I should have been posting more. I’ve been working on a project for my eldest granddaughter’s upcoming wedding. I’ve made macrame jar covers for the tables at the reception which is being held in a barn. I don’t care about the venue – I’m not one of those “poke my nose in your business” people. I’ll admit to being opinionated but not about things like this.

They need a bit of finishing and I will ship them off later today. I made a total of 7 as requested. I haven’t done macrame since its heyday in the 70’s. I do still have a few plant hangers, but the macrame decor managed to escape over the years. Now my house is adorned with my inept art.

I have way too many bad watercolor paintings. Grandma Moses, I’m not. Actually, some resemble a fusion between Picasso and a 2-year toddler. They’re probably not even that good. They probably look like I might have had my arms in casts while wearing a blindfold – very art nerveux, not nouveau.

I hate naked walls, so there is art everywhere – toddler art, my art, a panting my son did in 4th grade picturing his dream of living in a house and not an apartment. That dream came true, by the way. And my first house was even yellow like the one he painted.

Unfortunately, I made a bad decision, took a massive pay cut, sold my house and moved out of state. Eleven months later, I was back living in rentals for the next six years – nice rentals, but still, not mine. The last one was a 2-story, 100 year-old duplex owned by someone I had worked with.

There were two not great things – okay, three not great things. The worse was my landlord, who instead of calling to talk to me, would let himself into the apartment. It got to be a creep factor. The second was the oil heat. When I moved in, heating oil was $.99 a gallon. By the time I moved out it was up to around $3 or $4 a gallon.

It was mandatory in the lease to maintain a half-full tank, which meant I had to buy oil every three to four weeks. A half tank was 50 gallons so the cost of oil wound up becoming $200. Occasionally, I would ask the company to put in only $200 worth of oil and I kept the thermostat at 63 degrees.

Actually, I still have the heat at 63 degrees between 9pm and 5:30 am. I’m under 100 pounds of quilts and blankets to sleep so the only time the cold bothers me is if I drink too much water late at night and need to get up.

The third not great thing was riding with this guy and his partner during the 45 minute x 2 daily commute. The morning ride in wasn’t that bad, but they would never tell me we weren’t going straight home, so I’d get to wait for them to take care of their errands.

We did do grocery shopping at the same time. Apparently, they were wary of fresh vegetables and fruit. They were both doing this high-protein, high supplement diet. When I say high supplement, I mean they had the same size toolbox that I use for my hand tools to keep their vitamins and medicine bottles in.

The nice things about living there were the garage for my car, they were willing to feed my cats, and I didn’t have to pay them for the commute since the two of the three of us worked on campus and we had to pass the partner’s work to get there. Addition pluses over the years I lived there, were not having to clear my sidewalk and my part of the driveway, new windows, a remodeled kitchen

However all good things must end. The end for me was two instances. The first instance happened when I was home after surgery. I was in my underwear in the way to the bathroom, when a man poked his head through the doorway at the end of the stairs and called up “Bug man.” I had not been told he was going to be there.

The second instance was when I got out of the shower and went downstairs and found a package on top of my portable dishwasher. That meant not only had the landlord let himself in, but he walked from the front door through to the kitchen. I decided it was time to move. Three months later, I was in this little doll house that is all mine (and the mortgage company’s) and doing just fine.