Two Hours. A Lifetime.

Now and then people who know I have only two respite periods per week of two hours each, wonder how on earth I can get to enjoy such short times away from the house with no worries. And they do the math to see how many working hours I have in the week. I don't. I just know it's a lot.

Mostly I use the respite time to shop for groceries with time to actually think and study what's good in the produce department. But once in a while I'm all caught up and I can just play.

What happens then is that when two hours is all you have, you can cram a life into it! And it's all joy, like focusing on a single sunlit drop of water instead of insisting on having the whole ocean available.

Today a perfect October day coincided with one of my times off, and I spent the entire time at the Preserve, walking and marching and strolling and ambling and taking pictures



and watching gangs of warblers and tufted titmice and chickadees and other little fellers busily running their worlds. And the occasional groundhog trotting about purposefully.

I walked the longest trail all the way to the end, where there's a peninsula with a seat



of local stone, warmed today from the sun, where you can sit



and watch birds or the sun sparkling on the waves -- brisk wind today --



or just gaze and do nothing but be there. And look at the clouds and how fast they change in the wind







And see the sun slanting through the trees, lower down now in the sky.



And the red maples glowing in the smaller trees



And a tuft of down



caught in the grass. And find other benches in the sun






And take pictures to show your friends, to invite them in, to enjoy, too.

One of those times you know you'll remember and remember.

Art and taxes

Fall tree at the entrance to the town hall, on my dragging way to pay my real estate taxes. Add to the inevitables that of art. Always present particularly in this town, where there's an amazing array of art talent in all media.

After certain benighted township officials who shall be nameless to protect the guilty, declared that there were no artists in Plainsboro and that we would have to import any art we had in public buildings.....you can guess the comments from folks like me, long active in the art scene, helping to found our gallery, to found the nowadays huge Festival of the Arts, bringing in new artists all the time, quality stuff, too, not your grandad's whittling, putting my own art on the line regularly...well, anyway eventually said people said, okay, we will house some art, big treat for you artists, you can GIVE it to us in perpetuity, we will honor it, aren't you lucky, by hanging it in hallways in the town hall, right next to the municipal court and the tax office.

Well, some of us aren't up for that, however some of my friends were willing and since yesterday was Paying the Real Estate Taxes day for me, I took the time to walk around and actually look at the artworks lining the hallways, rather than just sort of see them in passing.

They are in narrow hallways, hence the distortion, impossible to get far enough back to get a better picture, but bear with me, as you admire Maureen J's brilliant mulberry paper collage, one of many of her works, collages and watercolors, you just have to see



Bob J's (no relation) found object mask




My personal jury is still out on this artist, good friend though he is, since the charm of the works, masks and various fantasy animals, resides in the sheer craftmanship of the found objects, done by other people and found at flea markets and other places, taken apart and reused. Inventive, yes. Creative, I don't really think so. Art? debatable. Saleable? you bet!

Then, down the hall and around the corner is a children's group quilt




honoring the township, under the guidance of Maria P., a wonderful book artist and local treasure.

Then there's the Embroiderers' Guild quilt of plants and flowers



must be seen to be really seen if you follow me, and round the next corner standing out above all from the young people's section of the works




a wonderful drawing by an eleventh grader not known to me, but such power and talent in this young work. At this point he's probably out of college, these pieces having been hung years ago, and off on some career, hopefully in art, since he really has some eye.

And always there are the dogs, to misquote Dylan Thomas

the black lab



as soon as he saw my camera sitting doing his impersonation of a Good Dog Who Should Get a Biscuit


the little white dog



rugged individual, you go your way, human, I'll go mine and the beagle

aka Spy Dog skulking round trees and evading the camera at all costs.



I guess my Taxes of Plainsboro are supporting Art of Pboro and Dogs of Pboro, too.

The Dollivers exercise their franchise

Since New Jersey has mail-in voting for all even those who are not, like HP, on the permanently disabled list and receive all their ballots at home, we now vote together, at the table which becomes the voting station, and this year the Dollivers assisted with the procedure of getting the stuff into the mail.



Dollivers at the mailbox grappling with the ballots, don't drop the envelopes, don't drop ME.

This being a midterm election, not as exciting as a Presidential one, but vital all the same, we were keen to get our faves back into power in the state as well as in DC. Not to mention the sheriff, yes we have a sheriff, but I don't think he wears a star and a big hat, and freeholders, yes, we have them too, great historical title, and assemblypeople, including the blessed Greenstein whose aides have helped me with all kinds of knots the state treasury has tried to tied me up in, instead of giving me my own mone back. And Rush Holt for Congress again, our rocket science rep and all around good guy, one of the few politicians I ever met who dared to say I don't know in answer to a question, followed by, but I'll find out and I'll get back on that, and he does.



I think I'll kick them into place just to make sure.

I did nothing to correct the Ds impression that we were voting for Rights for Dollivers, not wanting them to rip up the ballots and throw them in the brisk wind which wasn't helping us all at the mailbox this morning.

But they did point out that their assistance as poll workers merited a trip out for their new dresses -- and pink dress Dolliver pointed out that this was the ideal time for her to wear her designer knitted silk dress with matching hat, and her Michele Obama leather belt. Amid a chorus of my dress is silk, too, neener, and I have POLKA DOTS, and I have LACE and I have a GARDEN PARTY HAT which I won't go out in, too windy for it, we made the trip.

Once home they decided the photo shoot should include a gangshot of the new duds



and their ever appreciative audience, HP.



The Ds. did stop posing long enough to say they were glad his dentist came on Friday and did a terrific job, removed the broken and dodgy tooth and root, very very tricky, even the Dollivers were in awe of the skill, and so fast that Boud was wondering when he was going to pull it out and realized it was done and stitching was under way. Oh.

No aftereffects, largely because Dr. Y. has almost completed a year long residency, over and above many years of homecare dentistry and tricky procedures, in special oral surgery at Temple U in Philadelphia, and explained he used some advanced skills to get this nice result for HP.

The Dollivers asked me if I fancied proposing him for sainthood, since the Pope is in the mood at the moment, heck, he had to look as far as Australia for a candidate, but I said, nah, it's okay, he can manage just with our profound gratitude and a card at Christmas.

Happy Monday!

Fiber Artworks Preview

I'm in the midst of a series of fiber artworks, wallhangings, which involve tapestry weaving, knitting, beading, using a lot of my own yarn spun from original fleece and dyed with KoolAid (!) and other people's handspun -- the lovely red tweedy yarn in the long yellow tapestry/bead piece was part of a gift from Heather C., her yarn share in a fiber farm, from sheep we probably saw in their lambcam in the Spring.

Then there's the yellow string, courtesy of the hardware store, and various other yarns courtesy of the thrift store...

This is where I start to look at what I've made to date, and see what is happening. I literally usually do not know this until I hang the show, but that won't be till next year, and I'm still working on other pieces in my head.

But this is a preview of where we are to date. And it looks as if some of the pieces have taken the form of clothing shapes, indirect portraits,



Originally thought of as a setting sun landscape over water, it seems as if a person insinuated herself into the midst of this one.



This is Ear of Wheat in a wheaten colored yarn. My subconscious turned it into a dress piece.



This is a mixed media, plastic pieces and knitted cotton yarn, officially unfinished but enough people have seen it in the house where I hung it to hang out, lengthen, and for me to study and see what's next, people who liked it a lot and thought it was finished, so maybe it is. Visiting Indian ladies last week liked it a lot, wanted to handle and enjoy it. So, is it done? we'll see.

and some become landscapes, again, indirect portraits.



I spun most of the yarn in this triptych, and dyed it, and watched in amazement as buildings and farmhouses and fields and crops started appearing in the work.



This is my first tapestry, made on a loom I created from a picture stretchers, warped with mason's twine. And it turned into a kind of study of crops stretching out to the horizon. A Navajo weaver saw a picture of this and was very encouraging about it, a great thrill, since she's a kind of national treasure.


I never plan and draw these out ahead, just work instinctively as I go. And see what happens.

Always an adventure.

Newsflash from Our Dollivood Reporter

EmCee, our Dollivood observer and reporter, sent in this newsflash:



The Dollivers' picketing has evidently paid dividends coast to coast. They are now in a huddle, torn between wearing hard hats to honor the Chilean miners' rescue, and campaigning to get their own bubblebath hot tub.

As they said, seize the day,let's do both, it's not every day we can be shovers and makers, we mean movers and shakers.

Reminded that they now have national union responsibilities, they pointed out that the least the union of Dollivers and Allied Barbies, aka DAB or Dolliver Nation, can do is provide decent workplace amenities to the founding Ds.

If Barbies have a conference bubblebath, Dollivers should, too. And they bet the Chilean miners would agree with them that a nice bubblebath is just the ticket after a shift in the mine. Or the D's clubhouse. They generously offered to campaign for bubblebaths for Chilean miners and their families to celebrate their rescue, too, so there's that.



Having exhausted the social responsibility impulses of the Ds, it only remains to remind blogistas that you can read the text of the riveting press release courtesy of EmCee, guest blogger, by clicking once to get to a new screen, then again to biggify it.

And to be seriously thankful with all of us that the miners have seen the light of day finally.

October food of all kinds!

Literal food is the two nice loaves I made with dough that made bread this time, rather than pizza bases (which are in the freezer waiting for an urge to eat pizza)


Sun shining through the trees, food for the eye and ear, birds, you know



and along the tree-lined path, yet another one, I have a few of these around here.




Food for international relations the two Indian ladies taking a gentle walk through the park




And food for the spirit is the border out in the front yard, still blooming away, no frost yet




Food for thought is the note my neighbor left this morning, torn off the Wall Street Journal, indicating that it's being used to housetrain a puppy. Hm. I wonder if Wall Street knows that.



Evidently it's failing in its goal, since the neighbor now wants to add my New York Times and Star Ledger to the mix. Who said newspapers had had their day?

TenTenTen

Duncan pointed out the total auspiciousness of the date, and even more so when a friendly black cat gets involved and puts his favorite leaf on the sign.

Of course the Dollivers have to capitalize immediately, having seen the newspaper inserts all about Hallowe'en supplies and costumes. They all want to go as princesses.




They also saw some of the freecycle haul of lovely clothes I received yesterday, a bag of which is being passed on in its turn, not my style, though lovely, and they noticed a black foofy polka dotted top, diaphanous, just their fancy. And the lace ribbon I received in another freecycle, and promptly decided it was for them. And enlisted Marigold



and Duncan in their picketing.



Cats are not usually particularly union minded, more on the rugged individual side of the spectrum, but they figured why not, we'll lend a sympathy vote.

So it looks as if the next craft adventures will be Foofy Costumes for Dollivers, who will pose when they are all dressed up and ready to trick or treat.

As the Ds point out, it's not as if I was busy or anything.

Today is another day, or TGIF!

Yesterday was a day written in infamy, starting from the failure of the home health aide to appear until I'd already done all the morning care, saying oh sorry I'm late, got stuck, don't have a cellphone.

I was civil, and spared her the language I was thinking....then there were a series of seizure crises all day, complete with urgent emails and calls back from doctor to nurse to me to pharmacist and many permutations thereof. Luckily, a nurse arrived on a scheduled visit among all this and was able to give me expert observation and a discussion with the doctor right away. So everyone's up to date at once.

And further, among all this, HP announced he thought he must have swallowed the crown and post that has been causing the trouble, since it was gone and he didn't know where. Urgent calls to dentist ensued. She reassured that he's okay till next week's scheduled time, if pain starts get dentist on Monday. Later it showed up in the folds of his afghan, and has been preserved for the dentist to view. Or the tooth fairy, whoever shows up first.

And an anxiety ridden run to pharmacy to pick up new meds, no neighbors at home to ask, nobody to leave with HP. So now a new approach to small seizures that might lead to a grand mal one is now in place, thanks to blessed doctor, better advice than any of the six, count them, neurologists we've consulted over the years.

Totally exhausted by mid afternoon, but the new meds caused a nice afternoon nap for HP, so I threw myself down in the recliner and was asleep in moments. Later part of the day smoother and calmer.

Then in the evening I needed to put up a new batch of bread dough, but seem to have put in the pizza dough yeast by mistake. This is probably why the dough stayed fairly liquid, all night. So I figured, this is good stuff, as my Mom used to say when something didn't quite work as planned, though she was a terrific cook, it's All Good Ingredients! and I realized I may as well make flatbreads on top of the stove, and used up all the dough, making seven individual pizza bases, yay. I needed the same bowl the dough had been in, to make actual bread today, hence the rush. I felt like an Indian housewife doing all these flatbreads.

However, just so you know all was NOT disaster yesterday, I got a wonderful freecycle offer of a big bag of clothes, many new, in my size, and HS is gallantly picking them up this morning on his way to work and will deliver them when he visits tomorrow. This is exactly the kind of treat I totally needed, cheered me a whole lot.

AND the kimono has a future little owner! no problem with sizing, since the baby has not yet arrived, and I just like very much the description I've had of the parents and why they'll love it as a gift from the friend I'm sending it to. My knitting really gets around! the shrug went to Texas, the kimono to California.

Meanwhile, back at the recliner, reading has been saving my sanity! Nicholson Baker, and Julian Barnes.



You can't go wrong really. Baker is an odd writer. He's very irritating and cutesy for its own sake, then he gets serious and says perfectly wonderful stuff.

The whole of The Anthologist is worth reading for this part: about threading beads on a necklace as a gift, he says "as soon as it's on, you lose interest in it and let it slip down and away, and you're on to the next one." Exactly how I operate in art, I love this. It's not about niggling over the same thing, it's about using the experience from one to move to the next, and you end up with something worth having. That wasn't exactly his point, but I like it anyway.

The Dollivers were quite irritated to find that it was Anthologist, not Andollogist, but insisted on the pictures anyway. And one Dolliver posed with Barnes' England, because as she says, oughta be Zadie Smith in here, Zadie rules! as it happens, Barnes is good, too, very funny and so deeply knowledgeable that he doesn't have to keep on telling you he is! very graceful reading. Any of his books. Even if he doesn't refer to Zadie Smith.

And the Box of Matches is the next Baker on my reading list, just now started on it. He has a great way of talking about minute details without being tedious and stuck in them. As you can see from the slenderness of his books, always a good thing.

Smallest Dolliver pointed out that since she can't read yet, she will bring her doll along and another Dolliver can read to her.



Sounds like a plan.

One Kimono In Search of an Owner

The baby kimono in purple, pink and deep pink is DONE! surprising amount of knitting in this little thing. But it served its calm inducing purposes for me, about which more in a sec.

Meanwhile, here it is: it's wool (not the sort of jacket that goes next to the skin), easy to put on because it opens wide, and is measured as shown, see the inches before you decide if you know a little person who would like it. Babies love strong colors, and you must admit these are strong colors! so email me if you're up for it, and I'll see who comes out as the lucky receiver, free gift from moi.





But PLEASE be sure it will be big enough for the baby before you request it. Read the sizing on the measuring tape in the pix for width and length. No use my giving you an estimated age for this, since babies vary so much that one baby's outgrown stuff another of the same age isn't yet in sight of.

And we got the lab results for HP, which shows something quite different from what we'd suspected -- low sodium, which may have accounted for a lot of the mental confusion and agitation, and the seizure and various other things. Can be a side effect of one of the seizure meds he takes (irony there, since it triggered a seizure, but oh well). So he's started on another medication to correct that situation. And we're hoping. More lab work in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, nursing care once a week to see how he's doing, and tomorrow, a home health aide here early enough to be useful, yay. Just tomorrow, who knows if it will ever happen again! and tomorrow respite student will be here and I can run away for a couple of hours.

AND, big AND, the blessed aide in my state assemblywoman's office, who has come to my rescue before, did it again, slashed through the red tape and I will get the correct forms for the tax allowance, and the correct ID and the correct PIN, first time in history, and I can reapply. I love this guy, so cheerful and competent.

Don't know about the grand jury summons yet, but if they won't excuse me, I'll get my hero in the assemblywoman's office on the case! he'll show 'em.

And I have an appointment to get an estimate on the new heating and AC systems for the house, and will get them done eftsoons before the weather gets too cold.

So things is better. If you don't count the electrical outlet that came completely out of the wall into my hand this afternoon when I tried to unplug the iron after I touched up the baby jacket. Saved by a handy neighbor lady who knows electricity and wiring and fixed it all back again. both of us tutting firmly about the shoddy work that put it in like that in the first place. After 20 years we're still finding shoddy stuff showing up.

Same neighbor lady stayed for a cup of tea and a hilarious accounting of the latest events in her six ferrets' lives....they're her equivalent of the Dollivers. She's an old and treasured friend, we're blessed. And I gave her a couple of ratchet sets to add to her tool collection, since they're complete, unused (HP used to like tools even ones he didn't quite get around to using) and she can use them.

So all in all, I'd say this is an okay place to be.

Cheerfulness keeps breaking in!

Such wonderful weather today, and HS over to spend most of the day, and let me get out and shop and visit the farm and generally catch up and who couldn't be more cheerful then?

The farm is in full fall fig, with the flowers



and the vegetables all booming, and the pumpkin fields, complete with imported pumpkins to fancy them up a bit, all doing their job. And children



running out to pick their pumpkins, and Indian customers



buying their vegetables, wonderful customers for veggie growers, especially of unusual varieties. I loved this lady in the saffron colored sari, perfect choice for an early October day.

The light is clearly October even if you didn't look at the calendar. A kind of golden light and a darker blue sky. September is more yellow light, and August is white light. November will be a darker blue light, and December grey.

HP is doing better, and our lives are still a bit in flux, because his illness evidently unleashes more help than just the nursing care and the lab work -- we may be getting a home health aide a couple of times a week. If they can send one at the right time to be useful, that is. Morning is when most of our needs happen. Later than that there's nothing much that would engage their skills, since morning nursing care has been done by me. So we'll see how that works.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my setpoint of cheerfulness has taken hold again, and despite huge fatigue, I feel much more optimistic, and noticing weird little things which amuse me.

Such as the dental hygienist recently talking about the music being piped into the office, oh, I love this group, and they have a wonderful song about put me in coach. Whereupon I wondered how on earth there could be a song about airline travel....and eventually realized when she told me a bit more of the lyrics, that it was put me in, Coach, some sporting thing, heh. Oh well.

Or a recent reference to HP and creative knitting arising therefrom, and again I wondered what powerful imagination could create knitting from the theme of Hewlett Packard...a printer cover? a cartridge cosy? and eventually discovered it was all about Harry Potter.

Speaking of knitting, that everlasting tranquillizer, I have embarked on a baby kimono, the belt being all finished now, no baby in view for it yet, but I have some thoughts about where to find a taker...just wanted to make this piece, which is knitted from the top, and is generally a fairly new experience for me in knitting architecture.

Interestingly, knitting is a tranquillizer for HP as well as me! he is soothed and reassured by seeing me knitting quietly away, all's well then. When there's more to see, I'll give you a pic. Meanwhile, I find that the pink yarn won't be enough, so I'm cutting in purple, too. I hate this color combo, but a lot of people love it, and I won't be the recipient, so that's fine.

I might be looking for a little candidate for this in the near future, I'll let you know, dear blogistas from ten, count them, countries! just checked my stats and I'm very happy about this.

Serenity Now!

The picture is about a lovely serene scene (say that fast) and the way I'm saying it at the moment is like George Costanza's father in Seinfeld screaming SERENITY NOW! as he tries to cultivate a peaceful frame of mind.

Yesterday, shortly after I posted in here, a lot of things happened. HP had an attack of nausea, looked absolutely terrible, then slept for a while, very groggy and confused, then after afternoon snack and meds, slept again until early evening when he threw a huge grand mal seizure, first one in many many months, fortunately he was still in the chair, safe, and I was able to transfer him in the lift into bed at about the normal time, when I discovered he was passing blood in the urine.

His blessed doctor got back to me within minutes, decided this was most probably a UTI -- which could account for the mental confusion as well as practically everything else -- ordered up a nurse visit for today, and called in a script for antibiotics to start last evening. Blessed HS stopped by at the pharmacy on his way home from work, picked up the pills and came over to visit with me, which helped me a whole lot.

Great difficulty getting HP to take evening meds and antiobio, because he was so confused he couldn't fathom how to open his mouth for the pills, how to suck the water through a straw to get them down, etc., but we finally managed it, and he slept peacefully all night.

So did I. What a day.

Today he's exhausted, and I handfed him breakfast and his medications, because he ate nothing yesterday and this is dangerous, and he was too exhausted even to pick up a cup, and he fell back asleep again. The little he said made sense more or less, and I'm awaiting the homecare nurse to see what she has to say. Good thing we have a reclining wheelchair, so I can tilt him back restfully.

Planning to handfeed him lunch, too, if I can manage to get him awake enough. And wondering if he has slipped down a notch. But it might all be about the UTI and the antiobios.

Tomorrow is Saturday, yay, which means, now that the beach season is probably winding down, HS will spend most of the day here, letting me get out and giving HP and me his company.

Meanwhile, SERENITY NOW, DAMMIT!!