eight

 

After Linda's father died, December 1970, in Phoenix, Arizona, at age 65 of emphysema from a lifetime of smoking, Linda's mother sold her townhouse and moved home to an apartment in MountainBrook, Birmingham, Alabama. Ten years later she married Jim, a widower whom she had met in a dance club, and they bought and moved into a home of their own.

Jim died at age 92 when Linda's mother was 87, and she moved in with us in Apalachicola, and then in our home at the Old Place. Linda's mother died at age 90 in 2001, and we took her ashes by train to Tuscon, then by Hertz car to Phoenix and interred them at the grave with Linda's father.

Jim's prized rug, The Great Arachnid, now crouches in our living room, watching my every move. 

Bubba likes red, and so I pretend the two giant arachnids, one at each end of the rug, are simply designs woven into the carpet; but I know otherwise and better; and I am cautious.

Along with my Monday evening supper of sushi, all tuna this Time, I enjoyed a couple glasses of Winking Owl, a California Cabernet Sauvignon picked up at the new Aldi's that's where Winn-Dixie was at Beck and 23rd Street. Though I preferred Winn-Dixie with their fried catfish, Aldi's is fine, with their German beer and German coffee, and a wine selection that included this Winking Owl at, I think it was $2.95 a bottle. Some cheap wines are extremely harsh, this one is fairly smooth, not really discernible as a Cab, just a soft red; and after having been sitting opened (but with the screw cap back on) upon the kitchen counter for a few days, it goes down best in a small red wine glass with ice. 

Our new LG refrigerator has two ice makers, the one in the door makes regular cubes, the one in the top freezer drawer produces a large, round cube and I've been using the latter to soften my glasses of Winking Owl, which went well with the sushi this Monday evening.

Kristen came over for lunch of lobster meat, lobster rolls, coleslaw, and helped immensely by taking back outside the furniture and heavy plant items that we had to bring inside as precaution against last weekend's storm. When we have lobster, or sushi, she always takes home a bite for Pacey, who is seventeen, aging for a cat. Pacey likes lobster, salmon, and sashimi. 

++++++

But the rug, Jim's magic carpet. It's about ten or twelve by about fifteen, and nicely softens our living room floor, which is walnut LV tile planks put down after Hurricane Michael destroyed the real wood oak flooring. The carpet company did a nice job except that they didn't finish in the kitchen, where the missing quarter-round leaves it raw. I paid them anyway, because we were fortunate to get someone out here after the frantic labor shortage during the rebuilding nightmare after Hurricane Michael. The raw unfinished work around the kitchen reminds me that Life is Good nevertheless, notwithstanding, all the same, and anyhow. 

Monday's reading included several sections of Christian Witman's "Zero At The Bone," which, inexplicably to me, suits perfectly my personality and Time and place in life. I keep coming across myself as I turn pages. 

So also have readings from a current or recent issue of The New Yorker, including their fiction, which is most eccentric, and other articles, essays.

And online incoming including astronomy pieces such as the one I mentioned last week about Black Holes, and the theory that our own Universe is only one of an infinite number of Universes inside parent Black Holes, with other Black Holes containing other Universes and Black Holes ad infinitum. Cosmology science fascinates me, as does its confirmation that Your God Is Too Small if you believe God sits beyond the firmament shaking His head about your sins.   

++++++

The arachnids' eight legs have spines, as does the body. There's a stinger on the back, four eyes, claws on the front, and a fearsome proboscis for sucking out the liquified innards of prey. This is no joke. The rug is from an antique carpet store in Birmingham years ago, Jim's interior decorator found it for them. It's only allowed in 7H because Bubba likes red, and I don't go in the living room when the moon is full.

++++++

This is a Lenten Monday blogpost. As I wrote, last week it must have been, I'm posting during the week if and when I DWP, and maybe the Sunday post will be linked on Facebook, as yesterday's was before being taken down before bedTime last evening, as in self-observation I notice that my writing is ever more eccentric.

PTL anyway. RSF&PTL

T89&c