Daily Notes- January 8

It snowed overnight and G is out snowplowing the driveway prior to the expected rain.  Which if there is snow on the walks and drive will become sheets of ice.  Its been a strange Winter so far.  Finally getting colder.  But still fluctuating regularly between snow, rain, ice, snow.

I was up in the Magic Attic yesterday and discovered the batteries in the thermostat were dead.  It took four trips up and down to get working batteries inserted- I needed my reading glasses and then needed a flashlight and then fresher batteries.  Now there is minimal heat up there--enough to keep the bathroom pipes from freezing.  While I was up there, I watered the plants in the bathtub.  A few of the larger Clivia spend the Winter in the tub upstairs and along with them-a few mandavilla from the neighbor.  They come down if they manage to make a flower spike.  But often I miss them doing that and they flower all alone up there.

I had to take apart a few sections of the baby quilt top.  Make and insert new sections.  Of course I cut a few the wrong size--so had to add inches to them.  The top lives up to the name -scrappy.  For quite awhile it was just crappy--but only because I didn't lay it out on the floor and actually LOOK.  And, truth be told, I didn't have a real plan going into it.  Always have a plan.

I need to make a plan on paper before I start in with fabric.  On paper, one can scribble, erase, scribble, erase etc with more ease than to unsew, re-cut and sew etc.

I sorted thru a box that had been sitting on the floor here by my computer desk.  I did that last night. We couldn't find anything to watch on tv and I had finished reading my book The Cactus ...so--the box got sorted. Interesting pictures, articles etc.  I think the box held things for my journal pages when I was into pasting pictures on all the pages and writing in the margins. I also found a new-blank journal.  From the evidence inside, it used to sit here on the computer desk-by my left elbow--and I would write and draw interesting things found on the internet.  I happen to have two such blank page books here by my left elbow as I type.  One is nearly full.  The second just in the beginning stages. Now I have three.

G is feeling bored and is feeling like he should be "getting things"--ie buying things he actually doesn't need, hardly uses, forgets he owns.  He did try to clean off the side table on his side of the couch.  But I just looked and it is just as piled up with junk as before.  Mine has eye glasses cleaner, a jar of cough drops (Ricola), the house phone, a nail file and a wooden clothes pin.  I do actually have more clutter on my ottoman  (he has none on his) as I have a tray containing my sewing supplies.

My needs are small.  His encompass everything he sees in commercials.