No, Thursday's Out....

We had one of those FedEx struggles, where they didn’t come last Friday, as they said they would, but didn’t admit defeat until about 5 pm.  I spent the day in the front room, reading a book, (but sitting where I could see anyone coming up the front steps), and that’s a nice day, I know. But I would have liked to run a few errands. Then they said it would be delivered Monday, so of course I came home Saturday to find another “We Missed You!” sticker on the door. Sigh. Rick and I had begun speculating, grumpily, that perhaps FedEx pays as much for attempts as for successful deliveries. That would explain why it sometimes seems drivers must have snuck silently up to our door, affixed a “We Missed You!” sticker, and driven away. But I have now done my homework (Googling), and discovered that when other people ask this same question, they get highly conflicting answers like:   No, no, the drivers are paid hourly; No, no, the drivers get ten times as much for a delivery as for ...

I walked around the farmer's market today buying food and flowers from the stands that had no customers, dropping a few bucks in musician tip jars, feeling all Lady Bountiful for spending my custom keeping folks afloat. Then on my way to my car, a man stopped me and asked for a flower.    My hands were full, I was determinedly Off to My Many Next Things on a busy day - a COVID shot, a funeral, a rehearsal and a concert - and gave him an “Are You KIDDING??” reaction, as if he had asked me to go on a date.  He pivoted quickly to pathos, saying, “My dad died!” I figured he was making that up. Then I was mad at myself for being so ungracious.  He got his flower, but it was a complete Lady Bountiful fail. I marched off, and was unexpectedly visited by the stray comforting thought: Oh, well, Jesus got crabby too.  Let me just say, I do not regularly compare myself to Jesus. Also, I know that “Jesus got crabby” is not the approved lesson to take eve...

I've been home almost two weeks.  It's funny to see the things I keep thinking about. *MY FAVORITE LINES from the painting workshop: 1)       (The teacher, describing the rules of still life) - Everything has a light side and a dark side. (Beat.) Just like people. 2)       (A student describing past teachers whose admonitions were unhelpful) – He said, “Just paint what you see!” Then he looked at my painting and he said, “See faster! See better!”   3) This exchange:          Painting student A:   I don’t like arugula.      Painting student B:   You like arugula. A:   I don’t. B:   You’re a lesbian. You live on Vashon Island. You like arugula. (Actually, both A and B were lesbians. Maybe you had to be there. It brought the house down.) *LINES THAT BOMBED: We ate every lunch and dinner together, family style. It became a joke that I had a tendency to ...

One of the women in my Italian painting workshop was an architect. She would turn out crisp streetscapes in no time, while I gazed in admiration and envy. I assumed the drafting skills she’d learned as an architect were helping her, but she said she was struggling, because Everything Was Crooked, and All the Steps Were Uneven. She said, “I want to fix it.” Everything WAS crooked. She was right. Crooked, narrow, and unpredictable. If you turned into a tiny, unfamiliar passageway, you didn’t know whether it would intersect with another, or just end at someone’s front door. Here's the Via Nicotera, in Antonimina. Even in real life, as a space, it doesn't quite make sense - the archway looks too small, but then turns out to be reasonable when you get to it. I don't know what the porthole is about, but I love that it's there.  I learned a lot on the workshop. I could have learned more, or concentrated on improving a particular skill, but there were too many options and I...