Rooted in Mississippi

I spent my morning cleaning out the garage, because the repairmen were coming out to look at the opener.  I ended up putting a lot of my stuff into the garage when I moved over here and I added to the piles when I sold my old house.  It was not like it had been used as a garage.  I assume that my husband and his late wife always used it for storage.  Well, now that his cute little car is suffering from roof leaks periodically when it rains, I decided to get the garage door opener fixed and clear out a space for him to use, at least on rainy days. 

Unfortunately, the repairman only came out to assess the status of the door (I told them that it was wooden and not aluminum) and the existing opener.  He did some minor repairs on the door, but said it was in okay shape and still had a few years of life left in it.  Now I have to wait to hear back about when they can come actually install an opener with sufficient power to open that door, even when it is soaked with rain.   The upside is that I spent hours cleaning and tossing things out.  I filled up most of our garbage cans.  Good thing tomorrow is a regular pick-up day. 

I also found the lids to several pots and pans that have been MIA for ages.  It never occurred to me that they were out there somewhere.  I guess there are still several boxes of things I have yet to sort through since we moved over here.  The maid goes out there more than I do, usually looking for cleaning supplies.  That is the problem with combining two households; you have a lot of duplicate items that you just don’t really want to throw away, but are not suitable for donating to charity.  Most of that kind of stuff ended up in the garage.

I also got in there and decided to deal with the last of the Cheviot fleeces.  It was the dirtiest of the bunch, which is why I left it for last.  It had way more vegetable matter and hay than the other ones.  After two hours, I decided it was only worth saving the very best of the fleece.  It had not been skirted, so a little over half of it went into the garbage.  The good parts of it are in the process of being washed and sorted.  I also stuck the New Zealand Romney that had moths in it into the greenhouse, to let it freeze overnight before I start washing it.  So far, I have run it through the dryer for hours and left it in the garage.  A little later in the week, I will assess it again and see if it is worth saving, even as stuffing for my dog’s bed.  I probably should have just tossed it out, but it is beautiful stuff, so I isolated it and am trying to salvage it.

Since I was tied to the house, waiting for the garage door people to call back, I decided to bake too!  I made an absolutely gargantuan pan of baked chicken pasta.  I started out with some chopped chicken breasts and instead of making chicken salad; I got creative with what was in the pantry and fridge.  I added some Barilla Plus pasta, a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of marinara sauce, a ton of mushrooms, a sweet onion, a bunch of celery, cilantro, chicken bullion, some alfredo sauce, and of course, cheese!  It is currently in the oven baking and it looks (and smells) just incredible.  It really is a ton of food.  With luck, I will be able to freeze some of it for later in the week.  Plus, the baking is warming up the kitchen a little bit! 

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Mom and Uncle Morley obviously went to the portrait studio on the same day.  She was really quite young when this was taken, but she did have on lipstick and rouge.  She looks much like she did a few years later when her portrait was made in a ball gown.  She went to a lot of formal dances back in the day.  She eventually met David Smiley at a medical school event.  They married and he went into the Air Force upon graduation and they moved to Vermont for a few years before they whole family relocated to Atlanta.

By January 1955, they were a happy little family.  Mom, David and Brian.  Carl would come along a year later, then Janice and Vicki.  Bob Peace and I would not be on the horizon for another decade.

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Well, it is all over except for the blocking!  The red scarf is finished and I can start the next one.  I like the pattern and I am glad I made it.  I have been thinking that I would do one with a heart pattern for the next red scarf.  I might just chart my own heart and write my own pattern.  I think the Cranberry Wool-Ease is perfect for this project.  It is pretty, inexpensive, and the finished product is easy to launder. 
 
Yesterday was the first time in ages that it was light when I left for belly dance class.  The studio is not in the best part of town and we have had a couple of incidents lately, so I have been a little on edge.  A dancer who arrived late caught a man looking in the windows, then last Thursday, a scary looking man wandered into the studio.  They do lock the doors after everyone arrives, but this guy managed to get all the way into the studio before Kristina sent him packing.  After sitting around in the cold for a while, one of us went up to the door and saw that there was a note.  It turns out that class was cancelled, because the heat was not working in the studio!

It was definitely cold, but I was still disappointed  That said, I did not let it derail me.  After I got home, I worked out with three different DVDs.  I have to admit, I get a really good workout of the psoas and adductor muscles when I do the Belly Dance Core Fitness workout.  The first time I did the thirty minute workout, I was unimpressed.  Then I went back and watched the break down and learned what I needed to be doing with the small, subtle movements.  Now, every time I do it, I can feel it!  The routine really does work those core muscles, not just the rectus abdominis, which seems to be the only focus of most core workouts. 

Belly Dance Core Fitness is a WorldDance of New York title and I got my copy at Ross Dress for Less for under $7.00.  So far, I have really enjoyed their video series, especially East Coast Tribal, Heartbeat of Bellydance, and Belly Dance Basics and Beyond.

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The first photo is the oldest in this group.  It is my great, great grandmother, Bubbe Doboresh.  Mom is not sure who the males in the photo are, but she made a big point that the picture was taken at someone else’s home.  I am not sure why that detail was important, but it was what she remembered, so  I jotted it down.  I made copious notes on everything she remembered. 

The photo on the left was dated 4 October 1937.  My mom is the child in the center, Bubbe Rissa is on the left, Rissa Levine (all mom really told me was that she was a prominent business woman in Canada) is on the right and her mom is the back middle (they are related to me, but I am not sure how exactly).   The photo on the right is my mom, unknown male relative (could be Uncle Morley, but the age seems off), Bubbe Rissa, and my great grandmother Bubbe Chaika.  Chaika became Clara at some point along the way.  None of them kept their foreign sounding names long after moving to the Americas, because they did not want to be identified as greenhorns.  After they relocated to Georgia, they only used their Hebrew names for religious affairs and only spoke Yiddish in the home.  They felt it was very important to assimilate.

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The folks at FiberFemmes put the wrong photo with the pattern.  Will the real Peaks and Valleys Scarf please stand up!  Now, that photo looks like my scarf.  Cynthia said she thought it would look good in two colors, knit intarsia style, with one color for the peaks and another for the valleys.  I pointed out that it would not be reversible that way and she suggested double knitting.  I said, “not me.” She agreed.  However, it was a cool idea!  So, if any of you avid knitters get the hankering to do this, send us a picture.

I do plan to make the other chevron scarf eventually.  Maybe I will use some of my own handspun. I think it looks good with color changes, because it shows off the chevron shift.  Living in the deep south, I just don’t need to wear a scarf very often.  That is why I like projects like Red Scarf and Knit Your Bit.  So I will have to use masculine colors or something with red in it.

In other news, I got the Strange Flesh CD that I ordered from Eventide Music Productions.  It is a compilation CD for Raqs Gothique or Gothic Bellydance.  Kristina is using some of the music in the Black Hearts Ball and I really liked the music, so I ordered it online.  It is fun to have something a little less traditional. 

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Well, it is done.  The latest issue of CQMagOnline.com is now ready for public viewing!  I can finally breathe again.  It takes a lot of work for Nora and I to get each issue published.  No matter how much I try to streamline the process, it always takes time, especially the editing and corrections.  I know it is worth it in the long run, but it does take a lot of time and effort.  Sometimes I wonder how Nora does it.  This is my fourth year volunteering my time and skills for the magazine.  I admit that I have lost a little of my enthusiasm, but that is probably because my interest in CQ goes in cycles.

I did work on the scarf and am a little over half way through.  It is most definitely a chevron pattern, but it does not look anything like the Monika’s scarf.  It looks like the model is from a different Chevron Scarf pattern.  I am happy with what I have, it is turning into a nice scarf, but it is not the scarf I thought it was.

I have been practicing knitting Continental style, but the truth is, it is slower and throws off my gauge.  I get comments on my inelegant knitting style now and again, and I think I should change.  I learned to knit very young and admittedly, it is not pretty, but it gets the job done.  When I knit Continental, I have a tendency to twist my purl stitches, so I have to actually think in order to do it the right way and avoid using Combined Knitting Method.  Part of what I like about knitting is that it does not take a lot of thought or effort, so trying to retrain myself after all this time seems a little silly, but if Tiger Woods can change his golf swing in order to improve his game, I suppose I can get comfortable with Continental or Combined.

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Okay, I will own up to an essential truth; I would rather look like I did in the photos above.  They were taken about five years ago, when I was curvy, but quite a bit lighter than I am now.  I need to think of myself as a work in progress.  I don’t just mean the diet and exercise, I mean learning to love and accept myself the way I am.  Middle Eastern dance has been a tonic.  Despite seeing that awful photo from the other day, I still feel better about how I look than I did before I started to dance.  Of course, it helps that Kristina (my teacher) and Lisa left kind comments and Rhonda said she wanted to say “You don’t look fat in person!” However, it comes down to me and how I relate to my own body.

It took me years to develop a healthy relationship with food.  I guess it is going to take me even longer to develop a healthy relationship with my body.  At least belly dance has given me a tool to help shape that relationship.  By the way, I realized that in the photo from the other day, my shoulders were raised, which is poor dance form and adds extra bulk around your neck.  I also had on an ill-fitting bra, which is always a mistake.  I need to work on my poses, put on some makeup, and then let my husband get the camera out. Of course, if I still can’t mesh the image in my head with the image on the screen, I need to find a way to go with which ever one makes me feel better about myself. 

I am tired of using my thyroid disease and an excuse, but it really is a factor.  I just hope that if I can’t lose back to the weight I was before I got sick, that I can gain self esteem and learn to love myself the way I am.  Posting photos on my blog, even the unflattering ones, is a step in the right direction.   Now that I have put that into words, maybe I can get off the soap box!

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Chimneyville Weavers and Spinners Guild is participating in the Red Scarf Challenge as a group.  I started the scarf on the left at ROC Day, but got bored.  Really, really bored.  So I started another one using the Peaks and Valleys Scarf Pattern from FiberFemmes. I am several repeats into it and I am certainly more interested than I was in the first one.  I might just frog the first one, but I plan to wait a while before I go that route! 

I did discover that there is an extra K3 at the end of row 8.  I sent a note to the designer this morning, so she can check on it and make the correction if needed. 

I also wanted to include a photo of me at my ideal weight.  This is what I use for my visual motivation.  I doubt I will ever be that small again, but I hope it will keep me from falling off the fitness wagon! 

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A few more photos from the past. On the left, we have Rissa and David’s wedding portrait.  I believe they were married in Canada.  On the right, is Benjamin, Rissa’s father, my great grandfather.  The photo below is of Rissa (Bubbe), Leon (her brother), and Nathan (Zayde’s brother).  It was taken in the late twenties and I am guessing she was pregnant with my mother, or this was during the fattening up stage my mom talks about.  Apparently they felt she needed to gain weight before having children; a strange concept for most of us to grasp.

The picture below is the only photo I have of all the Siskin men together, because Nathan died in a TB sanitarium shortly thereafter and the mysterious older half-brother returned to Russia and became a communist.  The oldest is definitely the best looking and most sophistocated looking, which makes sense because he was a true world traveler.

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A word about comments.  I answer all comments, most of them by email.  If you have not heard from me, chances are you did not put a correct email address in the form or a SPAM filter ate something.  So if you think you are being snubbed, all I can say is, not by me.  I recently upgraded WordPress, so there might be a few glitches, so be patient. 

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