Undressing the Orange

This weekend I did not see my mom. And it felt great. Yesterday I returned a piece of broken furniture at FedEx (ours -- Wayfair -- say no more) and tried to get a lamp fixed (mom's) and I learned that the wonderful woman who repaired lamps has closed her shop. I am grateful for all of the lamps that she refurbished in the last year. And her niece's haunting cd that I purchased after listening to it waiting in line in the store. 

Instead of fixing the lamp I asked my sister if she wanted to go to breakfast (she was at mom's). And we had a really nice time catching up and talking about some things that didn't involve mom. And then I bought groceries and slept on the sofa and it was great. 

Today I attended the monthly writer's hangout where everybody is mostly much older than I am (how is this possible?) and the prompt was based on a woman's poem and was to start "I have a friend who...". The person who wrote the original poem apparently said that she had a friend who was 18 years old before she had undressed an orange in public.

That may be one of the best things I've heard in months.

One of the best dreams I've had in months involved Jimmy Carter who, as we know, is in hospice right now. I dreamed that I dropped in on his house in Plains, Georgia, and there was a houseful of friends and family tending to him. It was very casual -- a shoes-off sort of house with laundry to be folded strewn about and people puttering around making food. I slipped under the sheets with Jimmy Carter and comforted him, patting his skinny arm. The interior walls were paneled and lightly whitewashed. I kept asking if I'd come at a bad time and the people in the house seemed to think it was all pretty normal.

I hope you're doing ok in your journey, Jimmy Carter.

Spice Bars

I went in search of my mom's spice bar recipe last week. I made it and was not disappointed. It was amazing and I might have to make it again this weekend. Back in the day mom was a volunteer at the local "junior museum", a nature museum where she worked as a marsh docent, modeled in fundraising fashion shows and worked shifts at the annual Show House. Sometimes I worked those shifts also, even though I was a child. Mom's recipe eventually made it into a Show House cookbook that was also a fundraiser. The scan below must be from one of those. For the best texture use oil, not shortening.

A new treasure that I just had to have, from a blind box series of cats and shrimp. I was lucky enough to get the one I wanted. Looks so much like boy kitten :)

So much like the boy kitten that when a friend tagged me in a fb ad for a customized aloha shirt thing, which I could not resist clicking on and futzing around with, and when I could not find a good photo of boy kitten to add to an aloha shirt, I used the above photo, to full effect.

It's Saturday

We're waiting for my oldest friend in the world that nice boy to arrive. I was busy pressing "publish" on that last post and we had heard the mailman's truck pull up and the doorbell rang so mrguy opened the door thinking it was either our friend or mailie. Instead, it was the Jehovas. "Hey, how are you doing since Covid?" asked a man in a straw hat, wearing a tie. "Oh hi. We're waiting for a friend right now so we need to go," says mrguy.

Which reminded him of a story. Many many years ago when some of his friends were young and sharing a house, the Jehovas came to the door. While one of the roommates was engaging with the folks at the front door, the guy said "We just want people to read the Bible". At that moment, two roommates appeared with pantry items. As the story goes, they held cans in their outstretched hands and said "We just want people to eat corn" and chased the now freaked-out visitors down the walk.

We just want people to eat corn.

Happy Saturday.

Things She's Wrecked In One Week

Good night, TV. She pulled you by the cord a week ago today, and now we get to order one and take time off of work to set it up:

Good night, lamp. Mom really liked you. She bought you at a garage sale we went to twenty years ago, and later found out it had a secret way of turning on (too challenging to describe) which has confounded every single new caregiver that has had to deal with it.

And we might as well add the phone, which is a replacement for the one she threw at someone a while ago.

The jade fruit, a staple decorative item from her past, are trembling in a bin in the closet.