Fixing the Mailbox

When I went out with my holiday cards, all zip-sorted and rubberbanded, I noticed that the rivet holding on the mailbox door on one side was gone.

So yesterday, I returned to a local hardware store where one young workers cheerily asked if I needed help and the other, apparently remembering my last trip, said – yeah! after this we can go home!

Last time I bought 3 allen wrenches to stash away. My bill was like $2-3 dollars.

This time, I bought 2 sets of nut, bolt, washer and my total was 95 cents. We all had a good laugh. I said they could go home now and I was going home to fix the door on my mailbox.

Which I did and like most jobs it was easier than expected. I managed not to lose any of the new parts and I duct taped the spare set to the inside of the mailbox for future use.

Fixing the Mailbox

Cloud then No Cloud

Saw this cool lenticular cloud and then, literally in moments, it was gone.

Cloud then No Cloud

Clouds and Machines

I saw an interesting edge of clouds on the way home from Mom’s and finally found a place with a clear view of it. When I first saw it, it seemed to be heading to something a little more turbulent but it was cool looking no matter what.

When I got home I worked on getting my serger back up and running. I’d been searching for the power cable/foot pedal and found it last night hiding with the other room TV wires… don’t ask. I don’t use this very often and it’s a wonder that anyone at all does. The threading is such that it requires a tweezers, there are two needles to thread and a couple arms that get threaded and well… a lot can go wrong. After a couple tries I unthreaded the whole thing and tried to figure out why even the thread wouldn’t come off the cones nicely. Turns out it must have the lift arm all the way up. And it helped to thread it one cone at a time starting at the right. Then of course the tension was atrocious.

The images of bad tension weren’t too helpful in the manual and then I realized that they were telling me to turn knob 1,2,3 or 4 one way or another when in fact those knobs had no numbers. Did they number in the same order as the order of the cones in threading? Of course not! So I stuck a bit of masking tape on each, and the number, being careful not to obscure the color dot that goes with the cone threading path. Still terrible. Finally I put up the pressure foot and carefully tugged each thread until it was clearly inside the tension disks.

Yes, that did the trick and the thing worked great at last. That was a lot of work to prepare for making two chair cushions so I went off to do my haiku and painting for the day and have some dinner.

Clouds and Machines

The Daffodils

The past couple years, this view has been interrupted or obliterated by snow. This year, spring might seem to be arriving more gradually but it might be because – so far – there’s not been a wintery reprise.

The Daffodils

Take Home Quote of the Day

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
? Elliott Erwitt

Take Home Quote of the Day

Also found: Bill the Cat

This is the photo used for the “Lost Cat” poster in November 1990 when Bill and Maggie made a break for it. Maggie sat on the front porch waiting but Bill was eventually found in the next door neighbor’s barn a day or two later. Nervous times for all. The poster notes that he was about seventeen pounds at the time and get a load of those magnificent toesies! He really was a “best cat”. As a bonus, here’s another version of Bill. That’s right, it’s a cat scan!

Also found: Bill the Cat

State of the Cat

I’m calling this “Study in Tans” which is pretty ritzy for a picture of Ginny snoozing on the couch.

State of the Cat

One Good Thing

Let’s find one good thing every day.
Show or tell us your one good thing.

During the Pandemic, a fellow I am friends with on facebook, Carl Mastandrea, was posting a photo every day with “Let’s find one good thing every day. What’s your one good thing today?” He was interrupted by life and I started posting my own, to encourage myself and others to look around at the little things and see how much beauty there can be. I remember during the early days of COVID, going out each morning and looking around, taking some photos and waiting with anticipation to see what Carl and others would post. Thank you Carl.

If you’re on social media, I encourage you to share little things that catch your eye because we all need a little beauty and focus these days. Your cat’s whiskers, a blooming plant, some clouds, a visit with a friend or family member. Make someone’s heart glad for a moment with what made your heart glad.

One Good Thing

Charles Simic, 1938-2023

When you read a nice poem, somebody else’s poem, you become attuned to the words on the page. The language seems so rich, so beautiful, imagination making connections. You do need the reader as a collaborator. There could be other experiences beyond that of course. There might be some thoughts, some ideas emerging out of that, but I think the most basic fundamental thing is to give the reader something pleasurable. – Charles Simic

“Charles Simic, Pulitzer-Winning Poet and U.S. Laureate, Dies at 84” NYTimes obit, outside paywall.

Eyes Fastened with Pins, Poetry Foundation

Midsummer, Rattle 2016

The Vices of the Evening, Rattle 2016

Crepuscular, Poetry Foundation (see here for more)

Will be attempting to send blog posts to Mastodon as well. Let’s see how that goes.

Charles Simic, 1938-2023

December 2020

I’ve been home for a little over nine months now. You would think something would have come of that time and stuff has, just maybe not the stuff you might imagine. I’ve painted. I’ve taken photos. I’ve written. I’ve read. I’ve learned to interact to others via a plethora of online platforms.

I had gone to a lecture at the Clark and felt like I had a headache. Didn’t much enjoy the presentation, drove home and went to bed. Was sick with mildly flu-like symptoms and was more than glad to stay in bed napping for quite a number of days, long enough that for the first time in my working history I had to go to a doctor for a note in order to return to work. By then it was clear that something was going on. I had no way of knowing if I’d had the flu (yes, I’d gotten the shot), bronchitis, or whatever this new virus was. But I went to the doctor and he had nothing to offer because now, two weeks later, I was well. I seized the moment to get a test for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases which came back negative.

I got the note and sent it in and then my workplace was shut down.

So began my time at home. I stayed home a little longer, just to be sure about whatever it was I had early in March. Then work evolved and food shopping turned to delivery and pick up and life went on. I officially started doing real work-from-home stuff in early June. In September I signed up officially to do that for six months. And then another round of scheduling fuzziness ended my research into different retirement scenarios and my last working day was October 28. After that I was on “vacation” for a little over a month and now I am officially retired.

Last night I erased the computer I’d been sent to work on and packaged it up. I cleared out a little drawer that held a stack of post it notes – tallies of each day’s work. Yes our work was trackable online – so many interactions over the course of the day and all, but for me, it was a pleasure to tick each chat and perhaps note what the question was. I think the largest number of ticks was 46 or 48. Some days, due to outages or events were much lower. Thirty plus was the norm. I laughed as I quickly flipped through the stack looking at all the slashes. Each a person, for a few minutes or longer.

Now, as I have since March, I can take a few minutes to look around each morning as I go out to offer my coffee grounds to the garden or get the mail. The things to see are many. I fill the bird feeders. I look at the sky. I don’t have a long daily commute to think about things or listen to audio books, although I’ve finished several long audio books since being home. My Prius was showing 112.2 “mpg” the other day because many of my travels are within the electric range of the car. I don’t stop in a store just to look around. I took a pass on the normal Thanksgiving because it seemed like the best thing to do.

Today is 42 days away from Inauguration Day and that is good, even though the fight goes on to turn our country towards what it was before 2016 and maybe towards what we would like it to be. The fight continues to keep people healthy. The stay at home thing continues. So I look around and see what the world has to offer each morning and go from there.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
— Joseph Chilton Pearce

December 2020