Happy Belated Birthday Phyllis

I am such a bad Mommy! My precious Italian Greyhound Phyllis had her second birthday on the 4/26. And I forgot! You can see her picture below. She is the skinny one without feathers.

Some days I need to go see the newspaper to figure out what day it is. When you work 7 days a week, this happens.

In spite of my forgetfulness, she had a great day. Vince slipped her a piece of his t-bone steak and I took a nap with her. Later today we will go for a nice walk. Phyllis gets all upset when she is more than 400 feet from her house. I guess she loses the scent of her own yard. I can't smell anything different but I am not Phyllis.

Phyllis was barely 5 months old when she found us. She lived in 4 locations before we took her into our hearts. She is a sweet little 9 lb beauty and fills our days with laughter. Phyllis is a character.

She should not feel too bad. I was in Chicago working for my Birthday. The day later I finally remembered.

Cleaning up my act...or trying to, again.

This is our little girl in her t shirt I just had to buy. Italian grandson's are skinny little things.

These are the girls I often refer to. Lana is the larger one. We rescued her from the Humane Society a few years ago. She is a Spaniel mix and we adore her. Lana is 5. The little thing is Phyllis, our 2 year old 9 lb Italian Greyhound we rescued when she was 5 months old. What a dog! She is a bundle of energy and flies through the house. It is said she can run at 25 mph. Believe me!

And Sam, our foul mouth Parrot who is in his mid to late 20's. We are not really sure. Sam came to live with us in the early 90's from a smoke filled home. He was living in a dark room. Poor baby. He is happy now and will tell you all about it.

Now onto my weekend.

Good way to spend the holiday weekend when you can do whatever you want and not worry about feeding 14 relatives and Uncle Harry overloading on the wine, listening to well meaning female relatives suggesting how to run your house, and the little ones pouting for having to sit at the "kids" table not wanting to eat since they each put down a chocolate rabbit and are now having a big case of sugar overload zoomies, and watching the men negotiate who gets to take an after dinner nap on the only couch.

Then facing the mountain of dishes and leftovers clogging up the fridge for the next week. And clogging up the arteries! Leftovers include 4 green bean with canned fried things and mushroom soup over them that others brought each thinking they were the only ones. I hate that stuff.

Being a household of two has its good points. I made myself shrimp scampi and he had a lobster tail. I frying pan, one pot and a few dishes. Made cole slaw yesterday and threw a salad together. No chocolate bunnies, no hard boiled colored eggs, no ham and none of that green bean/canned fried onion mushroom soup crap. Just us and the girls. Enjoying our dinner on TV trays in the TV room watching some movie called Phenomenon with John Travolta. Bet he did not get an Oscar for that one! I will post a picture of the girls. Phyllis is a 2 year old 9 lb Italian greyhound and Lana a 4 year old mixed up English/Springer Spaniel Mix. And Sam the Parrot.



Vince found a cabinet which looks like it might have come from a kitchen. I really don't care where it came from. It has a Formica top and two doors and two drawers, is in very good shape, smells good,is clean and weighed a ton. I know since I did most of the lifting and draggin it in. Works for me. Perfect to use for a packing/shipping table. Formerly I was using an antique library table and would freak out every time I dropped something on it afraid I would put a ding in it.

I need to put that library table to a better use. Like use it to read books at. One future project is to dig into the book shelves that line a short wall floor to ceiling in my studio. It is a 16 foot wall lined with bookshelves that are double deep. Meaning there are stacks of books behind the books you see. Good insulation!

I spent the weekend rearranging stuff to fit it into its new space. Now it may sound easy for most but not for me because things are piled in assorted boxes and bags with no rhyme or reason in my 16 by 46 foot studio and workspace. Clearing out one corner is more like an archeological dig. And you need to find a new spot for stuff that is not going into the trash. Which means going on another dig in another corner and repeating the same playing "Musical Junk" till you are tired of it and say, "Screw it!" Or words to that effect. And some of the words are quiet effective.

I found some interesting stuff. Several books on getting organized I bought and lost in the piles during the process of trying to do what the books said. I found out I own 2 copies of Mary Rhodes Needlepoint, the art of Canvas Embroidery. I found my other brown shoe that one of the dogs must have hid on me. I tossed the other one long ago so I don't need to wonder what ever happened to the other shoe. I found a heavy duty stapler. I since bought 3 and I know where only one is. I found 3 pair of large scissors. Always losing them.

Found a whole box of assorted odds and ends of no value. A brass incense burner, luggage straps I was missing. Found about 20 knitting magazines that I forgot about since I am not knitting anymore. And even if I was, I hardly used patterns. I learned to knit years go and have designed all my own stuff. I studied pattern drafting back when I was in college and can do that so I knit to a shape. I discovered I love needlepoint more. I found 3 bags of knitting. Spotted 4 Rubbermaid bins of garments, including 3 coats, that need to be assembled. Love to knit, hate to assemble. I know there are 3 jackets in the bins needing assembly.

The 3 bags of Scarves are in progress. I will finish them since I now have 3 nieces and 1 nephew who I have never met. Hope to meet them soon. One is getting married next year. It is good to have family again. Scary but a good feeling. I have not seen them in about 25 years.

Hope they don't think I am the eccentric aunt. Well better than the nuts aunt.

You know the difference. Rich people that are a quart low are called eccentric. Poor folks are simply nuts. Calling me eccentric is a compliment.

I found a small bag of Medici wool, some Flower Thread color cards and color cards for Medici. No sense keeping them. Found some old show books from TNNA dating back to the 80's. Paged through some and found most of the people are no longer around. Like looking through your high school yearbook.

The antique library table is in place, the garbage bags are filled, the boxes broken down for the recycle man, another corner is being worked on.

And the place is still mess. Funny how cleaning makes a bigger mess.

I also wonder why I was saving those little plastic bags of air companies use for packing instead of the Styrofoam peanuts. I had at least 5 big lawn cleaning bags full. Don't ask the last time I ever used one. Could not tell you. I got out a pair of my new found missing scissors and started stabbing those little bags of air to compact them and get rid of them.

I filled up a few boxes of magazines I am parting with. I have trouble tossing old magazines. Yes, you can sell them on eBay but it takes more time than it is worth. And I have a neighbor who loves to read magazines and has no trouble getting rid of them. A good friend, Beverly Bradley, has me in the cleaning mode. Beverly is from LA and yes, Katrina made a mess of her life for sometime. When you lose everything but the shirt on your back, material things you thought were important suddenly cease to be.

So I picked a few categories of magazines to purge first. First is the cooking magazines. My education is in culinary arts and I hardly ever use a cook book. I have over 150 cook books and read them like novels. But when it comes to cooking, I go without. I know how to juggle ingredients and love creating. So, all the cooking magazines are off to new homes. And followed by Oprah, Martha, Health, Vegetarian Cooking and Organic style. And any other odds and ends. Keeping the decorating ones for now.

The dust is flying and my Dyson is in constant use. The room has 4 corners and the adjacent room has 4 corners. I visited 2 of them this weekend. Maybe by the time I collect Social Security I will have the place organized. That gives me about 10 years. Wish me well.

Tomorrow I am going to attempt to finish up the French knots on another tree. More about that in another blog.