Baldur

perhaps the most dramatic change has been the installation of the library. baldur always had books, but with limited storage capacities at hand. to rectify this i moved my bed out of the needlessly large master bedroom and into what was once the tiny guest room. a trip to IKEA resulted in an extravagance of their Billy bookcases now lodged in the vacated room. actually i will soon add three more bookcases. to this arrangement baldur added a small round dining table, a couple of lovely leather tall back chairs and a reading lamp (all from the thrift store!). the library now doubles as an intimate dining room.

Baldur

what was once the small bookjammed office is now a small bedroom.
hence fred is moving in. also fred's two cats are also moving in. they will be joining my Chloe and Kyle. Shakira, their mother, passed away early last year.

chelydra

Message 11363, imagine that... Well, the good news is that your very sad news (that the mother of Chloe and Kyle has passed on the that great cathouse in the sky) inspired a brilliant tribute in Beads in which Shakira's namesake is evolving into a heartbreakingly beautiful catghost, dancing among the stars, beaming out love to her bereft children and to fred (and to you too of course, if you're interested). But wait, it gets better! In seeking through many many moments of Shakira's exuberant dance videos in search of the perfect inspirational reference picture (pause, screenshot, pause, screenshot, over and over, until computer was groaning with the burden of carrying so many dancing clapping, swinging, flying, twirling images), what should I discover but a luscious rear view in which our heroine is holding her hands down from upraised arms and bent wrists to accidentally form the perfect silhouette of pussycat ears! I draw for about an hour, adding a dashing swirling tail, spiraling up and out from her furry short-shorts into the viewer's tickled face! Then I realize I'm not logged in, I log in, and all that work vanishes without a trace! That wasn't bad news, because I couldn't get it right and the harder I worked on her the lousier she got, although the original image in my elderly head remained as vital and luminous as ever... So please consider this a sympathy card, addressed to all of the real Shakira's loved ones, and let us be thankful the "tribute band"-style Shakira is still among us, still cranking out her glorious tributes to what must have been an ineffably beautiful she-cat...

Baldur

shakira dances on in her afterlife...... thank you. She was a beloved member of my family, I miss her greatly

mdawrcn

Welcome back Baldur! It is good to read of your happenings and updates, though sorry to hear of Shakira. Those little souls get inside a person. My Bubba's photo popped up in memories and though I lost him five years ago and have two newer babies to care for it still brings a tear to my eyes.

chelydra - such a wonderful and vivid description! How I wish we could have seen the results. At least it sounded like a lot of effort and creates a beautiful mental image tribute.

Baldur

Miss Shakira is greatly missed.
There is going to be cat drama in the near future. Fred will be moving into Boughbreak at the end of next week. He is bringing Dolly and Andy, his two mature cats. We will see how they are welcomed by Chloe and Kyle. I suspect there will be a rather tense period until the fur settles.

Baldur

On another front Baldur is trying to thin out his belongings in anticipation of trying to fit an entire second household into this very finite space. The second bedroom, which was my 'warehouse' of marvels has been ruthlessly emptied. I have also scraped off the wallpaper. spackled the walls and painted the room.
It looks good.
The library is perhaps the most sacred space in my opinion. It can accomodate Fred's books easily enuf but I plan no other changes there.

Baldur

The library also serves as a small dining room. Early on Baldur added a round table and a pair of comfortable, tall leather dining armchairs. it is a rather intimately, tight space to do this double duty.
Nonetheless since the transformation all meals have been served there, and none in the kitchen. Baldur's kitchen table (with 8 chairs!) has always dominated the kitchen but is too large for the cooking area. in fact it is more an obstacle.
Fred has a much smaller table. I am gladly saying goodbye to my behemoth.

Baldur

Baldur lives. There was a brief time this Spring when the computer allowed me to contribute thinkdraw art but that window has once again closed. Fred thinks the WiFi might not be able to handle it.
The library is progressing,, Baldur just found a copy of 'Season of the Witch' by James Leo Herlihy.
The garden has become riotous at a time when the other neighborhood gardens are struggling.
It remains too hot, too humid.

chelydra

After a few months of some unpleasant spam taking over the General Discussion forum (how to crank up the intensity of your wi-fi to kill your neighbors' cats, or whatever) I thought it was time to redirect our attention to good old Baldur and the many touching & intermittently eloquent monologues and dialogues and groupologues that have sprouted here over the years... In the past these forums did a fine job of introducing us to one another in a very human and often surprisingly personal way... an example of what good animals we can be when we're behaving ourselves—well, actually, when we're just doing and saying what comes naturally... Then some creepiness crept in, defenses went up, and that was probably when participations began to decline...not just in the forums but in the site as a whole... (perhaps in the internet as a whole and off-line as well) Anyway, it might be nice to socialize or eavesdrop here from time to time, so now it's your turn

Baldur

Thank you for that comment chelydra, Baldur must drop in more often.
This is an odd Winter, not nearly cold enough, meaning it is more muddy than icy. My neighbor adopted 10 ducklings last Spring. They were quite young. Now they are adults and just before Winter set in several began laying eggs. It had somehow never occurred to him that they might reproduce.
Panic set in. I think the original plan was to have a small cluster of of picturesque ducks gliding across his little pond.

Baldur

Boughbreak was being supplied with free duck eggs for several weeks until they stopped laying. The eggs are shaped slightly longer than chicken eggs and the shells a might tougher to crack.
There seems little difference in flavor.
In the Spring there will no doubt be more. With the price of eggs lately this will be a blessing.

Baldur

Also ducks get skittish around umbrellas. Isn't that odd?
Baldur goes to visit them in the rain and they all stay away. I fold the umbrella and here they come.

Baldur

Baldur has been poking around on an ambient music site for background sounds, white noise in an odd fashion. While Mr Bear cannot quite figure out how to created his own signature sound it has been fun being a sound voyeur.
Currently the sound mix at the top of my charts is called '1920's Rainy Day Parlor'. This contains the sounds of light rain, slowly flipping pages, a fireplace, the occasional bird and Frances Langford singing 'I don't stand a ghost of a chance with you' on an old radio,
Although this might seem like a bit of a cacophony, with the volume down extremely low it is charming and atmospheric.
Of course one one be hard pressed to find Frances Langford singing this in the 1920s it is still a delight.

Baldur

During the Winter I spend so much time in my little library despite it being the coldest room in the house. So far there are 7 IKEA Billy bookcases and 6 smaller bookcases, all stuffed beyond their capacity.
There are stacks of books wherever they can be stacked and of course a small dining table with 2 comfy chairs..
The trade off is there is little room for art. Mr Bear has been hanging small framed items whenever a blank end panel of a bookcase presents itself. Framed postcards fit well, so there is a collection of Edward Gorey cards accumulating.
Also is a faux gilded religious icon I created using a piece of board, an old photo of Mr T, lots of gold paint and jewelry bits and bobs, I think the crowning touch is his halo, created from a scrap of gold metallic paper doily.
I plan on making a second one featuring Obi Wan Kenobi (and have already obtained an image of Madonna wearing her 1980'2 funnels. She will be icon #3).

clorophilla

I just would say that I'm still here!

after my mother's death, that occours gently in my house, I felt the need to change something in my life. I saw how hard my triple levels, double staired home could be for an impaired person, that finds difficult even to stand up and walk. My husband and me wonder how we should cope with this when we should be ageing.
In the outer side, I was left alone from a hight needs person and abruptly "free" to travel and to "take some time for me", and found I didn't know what to do with so much freedom.
I was increasing busy with my job (as someone of you remember, I'm a Lactaction Consultant and a perinatal psycholgist).
I worked hardly at my first book, La rivoluzione della tenerezza (Tender revolution), about rearing children with a gentle leadership, and begun travelling here and there leading breastfeeding education workshops for professionals and mothers.
I was lazily settled in my confort zone, when the psycho-pandemic thing kicked me off.
Just a little more than an year after my renewed freedom, I was confined at home again, my human rights widely swiped off.
Living in Rome began impossible, as we was not allowed even to take a walk, or meet friends, or even swim in the lonely winter sea, as I was used to do. My Job, based on home visits and residential workshop, was totally wiped out. This carried on again and again with few discontinuity, and on October 2020 my husband and me leaved our old home and go to Tarquinia, a little ancient town at 1 hour from Rome, starting our new life in a country house.
I received the news about my book in bookshops exactly when I was travelling from old to new home!
Coming soon the 2021-22 tale of my life!

TomZZ

https://www.sexyadultdirectory.com

Baldur

Well I cannot very well leave that last posting up at the top of the queue. Baldur is well and spending this Winter working on his library
What is now my library was the largest of the 3 bedrooms here at Boughbreak. Since all my bedroom really needs is a bed and dresser I transferred over to the smaller guest room and filled the larger room with bookshelves.
It is amazing how quickly I felled the shelves

chelydra

I was shocked to see that you'd felled all those shelves! Seeing images of Pacific Northwest mountainside massacres with hemlocks, douglas firs, giant cedars crashing down in great heaps, only in your case indoors and with countless books dropping floorwards too. It took awhile before it occurred to me maybe you meant to type "filled".
Remind me (when it's before midnight) to share with you some amazing duck and egg stories. Dozing off for now. Hang in there, regards to your household.

fanweekly

https://www.adultfanweekly.com