Bits
Broadway show
Multiple days of damp, clammy-cold weather seeped in under my skin this week, chilling my fingers until my nails were near blue, blood slugging through my body, unable to flow as it should until the weather warms for more than a brief day before plunging into cold again. Barren trees, stubbed bushes, and brown grass fill the landscape with some pot-holed streets still wearing small stumps of dirt infested snow at their sides and corners. How long can this continue?
Down underground in the TechShop, I continued sewing, designing, cutting and assembling a quilted navy, teal and tan striped cover for the V-berth. Before I can finish, a fitting is required to measure the depth and angle of the corner darts and tucks to ensure a snug fit around the triangle shaped mattresses that fit together like the last two pieces in a pie plate. That is Saturday's task after a four hour morning seminar on marine engine maintenance, necessary, but not totally captivating. Once the last bits are done, it's the third major sewing project under my belt (photos to follow next week).
That's the way the week went, bits of progress, a few setbacks, no major accomplishments. I had higher hopes as we opened the week with a Sunday matinee Christmas gift from my daughter and son-in-law, the down right smashing, foot stomping, laughing Broadway musical, Something Rotten. But that was the best it was. The rest of the week has been bits -- finishing a book, Robert Penn Warren's Flood, an epic on lost southern lives in an old small Tennessee town waiting its death by the rising waters from a new dam; collecting and organizing tax documents, sending them to our tax man, who is also our handyman for the rental house in Memphis. Amazingly, he is expert in both and a sweetheart of a guy. I failed to be approved to co-sign my oldest grandson's college loan because as a retiree I can't meet the bank's income standards even though I've got a bundle of investments. Sometimes life is insane!
With a chart as big as the dining room table, John labored to plot courses in various conditions of wind, current, location and visibility after almost a week learning to read the chart's symbols and notations. He must pass a navigation test before his off-shore sailing class in Florida. Bits of progress emerge after much head scratching, calculating, erasing and swearing at the slippery sliding parallel ruler. At least he'll be warm when he sails out of Ft. Lauderdale to Bimini and back. While he studied, I shopped the internet and emailed with our boat contractor concerning boat stuff - bits for electrical systems, anchoring, safety gear and the like. The lists seems endless and, in reality, it is.
One last bit. I voted, wishing "The Donald" would disappear, mysteriously releasing us from the insanity of his rhetoric (if you can call it that). Bits of him should be scattered across the lands, dumping debris on those who scream for him to "tell it like it is".
Perhaps next week will bring spring. Maybe it will be better, bit-wise that is.