WHO'S HAPPIER THAN ME?

There is a cool breeze coming in the balcony door, I can hear the wind chimes downstairs doing their thing, and I'm getting ready to do a little reading before getting a few chores done for the day.

Oh...what joy...what bliss!

I hope you finds your joy and bliss today, Dearies! What's in YOUR purse? 🤭

(When I started this whole deep reading/self-learning thing and started moving my stuff from place to place in a little felt diaper caddy that I fished out of the cube room studio, my JB took one look at me and said "What's with the purse, Con?")

(Speaking of...my JB arrives home on the train tomorrow morning! If you would have told me that I would have been completely adrift for three months without him, I would have told you that you were crazy. I am, after all, an experienced Spinster of the Poppins order, and very well accustomed to solitary pursuits, but...(looking around to make sure nobody hears this confession)...I missed his company! 🥹)

Now...on with the day! I hope your very own Tuesday is just perfection for you. What's on the menu?

BELLY BEAN'S FAVORITE BREAKFAST (AND SOMETIMES LUNCH AND DINNER)

 

Another great set of kidney labs came in, and I am attributing this to my breakfast/lunch/meal one selection...cottage cheese with melon and berries.

Today has been absolutely positively wonderful, Dearies! Sometime last night the switch flipped and the weather went from hot, miserable, and humid to cool and sunny with a lovely breeze coming in the open windows.

I. Am. So. Happy.

So now I'm going to have a nice shower and enjoy some stitching, coloring, and diamond painting tonight!

How was your Sunday? Come tell me all about it!

FINALLY! IT'S FINISHED!

I don't know why this seemed to take for-ev-ahhhhh, but it's finally done! Now I can play with something new with a clear conscience!

(This was the June project from Cotton & Twine's subscription box.)

SUMMER SCHOOL

 

Since I have been left unsupervised all Summer,  I've been trying to occupy my time wisely, and not fritter it away on Housewives or doomscrolling.

(Mission accomplished-ish.)

I am still really enjoying long reading sessions in the morning, and have almost made my way through the introduction of King Lear after reading the actual play twice. As for Villette...she is my before-bed reading, and I am taking her slowly and loving every page.

For the life of me, I just can't seem to regain the stitching speed and stamina I had in my younger days. I can get about a half hour completed before something hurts or distracts or goes awry and I have to do something else for a bit.

(Phooey.)

Rich returns one week from today, so I had better get out of lazy daisy Spinster mode and move into lazy daisy Too Old To Be A Girlfriend mode. Not much difference between the two other than what causes me to holler at the TeeVee.

I hope your very own Summer has been...whatever you wanted it to be. Are you like me in that Fall starts on September 1st?

 

MAKING PROGRESS...SLOWLY

 

This has been a...slow...summer. Rich has been in New Jersey helping his mom, and I have been here trying not to burn the house down.

(Just kidding. I am really quite capable of adulting. It just seems like I am much better at it when under the supervision of trained professionals.)

But I have been trying to behave myself on all fronts, and despite a few mishaps and continued 'ugh' days I'm still here with stitching and damn good and wonderful reading and the Mad Mens to keep me company.

I thought I might tuck the stitchy project away until next year, but I feel like I'm this far in it, I might as well finish, no? But I am starting to get a BIG hankering for Fall stitching, and my tiny little brain has been all pittypat since seeing some of the new things on the internets. I'm also wanting to get back to some Fall WiPs to see if I can add to my Fuppy box. (*)

As for the reading...King Lear and I are becoming old friends. I read it through once straightaway without the benefit of footnotes or an introduction, then a second time with footnotes, and now I'm reading the introduction before a final read through before seeing it performed on stage.

(Goodness! You'd think I actually had a plan! This is all just a happy accident...I assure you. Lear is being performed over at Notre Dame as part of their Shakespeare Festival, so that's the reason for the deep dive.)

I'm obsessed with two lovely YouTubers. The first is Helen from The Coffee Monsterz Co. Helen is the owner of the business selling stationery items for planning. I love her little emotis and am fascinated by how she manages to journal, plan, and run her life with such whimsy. She might also be the hardest working person on the planet, since I think she consistently logs 12, 14, and 16 hour days running TCMC.

The other person I'm following/stalking like a crazy person is Ruby Granger. She is a lovely young woman who vlogs all about her life as a student/lover of literature and academia. Ruby went to Exeter and then got her Masters degree at Oxford, so now I'm completely obsessed with the fantasy of going there. I've got my college all picked out, have decorated my room, selected my course of study, and already know what will be in my lovely plaid satchel when I head to the Bodleian for an afternoon of study.

Aaaahhhh...if only.

So that's the entire sum of my little goat rodeo at the moment, Dearies. Stitching, labworks, appointments, and a cardiac CT on the horizon for me, as well as vats of damn good and cold brew and some good books in there to keep me occupied.

What's new with you?

(*) A Fuppy Box is where you stuff/store your finished/unfinished projects...meaning you've finished the stitching portion of the program, but you haven't yet finished the thing into the final thing it's supposed to be...like an ornament or framed piece, etc.

(I cannot take credit for this term. It was shamelessly lifted from a fellow stitcher's blog many many years ago. If you are the originator, please come forward so I apologize to you as well as give you proper credit.) 

IT DOES. INDEED.

 

WEEKEND SPINSTER BLISS

 

WOOOOHOOOO!

(Graphic from Tina Rubin)
 

 

IN WHICH A SPINSTER, KING LEAR, DONALD DRAPER, KATHY REESE, AND W SOMERSET MAUGHAM WALK INTO A BAR...

Yup.

Dropped the basket completely. 

Right there in front of God and everybody on a beastly summer morning.

(At least that's how my novel starts in my head anyways.)

Hello, Dearies.  I'm coming to you from the friendly confines of CS2, and not, it would seem, from the psychiatric ward of a very special mental health facility in some place far far away. I am well, just discombobulated by back pain and several months of solitude and spinstering while my Jersey Boy administers tender loving care to his mom.

I've kind of fallen into a monastic routine...I've been writing morning pages and reading/studying non-fiction in the mornings, eating my cottage cheese/fruit plate for a very late breakfast/lunch, doing a small core or two, and then spending the rest if the day with eyeballs glued to the Mad Men. In between there is a salad with either grilled chicken or salmon, vats and vats of iced water with lemon, and enough damn good/cold brew to open a Starbucks drive-through. At midnight-ish (OK, 3am), I finally turn out the lights and hit a few pages of a novel before falling into a weird sleep.

(Yes, Betty, my sleep/wake schedule is screwed up, and I know that my stitching and diamond painting production has dropped to zero, but if you know me, you know that the deep summer months have always been somewhat problematic for me.)

Speaking of problematic...

See what I did there?

I was taught that the selvedge side (in the photo, the bottom with the orange stripe), should always be to the right or left when stitching on canvas. Something about the warp and weft of the fibers? Well, I have had nothing but trouble with this since starting it, and in the midst of frogging the middle portion, I realized that I was probably having trouble because I have been trying to stitch against the grain, as it were.

So I think this is going to come off of the stretcher bars, a new piece is going to get fished out of the cube room studio, and I will try try again later this afternoon.

As for me, Don Draper and King Lear...let's just say that I finished a binge of all 94 episodes of one and re-started it from the beginning again yesterday afternoon, and finally read a Cliff Notes summary of the other to get some characters straight in my tiny little brain that really shouldn't be reading The Bard without adult supervision.

Somerset, however, delighted me completely, and when I couldn't sleep at 2:22 this morning (*) I turned the final page and had a good long weepy cry all over the front of my Costco pajamas. I didn't expect to love this book so much, but it hit me...deep. I guess now I need to go watch the film version with Bette Davis to truly get knocked out.

That's the full report from here in Hoosierville on what I think is another hot and steamy Tuesday. I have no idea what the weather is actually doing out there, since moving about or attempting to climb down or up a staircase is more than I think these back muscles will allow.

I hope your August is off to a roaring start! How are you faring during these last few weeks of Summer? Come tell me all about it!

SUNDAY SPINSTER DRAMA BROUGHT TO YOU BY PINTEREST

7:30 AM

9:30 AM

2:45 PM

3:30 PM

5:15 PM

CURRENTLY:

 

FRIDAY

Iced lemon water in the big floral sippy cup and cold brew with sugar free syrup and a little cream in the other. This was breakfast, lunch, and dinner today.

Phooey.

I'm missing Donaldson this year and I. Am. Not. Happy. About. It.

Taking myself to bed at 7:30 like a toddler because I just can't have one more meltdown, Dearies. I hope your weekend is wonderful.
 

WHAT A MESS I HAVE BECOME

 

I gotta tell ya, Dearies...it's just not easy being me sometimes.

My stupid lower back muscles all got together when I was sleeping and decided to REVOLT. I thought I was getting a little better yesterday, but the pain level has ratcheted up from a level seven to a HOLEY SCHMOLEY, and I am one big fat weepy miserable little cow..

I promised myself that if it wasn't substantially better by tomorrow I would call my PCP (that's Primary Care Physician in insurance speak), but methinks I might do that this afternoon instead.

Thank you for all of your tips and suggestions. I am ridiculously limited as to the things I can take/do because of BellyBean, but it does make me feel a bit better knowing that I am not the only human person on the planet who has pulled a muscle before.

Needless to say, there has been no stitching or diamond painting progress to report. Here's where we left things on the Cotton & Twine June project:

And here's what I've been doing all morning/afternoon:

The selection was serendipitous, since I googled "Shakespeare at Notre Dame" and discovered that there is quite a program/department of Shakespeare studies there. I knew that there was something called Actors From The London Stage, and I kind of knew that performances were common on campus, but little did I realize that there is quite an advanced Shakespeare Program at Notre Dame! AND...in August, they have a Shakespeare Festival and this year's performance selection is King Lear! If all goes according to plan, I'll get to see it the last weekend of August!

So that's the report from the friendly confines of CS2 today. I hope that your corner of the world is exactly what you need it to be! 

HOOSIERVILLE ICE PACK 🤭

 

IN WHICH THE HEATING PAD AND THE SPINSTER BECOME BEST FRIENDS

Guess who managed to screw her back up in the shower on Saturday?

I've been having a little problem with passing out when I take a shower (🙄), so on Saturday, I decided to bend over to wash my hair instead of lifting my arms over my head to see if that made a difference. Yeah. It made a difference alright. It pulled the muscle in my lower right back so bad that the pain from it almost made me pass out.

So I guess that's progress....the almost part.

Anywhoooo...the heating pad and I have been having 15 minute play dates for the last few days, and I am actually able to stand up without invoking all of the demons from the seventh circle of hell this morning, so methinks I might survive.

But just barely.

Not much of anything to report, but I did have a little progress on Friday with my various and sundry bits of fun. 

First, I finished a little diamond painting that I got on the amazons a few months ago. This one would have been a simple day-long project had I not been distracted by a binge of the SisterWives:

And I did make a little progress on the Cotton & Twine June project, despite giving Don Draper and the Mad Men all of my attention:

If I can manage it today, I might try to push through a few hours of stitching and documentary watching. Yesterday I watched Tea With The Dames...very very good. Today, I think I might watch a doc on John Irving. Anything educational/interesting lately has kept me happy and out of trouble. Virginia Woolf and I are becoming more and more acquainted, and I am thinking that my next adventure will be a bit of Shakespeare. (😮).

I decided to up my reading game a bit, so my evenings are still spent with a good novel, but I've added a little "deeper" reading in the mornings. Nothing too serious. Just a half hour or so of something that makes my gears move.

Well, time for my second cup of damn good. It's hitting especially well today, so I'm going to enjoy it! What are you up to? Come tell me all about it!

 

 

MONDAY...A LITTLE TEENIE BIT OF PROGRESS

 

I have no earthly idea why the stitching of this is dragging on. Is it the fact that this is 32ct and I have been in a 28ct mode? Is it the recent acquisition of all of these stitches from the skin cancer removal? Is it the heat? Or maybe it's just my normal annual Summer Schlump.

In looking back over previous years' entries, I see a pattern of hitting a bit fat sweaty wall right about this time every year. I had always suspected that it was the fact that my summer inventory of projects was somewhat lacking, but I think it's just...me.

Yes, the heat and humidity (*) are certainly factors, and this year I have the added bonus of an extended length of time without my Jersey Boy to entertain me. (No, Betty, he didn't finally come to his senses and leave my miserable blankety-blank. He's in New Jersey taking care of his mom for a bit because she needed a little extra TLC.)

But I digress.

I'm not complaining. Really, Dearies. I am only too happy to have entire days with nothing to do. But my pace of things has just completely...halted. I am spending a lot of time sleeping in. And reading. And writing. And organizing and re-organizing vegetables from the Costcos in the fridge. 

It's not a bad thing, really. Just different from the days when I felt like I was running around with my hair on fire. The funny thing is that I'm not too sure that anything that was on fire at that time was worth saving. Instead of constantly throwing myself on the flames and slapping bandaids on all of the wounds, I should have just let it all burn and then moved on to peace and quiet.

Whoa. That went dark.

OK. Back to me being slow and quiet. I have two more weeks of healing to do, and then I can return to my old lady exercising in the pool. In the meantime, I think I'm just going to enjoy the slower pace and let it come what may.

What's the pace of things in your corner of the world, Dearies? Come tell me all about it!

(*) I'm a Midwestern girl, born in Ohio and living here in Indiana since 1984, and I heard something on the TeeVee the other night that stopped me in my tracks. At first, I thought it was a joke, or perhaps some internets thing, but then I looked it up. Do you know why it gets so miserably muggy here in the Summer? (Muggy means that when you step outside you are immediately struck by the sensation of being covered with a hot wet blanket and told to just breathe normally).  

So, do you know why the humidity levels approach "steam bath" levels here in late July/early August?

CORN SWEAT

Nope. You didn't read that wrong and I'm not making it up. 

Apparently, there is so much farmland here in Hoosierville and elsewhere in the Midwest, that when the corn grows it literally gives off so much moisture it affects the environment by way of increased humidity levels.

So if you're a portly gal like me and you are mopping boob sweat every time you open your front door to bring the trash can in, or you're sporting your coolest old lady big top to go get stitches out...blame it on the corn sweating its little kernals off out there in the fields.

This concludes your AgDay minute. Back to regular programming tomorrow!

 

I LOVE INDIANAPOLIS