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I had a lovely dinner with kind people who thought I could use some wonderful food and company. Very nice! Then facing the house alone when usually it is Patrick and Marla helping put the two twig trees up, I managed alone. Still using sticks and stones to keep it all together, I really do not like the fake greens I bought a couple of years ago and plan on giving them all away. A few more twigs among the deer and I think I am finished!

It felt good but exhausting getting it all together…so rewarded myself with a Manhattan.

Even managed to bake myself a quiche during all the decision making of how and where to hang an ornament.

I also made a trip into town to buy local and small. I stopped at the new coffee shop to see if they could fix the flat white they promised. Apologies to Melbourne, where coffee and baristas are top notch…but the flavor was wonderfully strong. They just need practice as you can see. The pumpkin muffin was very good and I bought a loaf of bread…a very dense sour dough…good for toast.

My final order of birch sticks arrived, so I finished off the pots our front.

Then today I inked up the wood block. Not crazy about how it turned out…but am making do with a bit of cropping and mounting on black before attaching to cards.

Next year I will return to the etched images on polymer plates. I still have plenty left from Melbourne Etching.

I met up with some of the poets from the groups I recently quit going to and feel I should return. One of the women I really miss continues to call and hopes I will come back to read. I have decided not to expect solid critiques…just people eager to be heard. I have been working on essays and some poetry. The subject I would like to explore is the privacy of being ignored. It suits me…probably too well. It reminds me of the poem I wrote some time back titled, Position of Periphery.

 

Position of Periphery

Our place is somewhere on an edge

away from those centered and focused.

 

It is a not-belonging place

with expansive views

 

where we are mobile

and deliberately uncommitted.

 

Free to choose and change,

we remain inaccessible …. transient.

 

Free from doors closing behind us

and the constraints of expectation.

 

Here on the periphery we can

try on the skins of otherness

 

….and then discard at will.

 

Anyway, being ignored is a luxury of sorts. I need to find the words to explain why that is so.

And on another subject, remember the part of my essay about my father deciding for all of us what was allowed to be moved to Florida? Well it is best to let you know that he and I were fine,,,no holdover feelings of not mattering to him. We were fairly close. Within a few years of our moving, I decided I was tired of his complaining about tasting soap in his drinks. He was convinced we, especially me, were not rinsing properly. Remember these were the days when it occurring to him to wash and rinse his own glasses was simply never even thought of. I took a small pleasure in putting the tiniest drop of dish detergent into his highball glass, for my bike and for my dog. It was worth the scowls and a few years later, he and I enjoyed having a drink together.

I smile whenever I think of my long-departed parents. Once you get over being convinced you are actually adopted and muddle through the mortification of teen years, you realize just how much can be learned from parents.

Best be off… the quiche is calling with another small glass of Aussie red.

Til later….

The weather is up and down. It is almost Thanksgiving here in the states. When reading about the state of our country, there is little to be thankful for. Each week is a new low. I told Patrick not to come down for the holiday because all of them will be here in just another month. I have been asked to come to dinner by kind women who knew I would be alone. Also one of the old guys I meet for coffee asked if I would like to join him and his wife. How nice is that!

My doctor friend who usually has dinner with us has opted for a nice dinner out for the two of us to catch up. This year she cannot spend Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner with us. So dinner out at a nice restaurant seems a good option.

I ordered new boxing gloves. They are too thin so am returning them for heavier ones. I am hitting harder and at 81, need more protection for my knuckles. It feels so good to swing and connect with a good one.

Earlier this week I cut back all the dying ferns in the pots and decided to replace with sticks and stones for the winter. I have stones but had to order sticks. I like the straight birch branches. Now I am waiting for more to arrive via Amazon. A neighbor who has a good decorating eye is consulting with me and is ready to go back to a local shop with me to find more of whatever the pots need to look right. Here is one of the three by the front walk to the door.

This week I went to the monthly ladies lunch from the neighborhood. I also went to a HOA meeting. Between them I have used up my socializing in groups skills, so will retreat for a few months. Always best to quit while ahead.

Still writing. Working on essays right now. This is an excerpt from 1955, the story of moving to Florida to meet my father’s mother.

“………totally speechless, as we watched her sharpened fingernails slowly peel a nectarine grown in the back yard. Once the skin was removed, I thought she’d eat broken off sections. But no, each membrane thread had to be slowly, ever so slowly, removed and dropped onto the peelings. Then she’d look up from her tangerine to make eye contact before slowly putting sections into her mouth to savor even more slowly, offering nothing.”

I never liked the old woman. And never remember calling her anything…just wait for her to look at me and then talk quickly before escaping the room. Anyway, it is making a good essay on life in the fifties and how children stayed quiet, hoping not to be noticed. One generation later and that thinking is all but gone.

This morning I thought I would get out my carving tools and attempt a Christmas card. I will spend a few days on it before deciding whether I should, after so, so many years give it up and just buy a few cards. We’ll see. There is always the back side of the block if I screw it up.

When a wood block has been editioned, it is supposed to be destroyed. For some sentimental reason I just kept all mine. Not to use again because that is wrong, just could not part with all that work and memory of the fun in doing them. Now I wish I had buried them all with the other things some years back. We are not allowed burn barrels here, or I would love tossing them in, one by one. I will have to think of how I might do that…not here, but somewhere where I could have a bit of a farewell ceremony and a glass of something nice.

Time to get a bit of lunch and back to my audio book and carving.

Til later…

 

…….

Bit of snow here the other morning. It was gone by noon. It spurred me on to baking and soup making.

I no sooner reconciled myself to colder weather and then it is sunny and high 60s.

I am trying to decide if I have enough poems for a new book. Today was spent going through them all to get them in the same font and size. Poetry needs to be in a Garamond font for it to look right anymore. I used to think Times New Roman was the best, but now it looks heavy handed. I shall lay the poems all out on pages to see how they should be placed. originally I thought of throwing the essays and short stories in there as well, but changed my mind. Poems are poems and need to keep their own company. And once I decide to get the poetry book finished, I will concentrate more on short stories.

For now, the essays are filling my time as well. Especially the one about museum shops. Seems I would often buy a sketch or notebook in the shop and write or draw what I saw at the museum. The book from the Vancouver museum was fun to peruse. It was an exhibition of Emily Carr, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Frida kahlo. I never could get excited about Kahlo’s work…way too much color…too many flowers! So it appears according to my notebook, that I did not even look at her work. Emily Carr and her passion for nature and especially trees, very much appealed to me. Georgia O’Keeffe’s work was all too familiar but what she had to say about her work was interesting. I knew she stole the stones her friends had collected but could not remember how I knew that until I found my museum notebook. And there it was! She simply helped herself believing she loved them more. I remembered knowing this when I visited her home in Abiquiu, NM. Lots of stones lined the window sills. I would have demanded mine be returned. We get very attached to our stones, don’t we?

I will cut this short because I am going to attend a Homeowners Association this afternoon, and need to tidy up a bit. Home alone does little to enhance appearances.

Til later….

last week I was thinking that I should just let my website drop. Keep the blog but drop the general website. BUT after talking to my web person, Robert, we decided to keep it. I had no idea that 7,000 people a year check in to see what I am about…even what I was about. And after looking it over myself, I found all that I used to do and am doing surprising. So with a few updates, we left it pretty much as is.

The big thing that I noticed was that none of my books were pictured or mentioned on the site. And since Lee died a few years ago, I no longer live with my husband. Small adjustments including a more up to date resume page. It no longer reads like I stopped doing anything in 2014. Now the gallery page is more complete and the blog easy to find on the home page menu.

Today under the watchful eye of Sadie….

I baked cinnamon rolls for the guys and MJ tomorrow morning.

I also have decided what my next exhibition for the garage will be. I will be using the bottles of BIC white out and buying myself a new bottle of champagne for my opening reception for one. Working title is REDACTION. I will let you know how it goes.

Next week I will start to lay out the pages and cover for a new poetry book. And will let you know when it is available to add to these below that are now on the gallery page and mentioned more in detail on the menu page titled “Books”.

 

 

I think that is all I have for now except another of Sadie saying it is time for a nap!

Til later….