Lately, I’m learning to take smaller bites out of the quantum apple and look at smaller bits of time instead of the day, week, or month as a whole. IE, lets look at some more pulled in snapshots of moments in time this week instead of all of it together as a whole.

My buddies are back! My ability to keep plants in the garden alive over the last month is now paid off with there (hopefully) being enough fennel for the black swallowtail caterpillars. (I’ll get parsley plants from the garden center if it seems iffy- no potato famine-esque repeat on my watch.) Always amazes me that black swallowtail caterpillars look like this and lay their eggs on fennel, dill, and parsley- but giant swallowtails have caterpillars that look like bird poop and lay their eggs on citrus. So weird.

Kitten’s gonna kitten. That back leg kicked up like that is the most “little brother” thing I’ve ever seen. The cats have staked their claim on the bed and sleep with me most nights now- the little one generally on me, which I sure don’t mind. There are studies that say purring cats actually help wounds heal faster- I certainly would agree and say that it isn’t just physical wounds it helps with. And I just this second realized how closely these two color match to my aunt’s cats (hi Aunt Val!).

The chair you see in the background is moved in from the living room as there are still two mattresses out there. The girls use them for some late nights video games and the youngest is still often sleeping out there- odd as she is alone out there now, but she shares a room with her sister and would be with her in there if she were back in her bed. Who am I to judge, you know? You do you, kids.

But- and my point here- the armchair in the bedroom feels very weird to me. I know some people do have them, and they’re useful for putting on shoes, but they feel very “And this is where the voyeur sits,” especially when they are facing the bed. I won’t be sad to move it back out to the living room, but I guess it gives someplace for the ghost husband to sit since the cats have taken over his side of the bed.

I mentioned recently that crazy bright colors are not sitting well with me- so I took some I had and overdyed them. Here is what that looks like, and it’s a good example becaues dying fabric you have to realize will work differently on different colored fabrics… and it’s more a wash of new color, not a replacement of color.

So (and I knew this would happen) I wore a Zuri dress to both the wake and my husband’s funeral… and I knew I would sell it right afterwards as I’d never be able to wear it again. That happened, I sold it for $120 (bought it in 2020 for $145) and then bought the dress you see on top of the fabric pile above to replace it.

It arrives and I realize it is navy blue and white- I guess I didn’t even read the description on it. I am NOT a navy blue person- not sure what it is but the color totally doesn’t jive with me. My kinda bland coloring also means that a black and stark white (or blue and stark white) print is too high of a contrast for me… so I needed to fix it. The orange skirt is also Kenyan kitenge fabric, and I used to love the orange, but it is brain meltingly bright, so I needed to knock that back a bit now.

I washed both pieces, and then added them to a dye bath with olive green dye. That will combine to a brownish wash on the skirt colors to mute them, and dye the white to green and the navy blue darker- so as to be almost black on the dress. I hoped. Caution to the wind and off we went.

I took that picture and I’ll damn well use it. I used my handy garden tote to dye in this time.

The finished results and a bucket and yoga ball in the background. I also need to repaint the door.

I like the skirt the best. The dress now looks so 1980s looking to my eye… so I’m going to do it again with a dark green to knock the contrast down even more and hope that solves it. It’s at least better than it was and if I still hate it after that I’ll totally just sell it and recoup at least most of the money I spent on it. I also did a stained 1980s tank top I got for a quarter at an estate sale (bottom right) but the stains took the dye darker than the rest of the fabric… so it’s a write off, unfortunately. Always be prepared to ruin whatever you dye, is my advice, because sometimes it happens.

I’ve also turned back on my Ebay store, and have been getting some sales.

Kinda bittersweet as the person I most wanted to tell about this one was my husband- he was with me when I bought this for $1 at an estate sale and put it in a mat and frame I already had on hand. Nice profit, though it sure doesn’t bring me the thrill it used to.

I also got a sticker. All the stickers on the laptop were my husbands- and I finally added one of my own.

The octopus made me laugh-though, and I’m realizing this now- it probably isn’t exactly blog worthy.

I also had an initial appointment with a tattoo artist for the birds on my wrist tattoo I want. They’ll be about 4.5″ with the mockingbird on top and the cardinal on the bottom. And thankfully, unlike my last tattoo experience, I had an initial meeting with her to go over style choices, and she’ll send me the artwork 3 days ahead of my appointment to okay or make changes to- so that’s nice. My 15 year old asked me if I’m just going to get a ton of tattoos now and I shrugged. Maybe. We’ll see how dead inside I still feel in the years to come, but maybe this will be it. (I didn’t say that part to her, mind you) I’ll tell you what though, I don’t much care for leg tattoos or feeling asymmetrical, so it cuts down into the available real estate, you know? There isn’t much left that I feel I’d want tattooed after this, but we’ll see.

In sad news (like we needed more) we also lost our 14 year old Great Pyrenees mix, Murphy, this week. And by “lost” I mean had to put down. My husband and I had seen it coming and previously had talked a lot about it and he was on pain meds for his hips… which went out on him on Sunday night. He spent the night shivering and then he started when I woke him up in the morning when I shook his shoulder… so I knew he was now fully deaf as he didn’t hear me calling him.

I made the appointment, made him a steak, my dad helped me load him up and went with me, and we put him down at the vet’s office. They knew he had vet anxiety so they gave me a blanket to wrap him in (like we did to get him through storms at home) and he just tucked his head under my chin and was gone in 30 seconds of getting the shot. It was altogether more peaceful than I was expecting it to be.

He was a good boy and gentle with other animals and kids. We will all miss him.

I am not sure who said it (may have been the vet tech) that 14 years was a great run for such a big dog- and that even if I’d known this was how it would end I probably still would have signed up for it when we got him 12.5 years ago. And that struck me, because my goodness, isn’t that true- I totally would have.

And then I realized the same could be said for my marriage. We had 25 years together of a romance and love story so many people don’t get. A quarter century of joy and laughter and love. Three beautiful girls. A husband who wrote over 30 songs about me or our love, and who was my biggest champion through everything I ever did.

And if this loss now is the price I pay… I’d still sign up for it, you know? This price is definitely worth having had that, as opposed to not. Morbid I guess, but a comfort of a thought to have.

The other day I ordered a box to keep all our love letters in one place- as he saved mine to him, and I saved his to me and I wanted them together and saved as I work through the dressers in our room. And it made me sad at first- to put them in a box and just shut the lid on it- no more love letters for me, you know? But now I can see it in a different light, and how lucky I am to have all of these, and especially that I needed the larger sized box and not the smaller one to keep them all in.

I liked the wave pattern on the top of the box.

And then a couple of days later I found a card on my nightstand. Weird, as I didn’t recognize it- but there it was, standing upright behind the lamp- kinda an odd placement, actually. Did I put it there? Was it on the ground and one of the girls or someone put it there? Hell if I know.

And then I opened it.

And it was a card my husband gave me way back in January of 2000 when we had been dating less than a year. Did I miss it while consolidating those all together in the box? I legitimately don’t know. But look at him… even now he’s still a romantic.

And it struck me as I held the card that we’d taken marriage vows “till death do us part”- so I guess that meant we weren’t married anymore. So I looked up as his portrait on my wall, laughed, and said “So. You want to grab a coffee with me sometime, or something?” His picture just smiled back- but I’ll lock that boy down again in the afterlife when I get there, you just mark my words.