great to be honest. I don't feel sick, just very, very drained. Maybe it's because I got my period after several months of not having it or maybe it's the heat or the crappy air quality we've had from wildfire smoke. I don't know, but it's something.

Like I said, I was up for several hours in the night and so I did a bit of mindless sewing, making crumb blocks even though I have so many things I want to sew. I'm tired and it feels overwhelming to start a new project right now.  (Maybe my iron is low? I added a pot roast to our grocery order today and will make it tomorrow, just for a hit of iron.) While I sewed and ironed, I half-watched episodes of Bones. So ridiculous, that show. Perfect half-watching fare.

I had leftover kale and garbanzo salad, a few bites of cheesecake, and a slice of pizza for a midnight snack. Our dinner last night and lunch today was leftover pizza. (Maybe I'm tired because my diet has been terrible.) For dinner tonight we had vegetarian hot dogs and sweet potato puffs (see?) and salad. 

I need to start checking my blood sugar. 

Things Change

I found this little friend in our kitchen in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago.  She was not happy when I put a paper bowl over her until Dave could use his snazzy insect trapper to relocate her outside.

She is the second scorpion I've caught in the house. The first was much smaller. Turns out that they can squeeze through gaps as little as 1/16th of an inch, so I'm sure the big gaps around our doors are not much of a challenge to them. 

 Dave put her outside for now. (I did some reading about scorpions and it turns out that the females spend about eight months out of the year pregnant and that they are more aggressive than the males.)

Gray Kitty, outside.

Nanas with googly eyes. 

Here's some random stuff:

It's been hot recently and today it's windy. It's been hazy, too, pollen and maybe smoke from wildfires. 

I had a rough weekend, with swollen lymph nodes in my armpit and jaw on my right side. It feels a bit better today, but I'm still feeling...just not right. My hypochondriac brain suggest sepsis--just as it suggests a heart attack whenever I have heartburn or acid indigestion (a common symptom among women who have heart attacks) and stroke whenever I have a headache. My brain is not my friend sometimes. 

I spent part of the day sleeping and part of the day sewing. I finished a quilt yesterday, the circle quilt, but it was not a very satisfying finish. When it was done, I washed and dried it, folded it up and put it away. I may try it again, but maybe not. I need some new inspiration.

Today, I've spent some time journaling and doing laundry and starting to clear up my sewing area. I cleared out my most used sewing drawer, which had a bunch of stuff that didn't belong in there, including some dried up coffee from when I spilled coffee in it not once but twice.

Last night I fell asleep close to four-thirty in the morning, listening to a cabbie from London describing the routes he takes through the city. His channel was recommended to me because I watch a bunch of delivery drivers in London. I've also recently started watching videos made by a driving instructor in London. Most of the time she is instructing new drivers, but sometimes she has her friends or family who have been driving for years as example drivers (most would fail their driving tests if they took them now as they've built up the bad habits that all of us acquire over years of driving).  I don't know what draws me to these kinds of videos, but they are fascinating.

We are picking up a grocery order later this evening and maybe we'll drop off some bread Dave made for Grace and go by my old elementary school. My mother sent photos over the weekend showing that it's been mostly knocked down. Things change, don't they?

 

A Day

A day in photos:

Kelly texts jack-in-the-pulpits from her woodsy location. 

Dave spots the first batch of quail babies outside his office window. 

Gray Kitty and I take a pre-bedtime evening nap on the sofa. 
 

Getting ready for a mammogram this afternoon.  Great fun. 

It's A Spider in Bits

(Yesterday) 

We had strange weather today. It was cloudy, not too hot, windy in the afternoon and very dry.

Kelly texted early. She was stuck with Kevin (I assume) in an airport in Denver.

My mother texted in the early afternoon, wishing me a happy Memorial Day.

Dave did lots of chores today, both indoors and out and he made cinnamon rolls; I sewed part of a spider and hosed down the outdoor chair cushions and wiped down the outdoor cafe table. We sat out for a bit. I need to sit outside more. I get stuck indoors too much.

We made quesadillas for lunch in the very late afternoon--and so far dinner has been a piece of toast each. I need to figure something out soon because I need to take my meds with some food. 

Gray Kitty is napping on the couch. He came outside with us for awhile and looked around at the things Dave had cleaned up. Then he had a nice long drink from the hose.

In the evening, he curled up in the corner of the sofa and took a little late afternoon nap. He loves to nap. (Me, too.)

But I didn't nap yesterday. Instead, I started cutting out and sewing up a spider. This spider:

Okay, it's not an itsy bitsy spider, it's a spider in bits (and my old pincushion), and it's going to be big (about 9 inches by 4 or 5 inches). A lot of it can be sewn by machine, but a bunch of it has to be done by hand and hand sewing and my arthritis do not get along. Still, I got the abdomen, thorax, and pedipalps cut out, sewn, stuffed, and attached so that the body was complete. That left the legs. The legs are very long and skinny and numerous--eight of them!--and each requires a lot of concentration to sew and the use of hemostats to turn and stuff them. Hemostats don't bother my hands as much as scissors do--or so I thought until I had to turn and stuff spider legs with them. So I've only completed four legs. 

Anyway, I had a bag of polyfil (polyester stuffing) that is probably about six or seven years old and which was not that big but which turned out to be the gift that kept on giving and giving and giving. I mean, not that I stuff all that many things--maybe a pincushion here and there--so I was sure that I was going to die with a partial bag of polyester stuffing unused among my sewing things. But no, turns out this spider is going to take out that bag of stuffing and I'll probably have to buy more if I want to make another spider. (Which I do, because this is my first go around and it is a very amateur attempt.)

Today I worked a bit more on the spider and then on my big circle quilt. I also did some laundry, started clearing out a cluttered area in my room, worked in my art journal, listened to some episodes of Bones, ordered some things we need around the house, and took a shower. I sat outside with Gray Kitty for awhile (until I heard what sounded suspiciously like a mosquito buzzing around). 

What else is going on? I told myself that I wasn't going to order anymore fabric until I had used up some of my older stuff--then the Memorial Day sales ads started showing up in my inbox and the next thing I knew, I had filled a cart with fifteen yards of fabric and two quilt batts and used my 20% off coupon to order all of it sent to my house. Here's the kicker: The fabric is not going to be used for quilts (not most of it anyway). I also ordered a couple of patterns that I saw for pajamas and button down shirts and after watching a very detailed tutorial, I'm going to try sewing some of each using quilting cotton. We'll see how that goes. Other than pajama bottoms and a handful of skirts with elasticized waists, I've never sewn any clothing. But I'm crafty, right? (You're thinking those are famous last words, but in fact, those aren't the famous last words I'm looking for. The famous last words I'm looking for are: How hard can it be? Can't be that hard.)

Now I'm wondering about what to do for dinner.