Head to Toe

Woke up feeling really sick.  REALLY.  Is it "nauseous" or "nauseated" now?  Whichever, it is miserable, as you all know.  Peppermint tea, toast...  This in addition to sneezing and having a drippy nose all week.

These came today.  You know how I love confetti yarn, so these were a no-brainer.

We used to call these footies, I think?  Booties?  The ones we tennis players* wore usually had pom-poms on the back, to keep them from slipping into our shoes.

I've been wearing my pants inside out all day.  Of course, they're leggings, and I'm scarcely getting out of bed, so it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that it is my Twinnie's birthday!

*Man, that sounds obnoxious, doesn't it?  I played tennis.  That's all.

Who Needs Mint Juleps?

I FEEL SO SEEN!

I don't know who sent these (but I have a suspicion.)  Thank you, and LOVE YOU!!

I'm enjoying the Buttermilk Honey bread.  Warmed and spread with some butter, it's hard not to wolf down the whole loaf.  There was a comment about the sound bread machines make;  it's so true.  It will go into a rest cycle, then restart, and it jolts you.  At least three times yesterday, I got up to check on "that noise," before realizing what it was.  

'Bout time for random thoughts, don't you think?

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If I had a Whippet, I'd name it "Good."

A friend of my husband's had a gorgeous Great Dane.  He named her "Girl," which is one of the best names I've ever heard.

A possible name for a Boxer: "Rebellion."

Looking over the Kentucky Derby field:

Pavlovian is not too bad a name, but he's a pretty gray roan, and these are his silks:

Wonder Dean(!) has a white nose:

The velvety nose is the second best part of a horse, next to the beautiful jaw.

Emerging Market is a pretty chestnut with a great flippy mane.

Daddy might take him, as the name calls back to his days as a commodities broker.  For me and for Twinnie, though, we might bet by silks:

Yesterday, I found a photo story about a young woman and her Quarter Horse at the beach.  His name is Caliber.  How brilliant.  .  .

Bread and Obligations

Voting is always important.  Go on --- vote.

I baked this buttermilk honey bread today, and it smelled divine while it was in the machine.  It's one of the best breads I bake: the taste is wonderful, the texture is soft, maybe even pillowy.  My machine did good.

One of my son's work friends is making a film, and asked him to be in it.  She asked if he'd mind growing a beard;  not an issue.  (Have I talked about this already?)  At any rate, his character is intense and possibly violent, and it looks like he's gone all Method:

Can't Think in Paragraphs

Strangest headache since yesterday.  Paragraphs are too hard.  

I  have seen a dust bunny that looks like a bunny.  I realized this yesterday while watching the film

Should I buy this?

These are the lights I finally got up in the kitchen.  Please forgive the state of a house mid-preparation-for-a-yard-sale/a-move?

You can't tell --- obviously --- that the lights flicker like fire.  I wish the bulbs were closer together, but I do like the fire effect. 

I'm sad about/for Diego Pavia.  The Ravens would be a killer fit, though.

I had spells of hiccuping all weekend.  I'd forgotten how irritating they can be.

Fashion

Hear, hear!  Let's get hats going again!  Men in fedoras,

women in

let's just say we have options.

The new Herrschners arrived yesterday, and made me immediately sad.  It's laying here on the coffee table, teasing me.  Pretty colors on the cover, but I can't order anything.  Stupid fingers.

A Sweet Thing

My habit of leaving snacks and water for delivery drivers took a nice turn today.  I got the "See Where Your Package Is" alert, and went outside to leave the snacks.  The Amazon van was already in the driveway.  I walked toward it as the driver came down the van's steps, and he sort of put his right hand on his sternum.

"I pulled in, there were no snacks on the steps, and I thought, 'Oh, I hope she's okay!'  I was worried that something was wrong."

How nice is that?

At therapy yesterday, my therapist brought up "dopamine decorating."  It means what it sounds like it would mean.  She is facing selling her house, and sorting through what she will and won't take, she tried to focus on dopamine release.  It's a little Marie Kondo, but that's fine.  I didn't bring up the fact that I dopamined last week:

Hello, little astronaut light.

Though there are members of the Royal Family that I like (but many, myriad others that I cannot abide), my favorite is Princess Anne.  She seems sharp, funny, and impatient with foolishness.  She also wears tremendous hats.  From Anzac Day today:

That's a jaunty lid.  

What Light Through Yonder Pages Breaks?

 It's all my associates* and I can talk about, the Coconut Dr Pepper.  For several weeks, a recipe for a Dr Pepper margarita has come across my Instagram feed...  I'm not a drinker, but adding that coconut cream kick does sound tasty.

The book I'm reading about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary  made a very interesting point several pages ago.  We, of course, take dictionaries for granted, but people lived without them for centuries.  Shakespeare did not have a dictionary.  How did he know he was using, or spelling, the correct words?  That little factoid made my day.

"How do I even spell 'honorificabilitunitatibus'?  I do this all the time --- write myself into a corner...  Hey!  I think I just turned a phrase there!"

*I do so have associates.

Now It's a Party

Y'all --- it's back!

I cannot express to you how happy this makes me.  I found it at Publix, only to find out that Amazon has it for half the price.  I ordered two (their limit.)

The second chair is now out of the back porch.  I caught my right hand between it and a door jamb --- straight across all four knuckles.  It will be a prison-ink-looking bruise.

This is my little plant hanger with my plastic plants.

Those doors stopped working all of a sudden one day.  They won't open from the porch side, but they will open from the deck side.  I kept the cat tower there as a hopeful deterrent.  You can see cat toys hanging down from the door lever.

I'm working on putting string lights around the kitchen counter and peninsula.*  (No island here.)  They displease me as they are.  They took two types of hangers, because the counter is shallow along one stretch.  If I get them where I like them, I'll share.

*The perfect term, via Twinnie.

It's So Not Me

"Busy" is quite possibly my least-used gear.  Yet today I re-mortared some loose bricks on the front porch, installed a new showerhead (which I think is going to disappoint me), put together and hung a plant bar, and transplanted some baby succulents.

My plan is to turn the glassed-in back porch into a calm, safe space for myself.  I've moved two chairs and the cat tower out already, but can't do anything with the treadmill by myself.  I'm going to move my desk in there, and hopefully find a cute little chair for relaxing/reading.  The plant hanger is above the door there, with artificial plants for the time being.

More coming.

Which Way?

Each killer in the Serial Killer Exhibition had, their picture, and banners about the crimes and the victims.  Like, for example:

Was he (it was a "he") an ogre who killed many people, or did he kill both ogres and others?  This is what you think about when there are SO many people around you and they WON'T MOVE ALONG.

It's been a very pretty day here today.  Unfortunately, I have a 28-out-of-10 eye headache that has not eased up at all.  One thing that I had wanted to do today was put some hanging planters up in the back porch, but pounding nails was just not going to happen today.

Sunday

So, the serial killer exhibition was...um, fun?  Awesome?  Enjoyable?  It's hard to juxtapose "serial killer" with "great."  It was fascinating.  Sadly, there were a lot of children there.  Some of the exhibits had very realistic mannequins and prosthetics, and there were photographs throughout, and it was obvious that they were frightened, if not traumatized.

For the first time in a long, long time, I wished I were lecturing tomorrow.  Deviance, personality, family dynamics, the judicial system --- I talked about killers a lot as it was;  now I have fresh information.

Last night, I picked up a box of things to take to Hannah, to put it in the car.  I tweaked my back something fierce.  Luckily, I've never had any issues with my back, and I know this is nothing compared to what lots of people deal with.  (Perhaps even someone reading this. . .)  I've been "treating" it with topical CBD oil and my heated massager.