Healer, Musician, Bookmaker, Poet

I cut them on Sunday night when I got back from the gig.  My typing speed increased significantly and I can now scrub equally with right and left hands.  The eczema on my poor fingertips is easier to manage, too.  I think it flares right under the nail bed, which is excruciating, but at least I can see what it’s doing now, and it’s easier to apply A&D ointment, which is my current favorite ameliorative.  (Jeez, I didn’t even know I knew that word.)

We have picked a few snap peas from the big garden; their sweetness is inconsistent, but they’re still young.  Some of my cherry tomatoes are yellow-orange, and the beet tops are poking modestly aboveground.  There is one discernable summer squash among the blossoms.  My marigolds have bushed out into one another and the nasturtiums want to boss everything around.  Bright, reliable lobelia, singing its indigo chorus all along the front border bed.  A couple of things have died off, but for the most part I’ve remembered to water and everybody’s happy.  It’s a beautiful sight out there.

The sweet peas still haven’t budged very much, but the morning glories I planted next to them under the trellis are twining.

And TOMORROW is my FRIDAY for the week.  I have taken Thursday off, and with Friday my usual day off and Monday a holiday, I am in for a long weekend of good weather and doing as I please.  There are several sizeable projects I must attend to, like priming the new back door, making a garden gate, and trying to make some sense of the living room finally.  But I can sleep in and eat when I want for a change, and think, think, think.  The luxury of uninterrupted thought.  I want to clean up the back bedroom upstairs and set up the two long tables I borrowed for a sewing center.  That means a trip to the special fabric store where everything is $2 a yard.  And if Karl’s little solar panel arrives in the mail he’ll be able to convert the electric fence so I can have my long extension cords back.  That will allow me to do some hedge-clipping — long overdue like most of the outdoor jobs.

This is my wee potato crop.  King Edward potatoes, to be precise, smuggled lovingly into the country from England.  I hope I get enough to have seed potatoes for next year.  I’ve been looking into heirloom seed websites; I have some different plans for next year’s raised bed, which may include a second one.  I don’t really want to build another one, but my ambitions may require it.  And I’m starting to envision a multi-level perennial garden at the top of the stone wall, with a little stone walkway to the beehive.  Rose insists I don’t need to plant masses of flowers for them, that they’ll find their own, but I want to.  I don’t want to just stick a beehive on the wall.  I want to make it an event, celebrate and honor it with its own garden, a fanfare of blossoms that will give them nectar all summer.  Plus it’ll be cool to see it from the house.

After another hot and relatively humid day, there is a wonderful cool breeze coming in now.  I borrowed a dehumidifier from Snow to run until she decides her basement is damp enough to need it back.  Last year it was so humid in here that my luggage, bass amp, and hiking boots got a film of mildew on them.  The basement isn’t so leaky now but I still get a pool at one end after a hard rain.  My bedding gets clammy on these damp days.  I wake up smelling my hair, thinking this little room smells like a teenager’s bedroom.  I can’t stand it.  I think this will help.

It’s time to go to sleep; staying awake at work, at the computer, is really hard nowadays.  I hope I get to build something soon.  I see the light at the end of the Inventory tunnel, but it can’t come soon enough.  And because the light is on in here, the bugs are tapping against the screen — and there are enough gaps that things come in.  Ah, my beautiful House.  Time to blow out the candle and drift off.

It’s the kind of post-gig night where I could just keep eating toast and cheese, poking around on the computer and dreaming my life away until sunup.  I know how I regret that, though, so I’ll just put away the toaster now and write a few lines and call it a night.

We had a lovely gig in an 18th Century meeting house in Massachusetts.  We’ve played there two or three times before.  Chris brought our wireless microphones that we use in the school shows, but as it turned out, neither Carol nor I had any place to hook the battery pack.  It normally goes on a waistband, but as we were both wearing dresses, there was no option.  So we went with the regular mic stands and Chris remained wireless for the evening.  It worked out fine.

There were quite a few people who hadn’t seen us before.  It feels a little ironic to be making new fans in this, our last year, but maybe it’ll inspire them to bring more friends to shows while we’re still around.  We’ve certainly been getting a big response from presenters and folks wanting us to do house concerts now that they know their window of opportunity is closing.  We mentioned that from stage, and I said, “If we’d only known this was all it took to get people to book us, we’d have quit years ago!”  “Yeah,” Chris responded, “if it’s lucrative enough we may quit again next year.”

Anyway, of course it won’t be lucrative enough to NOT quit, and that’s okay.  But it does look like the first few months of next year are going to be busier than we’ve ever been so far, as we try to get in every last possible return and new engagement before our golden carriage turns back into a pumpkin.  It’ll help sell the album, anyway.

We got quite a bit recorded yesterday.  I figured out, learned and recorded vocals for two of Carol’s songs, and we did some overdubs for another thing we’d recorded before which is just going to be so cool.  We worked until 6:30 and I got sushi on the way home, as it was too late to organize cooking a meal at that point.

I think I am taking tomorrow morning off.  I mowed the entire front/side of the house and the rest of the meadow today before getting ready for the gig.  I also did laundry in three places — the laundromat down the street, the dryer at Rose’s (for my pillow) and their outdoor line, and my own small clothesline here.  It’s so silly trying to get clothes washed.  Rose and Karl don’t like to use their dryer, so I try not to use it much, but some of my things require it and in that case I try to get to the laundromat.

I had never used the one in the village, so I thought I’d give it a try this morning.  I have an irrational fear of unfamiliar laundromats.  I like to go where I know the machines, the cost, the time involved, where I like to sit.  My other one is about 5 miles away, so I thought I’d put on my big girl pants and just go 1/10 of a mile down my street instead.  Well, I probably won’t go there again.  Too expensive and the “large capacity” washers just don’t even hold all that much.  But it was close by and most of my things are clean now.

I’m getting those waves of sleep feeling through my brain now.  I think I’ll be asleep within five minutes of hitting the pillow.  More musings will have to wait until next time.

It wasn’t such a bad awakening.  A little money came in so I made a quick deposit, and next week is payday.  I still dropped a pound from last week, and on perusing my food diary realized I hadn’t gone all that far afield.  I’ve made some other grocery choices that will help in the coming weeks.  It’s gotten fun again.

It got really fun when I stopped at a local stand today and found native produce.  Lovely green beans, squash, strawberries.  These berries were from a different local town from the ones I’d gotten last week.  Neither batch has been very sweet, though they’re plump and these in particular are more consistently ripe.  (I hate it when they stick the half-ripe ones in the bottom.)  I know there has to be a certain balance of sun and rain to make the berries plump AND sweet.  Also I am reading that the most common varieties of produce now often have taste bred out of them in favor of other traits, like longevity or uniform shape.  I’m thinking, next year, heirloom strawberries… Karl and I agreed we could set up a strawberry patch next to the asparagus patch.  That would get my four little plants out of the raised bed, where they will only spread unduly if I leave them year after year.

I do have a few little strawberries starting, misshapen and shy.  So they did manage to pollinate.  Next year I’ll compost properly.  Ran out of time this year, what with building everything from scratch.  Still I feel fine about what we’ll accomplish in this, our first, experimental summer.  I’ve been reading that book I mentioned earlier, and the wonderfulness and awe of fresh local food is in me now.  This will be a growing trend for my family in the coming years, as we can tomatoes and make bread ourselves (okay, sometimes in the bread machine, but still) and sprout things for salad.  On the way up the drive today after errands I stopped to check on the wild blackberries.  They’re there, just a couple of good sprays, not a lot, but I hope by clearing a way for them they’ll spread.  And the autumn olive — we’ll make fruit leather at the end of summer, and I wonder if I can manage some preserves.  I think I’ve never made preserves, but maybe in my makeshift kitchen I could try it.

July, and my freedom from all things Band (except mixing the album), cannot come too quickly.  I borrowed a couple of long tables from work to set up a sewing center upstairs.  I want to make angel dolls again.  The farmers’ market goes on year round here now, and if I can make enough, maybe in August I can rent a space and sell dolls.  Karl wants to do his spice mixes and Snow wants to sell her linens.  Among the three of us we could have a really nice display.  And if Carol wants to make soap that would be a good add.  I want to work with my hands again.

I spoke with Wes today, finally.  It was so good to catch up.  I miss him.  Chris and Carol had told me that he & his lady friend, whom I’ll call Sparrow because she’s tiny and light as a feather, had gotten their landlord to come down significantly on the rent at their huge country house so they could stay another year.  What Chris didn’t explain was that Sparrow has changed her mind about getting a house with Wes.  They couldn’t decide on a location; he likes being around here, and she needs to be close to her special-needs daughter in NJ who lives with the ex husband.  So when he called me back today I could tell he was full of dreams of boarding here again, next year when their lease comes up again.  “So do you think you’ll get that bathroom fixed so I can move in with you?” he asked.  I explained that replumbing and renovating the upstairs bathroom had to come after a long line of other projects, as it requires breaking open the wall and ceiling of the little room I’m currently sleeping in.  Can’t move out of that room until the upstairs bedrooms are renovated.  The timeline is difficult to pin down.

“I’m not in love with her,” he says of Sparrow.  This isn’t news.  I ask if she is in love with him, and his answer comes out yes and I don’t know at the same time.  It’s uncomfortably uneven; he stays with her anyway, in a state of indecision.  There are good things about it, things that work.  But he sounded tired.  He feels like he’ll be done next Spring, and he’s looking for that next doorway.  “I’m in purgatory,” he says sadly.

He asked if Dar was involved in any of this, financially or otherwise, and I realized how long it had been since we’d spoken.  I told him how Dar had become attached to the house, coming down as often as he could to mow the lawn and see the place evolve.  And that, yes, he’s backing most of the larger fixes, like the chimneys, the pellet stove, the plumbing.  Maybe Wes was hoping there was still a chance that he and I could be more intimate.  I know he wouldn’t push it, but he lurves me.  My answer to that, if it comes up, is the same as it always was.  Happily, we do well as friends.

We talked about the family garden and my lifelong, recurring fantasy of being a pioneer.  I always thought it was some kind of akashic memory, some life I’d lived before.  But here it is coming to fruition in the second half of this life.  How did I know, all this time, that this is what I was headed for?  After all the different things I’ve done, the diverse endeavors and all the running around?  Every day it’s a miracle to me.  There is so much potential here, slowly emerging, and all sorts of wildness around the little pockets of order.  Plants going berserk outside, coyote scat in the driveway, hawks wheeling and crying way up above the trees.  We bend our backs, summon up our earth-moving equipment and our courage and imaginations, and coax a little something out of the soil, teach the flowers where to grow, encourage or discourage as we see fit.  Wes is attracted to the idea of a communal lifestyle.  “I can just see it,” he said.  “You’ve finally found this place for yourself, where you can get away from it all, and here comes the school bus with all the hippies on it, wanting to camp in your yard!”  We had a good laugh over it.  It’s true; I feel proprietary about my privacy here.  A boarder would help a lot with finances.  But it’s almost as though the house needs another nook.  A bedroom and bathroom away from MY living area.  I must talk to Dar about this.  I play with all sorts of ideas about how to create that opportunity, where to add a room, how to designate inviolable space.  I don’t have a handle on it yet.  It’s such a big house already.  But the way it’s laid out, one person really can’t get away from another for long.  I need some advice from somewhere.

I take deep breaths and prepare to transition to rehearsal mode.  I need to bathe and wash my hair and cook some chicken before 6:45 when the band shows up.  And tidy this room.  I am so happy here, glad for this little space to write and sit, quiet.  Our cold spell is finished and next week, when I return from Syracuse, will be sunny for a few days.  I can mow the lawn and mulch the front beds.

I have eczema around my eye now, most of the time.

My fingers have been cracked and in pain for several days.  The rest is flares as usual, never fully remitting.

In helping Snow figure out how to do WW points, I finally looked up how many I should be eating daily, and my guess has been way off for two weeks.  Tomorrow’s weigh day, and I’ve gone from being hopeful to very discouraged.  How can I have been so bloody hungry for all this time and still have been eating too much?  How can I possibly shave five points a day off what already seems like meagre fare?

Sigh.  So much for touting Weight Watchers as being so flexible and easy.

It’s been a few years since I did it in earnest.  My memory was a little vague.  I forgive myself that, and I still feel better for not having eaten a lot of crap since Memorial Day, but nothing seems any looser yet.  Except my middle aged brain.

I will think about the money I’ll make this weekend, on this gig trip that takes me away from my overgrown lawn and weedy garden and the lush blanket of poison ivy down the driveway that is crying out to be sprayed into poison ivy heaven.  I would rather be here on so many levels.  I am resentful.  I will try not to direct that toward my bandmates.

Money is a little elusive right now.  I just realized I have $78 in my bank account.  I have to tighten the belt in more ways than one.  Apparently I spent too much on unnecessary things last month.  I have to remember that gig money will dry up after June for a while.  I’m trying to pay off a longstanding credit card debt.  Music insurance comes due in a week and I don’t have the money to renew.  It protects my guitars when we fly.  It’s important.  I have a dental appointment next week I can’t pay for yet.  I’ve had holes inside my sneakers for two or three years; I need shoes.  So, I will be grateful for the dollars I will make in Syracuse, and try to be quiet inside about the rest.

I practiced my bass parts and now I’m going to bed, uncharacteristically despondent.  I hope I didn’t pick it up from Snow.  She was moist-eyed today, wistful and sad.  Trying to keep her head above water.  She left a bit early, as we’d brought two cars and I could take K. home.  I kept thinking all day how thankful I was that I wasn’t a sad person any more.  Well, I’m a bit out of joint at this moment, but maybe tomorrow things will feel better.

Suddenly I hear a train somewhere, whistling into the north distance.  What a pretty sound.

Snow gave me some seeds a while back: Cheiranthus (Siberian Wallflower) and Bachelor Button.  I’ve never grown either.  This weekend I’ll have a chance to sow some in pots.

I stopped eating crap for a while.  In fact, last weekend I started counting points a la WW again, for the first time in a few years.  I got tired of hearing myself complain.

Plus Snow took some photos of me on Memorial Day and I was discouraged over the silhouette.  So enough of that.  Just think of all those clothes I haven’t been able to wear in a year.  It’ll be like Christmas.

It’s been a good week so far; busy at work, still working on the inventory project, but I do see the end of it on the horizon now.  The hard rain didn’t wash away my perennials, and I’ll have fun finishing that flower bed this weekend.  Karl came over and repacked a couple of spigots — the one to the hose, and the shutoff in the basement.  It worked fine so now I don’t have to shut off the basement spigot when I’m done with the hose.  That saves two trips to the basement.

I was going to write more but there have been a few interruptions and now it’s bedtime.  I’m singing the “Thursday is my Fri – DAY!” song.  So tired… happy, listening to the crickets outside.

It’s 9:00 again.  How quickly the evenings fly now.  I’m sleepy a lot at work; my task isn’t very interesting, and the gradual loss of sleep during the week has caught up with me.  But tomorrow is the last workday of this week for me, so I’ll hold on to that delicious thought and hope it will keep me awake.

Snow has moved her work station from the hallway, which had the only unoccupied desk, to the Programming room behind our production area.  Geek Dave sometimes uses the other end of the room as a build area, but it’s usually empty and I rarely have to use the computer for programming boards.  The hallway was very noisy, and as that desk is right across from the ladies’ room, she got to smell everything that went on in there.  Yuck.  Now she’s close enough we can bug each other a little.  It’s lively.

I planted two large pots last night and put them out at the top of the stone steps that come through the front wall by the driveway.  No one uses these steps, as it would mean leaving one’s car halfway up the drive, but they’ll be seen on the way up.  I put geraniums and begonias in them.  I also got lobelia for a low border to the strip I did in front of the ell, but they’re not planted yet.  Tonight I found the perfect, miniature picket-fence edging for that bed, plus some impatiens I’ll put between a ranging wild rose and the mysterious, blue-berried tree, and a few other things.  I finally got the ladder of my dreams.  My roofing guy from last year had one of these, and he loved it.  I’ve wanted one ever since.  It’s a multipurpose extending ladder, so you can use it as a regular step ladder, an extension ladder, or a stairway ladder where one side is longer than the other.  And the bottom is A-framed so it’s very stable.  It’s the size of a small stepladder when folded up, but it’ll extend to 13 feet when opened.

Tomorrow after work I hope to put the mulch on the front bed, and maybe clear the impatiens bed, though I anticipate that will take some time.  I could also put them down by the rock wall.  Eventually lilacs will go there, but maybe not this year.  I’m practically drunk on the beauty.  I want this to be a carnival of color.  Dar wants snowdrops and crocuses; me, too.  I’ll plant those bulbs in the Fall.

While at Home Depot I talked to someone about weed whackers.  There’s an Echo I liked, and it was just the size that would suit Rose and me.  I sent her a picture and we’re going to look together on Saturday.

Gardens, gardens.  They make me happy.  These are the first gardens I’ve ever had of my own.  We went to pick up Snow on the way to work today and I saw the outside of her house for the first time.  It’s very sweet, and she has this big studio kind of building in the back yard.  It occurred to me later that this is the first time I’ve had a friend where we could go over to each other’s house.  Amazing, such an adult notion.  No more apartments.

Incidentally, Dar was over last Sunday and we had such a great time.  He was suffering from bronchitis, but still wanted to do yardwork, so I let him mow the lawn while I planted lantana and lavender and sweet peas.  Rose subsequently gave him some sample antibiotics from her office, and some Vicodin for sleeping at night, and by the next day he was markedly better.  Thank goodness.  He doesn’t get sick often, but it’s very hard for him to find time to rest when he does.  In spite of that he was ecstatic to be here.  He’s actually coming back down this weekend.  We have to sign some papers together so it’s a good excuse.  But I can’t remember him ever coming to see me two weekends running.

Time for a bath, I think, before bed and one more work day.  Karl is working at home on some new inventory software tomorrow, so that Belinda and Dave the Geek will be out of his hair.  He says Dave actually follows him into the men’s room talking before he realizes it’s the bathroom.  These dear, odd people.  I love where I work.

It’s very quiet outside.  Distant cars sometimes, down Main Street, but other than that just the simple stillness of a warm night.

I’m almost too excited to get tired enough to go to bed.  Spring is in me, I guess; new things are leafing out and trying the light on for size.

My bathtub is re-plumbed.  The magical parts we couldn’t get locally (odd size pipes, this old tub) arrived in the mail and Karl and Snow came over and fussed and swore and went to Home Depot a second and third time, and finally — it seemed all of a sudden, finally — it was done!!  The tub drains better than it ever has since I moved in.  I took my first soaking bath since before England.

Snow said that after she busted out the old pipes last week, which nearly did her neck and shoulders in, she broke out in shingles all on one side of her neck.  She’d never had shingles before.  She got really sick in February and was out of work for a week, and really hasn’t bounced back since.  I just did a little reading on shingles and they sound decidedly nasty.  We wondered if her immune system is just a little out of whack.  Maybe I should offer her a Reiki treatment.

While at Home Depot tonight (for the first time), Karl and I looked at lawnmowers.  We also stopped at a lawnmower repair place that we pass on the way home from work, but the guy didn’t have any self propelled mowers.  In fact he only had one push mower, and it didn’t work very well.  He wanted to complain for a while about everything wrong with people and his business, so we let him do that before going on our way.

I see a lawnmower in my very near future.

The church where we provided music last Sunday had a guest speaker, a guy who runs a meditation center in North Carolina.  He was so funny and we enjoyed his talk a great deal, discussing it on the long ride home on Monday.  What he said really stuck with me.  I guess it was just time for me to receive those thoughts, but it’s helping me be aware of how much needless worrying I do in the name of “keeping everything under control.”  It’s hard to let go of it; I wonder who I’ll be if I’m not all about my chattery inner dialogue.  But I’m trying satisfaction on for size and seeing if I can hold that in the light while allowing things to change as they always do.  Thinking:  It’s not that I don’t want things to be any different, but I can still hold a feeling of satisfaction now, while moving toward my goal, but without having to wait for something to be different first in order to start being happy.

I’m trying to apply it to my impatience about working on the house, for one thing.

So.

It’s past my bedtime, in fact.  I just emitted a gaping yawn, so I think I am ready after all.  And I’m so clean.

I can’t express how good it is to be back, just in time for this warm Spring weekend and the calling of many birds.  Nevermind that the basement had loads of water in it, or that the bathtub and kitchen sink no longer drain well enough to use!  We’ll get it all sorted out.  I am sleeping in my own bed, visiting with my family, and looking out at the 70′ x 75′ garden plot which Karl plowed in my absence.

Our return was ghastly.  I figured out that I was up for 30 hours, and the trip was fraught with difficulties.  Please consider never flying AirFrance.  We certainly won’t again.

I wrote a long cumulative entry, so rather than post the whole tome here I’ll break it up and folks can read as they please.

********

Before Leaving

The stars were sharp as glass last night.  I watched a satellite make its steady way across a silk sky.  There was coyote scat on the compost pile and, later, a few startled deer that leapt away as I came up the driveway after doing laundry.  Pearl was in the dining room next door learning how to cane a chair she’d bought at auction.  She will resell it on eBay when it’s done.

********

I don’t even know when I wrote that… a couple of days before leaving, I guess.  Here we are in Lowdham, after our return engagement at the Village Hall.  There isn’t much time to write at this point; it’s oh-so-late and we have to get up oh-so-early.  I wanted to just check in…

We arrived by some miracle.  The weather was dicey on both ends and we snuck past all the storms.  We ran for our connection in Atlanta and made it after they’d closed the gate.  Both flights accommodated our guitars in the front closets so we didn’t have to gate-check them.  It was spitting snow here in England but didn’t hamper our driving.  The rental car office was a bit of a mess, but we did get what we’d booked.  Two nights at our agent’s house and some really fine meals, and today we drove and played our first gig.

Aside from some brief but terrible sound problems in the beginning, it was good.  And the presenter said that everyone who saw us a year and a half ago, except for three people, came back to see us again.  That comprised about half the audience this time; everyone else came by word of mouth.  Wonderful!

We’re down the street at a nice B&B.  We have to leave so early tomorrow, it’s too bad we don’t get to stay and enjoy these places.  I did take a little bath after the gig.  They have one of those long, narrow bathtubs that just invites one, so I took advantage.  I was only about half covered when the hot water ran out, so I only cooked on one side.  Still, welcome.

I’m trying to stay in the joyous place; contented with a little anxiety a couple of times today, but things worked out all right.  It’s a very different trip for me this time, from the last one.  I was pretty miserable in ’08 with the dietary restrictions and the stomach trouble and being hungry all the time.  And so homesick… I’m not homesick yet.  And I’m actually looking forward to what’s ahead.

Well, I must sleep in some fashion on this very pretty but rather hard bed.  Let’s see what I can come up with.

Monday 3/1

I’m in a little mouse attic room somewhere in Gloucester.  Last night’s gig in Devon was great again.  There was a little second-hand smoke issue in the room for me, so I started out a little raw, but so far I’m holding the irritated throat at bay and hoping it’ll just dissipate if I take care of myself.  There was supposedly no smoking in the building, but who knows when that went into effect.  The smoke lingers a long time, and my pipes know it right away.

Nothing much else, I guess.  My fingers are in sorry shape, but that’s about what I expected. They’re waking me up itching most nights now.  I just shake my head and wonder, five years from now, will I have figured out whatever adjustments I need to make to my schedule / attitude / diet / lifestyle / thought process to make it go away, or will it be just that much worse?  I hesitate to imagine.

There is nothing more to be done.  My bags are packed.  I’ve gone over stove, mail, plant and bank instructions with Rose.  I gave her the rest of the veggies I had in the fridge, and almost managed to finish the bottle of wine I’d opened over the weekend.  The taxes got mailed, likewise the CD of our budding EP to Dar.  A little warm snow came down after dark, leaving the front path and the driveway sloppy.

I’ll wash my hair in the morning, fill the suet feeder.  Have one last chat with Dar.  He wouldn’t video chat with me tonight; said it would make him too sad.  “I’ll see your little mousie face and it’ll break my little mousie heart.”  The taxi comes to my bandmates’ house at 1:00pm.  I’ll get there by noon.  We’ll pray that the weather on both ends is good enough to give us passage; they’re expecting a storm in Birdsedge.  I’m bringing my boots.

That’s it, then.  I’ll be posting from my phone until the end of March.  See you over the ocean!

I’m thrilled.  Not only did I get internet in the house for the first time, but after a few hours of internet research, and a break to help Karl remove large trash items from my basement, I managed to upgrade my old Palm software and that for the folding keyboard.  I’ll be able to take these to England instead of my computer, and actually type on something.  My fingers, flying over the keyboard in a blur.  What a good feeling after tippy-tapping my thumbs on the iPhone keypad for a few months.

Having said that, I must break again for some errands.  Back later.

…..aaaaand, I’m back.  Scored a sweater and some pants for $1.50 each, and some nice black velvet gig pants for $3.00.  I am fabulous.

A Temporary Replacement is being trained tomorrow at work.  It’ll be nice to have help.

I put myself on Prednisone for five pre-England days starting today, for my hands.  I have stigmata — a patch on the back and on the palm of my right hand, among the other places.  Yesterday at rehearsal I scratched a finger til it cut.  Oops.  It was a tiny abrasion, and I try not to do that, but damn.  Sometimes it’s either scratch or scream.  I wonder if eczema is ever a symptom of menopause!  Guess what, I just discovered this keyboard won’t type a question mark!  Nothing comes out when I do that.  I wonder why!!

,,,\\\\\\=-0+_)==\\¿

Okay, I can make a Spanish one¿  Sheesh.  Time for bed.

********

Next day, typing on computer????? with ?? question marks.  But now I have no questions.

I met my new best girlfriend today!  Snow is a woman Rose and Karl met through the Historical Society; she moved here from California the same time I bought my house last year.  We’re almost exactly the same age and have most everything in common, it seems.  She’s going to be my fill-in at work while I’m gone, as she has electronics experience.  She also makes fine linens and has other important and admirable skills.  Rose said she felt an instant kinship with Snow, and I knew why in about ten minutes.

I’m calling her Snow because a) she is enthralled with our snow here, having not seen much of it out West, and b) because she drives a Scion like mine, only it’s white.  We spent the day working hard and laughing a lot and having a lovely time.

Work has gotten lively.

And I have to wash my hair.  I would much rather play with my toys.

I wasn’t expecting today’s snowstorm; we got five or six inches.  It’s pretty.  I’m thinking it’s the last one I may see this winter, being gone for so long.  That makes me happy.

Post-script:  OH, I almost forgot!  We discovered in coversation that SNOW was the other person who bid on the house, thereby costing my family an additional $17,000.  She was mortified over it.  I told her she could work it off, come Spring.  🙂