Kay and I packed our identical painting kits, ones we had bought together at the Art Spot in Edmonds and 50 times the amount of food we would need or come close to eating and travelled to The Sandpiper at Pacific Beach in a driving rainstorm. It was to be three days of painting and  Read the Rest…

A few days after I’ve done something stupid, I often think, “I feel a blog post coming on.” If I’ve done something exceptionally stupid, it takes a week before I feel it. Well, at the time of this writing, it’s been two and a half weeks. It started when I noticed that my arms hurt.  Read the Rest…

I used to call “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” the alcoholic’s Christmas carol because of the line about “next year all our troubles will be out of sight.” Pure denial, fantastical thinking. Wasn’t that mean of me? It’s a perfect song for this year and I regret my former attitude.  If you’re not busy  Read the Rest…

I’ve talked about learning to sew for years. I want to be able to make clothes in the colors and styles I like rather than forcing myself into procrustean fashions. This pandemic and the stay-at-home orders (and my lack of work and ensuing free time) has been a boon to me, a self-learner. I’ve been  Read the Rest…

Entering our third month of Sheltering-in-Place here in Seattle, I locate myself in the week by when I last showered: I showered today, I showered yesterday, I can’t remember when I showered or that’s really a funky smell. My hair has entered a new length division where it now looks reasonably good. I love hearing  Read the Rest…

My garden is keeping me sane. I’ve been out there for several hours a day since the middle of March, grubbing in the dirt and blowing my nose on the inside of my t-shirt. Maybe that doesn’t sound quite sane but without the garden I feel certain I would have gained 100 pounds and would  Read the Rest…

At times when I have been seriously depressed and feeling like nothing short of oblivion is going to help, I have engaged in the homely task of listing anything I could scrape from the quotidian to appreciate. In this surreal time, optimism can be in short supply. So as a public service, I offer the  Read the Rest…

Still at Zennor ( see previous post) we had lunch at the Old Chapel Café. I discovered Cornish crab, which I afterwards ordered every chance I got. As we were leaving I got engrossed in seeing how an old iron ship part functioned as a doorstop. I pulled it away and watched the door swing  Read the Rest…

Welcome to Port Wenn! If you are a fan of the series Doc Martin, you’ll appreciate the reference. If you aren’t, read on. We went other places, too. The day began at the cottage in Morvah with the usual tea and breakfast and me asking Sue and Wendy what they remembered from the day before  Read the Rest…

I got my naturalization papers last week. I made it past the health screening in spite of having a concussion.  After reading that you could be forgiven for thinking I still had one. Anyway, here’s what happened: On Thursday in an accidental maneuver too complicated and boring to describe, I knocked heads with my dear  Read the Rest…