Causing my sinuses to kick up a merry stink about big masses of air moving past each other, but hey, what else is new? That being said, I’m looking forward to the cooler temps for the rest of the week because it’s probably the last relatively cool weather we’ll have for spring. Temps next week are supposed to be in the 70s/80s, which means I’ll have to start running the upstairs A/C for the 80s days. I’m trying to give our downstairs unit as much of a break as I can before we need to start running it since it is Olde™ and the A/C was horrified at the sound it made when he was out here checking the systems. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it always made that kind of noise, being an old two-blade fan type.

In other news I have Plans for the weekend while the Brit is off playing D&D—I’m going to start cleaning and organizing the craft room, which is where he is currently working on some ancient computer prototype. I won’t go anywhere near his table, but there are a slew of computer monitors/cases/etc. that are strewn around the room and I can store them more effectively in or on top of the storage units we have in there. I would also like to get access to my worktable, the storage shelves that have my fabric, and my storage units. And yes, I could ask him to clean it, and he would say, “Yup, sure, pet, sometime this weekend or week” and promptly forget about it until I remind him again, at which point he will promise that he will get to it as soon as he can … and never will.

And I’m not upset about this at all. His brain just isn’t wired to see mess the way mine is. I understand this, accept it, and therefore I will clean and organize the room around his current work area because as part of my Finish All The Projects 2023 objective I would really like to finish the dollhouse that has been sitting there for the last decade.

Got the results of my blood and pee tests on Monday and all my numbers look good, so it seems like I’ll be around for a little while longer to make stuff, take care of the J Crew, and annoy the bigoted. So I have that going for me.

I’m also about 3/4 done on one of the throw quilts I’m making for a friend (sorry, no pictures—it’s a surprise gift for someone and I don’t want to risk spoiling that) and it looks spectacular. I should have the center finished by tomorrow and the border put on by Friday, then I can layer the top with the backing and batting and quilt it over the weekend.

Then I get to start on the second throw quilt, which is also using a Log Cabin block but in a different format from the first one. Looking forward to seeing how both of them turn out!

I don’t know how many people do this, but my particular reaction to grief, apart from crying, is cleaning. When Jordan died I gave the master bath a deep clean, finished recaulking the shower enclosure, and did a bunch of other tasks to get it in shape.

After J.J.’s death I’ve been organizing the house, vacuuming and sweeping the downstairs daily (yeah, yeah, I know I should have been doing that already, don’t @ me), planting the new lantana to replace the old ones that got killed in the frost (at least, I had assumed so until I dug up one monster and found little green leaves sprouting on the underside. I also learned that lantana have big-ass taproots so next year I’ll just cut everything WAY back and wait until the end of March for it to start blooming again), mailing stuff that needs to be mailed off, putting a bunch of stuff away, and making a master list of what I’ll need to deep clean each room. I think the J Crew are a little confused at Mom bustling around all the time.

Until I go upstairs and start sewing. I was commissioned by a friend to make two Log Cabin throw quilts, one in the Asexual flag colors and one in black, white, and grey, and I’ve started the Ace quilt first. The border will be black, white, grey, and purple stripes like the Ace flag with purple corner squares; so far this is turning out to be really pretty. I hope the recipient enjoys it.

It’s definitely been theraputic for me. Log Cabin blocks lend themselves to chain piecing so putting together the actual blocks is nicely repetitious and goes quickly. I should have the entire center section done by Thursday, the borders added on Friday, and I’ll put the backing/batting/top sandwich together over the weekend and quilt it. Even better, Joann Fabrics is running their Daffodil Dash weekend sale so I’ve been able to pick up the bulk of the fabric at a discount, which gives me more $$$ for quality cotton thread, batting, and borders. I’ll post pics once the entire quilt is done.

Now that the Elderly Gentleman’s system seems to be firing on all cylinders again (at least for now), I’ve gone back to work on the Arkansas Rainbow wall hanging. This is the Log Cabin pattern made with fat quarters I’d picked up in Arkansas last November when we went to visit my Aunt H, and while I had to fill them out a bit with fabric already in my stash it turns out that I had enough to make a rainbow Log Cabin.

And man, I have to tell you that chain piecing a Log Cabin quilt is the fastest, easiest thing in the world. Chain piecing (also called continuous stitching) is something you can do if you have all your pieces cut out for your blocks—you put a bunch of two pieces that are supposed to be sewn together with corners and edges matching and run them through the machine one after the other without cutting the thread. You wind up with something that looks a bit like a little flag banner. Cut those apart, press them, then match them up with their partners and start stitching again. It’s kind of like assembly line piecing, but with a Log Cabin pattern I can literally get multiple blocks done in an hour or so.

Which is good because—well, I was going to say I lost a lot of time while nursing J.J. but it’s not like I’m on a deadline. Let’s just say that I’ve gotten a chance to recover some of those evenings when I was tending to him. Pictures will come when more of it is together and I can give you a full view.

Also, in re: the Oscars, while I do wish Angela Bassett had won Best Supporting Actress (mind you, I have no real problem with Jamie Lee Curtis’s performance and win, and I especially liked the fact that she shared her award with everyone who works in genre fields, but I think Bassett also deserved it), on the whole I was happy with the choices for last night’s Oscars, especially since it meant that a science fiction film won Best Film for the first time in history. Most of the gowns were lovely, Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes were only occasionally flat (dude, seriously, Malala is not a good target for comedy), and they moved it along at a good clip considering that they added all the categories back in.

That being said, did anyone think the Best Film win was telegraphed when they asked Harrison Ford to present it, knowing that Ke Huy Quan would immediately home in on him?