Easter

It's hard to write about Easter as a non-religious person. It's a loaded holiday, carrying a lot of hope of resurrection and, well, hope that people can use right now.

But I didn't grow up with that, and it's not something I've looked for since. Growing up, Easter was tight white patent leather shoes and a dress I would refuse to wear ever again. It was bunnies and baskets and picking out all the black jellybeans for my dad, and trying to keep my mom from eating all my chocolates.

Today was a weird mix of sacred and profane, or at least sacred and secular. Since we're all staying home - and it appears my town is pretty well behaved - the local fire company drove around in the afternoon with the Easter Bunny in the back of their pickup.

I was ridiculously pleased to run outside and wave to a man in a rabbit suit.

Then I listened to Andrea Bocelli's concert from the Duomo in Milan, which was lovely and brought tears to my eyes the same way the firehouse rabbit did.

It was eerie, hearing that voice echo inside the enormous, empty Duomo. It must have seemed particularly strange to him; lacking sight, his sense of hearing and space in the empty marble building must have felt disorienting.

If you haven't watched or listened, here's a link. Also, for my sewing friends, check out the fabric of his jacket. Fancy stuff.

Whoever was in charge of the camera couldn't resist a little fun. This statue of St. Bartholomew was do amazing I took a screenshot so I could look him up after.

I hope you all had a safe and happy weekend, and whatever - if any - holiday you celebrated was good.

Happy Fourth!

We recently had another time travel incident.  The calendar may say 2018, but in Lansdowne, it felt like some earlier, less contentious (but still very diverse) time.

There was a parade in the morning, which I did not attend because we had six straight days of temps in the high 90s and I could not move from under my fan . . .  on the first floor, where we've taken up residence lately because it got too hot too fast to put the AC in the bedroom window.  So Mario's on the couch in the living room, and I'm in the next room on the loveseat.  It works, for now, but guess what's happening when it cools off?

Going by the photos, the parade was standard Americana - fire engines, string bands (for you non-Philly readers, just go Google "Mummers Parade" and thank me later), kids on homemade floats, high school bands.

I honestly didn't know people still did this stuff.  

In the evening, there was a concert and fireworks down on the high school football field.  The town officially stopped fireworks a while back, but the local athletic association didn't want to let them go, so they fundraise every year, in addition to selling tickets to the actual event.. We bought tickets - though the fireworks were certainly visible outside the school field, and outside the town, it just seemed more fun to sit on the bleachers and ooh and aah with our neighbors.

I was impressed.  Small town it may be, but these fireworks were as good as any I've seen on the Ben Franklin Parkway in Philly, without being shoulder-to-shoulder with several hundred thousand sweaty, semi-drunken people.  There was even a pre-show concert, and the girl singing the national anthem at the beginning of the video can certainly hold her own.

Looking like Revolution

But it's only the neighbors starting their July45th celebration a few days early.

Wednesday is a full-on small town parade (let's see if I can get out of the house by 9 a.m.) followed in the evening by a concert and then a fireworks display at the high school field.

I've never been big on going to see fireworks. The crowds, the annoyance of trying to get home after.  But these are about 6 blocks from our house, so I'm all in.

Christmas in July

Cue the Jaws music.  It's that time of year again, the annual reminder by the traditional (and not-so-traditional) retail world that Christmas is coming.   

And it is, whether we like it or not, whether we're ready or not. 

Shop-wise, I'm getting ready.  I leave this offer here for you all, to take or leave as you please.  

My sticky summer discount code is CHRISTMASINJULY, and it works in both the handmade and vintage shops.  In the handmade shop, it's a 10% discount, and in the vintage, it's 15%.

**  This would have been posted sooner but Etsy suffered a glitch going into the holiday weekend that hung up credit card and some PayPal payments.  After 5 days, I finally have sales clearing again.  I didn't want to add to the headache - yours or mine - by offering this earlier. 

Happy holidays!

Tis the Season

Where to start?  Well, first of all, there are roses blooming in my front yard.  There are tomatoes turning red in the back yard.  The outsides of the windows are running with moisture because it's colder indoors than out.

There's doing a final Christmas show and not selling a single pair of mittens because the shoppers were in shorts and flipflops.  In December.

Then, there are cats.  What is more likely on a holiday weekend than a vet emergency?

Last Thursday, I picked Annie up and thought I felt something under her arm.  I poked around and couldn't feel it, and decided I was imagining things.  The next day, I felt it again, and it stayed found.  So I called my regular vet, who is a good distance away from the house.  She had no open appointments that I could get to before the holiday, and I was afraid to let this wait.  I tried another vet; they were already on break.

There's a vet nearby who I've never gone to.  Dog people love him; cat people do not.  I decided, since he's four blocks away, that it was time to make my own evaluation.  He had an appointment for Monday morning, and I walked Annie down in her carrier to get her checked.

The vet is brusque, no-nonsense, no bedside manner whatsoever, but that's okay.  I know I can tend that way myself if I'm busy, and I don't hold it against a provider so long as they do good work.  He examined Annie, felt the lump and gave me my options: I could have him take fluid from the lump, pay for that and have it come back from the lab as malignant, and then schedule a surgery to take it out, or I could just take it out.  The lump, he said, is probably malignant (breast cancer is common in cats her age).  If it's not, leaving it there increases the chances that it will become malignant over time.  Taking it out, if it hasn't spread anywhere else, will give her a very good chance of dying of old age before the cancer returns.

I voted for removal.  We discussed whether or not to do it before Christmas - he was leaving for his own vacation on Wednesday, but he had time to do it on Tuesday.  It was either that, or wait until the Monday after to have it done.  He thought it should be done sooner, but the risk was that if there were any complications, he wouldn't be around.  I thought the risk was letting that thing grow for another week; I have an emergency vet hospital nearby if something unlikely happened post-surgery.

So Tuesday he did the operation.  I picked her up around 4:00 p.m., and attempted to confine her to the bathroom.  She staggered out of her carrier, stoned as a cat can be, fell into her water bowl and then immediately made a break for the wider world.  She's got pain killers and antibiotics, both of which the vet said were optional; he's one of those rare vets who assumes I know my cat and how she's feeling.  (And he normally doesn't give antibiotics after what he calls a minor surgery; these were a just-in-case since he wouldn't be around).

Well, just-in-case is a good thing, because Lily, not to be outdone by her younger sister, decided to brew up her yearly urinary tract infection a little early.  Same issue: regular vet had no appointments, wouldn't call in a prescription over the phone because it had been 13 months since they'd seen her.  Emergency vet hospital declined to prescribe antibiotics because the doctor who treated Lily last time was no longer there, and it would have been her call.  Two friends who work in vet hospitals and who have been able to score the occasional antibiotic before were already on break.

I looked online and the medication Annie was given is also prescribed for bacterial UTIs, so Lily and Annie are sharing the bright pink, cherry flavored antibiotics.  I got a look at Annie's incision this a.m. and it looks amazing - only a thin, dark-red line under her arm.  So she's getting one dose a day and Lily is getting two, and Lil has already started to act more like herself and use the litterbox without discomfort.

Ah, Christmas.  What would you be without three things piling on at once and making me want to crawl under the covers (with wine), forget about cooking dinner, forget about dinner with the in-laws the next day, forget about everything until the new year.

But I can't.  So I won't.  Head down, push on.  Tis the season.

Whatever your holiday (or lack thereof), I wish you all health, happiness and sanity (sanity being as rare in the festive season as cookies are ubiquitous).