weekend away

saturday was a beautiful day for a drive. we went up to connecticut again to see toby.

 sunday breakfast . . 

 she doesn't like to look at me when i try to take her picture . . 

 she has a lot of congestion, so we spoke with my sister and decided to give her medication that she had been taking throughout january. i hope it helps. 

 oatmeal, applegate chicken sausages, farm eggs and a nairns oat graham cookie that i will spread with peanut butter (i've been on a peanut butter binge lately). i couldn't find oatcakes in the big y supermarket. i've also begun reading charles dickens' little dorrit, and haven't been able to put it down. he wrote it between 1855 and 1857, and each chapter leads excitingly into the next. i hope to listen to the discussion with the center for lit's pelican book club on monday.

toby sleeps so soundly. it's not easy to wake her. her hearing is not as sharp as it used to be. i guess it might be partial congestion and partial growing older.

she's quite the queen of her home.

cemeteries and dolphins

kendall and i went to our friend janine's husband's funeral today. he had been very ill for a long time, and his death wasn't unexpected . . but, of course, it's still so difficult.

janine has ten brothers and sisters and we were trying to pick them out amongst all the guests, which included a supportive lakeside community with whom she and her husband spent their summers and weekends when they weren't in the city. kendall was busy scanning the guests for the sister with the triplets while i was noticing the brother with the dark sunglasses and black wool coat and the sister who looked like she could have been janine's twin (but she wasn't). it was chilly out, but it was a nice ceremony with a cantor and priest, and the jewish tradition of symbolically placing dirt upon the coffin open to anyone who wished to participate.

the day began sunny and blue, but the clouds had gathered by the time we were at the cemetery. we made it home before the rain began. it's now pouring and it feels very cold. i think i'll crawl into bed soon.

----

here are a few photos from my sister's trip to florida:

 her husband and sons' christmas gift to her was a swim with the dolphins in key largo. it was actually called a "shallow water dolphin" encounter. you could choose a deep water swim if you wanted . . but kathy was more comfortable with the former.

she also has a little video of herself holding onto the dorsal fins of two dolphins who pulled her across the lagoon. as you can tell from her smile, she loved it.

tea and knitting

 i met marisa to help with putting her sleeve stitches on waste yarn. she made the most amazing muffins from a recipe that had been her mother's. it was a mix of fresh orange and honey and flour and was delicious. her tea was also incredibly good. her husband had picked it out at the harney and son's shop in soho. it was a darjeeling tea called singbulli, 2nd flush. he always knows the best teas, cheeses and wines, and can share where they're from and how they're made.

now she's set to finish the body of the sweater. i picked up my sleeve stitches and hope to finish both sleeves by this weekend.

a coffee and flower shop

 

 i took the bus to meet korrina for coffee and tea at a cafe around the corner from her japanese class at the japan society. it's an interesting place because it's part cafe, part florist. (i also gave her an extra echinacea/goldenseal tincture i had . . yes, we're stocking up on those immuno supports - i'm drinking echinacea tea as i write this and i've had my vitamin c today also).

orange rooibus tea and a decaf cappuccino with oat milk.

 everyone must want to buy this cactus (hence the little not for sale tag). i know i did.

 renunculus flowers . . (which korrina correctly identified).

i walked down to 42nd street with her in the rain (the day started out so sunny and warm) and then walked through grand central and home along madison avenue, through madison park to 23rd street and sixth avenue, stopping at michaels and lionbrand in search of size 17 and 15 double pointed needles.

it was a cold and wet walk home.

winding yarn with pluto and korrina

korrina came over to pick up some broth from brodo, pepperoncini from faicco's, and vitamin d3 from mercola online that i had bought for her, and then we wound several skeins of yarn from her stash for a new project she's beginning. she was on her way to a potluck dinner with several friends (at which she was going to make my mom's macaroni and cheese recipe).

visiting toby

it was nice being in connecticut for two days. toby has become very talkative, and meowed repeatedly when we arrived. (my sister and brother-in-law have been away.)

i think she wanted some toby treats.

we headed to the new big y supermarket in town for our treats. they had four different kinds of soups, so we chose chicken noodle and new england clam chowder.

two for one price.

 no louisiana hot sauce!

we walked by a "salad machine."

it was interesting . . though i couldn't understand why a person couldn't just get a salad from the deli counter which was only a few steps away.

big y offers a lot of gluten free and organic products. today i found they had kombucha made from tea and honey, rather than tea and sugar. i've read about this, but had never seen it before. i love honey so i thought it was very good.

my sister has framed many of the beautiful photographs she took during her travels last summer and hung them around the house. this is a sod house in norway.

i think this might be acadia national park in maine.


acadia or norway?


a blue heron from the everglades. her camera takes fabulous photos!

flower photos . .

and all of us with my mom and dad in 2009, maybe? i think i've posted this pic before.

celebrating my mom's birthday from that same visit . .

my mom and jack bulldog . .

and this is my sister and my nephew in 1983, which i took with my old film camera.


my sister loves to read . .


and is a trained orton gillingham tutor . . and helped morgana tremendously when morgana was learning to read. my sister's knowledge and help, along with morgana's hard work and perseverance, were what made morgana a good reader.

toby relaxing in the sun . . which i did also . .

while greg worked on his latest computer class about coding . .

eating our soup for dinner while updating me on the coronavirus!

----

sunday morning . .


it was actually rather cool this morning . . 29 degrees, but toby was happy to sit outside in the sun for a good hour.

greg made us an omelette with heirloom eggs from the country hen . . (no, toby didn't get any) . .

and afterwards i had a delicious clementine that i found in my sister's fridge, and a delicious pignoli cookie from mazzicato's bakery in middletown. we stopped yesterday to have the car's oil changed at one of those instant places and the bakery was right next door. the instant oil changing place was so instant that we were supposed to wait in the car! i had already gotten out and was looking for the waiting area, when they said there wasn't one and i couldn't wait in their little office space, so would i please get back in the car? instead, i walked over to mazzicato's to wait for greg and enjoyed eyeing all their incredible cakes, cookies, pastries and breads. greg picked out a cherry filled turnover, and i picked out four pignoli cookies, which were, surprisingly, more expensive than the ones here in the city at veniero's.

the other part of the story in regard to having the oil changed in the car . . when greg arrived at the bakery, he informed me that the power steering fluid container cap was missing, and that we needed to get a new one. we first stopped at autozone, a store not far from the bakery, but they couldn't find anything on their computer supply list. we then stopped at another store called advance auto supply. there we were fortunately helped by a person whose name we don't know, but whom we now call "mechanic dude." after perusing the computer's inventory and not finding anything, he chose two caps he thought would fit from an aisle in the store and headed out to the car with us to try them. neither of them were the right size, so he then began telling us about how he had once lost a similar container cap in his car, but found that it had fallen down amidst the engine parts. as he's telling the story, he's rummaging around between the battery and another part of the engine that was very narrow . . and he finds the cap! we had had it all the time. either greg had forgotten to put it on when last adding power steering fluid, or it had come loose.

here's very cool mechanic dude replacing our power steering fluid cap.

toby looking for her sunday morning breakfast after her outside airing.

we discarded the trunk of our christmas tree in the backyard woods . . (i posted about taking down the christmas decorations and breaking up the tree here).

it was a beautiful, sunny day . .

time to say good-bye to toby . .