More about Fashion (a topic I know little about).

 While we are on the subject of fashion, I have to tell  you, when I read about this, I thought for sure that it was one of those bogus news stories. Except I googled it. It's not. So...for the record, would you be caught dead in these jeans? If you don't want to read the link, I'll give you the short version: $800 a pair, and they have sold out.

A reporter wore them on the street and got some very interesting comments. One person said something to the effect of "$800? For that price, I'll just pee my own pants!"

This is the weirdest thing I have ever heard of. 

Anyways, not much to report. Another day working on the house. No fresh blood. Good news. 

A thing about smart watches. At least my smart watch. I spent the day walking, carrying things up and down ladders, If my right arm (my watch arm) is not hanging down and swinging, no steps are counted. This is frustrating because if I am pushing a shopping cart it doesn't count. I spent a whole afternoon walking in an antique mall, and it didn't count, because I was carrying my folded sweater over my bent arm. Things like that make me think that my smart watch is not nearly as smart as it thinks it is. 

I need a haircut so stinking bad. 

That is all. 

What a Croc!

A couple of years back, I saw a pair of Crocs at a thrift store. I never had a pair before. I also had no idea that some styles are lined. All new to me, but I thought they'd be a handy thing to have so I bought them and brought them home. They live by the door so that I can slip them off and on quickly. 

Ignore the dirt. It's been rainy here and these are well used. 

I kind of feel as if they will last forever. 

Anyways, Tim and I stopped to drop a table off at the Restore in Youngsville. 

They do a good community service. Everything is on sale for $1. 

We live in a poor area, and I know that this is something that can make a huge difference for a lot of people, so we always take our donations there. 

And because I am me, well...I just had to take a quick look around inside. 

They had a pair of crocs sitting on the shelf

. 

Hideous, aren't they? 

Also handy to have. 

Also comfortable. Can't forget comfortable.

And convenient. 

All those things.

These are not anything I'd wear in public. At least this is the lie I told myself. I just needed a handy pair of slopping around shoes. Which is how, today, after a day of working at the house, on the way home, I  needed to make a quick stop. 

So. 

I did.

 I was half way out of the exit door, I realized that the very first day that I had them, I had broken my vow: there I was, wearing those godawful shoes in public!

What next?!!!!

Accessories?

I spent the day stapling insulation. The happy news is that I did not have to use a

the swing stapler, of which I have developed a healthy fear.

I confessed my incompetence to Tim. 

(I think he already suspected)

He said, "Well, let me get the electric stapler then." 

Me: "Wait!!!! We have an electric stapler?!!!!" 

I just feel like that would have been a handy bit of information to have, 

maybe even before I smashed my finger!

So he fetched it up to me and that is how I spent the day.

Can you handle the excitement?

 

They are upside down, of course, but we got two of these ceiling fan/light fixtures for $50. Well and truly happy with that find. We do find good bargains. We actively look for them. The people were remodeling their house and went with a different style. They sell for between $150-200, so that was a nice score.

I am disappinted in you folks. No one was curious enough to look up the Keoma soundtrack. I do not suffer alone and so I have linked it for you here. it was truly an audio ear assault.

Worked on the house today. 

My. A thrill a minute, aren't I?

Looking Back

 This morning started a bit differently. We had a funeral to go to. Tim knew him as a teenager. I knew him from working with him. He was such a funny guy. Always good humored. Quick to shake off any irritation. I always admire people like that. I used to eat lunch with him and his girlfriend when I worked nights.

His girlfriend was one of those rough people who seemed to have spent her whole life doing battle with some damn body. She was quick to take offense, and to be honest, she said things that I didn't understand at all. Her son had moved away to take a job. There's something I could relate to, having a son on the other side of the state. A daughter in Afghanistan. But what I couldn't relate to was when she said, "Well, I hope he fails. I hope he falls flat on his face and gets his ass back here where he belongs."  That shocked me, that any mother would say such a thing. I mean, I missed my kids terribly, but I raised them to be independent, and I expected that they would make their own lives and do their own thing. I wished them well, and they have done well, which makes me feel as if I wasn't a total failure as a mother. 

But I digress.

There were other things too, and it quickly became obvious that we would never be good friends. By the end of it, I found her pretty selfish. She could also be pretty mean. I wound up working a different shift and that brought that acquaintance to a quiet close. 

Today, at the funeral home, I noticed something. She sat by herself. Only one of her sons attended, and while he sat next to her, he did not touch her. He did not look at her. The dearly departed's first wife and his kids and grands and brothers and nephews and I don't know who all sat all together. 

But the girlfriend sat alone. Her son next to her but not with her, if you can understand what I mean.

Tim and I sat in the back, and just before the service began, her face just crumpled, and she cried quietly. Alone. 

And it was the alone that got me. 

I am not everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes it seems as if I might not be anyone's cup of tea. I just seem to operate differently than most people in this world, and I don't know what it is exactly that makes me so different or why I am what I am.  Last year was kind of scary with Tim's issues and suddenly, I got this feeling that it could just as easily have been me sitting up there all by myself. 

I watched her crying and I couldn't not do it. I went up and sat next to her and held her hand. She cried even harder and said, "Thank you." I whispered back, "I just couldn't stand to see you alone." She said, "This is awful." 

That was it really. 

The family spoke during his eulogy. Told funny stories about him. When someone said something about his favorite food, the reply came back in unison: 'Fried bologna sandwiches'. And his girlfriend wept and whispered, "I've still got his bologna in the refrigerator." 

She did not fit in, either, and that was plain to see, and it appeared that there were some pretty hard feelings about something. I have no idea what, and I didn't much care. That's somebody else's drama. I know the girlfriend is a hard person. 

After the service, I walked back to Tim. He was visiting with some people. We walked out of the funeral home, and surprisingly, Tim did not want to rush back down to go to work. He wanted to go to a restaurant a couple blocks away for lunch, and so we did, and when we finished, Tim said, "I want to take a drive down to Sheffield" and so we did. He drove along saying, "We lived here (pointing) and we walked to school every morning." It was quite a distance and kids these days would be bused. He drove up to where his old high school had been. He was the last class to graduate from the old school. He told me what that old building was like. He drove past his old friends' houses, and reminisced. 

We came home then, and changed into work clothes and we got in the car and headed for the new build. We stopped in at that tent sale where we got the ceramic tile for the bathroom yesterday. They had some small windows that Tim was interested in to put in at each end of the attic for ventilation. No one knew the pricing when we stopped in on Sunday. Tim stopped in today, the guy came out, took a look, and said, "$25 each." We bought all four, and put them in the car. 

I got the insulation done. I cut the 2 x 10s into 36 inch lengths for the 12 stair treads and he got those blasted stairs built. We worked quietly together, each thinking our own thoughts. 

And that was today. 

And then we came home. 

Late Edit: Tim is watching some movie called Keoma that has the most godawful soundtrack I've ever heard in my life. I am not a trained musician, but holy cow, this is BAAAAAADDD. My ears are bleeding. I advise you all to find it and come back here right away to agree with me. 

Sunday Work.

 Such a strange, strange day today, weather-wise, anyhow. We headed out to finish up a few things at the new build. Tim was working on the basement stairs, and project that was going very quickly once he got it figured out in his mind how he wanted it done. I had to finish up the insulation work, something that I'd intended to do Saturday, but things changed. 

Tim needed to stop and get a drill chuck. He got the last one at Ace Hardware, so we headed there on our way out of town. They do not sell them anymore, but they had a tent set up to the side of the building. Tim said, "Crap. They had their yard sale yesterday. I forgot to come over and see what they had." The guy inside told us to go out and take a look. 

They had quite a bit of stuff there. 

We've got the flooring for the livingroom and kitchen and hall. Tim found a great deal on that some time back. I haven't seen it yet, so I'm trusting his judgement. He wants carpeting in the bedrooms, which I'm fine with. The pantry? Quite honestly, if we don't have enough flooring left from the livingroom, kitchen, hallway, I'm not adverse to just putting down a piece of linoleum. That room will have the hoosier cabinet set in place next to the window, (not my picture, shamelessly stolen because I am too lazy to get the camera out and my phone display is dying a slow and painful death)

but the rest of it will be steel shelving on wheels, something that I can pull out and sweep and mop behind, easy cleanup being my gameplan. 

The one room we don't have flooring for is the bathroom. We found 36 sq feet of ceramic tile. $10, baby!!! We were pleased as punch with that discovery. 

So off we went, happy, happy, happy. 

I mentioned that the sky was looking extremely dark ahead of us. Tim agreed. We began to see cars come towards us with their headlights on. "Boy," I said. "It looks like we are about to run into something." 

Did we ever! 

The skies opened up and just like that, we were into rain so heavy that it made us think maybe we should pull over, but there really wasn't anywhere to do that. We were on one of those blacktopped country highways, and we sure didn't want to pull into someone's driveway. I noticed that it looked like it was brighter ahead of us, and then...bam...we were out of the rain. It wasn't that the rain had stopped...they never got any. The road was completely dry. It was the strangest thing! I wish that we had thought to turn around and see what it was doing behind us. 

But...we each got our projects done this afternoon. When we were done, we hauled the tile in and stuck it into a bedroom closet where it would be out of the way and then locked up and headed back. 

Everything is starting to take shape now, and that's pretty exciting. I did not take pictures because I forgot to grab the camera. I'll do that tomorrow. It will be a short day because we have a funeral to go to in the morning. It's a strange thing to lose contemporaries, isn't it? I really find myself seeing life in a different way. 

Sunday Sermon

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/one-evangelical-leader-uses-bible-090025360.html

I found this interesting and understandable. A different kind of evangelical movement. I hope that it takes hold. 

Friday

l’m old enough to remember 

that putting the National Guard 

on college campuses is a bad idea.

Bernie Sanders might be old but he has said what younger men cannot or will not bring themselves to say.  Read the letter here.

I will say it again. Opposing Israel does not make me antisemitic. I am not. It does not make me pro-Hamas. I am not. But Israel is wrong. Netanyahu is throwing around the word 'antisemitic' like a dog whistle. A distraction. "Don't look at me! Look over here! They hate the Jew! Don't look at what my behavior. Look at everyone else's."

He has taken a page from Donald Trump's playbook. 

Each of us has a responsibility to speak and to speak clearly on this subject. I don't imagine one of us has the power to change the world, however we should not stand by in silent witness. 

A member of Yale Jews for Ceasefire speaks from within the protests. 

This morning was an early 'up and at 'em' and at this stage of my life, I am not an 'up and at 'em kind of woman'. 

 

But the good news is that I did something that I have not done in a while...

I took an afternoon nap. 

(Mostly because I was so sleepy, it was impossible NOT to take an afternoon nap.)

When I woke up, William was here. 

Anyways, We went out for supper this evening with William. There was a table across the way where two adults and two teenagers, were avidly discussing, of all things, books. Their favorite books. They all seemed to be quite into fantasy and science fiction. The conversation was quite animated. It just seemed to be so wholesome. 

Mangey came back today when I called. He came into the house when I patted my leg in a welcoming way. He had his supper and did a little explore around the house. He stayed for about 20 minutes, but when I got up and began to walk around, he got nervous and asked to go out. I gave him some pets and gentle words before I opened the door for him. 

Andrew wondered how Houdi would react to Mangey being in the house. They are acquaintances, and greet each other with a customary nose boop each time they see each other outside. They don't seem to mind each other at all. 

Andrew, I am thinking of you tonight and I send my love.