Still Here!

Willow

After several hours of tinkering last evening I went to bed despairing of the blog.

The whole thing 'locked up' while I was playing with colors, changing the header photo, experimenting.

I've done this before, not always liked the result and simply put things back.

I admit the options available have all the temptation of a big box of colored pencils when I was a child--one wants to see what all the pretty colors look like!

One of those nasty notices came up informing that my browser did not support blogger [blah, blah, etc, etc] and that I must install goggle chrome.

I did so and still couldn't get into the blog.

I lay awake fuming.  I am not of a technical turn of mind--don't especially care about the HOW of things.  I simply want things to WORK!

A bit before midnight I padded out by the fire and turned on my laptop.

I immediately found that the blog dashboard appeared in the upgraded format.

I scratched away at the 'gadget' page and sorted the photos for the sidebar, feeling that I had conquered cyber-world.

Of course when I turned on the desktop PC this morning that was still in a bind.

I reinstalled Chrome.

I updated Internet Explorer.

I downloaded and ran a 'Fix-It' tool

It seems that a Yahoo toolbar which activated without my permission locked up everything else.

Toolbar de-activated, blog saved. Temper soothed.

Now I have to become familiar with the new posting format.

At least this one lets me view the photos I've selected for upload.
Hopefully later in the week I'll have time for comments and something more creative than a 'rant!'

The photo above is Willow.

Dear, naughty, stripey Willow--who removed the buds from the new Christmas cactus during the night and left them in a neat pile on the table.

How do I know it was Willow?

[I just know!]

This has been a day of mild dampness.

I harvested two lovely cabbages from the garden this morning.

J. split wood.

The grand accomplishment of the day was resurfacing the backsides of two pair of jeans for grandson D. and patching a long three-cornered tear in the leg of one.

D. wears his clothes hard!

I've always believed in patching jeans--a finicky job, as you'll know if you've wrestled them around on your sewing machine.

There's something about the soft, much-washed denim and the raggedy patches of an old pair that is very suited for hard work in the garden--or painting--or grubbing.

I daresay mine may be the last generation who patches and mends!

Grampa Mac as he looked when I was a child [left] and later when he was about 70 years of age.

My dear Grampa Mac, a widower, used to patch his denims on Sundays.

He used a huge darning needle threaded with the white twine he saved when he opened sacks of chicken feed or cow grain.

He sat in the rocking chair which is now my favorite, the radio blaring at his elbow.

His big calloused hands which had mended harness, groomed his horses, planted garden seed, hovered over the worn denim trousers, setting large firm stitches.

At any given time he surely  had newer denims neatly folded away, but his sense of frugality would have been insulted to discard that which could be mended and made useful.

When I learned to use my first sewing machine I took over the task of patching.

My parents and grandparents had survived the great depression and they passed on the

ethic of frugality and Yankee thrift so foreign to a later 'throw-away' mindset.

My current sewing machine is 'state-of-the-art' with capabilities we couldn't imagine even two decades ago.

There is still satisfaction in a job of mending accomplished--and the sense of being appreciated by a young man who clattered down the stairs to my sewing area to say, "Thank you, Meme, for mending my jeans."