Early in the a.m.

Early morning is my favorite time of the day, but it is also sometimes the most challenging, because I still occasionally wake up with a slammer.
Once the animals are fed and medicated, I sit with my coffee and the heating pad on my neck.  For some reason, it helps the headache.  It usually takes a couple of hours, before I am operational.
I have accepted that it is just a fact of life, grateful that it is not every day.

Miss Puss has neuropathy like DH.......he thumps down the stairs, if he doesn't lead with the right foot.  She thumps across the room, and I can't tell which foot it is that is making all the noise.
Diabetes, both of them.
Roy has days of whining and wandering.  Then sometimes he runs across the yard and leaps up on the porch like a puppy.
None of us want to give in to this getting older stuff.

I still struggle with the role of having adult children.  Where did my little ones go????   It seems like it happened so fast.
Grandkids make it easier, especially 3+ year olds who scream "MIMI!!!" when they see you, and throw their arms around your legs.

Then again, after a whole day of kids, I am exhausted, and wonder how I ever did that.  I am happy, content, then, to have a quiet house, and no responsibilities.
Ah, life is strange, my friends.

You can't figure it out ahead of time, and you can't figure it out backwards.   Which leaves us TODAY.
The only day we have really.
In the throes of living with my ex alcoholic abusive husband, one of my favorite Al Anon quotes was this one:
"If you ask God to help you with yesterday, it won't happen.  Yesterday is not yours.
If you ask God to help you with tomorrow, well, that won't happen either, because it is not yours YET.
If you ask God to help you with today, then you will get what you asked for."

STAY IN THE DAY.

I used to have this tacked over my sewing machine, so many years ago.

Now that ex is long dead, and I survived.
He used to say, " I will make you, or I will break you."
Ha!!!
Guess not.

Every morning, I have a plan.  Sometimes it is pretty detailed, and other days not so much.
I am finishing the threading of the AVL, this time in bits ........a little here, and a little there.....my body says so.

I also have dobby bars to peg for my next project.


And I need to get outside to do some yard work.  I do it in 20 minute bouts.   Once again, bowing to the almighty design of an aging, sometimes falling apart, body.

Then in a couple of days, L and I will be making a 5 hour trip northeast to pick up my NEW TO ME loom.  I am so excited.

I know.  I don't need another loom.  Well, that's what I am told.....but it is not necessarily TRUE.

This will satisfy my desire to play with computerized design on the loom, at a price I can afford.   If I don't like it, it will be easy to move it along.
But I am pretty sure I  am going to like it, since I play with Fiberworks on my laptop already.
And I just don't have enough dobby bars to keep all the drafts I want on demand.


So having a plan is good.  Keeps me moving in the right direction....forward, and not back.

Because there is no going back, I'm afraid.

As much as some days, we would like to try.

Minutiae

Fairy egg.

Have you heard of one????

It's a misfire, basically....only a smidgen of yolk in it........

Grandkids are the reward for getting old.   Sometimes, I ignore some of the not so pleasant parts of my age, because they make sticking around  SO worth it.

Watching them grow up is such a gift.

I broke down and bought this book, I have wanted to read it for a while.
If you don't like satire, you might not like it, but I found it to be hypnotic .

It offered me an insight I didn't realize I didn't have.

This one was good, but disappointing at the same time.........I didn't feel like things were resolved at the end of it.
It was a little dark.

Every now and again, I am plagued by squirrels at my bird feeder.......and the last few days, I had a tag team of 4 squirrels trying to eat every last bit of black oil sunflower seed out of it.    I was sewing, so they were really aggravating me, jumping on the side of the house, and then up to the feeder.

So feeling kind of mean, I took the feeder in.

30 seconds later, there's this.

"Hey, what did you do with the food?????"

I gave up, and put it back.     Lunch for everyone!!!!



This is some cotton hemp that I just dyed, blue on blue.  It's my first experience with it, so I don't know if I like it or not.

My latest dinner obsession is a Caesar salad with a marinated, then grilled portobello mushroom on top.

Here's the blue being woven.....undulating twill........

My youngest daughter called, and asked me if I was busy.....could they come for the day.

Oh, heart be still.
I happily stop whatever I am doing........ for this.

Do you blame me???

I can see clearly now......

Sometimes when DH is watching a particularly annoying TV show, I turn the volume way down, since he is listening to it with his amazing best thing I ever bought headphones from Best Buy.
Occasionally I find some British show to watch on my laptop.  Or I read.

 Lately, I've been off knitting....who knows how long that will last.  I go in spurts...knit like crazy every single evening for months, then screech to a halt.....I'm done for a while. I've given up trying to understand that mechanism.

Once in a while, I go back and read my blog. What a great reminder of days gone by, things I've done and forgotten about.  Reasons to be happy, sad, grateful.   They are all there.  The pictures alone speak volumes.
I wish now that I had blogged years ago....wow, what a story that would have been.

I have struggled with plantar fasciitis now for months.  Yes, months.  Nothing seems to work, not injections, ultra sound, ice, exercise.  NOTHING.  I've bought splints, orthotics, stretchy bands that you wear around your instep.  I've googled and read and searched.
Nope.   Nada.
As a last ditch effort, I researched and finally ordered a very expensive pair of shoes that are touted for their amazing qualities for someone with this horrific ailment.  Please God.
I want to go walking.  I have never wanted to go walking this bad, now that I can't.
If someone could come up with a cure for this, they would surely be RICH very soon.

I think that slippers have been my downfall.......walking around this house, weaving, working, in slippers, and not supportive shoes.



Yesterday I went to get my hair cut, over near where we used to live.  While I was there, I popped into the grocery store that I used to shop in.  When my mother moved in with us, I took her there every week.  At first she walked, then as the years went by, it got harder, and she started using the electric carts.  Oh, my, how she loved that.  She whizzed around that store with a permanent grin.  As I was walking the aisles looking for things, I felt her there with me, and suddenly, I wanted to just cry.

Funny, isn't it, how the memory of someone you love, can  sneak up out of the blue and put you to your knees.

How I miss her.
She lost her own mother when she was 28 years old.  In her later life, she always told me that she wasn't afraid to die, and that more than anything, she just wanted to see her mother again.

I get that now.



So I decided to do some dyeing, the other kind.  This was my inspiration picture.

I  must say, I love the process.

Lots of cotton, wound into 1000 yd skeins.

This is my sequence......mix in jars, pour into squirt water bottles.

I screwed up a bit here though.   This cotton was combed, and I have never dyed that before......it didn't want to take the dye.  I soaked it in a soda ash solution, but I should have soaked it, or even boiled it, in a synthrapol (soap) solution, as well.

Consequently, my sewing work room looked like a CRIME SCENE, which was really unwise since I was trying to clean the house for Easter dinner and a house full of family.

What was I thinking???

Anyway, what should have been a short, easy job, turned into an whole afternoon job.

Still the results are satisfactory............

I love color......it makes my heart sing.  There's no other way to put it.


I will leave you with my just washed windows......a clear sign of spring.

A bit of this and that.

Finally, it looks like spring is here.
Yesterday it was 73......and at night the peepers are singing their song.

Nothing says winter is over more than Roy laying in the sun.

Last week, I threaded 780 threads, in the wrong size reed.  So very annoyed, I took them out, and rethreaded them in the right reed, YES, all in the same day.

Can anyone say KNOT IN THE SHOULDER BLADE???

The pain came right through to my chest, I thought I was having a heart attack..
......I continue to be my own worst enemy???
Aren't we all????

Because I don't eat meat, I often have to come up with diner ideas for myself.....when DH is grilling a steak.

One of my favorites in a bean, mushroom, spinach quesadilla.  It is the bomb.

I've been doing a little dyeing.  I am always amazed at how well it turns out.

And some weaving.........

While Lois was off vacationing, I did some organizing, and cleaning.

I am trying very hard to have some balance........I weave a while......then I go do something else.  That pain in my shoulder blade got my attention.

 I do yard cleanup  about 20 minutes a day. It has to add up to something, I figure, without causing my shoulder too much pain.

I am beyond grateful to be retired, and have the choice daily to do whatever I want.   I dreamt last night that I was back in the prison system, passing out meds on the blocks.  I woke up in a sweat.

It is incredibly sweet to have every day as a blank slate, up to my imagination.

Who knew??