E:\LETTERS\FebBan10.txt This file is posted at http://davebeeson.home.comcast.net/LETTERS/FEBBAN10.TXT 2 February 2010 Unfortunately, the humidifier is working just fine. I woke up this morning thinking that either the humidity was way, way down during the night or I was coming down with a cold. By the time Handwork Circle was over, it was obvious that it is the latter. So I'm sipping a mug of ginger tea with lots of honey and lemon juice in it. Been so long since I had a cold, I don't know how to act. Hope it doesn't get worse and keep me from the banner- making meeting tomorrow. The left-over hamburger was getting old, so I browned it and put it into a skillet of macaroni and cheese. I didn't think hamburger improved it any, but Dave was thrilled. Been so long since we had macaroni and cheese that I wasn't sure how to make it. The Betty Crocker Cookbook to the rescue! Now we're out of elbow mac and almost out of cheddar. Oddity: when I wear my gray socks on the red carpet at church, the soles turn pink. That carpet must have been vacuumed thousands of times; where am I getting red lint? I'm to the point of threading the elastic into my silk tights and trying them on. I don't think I'll do that tonight. 5 February 2010 Didn't do it yesterday, either. When I planned to stay in all day, I figured I'd catch up on my sewing, but I just barely had enough energy to sit in Dave's recliner reading _Shape Shifter_ by Tony Hillerman. This pleased Al very much -- anyone who sits in the recliner must intend to brush the cat. Since I improved after a couple of naps, I think that a good part of my condition was poor sleep the night before -- thinking about *breathing* all the time makes it hard to relax. I took a dose of Sudafed in the afternoon, and slept pretty well last night -- until about five, when I got up and played computer card games. Aside from coughing, I feel pretty good this morning, so I should be fit to leave the house tomorrow. 6 February 2010 Al escaped this morning and I went out barefoot in the snow to retrieve him. He did not appreciate this sacrifice on my part. Good night's sleep with no drugs. Listened to the scanner thinking what a lovely night it was to *not* be a cop. Not a lot of snow on the ground this morning, and the storm seems to have passed. Brighter out than it's been in days. 7 February 2010 Dave's cold started the same as mine, two days later, so he should have been at his sickest yesterday, but he didn't even stay home. Seems as though he's mostly fought it off. I was complaining about having lost my old-person's immunity to colds -- but this wasn't near as bad as some colds I remember. I never did get sick enough to spend the entire day in bed, for example. I may or may not still be contagious, but I'm coughing often enough to be obnoxious, so I'm going to sit in the balcony today -- well away from the audio-visual crew. I've probably got pretty strong belly muscles by now -- they've got over being sore. ------------------------------------------------------------ I sat in the sanctuary after all, but at the very back. I'd put a lunch napkin into every pocket and two in some, but just one got me through the whole service and I didn't need to blow my nose until after we were dismissed. On the other hand, with people streaming out, I couldn't step out into the narthex to be alone with my disgustingness. I have realized another way I deal with viruses better than when I was younger: my nose isn't irritated at all, let alone in dire need of soaking in a quarter-inch of Eucerin. I do hope that I remember where I put my spool of #100 black sewing silk before I use up what's on the needle. I've been looking at the two cakes that were left over from Christmas every time I open the freezer, but it was Dave who snapped and cut into the spice cake today. Yummy, but I wish I'd put in twice as many walnuts. I don't suppose I'll come up with an excuse to bake more before next December. No word from Mrs. Near on whether I'll be wanted for Date Night this Friday. Perhaps my e-mail miscarried? I *did* get her address from the New and Improved web site instead of forwarding a message through the church secretary. I expect I'd better sort out my Embroidery-Gig backpack just in case. Prolly need more stamped squares, and more blank squares, and I should count the skeins of embroidery floss. 8 February 2010 Dave has changed the URL of his webcam to http://home.comcast.net/~debeeson/DaveCam/ . Today is laundry day -- only two loads. But I'm not washing the sheet. 12 February 2010 Grumble, gripe: I *know* that I have a bag of stone- ground corn meal in that freezer *somewhere*! Makes it kinder hard to have corn-meal pancakes for breakfast. I (cough) think it just as well that I wasn't sure that the address for Mrs. Nier on the WLFMC website is dead until it was too late to offer to do the embroidery gig. I don't think I'm still contagious, but I take spells of being disgusting, and I might have a relapse if I underwent that much stress. Checked the backpack yesterday. I need to climb up on the kitchen stool and get down a strip of unbleached osnaburg, but there's enough washed osnaberg in the bag to do a gig, so I put it back as-is. (Unwashed is easier to push a needle through, and I seldom have time to teach the use of a thimble.) I lacked an inch of enough silk thread to finish the gown, so I basted the last inch of hem with black cotton, pulled out the white basting, and plan to wear it to church this Sunday if it's not too cold and windy to wear my alpaca shawl. 17 February 2010 Yesterday I noticed some black silk thread hanging on the curtain -- left over from when I was sewing the black dupioni satin, the label says. Haven't used it to finish the silk gown yet. Last Friday, I laid the raw silk for my new shirt out on the table, thinking that if I got it cut out then, I could have it to wear to Banner-Making tonight. The red one is embarrassingly ragged, but I need something long-sleeved that opens down the front, since I need to wear a short- sleeved shirt while making banners -- it gets hot in the parlor when we get energetic -- and need a long-sleeved shirt for walking back and forth. I not only didn't get any farther than tearing off a rectangle for each pattern piece -- a lot of the pieces have thread-straight edges -- I haven't ordered the thread to sew it together with yet. I finished one slipper sock at Handwork Circle. I'd expected to start the other one, but I went to the history lecture next door. Aside from slowing the work, when I ran out of aid-to-concentration work, I had to stop entirely. No way I could pick out the stitching on a toe while paying attention! What I'm doing is cutting the sole off a worn sock and sewing it to the sole of a less-worn sock, with the toe covering the heel. Which entails removing the seam at the toe. This should make the socks much warmer to slop around the house in. One thing I learned from the lecture was that when the Free Methodists were getting organized, you couldn't join the church unless you first freed all your slaves. "Free" in the name referred to free pews, free slaves, and free speech. The first two caught on, even among the non- religious, but the last always comes a cropper. A page I read out of _A Future with a History_ says that the founder himself was repudiated when he tried to defend another preacher's right to free speech. This morning I put the book that I brought home from church last night next to "Uncommon Friends" on the top shelf of the bookcase. When I opened the door to the bookcase, several books fell out, and a brittle collection of Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories broke. Other books fell open in various poses, but seem to have escaped getting wrinkled. When I picked up the mess, I found a letter from Mom to Aunt Grace that I had never seen before. Not one of the books seems particularly likely to have come from the family, but it's plain the letter has been in a book with two edges sticking out. There is no year in the date, but half the 0 in "Aug 20" has faded off where it stuck out of the book, so there might have once been. But there is scarcely room in the margin, and the date seems to have been added as an afterthought. It's been stored flat for so long that it took me a while to notice that it had been folded to fit a #6 envelope. 20 February 2010 Ordered silk thread today: with shipping, $42.75. But that should hold me for the foreseeable future. I got three spools of black machine twist, and two each of gray and natural. And one spool of black "100+". Also sorted the waste paper, bundled the newspapers, stacked the mixed paper but didn't tie it, and de-addressed old magazines and put them on the bike shelf to be taken to the hospital. There are quite a lot of magazines out there; I'd better take only half next time to be sure of getting them all into the racks. Guess I've been keeping in for a while. Should have ridden today, as it's supposed to snow again tomorrow. Didn't do much except play with the computer today. I did a little better yesterday: I made the other slipper sock, and have them on right now. They are warmer than plain socks, particularly when I sit with my feet on the cold floor. I may make another pair -- more neatly, I hope -- to have something to wear on washday. Other earthshaking news: when I put my yellow bra on yesterday, I thought that it wouldn't survive another trip through the washer. Which I've been thinking for many, many wash days -- but this morning I realized that it wouldn't survive being put on again, so now it's a cleaning rag. It will, no doubt be a very good one -- when Dave spilled coffee on the carpet a few days ago, I grabbed a piece of old linen and got every trace of it with that one rag: despite the odd shapes, linen rags are worth washing to use again. Though worn nearly white, the bra was still a fairly bright yellow inside the seams -- but nowhere was there even a hint that this garment had once been *green*! 21 February 2010 I realized, when undressing after church, that however many layers I took off, I was still dressed all in black. Except, I just realized, for my "natural" silk tights; They are still under the black slacks I wore under the black slip under my black-paisley skirt. After taking the sleeved slip off, I put on a black-with-yellow-moons pajama top. Hurrying to get dressed, I washed myself, put sunscreen on my age spot and nose, and left the shower room vaguely feeling that it was too soon. Halfway through the sermon, I put my hand on my chin and realized that I'd forgotten to shave -- and a four-day beard is fairly spectacular. Worse, my upper lip doesn't look fuzzy, it looks *dirty*. I guess it's good that I also forgot to re-comb my hair after arriving -- I couldn't have done so without becoming aware that I looked awful, and would have been self- conscious. 22 February 2010 My silk thread has been shipped. I'd better get on with designing the collar for my black silk shirt. [The thread was on my chair when I got up from my nap.] 24 February 2010 Macaroni and cheese with a tuna-can of ham in it for supper tonight. I almost forgot to put in the pint of milk -- that would have made for a rather crunchy casserole! Pleasant walk to church last night -- not as cold as I'd expected, and I left off one scarf for the trip back. Added another row of stitching to my silk tights, but in the process discovered that there is a half-twist in the elastic. I picked open the previous two rows of stitching -- I'd marked the beginning-end with a strand of maroon silk for just such an emergency -- but then it was time to go home, so I didn't pull out the elastic and un-stitch it. And I test-wore it pinned before stitching it, and checked twice for twists! At some point in the evening, I was interrupted by a knock I mistook for someone who didn't have the knack of opening the door -- the thumb-latch works a little hard, often fooling people into thinking it's locked when it isn't. Turned out to be a young couple wanting to look around because they were shopping for a church to be married in. I took them on a tour and completely and utterly forgot to mention the parlor! That's our chief selling point as a wedding chapel; it's fitted out as a bride's dressing room, and quite handy to the center aisle. And I didn't point out the art gallery, which is displaying children's art at the moment, or the library. Irrelevant to the wedding, but they are also looking for a place to attend. 26 February 2010 Dave has been fooling with the background on his webcam. This morning he asked what colors he should do today -- I said "purple and pink". He went and did it! Didn't look as bad as I expected, but it didn't look good. Went to Aldi's today because we were out of celery. Spent $108.31, but forgot to buy celery. I'd have to go shopping again soon anyway: I looked at the lettuce and thought that we had plenty -- and then served tacos for supper. I spent most of today reformatting the Notions chapter of _Rough Sewing_. Haven't even started on the table of contents, but I've put an anchor at each header and made a list of the names. And deleted a few dozen "very"s. There are some other partly-formatted files in the folder; I'll have to look into that. 3 March 2010 'Twar me who snapped and cut into the apricot cake. Silk longjohns fully sewn -- it's almost time to put them away for the summer.