random thoughts – Day 2,429 (Wednesday 11/11) – times of clouds and sun

Freshly raked front yard.

The front yard was blanketed in leaves and I was starting to feel a little embarrassed. Most of the yards in the immediate vicinity of mine have been liberated of leaves regularly and I was the slacker. The back yard leaf carpet was even worse.

Today, with the sun shining and the temperature in the low 50s, and the weather app declaring the day to be one of "times of clouds and sun," I tackled the task. Three 30 gallon leaf bags were filled, along with a gigantic round plastic planter. Because I tend to read things, there was plenty of time to wonder why the capacity noted on the paper leaf bags was stated in gallons and not area like square feet or cubic yards.

New hydrangea leaves?

The track of leaf bag capacity wondering ran concurrently with wondering about the hydrangea which  hasn't flowered the past two summers. Thinking that this year's barren status may be because I trimmed it incorrectly last summer, and unable to determine if it blooms on old wood or new to know when to prune it, I left it alone this year. The leaves finally all fell off and left bare sticks. And now, it's putting out new leaves. Maybe it's confused by the recent spell of decent weather. It has a cozy bed of leaves for the winter.

There was raking and squatting like a Sumo wrestler and setting leaves in the bags and pressing them down to compact them. Despite an hour or more of raking and stuffing leaf containers, no theory about the gallons versus square feet emerged, but I knew there were about 100 gallons of leaves in my car at the end of it. And that was just the front yard. I didn’t have it in me to do the back yard, but luckily, it’s not visible from the street and only I and the neighbors on either side of me can see the shameful state of my yard.

Off to the compost area!

During the raking, my sinuses did the super fun trick where they felt simultaneously stuffy and runny and I had to breathe through my mouth. As if that wasn’t enough fun, I managed to tweak my neck. It likely happened during one of the 1,000 times I tried to shake my hair out of my face and mouth because I forgot to grab a hair tie before I went outside and then didn’t want to lose momentum by going into the house to fetch one. And the curse of the tweaked neck spread to my shoulder, which was the wretched progression a year ago when I ended up in physical therapy. The yard progress felt good, the physical effects did not. Clouds and sun for sure.

After the leaf bags and the planter were emptied at the compost area and the yard tools returned to the shed, it was time to park myself on the couch and take it easy. Mistletoe Mysteries, a Hallmark “cozy holiday mystery television series” was chosen for some easy, thought-free entertainment. It's going to be a cozy night of sleeping with a hot/cold sticky pad. 

random thoughts – Day 2,428 (Tuesday 11/10) – vegging and progress

It was an odd, bordering on strange, day that began when I woke in the dark at 5:54 and voluntarily exited the bed. Most days, I grudgingly awaken to the alarm on my phone at 6:30 and then tap the snooze button until 7:00 or later. I have no idea what inspired me to arise so willingly so early, but I dove into the day with a mug of warm water followed by coffee and breakfast (fried egg with cheese on an English muffin), Wordle, many games of Duolingo chess, and Words with Friends. And then, suddenly, it was 9:00. And 10:00. And 2:00.

All pieces cut!

It seemed like I spent most of the day vegged out on the couch, but things were accomplished in spite of my general state of inertia. A storage box of curtains was gone through and extra panels added to the back bedroom window for extra window insulation over the winter.

With no solder on hand, I was hesitant to do much glass work, but I finished the glass cutting on the crescent moon started Monday. I also had the sense to photograph the completed pieces. There are five panels ranging from 4” by 6” to 8” x 10”, three crescent moons, four hearts, and five poinsettias. Time was spent comparing prices and ordering solder, tinning wire, and a handheld edge smoother. Supplies will be in-house by Friday.

The refrigerator, which was delivered on October 27, was finally registered on the manufacturer’s website. While putting the product info with the paperwork for household appliances, I found the estimate of needed car repairs from the Jeep dealership that I was looking for two weeks ago. 

The local, independent garage that fixed my brakes and problematic lug nuts saved me $500 compared to the dealership estimate. In a month or two I’ll go back to the garage for the other repairs that were recommended. The reason I even found the garage was two weeks ago I needed gas and used the Waze feature for “gas near me” ranked by low to high price. I had driven past the station a million times in the past year (rough estimate) and never noticed the place. Now that they are on my radar, I expect to be visiting there regulalry.

random thoughts – Day 2,427 (Monday 11/9) – glass and faucets

Student show at
Worcester Center for Crafts.

Monday funday was a little bit less fun today. I had a vague plan of goals for today's glass class which was the last of the session. First, I couldn’t find the image I thought I had saved for a twisted wire edging I wanted to try. When I found another similar image, I learned it would require a drill to evenly twist the length of wire and keep it straight. I have a drill, but it was at home because I didn't know I would need it. 

We had a chance to see the student exhibit that is in the gallery. It was an impressive array of works in photography, pottery, jewelry, and glass. Gorgeous and inspiring stuff. Two of my classmates had work in the show, but I didn't enter anything. 

When I got back into our glass studio room, I didn’t have anything to work on due to the drill thing, so I flipped through class patterns (time consuming), changed my mind three times (a sun, a star, a moon) and ended up starting yet another crescent moon from scrap glass. 

Fighting with the moon.

That got complicated really quick as there were no scraps large enough for most of the pattern pieces as drawn. I was altering the pattern on the fly, cutting (and breaking) glass, grinding for hours, and leaving with a pile of pieces that didn’t really fit each other. Kind of frustrating, and fully my fault for not having a Plan B.

After class it was a dash home to meet the plumber who was coming to change out the faucets in both bathrooms, clear the drain in the main bathroom, and install a garbage disposal. The clogged drain was liberated of about 20 years of muck. The new faucets and drain plugs are shiny and fancy compared to the 40-year old leaky units with plastic knobs. The disposal needs a part and will be dealt with another time.

Fancy new faucet.

While the plumber worked, I tortured myself trying to finish the cutting on the crescent moon. It was not successful. The pattern alterations mandate totally new shapes and there is one crazy shape left to be cut. I didn’t have it in me to keep drawing and cutting. Maybe tomorrow. I can’t go too far with any pieces right now as I am out of solder. I have used everything I had on hand and need to restock. I will use the supply interruption to shift gears and focus on practicing the dances for the performance on November 22.

random thoughts – Day 2,426 (Sunday 11/8) – unplugged and under observation

Leaves on a skylight.

It was a gray morning and the leaves are still falling. The new skylights that were installed with the roof are not a bubble shape like the old ones, and the leaves and pine needles are sticking to the windows instead of sliding off. I guess that means the snow won't slide off like it used to, either. 

In keeping with a longstanding habit, dance bestie and I met this morning to dance. We ran through our duet and two group dances we are performing in a private event in a couple weeks. We looked at a cool construction detail on a recent addition to her costume collection and talked about how it could be incorporated into costume elements we make in the future.

When I was home, I decided to start working on the window insulation film I bought weeks ago. I chose the bathroom window to start with because it’s smaller than all the other windows and if I screwed it up, it wouldn't be as visible as a dining room or living room window. The double-sided tape was applied. The window film was cut closer to the window size and applied. The third step was to heat it with a blow dryer to tighten the film and remove wrinkles. Easy. Except the blow dryer wouldn’t turn on. I don't always blow dry my hair and tried to remember when I last used it. The best I could get to was early last week, because later in the week I had definitely let my hair air dry. 

The reset button on the dryer was tried. It was plugged and unplugged and turned on and off a bunch of times. I was about two minutes away from heading out to buy a new dryer when I decided to try it in another outlet. It works in a kitchen outlet so it seems the bathroom outlet has a problem. And it’s the only one in the bathroom.

There is a plumber scheduled to be here Monday to deal with the leaky faucet and the slow drain. I hope he doesn’t need an outlet, or that I can find a decent length extension cord to get to the next closest outlet. 

Under her eye.

To get my mind off the outlet, I started cutting glass for new pieces. The first was a heart, and like most of the previous hearts, it turned into a pain in the arse and I abandoned it. Then I took the bin of clear scraps and designed a small rectangle piece. It took a lot longer than I thought it should, mostly because I was truing to do it without cutting any glass. That became unwieldy and I ended up cutting several of the scrap pieces to fit. 

Somewhere in the outlet situation which was followed by making ramen for supper and then working on glass, I had set the phone down and forgot about it for several hours. When I remembered the phone, I got to play another exciting round of "where is the phone?" which is the only game I play more than "where are the keys." This time the phone was on the white cutting board in the kitchen, and once I hit the correct room it was easy. Usually, the dark phone is left on a dark piece of furniture and is hard to see.

Miss Kiki sat near the couch, supervising me as I applied the copper foil. She let me pet her when I had a free hand. She has been positioning herself for pets a lot more frequently and I am happy to oblige. I am often under her watchful eye. She watches me from across the room and then does her ninja move and suddenly appears at my side. 

Kiki also likes to sit across the room and meow, and when I meow back she trots over for a head rub. If I call her name, she comes to me. So cute. I’m sure she will eventually become a lap cat someday, which isn’t exactly a day of the week or specific point in time, but I’ll take it whenever it arrives.

random thoughts – Day 2,425 (Saturday 11/7) – labor and leisure

Pumpkins and gourds.

It’s been raining for several days. The day’s plan included apple picking, decided mid-week when the temperature was in the high 60s and 70s. The rain, which was just a light drizzle by then, did not get in the way of the orchard labor. 

A driver hauling a wagon took us past fields with pallets of pumpkins and gourds and beyond the now empty pumpkin patch, to the picking trees. From the wagon stop, it was a short walk to the Pink Lady apples that my friend wanted.

There were plenty of low hanging apples, but there were also ladders nearby so of course, I climbed once or twice. There were a couple lessons learned. For one, there are a lot more varieties of apples than I ever imagined. Snapdragon? Mutsu? Empire? Until now, my apple familiarity has been largely limited to the grocery store offerings of Granny Smith and McIntosh.  

Apple trees and a tempting ladder.

Another lesson involved my jacket, which was warm enough for the weather, but not exactly waterproof. The sleeve of my left picking arm got all wet, then my pant legs were wet from wiping my hands on them in an attempt to dry them. My hair became bushy with waves and frizz from the wet air and I felt like a tumbleweed by the time we were done. It was fun. All of it.

On the way home, we passed a store emblazoned with a sign that read “EC Thrift.” This was not a store with which we were familiar, which felt like all the more reason to go in. Wow, what a store. It is large, clean, and well organized. Prices on a lot of the housewares seemed insanely inflated ($79.99 for kitchen knives in a thrift store?) but the clothing prices were reasonable. Even though I didn’t find an Irish knit sweater (my current thrift holy grail), the store was still the cherry on top of an already great day.

random thoughts – Day 2,425 (Friday 11/6) – rain, patterns, wildlife

Turkeys in the rain.

The weather was cloudy and then it rained most of the day. It was perfect for staying indoors (not that I ever need a reason). It was a surprise to see turkeys walking around in the rain several times throughout the day. Maybe I just haven’t paid attention before.

It was a second day of not working on cutting glass. A large chunk of Thursday was spent reviewing and reorganizing the binder of stained glass designs. The binder is now so full the rings are about to pop.

I was surprised by how many designs I crafted so many years ago and it was a fun stroll down memory lane. There were also more photo prints of completed works tucked in with the patterns than I remembered, which was a nice surprise. One photo shows the first piece I ever made, but I have no idea where that is now. Some of the geometric designs had been drawn in a computer program, but many are hand drawn on either graph paper or brown packing paper.

Pattern organizing.

Multiple copies of patterns were found in different files and folders and now they are consolidated. I could tell if I had executed a pattern in glass by the presence of pushpin holes from pinning the glass pieces together on the pattern.

There was an angel design I had forgotten about until I saw the pattern yesterday and then I remembered standing at my worktable in Tennessee cutting the hair and face pieces, but not what happened to the piece.

In addition to several designs based on quilt squares, there were more flower patterns than I remembered. I did a commission piece with five purple tulips and a piece for a gala donation with violets and another with a rose, but I had also drawn designs with three tulips and single tulips.

The original fragment of an idea for the day was to pick a pattern from the freshly organized file and work on some glass. That didn’t happen. Instead, I finished reading Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. I had read to page 38 years ago and then life got in the way and the book was shelved. It was nice taking a break from fiction for the past week or so.

In exciting neighborhood news, someone posted on the Nextdoor app that three police cruisers and three animal control vehicles were on the street  that is one street over from me. The poster asked if anyone knew why. Someone else posted a screenshot from a scanner app that there was a verified coyote behaving strangely in a backyard on that street. Dang.

random thoughts – Day 2,424 (Wednesday 11/5) – shine and flashback

Sequins! Gaudy?

Yesterday may have been a full day, but not a lot happened today. As a result, I am taking the easy route and re-posting a piece from November 2020 (with a couple updates/revisions) when I was in the early days of genealogy research and discovering all sorts of fun things.

Mummu used to tell my sister and me, and our mother before us, cautionary tales in an attempt to guide us, or maybe to control us, depending upon your viewpoint. 

When shopping with her in the local ladies fashion stores, I would gravitate towards the adult cocktail dresses festooned with sequins and rhinestones. When I was about ten years old, we were shopping and I wandered away from her to stroke the fancy evening dresses, mesmerized by all the sparkle. Mummu suddenly appeared at my side. As she steered me back to the department specializing in age appropriate boring clothes for kids she said, “It’s important to keep children away from sequins or they will grow up to be gaudy.” Nice try, Mummu. 

Shiny Pink! (2019)

It turns out that despite her attempt at guidance and direction to conservative attire, my closet has been the recipient of an ever-expanding collection of beaded, sequined, and shiny garments. She probably would have choked if she saw the amazing sparkly everyday outfits available for kids nowadays.

Oh, if she could have seen me dressed in some of my favorite special occasion outfits and themed event ensembles. For a fundraiser event in 2019 with a pink theme, I got a pink and gold metallic tuxedo jacket. For another fundraiser with a black attire theme, the ensemble was black sequin shorts and a black sequin baseball jacket. In 2024, I bought a silvery sequin full blown game show host pantsuit that is still waiting for an event.

Sometimes, her tales involved horrific warnings of terrible potential consequences for noncompliance. My sister and I had long hair when we were kids. My sister’s hair was (and still is) waist-length and dark brown-black, straight, and silky. Mine was a mousey brownish reddish color with weird waves, bumps, and cowlicks and was never as long, straight, or as pretty as my sister’s. 

With our long hair, we would do silly things like twist locks of it and hold it under our noses like a moustache. I would pretend a lock of my hair was a paintbrush, or pass it between my lips and blow my warm breath through it. Mummu would see this and tell us “Don’t put your hair in your mouth, you’ll get a hair ball in your stomach and you’ll die.” The absurdity of the comment would have us rolling our eyes and thinking, “yeah, right.” When with my friends, I would tell them Mummu’s crazy story about the hairball.

Sequin suit, 2024.

Today, while adding family members to my Ancestry.com family tree, I added Grandpa Ray. One of the sources in the search results was a front-page newspaper article from January 6, 1926 about Ray’s parents, Hilda and Oscar. The story, titled “Hubby Charged Wife for Rides in His Machine” with the subtitle “Mrs. Kask Gives Divorce After Testifying She Walked to Work While Mr. Kask Rode”, described a court appearance where my great-grandmother Hilda testified before a judge that she walked seven miles to work while her husband rode around in an automobile, and, here’s the kicker, if he gave her a ride, he charged her 50 cents per trip. 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, she also testified that he made her sleep in the woods near their home and threatened to beat her. This story appeared prominently just below the masthead, and directly above another riveting story titled, “12-Year-Old-Boy Siphoned Beer at “Speak-Easy”.”

Can't make this stuff up!

As if those news stories were not exciting and dramatic enough, I browsed the rest of the front page for entertainment, and two columns to the right, sat this gem of an article: “Ball of Hair Found in Stomach of Girl.” Hot damn. Mummu’s story about the stomach hairball was not nonsense fabricated to scare us after all. It really happened to a real girl, when Mummu was 10 years old. It was so shocking, so astounding, that I called Mom immediately to tell her the hairball story we had endured and rolled our eyes at, was actually real, and in 1926, a 15-year old girl from the nearby town of Ashby had a stomach ache that resulted in surgery and “A ball of hair was found in her stomach.” 

Now Mom and I have so many unanswered questions. How much hair? How big was the hair ball?  Was it accidentally ingested and accumulated over time or was there some ailment that caused her to literally eat her hair? And we will never know. 

The weirdness contained in that newspaper front page keeps on weirding. That story my grandmother preached to the three of us during our formative years appeared on the same front page of the newspaper as the story of the seemingly dysfunctional family she would marry into some 10 or 15 years later. I can’t even make this stuff up. But damn, it sure explains a lot.