Bonny blue een

The girl is putting together a paper and a diorama for her poetry class. She and I had a lot of fun making a rice-stuffed doll. She did the rest entirely herself (although as a surprise, I'm going to make a shield for her fallen knight tonight.) We may have reached new lows, or highs, depending, of family weirdness as we both really like the doll. Even though it has no legs. And looks wounded. And is creepy.

She has ravens, a nest, and everything. We used corn silk for the hair, and painted two buttons with blue nail polish (doesn't everyone have blue nail polish just laying around the house?) for the eyes.

Her subject:

  Twa Corbies! (Anonymous, from bartleby.com)

AS I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane:
The tane unto the tither did say,
'Whar sall we gang and dine the day?'
'—In behint yon auld fail dyke	5
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there
But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair.
'His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,	10
His lady 's ta'en anither mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.
'Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike out his bonny blue e'en:
Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair	15
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.
'Mony a one for him maks mane,
But nane sall ken whar he is gane:
O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.'

Whether the doll is weirdly, creepy-cute, or just plain wrong, that was about the best quality time the girl and I have had to spend together in quite awhile.

Must ... finish ... projects ... Plus, Andrea gets shoes

I'm typing with my new, wonderful, deep purple fingerless gloves that a friend knitted for me. It's cold in the office, where yesterday's weather likes to linger, and they're perfectly warming especially across my wrists where I often suffer pain from carpal tunnel syndrome.

Rory reminded me that I'm neglecting my poor office. I've tiled the minimum space and then I abandoned the finishing work for "later." You all know about later, that mythical future time when there will be peace on Earth and no one will have to earn a living, when houses will paint themselves and my favorite peony will be worshipped as a goddess in certain circles.

Or maybe your later is different.

Anyway, it's past time to finish this puppy, er, office, off. I have to finish tiling first, tiling which I enjoy once I've got all my duckies in a row and put on some music. It takes about an hour to lay five tiles, not counting cutting time, and I've gotten to a stage where just about every tile will need to be cut. I think I've got six, maybe seven uncut tiles to go.

But this is all blathering, thinking about work that needs to be done. At the root of all this is a desire to finish. I want to finish Masks. I want to finish the office, and the porch project, and the vegetable garden (although finishing anything in a gardening sense is even more mythical than later.) There's too much juggling and it's time to set some of the pieces down.

This is probably all brought on by the work schedule. The day after tomorrow, I'm off. I'm free I'm free I'm free! Yee! Just for a day, but that's enough compared to, well, no day. I'd like to finish something that day.

In other news, my daughter Andrea and I went shoe shopping today. I got a pair of shoes for work that are, ahem, somewhat un-work like but I don't think anyone will look close enough to notice. They enclose the toe and the heel, a requirement. They are not sneakers. Voila! Perfect. (Don't mind the skull and crossbones print all over them--it just looks like a geometric design from a distance and who looks at my feet anyway? So there!) Andrea picked up her first set of heels for her 8th grade end of year celebration. I can get all teary-eyed at how my little girl is growing up and choosing (she actually planned on borrowing my heels--which I needed for work and that's how we decided we both needed at least one pair of 'other' shoes) to wear nice shoes and nice clothes to a ceremonial event. Instead of being teary-eyed, though, I'm just so very proud of her it makes me grin. I think she's realized that her jeans and t-shirt lifestyle is a safe place to be and that being safe all the time won't get her to where she wants to go. So she's trying something different, and it's very awesome. You go, Andrea! Mom won't cry. You're not going away. You're becoming (in more ways than one) and that makes me happy.

Misty, aka Mistah Fluff, our long-haired gray mackerel kitty, has leapt on my lap and declared "meh-eh." And now she's purring like crazy.

You said it Mistah. Meh eh!