Nellie

Here is our latest resident at the shelter.  A more lovable creature never walked the earth.  This is both fortunate and unfortunate.  Everyone fell completely in love with her, so we wanted to have her with us for a long time.  However, her charms did not go unnoticed by the general populace and she has already been adopted.  I have promised to gun down her new owner if she isn't loved and treated like a queen.

I am working two days a week regularly at the shelter now.  My limitations (shoulders) are respected by the rest of the volunteers and I am allowed to leave wheelbarrows full of manure for someone else to dump.  As usual, I lead a charmed life.

Sociable Willy and Food

 This has been the month of company and Willy has been a happy dog.  After Carrie left, Josie arrived for a week-long visit.  I haven't seen her in a few years and we had a very nice time.  I have spent more time cooking in the last few weeks than in the last year or more.  Quiche, Lasagna, Smothered Beef, Spaghetti, Lemon Meringue pie, Chocolate Cake Roll, Brownies............they all rolled off the one-woman assembly line.  I must say without modesty that everything was delicious.

I have thought many times since I lost sixty pounds that I had lost my taste and energy for cooking.  And I have. For one thing, the work that goes into planning, shopping, and preparing meals is too much trouble for just one person who doesn't appreciate the effort.  You spend two hours making a meal, eat it in ten minutes, and clean up for 45 minutes or more.  I rarely like what I cook anymore, either, so the simpler the better.  I eat the same thing every day unless I go to somebody else's house for dinner.  For breakfast-lunch I have a bowl of cereal with fruit.  For dinner I make a big salad (something I always disliked)with ice cream or some other ready to eat treat for desert.  The salad will probably be replaced by soup as it gets colder.

This is all not to say that I don't snack.  I have been known to devour a whole box of crackers while I play games on the computer, or eat an entire big bag of potato chips on the way home from Machias.

A Walk in the Park

 

 

 

 

Carrie came to visit for a few days and one afternoon we decided to go to Shackford Head State Park for a hike.  We ended up walking every trail.  These trails are very primitive and not marked often enough to keep us from getting lost a few times.  Luckily Carrie was armed with several electronic devices that showed us where we were on a little digital screen (on her phone, no less). It is very rugged terrain, up and down very steep inclines through the woods and rocks that tower over Deep Cove.  I've forgotten now how many miles we went, but we were gone for a couple of delightful hours.  The weather was perfect.......cool and sunny, with just enough fog over the water to make the ocean views particularly beautiful.  The woods were amazingly free of insects(other than the fire ants that cover the ground all over Eastport).

When I suggested a walk in the woods, I didn't anticipate spending the whole afternoon in such a beautiful place.  We had a great time.  It's a wonderful memory for us both.
 

Pepper Grinder

It's hard to know what to say about this, but I really enjoyed painting this pepper grinder, the same one, quite obviously, as the one I used for the wood burning.  It was a diversion from the painting I am doing of the crowd at the 4th of July parade.  That one gets tedious after an hour or so because of all the figures.  It seems repetitious.....I am impatient as I pick away at arms and legs, faces, hands feet.  It's a subject that I really like when it's done, but the process is less than inspiring.  Nevertheless, I plan on doing more of those crowd paintings.  I have a vague idea of a series......