Here's to Thrift Stores!!

No, I didn't get Foxy Angus at a thrift store, but I can't write about him every day!!

Foxy Angus, and here let us be done with the little critter for this post, is, I believe, mostly a wire-haired or broken-haired Jack Russell terrier.  A neighbor came over last night and pointed out the jumping (which he'd just started; he really liked her) and of course there are the beauty parts of him that are Jack Russell...BUT he is not white; he is a uniform russet beige with white face and blaze.  Oh he is so cute. Don't let get me started....

Back to thrift shops.  The pleasure of shopping at a thrift shop is the thrill of the chase.  Sometimes you go with a quite specific item in mind (like Foxy...oh, quit it) and there it is as if you'd ordered it up from the angels. Sometimes you just go in blank and there is a real treasure like the six Rosenthal plates I recently turned down even though they were only six bucks...why did I do it?

I was thinking about San Francisco this morning because I just found out that a worldly and chic friend of mine also likes to thrift-shop. (It's not a prediliction that you should confess broadly about). That made me think if SF as I first knew it in 1957. Just think what I could have found there, then. Makes me want to cry.

And we did buy a lot of things from Goodwill and the Salvation Army in Berkeley: our huge antique mahogany bed, our sofa and chair which were still the most comfy pieces of furniture I've ever owned, the hand painted rustic black dresser with wild flowers on it, the chair made of cow horns...most of these in fact all of them have gone by the wayside over the years.  I'm sorry I let any of them go. They'd nowadays be found only in an antique shop if at all...And the many little wooden tables with fabulous California tile tops...five  dollars here and there and there were plenty of them.

When we moved to Seattle in 1961, we discovered the St Vincent de Paul which was housed in several rough building along Lake Union, I believe.  Running from one building to another was a paradise of "finding", from furniture to old glass coffee jars, which was a never failing source of pleasure and acquisition to us.

I still find thrift shopping to be a source of simple stress relief.  You never know what you'll find.  Everything is different.  One beautiful goblet only, to be succeeded by a different beautiful goblet on the next set of shelves. I have a whole collection of them.  To heck with sets, say I.  I like my motley collection!

And books! Don't get me started on books! They are there. And different books too.  Like the novel, Eucalyptus, by that Australian writer whose name I do not remember. A good, interesting novel that I 'd certainly never have read if I hadnt stumbled on it in a thrift shop.

Why just a couple of days ago I found just by passing by it and grabbing it off the hanger, the very jacket I'll be wearing on this chilly morning. Its silk, Chinese, padded, and it's pale green embroidered and appliqued with more pale green on outside, and it's lined with an iridescent blue lining.  It's more tailored than it sounds and it will look good with my blue-gray-purple colored tee and brown-gray pants, at church. YAZZYBEL

Little Dogs and Hot Cups of Tea

Moral of life's story is:

Little dogs are exhausting.

Cups of hot tea are cheering.

Cup of hot tea with a Brownsville, Texas, chile pequin in it!!
Is there anything  more to say? 

YAZZYBEL

Foxy Angus

Welcome, Foxy Angus!!!

His name is Foxy because of his precursor, the Fox seen on these pages last week, who ran in front to announce his coming.

That has happened to us before. One year we had an absolute deluge of wild animals come upon us before we were given Freckles, our grumpy oldish cat, who arrived as the cutest kitten I've ever met in my life.

Yesterday, the yard man told us that while he was as Home Depot, he came out of the store to find that somebody had put a puppy into the back of his gardening truck.  He brought him in and we took him in.  The puppy, not the gardener.

He is the cutest little thing you ever saw.  I added Angus to his name because he looks like a little Scottish  terrier with wiry hairs and that little squared muzzle which you can't tell in the photo.

Took him to the vet this morning.  Vet Dr. Herron says he's part chihuahua and part terrier without a doubt.  Ten, maybe twelve weeks old. I went for ten because he is really a big baby and has fear of the grass. That makes his birthday the 15th of August, which it now officially is.

Dr Herron examined him from head to toe and pronounced him a " very good little dog."  Foxy got four shots and did not wince.  He is on the sofa now with Theodore and is snoozing away.

Foxy also got a new pill called "Confortis", which kills fleas from within.  It took me about five special "bites" of food before Foxy took down the pill.  He is a chewer not a bolter, and every time he got to the pill he daintily spat it out.  He finally ate it. It lasts a month and Foxy and I will be happy to see him cleared of fleas, which I hate.

This is the first animal I've ever had forever,without having Gregory here to love it and help care for it.  I'll miss him sorely because he was so great with the pets and did a lot to help with them when they were little.  Theo surprised me this morning by mentioning that he'd been thinking of Gregory since we got Foxy, so maybe Gregory knows we needed Foxy and helped him get to us. Or maybe it is just what Theo thinks: the yard man had the litter of puppies at his house, and just put out a sad story to get rid of them.  Either way, Greg could have been involved.  Am I crazy? Dead people can't get involved.  Can they? (yes)


Our big problem is this. We can barely care for ourselves, much less train and raise a puppy.  We are like the infamous old Brownsville couple who got to the place where they couldn't button each other's buttons... I want to give him to lively younger people who can do justice to him.  But here he is for now, at least, and he sure is a darling.  A Good Dog for sure. YAZZYBEL

Sunday Back from No-Church

Oh, how vexing.

Get up in the dark o'morn....it's raining! How exciting! And cold enough for a jacket.

So I don my rain cap (dark green with tiny blue and green sequins that look like rain!) my new non-faux fur jacket, my mid brownish gray pants, my mid navy-purple-gray tee, and my warm shoes and sox...and off I go to St Paul's....but even before I get there, the teeming hordes of people who are going to participate in one of the huge Walks in Balboa Park.  These walks are all to the good; but they take every available parking space for blocks around.  I finally stopped and yelled into the door to my friends Mary and Rick: "I'm going down to All Saints!"  And I was...but when I got close to All Saints, there was a group of police herding people off to the west from Sixth Avenue....and after a couple more discouraged go-rounds I just gave up and drove home.

Now I am in my weekaday clothes (which look just like the others but are from Kmart). I have kept on my shoes, as I am training my feet a la cave-man back to real shoes from slides.  Slides are a step up from flip flops, because they are beautiful, but they are still the same element on your feet: they do something strange to the muscles and maybe that's why I've been having so many foot problems the last few years. Anyway I am back into my everyday clothes, and Theo is still snoozing. I will make him wake up at nine o'clock just on the principle that people should get up in the morning if they can.
Especially diabetics.

I have a suggestion for St Paul's: If these interruptions are going to continue in the form of activities in the Park on a massive scale, why not offer a drive through Communion on these days? I got a program, but it would have been even better if they could have administered the Elements or at least a Holy Blessing.  Something for the priests or the Chapter to think about!! YAZZYBEL

Spanish Saying of the Week

Hi. I have a neat Spanish workbook and in the back there are many "dichos" or sayings...proverbs lofty and common...which are all interesting.

The translations are particularly interesting because often the images/words are nothing at all related to the actual words of the saying.  They are meant to convey the real meaning behind the old saying.

This week's saying is not too different in Spanish or English:  Con la cuchara que elijas, con esa comeras.

In English, we say: You have made your bed, now lie in it.

The first one uses spoons and eating to make the point, the second, a bed.  I think they're both apropos as images, because they're both everyday things.  And it is so true that upon the turn of a choice, sometimes made in pride or stubbornness or impractical optimism, lies the future of our lives from then on.

I was reminded of this in my own case as I talked to my son last night. Something he said made me think of a choice I made that brought me where I am today.  But as I muddled over it all in my head before I fell asleep,  (about five minutes),  it seemed that each moment of   'choice' , as I isolated it, brought me further and further back in time so that I could not really say which "choice" was the very one that brought me to this day.

Interesting.  Perhaps we are the chosen and are only imagining that we do the choosing....does it make sense? No.  Entropy, that is what it is.  A word I  am only beginning to understand. That is why we shake our heads and say, "Lord help us!" Perhaps we think we're saying it lightly, but we are really not. Not at all. YAZZYBEL

Autumn Wardrobe

I've been looking at clothes lately.  At last, our season seems to be turning away from a very unusually hot summer toward a cool fall.  We'll have maybe one more warm spell after this one we're experiencing now, but by Nov. 1 it will be time to set the furnace to Automatic for the morning chill...and fall and winter will be here.

My mangy summer clothes are lying about in piles here and there. I'll put away the short shorts and the white linen pants and a couple of tops, maybe two, maybe not. Easy to replace next summer.  I'll put all the rest into a big bag and haul them off to the stand of the young man who represents Goodwill in this neighborhood, down at the corner of Telegraph and the Canyon shopping center. I'll haul them off quick, because if I don't I'll soon find reasons to hang onto them just to see if I need them....nope. Off they'll go.

So, today I went to the Ross Dress Por Mas and loaded up my cart with some fallish clothes. Here that means a dark grey lace tee shirt, a pale metallic gold tee shirt, a warm beige and grey 'fur' jacket made from a beast that never lived on land nor sea; a black ruffly top with sparkles, a turquoise colored sweater, a coral cotton tee with long sleeves, and 2 necklaces with faux turquoise stones...No skirt, alas. I wanted a skirt or two but they are hard to come by especially if you have hopes that they'll cover that portion of the anatomy called in the parlance of the day, "the butt."  How short can skirts be? Very short I can tell you.  I'll dig up my expensive dark gray wool jersey longish skirt to go with the black and gray stuff, and keep looking for another color to go with the gold/beige/brown stuff.
At Macy's I bought a vest of faux faux fur. That is, it's faux fur that isnt even supposed to really resemble fur..just fuzzy stuff. It is white and very pretty and makes me look like a snowball, I realized too late. But am keeping it; too tiring to go back to the M. and turn it in. And I got something else...oh yes, boots! Low low boots of strange tan stuff that looks like cow hide trimmed with white fleece...very cute.  Mutton dressed as lamb, I am I am.  That's me. YAZZYBEL

Water all around us.....

Good day, it's Friday.

I have just been out walking in warm water.  It does good things for your muscles, your balance, your equilibrium, and your strength. I did it for a couple of months before we went to Concord to visit Ben, but what with one thing and another I havent gone back until this week.

Walking in water is a strange experience.  You stand there in a pool walking slowly back and forth, forwards, backwards, sideways, and you think, "What am I doin' here? I am not really doing anything.  This is so simple that it doesn't seem like I am doing anything."  However, you get out after a half hour (if you're wise) or forty five minutes (if you're crazy) and you come face to face with reality.  Yes, you were doing something, and it was really tiring.  Wow.

This noon we had a new visitor to our back yard. California pleasures include animals of all sorts.  And here was today's visitor.  Dang it, I can't grab him and put him here from my files....

He's a red fox...skinny, gray and red patchy hair, sharp fox face...I love him.  He's never showed up before, but I have the feeling he lives very nearby.
Probably got rained out or good and damp in his earth nearby.  There are several holes down in the lower forty.  Maybe we'll have fox kittens someday. I'll need a new camera, though, and a better computer expertise to be able to manage the riches at my fingertips. YAZZYBEL

Things Happen

Good morning.

And it is morning, and it is good.

Good is relative, now. And it is still good!

Things have change around here a lot.  We are making major adjustments (not very well) to a more advanced stage of old age.  A visiting nurse comes to see my errant hubby, who will jump up off the sofa and charge off in some direction just as if he still had complete control of his equilibrium.  He doesn't, and he falls, of course.  He often hits his head when that happens, and the doctors (sounds as if he's the president or a king, no?) have taken him off coumadin as it could cause him to bleed into his brain when he konks his head.  He doesnt understand that and thinks it was the coumadin making him dizzy and so forth. Does it matter? Guess not.

My state is more prosaic. For some reason I inflamed my inflamed nerve in right lower back and spend several days immobilized in agony two weeks ago .  Made me realize our vulnerability. Theo does a lot around here, but if I am down he is "out."  He was not able to make the basic decisions concerning my care when I basically could not move.  Next time, I'll have to get a nurse-caretaker.  Kaiser doesn't understand why I couldn't dash into the Urgent Care or Walk In Clinic to get help. They don't understand that there are times that we need help but can't go out to get it for ourselves. That's when we most need it, actually.

On a stranger, lighter plane, ==do you remember my blog about hairdressers and our strange relationships with them? How they take us for granted, and we do the same for them?  Well...when we got back from Concord, I called for an appointment with Don, and the shopowner said, "I'm sorry, Linda, but Don is not working here any more...," and I was just floored.  I got an appointment with another guy whom I love but he does not do a "strong" job on my hair combing so I can't stay with him. First things first.  So I decided to try going back to my old guy, Art.  He's farther away, but not too terribly. About five minutes more.
Art and I re-united on a cautious basis.  Now I have seen him twice, and I hope that this time the relationship sticks.  Of course, if he moves...I'll have to go through the frantic process of trying to follow him because he never did tell me when he did before.  But luckily he seems well placed where he is, and I hope we make it this time. I look forward to better cut hair, and better combed.

That reminds me that Don finally called me to tell me where he now is.  He's a dear person and I dearly love him.  But I'd already made up my mind. Carpe diem.  The weights swing over and a different diem is dawning. (Mixed metaphor.) I seized Art and who knows what may come of it. He speaks machine-gun Spanish and with my hard of hearing issues now, it's hard to follow what he's saying. But we still have a lot in common, including a love of literature and films.  He gave me tips of things I 'd love to watch.  So we have that. But it is the hair that 's the main issue and I have great confidence in him on that score. YAZZYBEL

I May Wind this Down

Hi, it's been ages since I wrote.

I may wind this blog down. Not that many look at it, and nobody comments but one sister, no. five...

A friend of mine said she tried it but found it un-appealing (I think gossipy was her term). Sometimes I think honesty is not a virtue in a friend.

So, I am not incentivized to write, but will continue on with the blog until the end of the year.
If there's anything to say, which at this moment there is not.

Son Benjamin went to Dean and DeLuca yesterday in St Helena, and said he would not send me anything. Is that unbelieveable or what?

Oh, I am off on a breadless kick.  There is so much written about concerning "gluten" and "gluten-free" foods.  Wheat is the worst culprit, certainly so here in America.  Plus it has the GMO components, so there are two reasons to eschew it.  Long ago when I was on the Dr Atkins, I looked like a million bucks (OK, it was forty years ago!) and felt like a million bucks too.  I ate no grain of any kind for a long time.  So it occurred to me that one of the Atkins benefits, unconsidered by me at the time, might have been that I was eating no gluten.  Hmmm.  Belatedly she puts two and two together and gets--zero.  Zero bread for a while. Zero flakes. Zero oatmeal :(....It will be hard to forego bread as Theo and I have been eating ever more of it with all these sandwiches we've been having out. And eating those grainy sugary little snack bars...and FEELING WORSE THAN I HAVE EVER IN MY LIFE.....so, I had sausage and eggs for breakfast and very delicious they were.  And baked chicken breast for lunch is coming up.  I gotta go to the store to invest in a lot of tuna fish, because tuna fish salad is filling and tasty.  Can I stick to it? In a way, I have to. I have to try. YAZZYBEL

It's Michaelmas!!

Actually, Michaelmas is at the end of September, and we've just joined October. But I've been thick, and didn't have the what-for to write anything.

I read a fine horoscope called "Risa's Stars," which comes out in the little Chula Vista newspaper, thrown free every Saturday (if you're lucky.) Risa is a very perceptive and sensitive and intelligent person who has a website, www.nightlightnews.com.   Last Saturday she wrote a paean to St Michael.  He comes with a sword to destroy evil (note Satan under his foot, above) and bring in cooperation, peace, work, joy, and the harvest.  What more could we want? He is one of the very strongest saints in the Christian layout.  Like an earl, rather than a mere count, shall we say. He's St Michael and All Angels, for he leads the good angels.
     I am feeling better; that is, I am not in agony with an inflamed nerve in my lower back any more. I have been able to move around with some comfort since last Wednesday/Thursday.  Now there is not a hint of that little diablo in there, unless I get tired, at which time he sends out a little Distant Early Warning: Watch out, sister.  I am down for the moment but not out.
     Ibuprofen was my St Michael this time. It works amazingly well, and I thank the sister who reminded me of it.  Sometimes we forget the thing that works for us and the thing we most need.
     I must close now, for my computer is on the fritz and about to toss me off.  That's another big problem right now. Gotta work on these problems, but first I turn these over to St Michael for now. YAZZYBEL