indoor summer

The more time I spend in the two-story greenhouse at Second Job, the more I want one of my own. But I don't want to do the work; I have quite enough work at home outdoors.

I remember Phaelenopsis (however it's spelled!) and Cymbidium for my days as the niece of a florist.

But these guys? I have no idea. They look more like insects than flowers.

The color of the pot is not as much of a match for the dark red of the flowers as it seems through the camera.

Tropical lushness.

Thanksgiving wedding

My grandparents were married on Thanksgiving Day, 1907. I can never remember the date, because they always celebrated their anniversary on Thanksgiving, whenever it fell, except in 1957 when they had a Golden Anniversary party on the date.

My grandmother made her wedding suit herself. The skirt, being silk, had fallen apart when I was still a little girl, but the bodice, also silk but heavily tailored underneath its froth, and the wool jacket are still more or less in one piece.

I'm disappointed with the light in these pictures. It was bright enough, but the late afternoon angle doesn't seem to show detail as well as I expected. There's a lot of fine handwork in there, and I think my grandmother did all of it herself except this beaded piece in the middle of the bodice:

I know she and her sisters all did tatting, although only one great-aunt on the other side was still doing tatting when I was a child. I'm sure she made the crocheted buttons, because she showed me how to do it, only I've forgotten how, since I never did it for real. (Thankful for the internet.)

I know the colors were brighter long ago: the greens, especially, would have been selected to make my grandmother's grey eyes look green.

But the reds were brighter, too.

Looking at the successful combination of so many decorative patterns, all her own choosing, I would like to think I have inherited her eye for design.

I take it out and look at it every few years, and feel the guilt of a librarian towards the Goddess of Archives for not preserving it better, but I've never done so on Thanksgiving before. Very appropriate.

a taste of the tropics

You wouldn't think this picture was taken at my second job, would you? I may have mentioned that I'm working seven days a week now; my second job is also dog-related, being at the boarding kennel of an animal hospital.

I am not, luckily, responsible for the care of the plants in the two-story greenhouse, since I have no gardening experience in the tropics.

I pass through it many times a day, though, on my way from one part of the building to another. This orange tree is on one route to the bathroom.

I'm sure I will enjoy it more and more as the days grow colder. Things are always in bloom.

Evening Exercise Experiment

During my search for ways to improve my post-menopausal interrupted sleep, I keep coming across the advice to avoid exercise near bedtime. Each time, I have thought "What nonsense! It doesn't interfere with my sleep at all." After the fifth or tenth or seventieth time I encountered this, I decided to conduct an experiment.

Hypothesis: Contrary to common wisdom, exercise near bedtime is not detrimental to sleep.

Methodology: For about three weeks, I have spent fifteen minutes on the exercise bike just before letting the dog out one last time and getting into bed. I continued to record my sleep data (time to bed, time fell asleep, number of times waking up, time alarm went off, quality of tiredness) in my journal as usual. I have been too lazy or too busy, pick one, to chart this data and present it in a table.

Conclusion: Bedtime exercise does not increase interruptions to sleep, and may even be preventative. (The one time I missed doing the bike was the time I woke up once every hour all night long, instead of one to three times a night. I wasn't missing exercise per se because I'd been for a long walk earlier in the day.) Of course, the drawback to a study with one subject is the lack of controls. It is convincing enough to make me keep working at squeezing the time for exercise in at the end of the day.

Thank you?

I’ve been pondering why the phrase “thank you for your service” to veterans makes me so uncomfortable. I think it would have made my father uncomfortable, too, although I don’t think it became so prevalent before he died. He served in the Coast Guard during WWII, and had three battle stars on his service ribbons, and stayed in the Reserve for thirty years, during the Cold War (he was on one-hour alert during the Cuban missile crisis--I don’t think my parents knew that I knew that), and his service was gladly and freely given. I grew up expecting to spend some years in some branch of the military, like him, and then stay in the reserve, and I probably would have if I’d ever been able to pass the physical on my healthiest day in my twenties. 

I honor those who serve, but thanks from me seem inappropriate in some way. I've failed to pin it down. The portable road sign at the county line flashing "Welcome home, Spc. Gore" seemed entirely and delightfully appropriate. 

vote

I seldom discuss politics, and I never discuss who I'm going to vote for, who I have voted for, who I might vote for. This is the fortieth year I've voted, and I've missed two elections in that time. The first primary election after I turned eighteen we didn't get me from high school down to the county clerk's office nearly forty-five minutes away in the hour gap between getting out of school and the office closing before the registration deadline. The second time I didn't vote I was too sick to get out of bed for longer than it took to get to the bathroom by holding onto the walls. So you can guess I approve of representative democracy. I just wish it worked better.

"Reindeer Jesus"

Every year at work we all carve pumpkins to display, and the customers vote for their favorite. I never win, but this year, one of our customers looked at my pumpkin and exclaimed "Reindeer Jesus!" I'm still chewing this one over. I've even considered "Reign, dear Jesus."

After we'd had too many pumpkins surreptitiously rot on us, we switched to plastic pumpkins, and I had to use a pattern. I've always done my pumpkin carving freehand, but that just doesn't work with styrofoam. So this year, to commemorate the Jeep's misadventure, I chose a deer pattern.

Thanks to that customer I'll never forget this one.