Saturday snippets

in which our plucky heroine dreams of the world being different...

I worry. I have not spoken to my mother in several weeks now. When I phone the Aged Parents, now it is Dad who answers the phone. I sometimes hear Mom in the background, making comments, but it is such a change from all the years when the stock action on phoning was for Dad to immediately hand the phone to her, saying "here, talk to your mother"... He sounds exhausted, and flat, as their lives have become smaller and smaller, and it breaks my heart.

I am hoping that the new day-caregiver coming twice a week will bring some improvement. I feel so helpless to do anything at all to be of use to them, I don't understand the choices they are making, and I wish with all my heart that there was no pandemic, which took as much away from what made their life pleasant as has my mother's descent into dementia. If there wasn't a pandemic, it would be more possible to arrange small ameliorations and activity of interest, instead of them being basically trapped in the house with only minor excursions for medical treatment and my Dad going grocery shopping...

If only the various technical connectivity tools were not so confusing for them; I miss seeing them and speaking with them, and even the small amount we were able to do last year, like Zoom meetings and my sister and I reading aloud to Mom, now seem like they happened a lifetime ago. Nowadays, my Dad just doesn't have the energy/bandwidth to wrestle with getting the tablet to work. I am hoping to figure out the least dangerous way for me to afford to visit them once I am healed enough from my periodontal surgery.

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~ creativity challenge ~

I am in the middle of making a thing. A new companion for Nandina, with the head of a fox. Somewhat inspired by the Coyote-headed beings in some stories. I'm using the technique of spun cotton, which is more like cotton mâché... I started with a foil armature, and then covered it with thin layers of cotton stuck down with watery white glue. My next steps will be paint, and a body the size that of Nandina... not sure how I will add the foxtail, but there will be one.

In addition, there will be chickens at Caer Cardboard (I found a miniature small livestock hutch in my boxes of random things) and since I don't have the materials called for in the Ann Wood chicken tutorial, I am going to attempt to make some using spun cotton as a base instead...

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Still feeling intense disconnection from not only my life in the before times, but from my friends and family. Can't be helped, as it is becoming more unsafe again being out in the world. Just when I began to dip my toes in returning to grocery shopping, Oregon dropped the mask mandate, so stores no longer ask people to wear masks, even if they aren't vaccinated. Fortunately the medical facilities are (I think) still taking the pandemic seriously. I hope that they are still requiring masks...

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beauty in the time of isolation:

I see odd things sometimes on my walks
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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	fox head blank	fabric stash sorted/culled	yard waste bin
2	-	lower L molar surgery	recycle bin
3	-	Nandina painted shoes	big bag of fabric
4	-	removed burned apples	big bag of fabric
5	-	pruned lower apple limb	big bag of fabric
6	x	resize Kestrel kuspuk	big bag of fabric
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - I cleverly cooked and froze things like mushy roasted zucchini, which means that I can pull out an ice cube of frozen broth, and one of frozen veg, and thawed and mixed with some cottage cheese and whey protein, it forms a slurry that is quite savory and flavorful, and as close as I can get right now to a formerly favorite meal...