How Are You Doing? Original Date: 10-14-07

[I have annotated this 'golden oldie' with boldface comments.  No, it's not true that I haven't written anything new -- I just like to revisit these things.]

10-14-07

How are you doing? I can't imagine ... but here's my (lately) chaotic life: Last night Mom and Deb and I went to the Show Us Your Bra auction.  Mom was the only bid (and she's stuck with it now) on my bra.  (It's "Barbie Goes Hunting.")  There were a lot of breast cancer survivors there and many "bratistes" had made their submissions to honor deceased mothers, sisters, friends.  At one point, Judith Fine (The Gazebo in Northampton) invited everyone to "Show us your bra!" and she whipped up her blouse -- as did several other women in the audience.  (I was too chicken.)

["Barbie Goes Hunting" is a handmade bra made of pink camouflage cotton fabric.]

On Friday, I had already taken the day off to go to a quilting class called "Sensuous Lines and Skinny Curves" by Carol Taylor. You can google her and find her if interested.  The first part of the lesson, I learned "couching" which turned out to be applying yarns, ribbons, whatever to the top of a quilt using zig zag stitches.  Not very hard, but tedious.  The second part -- the skinny curves-- looks easy but I am awful at it! I'm hoping to get better with practice.  Then she showed us a border with "floating" squares -- which I already knew how to do (thank you, Jesus!!).  [Ms Taylor pointed out how inept I was/am. Not a great experience.]

Thursday night, after work, Mom treated me to a live performance of "Shout! The Mod Musical" at CityStage in Springfield.  It was fantastic with the 5 women singing all of the 1960's hits.  (Well, many of them.)  I enjoyed it thoroughly. [I remember that that singing was fantastic!]

Wednesday, I took off from work and we drove to Williamstown to the Francine and Sterling Clark museum.  Wow!! It was fantastic to stand in a room with 4 Renoirs or 3 Sargents.  Again, I enjoyed that thoroughly.[I was also amazed at the brilliance of the colors of the restored 13th century panels.]

On Tuesday, I had to work 1 to 5:30 p.m. and was dealing with the vet and the dog.  He had $150 worth of tests to find out that he does NOT have Cushing Syndrome, which means the vet has no idea why he is intermittently incontinent.  [I still miss the dog.]

Last Sunday, Deb and Mom got sucked into going to church with me and staying for a "Newcomers' Class."  I told them they didn't have to go, but they did (pleasing me no end).  The day before, Sat., Emily was here too and we had a wonderful Sat. night dinner with Em, John (her bf), Mom, Deb, Elizabeth (my neighbor), me and Puffer.  It was a teriffic time! [I did end up joining that church and I'm very happy that I did.]

Oh yeah: on Wed., before hitting the road to the Clark, I noticed a bump on my gum. On Thursday, Jeanne and my boss said, "You had better go to the dentist!" Luckily, he saw me -- his office is almost across the street from the Jones -- sigh. I have an abcessed tooth and need a root canal and crown.  (Our Town dental plan is so crummy, that translates into BIG BUCKS.) [Currently, I need another crown -- and I'll have to pay $975.]

Shumway's Tree Service showed up two weeks earlier than he had said.  The huge, ugly, pine is gone from the front yard and you can actually see the house!  He trimmed the ornamental crab apple tree and removed twin maples from the back.  He was hauling away the huge trunk when I got home from work on Thursday.[Boy, was I glad that was gone.  Since then, we have had many high wind situations and that tree would have fallen on the house for sure.]