Happily it was back to the routine today. James got up at seven to start work by eight. We'd gone to bed so early I put my alarm on, and it was set to ring at eight, but never went off. So I ended up sleeping till nine. Since it was still mid-70s out, I loaded the washer with the towels, took Tucker for our walk first, then had breakfast.

About 10:30 I popped the towels in the dryer—or thought I did; they were still in the washer when I got home—and ran up to Town Center. Costco had the cheapest gas, and the gas pump allowed me to get gas even though our membership has expired. I guess tossing you out of the line just holds up traffic. Then I went down the hill, past the old Borders Books—I still miss Borders—and across Barrett Parkway to JoAnn.

I had a 30 percent off entire purchase for JoAnn, and had remembered from our previous trip that they had DMC's new Etoile thread line. If you cross stitch and want your stitchery to have a little "sparkle" (like snow or stars), you have to add metallic thread into it, and metallic thread is notoriously difficult to work with. The Etoile line has the sparkle already added to it, as you can see below (ignore the artificially added "star" effect):


I received a free skein of the medium blue with a British cross stitch magazine and wanted to get more, but it popped up at JoAnn only recently. Of the colors above, I got the black,  palest grey/silver, white, kelly green, the milk chocolate brown, the yellow, the darker of the two golds, the true orange, an orange-red, the pure red, the navy blue, the purple, and the frost blue. The white and frost blue are for snow, the red and green for Christmas, then the rest of the spectrum, the brown, red-orange, and gold for autumn, and the navy and the black simply because they looked cool.

At home today I sorted meds; washed, dried, and put away the towels; and washed the master bathroom and charged all the gadgets in it. I warmed up the roast chicken legs I cooked last weekend and we had them with a cucumber salad.

Mostly I updated my blog, had North Woods Law (fish and game police in New Hampshire) on in the background, and watched the new PBS cartoon Molly of Denali. Molly is a young Native Alaskan girl living in the the fictional town of Qyah with her mom, a pilot, and her dad, who runs the local trading post, and her husky dog Suki. Her friends are Tooey, another Native boy, and Trini, a black girl originally from Texas. Molly has a vlog where she relates her adventures online. It encourages kids to read (and use technology usefully), but also to go outside and have contact with nature, to respect their past and enjoy their family. Some stories have to do with animals (Molly and Tooey fear there's a ghost in the bunkhouse, but it's only a lost owl, Molly and Trini go with their friend Nina to watch puffins), others with just fun kid stuff, but the best stories have to do with Molly's native heritage. One story concerned Molly wanting to have a Native name like her parents and grandparents, and she picks out what she thinks she wants her name to be. However, that honor is something a tribal elder gives to you, and she doesn't think her cross aunt will do her justice. In the process Molly makes a list of the village people's Native names, what they mean, and who gave the name to them. It's a very sweet story and the name Molly ends up with is very appropriate. "First Fish" is just plain funny, and illustrates the Native tradition of storytelling. But the most striking story was "Grandpa's Drum," in which Molly finds out why her Grandpa Nat refuses to sing. It's very touching (based on a true story) and I cried at the end.

Molly of Denali

So we just noshed for dinner and watched two episodes of Savage Builds. The airplane dogfight one was interesting, but I thought the food fight one was kind of dumb. Why waste all that food?

Labels: chores, food, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:17:00 PM

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