Talking on the Phone while I paint on the screened-in back porch

What on earth?

I could hardly believe my eyes. My milkweed plant has sprouted three blossoms. I planted them to attract

  Read this new article excerpted from Nature about the gene that allows monarchs to have big muscles to fly long distances.

 
When I woke up this morning I was in the mood to do NOTHING! Absolutely nothing. While meditating for 10 minutes on the back porch, I had an idea, which changed the course of my day.

I was motivated. And decided, at last, to paint the two bird houses that were sitting on the back porch for a couple of months.

So, how many sides does a bird house have?

It's a cube, right?

I'm painting away, dibbing and dabbing, thinking I'm finished, when - lo! - I discover another side I must paint.

  I wear NITRILE GLOVES when I paint.

B/c I'm expecting important emails today, I would run upstairs to check, w/o taking off my surgeon's gloves.

The emails concern the next issue of our Compass magazine. I was in absolute dread to start it until I went to the retirement luncheon yesterday and then got all these great ideas!

 Here's a piece of canvas, on which I've outlined in pencil what I want to paint.

This is a shapely cup my sister Donna gave me. Inside are stalks of verbena I always pick from my mom's front yard. They spill over the sidewalk in purple splendor.

The first person I wanted to talk to was Marcy Belsh, who, with her mother Gloria, moved to Grenada Hills, CA.

As I couldn't find her phone no, I sent her an email asking her to call me if she wished.

Then I called Allan Heller from our Writers' Group.

 Allan read me a story he entered in a Halloween contest. A Mr. Cartwright was a bounty hunter and decided to kill the 'wanted men' instead of going to the trouble to keep them alive and fed and chained up.

Was he in for a surprise!

Allan told me he and his wife Tatiana will participate in A Walk to Stamp Out Parkinson's disease.

I told him I'd donate a small amount which I did.

Bill Gates, you may have heard, just donated $50 million for find a cure for the Ebola virus. This optimistic man is certain we'll find a cure. 

Boy o boy, if I were a rich man - sing it, Tevye!!!



Then I called my sister Donna and we talked a while. The bride and groom are doing nicely. That would be Kamellia from Ukraine and her new husband Tyler Roche Cartagena. Les trois live together. Donna is Tyler's grandmother. Ach! That makes us sound so old.

She asked me over the phone: Where have they all gone?

Gramma Green, Gramma Lily, Daddy and our brother David.

I confessed I had no idea. I said that once they were here on this earth and we all knew one another and tangoed together, but one by one they departed, never to be seen again.

Now I was upstairs making supper in the kitchen. What would I make?

Aha! Eggs. I scrambled three of em, salted them with pepper and where dyou think I ate them?

They were so delicious - I fried em in butter - so I took the bowl

outside and ate them in the dark.