2020

Hi blog.  Relax, I am not going to bore you with my vision failings.  As my eye specialist said to me once, when I questioned my failing far vision, your vision is good enough.  Good enough for him, I'm thinking, but I have my problems, with seeing I mean.  Oh well, on to more interesting topics.

This is the New Year and I decided to make a couple of resolutions.  l 've never bothered before but I've changed in this past year so I thought, what the hell, I'll make a couple of resolutions.  No, I am not going to quite smoking, or drinking, or cursing.  Those things are keepers at.my age.

First, to recap last year, I finished draft 2 of a book I wrote called My Imaginary Dog.  My nephew, Paul, who is editing my book, suggested I get myself a blog and record my comments about editing with my imaginary dog, which I had told him I wanted to do..  Paul read my book and gave me a 13 page analysis of it.  I am using this document to fine tune my book with the help of Bear, my imaginary dog.  It has been a lot of fun and I have posted several of our conversations, and suggestions he has made, on my blog.  You may have read them, or not, because accessing my blog is impossible for some unknown reason.  Sometimes, I, or my sister, forward a link of my blog to those who have shown interest, i.e. friends and relatives. 

Other than writing my book and blog all year, I have entertained myself, usually in the early morning while I have my coffee and cigarettes in my room, by re-designing a piece of clothing usually obtained from the Thrift.  The main thing I worked on last year was a long camel coat which fitted me perfectly but the sleeves were a bit short.  This I found weird because I have rather short arms.  I thought I could add some cuffs to the coat which would give it the length I needed but I couldn't think of what I could use from the stuff lying around my room.  I even thought of crocheting some cuffs as I learned to crochet duvets years ago from an old, cranky neighbour in Upper Lonsdale where we lived for a long time.  That seemed too difficult as I would have to find my old bag of crochet stuff and re-learn that weird stitch she taught me.

On one of my visits to the Church Thrift at Parkgate, I found a pair of white slippers for $1.00.  They had high sock like tops to them and I discovered that inside these slippers, there was this white, curly fur-like lining.  Perfect.  I cut the tops off the socks, turned them inside out, and fashioned them into very cute cuffs.  My biggest challenge was threading a needle to sew the cuffs on.  My sight isn't what it used to be and I swear those needles were placed in my care as a punishment.  The long and short of this creative tale is that the coat with its new cuffs looked pretty darn good, cute even.  I added a white matching scarf, long, and hanging down the front of the coat, and it's ready to wear.  I hung this masterpiece in my outside closet and waited for a cooler day.

Tragedy struck soon after.  I tried to open the outside closet door and a screw flew out of one of the hinges, the top one, and I never did find it.   The other screw was loose and the door slumped alarmingly into my arms.  Luckily, my gorilla ladder was leaning nearby and I used it to prop the door closed.   A couple of days later, Molly Maid, our expensive house cleaners, came by and one of the maids is a man.  I asked him about the hinge and he confirmed it needs a thicker screw and longer because there is good strong wood behind and that would do the trick.  Now, I need to find a hardware store and get those screws.  As if I don't have enough to do, I'm thinking.

Weeks went by and no chance to find a hardware store.  The gorilla ladder propping the door shut  did not add to the decor in the entry hall.  I needed something better, something tasteful.  I tried several books but they did not fit until finally I found the perfect one, by a writer not so yappy.  W. Somerset Maugham and his little book, Cakes And Ale, was just right.  It held that closet door closed with assurance and taste, just like the writer.  It's just too bad the book's title didn't have the word closet in it, then that would be more fitting in more ways than one..

 Back to my New Year's resolutions, I have two.

Across from my bedroom door, which fronts on the entrance hall, is a white wall made of very hard wood that will not take a nail.  I resolve to gather up old drawings done by children I have known, have them laminated, and stick them to that wall in an artistic cluster. I have lots of pictures done by Paul and Mara over the years we all lived together, and they have been laminated to preserve them.
I'm downsizing and going through old correspondence to get rid of it, or whatever, and found several old pictures drawn by an 8 year old Damon Shareski, the son of my brother-in-law Steve who I am corresponding with now that his wife, my sister Patsy, died.  Damon, as an adult, is an artist now but I have his beginnings, which I will hang on my wall. There are five of them, a sailboat, a horse of course, a car, a dog named Briar Rose Bottens, and a young boy's version of a woman, always endowed with a fairly big bust.  They will make a nice display, not the breasts but the pictures..  They look a bit ratty after about thirty years so I decided to freshen them up before lamination.

Damon's pictures were drawn on a white pad of paper, you know the kind with three holes on the bottom.  You can remove the pages nicely or just rip them out of the pad.  I managed to preserve the holes in two of the pictures because the drawings were so close to the bottom of the page.  I've always liked the look of the holes after lamination, or any marks to show they'd hung on your wall for years because you loved them.  Anyway, the pages needed something.  They were white, the wall was white, and the drawings were not that dark.

After some thought, I decided to frame Damon's pictures in black for contrast against the white wall.  I got out my trusty black felt pen, a big one I've had for years, and a ruler borrowed from my sister,    
and voila, the job was done.  They looked better when I held one of them against that white wall, but still not quite right.  My sister, Frances, studied them and said she has an old book of heavy coloured thick paper she let the kids use when they used to visit.  Perhaps some of those coloured pages backing Damon's pictures would do the trick.  They did.  I chose a deep, deep pink colour for all of them and will attach them before lamination.

I found an old folded up piece of paper in the back of my desk drawer in my room.  What a lovely surprise it was.  Paul, my nephew, had drawn these caricatures, dated  April 2, 1983,  which is unusual because most people don't date anything, of himself, a couple of me, and one of his friend Warren which is undeniably him.  The only problem was that each set of caricatures was on one side of the same single page.  There's a stationary shop up at Parkgate so I got the fellow there to photo copy both sides of the caricatures and, because there was a space on one side, I had him copy a picture of Paul, the artist, on the high right side of the one page.  I took the pages home and pasted them into one sheet, ringed it in black liked I'd done Damon's and I'm done.  Now, I just have to find the time to get the pictures over to Lonsdale where I found a print shop that does laminating.  I hope it's not too expensive, because I have about 6 pictures.  If it is, so be it, it is my lst New Year's resolution.

My second resolution is painting my room and bathroom.  Now, this will be a challenge, a big one.  I have the colours I want, that's a start.   I bought a decorative border many years ago.  It says it is prepasted, washable, easy to apply, and is about 6 inches wide.  My plan at the time was to ring it round the mustard coloured wall surrounding my bath tub with the claw feet .  The person who applied the mustard tiles behind the tub smeared some mustard streaks on the white wall above and it could not be removed.  That is why I thought the decorative border would cover it nicely.  Of course, I never got around to it.  However, the decorative border has the colours I want for my room, off white for the walls and a gray blue for the ceilings.  All I have to do now is find a good paint store.

It's a good thing I've got all year to complete these resolutions because I think I'll need every day and every hour of that time.  I am not the fastest person in the world, but I am steady and resolute in my way.

The idea of New Year's resolutions makes me want to puke, and always has, so I don't know why I am doing this now.  Maybe I'm losing it. 

In my entire life, I only heard of one good New Year's resolution.  Many, many, many years ago, when my sister and I were still working. a woman in her office told her she was making a New Year's resolution, for the first time.   She resolved to start smoking. 




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