Sunday was the day to

Clean floors,

enjoy the sunshine,

pick figs and make fig jam*,

knit a little,

and generally discomfit the cats.**

Huzzah. (It all beat the hell out of listening to bongo man down the block practice outside.)

*3 little bags of freezer jam, carefully put in a larger freezer bag to protect them. There is a small bowl of jam waiting for cheddar sandwiches tomorrow.

** The cats hate floor mopping, especially in a room that has been a battlefield of “thinking outside the catbox.”

You know it’s going to be a long week

When you pass a sign for Font Hill Drive, and think, wow… wonder what the hill looked like with all those italics, Times Roman, Arial, Helvetica, and Bookman crammed beneath it? Maybe a monument to printing? Anyone else read the Phantom Tollbooth and think it didn’t go quite far enough?

Oh yeah… it’s gonna be a loooooong week.

Why I don’t attend church more often

There are things about church that I like in general. I like the peacefulness, the music, and sometimes the sermons. I like being part of a group of people all centered on the same thought or emotions. The church around the corner does good works, offers a sense of community, etc. The pastor is really trying to make the church welcoming, and sees the church as part of the equal rights struggle. All well and good.

I just wish people on the GLBTQ (and friends) committee wouldn’t come up to me and say, “You know what I like about gay people? You’re all so happy and throw the best parties,” thinking that I’ll be delighted with their openness.

Ahem: I haven’t thrown any parties, rave music isn’t played in my house, I have yet to deploy my butterfly wings in chapel, and I don’t wear rainbow antenna to church. Instead, I’m a kind of average singer who brings food for the food pantry, and who is normally good-natured, except about her commute. Am I just being crabby here? Or would it be appropriate to just say, “What I love about straight people is they have children so I don’t have to.”? Or leave the committee after politely saying, “Screaming now?”. That might leave the committee with just “friends” though. And they mean well, bless their little hearts. (BTW: This conversation didn’t happen recently. It’s just simmering up again as I realize that more U.S. states than not have anti-citizen legislation that makes it illegal for a certain group of consenting adults to marry or have rights.)

A tale of two gentlemen

It’s amazing what you see in public.

• A gentleman in a public library, using the computer to watch foot “adoration” how-to videos. No children there, so I figured there wasn’t much need to complain. (Perhaps he’s too poor for a computer; perhaps his wife/gf/bf was tired of watching him watch feet instead watching him mow the lawn; maybe he’s trying to save money. Shrug. There’s a detail for fiction. [Go ahead... it's not my topic matter])
• Then there’s a gentleman who “gets it”. He picked up one red rose that was wrapped in a fancy clear and gold plastic cone from the florist. The card taped to the plastic said, “Happy birthday from your HoneyBear,” and he was buying one of those plastic honey bear jars at the market I was in. I just hope his significant other understands how cool it is that he’s put this much thought into his gifts.

I somehow believe my fiction prof from way back when wouldn’t believe either scene. But real life is often stranger than fiction around here.

Saturday is so short

Here’s a goofy list of things that might be more worthwhile than mowing the lawn (which is what everyone else is up to, according to my ears):

• Prepping a door for painting (apparently not enough of a break in the humidity)
• Walking to the library (planning on doing this in a few minutes)
• Going to a museum
• Baking cookies (there’s a break in the humidity)
• Go to a park — it’s SUNNY
• Photography (the first sunny day in a week)
• Sketching (ditto)
• Knitting (this can be done in the evening)
• Reading a shirt pattern (again — can be done in the evening)
• Go on a mad and crazy road trip
• Cleaning projects (UGH, but necessary)
• Hacking at the evil shrub (yep. did some of this)
  

Some of these are limited by the lack of water pressure today. I’m reluctant to come into contact with potential poison ivy in the evil shrub if I can’t wash off the itch.  I nearly broke the glass coffeepot this morning with the blast of air as I tried to fill it (no worries, I do have a little bottled water for essentials), so I’m reluctant to start washing things.

If I prep the door for painting this AM, maybe I can do a quick bit of lawn mowing to appease the neighbors. (mowed the lawn) Eh, if you had a beautiful, sunny day after a week of thunderstorms, which would you choose?

Cats and the new toy

I got a new camera, and so far all I’ve managed to do is annoy the cats with the bright light.

The Eyes of Reproach

Think she’ll forgive me?

A Day Told in Numbers

• 4.5 hours round trip commute (thanks to rain and roadwork).
• 9 hours typing frantically on a computer, trying to meet deadlines, and squinting at the screen. Perhaps computer glasses in my future?
• 2.5 hours at choir practice, standing and holding a music folder in front of me.
• Only 7 hours of sleep before I get to wake up and do it all again (except the music lessons will be at home, sitting, thank you very much). And I’ll have easy access to aspirin.

Utilitarianism and Green

The color green was popular, back before my Grandmother removed the paint and refinished the family antiques. (Anyone who watches the Antiques Roadshow knows that’s a no-no, but my attitude is — it wasn’t as though it was “antique” when she first owned it.) I can’t quite figure out if the color green was a fad in the Victorian era, or if people from later eras wanted an inexpensive, tough paint color to use to decorate their houses’ exterior woodwork.

On the streets of Baltimore, there’s a lot of green trim. It goes well with the red/orange brick houses you find throughout the city, so it seems to dress up and soften the brick. This is a great image to keep in mind when selecting colors that go with burnt orange. What do you think?

Time Travelers

I was driving up a one way street in the evening, past the Basilica, when I stopped for a red light. A movement on the left, from behind the Basilica, caught my eye.

He came down the access alleyway, an African American man on a bicycle, possibly coming home from a late night at work. His mouth was set in a line beneath a pencil thin mustache. He was wearing a dark grey tweed driving hat, dark pea coat, a scarf, and slacks the color of the charcoal night. He seemed to have spent more care on his appearance than is common now. As though he was going on a romantic assignation, or merely wanted to connect with a more genteel time, without looking overdressed.

I sat and watched as he glided silently on his bicycle toward the stopped traffic, passed the black gates with gold tips, and turned right. As he glided off the wrong way on the one way street, I sat and thought about how timeless people could appear, as though equipped to step across the frame of forward moving time.

And then the light changed, and I drove off toward the moonlit streets and flowered trees of the park in front of me.

Young Republicans

… Yes, set that line to a David Bowie song, and you’re right about where my brain is right now. Well, that and boggling at the spectacle of well-dressed, young Conservatives dipping and swaying to “Come to my Window” being sung by a live band.

Irony is not dead. It’s just stuck in the 80s, with Alex P Keaton. Perhaps people did not know the words (or the backstory) and just loved the guitar bridge. [I do suspect few of them remembered critically analyzing a poem in college. Do they even teach that these days?]