I’m trying to finish up this sampler that I started ages and ages ago, so that I can frame it and give it to Seraphina for her birthday.  I think it will be a nice addition to her fixed up room.  Moths got into my original wool years ago.  I finally took the time to order more and get back to it.  It’s coming along and I’m really pleased to finally be finishing it.  It’s satisfying.

Seraphina and I finished Anne of Green Gables and The Family Under the Bridge as well (that one is better at Christmas time).  We started The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I’ve since lost my voice.  It’s very frustrating.  The last several nights we’ve cuddled up and watched cute animal videos instead.  We’re doing the best we can.

Saturday mornings are starting to have their own routine: Help Elijah with his make-up before he takes a long morning drive to whatever photo shoot he has that day.  Fix Seraphina breakfast.  Gather up the library books while she’s eating.  Do her hair for Irish dance.  Get her out the door.  Morning workout, generally while listening to an audio book.  Settle in, preferably with a cup of tea and some classical music in the background, generally with Meadow nestled in my arms making it hard to type (see photo in previous post), with posts here; transcribing from the journal and the little notes that I’ve left myself, sometimes adding photos here and there.  This is how it should go, but often I lose large portions of the morning accidentally getting lost in other realms of the World Wide Web.  Today it was mostly looking at pictures of people that I knew as children.  They were children with my children.  Who, as it turns out, are now shockingly grown up, married (to each other!) and expecting a child of their own.  Goodness.  And now that I’m typing it out, I feel like life has made me into some kind of weirdo who is internet stalking their children’s old friends.  Right.  Moving on.  (though still a little teary eyed)

As a public service I also ate the rest of the Valentine’s Day chocolate.  It seemed important to get it cleaned up and out of the way.

**This post should have been accompanied by photos of Elijah in make-up and a suit.  I was simultaneously photographing him and scolding him for playing with my roses and putting them between his teeth.**

Mairi is loudly listening to Adele this morning.  Ours is a world of floating flurries and wild wind and it all fits my mood today.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Later.

I remembered that I texted my sisters pictures of the salon, so I saved the photos from that thread!  Not the best quality, but it’s something.

They had a can of Aqua Net signed by Debbie Harry, which I found endlessly amusing…

I had Heart of Glass stuck in my head all day!

Before and After.  I think I like the before picture better because I’m making a funny face in the after, but oh, well!  Also, it actually looks better than this.  It wasn’t quite dry yet here and I was rushing out the door, so didn’t have time to style it properly.

This is how I actually left the salon:

I will never understand why every single stylist attempts to make me look like I belong in an ’80′s hair band! This has nothing to do with the inspiration photos I brought, nor anything I said. I don’t get it. WHY?!? Every. single. time.

***Pretend that there is a video of Galen and Seraphina playing Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah together on the piano.  And also pretend that I didn’t just get all teary-eyed describing what I should be able to show you.***

———————————————————

Galen was telling me how someone sent him a recommended reading list.  I asked what was on it.  Says he, “but of course I’ve already read things like Little Women, because I’m a good boy.”  Ah, but there are other books by Louisa May books that would astonish you!  Books that are hilariously different.  I proceeded to tell him about A Long Fatal Love Chase.  It wasn’t published until 1995 because it was considered too scandalous for her time.  It’s a “thriller” that includes almost every outrageous (for the time period) situation that you can conjure up.  The heroine is tricked into marrying a scoundrel who is already married!  When she finds out she runs from him and tires to hide all over the world!  Even dressing as a man!  There is a woman of ill repute!  And a tempted monk!  The whole thing ends, and I don’t think this is a big spoiler here, fatally.  Reading it I kept picturing Gabriel Byrne in the 1994 version of Little Women telling Winona Ryder/Jo to just write what she knows.

Galen’s counterpoint to this was that he had found the greatest movie summery of all time:

“After losing his parents, a priest travels to China, where he inherits a mysterious ability that allows him to turn into a dinosaur. At first horrified by this new power, a hooker convinces him to use it to fight crime. And ninjas.”  

Brilliant.  I’m not sure that could be more ridiculously hilarious.  Though we have questions…”And ninjas.” being an incomplete sentence, leaves a lot up in the air.  Does he fight the ninjas?  Or are they just also in the movie?  Maybe they are on his side.  The film is called, I swear this is true, The VelociPastor.  Similar shows recommended by IMDB include: Llamageddon, Killer Sofa, and the yet to be released The VelociPastor 2.

In other news, I’m almost finished my third Susan Branch book of the month.  It’s a thing now and I don’t think it will end until I’ve read them all.

I’m scheduled to get my hair cut tomorrow.  It will be my first trip to the salon in 9 years.  I’m kind of wondering what would happen if I brought this as my inspiration picture:

Here am I, trying to regroup.  I have 7 unfinished posts.  The external hard drive where I store my photos up and died.  It was backed up until August, thank goodness, but the last six months are now gone.  Poof!  I spent a week and a half in denial, while Steve attempted everything he could think of to try to fix it.  We haven’t decided if we are going to take it somewhere to try to salvage the contents because it turns out that’s quite expensive.  I keep telling myself that it’s only 6 months worth.  It could have been so much worse.  But it still stings.  I really wish that I had finished up my Advent videos.  At least I would have had Christmas.

Anyhow, I had photos that I wanted to include in posts and then the photos were gone and it kind of threw me.  I do still have some things that were on my phone or pulled aside for other reasons, so I’ll just piece it together as best as I can.

The last several weeks have been intense.  Health issues- I couldn’t speak at all for a while again.  I can now, but my throat hurts a lot and I start coughing if I overdo.  My fatigue has been over-whelming.  Chronic and not-so-chronic issues have been cropping up for others as well.

We’ve had appointments.  So, so many appointments.

And weather.  We got nearly 3′ of snow earlier this week.  Thankfully we only lost power for a day, and not even a full day at that.  The town has declared a state of emergency and two days after the fact, there is still over a foot of snow on our road.

This is going to be a s-l-o-w project.  I took all of the hardware off of the dresser.  Every once in a while I take a drawer out on the porch and sand it down.  I’m just roughing up the surface so it doesn’t take terribly long.  Right around the time that my hands start to get really cold, I’m just about done.

~*~* Seventeen *~*~

He may have gotten distracted by cats on his way downstairs.  Pretty normal.

~One of his gifts~

In retrospect I shouldn’t have had him open the sleep mask first.

His masterpiece:

Ice cream cake with a cookie crust, chocolate caramel fudge core, topped with caramel and candied peanuts.

His caption for this:

I found myself torn between two Nietzsche quotes to accompany this. I have decided to include both.

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once”

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music”

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Mine:

1) The internet’s confusion over the fact that all of my sons insist on borrowing my apron and wearing it while bare chested is already well documented.  Your conclusion that my apron often smells like man pits is well founded.

2) I actually shrieked when I saw the part with the knives and he’s going to get an earful when he gets home from work.

My jade and angel begonia cuttings are rooting.

I took apart the dresser to start refinishing it shortly after this photo was taken, so you will be spared from further photos like this.

Another poor attempt at a picture of the antique hair pin that Steve gave me for my birthday.

Date afternoon.  We had to make a longish trip to pick up some home improvement supplies and decided to make an afternoon of it.  Iain offered to tile the backsplash in the downstairs bath, but we needed all of the special grout, thin set, sealer, etc. for my fancy cement tiles.  Also, paint for the girls’ room!

I tend to get kind of crazy with paint selection.  There are so many options and I’m terribly picky about these things.  I have a new system now and I feel kind of like a dirty, rotten, cheat, but it’s worked really well for me!  I use the Farrow & Ball color cards and pick from them and then have it matched in a cheaper paint.  They have a comparatively small selection of colors, but they are exactly the sort of colors that I gravitate towards.  Picking from only a small, carefully curated selection saves me a lot of time, energy, and let’s face it, spiraling.

I offered Seraphina the same pallet and she chose Middleton Pink for the walls.  Together we decided on Dimity for the trim.  For the dresser I got Magnolia Home Chalk Paint in Ella Rose.  It’s going to be a very, very, very pink room!

Afterwards we went to a restaurant that we like in the area.  I convinced them to let us take dessert and drinks outside, despite the fact that it was around thirty-five degrees. (side note: immunocopromised me is still not going maskless in public places, sigh)

I really only have one full on picture of Steve from today. He kind of looks like Bernie Sanders at the Inauguration, sans mittens, because after 25 years I still haven’t converted him to knitwear. I don’t believe he was quite as charmed by the novelty of my idea as I was.

My main motivation for this visit was the roasted fig crustless cheese cake that I believed them to be serving, but alas!  It was only a special and we missed it.  So, ice cream in the cold it was!  I quite enjoyed myself, but I’m still sad about missing the cheese cake.  It’s hard to be sad about a gluten free brownie topped with ice cream, fudge, and peanut butter cups, but I managed it.

I also had a sugar and spice Manhattan. For most of my adult life I didn’t drink at all and now I only drink every once in a while.  I probably won’t have had it if it weren’t for the disappointment of the cheese cake.  I don’t even like the way that being intoxicated makes me feel.  It’s too reminiscent of when I have a flare up and my muscle control starts to go and I have trouble thinking clearly and start to feel out of control.  What I *do* like, very much is fancy drinks in fancy glasses.  I just feel like it elevates an outing into something special.  What I would really like is if more places offered fancy mocktails.  Or like a kombucha bar…  That I could get on board with.

Galen started his cake tonight.  He wants to make this fancy ice cream cake for his birthday, but it will take several days of work, one layer at a time.