Summer Funny of the Week

I came into Summer's room today, and found her longing on her bed with a large PowerAde and most of a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. She'd been urpy!sick on Friday, and the combo of Flamin' Hots and sugared drink has not served her well in the past. Considering that she needed over-the-counter tummy meds on Friday, let's say the tone of my voice was incredulous

"You are having PowerAde and Flamin' Hots?"
"Don't judge me."

(no subject)

Alice Woodside, girlwithoutfear  gave us a reason to anticipate the Day After Thanksgiving. She was coming to teach Summer and I free-motion embroidery. (I learned it, and Summer worked on my laptop on something else.)

I was lucky enough to get to spend a whole work-free day with her (Summer and I usually see her for fifteen rushed minutes at CAPE), and it was one of my favorite kind of days: not just fun, but energizing, grin-for-hours after fun. Alice is one of those people that is just good to be with, and more than willing to have fun.
I am sure, beyond a doubt, that when Summer and I were decorating trees (we removed ornaments from displays an hung them on the naked display trees) at Hobby Lobby last week, Alice would've joined in. (We were not supposed to be decorating the trees, we just did. To see what would happen. It was a flashmob. We're naughty.) Alice would've hung more ornaments than the two of us combined.
We went for Starbucks (Alice bought) and to Walgreen's (because Summer and I were urpy from T'giving dinner, we bought our own, there).

Alice brought her Daredevil quilts to show me. I've never seen them up close, and they are exquisite. They are beautiful to look at, and they're lovely to run fingers over, not just for the Swarovski crystal braille on them. During a bad spell, Alice had beaded fringes some of them. The beading was gorgeous, but also made me laugh. Beading is hard, and Alice had done ridiculously difficult fringes. By the time I got to the twisted fringe, I was, no pun intended, in stitches. It was like the huge stitches in a quilt I once owned: they clearly said "I want this damn quilt done NOW I'm sick of looking at it and my feet are COLD!" Alice's fringes said, "I'll show you rassin frassin' fuck ur ur...!"

Alice brought along a sewing machine, a lovely, unkillable Elna to demonstrate for me. She brought the Elna for me.
I am absolutely stunned, still. I happen to love vintage machines, sometimes far more than their modern counterparts. I have a fantastic Jamone, a "travel" machine (meaning it weighs only 12 pounds), but for basic stitches, it has been goof-proofed with unchangeable 1/2 step presets for length and width.
Not so the Elna. This machine is a full-adjustable, all-mechanical badass.

Which I think is a good way to sum up Alice as well.

Thanks for the great day, Alice. I feel like we've had Christmas already!

Monday Walkies

I walked again this evening, motivated by a trip back to Hobby Lobby because I found a $9.99 charge on my card for something I didn't buy. Nicely enough, the manager was no trouble, having had the fight beaten out of him by a crush of decorators that had just ebbed before I got there. He was too tired to do more than lean half a degree. My checker took that as a yes, and gave me a store credit on a card.

I needed brushes, most of my fleet has been whittled away over the last few years so that I only have a few battered rounds. Brushes were on sale, so I bought sets for utility painting. 50% off meant $6.00 for 18 brushes. These are not lousy brushes, but they aren't nice ones, either. Just good enough. Sometimes that's all you require.

Over at Hancock Fabrics, on my wandering around sizing up machine embroidery threads (expensive, gloom), I found a display of Tensor lights being blown at 50% off. One of them was the classic style:




(This is not THE Tensor, but a lamp like it)
The lamp was perfect, but the clamp was long baby gone. They usually are, so I check boxes.

I still have the skull-crushing base from my last swing-arm lamp, a sad thing with lousy springs and a worse fixture. The base was wonderfully heavy, good for counterbalancing recalcitrant set pieces in photo shoots, so I kept it. I scored the lamp for $8.50, because that's how you scrounge, baby!
The lamp fit the base perfectly. I have task lighting at my painting/sewing/sculpting table for the first time in a year! Yay!
ETA: Must return lamp. Missing clamp: No problem. Missing SPRINGS on upper arm of lamp that uses springs to hold positions: PROBLEM. Rather disappointed.

Monday Walk: Honk and Flip

My "wind" is getting ridiculously good. I still have a problem with my left leg feeling cramped and heavy, but I've had that since riding my shin down a flight of stairs in high school, and I've learned to live with it.

Another thing I'm learning to live with is people making right hand turns who either speed up to turn before I'm in the crosswalk, or never look at all. The not-looking is an easy mistake to make, I've done it. It's something that will happen when drivers aren't used to pedestrian traffic or haven't clipped their first walker yet.

The thing that I don't like is people honking. There's absolutely no call for it when a walker is crossing with their signals. Yes, I know you're very important and busybusy because you are in a car, and I must be nobody because I choose to walk. Walking as transportation is associated with lower class here. The virtuous mind-dulling pacing after driving to the park is how the right people do it.  Therefore, impatient honking is just a "Make way!" from the Driving Important to us Proles who walk.

Tonight, I got a new and exciting variation on the theme.
Halfway across the street, I was startled by the car in the left turn lane, which I was right in front of, blatting his horn at me. I looked at the light first, in case I was in the way. The light was still mine. I looked back at the car, and the driver, a man, and the passenger, a middle-school boy, were having a good ha-ha over making me jump. The kid was making eye contact, still laughing when I looked at them.

I threw them the British eff off and followed up with the American translation to make myself clear.

That made the smile jump from the kid's face so fast I am almost ashamed. Almost. I have no time for people who are bullies just because they are in a car and have imaginary gender privilege.  

She Was Funny Yesterday, She is Beautiful Today

Summer, Fox and I sat outside this afternoon while I ate my late lunch and Fox had his after-school snack. Summer ate Cheez Its, marveling at how the actual-size picture on the box was the actual size of the crackers inside Fox tested this for himself with every fourth Cheez It.

Summer was admiring the very blue First of December sky. I saw one scrappy little cloud hanging out in that blue.
"That's a lonely little cloud," I said.
"That's a cloud with the whole big blue sky for company," Summer answered.

It's a new half-full. That's my girl.