HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Happy 2020 Halloween, Everybody!

My morning started by going to McDonalds, the moon full and golden.  Two of the amazing Moipei Triplets whose concert in March wowed me--were dressed as twin witches.  It was too dark to take photos at that hour, but I went back later and asked Marta and Mary to pose.  They already have an agent in New York, but  COVID forced them to postpone their plans.  While they wait, they are the most glamorous window girls McDonalds ever had.

The day was spiced up with some phone calls, a bag of treats from Makken and Sebastien, and Carlos being here most of the day doing jobs in the casita.

Finally, today the armoire was completed and shutters and Japanese fans hung on the wall.  This is indeed  My Happy Place.  I moved back into my Real House for  Halloween sleeping and movies but I'll head out to the casita in the morning to see what else I can find to do!

Just when I thought the day was over, Jan brought me a scrumptious dinner of spooky food--deviled eggs (the best ever); monster meatballs, and a sugar skull pizza.  Jan is the queen of celebrations!   There's a witch on top of her house, and Kate is dressed as a glam witch--and Jan looks so cute with a spider crawling around her neck. (I wish I'd gotten a picture!)  In lieu of trick-or-treating, Jan made the boys a scavenger hunt for candy all around the house, inside and out!

I just watched I Am Woman--an excellent film about the life of Helen Reddy who died at the age of 78 this past September.  

And next on the movie night list: Rebecca,  recommended by Linda K. 

Do whatever it takes to treat yourselves tonight!  

Memories of Halloween Pasts With Nathan and Elena: 

And from the Leary clan, 1300 miles away: they have returned home from their one week beach retreat, just the four of them and Tucker--who is Day's constant shadow, I hear. 

Wind chill 33

The Playhouse is temporarily closed--until Will comes to take the heater out of the storage room and put it in the casita.

I must say, I slept for 8 hours straight last night, my first night in the Real House in a long time But I woke up wondering: What do I do in the Real House?  All my toys are in the Playhouse!

Obama did a PSA about voting: Be sure you BUBBLE in your vote; don't check the box, bubble the box.

Joy on MSNBC informed us that we can call and "Cure our vote" if we did anything wrong.

So I started obsessing: did I check or did I bubble?

They couldn't have been nicer, or more efficient.  My vote passed muster; I'm fine. 

"But what if you find out later there's a problem?" I asked.  "I'm sort of paranoid about it."

She told me the state of Texas (like lots of other states) does NOT require contacting a voter about an incorrectly marked ballot--but Bexar County does do that anyway.  YAY for Bexar County!

But if you, like me, feel like maybe you left the house  ten minutes ago with steak frying aond you have to turn around and go back home to check, there is the option of calling the elections office in your county and double checking.  It's called "curing your ballot."  (checking to make sure you dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's.)

Every vote counts this year in Texas as we just might turn our state blue.  So if you have any questions, call the elections office and double check.  

 

Sunday in the Middle of the Night

At 2 a.m. I was at the window of the orange and white, holding out two dollars to my pal, the night manager.  He's funny, bright-eyed, personable.  "You know your money doesn't work in this place," he says. 

Persephone motions him to come to the window.  "It's your girlfriend," she says.  Until the next customer comes, we three talk and joke, and when I drive away we blow kisses through masks.  

The yoga Nidra class I took online yesterday calmed my mind.  I was, for the rest of the day--as the Hippies said in the 60s--"blissed out."

An "On Being" interview in the car with a Nobel Prize winning physicist was enlightening and inspiring, and seeing my two young friends lightened the heaviness of 2020. 

3 a.m, Cutting circles colored Japanese paper  gel printed with vibrant Golden paints, in a trance, listening to podcasts. I see  planets, the moon, breasts, bowls, flowers, slices of tree trunks, and sea shells. 

4 a.m., Reading a book called Claiming Ground by Laura Bell--a memoir about a woman who herds sheep, the only woman among men, in Wyoming's Big Horn Basin. Every single sentence is gorgeous.  

⚡️ Sparks, #1

I'm making this up as I go:

                Sparks: flashes of happiness, peace, or uplift, no matter what, no matter what:

So here are three of today's sparks.  Please send me yours.

1. A youngish man, possibly homeless, crossing Austin Highway with brace on his leg, obviously having difficulty walking, but smiling.  He was wearing--a Super Man shirt!

2. The car ahead of me was a Red Kia Soul with these bumper stickers:

     Be Happy

     MEOW--and a trail of kitty footprints

     Namaste

3. A friend invited me to a Zoom Nidra Yoga class--a deep and relaxing meditation.  It was over an hour ago and I'm still not entirely back from it.  When I opened my eyes, I didn't want to talk or do anything, just hold on to that feeling of peace. 

"What the Constitution Means To Me" by Heidi Schreck

Trying to think of the right word to describe what I watched last night: remarkable?  hilarious? poignant? terrifying? captivating? 

It's hard to find the word because this performance was uniquely compelling and emotionally nuanced. Heidi Schreck wrote and performed a  stage performance of "What the Constitution Means to Me"--and Amazon filmed it.

This is a gem, a timely one, that should be required viewing for anyone voting in 2020--or any other year. But this year especially--

When militias are threatening war if the current resident of the White House loses,

When the current resident of the White House is threatening not to leave if he loses but to take it to the courts,

When science is discounted to our peril and the peril of Mother Earth,

And when voter suppression, racism, discrimination, and bullying (over mask wearing and other things) are more apparent than ever in our lifetime,

This is a must see!  

I loved it.

Today has been one of those get 'er done days--buying tires, getting stuff repaired, and getting a hair cut. And as cool weather starts with gentle breezes, leaves falling, we are feeling the end of Texas summer at last. 

It should be against some law to have this much fun--but on this particular day, I'm happy to break whatever laws might be on the dusty old books and begin a weekend of making things. If anything else breaks, it will have to stay broke. 

(Pam told me about a vacuum cleaner shop at West and Blanco--Austin Vacuum Cleaners--that did an excellent job of fixing my machine.) 

The twinkly lights are twinkling, the bed is comfy, and I have birthday (and even a few Christmas) presents that will need mailing on the floor along with tape and ribbon and colorful papers.

I have Gessoed two panels for my cabinet, glued some canvases together with foam, mixed up some paste for attaching mulberry paper to them (from one of my Lyn Belisle classes) and put the first coat of varnish on the cabinet.  

Circles circles everywhere--on the cabinet, on the wall, in jars, and set to music....

From the day we arrive on the planet

And blinking, step into the sun

There's more to be seen than can ever be seen

More to do than can ever be done 

Some say, "Eat or be eaten"

Some say, "Live and let live"

But all are agreed as they join the stampede

You should never take more than you give

In the circle of life

It's the wheel of fortune

It's the leap of faith

It's the band of hope

'Til we find our place

On the path unwinding

In the circle, the circle of life....

Elton John

A man named Everett

Everett raised beagles and went to church four times a week.  He lived on property with his wife and family, six of whom got COVID.

Just before the virus hit, Everett's father's doctor told him, "You are ninety!  And your health is that of a man of fifty. You are the poster child for senior citizens." 

Everyone else in the family had symptoms so mild they thought it was seasonal allergies.  They all survived, even his wife with dementia who still lived at home and was cared for by Everett--all, that is, but Everett.  He died in the hospital, alone. 

His tearful daughter told this story on NPR this morning. 

When the interviewer asked her how she felt about Trump's handling of the virus, she said, "Now you have moved me from sadness to anger. He has done an abominable job!  He is responsible for the death of my father and thousands more."  

She cringes every time she hears him say COVID is no big deal, when he says the media "bastards" like CNN are running it into the ground and that we're tired of hearing about COVID.  

Instead of minute by minute news about Trump and his latest grievances and polls, the media should cover more families of victims of this disease.  I wish we'd hear their names and stories and realize that every one of the 223,000+ fatalities are linked to real people, people like Everett.

A day or two ago, scientists were interviewed about the treatment Trump had--which he promised to "give to all Americans for free."

"That's not going to happen," one doctor said.  "Trump 's treatment has to be administered intravenously.  Everyone who gets it would have a co-pay of two to ten thousand dollars. It is totally impossible to think that it would ever be free--or even available, to thousands of people who need it."

Special TINGS

When my children and the cousins were little and we celebrated Christmas together, sometimes we'd let them open one gift on Christmas Eve.  My nephew Andrew chose the one that had socks in it.

"THIS IS NOT A SPECIAL TING!" he said with a disappointment that made us all laugh.

So it was Andrew's little boy's voice that rang in my ears at about 3:15 in the morning as I was wrapping a couple of birthday presents.  Will this be a special "TING" for the recipients?

I also thought about it because I got some extraordinary gel prints using a mix of pearlescent colors (gift from Joy) and Golden paints.  They were so special I decided to cancel my day's car plans and keep doing this all day.  I mean, brakes and tires and fender work can wait--if there is a special TING!

Gel printing is my favorite thing to do in the middle of any night, especially when twinkly lights are glowing in the casita and the room seems magical.  You spread paints on the gel press with a brayer, add some texture with various things, maybe throw on a stencil, and pull a print.  You never know exactly what you're going to get and sometimes the result kind of takes your breath away for a minute.

Socks are good, but colorful pages are amazing! 

I will, however, take to my bed for a bit and try to get a little shut-eye before I start the next round. 

Boundaries

I didn't hear the beginning of the story, but what the woman was saying captivated me.

"Our people have no word for borders," she said.  "The deer cannot migrate this year because of the wall." The routes to food and water, the ones they have followed for generations, are blocked by Trump's wall. 

"The wall divides our people, too," she said.  "It cuts right through the middle of us."

I hope to track down the story in its entirety, but what I heard, just that, is enough to haunt me for a long time.  

If viewed from Outer Space, this beautiful planet has no artificial boundaries between tribes, nations, and states.   

Trump's wall, like his thinking in general, is an antiquated idea.  Based in fear of Others, it's a half-baked way of keeping Them out and Us in.  

In the past year, three readers whose opinion I respect, have recommended Braiding Sweetgrass, and I'm just getting back to it this morning after starting it some time ago.  It's the kind of beautifully written and interesting book I prefer in paper instead of a Kindle version.  

Two other recommendations by a friend: David Abrams' Becoming Animal and The Spell of the Sensuous. 

I just downloaded samples of both  along with What It's Like To Be A Bird by David Allen Sibley. 

Small children don't recognize boundaries between humans and animals. When Elena was little, she'd make the same sounds the birds in my yard were making.  It was incredible to me, how uncannily similar her sounds were to theirs.  And they would answer back!  This could go on for several minutes.

"How do you do that?" I asked her.

"Do what?" 

 She didn't even know she was doing it--it was as natural as talking to humans. 

Morning in the casita

When I woke up, it was still dark--all but a string of lights I'd found and plugged in last night. Instead of hanging them, I just lay them across the table where I do gel prints, and they twinkled like Christmas morning.

They illuminated the piece I'm working on, circles and circles everywhere on what used to be a drab armoire.  

I felt--happy!  

I hadn't taken a drive to see Persephone and Andy in a while, so at precisely 3:15, I took courage (surely the skunk is sleeping) and walked through the back yard, then through the house, then to the car--and took a cheerful drive to my middle-of-the-night equivalent of a drive-through bar where my two friendly bar tenders know me. 

Ironically, on the way home, the podcast up next and playing on my phone was by Ingrid Fetell Lee, the author of the book, Joyful.  She happened to be saying, Circles make us joyful, and multiples make us joyful.  So no wonder I felt joyful in the middle of the night with multiple twinkly lights and circles circles everywhere!

She wondered why buildings and rooms for the most vulnerable people are so drab.  Nursing homes and hospitals and homeless shelters.  What if people were given spaces to live and heal and recover that were expressions of joy instead?  

Sharp angles in our ancestry represented danger while round circular objects evoked a sense of safety.  So we humans, without even knowing why, feel comforted and happier when we look at round objects instead of angles.  Who knew?  

Remembering a Real President

MSNBC's film about Pete Souza, White House photographer for President Obama, should be seen by everyone, especially children too young to know what a real President looks like.  

Obama's humor and compassion, the gravity with which he made hard decisions, his love for his family were all captured in Souza's photographs and in his narrative.

If you feel homesick for The Way It Used To Be, this film is a poignant reminder--and an urgent call to vote, act, resist, protest, and whatever it takes to change How It Is Now. 

Getting Up

I am retreating in the casita this weekend, finishing my cabinet--which is, to my eye, pure fun!  It's getting close to completion and I'll post a photo when it's done.  

I can get down on the floor to glue circles on the armoire, but getting up is not a gesture of grace and I'm glad no one is here to witness.  When the phone rings on the other side of the room, there is no way I can get up before it stops ringing, so I just make a note of callers (mostly the Democratic Party asking me to contribute a little more) and call back those whose names I know the next day before getting down on the floor again.

Until my project is photo ready, I'll send you a picture I captured from Will's family camper, four hands of precious people:

Three Birthdays in Three Days

October 13: Jackson 19

October 14: Me 72

October 15: Day 49

It's been a wonderful week starting with meeting Beverly for an early birthday picnic at Palmetto Park near Gonzales--her idea, one of her favorite places, my first-but-not-last trip there!  We took a selfie of us both masked beside the river (San Marcos River) but I can't find it.  So I'll post a picture of Beverly, and one she took of me as we enjoyed nonstop conversation on Tuesday, as we've done for about 45 years whenever we get together. 

Since Day didn't have a birthday picture to send me yesterday--she sent me instead cute puppy pictures, so I'll send you a photo of my baby girl 49 years ago, even cuter than her puppy. 

'

And here's Jackson--a year and a half ago when he was dressing for prom night that turned out to be laser tag night with his girlfriend and high school friends. Now he's in college and working at an auto parts store, going to VCA in the fall. 

Chapter 5 Begins

Today I am 72.  Four chapters of 18 years each. 

Before dawn, I got a Happy Birthday quartet and key lime pie--and the party continued all day into the night, one surprise, one note, one visit at a time.  It has been a wonderful day!

I'm so thankful to every one of you

the people who are the lights on my candles

as I turn the page into Chapter Five!

"When Women Were Birds"

At the Pence/Harris debate on Wednesday night,  Pence reminded me of a plastic Ken doll, an obsequious robot. Kamala, by contrast, was a fireball real woman.

As he droned on and on and tried interrupting Kamala at every turn, he must have quivered inside at how far over his head he was. 

She didn't scream, didn't cry, and didn't call him a single name. She just gave him The Look and said with absolute authority, "I'm speaking.  I'm speaking."

After the debate, the three commentators I was watching (MSNBC's  Joy, Nicole, and Rachel) all noted and applauded Kamala's refusal to back down and be silenced by the man with the fly on his head. Women get it.  We get it viscerally.  We remember times we've been patronized, misinterpreted,  and verbally bullied by a certain kind of man.  

This was rolling around in my mind this morning when Nellie sent me this wonderful page from her sketchbook. 

"Before the cage" women were birds, free-flying, lighting up the sky with the incandescent streaks of their wings. 

When this nightmare is over, women's refusal to be silenced will have played a huge part in saving our Democracy.  The spokes of cages will shatter from sea to shining sea.

Saturday in Virginia

 

This little puppy has found a place to be loved on all the time.  

Marcus and his mama, Marcus and his daddy--and little tiny Tucker--appear to be taking advantage of beautiful fall weather in Northern Virginia. 

Turquoise pumpkins

 

The photo on the top I found in this month's Better Homes and Gardens.

The photo on the bottom is my own.

If you want to make your own marbled pumpkin in any color, you'll need a paper mâché pumpkin--available at Amazon, Jo Ann's, or Hobby Lobby.

You'll need some paper bowls to mix the three ingredients: paint, water, and Dawn.

And you'll need a straw to blow some bubbles before dipping the primed pumpkin into the paint solution.  I painted mine with a coat of white Gesso, but you can use any white paint. 

2 parts soap, 4 parts acrylic craft paint, 4 parts water. 

My sweet friend who lives next door--the one with pigtails

Jan came over for a short porch visit last night and brought the top of the quilt she's making. This low-light photo doesn't do it justice. It's beautiful!

I hope to take another picture in more light--to do it justice!

Happiness is...

"President Trump is not happy about...."

"The Trump Campaign is not happy about...."

I wish I'd had a clicker and could have counted the number of times I've heard this, and I always say, "Do I give a flying frog if Trump is happy?" 

I'd be willing to guess that we never once heard that about Obama--or probably any President in history.  

But this guy--who has never displayed a glimmer of happiness on his rage-frozen face--rules by Daddy's Emotional State.  Who cares if he's happy?  We didn't sign up to be contestants on his show!

We're all dragged down for living for four years in the pathology of the Trump family.  If anything, it's giving me insight into what it must be like to live in a climate of emotional blackmail and lies.  

Happiness is....the Democrats beating him so roundly, so unquestionably, that there's nothing he (and Putin and White Supremacists and his base) can do to stay one minute past his expiration date. 

Thursday: Just go with it

For the first time since the pandemic started, Elena and I had a play date today.  For a few hours, in spite of masks, it was almost like the days before the virus.

I had been complaining about the terrible paint job a handyman did on my porch chairs and table--splotchy and drippy and streaked. He hadn't used a drop cloth so there were big blue patches on the stepping stones. I'd spent the morning using my new sander to try to get down to the wood.

With Elena's inspiration, we turned it around by going with the flow. 

At first, when she wanted to paint a blue heart on a green chair, I said, "Oh that chair's supposed to be all green."

"Well, now you'll have a heart on your bum," she said, proceeding to spray a blue heart on the seat.

Then she wanted to help sand the table her daddy had built for me 25 years ago.

Instead of painting it, we decided we liked the distressed look and left it that way--still way better than a badly painted table.

I went inside to get us drinks and came back to see that she'd decorated the stepping stones in blue and green and stenciling a heart with masking tape. 

                                         Watching Queer Eye while painting pumpkins.

So--today was a beautiful day!  This kid doesn't get uptight about much of anything--and she taught me to give up complaining and let it be. 

My sanded chairs and table, my green chair with a heart for my bum, and colorful stepping stones--these will always remind me of one of the best days of being with my spunky girl. 

 

Sanity

Everybody is insane, irrational, out-of-control, and totally annoying! 

(Everybody but you and me, we're fine.)

On Saturday I spilled a full canister of flour all over my kitchen floor.  My response may have veered right to the edge of insanity but I caught myself before crossing the line.  

I screamed at the flour, at the floor, and my friggin' ineptitude while employing the other F-word fourteen times at top volume to give the event the gravity it deserved. 

When I discovered that the last user of my vacuum cleaner had rendered the cord no longer retractable and had stored it without informing me of its malfunction, I quickly consulted The Southern Woman's Dictionary of Profane and Obscene Words Only To Be Used When Alone and combined them into compound and inventive multi-syllabic words, an impressive five-minutes' worth.  

(Of course, I didn't actually have time to take this little book off the shelf to consult it; I have it memorized for occasions such as these.) 

I ceased when it occurred to me that Jan and her family might be able to hear, and took it to the safe space of my insentient car.  (One sign of sanity is that you still care a little bit what others think of you--or so says the Owner's Manual of Sane People's Brains.)

In ordinary times, I'm not as much a cryer as some of my friends who are admirably able to produce copious tears.  I see that as a deficit in my emotional range, BTW, but have learned to live with it. 

In these extraordinary times, I cry (and scream)  over literal spilt milk--not to mention moments when the world or one of its inhabitants (most frequently a Trump or Trump-clone type) annoys the hell out of me. Or if someone hurts my feelings, gives me advice of any kind, disagrees with me, or displays his or her own insanity. What keeps me sane is that these crying jags do eventually end and then I feel better. 

I have been known (to myself only since no one else is ever here) to scream invectives at the TV whenever I see the tax-evading, lying president taking advantage of bad old science when it serves him well and willingly boarding the military helicopters at his disposal (without irony) a week after calling those who serve in the military losers and suckers. 

Yesterday I got an email from a designer dog breeder (whose pups cost $6500 plus $500 nanny delivery service) to inform me that she had a litter ready to adopt.  I hate to even concern myself with business while I am praying fervently for "our President and our First Lady...."

I won't tell you what I wrote in response because you'd no longer consider me a nice person and would be justified in calling me a bitch.  

(The Southern Woman's Dictionary of Profane Etc. does include a footnote on page 42 that such words are permissible during pandemics and other national, political, and personal emergencies.) 

2 Things I Learned Today

          1. 

I mailed my ballot on Friday, though I'd thought I might vote in person.  Freda informed me that you "Track your Ballot" by going to the Bexar County site.  Which I did--and the ballot has safely arrived. 

          2.

I've never been very good at spray painting, so I hired Pedro to paint a couple of old chairs for me.  Turned out I could have done a marginally better job myself.  (AND I'd have put down a drop cloth so that the ground wouldn't have a big blue patch on it.) 

So I went to my favorite hardware store on McCullough, and my new pal, the graffiti artist, told me what to do:

Go to Jerry's Art O-Rama and buy yourself the kind of spray paint graffiti artists use and a nozzle called Big Shot.  He demonstrated how to do it a portion of the chair at a time, easy peasy, and to dry each portion a minute with a hair dryer before proceeding to the next part.  With these paints and the wide nozzle, and because they have more pressure than standard spray paints, you don't need to warm the bottom of the can in the hot water before spraying--which, actually, I didn't know you were supposed to do.

On the day before you paint, leave the chairs out in the hot sun all day so that the not-so-good paint can cure before applying the new paint. 

I've been to Jerry's countless times but never even noticed the section with spray paints used by graffiti artists and muralists.  I will go there tomorrow and buy myself a couple of cans.  (Two cans of this paint equals 6 cans of Krylon.) 

      

Two Giants and a Peanut

 

Sunday

My weekend retreat is going so well.  I'm sleeping in the casita on the Murphy bed, was awake and working on my project from 2 to 4.  

I'm decoupaging my gel print circles on a cabinet where I store art supplies.  At first, I didn't think I was going to like it and thought I'd paint over that side of the cabinet, but instead I just kept going and I like it a lot.  Two more sides to go--which will be my Sunday project. 

The weather is perfect for whatever we want to do this morning.  I should walk.  I'm going to glue instead.

Hope you're all doing whatever makes you happy today!

Alnernate puppy choice--from Nellie

 https://homefashtly.net/products/lu

Day's Traveling Companion

 

October 2

 

We don't have these yet--but we have an amazing moon!

October is here

I would like to tell you....

That while some among us are gaining weight and watching too many movies, I'm out in the fresh air walking and occasionally running, three or four miles a day, before coming home and making fresh organic salads for lunch.  That I'm calm and centered and conflict free, balanced and beautiful, and doing Buddhist meditation each morning (before my walk, of course.) That I feel energetic and productive every single day.  

But I've never been very good at fiction writing.