still life

candle at dusk (Oregon myrtlewood bowl and glass tea-light holder via Goodwill)

It's exhausting to continually be sick: cold, cold, cold, ear infection, flu, ear infection with perforated blistered ear drum, cold, borderline ear infection (same ear)—time for an ENT. Children are gremlins: cute outside, monstrous inside from all their unsanitary little respiratory-virus-spreading habits, like not washing after they come in from recess to eat a tray of finger foods and then wipe off their tiny mouths and noses with their adorable fingers. It's boring to be sick. It's even more boring to talk about being sick.

On weekends when I'm not sick, I try to do some living, rather than mere surviving. I make plans. I cross off to-do lists. Jeff drags me to thrift stores in search of inventory for his fledgling vintage business. I don't find much myself these days: a striped shirt or pair of shoes here and there; a long-sought, white-cotton duvet cover to turn my bed back into a cloud; a candle holder (the above was 50 cents last weekend at the Powell Goodwill, and all I had to do was melt the remaining Stella Mare candle stump on low in the oven, pour the wax out, and wipe down the glass, the process of which, Jeff wants all to know, was his idea since he's smart like that). In Portland winters, evening tea lights are vital as dark chocolate, little bowls of sun.

Goodwill thrift: Max Studio wool poncho ($7); vintage-wool ($1) scarf,
handknit by me; striped Splendid tee