Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Damp Days

Lovely, lovely day!  Leaves a delicate tracery of gold, copper, and bronze against a pale grey sky, all gaily dancing in the breeze -- light but muscular, and tossing my hair around my face -- ahhh!   Smiling weather.

Buses whooooshing by, broooom-jingle-scrunch!  Cars a lighter, smoother hisssss of the pavement, still wet from last night's rain.  Motorcycle -- which should not be out in this weather -- blap-blap-blap-brunnnngle-blap-blap-blap.

I don't even care that my car is in the shop, having its brakes examined, and new tires put on -- can't afford that, but what can you do?  Smile and keep walking.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

A trip to Bedfordshire

Well.  I'm not sure where to start.  I've sat here drinking cider and mindlessly scrolling through Facebook and completing quizzes like "Name all the Sesame Street characters!"  (100%, BTW) because I almost don't feel up to writing down why I am not bursting with fruit flavor this evening.

Okay.  So my house was completely clean because two of my sisters came to visit me twice last month, and then I had a day of assembling a costume, and baking nut tarts.  Which completely destroyed the clean house, as I was rushing from place to place trying to get the #$%@ bald cap to stay on my head and get the caramel filling to thicken and turn golden without burning and so on.  Sticky swathes on the counters, bits of nuts on the floor, drifts of fake fur all over the carpet, scissors, needles, thread, pins and so on everywhere else.  Really did a number on it.  And then I remembered that Aunt Jeannette was coming by to take me to dinner last night.  So I had one evening to undo all that hastily created disaster.  But, however, I did so, and the house was once again vacuumed and dusted and washed and dried and put away.

So, today, I had a dental appointment at 7:30, and then I went to Starbucks and was working on all the photos that had been piling up on my camera, when I got a phone call from the woman with whom I had been communicating about buying her antique oak bed frame, with inlaid flowers in the foot board.  (That's a long and possibly run-on sentence, but I'm just leaving it.  That's how unwriterly I am feeling this evening.  Deal with it.)  She was a block away from my apartment, with the bed frame in the back of her truck.  So I rushed home and helped her unload it, paid her for it, and then sat back and gloated over it.  However, while I was helping her unload it, I hurt myself -- not because it was heavy, because pfft!  Come on!  It's a bed frame!   But somehow, in the back and forth, I pulled a muscle or strained my heart (!! -- got that out of some book) or something, because for about three hours my chest ached and I felt as though I couldn't breathe properly, even though I was.  Also both hands felt as though they could not make fists, you know?

So that took some of the oomph out of my morning, and then about noon, when I was finally feeling like I could move around without, you know, dropping dead or anything, I started trying to put the bed together.  And now it is 7:30 PEE EMM, and it is STILL NOT PUT TOGETHER.

ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!

I finally quit and came over to the T&P, where I am now, and drank two pints of sweet cider rapidly to try and soothe my mind as well as my thirst.  And I have tomorrow to get the #$%@! bed together, so that's okay.  I will go to a hardware store first thing to get some bolts (they were not provided -- and the ones that I have are all either too big or too small, dang nab it.) and some of those bed-raiser thingies.  I will also sit down with sharp knife and see if I can't make the tabs fit the slots.  I will also call and order delivery of a new mattress and box spring set. I just have a hard time believing that this bed was put together and used for years, which is what I was told.  That cannot be true.  Sigh.  I don't like being lied to.


And I will have to sleep on the fold-put couch tonight!