Rainy Saturday

Woke up this morning to a rainy day..... as I type, I can hear the frogs outside by the fountain.  We have two little brown frogs that have made a home in that fountain, swimming around in circles for part of the day, then climbing out and sitting on the ledge as if they're garden ornaments.  There is also a family of frogs out by the coop (the kitty-coop now, since the chickens are all gone).

Every morning when I go out there to get the coop ready for the cats, five little frogs pop out from under the wood board just outside the coop.  I've put a shallow dish of water in the grass out there for the frogs, and they seem to wait for me to refresh the water each morning.  As soon as I do that, our outside cat Gatsby takes a drink, all the while being watched by ten little froggy eyes.  He doesn't bother the frogs, and the frogs just sit around the dish waiting for Gatsby to finish.

Mickey and Sweet Pea watch the frogs from inside the screened-in coop, and the frogs watch the cats.  It's like kitty-TV and frog-TV at the same time. But they're all happy, and that's what counts.

This month is almost over, and I don't know where most of it went. Busy with the house, my space in the antique shop, getting ready for the Halloween party, and just the usual day-to-day stuff. Plus reading. Always reading. I've finished the book on Vincent Van Gogh, this wonderful volume filled with his sketches and paintings along with the story of his life. He didn't even live long enough to see the impact of his talent on the art world.

Last week, we had an afternoon of card-making here...... me and J and J...  the three of us sitting around my dining room table, which I had filled with everything we needed to make Halloween cards..... happy Halloween cards for family and grandchildren--- no gory ghouls allowed.  We picked out card stock and papers and pictures and embellishments.... put them all together and ended up with original cards for my cousins and their grandchildren.  There were a few times in that dining room when you could have heard the proverbial pin dropping...... we were all concentrating on what we were doing, barely breathing till we got the cards just right.

I think I've created two card-making monsters...... both J and J will now be looking for seasonal pictures and embellishments,  and saving greeting cards that they get throughout the year....... and we're going to have a card-making afternoon once a month here.  Last week, Halloween cards...... next month--- Thanksgiving cards............... and then just wait till December..... greeting cards, place cards, gift tags.  

All of this paper crafting is part of my Aunt Dolly's legacy...... my aunt saved every bit of pretty paper, pictures from magazines, greeting cards that were given to her..... all of that went into hat boxes (one for each season)..... and when we had rainy days with nothing to do, or too-hot days when we didn't want to be out in the yard, my aunt would go up to the attic and bring down the hat boxes and we'd start making cards or gift tags or paper dolls. Endless hours spent at my grandmother's kitchen table, with the scissors and paste, papers and pictures and colored pencils.

I've tweaked Aunt Dolly's method just a bit.... using shoe boxes for each holiday, filling them with the fronts of greeting cards, pages from magazines, pretty embellishments from the hobby section of the store...... double-sided tape has replaced the messy paste, fancy-edged scissors are a must.... and as Mary Engelbreit would say: "Let the crafting begin."   And my Aunt Dolly, still busy and thriving at 99, probably has a hat box up on her closet shelf, filled with card-making supplies.

Catching up.... still.

.... it's the middle of September and I feel like I'm still catching up with myself.  What on earth happened to August?

I haven't started to read "War and Peace" yet, but I'm working my way down to that part of the pile of books-to-be-read.  I've started reading Irving Stone's book about Vincent Van Gogh.... wonderful story.  When my husband and I were in Amsterdam years ago, we went to a museum filled with Van Gogh's paintings.  So many museums there to choose from, and we saw quite a few, but the Van Gogh exhibit was worth every minute.

This particular volume of "Lust for Life" is filled with pages of Van Gogh's artwork.  It's a beautiful vintage copy and I found it in the thrift store the week after I found Irving Stone's "The Agony and The Ecstasy," his book about Michelangelo.   Honestly, every book in the state of Texas eventually finds it way to that thrift store.

Speaking of books........... the carpenter tells us that we're on his list for the beginning of October. I will believe it when I see him out on the porch with his bag of tools.  I'm sure he'll be here... he has always been as good as his word. 

We've had a lot of rain since last I typed.  Pouring-down soaking rain that lasted for hours and hours. Still not enough to fill up the ponds, but surely enough to wet down all the pastures and everything is green and thriving again. (And needs to be mowed again.)

I've had a battle of wits with the local post office this past week...... a package that I sent to one of my cousins in NY somehow got side-tracked and was sent to Beaumont, Texas.  How do I know that? Because the tracking confirmation number on the package listed its status as being delivered in Beaumont.  Of course, I was on the phone to our post office, and filling out on-line lost-package forms.                                                                                                                                            

Wonder of wonders, the USPS people called me up and told me that they were checking high and low in Beaumont for that package.   Three days later, my cousin called to tell me that she received the package.... I called the post office to tell them just that.... and the postmaster told me "Well now, she couldn't possibly have that package because my computer is telling me that it was delivered in Beaumont five days ago."

The postmaster didn't believe me and my cousin......... she believed what her computer was telling her. (Talk about being a slave to technology.) I suggested that maybe the tracking sticker came off of my cousin's package and got re-stuck on a package that was indeed headed for Beaumont.  After a few seconds of silence, she agreed that that could have happened.  I thanked the woman for her help, agreed to fill out an on-line survey about my postal experience, and then thanked the Postal-Powers-That-Be for getting that package to NY after its short delay in Beaumont.

The intense 100-degree heat is now just a memory.  The afternoon temperatures have been hovering at or just below 90 degrees.... with nice breezes and very low humidity.  The cats are enjoying the balmy air out in the kitty-coop during the day, watching frogs and lizards and hummingbirds..... and listening to 1,873 crows as they sit in the pecan trees waiting for the pods to release the nuts.  My husband takes an air-horn out on the porch and blasts it in the direction of the pecan trees..... the crows clearly do not like such a disturbance, and off they go, flying to the neighbors' pecan trees, no doubt.

I've started to write out the invitations for our Halloween party..... it already looks like a party on the first floor of the house.  Black cats and smiling witches, happy pumpkins all over the place, and the little corner by the fireplace in the living room is piling up with party gifts and costume prizes.  Halloween will be here before you know it..... so BOO! to you all......!

"War and Peace"

I am forever haunted by Tolstoy's "War and Peace."  I've tried to read that book more than a few times, but I never get further along than the first one hundred pages.  I've sold copies of that book on both eBay and Half.com, and I've given hardcover copies of "War and Peace" as birthday gifts to friends.  No matter how many copies I sell or give away, I still find more copies.  Last week at the thrift store.... there it was, a nicely bound vintage copy of Tolstoy's infamous book.

Oh well. I couldn't just leave it there.... not for a dollar. So it came home with me, and it's now sitting along with nineteen other books that are waiting to be read.  I will try it again.  I will try and keep up with the countless characters and endless details.  Maybe I will make it to the 200th page this time. If so, I will keep reading.  Each time I re-try this book, I never remember what I had read the time before, so it's all new.  You're killing me, Tolstoy.

We're still waiting for the third floor to get finished.... the carpenter has us 'on his list,' whatever that means.  We had such faith in that man and his crew...... we should have just let him finish up every last bit of every last thing when they were here. Never mind that we had to get the air-conditioning work done, and never mind that we hadn't yet decided on wood flooring or carpeting.......... they were right here in this very house and we should have just let them do every last bit of every last thing before they left.  So now we wait. And wait.  Christmas, I tell you..... it won't be done till Christmas, if even that.  I can see that library in my mind's eye...... and in my mind, all the shelves are up and filled with books............. there are tables and lamps and chairs and the loveseat......... and there I sit, with "War and Peace" and I'm nearly finished with the book and it all finally makes sense. 

As I type, I can see the pile of books that I have here, waiting to be read.  There's not enough time to read everything I'd like to read...... plus all the books that I would like to re-read.  Right now, I'm re-reading "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy.  I read that book years and years ago when it first came out, never realizing that so much of that story was a personal memoir of the author. Ouch. Makes you look at this book in a whole new way.... so of course, I had to re-read this volume.  Plus I found copies of Conroy's other important books on Half.com, always a sourse for out-of-print or hard-to-find books.

And I forgot to mention "The Agony and The Ecstasy," by Iriving Stone....... another vintage hardcover that I found in the thrift store for just one dollar.  And, of course, I couldn't leave that there, either, so it's sitting on the to-be-read pile along with Tolstoy.  Maybe I should read  The Agony and The Ecstasy  when the upstairs library gets finished........... with that title, it's the perfect description of this entire third floor library adventure.

Catching up.

Spiders and wasps and bees and crickets on steroids...... all things crawling, flying, stinging.... we're surrounded.   You would think that with the bumper-crop of frogs here, there wouldn't be an insect anywhere in sight. But even the frogs couldn't keep up this summer.

There have been scorpions in the house, but the ones I've seen were just laying flat-out dead. It's the scorpions that I don't see that will be the ones that worry me the most.  Our across-the-road neighbor woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago and found a scorpion in her bed. Nestled under the covers just as nice as you please..... and she discovered the visitor seconds after it stung her.  Needless to say, she "smashed down" that particular scorpion, but her story of that middle-of-the-morning adventure has all of us looking under the covers every single night.

We've had hotter-than-hot temperatures this past week..... I don't even think the temperatures are any higher than they usually are, but the humidity has been off the charts, which makes every day just very uncomfortable.  I was never one to complain about the heat... but these past few summers have just been the pits.  Add to that the lack of rain, and the once-again empty ponds, and it feels like we're living in a desert. I'm not even going to wish for cold (or even cooler) weather, because the memory of the deep-freeze we had two years ago (which burst the water pipes) is still fresh in my Texas mind.

The shops in town here are all decorated for Halloween..... which got me to take out my own boxes of Halloween decorations.  I spent the last two days decorating the inside of the house.  The living room, dining room, kitchen and breakfast room, plus the foyer..... all decked out with pumpkins and black cats and witches, with a few ghosts tossed in for good measure.  No decorations outside on the porch, because I know that the wasps and scorpions will find them.  I don't mind the cute little spider decorations that I have, but I don't need any real ones, thank you.

Speaking of spiders, the 'golden weavers' (or banana spiders, as the locals call them, because of their yellow bodies) have exploded in population as well.  No matter where you look, there's the familiar zig-zag in the center of that spider's webs.  There's a golden weaver web in the purple sage outside the breakfast room windows. I can see it clearly from my chair, and if I look through the binoculars, I can practically see the spider's eyes.  Every blessed day, there's some insect caught in that huge web.  The golden weaver will wrap up its prey in webbing, and leave it hanging there for hours before it starts to feast on it, poor thing.

We're living in a never-ending episode of "Wild Kingdom."