A mix for Monday and micropore......

The wind is still blowing gusts strong enough to move things, so the greenhouse, or what is left of it is still where it collapsed. It can stay there until the wind stops.
And the first of the quilts, which measures roughly 42x34 inches, is finished. The second is nearly done too. And the hands, oh the hands..... I hand quilt in a very simple fashion, you see - I love the way the hand stitching looks - but it strips the skin off the thumb and next 2 fingers. I don't wear a thimble because it just doesn't work for me, so I have a new system. I wrap my middle finger in a folded up piece of toilet paper, and then micropore it in place. That works. Sort of. One doesn't really want to add one's DNA to every quilt. I different kind of signature!I was on the couch stitching away last night, and it was dark and for some reason, it seemed like midnight. It was 9pm. I had completely lost track of time. I think I must have made supper at about 4pm. For the first time in my life, I ran out of olive oil. I was making a stir-fry of a mountain of fresh vegetables, and there was NO OLIVE OIL. Disaster.

That set me thinking of how, oh, about 15 years ago, I never used olive oil. I used sunflower oil. I think most people did back then, and then that got me thinking about how the eating and cooking habits have changed over the course of my life time. I remember when the only peas we had as children, came from tins. Frozen things were not really around, and how the vegetables and fruits were seasonal. We had fruit trees in the garden when I was young - plum, fig, apricot, lemon. I think. I remember waiting and waiting for the fruit to ripen, then eating fresh figs straight off the tree. Wonderful. I can picture that tree now in the back yard near the fence......

Now there is the awareness of fair trade and food miles, and organic produce never mind the things we grow ourselves. Things have changed. And for the better too. And "sell by" dates which in most cases are so overly cautious they end up with mountains of food being tossed out unnecessarily. Tins will keep for years - decades even. Having a 6 month sell by date is ridiculous. I use fresh foods well after their sell by date too. You can smell when the milk is off, the cheese is inedible and things are bad. I cut off the bad parts of fruit and eat the rest.

Anyway. I am still alive. So that is good.

Well, that depends on whether you are my lawyer or not. She got a stinging email (I am now sending one weekly to try to get things moving faster than the pace of a paralysed slug) asking for a progress report. Experts who have agreed to revue the case who take 9 months without producing a thing and who are apparently out of the country at the moment do not impress me at all. And the frustration is knowing that, had I agreed to the paper interviewing me and had the story been splashed all over the Sunday paper months ago, things would most certainly have been moving rapidly, if not over by now. There is no focus on justice here. I am surrounded by people focused on their own interests and advancement.

Maybe I will write a book about it all. Or something.

Ah well - what was my word for the year? Quiet. Hmmm. This Monday my mind is anything but quiet. I should retire to the couch and listen to a relaxation tape right now. Or quilt.

Now where did I put the micropore?
PS............ in the hunt for the micropore, I tipped over the coffee on the desk. Oh my sainted aunt.......