August Accomplishments

Here are a few good little things I did in the hottest month of summer:

I took this pretty portrait of Carmen. I had so much fun doing the photo shoot, brushing her beforehand with her special Squishmallows brush so her fur was nice and silky. To help her relax (she’s extremely playful), I read aloud to her from Little House on the Prairie:

All around them shadows were moving over the waving grasses, while the sun rose. Meadow larks were springing straight up from the billows of grass into the high, clear sky, singing as they went. Small pearly clouds drifted in the immense blueness overhead. In all the weed-tops tiny birds were swinging and singing in tiny voices. Pa said they were dickcissels.

I read to Carmen from the same book my mother used to read to me when I was little. The pages were yellow, and the cover was loose. Carmen settled down on the bed and gazed at me, and lovely clear light poured through the windows.

I solved a perplexing decorating problem in the back bedroom. Above the rocking chair, next to the chiffonier, there was an awkward gap among the various wall hangings. I puzzled over this gap for months . . . until I finally went on eBay and ordered a funny vintage wall pocket shaped like a cuckoo clock that was, amazingly, the exact right size and shape to fill the gap! My online purchases never work out this well. (I often forget to read some pertinent detail.) Anyway, hanging my cuckoo-clock-shaped wall pocket was a real moment of triumph!

I made a new feltie—an ornament for next year’s Easter tree. Working on it was so relaxing. I sat on the floor in the back bedroom, quietly stitching, as Carmen napped nearby in her “princess bed,” her comfy, cave-like bed that’s shaped like a giant flower. The princess bed is plush with padding, and its lining is a soft, sheepskin-like material. Carmen looks very cozy curled up inside it. Whenever I see her in her princess bed, I’m just delighted. I usually have to go and get Rob so he can see too. I’ll tiptoe out of the room so as not to disturb her and I’ll say, in a whisper, “Do you want to come see the cutest thing in the world? Carmen’s in her princess bed!”