Catching up with Fio

Fiorella rewrote yesterday's blog because it didn't flow right when she reviewed it that evening.  She's like that--a serial revisionist.  Anything worth doing is worth doing better.  Stay tuned.  This blog will probably get a revision too.
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Fio's numeral-reviewing project in seven languages got bogged down somewhere along the line so she decided to work on just 1-10 instead of 1-20.  She can rattle off those  numbers in Spanish, German, and Russian again, and is working on Telugu.  Latin and French should be easy enough once it's their turn.  But, now Fio wants to add Mandarin to the list.  After all, she has an appointment with her Chinese dentist next month.
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Husband and Fiorella started putting together an art desk last weekend, but they screwed in the center crossbar upside down and haven't had the time to fix it.  Ah well, there are seventeen more hours left in this weekend.

Sonia's Cigar

Sonia is a real dog.  She buries bones behind the waste paper basket, under pillows, between couch cushions, under Fio's leg, or any other strange and wonderful place into which she can nose a piece of saliva-soggy rawhide.

Doggie gets a new bone every day which she promptly hides, then appeals to Fio to find for her.  Mommy makes a big fuss over locating the bone, re-gifting it it with all due ceremony, and Sonia walks off happy, bone hanging from her mouth like a good cigar.

Ah, if only Fiorella's life could be so good.

Going Upscale

No doubt about it--our area is gentrifying itself.  Yeah, the boondocks are sprucing up.  The people at the end of the street added a front patio last year, and now they've got a work crew out there laying a U-shaped drive across their front lawn, adding extra parking spaces, and pouring a graceful concrete walk to the new front door of their house which opens into the new addition they added two years ago.  Before that, they turned their back yard into a garden of Eden.

And the neighbors halfway between the end of the street and us are leveling their driveway and adding a concrete lip.  And across the street, a new house is going up, and it looks sorta GRAND.

Husband and Fio have done their bit by having the cedars on their front acre removed two-thirds of the way toward the street and also hiring handyman McHugh to clean out the western planting bed, but more work is going to have to wait till they've paid off the groom's share of Son's wedding.

Nursing Home Visit

He sleeps, but does he dream, my father?  When
I visit twice a week, he wakes with eyes
near blind and looks, then nods to asleep again
He sees my shape, but does not recognize
his oldest child, his baby girl all grown,
who shouts her name into his better ear,
who warms his death-cold hands within her own, 
who scrubs the crusted food off from his chair.
Father beloved. where have you gone?  You sleep
but do you dream?  I kiss his innocent face,
smooth back the unkempt hair, loudly repeat
my name again, and pray to God for grace
that he may dream within his cobwebbed brain
of righteous battles won and dragons slain.

                                               

After Effects

Adrenaline does amazing things.  Monday morning, despite a good night's sleep, Fiorella spent another two hours on the couch after she woke up.  She was totally innervated--not an ounce of get-up-and-go in her body and her brain had an out-of-order sign draped on it.  She couldn't even think of what to do, much less get up the energy it do it.

That afternoon came the phone call from the Divine Liza.  Within five minutes, zing!  Fio's world went from dull to sparkling!  As soon as she was off the phone with Liza, she called friends, emailed her RWA chaptermates, notified friends and relatives.  Not only that, but she picked up her morning list and went down it, ticking off most of the things she had meant to do earlier.  And she got Husband to drive her over to Hobby Lobby to buy the art desk (40% off) she plans to put in the guest room.

And now she's still on her laptop at 9:18 PM when she usually packs it away at 8:00.  Oops--hope that doesn't mean she'll get up exhausted tomorrow and have to seek her adrenaline in chocolate.

Drum Roll, Please!

FIORELLA HAS A PUBLISHER!

KINKAID HOUSE (nee PRINCESS OF BOSQUE BEND aka HONEYSUCKLE DREAMS) WILL BE PUT OUT THIS SPRING BY A TOP-TIER PUBLISHER, GRAND CENTRAL (HACHETTE GROUP)!

Dressed Appropriately

Back in the dark ages, when Fio was a child, little girls wore dresses.  Ah, the elation in finally being able to tie the sash in a bow behind  her back.  Ah, the joy in her aunt, valuing Fiorella's entrancement over Mother's eye rolling, buying her the dress she fell in love with and still remembers--pink with a black paisley border.

Fiorella thinks blue jeans and tees became popular children's wear during the 1980's, when women hit the employment market in droves, the decade when women couldn't afford to stay stay home any more and run up cute little dresses on their sewing machines.  Then somehow the cover-up of jeans and loose tee shirts morphed into the slut decades, when little girls were exhibited in miniature street-walker outfits--bling, sparkle, belly buttons, and skin-tight. 

But now, dresses are back--store-bought, of course, but little girls are being dressed like children again. And Fio finds it charming.