Still November

1. It occurs to me that most people won't know what this is or what it does:


But there are still a fair number of people who will recognize that yesterday was My Mammogram Monday, a now annual November event added to my personal calendar. It marks the one time every year that I wish I had microscopic boobs because it seems that once you climb up into the rare air of my cup size, the number of times each breast has to be squashed between those plates doubles. Those machines are built to easily built to handle things up to about a C-cup, so in my range, at least two pictures have to be taken at each angle instead of one. I was there for 30 minutes. That is a long time to spend with your tits in a vise.

2. Here is a picture I took at the museum:


3. Decluttering continues! Dave and I took a day off on Sunday, but last night resumed with day 23. Forty-six things gone. (That's 576 things combined total in 23 days!) Last night Dave went through his box of sentimental things and got rid of some stuff, while I continued to mine the small things in the casita and closet, where I am always able to find something that is stained or doesn't fit. (Old, stained t-shirts are usually suitable for wearing to the studio since they're going to get dirty anyway and further stained with iron oxide and the like. As for stuff that doesn't fit, I am just like every woman on the planet; I maintain an entire second wardrobe of things that I don't currently fit into but that I'm one day going to fit into again.)

(Ay yi yi.)

But by now we've gone through many of the small things so we're going to have to start taking a look at the larger things: appliances we so-rarely-as-to-be-akin-to-never use (but which take up lots of our limited cabinet space), large pottery bowls of which we have so so so very many, and so on. Things that we own more or less jointly are also problematic as there has to be some discussion about them as well as respect for the veto process and people's feelings (neither of which I am particularly good at).

Last night, for example, we got rid of a casserole dish that Dave threw and I glazed. The lid never sat very securely on the piece (the gallery was a bit shallow) and it developed a small crack in the final firing. The piece was still usable--though how often are two people going to use a large casserole dish?--but not salable, so we kept it even though it was a relatively large piece and hard to store with the lid on. We've probably used it twice in four years. Long story short: It went, but it ended up in the donation bin on Dave's suggestion. (I would rather smash up a piece that we made than donate it, to be honest.)

Tonight we tackle 24. Yikes.

3. Five things that have made me happy in the last 24 hours: New episodes of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on Netflix. Green chile, cheese Lotaburger and shared fries and onion rings for dinner last night. Gray Kitty learning to communicate by scratching at the door. Getting through to day 23 of the decluttering challenge. The tiny house spider, complete with web, who has taken up residence at the head of my bed.

4. Daylight savings is messing with my head, man. It's only 5:00 now and getting dark. In a couple of weeks, it'll be dark at 4 in the afternoon. That sucks.

5. It may freeze tonight, so this afternoon I went out and picked all the tomatoes that were ripe. For dinner tonight, we're having a kind of last huzzah of summer caprese salad with the tomatoes and some basil from the garden, fresh mozzarella, and red onion. Why not?