When I first sat down at the computer to begin this post, I checked the weather also and the temperature was 79°! I had surprising good sense then, to know that I must postpone writing, and hurry back out into the sunshine. The house was cold, though it was a little warmer than usual because I had stoked the wood fire before going to bed last night.
I dragged the tarp off the woodpile and brought armloads of logs into the garage and the house. Tomorrow the more typical weather will return, and I’ll build fires again.
On my walks this week I was surprised to see the pussy willows out! Today I walked on the golf course for a hundred feet or so trying to get back to the creek path, and I saw lots of English daisies that had escaped someone’s yard and were well established, growing in the turf.
I’ve been complaining about February and saying that I want to be in Hawaii next winter, which is silly when I live in such a mild climate. I know I’ve been grumpier than usual partly because of various inconveniences of the remodeling. Experienced altogether over a year’s time they feel like afflictions.
I never thought the disruption — of my solitude, my routine, and my “nest” — would last over a year. At least two of the important persons will tell me things such as, that they are coming “in the next two hours,” so I wait around and don’t take a walk or run errands, but then they don’t come at all. If I run the errands at night, I get to bed late, but the workers might arrive at 7:30 the next morning. I’m sort of stuck here a lot, but with not much I can do of my usual housework. (That’s why I’ve been able to write more blog posts lately.)
But “Richard the Wonderful” is the main carpenter, and he is always my friend. 🙂 Today he was finishing the prep work for the bathroom tile, including this Valentine pink stinky waterproofing stuff that had to be painted around the tub/shower.
I was glad the day was so warm, because it gave me a chance to make use of another improvement in my upstairs arrangement. The new passageway between my bedroom and the sewing room also allows for a cross breeze from the front of the house to the back, and I opened those windows to let the smell out. This option will make a big difference during the rare heat wave, to be able to get that draft going as soon as the sun goes down and cool off my bedroom so I can sleep.
In my garden, the asparagus spears are emerging!
The east side/front of my house only gets a good amount of morning sun in the upstairs rooms, of which my new sewing room is one. Long ago we used to do our homeschooling in that big room (now divided into two) because on clear winter days it was by far the warmest place in the house. As soon as possible I’m planning to get a cozy chair in which I can sit by the window and bask on chilly mornings. I expect to look something like this lady when I do.
But now, my feet are already cold, so I’ll go tuck them under some blankets!
(painting “Morning Sun” by Harold Knight)
Cousin Rosamund is a more difficult read than the first two books in the Aubrey Trilogy (also known as The Saga of the Century), in ways I might tell about later. But this passage in which the Aubreys’ friend Nancy shares her expectant-mother thoughts sweetened the mood:
“I never thought of it before, but it would be more natural if there wasn’t anything at all,” said Aunt Milly.
This month our parish women’s book club is reading Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” I finished it this morning, in an old anthology from 1947 that I had kept from our homeschooling years, when twice my late husband and I taught a short story course to our children. That collection is A Treasury of Short Stories edited by Bernardine Kielty. When I closed that volume I opened The Norton Reader, Seventh Edition, to see if it included any Tolstoy stories, but when I saw the title “From Journal of a Solitude,” I continued reading the first few excerpts taken from the book by May Sarton.
Gladsome Lights 