This morning I’m numbering the measures of the music we’re playing at our next concert. Which happens to be Friday, March 13th in case you need to put it in your calendar.
It’s our dinner fundraiser, where you pay to attend but we give you food and a silent auction in addition to a full concert. As soon as tickets are available I’ll let you know. Last year (our first) we sold out, so don’t delay!
It’s all fun music.
For your listening pleasure this year we’ll be doing show tunes. And that’s why numbering measures is giving me fits. Because as I’m counting along my mind starts to wander into the music. Then I start to hum and then I tend to mis-number the measures which defeats the whole purpose.
The first two pieces, Les Mis and Grease each had 216 measures! What are the odds of that?
I completed about half the music this morning, until my eyes were going bad and I was secretly glad when a certain fuzzy short member of the family poked me in the leg asking to go outside.
I might need a haircut too, mom. But only after I go outside, OK?
In January, 2014 I was trying to read The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. All I can remember about the book without looking at my notes is that there is a young boy who somehow is in possession of something important and it all revolves around a piece of art.
Winter goldfinches turn green with lingering hints of yellow, the hope for summer’s return.
But looking back at Goodreads, reading my ‘review’ (I honestly never think of my notes as any kind of review) I remember more.
The stink-eye from the bird in the middle says he doesn’t appreciate being photographed.
A thirteen year old boy and his mother are visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art when a bomb explodes, killing his mother. In the chaos someone directs the boy to steal an important piece of art, titled The Goldfinch.
Something startles them and they fly for safety.
The story goes on from there, on and on for about 800 pages. My review noted the often beautiful writing but the hopelessness of wading through so many pages of it. I was determined, it says in my review, not to let the book beat me.
And now, after all that, I don’t even remember how it ended.
This little dark-eyed junco takes the opportunity to grab a quick lunch.
Today, more than 10 years later, I’m reading Fredrik Backman’s My Friends. Mr. Backman also wrote A Man called Ove which I loved and remember almost every bit of.
The sun comes out and everybody settles in for a friendly meal.
I expected to have a similar warm and tearfully emotional experience with this book, but so far I am not having those feelings…and I am struggling to finish it. I’m half way through and I’m determined not to let the book beat me.
The book seems to be two stories, one the story of eighteen year old Louisa who has aged out of the foster system and run away, and the story of four friends, one of whom grew up to be a famous artist, and their story of a summer decades ago, depicted in a very famous, very expensive painting.
Some fuzzy girl in the house barks at her birds.
Now one of those four friends has run into Louisa on her flight from her old life. He might be running away too. He has with him the ashes of the artist and the painting itself. It happens to be Louisa’s favorite painting, one she came to town to see.
Fly away.
That’s as much as I know at this point. Louisa and the artist’s friend are on a train going somewhere. The friend said the artist wanted Louisa to have the million dollar painting. (The artist and Louisa met briefly in an alley where she was spray painting a mural on the back of a building. He said she was his kind of person.)
It has occurred to me that young people and famous pieces of art might be a theme.
They ‘hide’ in the top of the nearby beech tree until they think it’s safe.
Which reminds me of another book, written by a friend of mine, Karen Mulvahill. Her book, The Lost Woman is the story of Nicole who’s parents were each rounded up by the Nazis during WWII. Nicole’s father owned an art gallery and Nicole worked there as a young woman. After it was taken over by members of the Nazi party she managed to get hired to work there again.
And then they’re right back to eating.
She did that so that she could protect as much art as possible. But at what cost? At the beginning of the story she is an old woman, hiring a man named Robert to find and return some of the art that was stolen.
The book, beautifully written, is the story of Robert and Nicole and how they came to be in the places they find themselves.
It begins to snow again and the goldfinch makes peace with the cardinal who also wants lunch.
So here you have three books and three sets of young people absorbed in art. Three different stories threaded together with images of my winter goldfinches who, of course, have their own stories to tell.
Once upon a time, when I was 14 which was many decades ago, my brother gave me a watering can for my birthday. I kept it through all my moves, college, 8 apartments, my first house, and finally to the home we live in now. Years of moving around and the watering can always moved with me. It lived in the cabinet below my kitchen sink.
These days I only have one plant, but it’s hard to water, because it’s years old and very dense. The long spout of my watering can helped me get water to the roots. I water it every Sunday.
Then, one Sunday I couldn’t find it. In fact there was nothing below the sink. We’d had to empty most of the cabinets to get some work done in the kitchen the week before. I didn’t know which box, out in the garage, held my watering can. I used a glass to water the plant, most of the water ran down the leaves to the floor.
When we put everything back into the cabinets in the kitchen I couldn’t find the watering can anywhere. I asked my husband if he had seen it. He looked stricken, and said maybe it had accidentally been thrown out. I was heartbroken. I continued to water the plant with a glass and wipe up the spilled water. I almost asked my brother for a new one for Christmas this year. But I didn’t want to tell him we had lost it.
And then the dishwasher broke.
While my husband was installing the new one, hoses connecting under the sink, the watering can appeared. Way in the back of the cupboard, hiding in plain sight, it had been there all the time. After almost six months of being lost, of me thinking about it every Sunday, it reappeared.
Yesterday I watered the plant and smiled as the thirsty roots grabbed every drop.
The media has hyped this storm for more than a week, warning us of brutal cold and inches, maybe feet, of new snow. And they haven’t been wrong, about the cold anyway. We’ll see about the snow tomorrow when ours is due to arrive.
Last week I dug Katie’s old boots out for Penny. Penny’s feet are bigger but I can still, with a lot of work, get them on her. We’ve been using them for a few days when she goes out to do her business. She’s not a fan.
Ready to go.
On most of our trips outside at least one, and generally two, boots fall off as she runs around in the snow looking for the perfect place. I collect the rogue boots and stuff them in my pocket and sigh, and when she’s done we race for the house.
Most of the time. Sometimes she stops mid race and holds up a paw. Once she tried to hold up three paws all at once and then just sat down in the snow, shivering. When that happens I pick her up and we race, as fast as I can with an additional 26 pounds, back to the house.
I don’t think she appreciates her mom nearly as much as she should.
I just don’t think this is the look I’m going for, mom!
Anyway today is different. When I woke up this morning about 6 a.m. my phone said it was -15F (-26C) and that it felt like -25 (-31.6C). I lay very still. Penny was still sound asleep, curled up next to me, and I didn’t want to wake her.
At 8 a.m. the temp outside was -18F (-27.7C)
Because when Penny wakes up the day has started and that means breakfast and going outside! I didn’t want to go outside.
For a moment I contemplated how I could get her to hold it all day. I soon gave up on that idea and started thinking about how to make this work safely for both of us. I figured out how I could layer up in running tights under jeans under windproof running plants. And long sleeved shirts under sweatshirts under the coat. And two pair of socks.
I don’t think I’ll come over there to get my boots mom. OK?
But for Pen? She was definitely going to have to wear her boots and even then I was going to carry her out to her spot so there was less time for ‘boots on the ground’ and the opportunity to lose one along the way.
She woke up at 7, had her breakfast and then looked at me expectantly. It took forever to get me dressed and her boots on her.
Well darn it anyway.
She was not excited about me carrying her out into the cold. It hurt to breath. I wasn’t excited to be out there either.
It’s a look.
I set her down and she, of course, couldn’t stay on the part of the yard we’ve packed down from numerous trips. No, she needed fresh fluffy deep snow to pee in. Which she soon found and immediately peed and peed and peed.
I was telling her good girl and hurry up all at the same time. The chill was seeping through my coat.
She finished and looked at me, grinned, and ran through the snow, leaped over the pile of shoveled snow at the driveway and then just stood there, looking around. I asked if maybe she’d like to go in?
This isn’t so bad, mom. Want to go for a walk?
Oh no mom! I have to do my other job, and that needs to be over there in the front yard where we haven’t walked before at all! You know, in the DEEP snow!
I sighed and followed her as she leaped over the pile of snow on the other side of the driveway and ran through the snow until she found the perfect spot.
I think it’s better just over here, mom, come on!
One boot came off. I collected it and told her to hurry up. She did.
So then I scooped her up and we trotted through the snow, over the piles, up the driveway and into the house. Success! She’s such a good dog!
I believe the proper fee for doing my stuff outside is three kibbles mom. Hurry up.
And just then then the sun came up.
A sign of coming warmth. We hope.
We’re not heading out there again until much later today, when we can hope that the sun will warm us up to at least 0F. A veritable heat wave.
Stay tuned for stories about snow tomorrow. I won’t ask you to read a whole post about Penny doing her business again anytime soon.
I have a new laptop. Can you tell? I can, there’s a different feel, things are in different places, and I have to figure everything out.
What’s going on down there?
For example, I can’t find the cursor to put it where I want it to do any editing. Getting the images in is hard too. I can cut and paste previously typed stuff, but I can’t delete anything. So odds are you’re going to see the same sentence repeated because as I was inserting photos they were going in the wrong locations and I was trying to move text around them.
I’ll just ignore all that going on over there.
AND I have this backlog of photos to show you! Of course they’re mostly birds, shot in my own backyard because sometimes I look out there and I can’t not take their pictures. They are soooo cute. And beautiful too.
Hey lady! This is supposed to have water in it!
I have so many images of the same birds eating out of the same feeders. But each time I’m hopeful of getting that shot. You know the one. The one that makes you gasp or smile or both.
Hurry up and eat before some big bird comes along.
Sometimes I think I’m the only one feeding the birds in my neighborhood. They sit out there in the trees and shrubs and seem to wait. I’m hardly ever back in the house when they’re chowing down on the newly filled feeders. It’s cold right now and I’m filling six feeders 2x a day.
Does that make them spoiled?
Coming in for a landing.
So now I have all these images that I’m just now getting processed and you just need to see them. I have virtually nothing interesting to say to accompany the pictures.
No bird in this image…just beautiful frosty ice.
The birds have been so hungry they are getting used to me standing in the window with that big black lens pointed at them. I think they’ve decided the risk of me is worth it. Or maybe they recognize me from all my trips outside to fill their feeders.
Just leave all the peanuts in the shell to me and I’ll leave you guys alone.
I guess I could tell you that all of these were taken from across a room and through a window. Thank goodness we paid some nice gentlemen to wash the windows this fall.
There are five of us cardinal couples at the feeders daily.
Whenever I’ve tried to do the windows I end up with a streaky mess. The guys that come here twice a year do a beautiful job and I don’t think they’re very expensive given all the windows we have. We try to get them scheduled in the fall before the weather would make window cleaning really miserable.
We were pretty late this year but we made it. In addition winter started a little early. Does that mean it will end early this spring?
How many of us do you see?
Probably not. The winter this year seems more like winters I remember as a kid. Cold and snowy. We’ve had snow on the ground most of the time since Thanksgiving.
Eating upside down is good for your digestion. Really.
Anyway I think I’ve rambled enough to show you some of the images I got last month. I have a whole other set of images from the ice storm. That was pretty amazing.
Hi, I’m a titmouse and I fly really fast. And I eat a lot. Cause I’m such a crazy little bird.
I’d like to get all these photos from 2025 processed and filed away. Cause there are even more on my camera waiting to be downloaded from 2026!
Stay tuned.
Make room for incoming!
I’m just going to publish this and see what it looks like. I can’t get to the preview either, and I can’t delete some stuff, though I was able to delete a few sentences and then I lost that ability again. It’s going to make me crazy if this is the way things work!
But I’m glad to just get some photos out there. I’ll try to see if I can edit it tomorrow. Maybe the laptop (or WordPress) just needs a good night of sleep.
UPDATE: Apparently WordPress just needed a nap. The editing today went just fine. I’m not going to reread this post, I’m sure it reads somewhat clunky as I was working so hard last night just to insert an image or a paragraph. But I feel better that I can at least delete repetition. Hope you enjoy the birds!
I started messing around with watercolor when covid began. I thought I’d use the time while we were confined in our home to teach myself something I’d always wanted to do. There are a LOT of free tutorials online.
I never stopped painting even when they let us out of the house. Now I paint cards to give to Bring Smiles to Seniors, a nonprofit that organizes homemade cards to be sent to nursing homes. I’m grateful to them for giving me a place to send my stuff. I mean, the people in my address book can only take so many hand painted cards….right?
Anyway, I saw this video in 2023 and became facinated with these crazy birds. They’re easy to do, and people love them. Sometimes I get in a crazy birdy mood and that’s what I paint all day and then I ship them away before I get too attached to any of them.
This weekend I had a friend over and she painted her own version of the crazy birds.
Today I attempted to use up Saturday’s leftover paint and did these guys to go the the nursing home.
And then I decided to paint a card especially for the woman that manages all these cards and gets them shipped out to the places they need to go. I figure hardly ever does anyone actually tell HER thanks. And I appreciate her and her organization so much.
I’m writing this post while I’m waiting for her card to dry so I can add some more dark places. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s done.
This morning I painted a lot of cards really quickly. The birds have lots of doodles on them. The flowers have lots of leaves and stems and colors.
The question is….when do you know to put the brush down. When do you know when to stop?!
Change Is Hard 