A Little Is Better than None

 

        Sometime in March I stitched this little pinkeep from a scrap.  Nothing fancy, just functional.  Pinning it to my apron keeps the needles easily at hand, and I don't lose them.  But I learned the hard way that placing them horizontally results in my forearms being scratched!

        My fingers don't much like pinching a needle, and the hand therapists told me to hold a needle for only 20 seconds at a time, stopping to give my fingers a rest and stretch them.  Seriously?  Are you kidding me?  Can ya'll see me rolling my eyes?  That was many years ago, when severe joint pain and swelling was making my now-gnarly knuckles almost unusable.  But unlike my beloved Grandma, who never had the benefit of help from a certified hand therapist (always an occupational or physical therapist), I've been able to continue working with my hands.

        Still, today, even without those breaks, it takes me a full 15 minutes to hand-sew a mere 6-inch long line of straight stitches.  Goodness gracious.  But this little dooliebob helps - no time wasted scrambling about searching for a lost needle, worrying it will make its way into a dog's mouth!

        This small effort was a huge accomplishment for me, and though it has none of the finesse of my hand-stitching 30 years ago, when I had a small business doing custom sewing, it's finished.  It. Is. Finished.  I didn't let perfectionism get in the way of making it.  And I'm proud of that.  A little stitching, a tiny, imperfect project, is better than none.  Use it or lose it baby!

Basil Roots!!! Time to Transplant!!!

Happy happy happy!

Sometimes "Making" Involves Killing

     A potted "sweet mint," for making mint iced tea, has graced our desk for months, but a few weeks ago it began to "look poorly," as my Mom would say.  It was already stressed by the dry air of our apartment and the lack of adequate sunlight; I should have taken it outside two months ago.  But I love to touch the leaves and enjoy the scent wafting around the desk.  A memory, and a tiny little suspicion began to work their way to the forefront of my mind, still dulled by long COVID.  Time to pull out the antique, but still extremely useful, microscope.

     With some white paper, Scotch tape, two fallen leaves, and after a lot of adjusting and re-adjusting the lens and sliding the paper back and forth on the , the culprit came into view.  Two-spotted spider mites.  The leaves look very dry and dull to the naked eye, but under the lens, the surfaces cells' transparency is visible, along with microscopic droplets of water, spider mite feces, and long blue-grey threads here and there that might be fungal hyphae.

     Because this is an edible, and I don't want to use a chemical pesticide - even a supposedly "organic" one such as a pyrethrin - an alternative form of murder is worth a try.  As you can see, I have no qualms about killing certain insects.  Experts recommend spraying them off with a hose, but we don't have a hose, or an accessible outdoor spigot, anyway, so I'm trying to drown the evil little monsters.  And this plant is too fragile to endure even the kitchen sink sprayer.  I absolutely cannot remember if it worked the last time or not.  But here goes!

Plant, soil, and pot, completely submerged in water (pulling the garbage bag over the plant and pressing all the air out ensures the entire plant - and hopefully all the mites - are fully submerged).  We'll see what happens.

Rooting a "Magic" Basil Cutting

"Magic" basil cutting, keeping company with Annie the gnome

        Last week I felt safe attending our monthly Master Gardener meeting.  Why?  Because it's held in a gigantic, many-thousand-square-feet, extremely high-ceilinged room (higher than in a Walmart Supercenter), those of us there were like a few ants in an empty swimming pool, and I sat at a distance from everyone else.  Almost no one walks up and gets right in my face trying to talk to me, and if they do, there's nothing in the way (e.g. a church pew, table, row of chairs, or bathroom or church foyer wall) to keep me from backing well away from them.  (You wouldn't believe how many people don't take the hint and keep getting closer as you back away from them!)  The restrooms are very large, with many stalls, and well ventilated.  Of course I wore an N-95 mask with a second mask over it - and was the only person wearing a mask.  Of course.  A woman has to do what she's got to do to protect her immunocompromised self from everyone else.

        The presenter for the educational portion of our meeting, a fellow MG, spoke on herbs, and brought seedlings and cuttings to share with the rest of us.  She's an expert on culinary herbs; every time she speaks I learn something new, and leave inspired to keep experimenting, both with growing new herbs and cooking with them.

        This is a "Magic" basil stem cutting; I don't know if it's "Wild Magic," which doesn't produce viable seed, or some other cultivar, but regardless, Linda said these root in water, and are "too sweet" for her traditional Italian cooking.  Now it's time for me to learn the difference between sweet and not-sweet basil in cooking.  And even if I don't use it to cook with, the fragrance is delightful!  LIFE is finding its way. It's only been three days and already, tiny root hairs are visible coming out of the upper node!  

"Magic" basil cutting

Saturday August 20, 2022

Magic in the Garden!

        Sometimes my "making" involves observing that which needs nurturing, watering, transplanting.  That's what today's post is about.

        I love gardening because it is full of magic.  I don't mean Harry Potter cast-a-spell magic.  Rather, magic that is the delightful surprises that come because, as Dr. Ian Malcolm said in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, "life, um, finds a way".  As when plants revive in spite of extreme heat and dryness, in spite of freezes, in spite of neglect.  Yes it often does.  This morning brought several magical surprises.  The fact that I have to sit down every minute or so to relieve the pain in my back is a gift, because it forces me to be still and simply be.  Observe.  Look, listen, feel, smell.

Common Paper Wasp

        A large sturdy wasp hovered, then landed on our half-a-century-old rocker.  Along the edge of the slats it landed on, the wood was very pale - as if someone had taken a plane and scraped off a few inches.  This mystified me until the wasp grasped the corner edge of the slat with its jaws, and worked them a bit.  Wow.  It was chewing on the wood.  And apparently had been doing so for quite a while.  I never knew that there are species of wasps that eat wood!

Cope's Gray Tree Frog

        As I was watering, something pale jumped away from the small watering can.  I sat and gazed in the direction of the movement, and there was a new-to-me species of frog, sitting, watching me back.  The lovely creature is a Cope's Gray Tree Frog (Hyla chrysoscelis)  To hear its song, go to https://srelherp.uga.edu/anurans/sounds/hylchr.mp3 .

Jade Plant

        Our jade plant, a gift from a dear friend, is sprouting tiny leaves all over.  Even the leaves that have fallen off are producing rootlets.  Propagation is one of my favorite garden activities - especially when the plant itself gets a head start producing "volunteers".

Pothos

        Early last year my attempt to propagate a beautiful Pothos failed; more often than not, such failures occur because I forget to water the plants.  Out of sight, out of mind.  The Tradescantia I planted in the same pot thrived, but every one of the five or six pothos cuttings dried up.  This morning, right in the middle of the soil in that pot, these two brilliant green leaves screamed "I'm ALIVE!"  My heart nearly burst with joy.  I had not seen this particular color of Pothos in over a year!

Dragon Fruit???

        We will see.  The leaves are sending roots, desperate for more nutrients.  Notice the Southern Anole resting a few inches away?

Split-Leaf Philodendron

        The plant pictured below is sending roots up the inside of its pot... this is a severely pot-bound split-leaf philodendron that has managed to both survive a move and being stuck in its too-small pot for far too long - and now it's seeking new ground to obtain nutrients and water.

        The fact that, yes, life will find a way, is magic to me.  It doesn't matter that I could give lectures on aerial roots and phototropism, on dormancy and propagation and plant anatomy and composting and shade gardening in the South. What I've learned, so far, is but a drop in  the ocean of botanical and horticultural knowledge.  For me, the joy comes in discovery and learning.  JOY JOY JOY!!!

July 21, 2022, Thursday

Readying the Ground Garden for Spring

        This is what our front porch patch looked like a few days ago.  A few freezes had destroyed the tender tissues of the three perennials we'd been growing in that space, and they'd browned and gone limp.

The hori-hori knife has done its work!

        This is what it looks like now, after cutting most of the butterfly ginger to the ground, as well as the canna lilies and 'Black Jack' ornamental sweet potato.  I'm preparing this space for a spring planting of as-yet undecided plants.  Undecided because we've had big problems with the landscaping crews spraying glyphosate (Round-Up) and other herbicides along the edges of and far into the planting beds, despite my repeatedly asking them not to.  They destroyed the perfectly healthy, original beautiful perennial plantings put in by the landscape designer many years ago along our neighbor's entrance sidewalk - and then didn't bother to replace the dead plants, even a year later. It's remained an ugly brown-grey scar.  So I'm afraid to plant any edibles in the soil here, and our awesome ag agent was also concerned about the soil being contaminated by the bleach and detergent coming off the roof and walls when the building is cleaned.  So, ornamentals only in this rather damp soil.  But I can make magic with containers!!!

        That's because they haven't sprayed herbicides on anything I have growing in containers. There's always the risk of blow over when they're spraying, but all I can do is ask them, again, to NOT spray any kind of herbicide near our apartment.

        While mulling over options for vertical growing, in this patch, or just behind it, I've considered using containers, cord, and the old shepherd's crook we've been hanging hats on.  Before we moved here we used it to hold a hummingbird feeder (forbidden here - no feeding the "wildlife") on one side and a hanging planter on the other.  YouTube has turned out to be an excellent source of information about vertical growing, recycling plastic containers for growing edibles and ornamentals - especially videos by incredibly creative Vietnamese people who do not have yards, yet find ways to cram in as many plants as possible in their rooftop and balcony gardens.  There's no narration, no speech, but they do a great job of demonstrating how to turn water bottles and soft drink bottles into planters, how to build a frame from which to hang them, etc.

        I have some rather old flowering vine seeds and some fresh  nasturtium seed to grow (nasturtium blossoms and leaves for salads).  My extremely old nasturtium seeds failed to germinate.  They were really old, but it never hurts to try!  As our wonderful LSU AgCenter agent says, 'if you get just one plant out of it, it's worth it'.  And I never tire of experimenting - there is always something new to learn!

Reclaiming Something Lost

 

One morning a week or two ago, my "making" most certainly wasn't a material one - and besides, adding water to a bowl and popping it in the microwave isn't really "making" something, in my mind.  Although I routinely say "make" instead of "fix".  E.g. "Make a bowl of soup."  In other words, dump out a can of soup and pop it in the microwave.  As opposed to making a pbj, which requires at least three ingredients, a knife, a plate, messy application of sticky stuff to bread, and an often maddening amount of cleanup, because I invariably get both the peanut butter and the jelly or jam on my fingers, on the edge of the plate, on the counter, even on my forearms and the floor.  Because every other time I lose my grip on the knife and it hits the floor, providing the barking scavenger at my feet a lick or two of sweetness.  Sigh.

Instead, this making was of the soul... making a connection with my younger self and with my long-deceased father.  I don't know if he ever ate ramen; he probably did, because he dined in any Japanese restaurant he could.  He loved Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, German, and some New Orleans Creole dishes - any "ethnic" cuisine available to him.  Daddy somewhat patiently taught me how to eat with chopsticks.  We weren't allowed to eat Chinese or Japanese food with fork and knife - to do so would be disrespectful to their people and their culture.  We ate Indian food with the fingers of our right hands, once again, showing respect for the culture whose food we were eating.  (And deeply offending my mother's Southern Belle manners.) This was my father's teaching in the 1960s and 1970s.  He didn't show the same respect for my mother's family or their "White Trash" (not his words) food, which was virtually identical to Black soul food, and which, other than the weekly "wash day" red beans and rice which he despised, was never served in our home.  Luckily Grandma taught me to appreciate it.  Well, most of it.  No one's succeeded in getting me to eat real hog's head cheese, pickled pigs' feet or trotters prepared any other way, much less brains, tripe, chitlins, ears, or raw oysters.  It should be noted that Mama was the only one of us who refused to eat with chopsticks, most likely a tit-for-tat act of defiance toward Daddy.

I hadn't eaten with chopsticks, at home, for decades.  To an almost overwhelming extent I'd abandoned my own family's comparatively sophisticated food culture and embraced (mostly) the simple "white-bread" foodways of the family I married into.  It's a blessing to be married to a man with simple tastes when it comes to food - he's never demanded the time-consuming, labor-intensive "gourmet" foods that my father preferred. It was just as well, because the sicker I became, the harder it was to make from-scratch food anyway.  I basked in my mother-in-law's comfort food and tried to learn how to cook everything she cooked, and yet still craved almost anything that wasn't "Amurican".

But decades later, poverty, pain, illness, and overwhelming fatigue caused this "foody" to resort to eating packaged ramen noodle soup on an icy cold day.  I suspect Daddy would've sighed in disgust and added a large quantity of his favorite condiment - the original red Tabasco sauce.  To his dismay I did not inherit his cast-iron stomach, nor his taste for vinegary-spicy things, so that particular delight remains on our shelf, unopened, as a sentimental reminder of my favorite gastrosnob.

This morning, though, the frustration of seeing noodles slip off the edge of my spoon and feeling them slap against my chin sent me to the cutlery drawer, not knowing if we still had chopsticks.  I remembered watching diners eating ramen on a travel show, using both a spoon and chopsticks to control the noodles.  The spoons were identical to the ceramic ones we used growing up.  Time to re-learn how to eat properly.  Yes!  We have a pair of chopsticks!  Sure  wish I could remember where I got them - probably purchased them at Trey Yuen, or they might have come from my favorite French Quarter gift shop when I was a kid, a small place off the beaten path, owned by an Asian couple.

As I ate, I felt something wonderful happening deep inside my heart.  A sweet recognition of familiarity and memory.  A remembering of Daddy's presence, his ongoing efforts to broaden my mind and fight what he accurately perceived to be the stultifying influence of Southern religious and cultural mores on feminine intellectualism and creativity. A re-awakening, a reclamation of a part of myself so long buried.  One more step in the journey back to myself, in the journey to embracing the real me buried for so long.

Epic Fail

     This is one of those times when my effort, my intense desire to "make" like Grandma did, to connect with her and Mama - results in an epic fail.

      Saturday I made a rare trip to the farmer's market to get some herbs & collard greens, or kale if collards weren't available.  But it was collards I wanted and collards I was thrilled to get, a nice big dark green bunch, freshly cut that morning.

      As soon as I got home into a tub of water they went.  Grandma had taught me they needed to be soaked and rinsed over and over and over and over to eliminate any sand, clay or dirt.  So every few hours I'd dump out the tub, holding the greens in place, then refill it with cold water to both clean them and keep them from wilting.

     As happens more often than not, I ran "plumb out of" the few "spoons" I wake up with each morning, and my spine was flinging foul epithets at me to boot.  The greens would have to be cooked the next day.

     And the next day, an entirely different bunch of collards greeted me.  Some were limp.  Some were turning slimy and black.  Some were yellowing.  All had holes in them.  Holes that weren't there when I bought the bunch.  I poured out what should have been perfectly clean water.  It was tinged green, littered with bits of dark green leaf and slimy threads of lighter green waving off the stems, and a layer of black grainy specks at the bottom of the tub.  Odd.  Very odd.  Well.  Dan Gill says 'It's okay to eat the holes.'  So I rinsed the collards again, and turned to get a pair of scissors and a knife.  When I turned back to the tub, movement caught my eye.  I did a double-take.  A pair of dark, slick antennae waved and crept up one of the leaves - followed by a repulsive, slime-covered body.  I nearly puked.  Ugh!  A slug!

     I knew that they love to feast on hostas.  Never would I have expected to see one on my precious collard greens!

     Remembering Gill's words, and trying very hard to not be a wuss, I lifted away the disgusting beast with a paper towel and dropped it in the kitchen trash, then began picking the leaves out one at a time, intending to salvage as much as possible. But with each leaf lifted from the water, hope for a nice meal of "cornbread & collards" circled the drain faster and faster.  The lower part of most of the leaves had been gnawed off and the stems macerated - hence the long fibrous strands swimming in slime - and of course the dozens and dozens of holes.  By the time I finished, only about a third of the bunch remained, and my gag reflex was fully activated.  Even if the greens were "safe" to eat - nope.  Wasn't gonna happen.

     I burst into tears.  When everything you do is five times as hard as it used to be, or just plain impossible, or it hurts like hell to do it and then you pay dearly with even more pain than usual for the rest of the day, and four dollars were wasted - a loss like this feels ridiculously hard.

    I just wanted some fresh collards.  Next time, I'll buy them at the grocery store, pesticides and all!

 

Little Free Library!!!

    Yes, it's been a year since I last posted.  A lot, a lot has happened since then, and in a nutshell, I'm profoundly grateful that my beloved and I are both still alive.  While I have the mental and physical energy to do so, I'm posting again.  It was very tempting to just give up and abandon the blogging thing, since I can't do it consistently.  But I just plain enjoy it!  So I will.  Who cares if no one looks at it but me - it gives me pleasure, and that's enough.  And if my memory continues to falter, these posts will serve as repositories of a few of the things that give me joy.

    Long before we moved here to the housing project, when we still owned our own home, I dreamed of building a colorful "Little Free Library" (LFL) on our front lawn, with a curved bridge across the ditch, a bench for visitors to sit on while they peruse books, and an herb garden with scissors that passersby could harvest from... and sketched out my ideas in a sketchbook.  But obviously things didn't work out.  The biggest obstacle was that we couldn't figure a safe place for people to sit out there... the danger from limbs falling off of nearby aged, diseased water oaks was just too great.  It was one of many dreams I've had to let go of.

    But the universe seems always ready to offer an alternative to those with eyes and hearts open to new possibilities.  I am still a maker, if only for minutes at a time, and welcome any opportunity.

    A delightful white-haired maintenance man who worked here - for it seems just a few weeks - told me that someone had built a Little Free Library out in front of the community center here, and its steward had made a habit of looking for a specific author's mystery novels he liked to read and stocking them in the LFL.  How wonderful!

    So my beloved and I walked over to take a look. I nearly burst into tears of joy to see this LFL, just a short walk from our apartment, to which I can donate books.  What a gift, that someone else did what I cannot do!  I'm too fatigued to even imagine building anything right now - simply walking from the back of our apartment to the front and a few yards out to the sidewalk is exhausting.  So I adapt and do what my body will let me.  Lately, that's small things, done while seated.  One of my moments of making in the last few months was printing out these LFL labels onto copy paper and coloring them in with markers.  I'll glue them into the inside front cover of each book I donate.

Coloring them in was a quiet, calming, meditative experience.

    Today, cutting them out on our old paper cutter today was equally soothing, enlivened by the anticipatory delight of imagining gluing them in and delivering them to the LFL.  I can't wait!

Finally, Yarn In Play After All These Months!

     It's been almost 7 months since I last worked with yarn, fabric, clay, or any art medium except colored pencils and gel pens. Those I've played with because I switched from using the very expensive commercially-produced pre-printed planner used for the past 20 yrs. to using a bullet-journal format. It costs a tenth of what a fancy planner costs, makes it possible to custom-tailor every page to my needs, and provides endless opportunities for creative doodling and drawing. And the pages don't fall out. Can't beat that!

     That state of 3-D art/needlework paralysis, though, ended this week when I learned that Gregory Patrick would be hosting, on YouTube, a live teddy bear knit-along today and this weekend. Just what I need to be able to focus: the external framework of someone else's schedule and guidance, with homework and deadlines. Perfect for an overwhelmed & depressed ADHD brain. Needless to say I couldn't keep up - his fingers fly as he knits and I fumbled along, failing to produce the correct number of stitches, getting completely lost. But I did not give up.

Embroidery thread marking every 10 rows of a teddy bear arm.

     The neat rows of tight knit stitches are immensely satisfying to look at. The increase rows look awful, even after ripping out the first one three times because I had so much trouble staying "on task" despite the clear written instructions (see his book, Beasties: A Collection of Knit Animal Patterns, at https://gregorypatrick.bigcartel.com/product/beasties-a-collection-of-knit-animal-patterns-pdf). It also became necessary to stop frequently  and rest my swelling finger joints, and it took quite a while to limber them up in the first place. But I won't abandon such hand work again. It is a form of physical therapy - "use it or lose it"! And psychotherapy - a "maker" making is always a happier person.

Sew inside out, then turn outside-out. One arm done!

     This is what happens when you forget those nuances Gregory speaks of - because I sewed along the edge instead of a couple of stitches in from the edge, the stitches show. Also there are big holes at the shoulder for the same reason. Eye roll. That's ok; they won't show. But I really need to only do one thing at a time - either watch and take notes, or knit. Not both. Trying to knit-along is something to maybe tackle once I'm back in the knitting groove and can manipulate needles and yarn without losing my grip on both. And using less-slippery needles might help too!

     Another typical distraction that makes my brain go "SQUIRREL!!!"

Untangling what has to be the thickest, coarsest "embroidery" thread ever spun. What a mess!

Paralysis by Pandemic & Illness

      Here we are, mid-April, and I've done nothing creative with my hands since the last post, back in December, but fill in my planner and sketch out an idea for upcycling jeans and denim skirts. The pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes, COVID-19, has turned the world upside-down. So has my beloved experiencing a stroke and TIA three weeks ago and my own usual string of infections since January. But I have two sewing projects to start working on, once my energy level increases enough to do more than the most basic housekeeping and cooking tasks. Even though it's been over 14 months since my first spinal fracture/herniated disc, sitting at a task chair is still painful and hard to do for very long, whether it's in front of the computer or a sewing machine.

      The first project is sewing some washable cloth face masks. We've been re-using the same disposable but un-washable masks each of the few times we've gone out in our car the last several weeks. Gross. Masks are needed not just to protect other people from us, in case one or both of us has asymptomatic COVID-19. Careless landscaping crew members blow dirt and debris off the sidewalk all over us. Between that, and pollen, and the dangers of soil bacteria becoming airborne when we're working with potting soil, having washable masks on hand year-round is just good sense. And others need them too.

     The second project  is upcycling some of my pants and possibly some of mu denim skirts. Anything to relieve the pain caused by the slightest bit of pressure on my abdomen, thanks to extensive scar tissue tangling up my insides. My beloved will be grateful to hear Miss Cranky Pants snarling and snapping less often. It's time to make another wardrobe modification to make life more bearable. Bye-bye belts and waistbands, hello suspenders. And hello to waistbands at least a couple of inches wider than my greatest waist circumference when sitting down.

Two Weeks 'Til Christmas: Nothing Done, and That's OK

December 11, 2019. Two weeks 'til Christmas & we've done almost nothing to get ready. There's little to do when Christmas, The Great Family Holiday, will be spent alone, again, and you can't commit to volunteering somewhere that day because disabilities and/or illness are an insurmountable barrier. But as some of my single friends like to throw back in my face, "Well at least you have each other." Yes, we do, and for that I am immeasurably grateful. Things could be much worse. (And probably will get worse as the years go by - it's part & parcel of growing old in poverty.) Yet being part of a couple doesn't lessen the longing and loneliness inherent in spending holiday after holiday alone. Not all families are flush with money to fund holiday travel. Some use what little extra they have to help other family members pay their bills or put food on the table. Many of us older folk who are too limited or impaired to do anything else resign ourselves to sitting at home in front of the tv watching Christmas specials, wondering what our children and grandchildren are doing over at the other grandparents' house, hundreds or thousands of miles away. If we have children. If we have grandchildren.

According to the book of Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything. My time for running the Christmas rat race is long over. Now, attending a Blue Christmas service somewhere will be sufficient, for me, to celebrate Christmas. No need to put myself through the Christmas Eve torture of being surrounded by happy grandparents with all their kids & grandkids around them and the acute discomfort of hearing them say "Where's your family?" or "When is your family arriving for Christmas?" or some other innocent but thoughtless comment.

It's almost impossible to get excited about another solitary Christmas. So even when I'm not contagious, if I think I won't be able to put on a happy face, I stay home, which just makes the isolation inherent in chronic illness and disability even harder. But I don't want to "drag anyone down" with me (or be accused of doing so): I've learned the hard way that many people, including some who are "friends," will avoid you like the plague if you're not Miss Pollyanna Sunshine, ready to inspire them and "make their day" almost every time they see you.

In the fight against despair this week G and I each in our own small way have given "the finger" to the often overwhelming depression we both feel in November and December. We both defied the dark, for at least a few minutes, despite the horrible sore strep-infected throats, eye infections, coughing, his ear infection & chronic nausea, and my asthma on top of everything else. I plugged in the tiny hand-me-down Christmas tree we were given last year. It wears no ornaments, but that's ok - the lights are cheerful. The next day G dragged himself out of bed and gave me a priceless gift: he hung the transparent white lights along the shade plants on our back balcony, creating a fairyland for imaginary elves. The next afternoon he expanded that gift and taped a string of red, orange, green, blue, and fuschia Christmas lights around our bedroom window. I loved it so much, that night I couldn't make myself go to sleep. I didn't want to stop gazing at the colorful lights!

Other than that, we've done no decorating, no getting crafty, no gift-making. He forced himself to go back to work today even though he feels terrible. Several huge sneezes this afternoon set me back a few months in terms of back pain. We need to spend the rest of this month trying to heal and recover. We've both been sick since before Thanksgiving, reduced to survival mode. We didn't have Thanksgiving dinner - I was too weak to cook it, and neither of us really had any appetite. It was cereal and milk, crackers, or nothing at all.

There is one questionable blessing in spending Christmas alone. Like last year, there's no pressure to be a good hostess, to perform, to please, to avoid disappointing my own or others' expectations. There's no one to let down but the two of us, and we've learned to have zero expectations. The last time we hosted family for Christmas, back in 2010 or 20ll, it was a nightmare. I was experiencing some of the worst side effects of a high-dose regimen of prednisone, unable to control my emotions, living in a constant cold sweat with tremors. It was awful. I was so desperate to make Christmas "perfect" for them that I made myself sick with anxiety, afraid they'd never want to spend Christmas with us again if I failed. I fell apart. I failed, miserably. We had a "family meeting" and admitted to our daughter and her husband that I'd been far sicker than we'd let on. (And at that point, we didn't know I had/have cancer and didn't know, for sure, that I have a potentially lethal autoimmune disorder.) Our daughter and son-in-law were gracious and compassionate. They had never put pressure on me to create a wonderful Christmas; I was doing it to myself. So I let go, and stopped the self-flagellation.

At my last trip to the food bank, the volunteers asked if we'd like to receive a ready-to-eat Christmas dinner from the Rotary Club delivered to our apartment. I stood there speechless, confused and amazed. One whispered loudly "Take it! It's free!" Finally I said yes, because it dawned on me that with my health, Christmas dinner could be a bowl of cold cereal and milk, again. With that wonderful gift from the Rotary Club, now the pressure is really off! I can just, be.

Previous decisions reduced the materialistic distraction from the real "reason for the season." As a couple, we stopped exchanging gifts several years ago - bone-deep seasonal depression and lack of funds ended that tradition.  I'd always found my Church of Christ in-laws' obsession with gifts and Santa, to the exclusion of celebrating Jesus' birth, offensive and hypocritical, so I didn't much mind. Years before that, G and I confessed to each other that the Christmas stocking tradition was a super-stress-inducing, onerous burden for both of us. We were so relieved to permanently shelve that time-suck. I also stopped obsessing about sending Christmas gifts to our grandsons, after realizing that our humble offerings would disappear under the mountain of thrilling, big-ticket items lavished on them by their other relatives and the Jolly Old Elf.

Instead, their handmade "Christmas" gifts will be winter gifts, mailed in January or February or March, giving me time to work on them without feeling the time pressure of getting it done two weeks before Christmas (since extra time has to be allowed for shipping gifts across three states). This is a better, simpler, far more peaceful way.

A sweet memory arose on the way to the pharmacy: Grandma's shopping for supplies to make, for me, either a now crispy crunchy royal blue hat & scarf or the softer and scratchier afghan. I can't remember the name of this former five & dime on N. New Hampshire in Covington, but I remember Grandma taking me along for what was an almost unbearably exciting expedition for a girl growing up in a tiny town. I watched her sift through the yarn bins for just the right colors of what fiber snobs would call "cheap acrylic" yarn, to crochet gifts for her family. The building wasn't this upscale back in the 1960s-1970s, of course. Gentrification has made old Covington far more attractive but also far more exclusive and inaccessible to many of its former residents. It can't steal all my memories, though.

It must have been the afghan for which she was choosing yarn, because Grandma was looking for just the right shade of white to match the lavender and soft blue yarns. She, as so many poor people have to do, settled for what the dime store offered instead of what would be "perfect.". It was the 1970s in a still very rural parish of mostly villages and small towns. Either the labeling was incorrect or she couldn't see well enough to read it, but she got more than she bargained for!

The afghan was beautiful. I loved it! Grandma was so proud of her gift. She must have worked  dozens of tedious hours to produce something big enough to cover most of me.

And then, we washed and dried it. Or Mama washed it. I can't remember. Who did the washing and drying doesn't matter - what mattered was what it did to my 70+ year old grandmother.

Grandma wept when she saw it. After the damage was done. Angrily berated herself for not realizing the "white" yarn she'd chosen was 100% sheep's wool. The blue and lavender were acrylic. Reminiscent of the biblical warning against sewing a piece of new skin onto an old wineskin. Of course when the work of her crippled, arthritic hands went into the hot dryer, the wool shrank. A lot. Suddenly the perfectly straight edges had unsightly ripples and the perfectly flat fabric she'd created had huge buckling puckers. Everywhere. It was every crocheter's or knitter's nightmare. What had been a lovely zig-zag that draped well was now an odd-looking zig-zag with tight, dense, scratchy bands of felted cream wool pulling on the still soft and supple rows of the other two colors, distorting the entire piece.

Grandma was crushed. I don't know if she ever picked up a crochet hook again after that. But that wonderful rectangle of love continued to keep me warm on cold nights and lay folded at the end of my bed, on top of the blue & lavender iris bedspread, on warm nights. For the rest of my life it's moved with me to each new dwelling place. With each washing and drying (yes still in a dryer) the acrylic yarn softens again and the wool tightens up a wee bit - but somehow they have made peace with each other, and it looks so much better than it did four decades ago.

How I wish Grandma knew that over forty years later her gift of love still warms and comforts me, often when I need her the most.

Thanksgiving for us was a day of work and illness for hubby, and for me, merely existing, in a torpor of fatigue, allover joint pain and muscle pain. The turkey lay in its plastic coat in the fridge, neglected, while ingredients for the side dishes sat untouched. Hubby's had no appetite since he fell ill Tuesday, and I've had little myself. There's no point in cooking a meal that won't be eaten.

Elbowing Out of the Ashes

     Almost 2 years have passed since my last (2nd) post. Steaming hot piles of poop happen, you know? When life knocks you flat within days or weeks every time you bounce back up, creativity and being a "maker" gets knocked flat too. But I am elbowing my way up, out of the ashes of my former life.

     And feeling hopeful, despite the immense difficulty of this new life. I'd lived with chronic pain & chronic illnesses for decades, but this year has taken both pain and disability to a previously unimaginable level for me. I lost most of 2019 to simply existing in a cloud of often blinding pain, brain fog, and learning to adjust to impaired mobility and the inability to stand up straight for more than a minute or so at a time. My calendar is littered with black lines marking activities as no-goes. 2015-2018 were an entire book's worth of numerous, devastating losses that changed our lives forever. The 3 years before that revolved around the excitement of our first grandchild's first years and simultaneously learning to live with the initial terror and perpetual insecurity inherent in a diagnosis of incurable cancer.

     The last seven  years I've felt like a set of pins in a bowling lane, the ball of calamity striking every few weeks, over over and over, before the pins can stop wobbling, settle into place, and gain a firm footing between strikes. But the last two years have been absolutely unbelievable. There seems to be no end in sight. I'm still on the up-side of the learning curve, clawing my way towards the top.

     But this fall I managed to climb out of the brain fog long enough to crochet these three washcloths for a new baby and her moms, and a fourth in a bright pink solid cotton is on my knitting needles. 

     

a

March for Our Lives March 24, 2018

Hah! Yay! Finally figured out, after many frustrating months, why this blog seemed to be dead in the water - couldn't get into the dashboard to create new posts. Problem solved!

https://www.marchforourlives.com/

http://kristasuh.com/evil-eye-glove/

"Do what you can,

with what you have,

where you are."

Theodore Roosevelt

I'm a citizen who communicates with congressmen on important issues and take my rights and responsibilities as an American citizen seriously. I can't march, and would probably be uncomfortable marching even it it were physically possible. But I can knit and can support these brave young people in my own small way. Eight rows knitted so far...slowly getting the hang of knitting on "small" needles again, with thin yarn.

Welcome to Abita Butterbean!

Welcome to Abita Butterbean! This blog showcases the work of my hands, be it "craft" or "art."

Why such a moniker? Because I get the warm-fuzzies hearing the word "butterbean" - I associate it with the most loving person I knew during my childhood, Grandma. I grew up in the small town of Abita Springs and ate a lot of what my deeply loved grandmother called "butterbeans & rice." The beans were dried large white limas. She dumped the cellophane bag of Camellia brand beans into a white porcelain enamel colander and picked through the beans, taking out all the moldy or broken ones. Then she soaked the remainder in water overnight and simmered them with pickled pork, for hours, until they were soft and swimming in a steaming sea of savory cooked-down bean gravy. Grandma served them over hot white rice with a side of sliced red Creole tomatoes. Mmmm, mmm! She drank a glass of sweet tea and I drank milk with it. Of course.

Mama made red beans and rice with pickled pork and sausage every Monday, following the southeast Louisiana tradition of red beans on wash day, but her independent mom made what she grew up eating in Alabama.  Not only an excellent Southern cook and from-scratch baker, Grandma was also a skilled seamstress, embroiderer, and crocheter. Through her I learned to appreciate handwork, textiles, and so much more. Grandma was my safe person and her home, less than a ten-minute walk from ours, was my safe haven; "Abita Butterbean" is a tribute to her and my hometown.