This is my second post this morning, and I am just putting off going to the studio until after my coffee and maybe lunch here, maybe a cup of soup at Cafe Europa, which is in the same building. I miss going to the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings, but I crave my relaxed sleeping late Saturday mornings more. Sometimes it seems like this obsession over sleep is taking over my life. This afternoon and/or tomorrow afternoon I think that I’m going to play with monoprinting and stencils on my gelli plate. Just something to get me going that is fun and not intimidating. I’ll try to remember to take photos at the studio.
Work has been dull but the stress has been down. My depression/anxiety has been better. We still haven’t heard about where the university budget cuts will be and the state legislature has not passed a budget yet. The Democrat governor and the GOP legislature are haggling over state employee and teacher raises, which is infuriating considering that we haven’t had a raise in three years and the last one was small. It would be nice, since there is a budget SURPLUS, if they chose a raise that keeps up with inflation instead of tax cuts, but that is unlikely. I honestly would support a strike if that happened. It’s amazing that anyone chooses to be a teacher in North Carolina any more.
I’m pretty disgusted with both major parties, as usual. At least Biden is attempting to do the right thing with vaccination mandates.
It’s funny that I had an ugly comment a while back – which you won’t see because I deleted it immediately because I won’t be insulted or lectured about what I write about on my own blog – that criticized my “love for Biden” and my political rants. Boy, if I wrote even one tenth of the rants that are in my head on this blog nobody from either party would ever read it again! I like Obama’s and Biden’s personalities, and some of their policies, but I left the Democrats during their administration. As for the part about me being a Dudeist priestess: Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man. LOL
Greensboro lost a friend to many this week with the passing of Brooke Neal. She was a “character” and an artist and lived an incredible life. I knew her mainly on Facebook. We had mutual friends and I last talked to her at our artist group gathering a couple of months ago. Whatever got her worked fast. I didn’t even know she was in hospice. Her final comment to me on Facebook was “Retire.” Her friends said that she seemed at peace with dying.
The way things are going I’ve been thinking a lot more about retiring to Portugal, and our trip to see it in May. As the planning stands now, everything but getting to Boston and back is arranged and mostly paid for. We’d need to pay for train and bus tickets and meals and any tours and admission fees, but that is mostly it, and I can save up for that. The itinerary is Boston-Dublin-Lisbon-Porto-Evora-Tavira-Sevilla-Tavira-Lisbon-Dublin-Boston. (Dublin is just a stopover both ways, and Sevilla, Spain is a side trip for one night.) We have to leave from Boston because my original tickets were Southwest to Boston, then Aer Lingus to Dublin in June, 2020. This trip has gone through several changes since then! Hopefully I can use all the voucher points from my Southwest canceled flights to cover the flight from RDU to Boston and back, but the way they have been canceling flights lately it makes me a bit anxious.
Anyway, the green tomatoes and the peppers and basil have been picked, and winter is coming at last. I can’t say that I’m sorry. Daylight Savings Time ends tomorrow, and I wish that it would never come back. My body never adjusted from the change in spring! Here’s an article about its history and present.
slowly she turned 