dual personalities

I’m working from home in the afternoon for the rest of the week because October is going to be a busy, busy month. And let me tell you, I’m sitting here in my quiet sunroom and it is delightful. I also took a walk and reacquainted myself with my old friend, the river.

It is rather low these days. Don’t worry, I am planning an outdoor press conference on Monday so I’m sure Mid-MO will get some rain. Your plants can thank me.

All of the sudden it is Fall. The air is cool. And the light has changed. I have forgotten what it is like to need a jacket. I’m not complaining. Even if what used to be an oversized-sweatshirt is now appropriately sized.

This week I finished my little witch Halloween decoration. I’m not super into Halloween but for some reason I just liked this little witch. I stitched her almost entirely while participating in endless conference calls. The back is an orange gingham. I might add some cording around the edge–TBD.

As my mother mentioned, we continued working on the basement and foolishly went to an estate sale and bought more books. It seems that each Sunday when I return to my apartment, I have many, many trips from the car to make as I haul in my finds. If I were to ever write a memoir the title would either be:

I Need A Plate Stand

or

Where Can I Fit Another Bookshelf?

It’s a real problem. But somehow I struggle on.

*from a story Marty Stuart tells in this video.

“He eats lions for breakfast, and leopards for lunch, and gobbles them down with one terrible crunch. He could mix a whole city all up in a mess, he could drink up a sea or an ocean, I guess.”*

Well, it’s Terrible Tim’s birthday today and the mischievous lad is turning 25! Obviously, he’s long over nursery rhymes, so pardon my sentimentality, but it is a little mind-blowing that my youngest has achieved this milestone already — time’s winged feet and all that. I am happy to say that he has not lost the twinkle in his eye or his sense — like Scaramouche — that the world is mad. Here’s hoping that this year brings him all manner of happy adventures and blessings!

The rhyme quoted above seemed fitting not only for the name mentioned, but because it reminded me of tongue twisters and they reminded me that the DH and I spent last evening lost down the rabbit hole of odd pronunciations. The way humans torture words into sounding completely different from their spellings is mystifying to say the least. Consider, for example, the name Featherstonhaugh. Who, I ask you, would ever imagine that it is pronounced Fanshaw? Or what about the perfectly straightforward seeming Menzies? In Scotland the name is often pronounced Mingis (rhymes with sing)! Similarly, Talliofaroe becomes Tollifer, Wildboarclough becomes Wilbercluff and Dalziel is pronounced Dee-el. It’s almost as if the denizens of different countries do this on purpose to trick unsuspecting foreigners into making fools of themselves. Pronunciation is like a verbal secret handshake. Are you a member of the club or an ignorant plebe?

Everyone must grapple with this particular kind of diversity at some time or another. It can certainly be baffling and frustrating. My advice? Get interested and before you travel abroad (or, indeed, into parts of this country where people speak with a different accent) take the time to find out about how the locals pronounce their names.

Have a glorious weekend and if you can’t go out and have fun, stay home and learn something new!

*Mother Goose Rhyme

Baby Katie is 16 weeks old!

We celebrated by dressing her up in one of the dresses her great-grandmother made and comparing babe and mom (wearing the dress way back when). I am not fishing for “She looks just like you!” comments, but it is definitely sweet to see her in the same dress and maybe a hint of the same smile 🙂

I didn’t have any Zoom calls yesterday, so I took the time for a full-on photoshoot, complete with a fuzzy blanket covering a boppy for a makeshift set.

I need to work on better clearing the background of photos and avoiding the backlight from the balcony, but I do what I can. You can’t really go wrong with a baby that cute, right?

In other news, the temps have gotten chillier, which means we’ve busted out some baby sweaters. Here’s a hand-me-down getup with bunny ears:

Katie loves to pull hoods and hats down over her face. It’s very dramatic when the sun shines on her face and she seems to take the initiative to shade herself. “My perfect porcelain skin!”

Perfect, indeed!

And here we are on Tuesday evening again. It really feels more like a Wednesday. I’ve been in a funk since yesterday when I realized I had to tear out all of the lettering I’d done on my most new cross-stitch project because I’d foolishly started in the wrong spot. Blergh. But! I did pick up my wine club wines this afternoon, so there’s a nice red blend in my future.

I moved my sewing table/work from home desk back to the craft room from the sunroom this weekend. I’ll miss spying on observing my neighbors. But the feng shui is really back to normal. With the set up back in its usual place, I whipped these up, per request, for Daughter #2 and sweet Katiebelle.

Also, in breaking news I forgot to mention last week, I got my sampler back from the frame shop. And boy does it look good. I am so pleased.

I drove down to Osage Beach this weekend to hit up the outlets. It feels like stealing to shop at JCrew these days and I didn’t really see anything that great. It was a pretty drive, though.

So things continue on.

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep them from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

–Ernest Hemingway, “A Moveable Feast

I just love to page through old books and see what I’ve underlined before. Usually it’s stuff that seemed really deep when you were in college and in your early 20s but now seems not deep at all. Anyway, I actually liked this quote from Hemingway–even if it is about Spring and we are entering Fall.

*I wish. (Bart Simpson, “Bart of Darkness”)

It’s almost the end of September, the nights are chilly and we’ve had our first frost warning. My week was chock full of small, wearying failures: I discovered that the hot water heater had died when I went to take a pre-work shower at 6 am; I had computer problems in every class and didn’t handle it well; I spilled coffee on myself first thing in morning and had to wear the stain throughout the day, and I endured the usual round of irritating zoom meetings. In other words, it was the kind of week that left me looking a lot like Peter the Great’s sister, Sophia, after they stuck her in a convent.

Nevertheless, the good far outweighed the bad. After my second tech-failed class in a row, a student tried to make me feel better by asking me what had given me joy that day. It took me a while to come up with an answer, and when I did it was pretty lame — the quiet drive to work — but I got her point and appreciated the reminder that we need to concentrate on the things that really matter.

Looking back on the week now, I realize that I have much to be grateful for. The DH and I managed to remove the heavy, old desk from Tim’s room and get it out to the curb without mishap. Someone came and took it within minutes — now that’s a win! I also moved several boxes of stuff to the storage unit and dragged my parents’ desk into place all by myself (no pictures yet, but I’m getting there). We’ve got a new hot water heater, which is infinitely quieter than the old one, and we will be getting a new furnace next week sometime. We’ll have hot water and heat! I need to remember that work is just work; it need not define my mood. As Lucy Maude Montgomery wrote in Ann of Green Gables,

“It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”

The quest to find joy in quotidian activities has been an ongoing theme in this blog, and I for one appreciate the daily reminders that things aren’t as bad as they may seem!

*George Carlin