This is Ivy-girl, with her knee socks and Elmo underwear, and a plastic bighorn sheep. She posed dramatically and did modern interpretive dance moves, and told me about the neighbors' dog, and out of all the pictures I took, for some reason I chose this under-exposed one. I like it. It looks like dusk actually looks, on the late summer afternoons when you stay out until Mom says you have to come in and take a bath.

I have made a helpful graph for Heath to refer to regarding how I'm feeling. Perhaps it will save me some whining. Now that I look at it, it looks a bit like a watermelon, the very thought of which makes me queasy, because it is not an english muffin or a glass of ginger ale. The writing is very tiny, but I don't want to make it bigger, because then it would be a very big watermelon. 

I am glad that Ivy is so charming and amusing, so as to remind me why I'm so happy to feel like crud.

I bought this high chair today, for my dear someone, who is currently small and translucent, and should arrive on Bob Dylan's birthday, at which time he or she will hopefully have achieved opaqueness. Yes, Mama, you can tell people now.

I named him Sparrow so he wouldn't hunt birds. Sometimes he's a rat. Mostly he's a kitten. I sat on top of the big chest freezer on the back porch, and he waited for something to pounce on. It's not a very high angle, but Heath's home, and he wouldn't let me climb up on the roof. I'm accident prone.

He has the longest arms. I must love him because this is not a photo of a tree or a book.

This is catch-up, since I'm a day behind. If that's not how it works, I'll replace this tomorrow with something else. Nice shoes, though, eh?

Alright, Beth Ann Marie, here I am, rising to the challenge. Dear internet: you, too, might join in and see what you see. The world looks different when you pay attention.

My Labor Day of love left me too excited to sleep. Thank you, nice flea market lady, for letting me dig through a barn loft with you and haul off a carload of 30's-50's dress in various states of neglect, disrepair, and glory. I'm so very happy. Yes, yes, they're just clothes. Still, they're very pretty, and they're old, and I like them. I suppose I'll have to sell off a few to keep my man from putting me on notice, or, worse, using this as an excuse to never throw out another empty milk jug, but most of these babies are living happily ever after with me.

The stuff had been stashed ages hence by some nice old lady in Lakeside who never saw a newspaper clipping she didn't like. I pulled out trunks and bags and boxes and suitcases, some full of tax records or empty bologna packages, others of antique encyclopedias with marbled endpapers or late victorian nightgowns with hand tatted yokes. Pretty much all the dresses smell of old hay, and some have seen the worst of weather and mildew and time. Some were packed away gorgeous starched crisp and department store new. I think she liked colors and prints. Some were worn and faded almost out of all recognition, patched, stitched, barely held together by the intersecting lines of a quick determined hand and cheap coarse cotton thread. One had been altered at the neck to accommodate the slumped spine of a gardening grandmother. I think I've figured out why they were all there. The faded frocks most mended, those held together most by force of will, the ugliest, are from the late 30's and early 40's. Depression dames made do and mended. No wonder she saved bologna bags and pickling salt. There's some sweet story, I think, in the bright hawaiian Nelly Don 50's flounces packed up one trunk above the dingy 30's rayon rags that barely still hint at paisley. I feel stronger when I wear her dresses.