Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2003 - 12:19 p.m.
Greetings,
I picked Tommy up at work last night and we drove to Jaye'splace. We had to go up into his apartment via the spiral staircase fire escape because the front foyer area was being painted and tiled.
Tom and Jaye chatted online for a while with Alison while I sat on Jaye’s swanky new sectional sofa and looked out his front windows. I’ve always enjoyed the view which is mainly tree tops and skyline. It was one of things I remember most from the month or so we stayed with Jaye after the fire at Sinwood and before moving into Crescentwood.
We ate Chinese up the street and while I ate Szechwan Chicken with hot (hot) sauce, I watch the fish in the huge fish tank swim around and play. Oh, and I talked too. Naturally.
I would have liked to hang out longer, but Meow needed her shot, so Tommy and I departed the Westblank around 8 p.m. or so and went home.
I finished reading “It” before falling asleep.
Right now I have the taste of one of those Listerine mint strips in my mouth. I have become addicted to them I think. I found a sample pack of 8 when I was cleaning out my old cubicle prior to the move down here. I rationed out one a day after my morning cup of coffee but Monday night we stopped at Schwinn Blixie and I scored a 24 pack so I let myself have two a day now. I like to live on the edge as you can see.
I’m currently drinking tea instead of coffee due to the arrival of That Time of the Month. And with each mouthful of delicious Plantation Mint tea, I think to myself that tea tastes better than coffee. It’s always tasted better than coffee. Years ago I wouldn’t even order coffee at restaurants when I went out to breakfast, I always ordered tea. (Now I’m flashing back to college days when every Friday a group of my friends and I would meet at a local Friendly’s for breakfast before class (for some of us) and work (for others).
I would always order the breakfast skillet – cheese omelet and home fries – and a cup of Lipton tea. That was fun. Our favorite waitress’s name was Rose and she called us her “girls” as in, “I know it’s Friday because my girls are here!”
We’d all pay in cash since this was way before debit cards and also way before any of us qualified for actual credit cards. That was unimaginable.
Sometimes my friends would get irritated with me because my hair was pink for a while and that tended to garner a lot of attention from nearby booths. (This was a fairly small town.)
Well, now it is much later in time since I wrote the above. Time flies when you are having fun working!
I am steeping another cup of Plantation Mint tea though.
I still have not made up my mind what caftan to wear for the 4th Annual Halloween Costume Caftan Night. It’s narrowed down to two, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Maybe I will let the Halloween spirit direct me that evening. Or maybe not.
The cats are still butting the little pumpkins around the dining room floor. I never suspected my cats would play with pumpkins, but there it is. My big Simon LePumpkin is too big for them to roll around, but they play with the littler ones. When I come out into the dark dining room from the bedroom some mornings, I sometimes get startled by this big lump of unidentified *something* in the middle of the floor and before my mind can finish the word “rat” or sometimes “big spider”, I realize it’s one of the little pumpkins.
I wonder if my cats would be any good at bowling?
I have not made any Caftan Night LJ entries in a long while. I plan to write something Halloween night though. I miss typing along with a glass of champagne at my elbow and big caftan sleeves billowing around. Plus candles. It’s also fun to write by candlelight.
I think the flow of Caftan Nights at Crescentwood is different that it was at Sinwood. The house itself is set out much differently. Tommy’s Chamber is at the end of the house and my Study is sort of in the middle and so we can both play our music for Personal Choice without drowning each other out. That was hard to do at Sinwood for some reason.
I just love sitting in my Study rocking in my rocking chair and watching the lava lamps and the Halloween Spooky light revolve around while I listen to the 1979 Dracula soundtrack or something from my Caftan Night CD.
The rocking chair is a little corner between John’s old altar/bookcase and my black iron bookcase. To my left I have Vera, the CD player, music, the ghostly glimmer of books, my little sound machine (which play crickets and owl sounds and is turned on promptly before I take my bath and turned off when I come to dance to Limbo and, really, is the thing that officially kicks off Caftan Night at Crescentwood) and my Midsummer’s Night Yankee jar candle.
To my right is John’s altar/bookcase where a Day of the Dead tea light burner gleams across my Dracula model which spreads his ghastly, flickering shadow on the wall behind him. Lavander my purple and white lava lamp gently morphs next to the Dracula model. She stands a couple inches to the right of the window and on the window sill Marlin (Broken) Pokens swims in the soft lava light.
Then past the window is my altar niche where the jar candles glow from the black wrought iron candle holders on the wall. The red lava lamp (who I named Bela one night since it does look like blood inside the lamp) is in the center of the altar and the Spooky Halloween light is near the window.
On the other side of the altar niche is the closet with its ghostly white louvered door. And between the altar niche and the closet is a small strip of wall where Vincent, my plaster incense burner in the shape of a skeleton half buried in his graveyard dirt, hangs.
After dark on Caftan Nights, Vincent has incense burning between his toes. :)
Past the closet is my little rocking chair where I keep my library books and my stuffed Eeyore that Tommy got me in Disneyland the day we first met in person.
Then there’s Papa Legba’s altar, which right now is my drum covered with a red altar cloth with gold stars and crescent moons on it. On the altar is my Legba doll, Legba veve candle, some black and red Mardi Gras beads, some candy and a couple other toys for him to play with. There’s not much room left on the drum, so Legba’s altar will be sized up (a t.v. tray) soon.
Then next to Papa Legba’s altar is the door leading out into the dining room.
So that’s my Study. Lovely, isn’t it?
Until next time,
Olrun
