Rainy Days Are Not Good For Dementia

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I managed to get the one basil plant I have trimmed and chopped with olive oil to make cubes for the freezer. Then on to a loaf of grain bread turned into french toast for the freezer.

A brief walk outside between showers revealed that Lee had decided to take all the recycle bottles and line parts of the driveway. We got that picked up so it did not look like there was a wild party out there. Next we took all the ferns out to get some of that nice rain and he brings in a massive shop broom to sweep up the leaves on the porch. I get him sorted with the vacuum and then realize he has taken it out on the deck in puddles to vacuum whatever he sees there. I put it away.  A few more forgettings where he is going to do something and what it is he would do when he got there and he is now out on part of the trail moving rocks. I am not going to look. Later.

Yesterday he brought me another large turkey wing feather from a walk with the latest caregiver. She did so much talking and looking around that I only got one new pair of pants sewn. But there is always next time. Next week we go back to one that has more energy to do things with him and a new one to come on Friday. Hoping we get as good as we did with the old company.

Anyway back to turkeys.

Here you can see those big wing feathers being stretched out.

And the last four days of drawings with one of those feathers on a page.

What a pretty weed!

More yellow blooms will pop from

the very tall tops.

 

A little sweet pea –

wild and trying to escape

the blackberry thorns.

Much too big to fit

on the two pages I have

for drawing this one.

 

An old bamboo leaf

caught my eye as the perfect

subject for today.

Lee is back in with two mud covered small feathers. I will draw them tomorrow. Now I have him settled in front of the TV with the cop shows channel. It will hold his interest until he drops off in an afternoon nap.

Lately he has forgotten how to eat some things. Sandwiches are dismantled and eaten with a fork after cutting up into very tiny pieces. If I remember to demonstrate how to pick it up and bite into it, he will follow suit. For sure our eating out days are over. This covid isolation has come at a good time.

I did get a little time to work on the fairy book.

Our evenings are spent watching whatever I could remember to record or a Netflix series. We are finishing up the last season of a Showtime series called The Affair. I have never seen a program that is so long and has not one character that you care a whit about. Privileged, entitled, self-indulged, thoughtless, witless, each and every one of them. And there are several covering three generations. And why do I watch it? One, I am hoping the screen writers will change something to make the characters at the very least tolerable, and frankly it has the most energetic and athletic sex scenes I have ever seen. How they pull that off with so many in the room while filming is a mystery. I actually prefer the British series where such matters are implied rather than exposed. I will be glad when this one ends.

The rain will be moving back in soon and if Lee has not taken a nap, I will find a book to read aloud to him. We can sit on the porch, listen to the rain and the sound of my voice and have an early glass of wine.  Dinner will be the last lasagna I put up in the freezer. Tomorrow I will make more.

This is a strange blog going from the kitchen, to keeping track of Lee, to turkeys, to drawings, to caregivers, to pathetic TV series, and end up back in the kitchen. I can do better. Promise.

Til later.

 

New Sketches – New Imaginings

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Some company on the trail. And a new word.

Trypophobia – A fear of holes. I found this in researching why some lotus blooms leave such small pods. It seemed a bit dumb to have this word there in lotuses simply because they have holes. Sometimes you just have to wonder who is in charge of online reference materials. I like the word and my son pointed out that it has five syllables and could be used for the first line in haiku. But it is hard to bring a hole inside to draw for that book of drawings and haiku. I did go looking for holes to show you.

And this one that looks like he is singing.

And some other things in the woods.

A fairy door.

Peeking fairy.

Shocked fairy.

And remember the snaggle-toothed troll? Here he is in the Fairy Book trying to trap a fairy.

And some fun starts to pages in My Life in Clothes book.

Hiding in the bathroom from having to dance with boys.

Some of my mother’s smocking on my clothes and the most awfully tight shoes that I ever wore just to get my embarrassing father out of the shoe store. My mother asked him to go because she was busy and I think he just said, “Try these.” I just wanted out of the shoe store and said they were fine. When I went to draw them I was surprised how much detail I remembered.

And my Brownie Scout uniform. I didn’t last in Girl Scouts because their expectations were higher and my disagreeableness to those expectations increased. If they had just stayed with those Nature badges, I would have been fine….so no Girl Scout uniform.

And by the way, doing my own research by simply looking, lotus pod size is directly related to the thickness of the stem.

More later. I might be able to sew my new linens into pants today….if a caregiver comes…

Bye for now. Lee and I are going to do a take out lunch.

 

 

 

Another Start of Another Book – My Life in Clothes

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I took the odd leftover pages from some of my contact printing that was mostly used for The Stoat Story and bound them together in five signatures using the coptic stitch. Next I put some of the dyed silk shirt that is over thirty years old and also was colored with some of those same grocery store Eucalyptus leaves and pod and tailor tacked them into place here and there on the pages.

Now I had something to draw into besides just the plain pages. I thought it would be fun to draw my life in clothes. It would be something else besides the Fairy Book to work on and something different from my Drawings a Day books. The fun part is trying to remember the first clothes you wore that left such an impression that you never forgot them…whether you liked them or not!

Here is the inside cover with the rhyme that my mother said several times to me.

There was a little girl

who had a little curl

right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good she was very, very good.

And when she was bad, she was horrid.

I am about three here and wearing the dreaded Sun Bonnet Sue hat my mother made me wear whenever out in the sun. I remember picking strawberries and having to wear some cute little sundress as well. These drawings are from memory and not old photographs, that I really hate looking at.

Then things got better.

My father rigged up an old mailbox with a saddle, mounted deer head and mop to be my horse. I had a brand new cowgirl outfit that probably contributed to my love of fringe through the years. I so wanted to be a cowboy back then at about five years old. And very soon ditched the skirt for those paired jeans and shirts….plaid flannel-lined denim jeans to match the plaid flannel shirt.

On the left are my hat, caps, six shooter and holster. These years were heaven for me. The only horse I had after the mailbox was my imaginary horse, White Cloud.

Today while Lee is with his new caregiver, I had a chance to move on a few years to the dreadful cotillion dress that I had to wear to a dance that I wanted no part of. The drawing is of me standing on the toilet to stay hidden from the chaperones out looking for me. I stayed there until the dance was over. I will post that later with some equally dreadful shoes from childhood.

 

I am going to tack on a story here because there does not seem to be another place to put it.

When last in Australia, March of 2019, I joked with a friend in Hobart that I just needed to find a man to marry when Lee was no longer with me. Someone in Australia so I could just move there….preferably Tasmania.

We went off to Bruny Island for a fun day with another old friend, and stopped at a place for a flat white and muffin. I told the young fellow that I was willing to pay $1,000 just to get the ball rolling. He laughed and said he and I could start in Dubai. I lost interest.

But my friend reminded me that same sex marriages were legal now in Australia and she was single.

Well, we always were quite compatible…ever since we met in the late 90’s at basket workshops I was teaching down under. Her house was always open to me for staying over. She always picked me up at the airport, always got me off when it was time to leave. She always took me to the best shops, got me to where the workshops were being held, fed me well, had mutual friends over for good visits….she is simply the best.

So when she suggested that her and I could get married if it came to that, here is what she said. “I do love you, Sandy. And I’d marry you, but also I could really use the money.” We laughed at that. We laughed at so many things over the years. I can never think of her without just grinning and remembering some funny thing she said.

I remembered her in the middle of the night when I would wake up thinking how very special she is. So just short of six weeks ago, I sent her the check for $1,000 US funds. In AUD it would be almost worth an additional $400. I sent it in a lovely botanically illustrated card done by another friend’s mother, and just used an international stamp for postage.

I asked my two kids if they thought it was a dumb thing to do. I told them I wanted to use my own money from traveling and teaching down under. They both had met Jude on their own trips joining me in Australia over the years, and thought the idea was a good one and to go ahead and do it. The memory of her makes them smile too.

I thought it would be there in two weeks tops. She never messaged me about it. After a month I thought it had become lost and I might be out the money altogether. Mail was coming from Australia within four weeks, so I was a bit worried that I should have gotten her particulars on her bank account instead of being so impulsive. But I so wanted to imagine her face when she opened the envelope.

Well, the other day she received it! Just a bit over five weeks to get there. She says it is the best marriage proposal she ever got and is excitedly thinking of the things she needs that this will help with.  Jude gets the money, I get to smile a whole lot more and when we get married is anyone’s guess.

Here we are in a tavern on Bruny Island.

So the moral to the story is, “Just do it!” Especially if it wakes you up in the middle of the night and keeps you smiling. Just do it.

Til later.

This One Is Mostly About Lee And His Days

Posted on by Sandy Webster

This is some of the switchbacks coming up to my studio. I need to get more mulch delivered to finish it off. We walk the trail every morning and search for something for me to draw in my Drawing a Day book. I photograph things along the way to feed into my Fairies Book.

Like this.

A snaggle-toothed elf wearing a pink hat emerging out from under a watchful eye.

Rain on crape myrtle trees bring out fairy faces.

Our dried leaves fall down with every squirrel jump made to shake the wet down on our heads. Some colored as to look like fall is here.

Twin fawns appeared in the yard.

Lee stops to replace the rocks knocked off his wall by deer and squirrels.

Usually I lead, but this morning he got ahead of me. I made a little movie of his feet walking in front of me but it did not like being here.

We return home and I draw in my book. The fourth image of a feather found this morning is the last page of that book. I have two more this size to go before I have to make more.

Irresistible!

A wet turkey feather left

for us this morning.

 

A small and fluffy

taupe-colored tickling feather left

for us this morning.

A knot that came loose

from its branch on a felled tree –

more interesting.

 

Barely visible

a feather from the trail to

finish out this book.

 

And lastly I would like to thank all of you who send cards or little things for Lee. You are so thoughtful and it makes us smile. He has forgotten the friends we used to have, much like some of them no longer think of us. And to be honest I have finally let my disappointment in them fade away.

Today he came in from the yard carrying two pairs of work gloves.

“Why two pairs of gloves?”

“I want to take both pairs with me.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Where is home?”

“Michigan.”

“No, you don’t want to go there. It is too cold and grey. That is why we left there twenty-seven years ago. We live here now.”

He looked so sad. So I said, “Let’s bring in the ferns from the deck, hang them up with a good shake, and you can vacuum again.”

“Yes, let’s do that.”

He loves the hum of the vacuum and leaf blower. My job is to make sure one is used inside and the other, out.

Now he is having a good nap and I get to do this….have a visit with all of you who tune in.

Til later.