by Kat | Oct 10, 2022 | General, In This Moment
Brings an adjusted To-do List…
I stumbled across this quote over the weekend and have not stopped thinking about it.
Yes, it absolutely does!
This weekend I really needed to focus on sewing but instead I did lots of procrasti-knitting, procrasti-painting, and procrasti-reading.
So here it is Monday morning and I still have sewing to do. Although I do have the sweetest completed Autumn Gnome, I’d really like to have a pair of completed tunics and a new pair of pants!
So I created a very short and sweet Stop-Doing List… it has one thing on it… stop procrastinating.
Now, I am not sure that putting something on a “stop-doing list” is somehow magic and you just stop doing it. Ha! I know that is not true at all, but I am hoping that by identifying my procrastination tactics… I will curb those moments to a more manageable amount of procrastination!
My To-Do List remains the same!
I hope your Monday is full of good things… and no procrastination!
See you all back here on Wednesday!
by Kat | May 2, 2022 | General, In This Moment
Greetings!
In the Weekend From Hell Category, I (we?) scored a ten. Although perhaps that should be a negative ten…because hell. Ha!
We have “been on the lookout” for a sofa for some time now….but most sofa’s are too big for our living room. So when we discovered the perfect sized sofa while in Erie last month. Steve did some research and found that.exact.sofa. at Wayfair.
- Right size: check
- Right color: check (the requisite grey…don’t ask)
- And the right price: check… it was on sale…although perhaps the on sale bit should have given us a heads up but I digress
The perfect sofa! And we knew it was comfortable having “test-seated” it for 10 days! We ordered it! (mistake #1…)
I no longer thought about said sofa until Steve got an email letting us know delivery would be Saturday… and as the week progressed, they refined that time to “10am-2pm” on Saturday. Then came a most reassuring email… I suppose… of their “strict COVID policy for No Contact Deliveries” The email had a list of things that we must do to “keep their employees safe”…things like Masking, Distancing, etc.
And so on Friday we disassembled our old sofa… yep, disassembled and removed from the house. (in hindsight, this was our second big mistake…)
Saturday… I’d truly like a do-over please! Heck, I’d like an entire weekend rewind… sigh! LOL Anyways, that 10-2 delivery window soon became 12-4pm… and 4 pm came and went with no hint of a delivery and by this time Steve was off the charts angry… and I am just keeping my mouth shut in our now sofa-less living room.
When the delivery people (boys? Seriously, I wonder if either of them were old enough to drive) finally arrived after 7PM… maskless, by the way… they wrangled 2 boxes from their truck and in the wrangling, they rolled the largest box into our front light post. The angle of it this morning is most lovely… really… if you live in the Crooked House, on the Crooked Lane! And before they were done, they had broken our front storm door… So now we have a Crooked Light and a Broken Storm Door!
And in case you are thinking that… whew… at least you have a damned sofa to sit on. Well, that might be right if those boxes had contained the correct back pieces to attach to said sofa.
And Customer Service closed at 8PM on Saturday (because, of course it did!) and Sunday’s Customer Service was… well… exactly like the sofa they delivered…it was missing the important parts (like actual customer service!)
The moral of the story is if you buy a sofa on the internet, you may need a new light, a new door, and perhaps another sofa.
Happy Monday from my Sofa-less Corner of the World!
P.S. The photo has nothing to do with a sofa and everything to do with a lovely little African Violet I got from TJ’s last week…a bright spot for any Monday!
P.P.S. I am thinking Wayfair’s new jingle should be “you don’t got what I need.”
by Kat | Apr 11, 2022 | General, In This Moment
Is for lists of things… good and not so great. I would ask you if you want the good or the not so great first, but since you are not here… I will get the not so great out of the way. If your Monday is Monday enough without any more not so great, please skip ahead to Thing Three!
Thing One… today is my sister’s 58th birthday and it has been 3 months since I have heard a word from her. I am holding on to the thought that no one has contacted me with bad news… Still, it was so easy to get used to talking again…however brief… and even though it was simply because she had hit the bottoms bottom… I miss talking to her… even it if it just to listen to her version of truth.
Thing Two… (as if Thing One was not depressing enough) 100 days into 2022 and Pittsburgh has had 4-whole-days-of-sunshine. 4-freaking-days. I am more than ready for some prolonged moments (days? weeks?) of sunshine. Also… I am going to remind myself of this in August when it is 90-gazillion degrees and we need rain.
The remainder of my list is for your ears… things to listen to while you work on your Monday list.
Thing Three… This morning Season Five of Poetry Unbound began! Ahhhh…and this morning’s episode was exactly what I needed (“I put myself back into the trance…weather, gossip, news”)… because of course poetry helps all things…and even more Pádraig’s commentary… it helped me make sense of my void.
Thing Four…Thankfully, Jon Meacham has returned with another podcast offering. I have listened to several installments… they are short… and so lovely. If you like history, then I think you will enjoy Reflections of History.
Thing Five… Ocean Vuong. His latest book of poetry, Time is a Mother, was released on the 5th. You can listen to a beautiful interview here from NPR’s Book of the Day podcast. I found myself nodding with so much of what Ocean shared with Rachel Martin.
I hope your Monday is gentle… see you all back here on Wednesday.
by Kat | Mar 21, 2022 | General, In This Moment
I had such a lovely “list of things” I wanted to do this weekend.
Things that included tackling button holes with a fresh mind on Saturday morning, finish my handspun Hitchhiker, watch some of March Madness, and start reading The Books of Jacob.
But Real Life had a different plan because on Saturday morning we discovered that our refrigerator was not refrigerating… or freezing. And of course, we had gone grocery shopping on Friday so it was on the fuller side of the scale.
So we made some attempts to determine what might be wrong. (I say we, really I just stayed in the vicinity so Steve had someone to yell at, lol) And for some brief moments, there was a glimmer of hope…it started working again but it was not for long. Kaput refrigerator was not on my weekend plans… nor was scrambling on Sunday to try and find a refrigerator replacement. (Why do these things always, always happen on a weekend? lol) The Big Box stores near us were a mixed bag. One had nothing in stock (at least nothing in stock of a size that would fit or with a price that was reasonable… $7k for a refrigerator??? What??? Does it cook and clean too, because at that price it better!) and the other had some better luck… but no deliver until April 12th. Could I live without a refrigerator until mid-April? Could we live without a refrigerator that dispenses water and makes ice? Oh boy… those are the million dollar questions, are they not? The local appliance store was of course not open on Sunday… nor did they have any idea of available stock on their website (really, if you have a website – including useful information might be a good idea) But Best Buy to the rescue… (In a million years, I would never have guessed that that would happen!) They had the necessary size, with the desired bells and whistles… and they can deliver it on Thursday! Four days sans refrigerator almost seems something to be gleeful over, lol!
(And we really aren’t entirely refrigerator-less… we have the “Beer Fridge” in the basement and while it is not perfect, it is amazing how much you can pack into a refrigerator if needs must!)
Aside from all that drama… I did manage to see some of the Michigan game! Yay to them for advancing to the Sweet Sixteen.
I also finished the second sock!
And I started The Books of Jacob… but I have a very long way to go!
And this week… button holes… that is once I have the Monday chores done!
Oh… and that photo… that is a picture of my snowdrops. They managed to survive the 10″ of snow… only to be done in by Wednesday’s 70+° weather. (but I spied a tulip peeking out of the ground…yes, a single solitary tulip. Must be one the squirrels “transplanted” to my yard!)
I hope your weekend was much better than mine! I will see you all back here on Wednesday!
by Kat | Nov 15, 2021 | General, In This Moment
In a week that did not at all turn out as I hoped or even in my wildest dreams imagined this poem from last Friday has been my lifeline.
At some point, Elizabeth Bishop renamed the poem… but I found her original name, Early Sorrow, to be so profound for me. But, the new name… Sestina… has stuck in my head and the words of the poem keep echoing there as well. It is a good time to plant tears… not very bright or cheery for a Monday but every day can’t be all sunshine and rainbows…
Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop:
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,
It’s time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle’s small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.
Elizabeth Bishop ©
I learned last week that my years-estranged sister has been evicted (yet again) and has spiraled down to the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the mental health ocean. There are volumes to this story that I am just not ready to share and my Monday is going to be full of making calls, asking lots of questions and I am hopeful that I will find an answer or two. I am sorry, but I have closed comments for this post… I hope you all understand.
See you all back here on Wednesday.
