Friend of Twelve By Twelve

The Purple and Yellow Colorplay. Now, I didn't like this combo. And I could have gone with pale lavender and yellow but that's not what I had to work with. This image looks nearly like the original. Purple is difficult to photograph accurately. The strips aren't that red. The yellow isn't that green. The purple is bluer. I could have added more colors to the mix but decided to be parochial in my approach: strictly limited. I am looking forward to seeing what is posted today by the Twelve. And find out what's next.

The roofers are working on the front section of the roof today. The wings are done. The first day was unbearably hot. Yesterday, sunny but cooler with a breeze to discourage flies and mosquitos. Today, cooler still (70) but sunny. Perhaps they won't need to hose down the shingles today and create muddy earth all round the foundations. And the front section doesn't have any skylights. So, it's just straight shingles but a very steep pitch (a two story roof) because I have a roof within a roof design. My kitchen dining room has its own cathedral roof and then another is built onto the front to cover the upstairs space. It is intriguing and was probably very expensive to build in the 1980's.

I am having a lunch date with a library friend. And I have two books to pick up. A really good one for G and I hope a really good one for me: The Art of Joan Schulze. I am not familiar with her work but the examples I have seen on several blogs is very interesting. So I am eager for the book and the experience of seeing new (to me) fiber art. The book traveled to me from the Maine College of Art (MeCA). This is the school I had thought about attending to finish my BFA. Now that I have money to pay the tuition I am less interested. "An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit" Pliny the Younger.

I need to get my Pole Beans into the earth today so they can grow and prosper. I love beans. I picked my first zucchini yesterday and two bunches of lettuce which took forever to clean and just minutes to eat. More radishes are ready to be pulled.

Riley just discovered I closed the bedroom hallway door. He can't get down to the bedroom to disturb (wake up) G. G got home very late (or very early) from end of the month. Now that he has new managers the paperwork and inventories aren't as perfect. And this stuff isn't what he's good at. So, he is suffering. I think it must have been 3 or 4 in the morning when he finally got home. Twelve hours working on end of the month. OMG.

I made coffee for myself but not in my dog mug. I clunked the edge of the mug with a jar bottom yesterday and now I have to think of a way to repair it. And then remember to hand wash and not drink from the chipped side. IOW, not use the mug as often or as carelessly as I have been since I received it at Christmas which is, like, every day.

I'm trying to decide whether to skip breakfast because I am going out for lunch. I have bills to pay this morning. Garden work. And that's about all.

I had lunch at the home of a gardening friend yesterday. She had made a watery potato "soup" with crunchy (undercooked) chunks of onion (old stuff she had pulled from her winter garden).

Thank goodness I had brought the leftover hot curried rice which I added to the soup along with a big swish of salt. I had also brought my sweet potato veggie burgers and we had those heated up on toasted English muffins with some of my pickled zucchini. I had added the jar of iced tea with lemon to my bag at the last minute. We finished it up while sitting on her deck under her grape vines. P is not the woman I met 8 years ago on the first day of Master Gardener classes. She has changed, gotten more scattered, less coherent, stranger as the years go by. Yesterday, I wondered why we are even friends. But, we are. I just have to accept her running away in the middle of lunch to "check the squash plants", her mowing odd sections of her lawn and then just not mowing the remainder, her running off to "help" people all the time. I get to listen to her complain that her garden is a mess, her house is a mess, she is tired, never has time for herself etc. We go places together every once in awhile, to garden events, meetings or dinner but not as often. And we don't laugh as much.

I don't laugh as much. I remember laughing a great deal when we would visit G's friends in Florida and North Carolina. Laughing a great deal with K in Atlanta. Laughing a lot with P on our garden adventures. I was trying to remember when the last time was that I really laughed. I think it must be years ago. When I was fat. Fat and very jolly. But when I was fat, people I knew hadn't started dying, getting sick, losing their jobs, having their children die suddenly and we owned a business and had money and TIME for travel. We have two weeks vacation now. Period. No time for laughing. Oh, I occasionally have a good hearty chuckle while watching Wipeout. Riley makes me smile. I am amused by life. In good humor. Just not roused to good out of control laughter. Would that be a "self limiting assumption"?

I haven't cooked anything in nearly five days now. I boiled some pasta one evening and served it with butter and cheese but I hardly think that qualifies as cooking. G ordered a complete take out dinner on Tuesday from an Italian place in town. No waiting in line for a booth or getting dressed in real clothes. And it was good. We will do that more often. I should go to the grocery and buy something but I lack the interest in doing even that.

On to the bills. The beans. Sweeping the floor (a daily chore).