NOW THAT I'M OFF THE NAUGHTY STEP...

I make it a habit to go back a day or two to review my posts. Sometimes I crack my own self right up, but other times I am so ashamed at my ridiculous bitching that I have to go sit on the naughty step to think about things for awhile.

Thus the predicament that I find myself in today. I am feeling very sheepish that in light of all of the truly serious stuff in the world that's wrong and sad and broken, I'm bitching about house painters and colonoscopies.

I owe a very big fat apology to the lovely young gentlemen who painted my house, because the results are spectacular. The leader of the crew showed up early Saturday morning to paint my front door, and after talking with him I realized that he really wasn't so bad after all. (This crew was from one of the high schools here in the area, and their boss/mentor is the drama teacher. Most of these guys were recent graduates who will go on to study the arts in college, so instead of the miscreants that I thought I was dealing with, they were the cast of Glee.)

It also turns out that there is a right way and a wrong way to paint a door. (Yup. It had been painted the wrong way.) So now I have a beautifully painted Black Forest Green front door and a lovely sagey green on the cedar. Looks like a brand new house.

(That'll teach me to judge a book by it's iPod-wearing Red Bull-swilling cover.)

My "procedure" went well. The only complaint I have with Dr. Mark is that he tells you something funny or interesting at the exact moment he's injecting the knock-out drugs, so you end up with the fact stuck in your head for the better part of a week or so. (Kind of like when a hypnotist can get you to squawk like a chicken whenever you hear the word "broccoli".) One time I wandered around for a week thinking about Iceland because he told me he was going to quit his practice and move to Iceland (he didn't, thank goodness, but I couldn't stop thinking about Iceland). This time, he made the mistake of telling me that he and his wife got to meet Chef Robert Irvine down at the South Beach Food and Wine Festival. (Like y'all, Dr. Mark knows my feelings on THAT particular subject.) So I've been thinking about my beloved and walking into walls all weekend long.

(But that didn't stop me from having a Jeffrey Dean Morgan movie marathon into the week hours of the morning while reassuring Stewey that I don't need a therapist to help me get rid of my crazypants obsession with the guy.)

(Hey. A spinster's gotta do what a spinster's gotta do.)

On the stitchy front, I finished Shepherd's Bush Beekeeper's Cottage:

And worked a bit on Needle Delights Originals Aquamarine:

And tonight I will start this lovely piece:

Stewey sends his love. He's started suffering with his seasonal allergies, so most of the morning has been spent in the office chair trying not to gnaw his little feet:


My heart goes out to the folks that were at that concert in Indy. Every time I see the footage of that stage coming down and the crowd then rushing forward to try to help the victims, I get overwhelmed by the thought of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. One of the people in the grandstand was interviewed, and he said that as the crowd started running, he thought that there must be a tornado coming, but he then realized that they were all running TO the stage to help, not FROM the stage to save themselves.

I can't imagine what that must have felt like.