Mother always wanted to be a teacher. Her older brother took her to school with him when she was (Four) and when she came home, she made a schoolroom for her dolls and taught them. They never missed a day of school, was double promoted, and attended college to be a teacher, and she taught her children and she wanted Fio to be a tecaher too. Fio, though, had different ideas--what she wanted to do was learn, EVERYTHING. Need;ess to say, that didn't work out too well, and Fio spent 23 years as....a tecaher on the college level.

and she became a very good  one--in the classroom and at home

22

It was a bleak day. Fio's eyelids were heavy and her brain was sodden--then her daughter called her and said that chocolate cookies were on the way. What more could (burp) Fiorella ask for? 💗

*

For the past two days, Fio has used the den as a staging area for packing kitchen and den clean-outs, but today, she'll put away her duct tape and concentrate on making both of these two rooms semi-respectable again.

*

Sonia Dog often sleeps upstairs in the master bedroom while Fiorella sleeps on the couch downstairs, but in the morning, the first thing Doggie dies is bark loudly, then hurry down to check on her Mommy. 💗

*

Off a country

The true measure

Of a country

Is how it treats its greatest treasure

The children

*

Fiorella's strongest voice is her pen.

Another Excerpt from SIGRID'S STORY

     Mik watched a little TV, then considered finishing the red-hot sex scene he had been working on before Sigrid came in dressed like Raggedy Andy. No, let it rest a little. He'd just do a little editing, he thought as he picked up Easy Prey. Only a few more chapters to go.

 He'd always known he would be a writer. It's what he was good at and what he enjoyed doing, but it took hitting rock bottom before he could really commit himself to the discipline required. Thank God for Dmitry. His uncle had quite literally pulled him out of the gutter, then helped him launch his career.

He glanced toward the hallway to the bedrooms. Losing Sigrid had been traumatic, but maturing. it had also given something to write about. The fact that she'd never read  any of his books amused him--if she had, would she recognize herself as Stefania, the one who got away? Of course, the reason Stefi had divorced Alexei was because she didn't want to be the wife of an undercover agent, but the emotional impact was all his own.

Mik laughed to himself as at his threat of using Sigrid in a story because he already had--in every story.

 

Tech, Family, House, Blogger, Omen

 Fiorella is getting some snide remarks about her attack on technology, but don't people see what is happening? Our originality--the very thing that keeps us from being machines--is, bit by bit, being squeezed out of us as we are forced into prefabricated decisions.

*

Your girl spent the morning packing moving boxes and preparing for the arrival of Minnesota son and his wife, who have kindly volunteered to help Fio get the house ready to sell. Yep, the bare bones are beginning to show.

*

Fiorella knows that selling the house is the right thing to do, but she resents it taking up all her time. and energy. All she does is repair, clean, and pack, and what she wants to do is paint, read, write, compose, learn languages, and make the world a better place.

*

Why is it that Blogger chose to minimalize itself rather than add new features? 

*

Fio was caught off-guard by the death of Ruth Baden Ginsburg. She wept until she was exhausted, then wandered over to the jigsaw puzzle spread out on a kitchen counter, looked down at the pieces, and--without even thinking--put three of them in their proper places. 

A chill swept through her. She knows what she has to do now.

*

21

Fio has been finding the most beautiful rocks in the driveway lately, as if the land senses she's going to be leaving it soon and wants her to have good memories.💗

Languages, Canada, Firewood, Health, Success!

Interesting.  Fiorella, the linguist, suddenly realized that when people have known each other for a long time, they develop their own mini-languages, short-cutting references to mutual experiences or previous discussions. And that, in a nut shell, is how dialects, then languages, build up.

*

Did you know that Canada is now Covid-free, that Trudeau shut the country down for a fair amount of time and he's now in the "let's be careful" phase, while the numbers are still spiking in the good ol' USA? Sad.

*

Fiorella hauled several fallen branches out of el parke today, but she's not sure what to do with them. They'd make great firewood for the winter, but she has the feeling her realtor will want them out of sight. Good grief--who doesn't value aged oak? 

*

Well, your girl drove over to her doctor for a scheduled check-up today, and apparently, she's still in good shape. The weird part of the visit was that Fio and an elderly man--who sat several seats away--were the only patients in the waiting room. Yep, the virus has turned the whole world upside down.

*

Hah--Fiorella made it all the way to the end of the blog without losing it! Earlier in the day, she wrote out five witty conversational topics, then somehow touched the wrong key on her machine and erased EVERYTHING.

Playing Along with the Game...for Now

Fiorella has always considered herself to be the Pepys of her generation--but what if in the future, she's  considered the crazy lady of her generation?

*

Speaking of crazy ladies, ever since the house alarm system went out, Fio has been keeping  a sledgehammer within reach of her couch-bed. 

*

Fio's older son and his lovely wife will be coming down to Texas to help your girl with the clean-out, which will be a godsend--daughter-in-law is six feet tall and Son is six-two. (Fiorella is five-two. 'Nuff said.)

*

Somehow, Fio has managed not to clean out the downstairs bathroom like she planned to. Oh, well--there's always tomorrow....which is the same thing she's said for the past two days. 😁

*

Hoorah! Fiorella just got a clean bill of health from her favorite physician, Dr. Saramma George. And yes, as you've guessed, she's from South India--remember that Fio wrote her dissertation on a South Indian language called Telugu.

 How can I delete unusable pages?

Junk Drawer

The contents of this drawer were personal--ideas and conjectures Fio had stored up for later posts or her own own interest--were never meant to be published unaltered, but Blogger would not let her reschedule to another date. Thus she has erased them all.

Tell me again how much "better" the new straitjacket Blogger is 😠😠😠😈

 

More Griping

This new Blogger has your girl so frazzled that she accidentally lost a whole page of notes she'd taken for future blogs. Why do people change things for the worse? Oh, yes--Fio forgot--for the sake of conformity--we all have to get together in technological lock step 😠😠😠

*

As you've noticed, Fiorella was finally able to track down Click, which had moved way out into the boondocks, but it was a two-day venture. The first day, she was on the road for more than two hours with no results, but today, she finally found the place, tucked back in the corner of a ramshackle business park in the middle of nowhere. Mark very kindly adjusted the format for her, but there's no way--or anyone-- give it the advantages of the old Blogger.

*

On her way back from the new Click, Fio drove by her favorite Dairy Queen and sadly noticed that, although it was almost noon, there weren't many cars in the parking lot or drive-thru. The virus has changed every aspect of our lives.

*

Speaking of the virus, did Fio tell you she is now the proud owner of a forehead monitor and can thus check out not only herself, but anyone who visits her?

*

It interests Fiorella that while the "new and improved" Facebook and Blogger may be new, they are not improved. In fact, they force the writer into pre-prepared corrals. Sounds like a take-over to Fio.

WHY DOES BLOGGER HATE ME? WHY IS MY TYPE SO SMALL? CAN ANYONE HELP ME?





FIORELLA IS CAVING FOR TODAY, BUT CHECK HER OUT AGAIN ON WEDNESDAY WHEN SHE'LL HOP OVER TO THE LOCAL LIBRARY IN THE AFTERNOON FOR ASSISTANCE. 

Sixteenth--local library can't help, had closed down Wired Wednesday

 

 

Four-Beat Sonnet

Fiorella's Blogger is out of whack.  

It's changed its format and won't change back 

Meanwhile her Facebook has done the same

"Drive Fio Crazy"is the name of the game

It occurred in the dark of the virus, of course 

When she couldn't research another source 

That could turn back her clock to happier days 

Or teach her to use the take-over ways 

But why is this happening now, you ask 

In this time of the distancing, this time of the mask? 

The answer is simple, the answer is plain 

Putin is on the move again 

And a country without adequate communication 

Is easy prey for annexation

Not a Bowl of Cherries

Fiorella is sad. She and Friend met in a women's chorus forty years ago and stayed friends for a long time--carpooling their kids to school together, sympathizing with each other, exchanging juicy confidences, and cheering each other on, but when Fio opened up Facebook yesterday evening, she discovered that Friend had attacked her at length on a very personal level because your girl opposes Donald Trump's bid for a second term.

*

On the sunny side, Daughter will be visiting this weekend and maybe she can figure out how to convince Blogger to let Fiorella indent as a way of indicating the start of a new paragraph. Fio would also like to know how to use an asterisk to indicate she's on a new topic.

*

Sonia Dog spent most of her afternoon yelping at Fio to come downstairs--Doggie does not approve of the amount of time that Mommy is spending cleaning on the various edges of the master bathroom to get the house ready to sell. To tell the truth, Fiorella would rather be downstairs herself, maybe putting her nudes, which she recently rediscovered, into an art book.

*

This long hair thing is getting to be a drag (😄), but with Covid/Coronavirus/The Virus prowling the countryside, there's no way your girl is going to pop over to Austin to get her hair cut. She'll probably end up with braids, like she had when she was in elementary school.

*

 

 

HEAVENLY INTERVENTION?

Fiorella cried herself to sleep after a horrible couple of morning hours dealing with the alarm system outage, the telephone outage, her FB timeline outage, the new Blogger, the house being a total mess--then, suddenly, woke up at noon feeling refreshed and determined to face the world. A minute later, her doorbell rang. Staggering into the front room, she saw a man holding a yard sign. He explained he was from her church and asked if he could put up the sign, which was apolitical, on her roadside. 

Of course, he could. Although Fio wasn't sure how long the neighborhood radicals would allow a sign touting love and joy to stay up, it was just what your girl needed. In fact, it filled her with so much energy that she planned to tackled the alarm system and land line problems, pack up more of the house, then maybe get to work on one of her short stories. 

Almost immediately, her land line rang, which meant her alarm system must be working too.  

OMG--had her church visitor been an angel in disguise?

But Fiorella, tell us the rest of the story. Who was the phone call from?

Interestingly enough, the caller was the total opposite of an angel--a realtor who claimed she could sell Fio's house for "more than it was worth." Not a good tactic--your girl would never try to sell anything for more than it was worth.

*

THIS IS FIORELLA'S SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 BLOG. THE NEW BLOG FORMAT DOES NOT ALLOW FOR CHANGING RELEASE DATES . TALK ABOUT LOSS OF FLEXIBILITY!

 

   

Five WHYS, One Complaint, and an Expression of Sorrow

Firella is not happy. First Facebook changed its format, and now Blogger has followed suit. Why?

Why has FB knocked her off her own timeline?

And why did the lid slip off her mother's charming tea set and shatter to pieces when she was trying to be so very careful when carrying it to a storage box?

And why, even though she's called several times, can't she get hold of Superior Pipeline for income tax information?

And why is the new Blogger double-spacing every time she hits "enter?"

* 

Fio does not like (note how she avoids using the word "hate") this new Blogger format. It is like a heartless machine has taken over and is trying to force your girl into its own image. No longer can she see her previous posts at a glance. No longer can she run free in the meadows.

*

 I am full of anger

I am full of pain--

When is it I shall ever be

Myself again?

*

Fio's just discovered that her alarm system and the telephones are out. Also, that she can't get on her FB timeline.

 

 

Excerpt from SIGRID'S STORY

Sigrid nosed the Volvo into its parking place, then looked around in the semi-darkness of the underground garage before unlocking her door. You could never be too careful--she'd reported on a series of parking lot assaults just last year. That's when she'd bought herself the neat little Beretta Tomcat she carried in her purse every day of her life.

One more quick look-around and she walked to the elevator with purposeful strides--another mugger deterrent--rose to the fourth floor, and carded the lock of her own safe haven. 

Safe except that her ex-husband was still there, sprawled on her leather couch and reading the Michael Gregor mystery thriller she'd tossed aside earlier in the evening.  Literary trash--just his level.

Mik put the book down on the floor beside him and moved his arms up to cradle the back of his head. "How'd it go?"

Sigrid took the chair across from him, dropped her heavy purse to the floor, and laid her jacket on top of it. Mik's legs were spread wide, as if he was deliberately displaying his masculine package. She focused her gaze above his head. Been there, done that. Not interested.

"It turned out to be a wild goose chase. Some idiot woman who finally admitted she was trying to get back at her boss for reaming her out about smoking in the john." She glanced at the discarded paperback and her lip curled in disdain.  "I see you've spent a pleasant evening."

Mik smiled broadly, as if enjoying a private joke. "Yeah. I like to check out Gregor's stuff occasionally" He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Have you read any of his books?"

Sigrid took a deep breath and shook her head. "Not yet, but I'll have to sooner or later. He's scheduled for a book tour in a couple of weeks, and I got stuck with interviewing him when he's in Minneapolis. Talking up visiting firemen isn't usually in my line, but my boss wants me to do it because his stories usually involve the Russian Mafia, and  I'm the only one on staff who speaks Russian."

Mik's eyebrows went up again. "You speak Russian now?"

"Sort of. Living with your family gave me a head start so I minored in it when I went back to college. I read it better than I speak, of course."

He winked at her. "And you already knew all the dirty words."

Sigrid refused to rise to the bait. Let him say what he wanted to. If things worked out, Mikwould be gone within the hour.

He reached down for the discarded paperback. "Have you read any of Michael Gregor's other books?"

She snorted. "Smoking guns and steamy sex?" "Not my sort of reading material. I'm a journalist. I like reality--not testosterone-driven adventure fantasy."

One side of Mik's mouth quirked as he glanced down at the slandered paperback. "There's more truth in fiction than you might imagine, sweetheart.""    

 

    

All about Me, Me, Me, Me, Me!

Yes, I drink strange
And I'm not going to change--
It's water or milk, never coffee or tea
And when it comes to food
I don't like to be rude
But not much appeals to me
*
Ever since the hip replacement, Fio has favored her left leg. Then it suddenly dawned on her yesterday that she could buy a couple of pairs of shoe soles, turn over two of the soles to match the others, cut the four to size, glue them together, slip them into her right shoe, and be even-legged again. 😄
*
As far back as she can remember, Fiorella has tried to avoid personal conflict by walking away from whomever she is debating because she knows that the only thing that objection does is intensify the opposition viewpoint. On the other hand, she'll fight a tiger to the death for a cause she believes in.
*
Fio just learned that friend Paula and her husband will soon be moving to Vermont to be with their daughter and her family, which makes your girl happy for them, but sad for herself. She and Paula first met when they were teaching at UT many years ago. Since then, both of them have encouraged and consoled each other, written books, and become mothers, then grandmothers. Time marches on.
*
It's raining outside, which is a rarity in Texas, especially this year. The grass at the back of her house has turned green and the iron plants at the front of the house are blooming like crazy. Maybe their joy will help Fiorella sell her house.

Odds and Ends Again

Congratulate Fiorella! She got herself out of her own pickle.
    Your girl has been parking both her cars outside lately to make more room for moving boxes in the garage, and that's never been a problem until yesterday, when she didn't gage the length of the concrete parking area correctly and jumped the Mercedes' front wheels off of it and into the woods.
     Panic--no matter how much she gunned the engine, she couldn't get the wheels to roll back onto the cement again.
    Her first thought was to call neighbor Michael, who has often rescued her, but apparently he is out of the country, which left Fio nothing to do but sleep on the the problem.
     Then--voila--her nighttime brain told her to check out the ground around the parking area to see if it was cleared out enough that she could move further into the forest, which would give her a better chance of backing the car up onto the concrete.
     Holding her breath, she studied the site the next morning, then drove forward onto higher land, gunned the engine and--thank you, God--the big car scooted back up out of the woods and onto the driveway again.
     Fiorella parked more carefully this time.
*
Fio's down to the nitty-gritty with her preparations to move out of the house--she's going through her jewelry boxes. Yes, boxes. At one time, your girl wouldn't leave the house without jangling.
*
As a child, Fiorella once asked her mother why she never said she loved her, and Mom explained that the word itself was cheap, that one  proved love by one's actions. "Hate" was also a word Mom didn't use, which was more understandable.
     Fio is more lax in her use of both words and does use love and hate as slang, but holds them tight when it comes to relationships.

Revelation

Her husband had not been on the scene, but he immediately shut her out and, man-to-man, took charge of the situation, giving the policeman his own version of what had happened. The cop seemed startled, but had no choice but to to go along with Husband, just as she knew it was best not to press it.
   But Husband was wrong. The stranger who had stopped in front of the house while she was tending to the plants was not interested in the beagle pups they were selling, but in her.
   It had seemed odd the way the way he walked toward the front door although she was visible in the side yard, but she thought maybe he was reading their front-yard sign advertising the puppies.
   "Did you want to see the dogs?" she called out.
   The man paused as if he hadn't considered it, then said "yes," in a soft, calm voice, so she ushered him through the house into the back yard.
   Strangely enough, the man seemed to be afraid of the dogs, even the puppies, but he wasn't in the least afraid of her. Turning to her, and in that same soft, calm voice, he said, "You're not wearing a bra, are you?"
   Panic flooded through her, but she laughed and kept on walking, holding the back-porch door open a second too long so the adult dogs could accompany her into the house. On the way through the kitchen, she picked up a knife.
   "Please put the knife down," the man said in that same soft, calm voice.
   She looked at the the knife as if she hadn't noticed it was there, smiled, and laid it down within easy reach.
   As soon as he was out the door, she called Husband and the police. She'd like to think it was her knife that had persuaded the man to leave, but it was probably the beagles, who wouldn't leave him alone. 
    The policeman arrived first, and she was telling him what had happened when her husband got home and rewrote the script.
   "You can leave now, officer. I'll handle the situation," he said, then explained it was probably a fraternity prank or someone stopping at the wrong address.
     But Wife knew it was neither of those, and also  knew she that she'd learned something about her husband that she didn't want to know.

   
  
   
     
  
  


 that the man who stopped in front of her house while she was outside tending to the plantscame into her house and 
.
    



Smooth, as usual.

I may have told the huy that my husband wd be home any minute now. I think he asked for a drink of water.

In effect, I was told to forget it--and I did. His goal was to take over and define the sitautaion.   Perhaps he was taught that that is the way one handles bad stuff--redefine it. Also, he does not like police in general and might have wante dto get rid of the guy.


He wasn't interested in the dogs--he was interested in me

From the Story of Ann and Neil

Aidan's half-open overnight bag lay beside the door of his room and his prized Spiderman pajamas were on the bed, so neatly folded that, at first glance, they looked like part of the bed covers. Neil would bet that was Miss Prim's doing.
     Stepping back into the hall, he glanced into the next bedroom, Miss Prim's room, which wasn't hard to do. Her door, like the front door, lay in splinters on the floor. 
     Taking a quick glance down the hall to make sure the none of the police squad was looking his way, Neil slipped inside the her room and looked around. As the cop had said, it was a mess. The ceiling had been riddled with bullets and the bed had puncture wounds in it.
     His eyebrows went up.
     Aidan hadn't been the only one in danger. Miss Prim had been damn well close to being punctured herself.
     He turned to go, then paused to look at the delicate landscapes hung on the wall.
     What sort of person was she, this prim and proper would-be old maid who painted pictures of charming dawns and wildflower meadows? Who had the cool thinking and the courage to save his son from armed kidnappers? Who'd turned out to be sexy as hell?
     He picked up a framed photo from the table next to her bed. It was picture of a family--a man, a woman, and a flaxen-haired little girl about Aidan's age--all smiling. Obviously, the McCoys had been happier in years past.
     His forehead wrinkled as he put the photo down.
     What had happened, he wondered. What had happened to Ann McCoy that had damaged her so much that she'd turned into the grim Miss Prim she was today?

Keeping Up with Fiorella

Fio's running late today
So give her, please, some time
Because she'll have a lot to say
More in prose than rhyme
🧡

Fiorella's had a busy day. Bastrop son came up to Gtown to work on the outside of the house, doing jobs that otherwise we'd have to pay a handyman for, while inside the house, your girl was taking yet more things out of drawers and off the walls. But then, every day is an overload now.  That's why Fio has a jig-saw puzzle spread out on her kitchen counter. It soothes her.
*
It's so odd--the cool weather came in on the first of September, and today, IT THUNDERED AND RAINED! Sonia Dog ran for the safety of her cave (i.e., the downstairs bathroom), then came out from time to time to whimper at Fiorella, probably trying to persuade her to take cover in the porceline palace.
*
The long, sweaty summer is over. Next week, Fio will not only be packing away her shorts and trying on her slacks to make sure they still fit, but also add long-sleeved shirts to her wardrobe. 
      Ha, ha! Watch us have a sudden hot spell. Mother Nature can be capricious.
*
Wow--it's the end of the week again, and Fiorella didn't even know it.

Warning: Doom and Gloom

As the house she's lived in her whole life is being torn apart more and more, Sonia Dog wants to cuddle in Mommy's lap more and more. Fiorella wishes she had a lap to cuddle in too.
*
The GooGone is finally working. Turns out it had to sit overnight. Must report that Fio didn't know that her fingernails would be required as a sacrificial offering.
*
Fiorella will start sorting through her jewelry today. She's already found a batch of earrings she'd forgotten about, and there's more to come. Yep, your girl used to deck herself out in diamonds and pearls, but that ceased at Husband's death, when she took off all her rings and put them away with her other splendors. Her only adornment now is the gold hoop earrings she wears day-in and day-out, awake and asleep, to identify herself as human, a reference she got from Hemalata Tirumurti.
*
The dreaded "low battery" voice is plaguing Fio again. That means she has to check every phone in the house to see which one is out of its socket. Actually, Fiorella probably messed things up when she was trying to untangle a snakes' nest of cords nestled in the back of a kitchen counter.
*
Another Gilead poem:

     Is there no balm in Gilead?
     No soothing respite to be had?
     Or is it now forever sorrow,
     Yesterday, today, tomorrow?

Complaints

Fiorella caught a show on TV that featured high-end mansions and was not impressed. How can anyone call a house a home when it costs twenty million bucks and has so many rooms that you'd need not only a road map to find your way around, but a squad of servants to keep the place looking like no one lives there?
*
It's no wonder your girl is depressed. Day after day, week after week, month after month--ever since Husband's death--she has dedicated herself to tearing apart the home she thought she'd live in forever. 
*
First it was called "the virus," then "coronavirus," then "covid 19," then "covid," then "the pandemic," but, sadly, it's all the same.
*
Fio's going to be rolling not only the big blue trash can up to the road this Friday, but the smaller black one too. Hope her pick-up won't be overlooked like it was last week.
 *
As you may have guessed
I am depressed
And day after day I get worse
But with nothing in sight
To set things aright
All I can do is curse

Housekeeping

Fiorella spent her morning cleaning the tub, the sink, and the window sill in the master bath--which left her plenty more to do--but, just for kicks, she went downstairs and spent the afternoon packing away the contents of the seven upper kitchen cabinets. Among other things, they held two very nice Chinese cookers of some sort, probably gifts from Younger Son's godmother, Jeanette Faurot, a renowned Chinese scholar and Fio's very good friend.
*
Did Fio tell you that she'd been rolling up the smaller oriental carpets and taking them out to the garage for transport? She inherited several of the rugs from her late mother-in-law, but who knows which ones are worth anything. It doesn't matter--the artist in Fiorella likes the colors and designs.
*
It's supposedly autumn now, but our temperatures here in Texas are still in the 100s. Pray for us.
*
This is too hilarious not to share. Fiorella's phone rang while she was busy with her to-do list and as she picked it up, she noticed the call was from one of those "business" that have a long line of numbers instead of a name.
   "Hello," your girl said, in case the call was legitimate.
   "This is Shawn. How are you doing today," answered a suave male voice.
   "Why do you want to know?" asked Fio.
    He paused, then hung up on her.
    (Yes, it was THAT EASY!)
*
 Fio is hoping to get around to her closet in the master bedroom today. She'll leave her clothes in place, but her jewelry collection needs to be sorted out and boxed. What sort of treasures will she find?


  

Still Packing, Still Griping

Fiorella dropped by Target yesterday and was pleased to notice that there was a sign out front saying  masks must be worn, and when she walked in, she saw a guy stationed near the door remind a man who had entered the store ahead of her to put his mask on.
*
While clearing out the upper shelves in the kitchen, Fio discovered that she and Husband were the proud owners of forty-three cups of varying origins. She'll save a few of them, but the rest will be donated.
*
After your girl finishes boxing up the kitchen, there's still the garage to attend to, and also her side of the bedroom closet, which includes her jewelry, a mess unto itself.
*
Fiorella is so tired of people killing each other. And she's tired of packing and cleaning. And she's tired of being alone. Remember, she lives in the boonies, where people only see each other if they go out at the same time to pick up their mail.
*
The horrible thing about the packing is that Fio has everything all crated up, it will have to be uncrated at the new house.