Tasty gaslines

I bought a simple black dress to put my beaded moth top over

After much debating over the past few weeks, I bought this crane print. The Taiwanese artist, Hua Yao Tung, has painted some very cool stuff. As you can see from the previous photo, I have this next to my crane screen in  my orange, blue and gold living room

Maya came over the other night but spent most of the time sleeping

Another primitive doll to add to my doll wall. Its body sort of reminds me of my own. Finally a reasonably thin body ( 8 pounds to go and I stop) but upper arms still are mysteriously outsized

Where have I been? Busy.

Yesterday I spent the entire day in a hospital. Not what I had planned on doing. What I planned to do was to finish planting my vegetables and maybe set up my pond. A friend had surgery  2 months ago. Unfortunately the wound never healed and was opening even larger exposing her to all kinds of peril. Her daughter and grandchildren live with her but her daughter was inconveniently out of the country. I had offered to keep her company while she recovered but the person who was to take her to the hospital ended up in the hospital herself. She said all I had to do is drop her off but I knew they wouldn't do surgery without a person present responsible for her afterwards.

I was told the surgery would take an hour and the recovery another hour so I had brought my running stuff to get some sort of workout instead of just hanging out in a waiting room. Already it was 80 and humid (now after the arctic blast came in, it hasn't got past 55). I found a path next to the river and run in the steamy air redolent of honeysuckle and wild phlox. There was some kind of pollen burning my eyes. The hospital gives you a patient number which shows up on a lit board telling you what phase of the surgery they are in. I had timed my run such that she'd be almost out of recovery when I returned. Nope still in surgery. An hour later, still in surgery. Recovery took much, much longer too. They wanted to admit her but she had those grandkids to take care of. Don't they have friends to stay with? Not any her daughter would approve of. Turns out her wound was very deep and they had to keep cutting and cutting. Whether she got to go home or not depended on a physical therapist finding her capable of walking a bit. This hospital doesn't have a physical therapist so we had to wait a few hours for them to find one to come over. She could walk gingerly and in pain. How much pain? 5 out of 10. Then they wouldn't release her until additional meds got the pain down to a 4. So a very long day that I got to drive in 2 separate rush hours. The grandkids are 13 and 15 so they should be capable of being helpful. Sadly they a used to grandma stepping and fetching for them, not vice versa though today's report was they did step  in for some of the work.

So who would eat a gas line? Rodents. One of the Moms recently got a new car and already the Check Engine light started flashing. She took it in to find the chewed gas line which the warranty doesn't cover. This has happened before to another car of hers. Never heard of this before. I looked it up. Happens a lot and especially to one brand, not hers, which used a soy based (yum, yum) housing.

All the Moms have many plans to go on their fancy vacations so we got together the other night as we had 4/5 of us around (the fifth is on a dream vacation in Scotland and Ireland). It had been a very hot day but it was quite pleasant in early evening to sit outside next to the railroad tracks drinking our enormous Happy Hour beers ( I had been minus 60 pounds; too afraid to weight myself now). The train comes quite close to us shaking the ground. Right after the crossing gates went down meaning the train will come thundering through in the next 30 seconds, a young woman's  bike tires get stuck in the tracks and she falls down sprawled on the path of the soon to be here train. Her helmet was on the ground. She didn't seem too much in a hurry to move herself out of peril. All of us diners behind a fence were yelling in unison for her to get up. A runner who could have pushed her to safety just keeps on running by. We all thought we'd see a very gruesome death but she got up with seconds to spare...smiling. Did she stage this?

So after my bike ride today(in the cold but at least it was dry), back to gardening. All the vegetables are in. Hopefully they survived being dried out in their peat pots yesterday while I was gone. I didn't have to buy chard as little plants are popping up. They reseeded as some of the plants were out of the rabbit proof zone. Of course that nasty kale didn't die. It has roots to China. Still much work needs to be done.