Daily Notes- January 15

When Life gives you lemons.  Internet Trolls are sending me messages regarding my recent "employment applications" and their "enthusiasm" for me to click on their letter and "join the Team". I am dragging their letters straight to the Trash logo in my sidebar.  un-opened.

Like I am stupid enough to put all my verifieds in an open internet document to whom?????  And why the hell would I want a JOB????  I'm 72 years old.

So, okay.  Moving on.  I made another tea bag paper surface.  Still trying to find the "sweet spot" for the hand embroidery.  I have five of them now--possibly 8 to 10 inches but not squares.  Wonky.  And I have used a group of colors.  Some work and other don't.  One has beads.  One has buttons.  One has both.  Two have none.  If I had one of those computer programs I could put them all in and make X's on the parts that don't work, circles around the "good" parts etc.  But right now, they are all on the wall.  Pinned up.  I walk past and sometimes stand.  Trying to not be the kind of person that finds something good in everything.  That's what got me to having five of these things and none of them what I want. And Grace.....the tea bag paper is not saying a word to me regarding what it wants.

Had to stop--Rachael from Card Holder Services wanted to talk to me about lowering interest rates.  I pay the balance on the cards.  Have done for 50 years.  Never carried a balance.

Nevermind.  It's not a policy anyone else in the Universe follows.

I'm in sort of a "crabby old woman" mood today.  My daughter says a storm is coming.  Lots of snow or some such.   She called this morning to notify me that she has a cold.  Germs.  Might not want to go exchange phones tomorrow.  I told her she was going.   I want my phone back.  I want to take pictures of those tea bag things on the wall.  Show you how bad they are.  Lemons.

Daily Notes- January 14th

From a website.  Plant based cloth dyeing.   Eucalyptus leaves.

I still have my steaming pot filled with onion skins.  Using it to "deaden" bright fabric.  The yellow adds a layer to cover and change bright backgrounds.  And soften any bright printed details.  Where once I enjoyed the sharp contrast between light and dark--I am now appreciating a lower contrast level.  Perhaps I understand the comments of older quilters 20 something years ago---they said my fabrics "hurt their eyes".

I promised G a pot of chicken soup today.  It warms him up when days are long and cold.  Bright sunshine here in Maine.  26 degrees.  I think this is the high for the day.  There are reasons only 2 million people live in the entire (large) state of Maine during the cold months--like 8 months of the year.  28 degrees is the high.

I am right on the edge of setting up my empty milk bottles and filling them with soil and seeds.  I also need to work on my labeling.  Didn't work so good last year.  I have stick on numbers for each bottle but I think I need to make a chart.  A big chart.  Because last year I started the same seeds two and once three times.  A mistake, for sure.  A Big Chart would stop that nonsense.  G hates it when I clutter the kitchen cabinet doors with charts.  But--I need a chart.

The Fairy Garden Class is coming up fast-- Saturday the 26th--twelve days.

I'm reading the first of three Permaculture books.  And the first book gives directions for finding the one place in your yard where the sun shines most--summer and winter.  That's where the greenhouse goes.  Not--like we were thinking---where we have room for it.  But actually--the sun does shine there (all day) in both summer and winter.  Dumb luck, huh?  Now we need to figure out how to add a heating barrier to the north side.  Well, and get the guys over here to put the damned thing up.

The book also said a sunporch could be a little greenhouse--like the vestibule.  It's 45 degrees in the vestibule right now- without any heat other than sunshine.  The fig tree, the two large geraniums and the asparagus fern are happy.  Oh, and my rosemary plant.  The citrus is in the house.  It's getting ready for the flowers to open.  I am spraying with insecticidal soap to keep the bugs down.  Would be nice if it actually made a piece of fruit--but the scent of the flowers will be wonderful.  Last winter we lost all the leaves right after the flowers opened.  Thought the plant was dead.  It wasn't.  I can't come up with the name of the insect but it left a sticky surface on the leaves. Scale or mites.

Well, I'm on to the soup.  Great games yesterday.  Patriots and Saints.  On to Kansas City.

Daily Notes- January 13

Football.  All weekend.  The games have been hard to watch.  The Teams that are winning are brutal.
We're up next.  If we win today we play one of those teams.

Yesterday I read another book by Beth Harbison.  Thin Rich Pretty. The remaining books are not in my library's catalog so I will have to order them--one is intriguing--Hope In A Jar.  I keep little rectangles of paper in a jar--with one word on each--today's word is  "invent".  The word gives me something to think about--what would I invent.  What would I like someone to invent.

I made the special dinner I made for my brother and then my son.  Yesterday I made it for g and myself.  Southern pork ribs seasoned with cider vinegar, brown sugar and cayenne pepper.  A Martha Stewart recipe if you've interested.  You run the ribs with the dry and then add the vinegar.  Put a lid on it and into the oven.  Tastes fantastic.  We're having it with potato dumplings and fried sauerkraut.

It's very cold here-- the sun is shining but without any warmth.  All surfaces are covered in shiny, hard ice.  A local church is offering an Indoor Gardening class today--on growing salad greens in the house.  I gave seeds to my daughter to give to two of her friends.  Seeds for sprouts and micro greens. They each are enjoying the fresh greens and the growing of them.  I love growing pea sprouts.  The little leaves, stems and curly tendrils taste just like green peas.  Nice on top of salad greens or a baked sweet potato with avocado.  Now on sale for 99 cents each.

I was in a "mood" yesterday.  Wondering if I was becoming "demented" and beginning to forget things.  The Lyme disease thing.  Forgetting words.  Not being able to find something I recently saw and touched.  Almost like I am "gaslighting" myself.  Enough.  Just let it go and move on.

Daily Notes- January Twelfth

Food 52 is keeping me busy with clean up ideas.  This one is for the staples panty.  Containers all labeled.  When my son was here for his visit in October he looked at the expiration dates on all the items in my pantry.  Set aside the expired ones and then monitored my disposal of them.  There--thankfully, were only a few items.

Knowing he was visiting I had checked dates and written the expiration dates in black magic marker on the tops of the canned good lids.  I did miss a few things.   I mentioned this to my daughter and on a quiet day at home--she went thru her cabinet and was shocked by how much had expired.  She has also been too busy or too tired to do much cooking.

I just deleted the other two paragraphs I wrote.  Blah.   I found graphite pencils from Bohemia that I purchased somewhere and have been enjoying their smooth coverage of the paper in my journal.  There are some with fine points and I may draw a few chairs.  I have plenty of magazine and catalog chairs to use as "models".  AFTER I vacuum up all the dog hair that has drifted along the baseboards. Everywhere.  And once I notice it (takes a while) it starts bothering me.  And if I vacuum near the baseboards then I have to also wipe the tops of the baseboards with a damp cloth.  And finish doing the laundry.  And the oven could use a cleaning.

But I have a few good books to read.

Quite a battle:  Book reading or the vacuum.