What do you do when housebound to keep from going bonkers?

Back when Punxsutawney Phil predicted we were in for six more weeks of winter I borrowed the puzzle below from my mother.  It turned out to be a lot of fun and not very hard to put together.   So I  picked up two puzzles the next time I was able to go to the store. 

I started the puzzle below during our last bit of bad weather and just finished it this very morning.  I thought the fall leaves I posted back in January were hard (it took two weeks) but it turned out to be a piece of cake compared to all the birch bark and sky in this one.  This one tied up our dining table for almost three weeks.

I just looked outside and discovered our car has a light dusting of snow covering the windshield.  Haven't heard the latest weather report but it looks like I will have to pack away the birds and get started on the Indian Chief  I purchased.  I guess we really are going to have six more weeks of winter.  What do you do when housebound to keep from going bonkers?

Weekly Kranky List

Here are just a few of the things that made me cranky this week:

 Seems that no matter where I go shopping all I see is pudgy girls in low-rise skinny jeans.  I wish someone would invent a camera that allowed others to see themselves as others see them.

  I got a virus (me not my computer) and spent three days feeling bad and one of the three in bed.  Hubby caught my bug and it became a ten-day nightmare with two trips to the doctor and an endless round of observations about how he took better care of me when I was sick, then I was taking care of him.  Why are men such bad patients?  

I have a seventeen-year-old grandson who is applying to colleges.  I am out to dinner with friends and get a panic call from his parents.  They have been waiting in line for hours at a college open house. When they finally got to the registration table, the first thing asked was their son's Social Security number, which they didn't know.   Whenever anything like this happens they resort to a tried and true solution, call Mom she will fix it. Not only did my daughter expect me to have his SSN she expected me to either have it memorized or stored on my person. When I didn't have the answer my dear daughter didn't see any problem with asking me to leave my friends and drive home to search for the info she wanted.  After all, they had waited "hours" to register their son.  The fact that they had not bothered to find out what they might need up front so they could be prepared had no bearing on the issue.  I was once again the bad guy.


We had a windstorm yesterday evening with 60-mile gusts made worse by the fact that we live on top of a hill.  When it was over, the awning over the patio was in tatters and our yard was littered with the singles that were once protecting our roof.  Plus, a large nail-studded tar soaked sheet of roofing liner landed on the hood of our car.  Needless to say, none of it is pretty and I fear what the repair will cost.  Looks like today will be spent dealing with the cleanup.  Of course, rain is forecast tomorrow.

Collecting

Growing up as an auctioneer’s daughter who, along with my siblings, were the staff that made sure the proceeds of my parent’s auctions stayed in the family; I got to know many dedicated collectors.

While our family business ran to country farm and estate sales and a twice weekly consignment sale held in old barns and chicken houses; with fast talking, sing-song chanting, joke telling, bib overall wearing auctioneers. We didn’t have any of those couldn’t-chant-if-their-life-depended-on-it, suit and tie guys watching for raised paddles from silent guests sitting on petit-point chairs in a mirrored and crystal room at someplace like Christies’ but the mentality of the collector seems to be the same.

What is it about people and collecting?  Why would someone want to fill their home, with multiples of the same item?  Or a room filled with a particular period’s baubles?  I doubt if I will ever understand collectors and I happen to be one of them. 

In one of my bookcases, there is a large ornate candleholder filled with bookmarks; everything from advertising handouts to poetry to the gift shop souvenir, none of which have ever held a place in a book.  The books lying around my house have store receipts, bobby pins, nail files and who knows what marking my page. 

What was once several hundred figurines of owls has slowly been culled to about fifty that can be found tucked into every nook and cranny from my flowerbeds to my laundry room.  A row of Hull Art vases, all in the same pastel magnolia pattern, sits atop my china hutch.  While a corner of my dining room houses my mini collection of Knight’s and castles.

My dozen or so cedar boxes are each filled with some small collection from cameo pins to nail clippers.  A lifetime of seashells, hauled home a few at a time, have finally been corralled into a wreath that hangs on my bathroom wall beside a shelf of shells to big to be held by a dot of hot glue.

Old-fashioned heavy glass paperweights line up in front of the books in one bookcase while mummified oranges (Florida 1979) occupy another. All around my office are decorative containers, coffee cups or little trays filled with binder clips, pebbles, memory sticks or assorted small items.  Heck, if one is good why not a couple dozen…. right. 

The above are just a few of the items you would find on a tour of my home. I am the rare collector that does not go out seeking rare or unique items to add to my collections, they somehow seem to find me.  I sure wish I could understand what it is about them that attracts me, because perhaps I could start to rid myself of them so my poor family doesn’t have to deal with it all after my passing.  

I wish

I wish……..

photo courtsey of Flickr

folks would stop thinking that because I live on a corner lot they can use their time at the stop sign to deposit the litter from their car into my yard. 

I could do in real life all the things that I do in my dreams.

I had not canceled my newspaper subscription because today someone called to say a photo of my garden, covered in snow, was published on the front page and I could not find a copy anywhere. 

I had felt loved as a child.  Perhaps now I would not feel the need to run for chili cheese fries when things get  …. Well hurtful.  

internet photo

Car designers would actually design an interior to please a busy woman… And I don’t mean doing the vase of flowers on the dashboard thing.  

My 88 yr. old mother would stop using the phrase “old age is not for sissies” and “life gets tedious” in the same sentence a dozen times a day.  I’m getting old and it is starting to hit too close to home.  

We are buried in snow ………AGAIN !!!!!