hand eye crafts

I made it through the evening and night, but woke up at 3 AM so  miserable.  My left arm, where I got both shots, is sore to the point of unliftability.  My head is pounding.  My chest hurts... How are y'all doing?

This helps me a lot.  Maybe more than it should. I got COVID and pneumonia vaccines this afternoon.  Let's see if they do anything to me.  I will say CVS has an interesting selection of reading material for perusal or purchase. "Jesus or 'Car and Driver'?"  Oooooh --- a whole magazine about brunch!  So many choices!

Thursdays here are plant care day.  I've come into possession of several succulents, and am trying to keep them alive. I put the little pebbles in to make things look cute.  Sprouting on the bottom left is cilantro, I think?  I've been so carried away with the plants and the little pots that I didn't keep the seed package.   Air plants are around, too. I really like the hand holder.  The other is some part of a teapot, I think, but I can't figure out how that would work. These aren't real.  I added the pink, yellow and white to the dark purple.  It may be a bit much, but I do like how the arrangement looks.  I'm usually crap at arranging flowers. I had a philadendron from middle school to college.  Those were years when talking to your plants and playing them music were very in.  My philadendron was named "Gibb."  Gibb heard a lot of Bee Gees, Emmylou Harris, and Delbert McClinton.  He was also the source of cuttings for s...

It's hard to wash a colander.  The thing I dislike washing most is a pizza cutter. It looks like my ginormous gardenia bush has gone almost entirely barren.  Just a single bloom. I may have to have it taken down.  It's been a glorious friend for lots of years.  My mother said that gardenias made her think of the days after Dale died;  apparently I had them all around the house.  I honestly don't remember a lot from that stretch of time. Today hasn't seemed like a Wednesday at all to me.  Am I the only one?  It's seemed more like a weekend or something. In I-want-to-move-but-I-need-to-clean-anyway news, one dresser has been completely emptied.  The book chest at the foot of my bed is empty.  The kitchen is as bare as it can be with someone still using it. On the other end of the spectrum: my Lincoln books case is full.  FULL. (Ignore the surveyor's stake in the corner.)  This might mean I can't read another one.  Well, buy ...

Down on one knee proposals.  If I were in my early 20s, I might feel differently, but I doubt it. Hearts made with hands or fingers.  Again, this opinion might have been different before. Mr. Beast. Losing tape measures.  IT WAS JUST RIGHT HERE. "You've Got a Friend in Me."  It worked on me in "Toy Story," but every other Instagram post uses it.  Please stop.  Same with "A Thousand Years." Things "vibing."

Memorial Day here was sun, clouds, RAIN, clouds, RAIN, sun, STORMING RAIN.  Anyone hoping to spend time behind a grill today was probably mightily disappointed.  I very-slow-roasted a honey garlic tenderloin for myself yesterday.  Corn on the cob and a salad rounded out my inside picnic. Dale loved  to grill, but always on a gas grill.  Personally, I think the smell of a charcoal grill and meats cooked on it is hard to beat.  I live a little over a mile from both a hamburger place  and a steakhouse so I get that luscious aroma pretty often.

1.  Misused/misplaced apostrophes.  ("The Smith's invite you to their luau."  The Smith's what?  And which Smith?  "Smith" there is singular.  This makes me CRAZY.) 2.  When actors are playing scenes that call for them to drink something, and their cups or mugs or glasses or whatever are plainly  empty.   3.  When people say, "shaking your head 'yes.'"  You shake your head "no."  You nod your head "yes." 4.  Police don't light up their sirens.  They light up their lights.  You do not hear their lights and sirens.  You only hear the sirens. 5.  "Where at?"  Just "where."  Simple. 6.  Has anyone ever named a pet "Peeve?"  (I know this isn't a pet peeve --- more like a tangential thought.) 7.  "Whenever" instead of "when."  "Whenever you were at the store..."  How about,"When you were at the store..." 8. People bucking if you call them "Sir...

Spirit Animal, am I right?

Welcome the latest addition to the hall, which is pretty much Equine Alley at this point: Mostly horses there, while two lions are in the bedroom.  I'm almost at the tipping point: enough framed prints to build a tiny house, as opposed to a tiny house having enough wall space to accommodate them all. This week has been productive.  Lots of moving and thinning out and re-sorting.  My back feels it, and there's a painful cardboard cut on my left middle finger.  When you break down box after box after box, that seems unavoidable. Sec YMy 2026 Nativity has arrived, and it is another mini one which fits inside a mint tin.  The Holy Child looks as though He's holding His breath until someone hands over the frankincense! Or, for those of you whose memories go back far enough, a member of Bobby Benson's Baby Band .

1.  Liver.  It will always be first on a list like this. 2.  The word "pot."  Can't explain it;  I just don't. 3.  Spice without flavor.  Food should be a good time, not an endurance test. 4.  Runny eggs.  Ick. 5.  Meringue.  It probably hurt my mother's feelings when I would immediately slice off that my piece of her pies.  It's why I don't care for macarons. 6.  Chocolate ice cream.  Except for  7.  Ignorance trying to mask itself with arrogance.  You know who you are.  And we know who you are.

Election Day in Georgia.  I was pleased to see a full parking lot at my assigned polling place.  I early voted at the Co-op Extension Office.  You should remember that that's the place with a really big chicken. I like voting here.  It's seldom busy, and the poll workers are very friendly.  Actually, all the poll workers I've dealt with here have been lovely.  There's one woman at my assigned spot who knows that I'm always  going to compliment her hair.  When she sees me, she starts turning her head around and laughing.  

1. The  smell of leather.  Preferably worn, ideally in a barn. 2.  A level.  A plumb line, not so much.  Give me a good level. 4.  A good, strong bass line.  The kind that makes your feet tap, almost involuntarily. 5. A well-fitting men's suit.  You already know how I feel about men's hats... 6.  Snack Pack lemon pudding.  I didn't even know it existed until a few weeks ago;  now I'm hooked. 7.  Chimneys that still stand after houses are gone.   8.  Rolled/folded/pushed up sleeves.  I also usually enjoy seeing sleeves rolled/folded/pushed up. 9.  These pants!  I might have had the chutzpah to wear them when I --- and my body --- were younger.  I will always love a good bell bottom.

For the porch "haven," I've begun looking for runner rugs.  What do you think about this one, with the miss-them-with-a-simple-glance bats? Of course, there will be little knicks and knacks bought for decoration, but the main purchases will be a runner and a chair.  The searches have begun.  They must both be purple.  That requirement immediately narrows the range of choices.  Do any of you have recommendations for rug and/or chair purveyors?* *"Purveyors" because I've been watching "Deadwood."  Other words from the series are a little more bawdy.

My insomnia stretched past 36 hours.  I am a night owl, but that was ridiculous.

I have been awake since 4:30 yesterday afternoon.  These stretches of insomnia almost always come on Thursday nights.  Therapy, of course, is on Friday, so there may be a connection there. I replaced my sunflowers with these dark purple tulips, which I do enjoy. I've got some wildflower seeds which I'm going to scatter over some bald spots in the yard.  I ordered a lavender tree, which I hope to plant by the front porch.  Why I'm interested in seeds and planting all of a sudden is anyone's guess.  Oh, and I got a baby air plant.  Did you know they're called pups?  I have a small conch shell I may put it in, or a really pretty piece of glass that is part of something that I don't know.  I want to say it was involved in a tea set somehow?  Anyway, I've given it its submerge bath, and we'll see what happens.  I've never understood how air plants survive, much less reproduce.

 Temu has me in a wall art finger trap of animals on couches.  It is entirely  Temu's fault.  To assuage my feelings over buying prints, I branched out and bought some artificial tulips. Now, the problem with cleaning out your house is that whatever flower vases you had (and it was never many) are no longer handy.  So in the spirit of making do with what you have:When I gathered up shells to put in the lamp based, I had big ones left over.  I was seized with an idea.  Pride in this is now right up there with taking the treadmill apart (and hauling it from the porch to the front of the house.) Florally speaking, my sunflowers are beginning to crinkle, but they have held up well. That's Eilidh, and her name follows the grand Scottish tradition of sounding exactly nothing like how it looks.  ("Aylee," for the record.)

Do you ever have to sit with something?  An idea, a problem, a memory, a person. I'm haing to sit with my IKEA* lion.  Henrik.  The decision of whether to take him with me when I move is what's up in the air.  He has sat atop the armoire in the bedroom since I got him.  The armoire might not even fit in Tiny House. "Armoire" is one of those hard-to-say words for me.  "Rural" I can usually manage.  "Rural juror" is a bit trickier.^ The porch is now empty of things that won't be in "my" room.  I took the cat tower apart, which was surprisingly difficult.  The treadmill eventually gave in after hammers and allen wrenches and rust removal oil and a crowbar.  I'm as proud of taking that treadmill apart as anything I've done in a while. Now, I didn't say the porch was clean, only that it's empty.  On the left there, you can see the power drill I had to buy myself.  Yes, it's pink, but that isn't why I bought it.  I b...

It's been a weird day.  I was up and down three times last night and into this morning;  my sleeping routine is still in shambles after being sick.  It feels very much like a weekend day.  Poor Tap is more discombobulated, though.  He has been fast and hard asleep all day, snoring away. Welcome my latest  Poppet . Kind of self-explanatory.  After I had already ordered this, the Artemis poppet debuted. I may yet have an opportunity to own one,but if I don't, there'll be this "catalog" photo, which almost brings me to tears:

A biscuit board, my beloved twin, is for kneading biscuit dough.  (Sadly, if you Google it, "biscuit board" pops up as a charcuterie board.) My Aunt Sis (named "Bertha Almeda," so "Sis" was an excellent dodge) was EVERYone in my father's family favorite.  When she had made her biscuits dough, she floured the board, put the dough on it and kneaded it up and down, back and forth around the board (it's curved) with such skill and speed that it was worth going into the kitchen just to watch.  There's no telling how old that board is, or many biscuits made on it were eaten.  I genuinely cherish it. When recovering from a hellacious head cold, let me suggest a soft, snuggly Scottish Highland cattle blanket.  It will help. I do feel better today, but there was hardly anywhere to go but up.

I went to bed at 8:30 last night.  TheraFlu knocked me out.  I did wake up a couple of times for nasal spray.  Today, I feel heavy-headed, but not sleepy.  Yet. One advantage to living in an artsy, college town is that you needn't worry about finding things like this: Glazier points with a glazier point pusher-in-er.  That pusher makes a big difference.  This isn't what I used the glazier points for this, but it's new to the den wall: It was advertised like this: NO, NO!  If the shoes are like that, all the good luck pours out!! 🤦‍♀️ My Recommended from Amazon today, "Based on [My] Past Purchases" was this: WHY?

There are so many things around this house bought to help me with my headaches.  Cold treatments, heat treatments, massage treatments, and now this little electric jobby.  I got as much for my fingers as anything else, and have done couple of "treatments" thereon.  No change yet, but I couldn't realistically expect one. After getting out for therapy and feeling none the worse for wear, I woke up today with a somehow stuffed AND dripping nose, coughing spells, and sneezing.   Look, we may call you "common," but we don't mean it as dismissive or a slur. I've spent the day pricing more yard sale things, working to clear out the back porch so that I can create my little space there. That's the treadmill in the lower right.  I'm taking the cat tower apart.  I certainly plan on having more cats, but will get a  new one then.  The icicles lights must come down, I have to find a runner rug, and, ideally, a rocking chair.  It will probably take m...

When I woke up this morning, I felt surprisingly good.  Then time passed. I'm an  Ipsy  subscriber.  Look what came last month: It's almost too pretty to use. WHY?  Understand, points for creativity, but WHY? Not an animal on a couch, but I love this. Got it hanging in the hall. This is also in the hall: Animals on couches.  Okay, and boots. This is my beloved aunt's biscuit board.  Watching her work dough was watching actual magic.  I've got to figure out how to fix those splits. I bought myself flowers. They come from Publix, who is the only retailer keeping Creamy Coconut Dr Pepper in reliable stock.  Also, superior sub sandwiches, which I've reported before. When I was growing up, my mother enrolled me in a children's book club.  I hadn't thought about this title in a long, long time.   I remember Toby   Tyler , Black   Beauty, Heidi , The Bobbsey.   Twins.   One about a circus...? I'd never thought about bun...