Odds and Ends and Pretty Flowers

One of the hardest things about being retired is keeping up with what day of the week it is. When I wrote Tuesday's post, I thought it was Wednesday. (Gimpy's appointment to be neutered is next Wednesday, not Tuesday.) I almost missed "So You Think You Can Dance" Wednesday night, because Wednesday seemed like Thursday. And today feels so much like a Saturday that I've found myself twice thinking about calling people I thought should be home on a Saturday morning. Maybe it's because my days aren't all that different from one another lately, and maybe it's because, even in their sameness, they've been filled with things I enjoy.

**********

I've had three separate genealogy projects going on this past month, and there aren't many things that hold my attention more than family history research. It's more fun than ever now that so many people are posting family photos and stories on the Internet to go along with the trail of "begats." What isn't fun is spending hours posting names, dates, and places in a genealogy database and then discovering that much of that family tree is someone's best guess. Wouldn't you suspect an error if a wife lived a century before her husband or died before her eleven children were born? Needless to say, there are some kinks to work out of my latest research.

**********

When my children were small, I made many of their clothes--and a lot of my own, too. Nowadays I use my sewing machine mostly for alterations, and that happens so seldom that  I always have to pull out the manual to see which way the spool of thread goes on the spindle. I could thread my old machine by muscle memory, but this machine is new enough--and used infrequently enough--that I haven't yet developed that ability. This week I was shortening sundresses for my daughter, and that little bit of sewing was enough to make me long for a bigger project. I'll leave the machine set up for a few days and see if anything comes to mind.

**********

One of the best things about being retired is not having to stick to a schedule, though I now find myself with a regular deadline I hadn't anticipated: the due date for library books. When I was working and could afford it, I bought books. Then, I could read at a leisurely pace. Now, a stack of books from the library excites me as much as a box from Amazon.com ever did, but it also puts pressure on me. The first thing I do is divide the two-week lending period by the number of books I've borrowed to determine how much time I'll have to spend with each one. Isn't that silly? I know I can renew them online, but I don't want to do it. For some stupid reason, it feels important to me to finish them on time. I think it must be some kind of weird, left-over-from-work mindset.

**********

The granddogs, Lucy and Oliver, are spending the weekend with us. It's fun to have actual lapdogs for a few days. They don't play with Levi and Gimpy, but they all get along, and the big boys are not quite as rambunctious when the little ones are here. It's a nice change of pace.

**********

All the flower photos in this post were taken on my recent visit to Houmas House. Can you see why I love to go there?