Have been busy lately. Not the kind of 'run around town and get lots of errands done' kind of busy. No, just the kind where I do stuff all day long and then wonder where the time went and why didn't I ever take time to write on my blog?

Have finished part of what I had set as my goal on the blanket I'm cross-stitching. It goes really fast when I set small goals and work toward them. I don't feel so overwhelmed by the whole project. I finish the little section, or the item (like a flower, or the stems of several, or a butterfly) and then I put it all down some place where I can just look at it. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with the individual stitches - and especially the ones that aren't "perfect" - that I can't see the overall blanket. That's why I do the 'setting apart' exercise. After an hour or so, whenever I pass it and see it, all I see is the completed whole, not the individual stitches.

Does that make sense? :-)

I like what I'm seeing in the completed whole. The good news, too, is that I'm well over half-way finished now. It needs to be done by the end of the month, according to what I heard on Sunday, but that's not going to happen. If everything goes as planned, I may have to mail it rather than give it to the person I'm making it for. If that's the case, that's ok. Not my first choice, but ... many things in life are not first choices.

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Wow, my typing this morning is really weird - I keep transposing letters and making new words, or wrong words. :-)

I decided on the spurr of the moment yesterday to go out and clean our section of the stairwell. It's been driving me crazy. Every time I go out there all I see is all the stuff spilled on the walls. It has never been like that before, in all of the 12 years we've lived here, I've never seen stuff spilled on the walls.

Now that makes me wonder - what the heck went on while we were gone?? Most of it looked like coffee or hot chocolate. In America it is common to see people walking around with cups of liquid, sipping from them, possibly splashing a bit here or there as they walk, etc. But not here. No, here you might see someone with a bottle of beer or a bottle of water. Very rarely do you see someone drinking a bottle of soda (most soda is sold in 2 liter bottles, not smaller). But coffee? No way! Coffee is drunk after a meal and maybe for breakfast and that's about it.

So, what was that stuff on the walls, spilled here and there for 3 or 4 flights of stairs in our stairwell, starting about shoulder height? I have no idea.

I started by going out and sweeping all of the stairs from the landing above us (dirt comes down as people come down) to the landing below us (dirt comes up as people come up). There was a lot of dirt, even though I swept all of this a month ago (apparently I'm the only one sweeping them).

Then I came back in the flat, put on one latex glove (the kind used by doctors), got a bowl of cool water with some Mr. Proper in it :-), grabbed a rag made out of one of Mel's old sport socks, and went out and washed 3 flights worth of walls. You know, our walls are lime green and white - only the lime green is washable. The white is whitewash and just comes off with water - not good. I also washed the brown paint on each side of each step. I did not wash the brown paint that encircles each landing - I need a mop for that due to all the bending over.

The water was filthy. I figure that is the first time those walls have ever been washed since the building was built. Since they were painted a few years ago (I think I wrote about that, but I'm not going to go looking for that post right now), there was only a few years worth of dirt and grime on them.

When I come up the steps I always lightly touch the wall with my right hand since my left hand has my purse in it and the left is where the banister is at. That light touch just kind of steadies me on my way up. Then I come in and immediately wash my hands. Well, last night we went out to find the lunar eclipse and when coming back up later, I could feel the difference immediately when I got to the part I'd washed. It was slick and smooth - and clean! :) :) :)

This makes me happy.
Now - if I could just feel that happy about dusting, mopping and vacuuming here in our flat.........

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Yes, we went out and walked around in the mostly dark for awhile until we found the eclipse of the moon. Finally found it just a couple doors down our own building. Figures. The street view was too bright due to street lights (would rather have the lights than the eclipse), there were too many 5 and 9 story buidlings in the way or there were too many trees with lots of leaves on their branches to see the sky. Just down the walkway in front of our building, tho, just a few meters away, was a clear view of the sky.

The moon was really tiny, way up there in the sky. Tiny and very orangish red. I was disappointed. After seeing the eclipse in Colorado last December, this one was hardly worth looking at. Teeny tiny moon, not so good view, hot and humid air. We went back inside.

Finally, just 15 minutes before it was all over, I discovered a link to a live view of the eclipse. I clicked on it and watched the end of the eclipse. That was as good as what I watched in Colorado last December! Bigger moon here on my computer than up there in the sky - and even here on the computer it was, what?, 3 inches across at most? :) :) :) But it was way too cool watching the sunlight come back there on the far left side, turning the moon from dull copperish-red back to brilliant white.

By the way, this eclipse, viewed from the Southern Hemisphere, was 'blood red' due to the ash in the upper atmosphere from two volcanoes erupting. Hmmm - I need to write about that, too, but it's going to have to wait. Anyway, there are End Times implications for that, according to several websites I've read. More about that later, too.

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And now, I must go get dressed, make a couple phone calls and get busy with my day. What I do is going to depend on what I learn from the phone calls.

Bye.