hand eye crafts

A gray, cool, misty day which, as you all know, makes me feel better than any of your dumb ol' sunshiny ones.  Tap and I won't be able to take a long walk today, but in a short one before it got kind of wet, we came across this. Even if you're not a fan of spiders, you must admit their webs are amazing.  This one on the ground shows today's dew and moisture beautifully.

"Peccadillo" is a word I learned from Johnny Carson.  I have no specific memory of what was happening on a particular show, but every single time I have ever heard or read it, muscle learning memory kicks in and says, "Carson." If I have closed captioning on while watching a true crime show, it makes me crazy to read, "A grizzly discovery."  A bear found something?  Something of a bear's was found?  "Grisly,"  people. Do not get me started on misplaced apostrophe's. (See what I did there?) Nor on people putting emphasis on the  wrong word when reading or speaking, either. (I did it again.) Not a peccadillo, just something weird.  In my e-mail inbox today, a message from "Orgasms."  No, I didn't click through.  The mind reels at possible content, though, huh?

Spoke too soon about vaccination aftereffects.  My left (COVID) arm is so very, very painful. My nails and my mama's ring are dripping, though.

First of all, very special thanks to Kay and my Twinnie for empathizing with me, then offering help after yesterday's entry.  Kim suggested I plan just one thing that I could do and enjoy today.  Well, it wasn't necessarily joyful or fun, but I did make myself schedule an appointment to get my flu and COVID shots today.  It got me out of the house.  Usually, I start feeling flu-ish 3 to 4 hours after the shot, but not this time.  Do you think the COVID vaccine fought it somehow? I posted this on Instagram today, but it's cute enough to post here.  I drifted off while reading, and when I woke up, I saw this: "HI, MOM!"

Blogs, I suppose, should be sort of fun and interesting.  If you have lots of pretty places and things to take pictures of, blogs are a way to share them.  If you have warm stories and projects in the works or completed, you can share them, too. I try, but often fail, to not let this blog devolve into a septic mess of grievance and wailing and tears.  But my life is my life.   I am inexpressibly sad and hopeless and at sea right now.  Not suicidal --- let's get that out of the way.  But I am low.   I have been sitting in this spot on this couch all day and doing nothing.  Literally not a single thing.  Just sitting here.  Staring at nothing.  Rising only to take Tap out. The weight of this gloom will not let me move, or come up with a reason to move.  I don't have many days left in my life, and this is how this onc has gone. Sheesh.

I have been chastised, and very nearly ridiculed, for how long I was sick last week.  The fact that I did not feel like housecleaning or doing laundry during that time was spit at me with venom and force.  Whether the coming holidays would or would not be family occasions was flung through the air. What is happening?

Is there a returns / exchanges desk for weeks?  'Cause this one has not worked out for me at all. 

Y'all, I just feel plain ol' bad.  Plain ol' feel bad?  Either way. . . I've got a little nest here on the couch, and don't leave it any more than I have to.  Instacart has delivered ginger ale and tea and soup and bananas and ice cream and chips/crackers.  Ninety-eight percent of the time, when I have a sore throat, I want scratchy things.  (When I had my tonsils out, I made Dale stop by a Mexican place for chips and cheese dip on our way home from the hospital.)  Right now, though, ice cream is hitting the spot more than usual.

. . .where you lie down to sleep, and you get the covers and the pillows perfect , and the animals are all settled, and you think, "Did I unplug that?  Is that still on?"  You know everything's almost certainly fine, but that thought will not leave you alone and you don't want to get up because the covers and the pillows are perfect. . . . where your skin starts to feel tingly/sticky and your nose starts running and your throat is scratchy and you know you'll be in bed a lot and you hope everything is unplugged and off.

I boiled some okra today.  Yeah.  Me.  High point of the day, probably, though I did make some delicious cheese bread tonight. Dale's mother made insanely good boiled okra.  She was what my father-in-law once called "a good country cook."  I loved her stuffing, too;  if memory serves, they all called it "dressing."  Is there a difference?  Or was this one of those different words for the same thing deals?  The Deans called the midday meal "dinner" and the evening meal "supper.:"  I call them "lunch" and "dinner," respectively, and there were occasional miscommunications between Dale and me over those words. Almost every meal at the Deans' had chicken.  I realized a few years back that I can't remember ever having chicken when I was growing up.  Mama cooked mostly beef, with some pork every now and then.  I don't recall any fish, though there very well may have been some.  I'm still not that big on chicken. ...

It should go without saying that you ought to support your local library just on principle.  However, when their book sales roll around, and it's everything-you-can-fit-in-a-paper-grocery-bag-for-$10 day, get thee there posthaste. I actually bought another dozen or so to take to Little Free Libraries, but these are pretty much for me. The Gem, though?  The Most Excited About one?  This can't mean anything to any of you, unless you took a few Sociology classes, but Erving Goffman is it for me.  My favorite Sociologist.  The man who planted the seed for my Master's thesis.  That I found this book just thrills me.  Never miss a chance to go treasure hunting, my friends.

In the shawlette I'm currently working on --- which, by the way, is this pattern: --- there is this slipped stitch work: I have to assume this is a folding point, as the shawlette is all one piece.  No matter what its purpose, I really like it. Only one stitched slipped on each long row.   Something small that no one will know about, but I think it's sharp.  

I have decided that I am going to embrace my night-owl-ness and do away with the idea of Bedtime.  I actually landed on this a while back, and it has been freeing.  I don't have a job to get to, have barely any real requirements in my life, so what difference does it make?   I set an alarm to get up and give Maddie her insulin, take Tap out, then go back to bed.  If I sleep until Noon (or later) so what?  I don't know that my natural cicadian rhythms are at work yet, but throwing off the shackles of schedules has been nice.

This is one of the books I am currently reading: It's where the plural of "octopus" post started.  But let me say right now, it looks like I am going to be learning a lot of amazing things, so prepare yourself for frequent factoids. In other news. . .  I spent most of last night going through boxes of photos from here and from my parents' house.  Some of them, too, might make appearances here.  For today, and mostly for The Twinster, proof that we have been Oregon fans for many years.

You're supposed to laugh at least once a day.  A health thing, I suppose,  I remember reading somewhere that crying is laundering the soul, laughing is dry cleaning it.  Are you also supposed to learn something each day?  'Cause I just did:  The plural of octopus  isn't octopi.   (Oh, the times I have erred.)  The reason is because the word octopus  is Greek, and the plural i  is Latin.  And the two aren't supposed to mix, I guess?  Anyway, the correct plural is apparently octopodes. Fact learned. .

 Happy October!  Like Bridget, this marks the beginning of my favorite stretch of months.  Hello, Fall and Winter. We've had a couple of windy days here, and we are far away from where Ian was.  As much as I'd love to have a house on a beach, that type of weather, and its increasing frequency, keep me from making a real move toward that end. I did find some of those "Books Everyone Should Read" and "Movies Everyone Should See" lists, and I didn't fare too well on either.  Of course, my final total depended entirely on what list I was looking at.  Still, I've seen more of the movies than I've read the books, which truly surprised me.  Also, a significant number of the books that I have  read I read as assignments in Middle or High School.  I've also read the three Lord   of   Rings  books, only because I took a class on them in college. Twinnie asked if I read Crime   and   Punishment  for fun.  I doubt it, a...