hand eye crafts

Senior Day for Vanderbilt football.  Things like that are guaranteed to make me tear up, even if it's not Vandy. If you're a toddler, dressing to go to an older sibling's Senior Day, make this part of your look: (If these had been available when Hannah was little, we could not have gotten to Target fast enough.  Everything she did and does love: sparkle/shimmer, bows, and lug-soled boots.) I am proud to announce that my major is on just about every list of Easiest Majors I could find.  Coming in at #7 here.  Technically, I majored in Social Psychology, so maybe we should split the difference and call it #4. A group of Japanese samurai once visited the Great Sphinx.  Which is crazy to me somehow.  It also looks like many of them brought along their katanas. I have looked and looked at this and still can't quite  figure out how it works: I feel like I've talked about this before, but it's still kind of amazing. The shackles are a bit much, but the legs!

      I'm so sorry these pictures aren't better;  maybe you can suss some things out.  There are yellow, red, blue, and orange flags (and coordinating stripes on the ground) in my front and side yarns.  It seems AT&T will be installing high-speed cable, and my yards on the corner will be points of origin AND sites of lots of digging.  Technology marches on.

I do love finding new words. Musth. It's sort of like Pon Farr, but for elephants.  As interesting as that is, what was a little disappointing was finding out that the pronunciation is not as special as the spelling would have you believe. One hundred sixty-two years ago today, the Gettysburg Address was spoken into Eternity. My opinion of President Lincoln is well-known.  I don't think I've said, though, that he's my favorite writer.  He is.

You know when the crayons come out, it's gonna be a fun crafting time.  Unfortunately, fun doesn't ensure success.  What I had in my mind did not manifest itself on the paper.  There are lots of pretty colors, though, huh?

 Part of my day was spent watching  "Frankenstein."   Although I haven't seen many of Guillermo del Toro's films, this one did interest me.  I'm a fan of Oscar Isaac, and, let's face it, the story is one of the most fascinating ever written.  If its creation intrigues you, may I recommend  That the book came from a "competition," and who the "competitors" were?  Remarkable.  And, since I like to throw Sociology in whenever possible, Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was an early proponent of women's social rights.  My students usually found that cross-reference interesting. Usually.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time going through my scrapbook/collage/decoupage supplies.  A lot.  Today, my left arm has been very twitchy and sore.  I can't quite figure out how that happened, but there it is.  Good thing I bought icing wraps when I hurt my right shoulder --- they've come in handy today. Yesterday, I also tried knitting some more.  It's still not happening.  Honestly, it's begun to seem like dead fingers are to be my lot in life.

(Getting this in before Midnight.) Have any of you ever tried, or seen in real life, a pop-up Christmas tree?  I'm suddenly consumed, and need to know if buying one would be worth it.

...that Hamburger Helper makes breakfast meals.   ...that all mammals have 7 bones in their necks.  Well, except manatees and sloths.  Six for manatees, five, six or nine for the different species of sloth.  (I also learned that many people have posted drawings of manatees and sloths together.  Thankful credit to whoever drew this one.) ...that if you bookmark just one online recipe for Basque Cheesecake, you will be inundated with recipes for Basque Cheesecake. ...that if you are inundated with recipes for Basque Cheesecake, you will decide that there is nothing else in the world that you can possibly eat besides Basque Cheesecake.  In the world. ...that the "space pen" NASA sent on missions took years to develop.  Russian cosmonauts used pencils. ...that you can call naked mole rats "gnashing little phalluses" (😆) in print.  My children and I have had more than eight discussions about naked mole rats over the years, and knowing that term w...

 It hit me today that for the last couple of days, I haven't talked much at all.  Not that Tap spurs me on to a lot of conversations, but I do usually speak to him throughout the day. What?  You don't talk to your pets? And, keeping with today's theme:

I can blink today, but it must be mindful blinking.  Think before blinking, and stay connected to it all the way through. I've turned on my little happy tree (no, no, no Bob Ross voices*) because the glow eases me. Full disclosure:  Bridget  introduced me to tiny light trees after her husband, the always entertaining Philly Tim, got one for her.  Full gratitude and credit to them. *I never watched, but I know the deal.  Is it true that all his paintings, lined up next to one another made one big mural?

 Especially the painkiller-type ones.  Because one day you might have a headache so painful that they become your only hope. It hurts to blink, y'all.

The mailbox here has been here for near 40 years.  It is rusted in spots.  The layers of paint I've put on it over the years are flaking.  It's one of those things you live with so long, you stop noticing, you know?  Well, I ordered a new one, and it came today. It's the large package on the bottom. Amazon put my mailbox box inside a box.  This from a company that once sent me a single bag of dog treats with the address label on it. At the top there is the book I'm currently reading.  It is thoroughly fascinating.  The author is moving up the size chain: krill, insects, fish, birds, which is where I am now. An Amazon scroll recently took me here: Now, I've got nothing against Jesus.  At all.  The peace sign on the packaging is a bit misplaced time-wise, though.  (Also, a girl I went to elementary school with, whenever she saw any of us drawing a peace sign, would launch into a lecture on how peace signs are actually broken crosses. ...

When going to vote, accessorize to match your "I Voted" sticker. In my district, the "only" things on the ballot were Public Service Commissioner seats, and there were more people there than I expected.  As in, I had to wait in a couple of lines.  It did my civic heart good --- especially the very old woman who was driven in her senior community's van, and had a young lady along to help her.  If she could make those arrangements to come out and vote for something "not so significant," none of the rest of us should sit at home.   

Hello to November.  My thoughts have been turning to this year's holidays and how they'll be dealt with.  Money is so very tight that it's close to cutting off my breath.  It will be tough to buy Thanksgiving food and Christmas presents. I'm happy about the Dodgers winning the World Series.  I was a Dodgers fan in high school, due to their infield. That's Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Bill Russell and Steve Garvey.  (Okay, not Garvey so much.)  The catcher was Steve Yeager, and Tommy John and Fernando Valenzuela were on the pitching roster.  Late at night in Nashville was game time in Los Angeles, and I could pick most of their games up on radio.  Youngsters, sitting in the dark and listening to what was happening somewhere else in the world was magical and cool.