Goodbye, 2020. Good Riddance!

You will NOT be missed. Never forgotten, but never missed. So far we’ve had Covid-19 running amok, wildfires burning up the western US, flooding in the eastern and southern US, earthquakes in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, super-sized hurricanes and so many of them that we ran out of names and had to use Greek letters. And almost ran out of them.

Was it really June when I last posted? I knew I had been busy, but not how much. Let’s see. Besides everything else going on in the world I’ve been in the hospital with bronchial spasms where I was in ICU and the staff was covered with every conceivable PPE, the ER with a dislocated thumb, and then had an allergic reaction to some new blood pressure meds and was covered with hives from top of head to end of toes. I did not use my Epi-pen, but came close. What a fun Summer and Fall. I have also started on Medicare and Social Security. Bad year for that. I made it into the SS office before they had to close because of Covid.

Now, it’s almost Winter, when Jupiter and Saturn will appear as one joined star in the sky overhead on the solstice, and I will be outside on the 21st to try to witness that, as long as it’s not a rainy and cloud-covered night. Mercury is in retrograde right now. That’s supposed to bring changes. Hope it works.

Let’s see pandemic, politics (even weirder than usual), natural disasters, life changes, social distancing, mask wearing…whew.

The e key on my keyboard only wants to work some of the time. I often have to go back and delete and rewrite several times to get the e where it belongs. This is the first Apple product I have not been deliriously happy with right out of the box. Although the last laptop’s whisper keyboard quit working after awhile, but was replaced free by Apple. I did have to go to the much-hated mall to take it to the Apple Store. I loved malls as a young person, but they just represent too much useless hunting to me now. I think online shopping has spoiled me. It reminds me of the old, old Yellow Pages (told you it was old) jingle, “Let your fingers do the walking…”

I also had to replace my recliner when the old one fell apart. The new one was defective and the store offered to replace it, but had to order one. Their truck got a flat tire and they had all of them replaced, but their corporate headquarters didn’t want to pay for it right away so the tire company held the truck until the bill was paid. I got the first chair on September 24 and the replacement came on November 10. By the way, it works great.

I’ve made umpteen cotton fabric masks to give away, sell, and wear. I’m still making them. I started in May and now it’s December. I keep looking for new and better patterns and tweaking the ones I already have. I’ve adapted a few that I found on videos from India too. Some fog my glasses less than others. The ones I made for the Tennessee School for the Blind were interesting. Since they lip-read the masks needed clear vinyl windows. Kind of fun. I meant to make some for men with beards, but I haven’t. I always get distracted by more urgent things.

One of the shops I sell my things in has an agreement with me that lets me keep up the website in lieu of working 4 hours a month on the desk. It’s a 70-75 minute drive for me one-way. That’s a lot of gas, so it helps them and it helps me. I still have to take things in now and then for sale or go to a meeting a couple of times a year, but it has saved me much time and money. I’m very grateful for this agreement now that the pandemic has hit. I don’t have to worry about catching viruses.

One of the sub-committees there has been working on changes to the website in order to incorporate an online shop. I tried 3 different versions of online shops and it got a little (lot) overwhelming for me so they got a web guru to make it over. He’s done a great job. We have been studying SEO and how to blog effectively and we each have blog articles to write. I have a couple under my belt, but there are many more to do and I’ve been working on that.

Isn’t Madeline cute with her little, tiny buds?

Meanwhile, back on the (windowsill) farm, there were ten little orchids in one straight line and the smallest one was…putting on a couple of buds! I must name her Madeline. Several of my orchids are putting out bloom spikes. My husband says that their timing is off.

My sales for the year have been slow, so I’ve been making lots of smaller things to sell in the shops. Tree ornaments, masks, card cases, mug rugs, and some baby things. I’m also making clothes for myself and the grandkids. One grandson, my daughter’s, only wants unusual things like a kilt and a safari hat in mint green. Now he needs a new sweatshirt for Christmas. I made him one last year or the year before. It’s been a long year and I can’t remember, but he’s outgrown that one. I had already planned a new long-sleeved T and corduroy bib skort-type outfit for his sister from two Violette Field Threads patterns. The older of my son’s kids needs new clothes too, so I have a shirt and sweatshirt cut out for him and a sweatshirt for his little bro. Can’t leave out the baby, even when he gets all of big bro’s hand-me-downs. He gets a little jealous now and then, but isn’t a tantrum-thrower or anything.

I’m working on decorating the house for the holidays. I don’t know if anyone will see it besides my husband and me, but we will enjoy it a lot.

Texas on my mind

I’ve been thinking a lot about when we lived in Texas the first time, this last week. Don’t know why. I actually think pretty often about Charlie Perkins Barbecue in Cleburne, Texas. Oh, how I miss it.

It was 1980 when we moved to Granbury, Texas, famous (?) for being close to Glen Rose of fossil fame. My husband is an engineer and he job-shopped for awhile. It was great money, we got to see a lot of the country that we probably would not have otherwise, but we moved about every 6 months or sooner .

Matt, our first little one, had been born in January that year and my brother-in-law got married on August 10. We attended the wedding and moved from Tennessee to Texas August 11. We were more durable back then.

We lived with some friends for a little while, until the duplex we rented was ready. It was brand new! Nice. I made curtains for Matt’s room from jungle-themed sheets and checked the back yard every few hours every day. The building site had been a huge field before the duplexes were built, had a great view of Comanche Peak, and snakes, scorpions and tarantulas were everywhere. Fortunately I only found one mouse in the house, no snakes or other creepies. There were also oodles of toads that came out at night. It was a bad year for heat stroke and rattlesnake bites, too. The weather was extra hot, well over 100°F every day, usually over 110°F, and dry. Snakes would shelter in the shade of cars. When people tried to enter the vehicle the snakes would strike. You learned to check under the car every time you got approached one.

Now, I’m a country girl. I grew up on farms and knew all about animals, but these were unfamiliar ones. Spiders that you could see crossing the road at night, large scorpions in the light fixtures, and snakes under cars. I always checked everything before I let Matt on the the floor. I checked his bedding. I checked our bedding. Everything. Especially after I saw a huge hawk swoop down behind the duplex and carry off a snake bigger than itself.

It wasn’t ALL scary, though. Huge dragonflies came flew all around. I’ve always loved them. I guess the nearby river kept them happy. The scissor-tailed flycatchers were gorgeous. I could watch them for hours. We saw cattle egrets everywhere. They are native to Africa, but a flock was blown across the Atlantic at some time by a storm. They made it to Tennessee a few years back, but they have been in Texas a long time. In south Texas they call them rice birds because they follow the harvesting machinery and eat the insects they stir up.

Our friends made the move much easier by finding us the duplex before we got there and introducing us to the best restaurants in the area. The first was Charlie Perkins Barbecue in Cleburne. It was about 28 miles from Granbury, which is practically next door in Texas.

I wish I had taken pictures of this place. Charlie Perkins must have been interesting. I never got to meet him. His restaurant was huge–warehouse-size. He probably employed 30 people. You could find any kind of barbecue you could imagine there. One catch, though–you had to check the Texas A & M football schedule before you went. His son played and he attended every game that he could. And he would close the restaurant. You should be watching the game, not eating barbecue. Oh, my gosh, that food! They really needed the sawdust floor. You couldn’t keep from dropping or slopping a bit while you gobbled it up. I have never had any to match it.

One thing I found fascinating were the huge longhorns in the adjacent field. Their shoulders came to the top of my 6′ husband’s head. I swear, their horns were wider than our car was long. I had been around cattle all my life, but I have never seen any before or since that were this large. I can’t remember if they were steers or not. Probably. They tend to get bigger.

The next restaurant was Japanese. My first. Yumm! But the local ones are just as good. Then, there was The Cattlemen’s Steakhouse. (Insert Homer Simpson sounds here when he dreams of donuts.) Oh, boy! This was not the fancy Cattlemen’s Club in Dallas. This was the original one in Fort Worth. It’s a little more down-to-earth, older and man, what steak! I swear, it melted in my mouth. I have never had better. Not even in Houston or Beaumont.

We moved away from Granbury in October that year, but that area made a big impression on me.

Like I said earlier, I’ve been wondering what happened to Charlie Perkins Barbecue. I found a young cousin while doing genealogy who lives in Cleburne. He’s never heard of it. Of course, this was 40 years ago. But I searched for the restaurant and finally found out what happened.

This is a Bum Steer Award from the January 1983 Texas Monthly:

“BUT THANKS TO THE AUTHENTIC SMOKE FLAVOR, THEY BOUGHT FIVE ORDERS TO GO
Citing a city ordinance that prohibits firemen from answering calls outside the city, a truckload of Cleburne fire fighters sat and watched Charlie Perkins’ barbecue restaurant —bordering the city limits three blocks from downtown — burn to the ground while Perkins fought the blaze with a garden hose.”

Sweet Hat Talk

One of my favorite groups of people is four-to-five-year-olds. My youngest grandson is four. I love how he pronounces things. The subject of skunks came up the other day. He went on and on with his knowledge of what “stunks” are and how they act. He was very accurate. I like his version of the name.

Youngest Grandson also loves Thor: Nagornack. You know, the one with *sigh* Chris Hemsworth.

Husband and I took him and his older brother to the Smoky Mountains a few weeks ago. We spent some time exploring the river bank and watching for wildlife, but the highlight was the visitor’s center with all the stuffed real animals of the park. They were so excited seeing creatures they had heard about but never seen. And Older Brother kept saying, “Nana, did you see the owl?!?!”


His new favorite animal is a wolf. This is a big shift from tigers, which hold the record of being favorite for 3+ years. Cheetahs held the title for about a year. We bought him a toy wolf at another visitor center in Townsend and youngest got a bag full of plastic animals. His choice. I tried to buy him a stuffed toy but he loves making landscapes full of small animals, so the plastic toys were very well suited to his personality.

The funniest thing Youngest Grandson said that day, though, was, “Nana, somebody threwed trash in your hat.” This statement came from the backseat while we were driving home.

I thought hard for a minute and asked, “What hat?”
“This one back here.” Well, I should have known that.
“What does it look like?”
“Ummm, it’s big.” I do have a large head, but I still don’t remember having a hat in the car.
“What color is it and where do you see it?”
“It’s black and it’s right here by my feet.”
“In the floor? That’s a trash can, honey. It does kinda look like a hat, though.” A stovepipe hat without a brim. Hahahahahaha. I explained how it was a collapsible trashcan for the car while my mind played with visions of me wearing the “stovepipe hat” and making speeches from a caboose. Carrying an axe. In a suit coat with tails over a long skirt.

On another note, I’ve been busy, but not necessarily with creative pursuits. My health seems to be improving a little. I actually had a polyp removed from my vocal cords today. It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, although I had to be knocked out for it. I hope that it will take care of the periodic loss of my voice and constant hoarseness. Now I’m on total voice rest for at least 5 days. That means that I can’t speak. I’ve done it before when I’ve had laryngitis, but then it hurt to talk. Now it doesn’t hurt much and occasionally I forget. And Husband forgets and asks questions. We really are getting old.

I did have a commission for a denim newsboy-style hat for a lady who had one when she was a teen or twenty-something. It had a zipper in one crown piece. I think I got pretty close. I added zippers and pockets. She was a very happy customer.

Reversible Denim Hats

Denim hat lady loves hats as much as I do. She even knows the series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. The costumes on it are phenomenal. We are kindred spirits. She bought the darker hat. The lighter one is at Locally Grown Gallery in Oak Ridge. I have got to make one to fit me. And not allow anyone to put trash in it! I’ll let Youngest Grandson guard it!