A better Wednesday

^^^Cochineal dyed wool socks from Laura Frazier of FarmGirl Arts

Whew. I starting feeling better yesterday. I put The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel soundtrack on at work and at home and reveled in the music. Peggy Lee has become my new favorite. When I thought about my disappointment about that video, in my brain I substituted the theme from the Benny Hill show (“Yakety Sax” by Boots Randolph) for the part that highlighted my framing fuck-up and made fart noises. That made me laugh and feel silly and now I am over it, but I’m still not sharing it. It’s a lovely short film, otherwise.

Good news: I have been approached several times over the years for the use of my photos that I post here and on my Flickr account. If it is for a for-profit venture, I ask for payment and they disappear. But if it is for a non-profit or a small business, I’ll usually say yes for free. Recently I was asked by a really great journal published by UNC Press and the Center for the Study of the American South if they could use my photos from a 2013 post about a natural dyeing workshop I took with Dede Styles for an article they are writing in the Spring issue. I took one look at the website Southern Cultures and immediately offered up high res photos. (I resized all the photos that I post here to save space, as well as discourage stealing.) I’ll be posting that link when the issue comes out.

Work has suddenly calmed down and I am in the mode of waiting. I am not a patient person. I wish I could go to the studio. Or stay home and weave on my tapestry and sew more masks. We need new masks and I have plenty of cotton fabric and supplies. I stopped making them because like most people I didn’t think we’d be looking at another year of wearing them. Our county did away with the mask mandate and even though my workplace and many other businesses that I support still require them inside, I’ve noticed an increase in people not wearing them or wearing them on their chins or below their noses so that they are “technically” wearing a useless mask.

I turned on the Christmas lights on the front porch. It was that easy because I never took them down. I think that I might put up the little artificial tree that we used to put in my mother-in-law’s nursing home room. I prefer the smell of a real tree, but the vet told me not to do it because of Diego’s asthma. That’s fine – many years we don’t do anything for Christmas. I actually prefer Hanukkah because: latkes. I also like the color blue. Since we stopped “doing” Christmas as an obligatory chore I have been much happier. Sandy doesn’t seem to care one way or the other, and when he was working he often volunteered to work on Christmas day so that others who did celebrate could do so. Thanksgiving is the only holiday that I really care about anymore.

There’s no wish here for others not to enjoy holidays. I just don’t care to have days designated for obligatory cheer. It took a long time for me to realize that I don’t have to participate, and not feel (very) guilty about it.

Still, when I look at the Christmas light balls hanging from the trees in the Sunset Hills neighborhood here, and when I look at the beautiful photos from Lisbon of the decorated city, I do feel the spirit.

Somehow I must find a way to get excited about cooking healthy (or reasonably healthy) food again. We both need to lose weight and Sandy gained an enormous amount of weight this year. He is not going to do it without help. He suggested to me last night that he might go on a diet of eating one apple, one banana, and one orange twice a day. I told him that was not healthy and later I tossed him a copy of The Diabetic Bible for him to look over for a well rounded diet. It is still sitting where I tossed it on the sofa. Even if I cook more whole healthy food, that doesn’t mean that he is going to stick to a diet or eat the food that I cook, but it will help me and hopefully he will get some residual benefit from it. At least it is soup season. I do love to make soup.