dual personalities

My dear DP came through her surgery with flying colors but is taking a few days off to recover, so here I am posting on a Friday!

We’ve had a busy week full of surprise visits from workmen. First, the carpet guys called out of the blue to schedule the installation. They called back a couple of hours later to ask whether they could come right away. As a general rule, it’s best to say ‘yes’ no matter how unprepared you are. They were friendly, swift and extremely competent (although they didn’t wear masks. Hush, don’t tell). And now we have one bedroom with freshly painted walls and new carpet.

Once the pictures are up and I figure out a lamp for the bed, it will look nice, don’t you think? A new bed and coverlet would help as well (does the navy clash?).

It doesn’t look like we had to move much back in, but this is what the other bedroom looked like while this one was empty.

The DH and I had quite a job moving everything around corners and through the narrow hallway. I’m still sorting out boxes but we’re making progress.

Yesterday, right on schedule the porch painter and his helper showed up and got to work. It’s a tiny porch so it didn’t take them long. The paint color is a wildly bright blue — brighter than intended — but at least the porch looks better.

While painting and carpeting were going on, yours truly got her trusty sewing machine down from the attic to make the kitchen valance. I haven’t sewn anything since Halloween costume-making days (probably 20 years ago) and even then I wasn’t very good at it. However, I persevered and voila!

Let’s look at a close-up:

I have enough material left over to make a couple of oven mitts, but first I have to venture to the fabric store to buy the quilt batting for insulation. I figure I can sew anything that (1) isn’t very complicated and doesn’t require perfectly straight lines and (2) no one will see up-close or care about. I take inspiration from Marge…

That was my productive week in home improvement. Now if I could get some job work done I’d be in great shape!

By the way, if you’re in the mood for low-key, feel good flicks, I have two to recommend: The Mountain Minor (2019), a story about a family’s tradition of playing Appalachian music (the boy is quite the fiddle player),

and American Folk (2017), a road movie in which, according to IMDB’s description, “Two strangers, both folk musicians stranded in California, take a road trip to New York in the days after 9/11. A story about the kindness of strangers and the power of music.”

Both are available on Amazon Prime and are timely reminders of American values. I suspect the people who made these movies wanted to counteract the negativity so prevalent today. Are we really prepared to abandon our roots? That’s worth pondering…

One final thing before I go… Happy Birthday to the OM, my brother-in-law! I hope you have a pleasant, relatively uneventful day! These days, that’s about as much as we can hope for. Let’s hope the next year turns calmer!

*Lyric from “Arise! Arise!” a song in English Folk Songs in the Appalachian Mountains by Cecil J. Sharp