Going To the Dogs

This morning I spent 15 minutes walking around the yard and under the trees, before my back started complaining. I'll try to increase the exercise time every day, in preparation for walking my dog, if I ever succeed in getting her from the Pet Finder agency.

I sent in the adoption application a week ago today, but haven't heard anything from it. J.J. is an 8-year-old beagle/corgi mix, being fostered somewhere in Bibb County, best I could gather from the Pet Finder. I was looking for a larger dog but just couldn't resist these photos of her.


I almost fell for the dog shown below, but a one-year-old dog with his tongue hanging out is bound to be hyperactive and sort of wild. They're calling him "Uncle John." If he were mine, I would call him "Spats."

Too Much Is Enough?

I've read a little more than half of A Prayer for Owen Meany. The spectre of 300 more pages is daunting to me. Maybe I'll save it for another burst of reading energy. Owen was captivating as a child, but the older he gets, the more predictable.

Something has messed up my "Pictures" album. I have to go halfway around the world to get to the actual pictures, and then they're just words until I retrieve them. Or something.

I'm just tired. I had such a terrible dream night-before-last that I haven't slept much since about four o'clock yesterday morning. And spending that time reading "Owen Meany" hasn't helped the weirdness much.

On Becoming One's Mother

I used to feel (but not express) a little annoyance at my mother for walking so slowly in her 80's. Hah! I hope she was up there watching yesterday when I went to Walmart for prescriptions that were delayed for medical approval.

I shuffled around, found an uncrowded aisle and stopped, slumped over my shopping cart, and tried to breathe and wipe my hair out of my eyes. I heard someone laughing behind me, turned, and saw a woman about my age slumped against a counter, looking at me and cackling with laughter.

"This must be the rest stop," she said. "Do you think we can make it any farther?"

I laughed too, and said, "Why, I can walk several steps at a time before I have to stop."

After we exchanged a few quips and further laughter, I said, "But really, do you need any help?"

At that, she laughed harder, and said, "What would you do if I said yes?"

"Well, maybe I could call somebody."

She said, "Do you need any help?"

"Naw," I said, "I'm cool," and continued on my snail-paced way.

Rough Weekend

Man, I've had one! From the middle of Friday night until sometime this morning, I was thinking maybe it was time to buy the farm. Severe abdominal pain, bad enough to make me moan and groan while stifling screams. I called the doctor's office yesterday, but both Onae and Dr. G. were off this week on vacation. The covering doctor said go to a treatment clinic over on the Southside for "further evaluation," but I decided to wait one more day.

So this afternoon I found I had enough energy to take a shower and wash my straggly hair.

Yesterday, Pat picked up my prescriptions for me from Walmart, and brought some cottage cheese and canned pears, plus a big bottle of Sprite and a bag of spearmint Lifesavers, which is what I've eaten ever since plus a can of chicken noodle soup. I think the mints did the most to settle my stomach. Seems like I might have had a touch of food poisoning--I blame some chicken legs of which I had made a sort of barbecue mess. I turned nauseated while trying to eat it Friday, and later poured the whole megilla down the disposer, except for the bones.

I just watched a good blood-and-guts movie starring John Travolta. 1999, I think it was made. "The General's Daughter."

Missed the book club meeting this morning, because I wasn't sure the nightmare was over. I still have a little pain, but not enough to make me holler.

Great Movie

I just watched "Legends of the Fall" (1994) again. If I had to name 100 best movies, this would be in the top ten.

Yum!

*

At poetry meeting, my poem was over-praised, as usual. Maybe it's because I'm the antique relic and they feel sorry for me. Or maybe my poems are pretty good, after all. Either way, it makes me feel strange.

Still Here

After sleeping 12 hours without twitching, I spent half the day trying to wake up. Then I decided if I took a shower, maybe I would come alive. So after the shower, I went to the grocery, and now I think I'll go to the poetry meet after all.
Gonna take my Conrad Aiken poem, based on his "Beloved, let us once more praise the rain," one of the finest poems in any language that I know. Which includes English, a dead language.

Jesus, Lover of My Soul

Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Savior, hide,
Till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide;
Oh, receive my soul at last. . . .


Charles Wesley

Inspiration

This is a page from an old quilt magazine. It's where I got the idea for the little basket quilt. I think I still lived in the Southside apartment when I started my quilt scrapbook. I've made a few quilts based on saved pictures and patterns.

Book Club Tuesday

All seven members of the book club met at Ramey's yesterday. We enjoyed a delicious lunch, and then discussed E.M. Forster's book A Room With a View, and the delightful 1985 movie based on the book.


This morning I put the makings of chicken and dumplings in the crock pot, and will add a little can of LeSeur peas. So for dinner this evening I'll have a good meal, including a fruit salad. I'm counting every calorie, so I'll have leftovers to go into the freezer.

New Quilt, I hope

These blocks are four-and-a-half inches square, plus quarter-inch seam allowances. If I make a miniature quilt, maybe I can finish it this year. But a full-size one will take much longer.


I cut out all the pieces for a full-size quilt, several years ago, and sewed together the light-colored block. Each square in the box holds pieces for 3-4 blocks.

I want a brown-and-white quilt for my bedroom, and I hope this will be the one.

***

Over the past week, I've watched all 6 re-run episodes of "The Night Manager," plus the Saturday night replays of the first 3 episodes of "Poldark."

Stars and Strikes

Jed came down Sunday. We really didn't have any great plans; ate at Cracker Barrel Sunday evening. I celebrated(?) the Fourth of July with a terribly messed up digestive system, so we didn't do much then, either, except watching some movies and old TV series. Jed celebrated by fixing everything around the house from the closet door in the "reading room" to trying to plumb the kitchen faucet. He went back to Atlanta today.

*

One of my favorite hymns sings in my mind:

My Faith Looks Up to Thee

Ray Palmer (1808–1887)

My faith looks up to thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary,   Saviour divine! Now hear me while I pray, Take all my guilt away,         5 O let me from this day   Be wholly thine!   May thy rich grace impart Strength to my fainting heart   My zeal inspire!         10 As thou hast died for me, O may my love to thee Pure, warm, and changeless be,—   A living fire!   While life’s dark maze I tread,         15 And griefs around me spread,   Be thou my guide; Bid darkness turn to day, Wipe sorrow’s tears away, Nor let me ever stray         20   From thee aside.   When ends life’s transient dream, When death’s cold, sullen stream   Shall o’er me roll, Blest Saviour, then, in love,         25 Fear and distrust remove! O bear me safe above,—   A ransomed soul!

Found it in the yard

Birds are talented.

New Crock Pot

My new slow cooker arrived yesterday. What it was: I had put chicken and veggies in the old one and left it for ten hours. I accidentally had set it on high instead of low. During the ten hours I took a nap and fooled around, and all the liquids in the pot boiled away and all the solids stuck to the pot and got very brown. After scraping them out and scrubbing the pot, I found a hairline crack down one side and across the bottom.


Of course, I resorted to Google to tell me what to do next, and the consensus was to plant a flower or something in the pot, and buy a new one. Although you could buy any other part separately, you couldn't buy just the ceramic insert, and the possibilities of using the cracked one ranged all the way from a kitchen explosion, to using it for a few days until the new one arrived. So I ordered a new one, identical to the old. It cost less than $30, with free shipping, so now I can slow-cook again. Carefully.

All my dish towels are so old, most of the embroidery is gone, leaving the holes and shreds where it used to be. So I also ordered a new set of dish towels. When they arrive, I'll be set for another 10 or 15 years of problematic cooking and drying dishes, for less than $40.


***
An Interesting Dream

One night I dreamed there was a black velvet box on the night stand, and in it was a beautiful black spider with a pearl on its back. I thought it was a piece of black enameled jewelry, and I reached out to touch it, but then it spread out its legs and crawled out of the box.

"Why, then, the world's mine oyster!"

TCM went Shakespeare-wild last night on TV. They showed Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and the 1935 A Midsummer Night's Dream. I watched a little bit of Macbeth, but don't really enjoy looking at Orson Wells. I watched all of Hamlet.

I take back most of the negative things I ever thought about Laurence Olivier. His Hamlet is one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life. I had never seen this one before. L.O. didn't go into his usual histrionics until late in the film. Shortly into Romeo and Juliet, I went to sleep in my chair, so I got up and went to bed.

Note: The characters Francisco and Horatio, and old Polonius, reminded me of Edward de Vere's two cousins Francis and Horace de Vere, and Lord Burghley of whom Polonius in the play is a word-for-word-for-word copy.

This Time, Mama Means It!

I often say that I'm going to ignore Facebook and spend my time practicing. But this time, I'm really leaving Facebook. My reasons:

10. Not enough pictures of puppies and kittens.

9. Bad grammar, such as people saying "convince" when they mean "persuade."

8. Politics (not enough pictures of honest politicians).

7. Ubiquitous atmosphere of ambiguity.

6. The prevailing assumption that if you're for something, you must hate its opposite.

5. Too frequent mention of words that begin with the capital letters D, T, O, and F. I cringe every time I see one of these.

4. Recipes for delicious fattening foods.

3. Reminders of stupid things that I posted three years ago.

2. Dreaming of my mother waking me up in the morning to do chores that I've ignored too long.

1. My number one objection to Facebook is that it begins with the letter F.

Fish Tales

Occasionally, my friend Miriam and I used to say one to the other one, "Wanna go eat grease?" And we would go to one of my favorite fast-seafood places for lunch. I wish I had some of that good old greasy stuff now. But in recent years, I don't eat much seafood, owing to the oil spills, nuclear meltdown scares, and plastic/garbage pollution. Just when Jed and I go to a nice restaurant, I may order the fish fry or a grilled tilapia, but mostly I don't. I really miss Miriam, and her girls, and Billy Sam.


Speaking of fish, the short story I'm mainly working on is about an adventure at "the" beach. I've got three or four pages done, and re-done over and over, and I like it pretty well. I'm also working on some of my unpublished poems to send to the American Journal of Poetry. They publish a lot of poems by famous poets and by amateurs. I guess I can't call myself an amateur, since I've earned a pittance of money from writing. And I can't call myself a "famous poet." So what am I, chopped liver?

"Pie, me oh my! I love pie!" *

I've been eating pie, 3 Musketeers bars, cheese and crackers, and a dollop of Daisy on anything suitable. So I weigh 120, and in photos I look fat and matronly. I guess I need to lose 10 pounds. It doesn't matter to anyone but me, and I won't deprive myself entirely of what I crave, but only once a week will I eat any sweets other than fresh fruit.


I've made a little bit of progress on the short stories--three of them at once. One is a ghost story, one a romance, and the third a fairy-tale fantasy called "B.Y.O.B.," as in bring your own bottle.


I find that I can't sew the prairie points directly to the edges of the leaf quilt. When I asked if it could sew through 7 layers of fabric and a layer of batting, my machine laughed until it had tears in its eyes, but said nothing at all.


*Dorothy's song, in the "Michael" movie

"All That Will Remain of Us Is What Was Written Down." *

As of this month, my blog is nine years old. I need to concentrate on my writing, and aim to do so from now on.

*Tiro, the secretary of M. Tullius Cicero, in Robert Harris's book Dictator

Major Crying Jag This Morning

It only happens once every year or so, but when it does, the dam breaks and it's hard to see how anyone can be cheerful. I try to joke about things, especially the damn-it-all agitations. But mass shootings, and a few other things, sometimes pile up and have to be dealt with. And what can you do but cry? You can stand up for what you believe.

As for sympathizing with the Muslim terrorists, Jesus said love your neighbor, he didn't say love those who kill your brothers and sisters. He said to love your enemies, not the enemies of God. He told the disciples that if people didn't accept their gospel, to shake the dust off their heels and get out of town. I can't sympathize with the Muslims. By their own "Kuran," they have pledged themselves to destroy human lives. By doing so, they have ruined at least as many lives as they have destroyed.

Muslims don't worship the same God we worship. They worship an invention of a man named Muhammad, and have twisted the Hebrew scripture to suit their own vicious ideas.

I love the whole human race in the abstract, and I cry for the whole world. But I will not try to justify violence and a whole people's commitment to a code of violence. Just because evil has been done in the past, even by "us," doesn't justify what they're doing now.