« Need to Spend Some Tax-Deductible Cash before Saturday? | Main | Blessed Freedom »
December 29, 2004
End of the Year Clearance
I had a voice lesson this morning. 11am. To make up for the paucity of voice lessons last semester. It was more productive than any of my previous lessons, probably because I've had a couple of insights, and also because neither of us was rushing. I wasn't coming from anywhere else and she wasn't trying to wrap things up early to move onto the next thing.
During the lesson, she asked me to come up with an animal (since the animal work did so much for me in acting last semester) that made a nice, moany "aaaaaaaaaaah" because that's the sound I constantly have trouble with. Well. Because David and I just finished reading Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel, the first thing that popped into my head was a zombie.
So I said, "Um, the first thing that I thought of is a zombie, but I'll work on finding another animal later." Only, I don't need to because the damn thing works. It's the perfect image for me. It relaxes everything what needs relaxin' and moves it forward. But picture, if you will, me shuffling around my instructor's studio, arms outstretched with my hands dangling at the wrist, singing a 5-tone descending scale of "aaah-aaah-aaah-aaah-aaaah." Yeah. You want the 8 year-old to come out and play, you got it.
This afternoon, I worked on getting the rest of the bricks around the yard. Dave decided last fall that all of the flowerbeds should be brick-lined. I didn't want any edging, but he was super-keen on the idea, so I agreed. We've had a pallet of rosy sunset bricks sitting in the driveway since August, and every time I've pulled into or out of the driveway, I have cringed with guilt for not getting to them. So this week, they went in.
Dave wanted the bricks around the beds, but since I'm the one doing the bricklaying, they go in the way I want them to. In the back, I followed the edge of the lawn, but it looked kind of strange. Then I realized that there are a couple of curves on one side near the front gate, but then the rest is straight with sharp corners. While it works in places, it just seems wrong on the longest unbroken stretch (where the junipers used to be). So I put a big, sweeping curve out into the lawn, which will become an extension of the flowerbed, and curved the corners on that same side. I also curved and extended the edge of the flowerbed under the kitchen window, to sort of match the sense of what was happening in the bed across from it.
Now the yard looks good; deliberate, instead of a mistake. Dave doesn't like it, but as I said before, I'm putting the bricks down, so I get to decide where down is.
While I was working on the bricks yesterday, I started feeling water on my fingers. I checked the fingertips of my years-old leather workgloves and realized I'd worn right through them. So last night I got some new ones. I got two pair. A white pair which looks alot like the old ones but fits a bit strangely and an orange pair that fit perfectly but feel a little "light." I wore the orange ones today, and they were great. Only now my fingers are orange too. Technically, I'm not made of the same things as a cow, but it's apparently close enough to cow leather that the dyes work on me as well.
Posted by sally at December 29, 2004 04:52 PM
©2006 - All content copyright Sally Eames-Harlan unless otherwise noted