Linen and Gauze

Inspirational song: Gimme Stitches (Foo Fighters)

For far too many special occasions in my life, I have sewn my own clothes (or often more accurately described as "costumes"), and I don't think there was a single time I wasn't panic-sewing right up to the very last minute. My oldest daughter showed up to foster daughter's wedding with a dress that needed just a few more alterations, and wow, did I have flashbacks that day. 

So now we have plans to attend the next door neighbors' Vegas wedding, and I honestly expected to be whipping together something loose and flowy that would cover my arms fully and be of breathable fabric. I pictured a cream-colored peasant top of sorts, over loose pants. And every time I thought about it, I stopped myself, and said no, only the bride wears white, and made myself imagine a lavender top instead. 

Today I found myself at Target, buying underbed storage bins for the craft room, and I walked out slowly past the clothing department. I picked around the clearance racks, and right at the end of the last one, I found an enormous lavender gauze poets blouse. There it was, the top I needed, completely finished, and on clearance for fourteen dollars. I grabbed it, and went back to the newer clothes, and looked for some light colored pants in my size.

Am I the only adult who needs permission from her grown kids to select clothes, especially when I'm out by myself? I texted my older daughter, first asking whether A would be cool if my wedding clothes came from Target (daughter said of course, she's cool like that--they are getting married at a wedding chapel on Fremont Street after all), and secondly, which pants to choose? There were some camel colored jeans I liked, and there were a couple large wide-legged linen pants that were pretty. Her answer was "linen 10000%." I showed her the two color choices, and between us, the answer became both.

So other than these clothes being huuuge, and needing a few tucks and maybe a shorter hem, I am completely ready to face the Vegas sun next month. Now, even though the hotel we want is all of five blocks to the chapel, daughter suggests we should go ahead and take a taxi. I'm not used to that sort of heat anymore. It may be Vegas, but that is one gamble she doesn't want us to make.

Also, the top rang up for only eight dollars. I'm already a winner.

Big Girl Bed

Inspirational song: Mr Roboto (Styx)

The agonizing wait is over. This afternoon the bed frame finally arrived. The box it was in was surprisingly flat and narrow. I was very concerned that it wouldn't work out to the bed I thought I was buying. I needn't have worried. I apparently am not as creative as a factory person trying to find the cheapest way to ship a whole lot of products. It was all there, in more pieces than I imagined.

I sat down on the floor to open the box, and that was all my tired body was prepared to do. Luckily the man came in to play with our new toy, and he did 95% of the assembly. By the time I worked myself up off the floor, he was almost to the point of letting me plop in the crossbar supports. I did take over and put on all the bedclothes. I got a little ahead of myself and put on the sheets and duvet cover before washing them, but I will remedy that before I have my first overnight guest. 

I have a few more challenges to address in that room, such as what to do with the screen and antique window I had stored in there before. (Have a design idea for the window, finally, but will need help to make it work.) I unpacked a big box of family photos, so I will be making an ancestor wall next. And the storage baskets I had under the old bed are not going to fit under this one, so I need to do a little container shopping this weekend. For now, I am very happy with the bed, and hope that it gets lots of use with overnight guests and napping grandbabies. The old daybed is no more.

Peachy

Inspirational song: Don't Bring Me Down (Electric Light Orchestra)

Quelle dommage. FedEx did it to me again. At 3:30 this morning, my new bed was scanned as in transit in far western Utah. I checked back every half hour or so starting at noon, for some sign it had arrived in northern Colorado. At 4:30 this afternoon, the tracking timeline went red again, with that same "barcode unreadable, reprinted" message. At least it has made it as close as Broomfield now. But that is where its adventure stalled again. It went from promising delivery by end of day today to pending with no shred of hope when I will see it. What are the odds that when it finally arrives, there will be some part of the box so damaged near the shipping label that the bed is unusable? I sure hope not, after all of this delay.

I ran up to the store this morning to buy a new cover for the mattress and pillow, and I got a set of sheets while I was there. It wasn't an exact match for the duvet cover, but it has the same vibe, so I splurged (all of like 20 bucks--this was Walmart after all.) I sat in my living room most of the day, staring at the new bedding, still entirely in its packaging, desperate for a sign of the chance to put it to use. We had a friend come down from Cheyenne for the evening, and we thought they would stay overnight, so I started to make up the bed with just the mattress on the floor, but they forgot an important daily med, so they went home after dinner and learning how to play the bean game with us. The mattress is still leaning against the wall, the bedding is still wrapped up, but at least I went ahead and steam-mopped the floor, so it's ready to go.

Valerie was here all day. She is quickly absorbing all kinds of new vocabulary, even if she isn't repeating much of it back to us. She knows what to do when I ask her to play piano, or have dancy-feet, or to punch the green button on the game I always play on my iPad (that collects my hourly points bonus). She can point at her swimming pool in her back yard, and say "pooooooo," but when she is holding a ball, she says the same word. We're working on that one. But the really fun one today is when I remembered I had an open jar of peaches in the fridge, and I asked, "Valerie, do you want peaches?" She didn't make eye contact with me, because she was busy looking at my utensil drawer, but she did immediately answer, "Pt! Chs!" If that isn't a victory, nothing is.

Bean Field War

Inspirational song: Magic Carpet Ride (Steppenwolf)

Who could have imagined that a card game based on growing beans would be one of our adult game group's favorite pastimes? While one of our D&D campaigns is on hold (Mr S-P is taking a hiatus from leading it during mountain build season), we have turned every other Wednesday into board game night. The first thing we played was the bean game, and it was cutthroat and glorious. The wheeling and dealing is way better than that nonsense in Monopoly. We are all fairly evenly matched, as evidenced by three of us scoring 9 points, and the winner edging us out with 10. I don't think anyone had fewer than 7.

As the evening progressed, and the drinks started affecting those who imbibed, we switched to Neanderthal Poetry. It is so difficult, even when sober, to play word games where the person giving clues gets bonked in the head with a "club" if they use more than one syllable in their hints to teammates. A, the lady of the house next door, is the hands-down best at this one, and Mr S-P may count as the worst. I'm somewhere in the middle between them.

It was the kind of day where I didn't shower until right before I headed next door, not because I was moping around, but because I was busy working in my overly-warm house and needed the cool-down. (I have already nearly filled the donation bin yet again, and I feel fantastic about it. One more big box of clothes emptied from where it had been stored under the old bed. The new bed arrives tomorrow, I think.) After a long day of cleaning and sorting, I took a cool shower before game night, and I headed over in pajamas, carrying a giant mug of monkfruit-sweetened hot cocoa for my dinner. Yes, a bit unorthodox in the middle of July, but I was tired and needed relaxing comfort food. Well, drink. Now after a long evening of play, I can happily just crawl straight into bed, and rest up for a long day of playing grandma tomorrow.

Ready to Receive

Inspirational song: The Waiting (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers)

After eight days lost in limbo, FedEx finally updated the tracking information on the bed frame I ordered in June. According to Home Depot, they sent it out on June 28. All this time it said, "Pending--tracking will be updated once FedEx receives the package," or words to that effect. It updated once mid-morning, and then this afternoon it added a note that the bar code was unable to be scanned and had to be reprinted. I wonder whether that was the big delay. It now says that it should be here by end of day Thursday. Fingers crossed.

I saw on Twitter just today, a thread by people who are experiencing much longer delays for getting furniture they ordered during the Covid times. I recall the bed I bought last year took a little longer than I expected, but it sounds like I had it pretty good. People who have ordered pieces that have to be made up once the customer decides on wood finishes or upholstery have had delays of months, sometimes over a year. I don't know whether to be scandalized, sympathetic, or to think back to how good we had it up until last year, compared to most of consumer history. Eventually things will be zooming again, but the backlog is going to take some time to sort out.

Knowing that I have a target date for the new bed, I went to shop for a new comforter for it. The one I had before was some little quilt I had gotten on clearance at Target, and it never really fit the bed. It was ruffled around the edges, and shaped in such a way that it seemed to be for a short toddler mattress or something. I intended to buy a quilt, as that is my preference (I can't stand heavy blankets pressing down on my toes), but none of them really spoke to me at Bed, Bath and Beyond, where I went after Rotary today. I looked at down and down alternative comforters, and found an alternative with fill made from recycled plastic bottles, and it was on clearance for a fantastic price. I went looking for duvet covers, and found one that will do well enough for now. This way, I can change things up as I see fit, especially once the baby starts using that room once in a while, and can express her design preferences. By the time she is ready for sleepovers, she ought to be able to name her favorite color for me. 

Handful

Inspirational song: Most Toys (Marillion)

The Big Galoot has noticed that she isn't getting as much attention as when we were going to puppy school every week. She is becoming quite a handful. She sits at the front window and barks at everything she sees, whether it's humans, other dogs, cars, or, I don't know, leaves? She has matured enough that her bark is now a deep, roaring woof, so I suppose she is an excellent deterrent against home invaders. When she is outside in the back, she goes over and puts her front paws on the short garden fence and barks non-stop like she is reading the news for every dog on the block. (She's on repeat, so does that make her DNN Headline News?) She gets brought inside a lot.

She went through a stage a couple of months ago where she didn't seem to need much chewing, but now she has regressed and is tearing up everything she can get her mouth on. We have lost a half dozen dog and cat toys in the last week alone, plus she found another of the Mr's shoes. She and I went to Petsmart for an outing this afternoon, because she needed one badly. I bought crickets for my lizard while I was there, and let her pick out some dog toys. I selected two, one with multiple squeakies and another with knotted rope "bones" instead of polyfil, and she chose a rope toy with hooves as ornaments. Of all of them, she likes her choice best, and has spent all evening showing me how quickly she can eat a pair of hooves. They will be gone before morning.

We peeked at kittens at Petsmart. There were three babies, including one who looks just like Harvey did at three months, and two adult black cats. I have no vacancies here, but boy, they were cute.

Also, when Saoirse got chased off from barking out the screen door, she ran into a plant stand and destroyed a selection of small succulents. So I got that going for me.

Non-Stop Explosions

Inspirational song: Owner of a Lonely Heart (Yes)

Does everyone's neighborhood sound like this one does? We don't remember ever hearing this many big fireworks going off, in a constant rumble. It started this afternoon, long before sunset. By the time it was even vaguely dark, it began in earnest. It has never stopped. How much money did our neighbors spend? Do people around here still have to drive up to just over the Wyoming border to get these aerials? 

I wasn't going to go out and watch any of it. I was content just to listen. But a friend from out of town dropped by, and encouraged me to step out to the sidewalk. We chatted there a few minutes, until Mr S-P arrived back from the traditional party that most of our old friends from the pre-military days attend. The Mr had invited this old high school friend to join us at the drunk American history party next door.

I was skipping all parties this time around. I wanted to feel social, but I just don't. I'm tired, and thinking of putting on a happy face around tons of people, many of whom I don't know, just makes me feel even more exhausted. There are plenty of people I would love to see, in onesie-twosies, but it would be way cooler if they came here, rather than me traveling an hour each way (or longer because it's a holiday). 

So I popped in next door to say hello. I was there long enough to drink a seltzer water (non-alcoholic, not the hard stuff), and I heard one drunk history presentation, which happened to be T telling the story of Johnny Walker (not the alcohol but the guy who sold secrets to the Russians). They were about halfway through the presentations when I left, and because of his late arrival, the Mr was number 10 on the list. There was no way I could hold up that long. I came home, and retired to bed, to listen to the endless booms and smell the gunpowder all night. I don't even mind the noise. People needed a reason to celebrate and feel good about life this summer. I hope all the hot dogs and beers and fireworks were grand, and the gatherings of friends even better. Maybe next year I will feel like being at one of those parties.