Real and Unreal

I slept in a bit this morning. I wasn't up until 6:45, which may not sound very late, but for me it's more than an hour past when I usually get up. I haven't been sleeping well lately. I keep waking up and thinking about problems in the library, and about the fact that the world is so crazy, armed men walk into pizza restaurants expecting to find children being held prisoner by presidential candidates.

The library problems are minor. There's a gaggle of ninth grade boys who always sit together during break and lunch times and who lately have been giving me fits -- playing computer games with jangly noises, issuing piercing whines from their cell phones and moving around books on the shelves just to annoy me. The problem is, there are so many kids in the library at break times, spread out over such a huge area of the floor and all the tables, in a kind of amoebic, amorphous mob, that it's hard to tell where the troublemakers begin and end. So I can't just throw them out of the library, for example, because I can't tell exactly who's involved. I did catch the book-movers red-handed and reported them to their dean.

I'm sure this sounds like minor stuff, and I suppose it is, compared to schools where students are carrying weapons and beating up administrators. But it still makes me nuts. I don't want to be a cranky librarian, but I find myself falling into that role so often.

And then the pizza thing! And not just the pizza thing but all the problems it seems to embody, from the scourge of fake news to a gullible, armed populace. I mean, what kind of a world have we become? Who would seriously consider believing that Hillary Clinton is holding children hostage as sex slaves in a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant? Isn't it ridiculously absurd on its face? It's almost like there is no reality anymore -- like we've entered the pages of our own dystopian fiction and are acting out the plot in real time.

It just makes my head spin.

(Photo: I really did see a big pink unicorn near Oxford Street, on Saturday.)

Feathers and Geraniums

Remember V.V. Rouleaux, the tassels and trimmings shop I blogged about last year? Back then it was covered with colorful ribbons. Well, I happened upon it during my walk through Marylebone on Saturday, and this year, it's covered in red feathers!

Even more interesting, it's not the only feather-cloaked shop on the street. Clearly there's a theme going on here...

An interesting idea, and definitely eye-catching!

I did some research on our geraniums yesterday. They're looking terrible -- many of their leaves have dropped off and the ones that still exist are curling and mottled. At first I thought they had a fungal disease, like rust, but actually I think they have oedema, which apparently occurs when a fleshy plant (like a geranium) gets too much water. The leaves develop fluid blisters, which create yellow spots on top of the leaf and brown nodes beneath. That's exactly what's happened to ours.

The geraniums sat next to the tomato plant all summer, and it required watering almost daily. When we watered the tomato, we also watered the geraniums. Aha!

I'm hoping they recover if we let them dry out some and give them an airier, more open and sunny environment next spring.

Thank Goodness

Olga came home yesterday morning from her overnight trial stay with her new dog-sitter. Apparently she passed with flying colors. We hear there was some growling with another dog over the possession of a stick, but that seems to be the extent of her anti-social behavior.

So we have successfully enlisted the dog-sitter to care for her during Christmas break. Whew!

When she got home I was in the middle of a whirl of housework -- laundry and vacuuming and bathroom cleaning. I finished all that and spent some time reading and catching up on minor errands. Then, about 1 p.m., we went for a walk on the Heath.

The sky was crystal clear and there was still frost in the fields. The light was an incredible golden color -- the color of approaching evening, even though it was early afternoon. Olga seemed to enjoy it.

We headed home when the sun left the forest floor, settling in the treetops. The outing was a good return to routine for Olga -- and for me!

Speaking of the dog-sitter saga, I did finally find some news coverage about the death of our previous dog boarder. Sounds like no one is sure what happened. A sad story, although, as I've written before, our relationship with her was rocky at best. (Apparently we were not alone.)

Fashion Flash Mob

After French class yesterday (and thank god THAT's over) I went walking in Marylebone and Soho, looking for good photo opportunities. I came across some interesting characters in Soho, dressed to the nines.

Turns out they were with an outfit called Live Fashion, which takes fashion shows to the street -- more about that here. They have a YouTube channel and an Instagram page, too. They paused in front of this boutique and attracted a spontaneous gaggle of photographers. We were popping off frames while their ringleader took photos of us.

(The woman in the beige coat is doling out vodka, BTW.)

There was some vamping and vogueing for the cameras...

...and some brief lounging on a passing sportscar. (I hope the driver was in on the joke. He did furiously rev his engine at one point.)

It was a hoot! As I told another guy there taking pictures, you just never know what you'll find walking around London.

(I do love that blue suit on the left...)

More Dog Care Drama

I took this photo on my Wimbledon walk a couple of weeks ago. These plastic rings were clipped to a big metal gate behind some shops -- they're clothing size tags, normally attached to coat hangers. I like how someone turned them into a little art project!

So I don't remember how much I've updated you on the Olga dog-sitting saga. We need to have a dog-sitter for Olga while we go to the states for Christmas. We asked a friend of a work colleague, and she initially said yes, and then she said no, and then she said yes again. Well, early this week, she said no again. (And as I wrote earlier, our back-up dog-boarder has died.) So I've been scrambling to find another sitter.

We've talked to someone else, also recommended by a work colleague, and she came to the house on Thursday and met Olga. That seemed to go well -- though Olga huddled by my leg, certain that something was up. Today the new sitter is going to take Olga for a walk and keep her overnight to see how it goes with her dogs and her 5-year-old kid. I'm sure Olga will be fine, given her history with dogs and children, but of course I'm also a little nervous about her being in a new place with new people.

I'm also bummed that I won't get to walk her on the Heath today, because I was looking forward to that. Maybe she'll be back for a walk tomorrow. I'm not sure yet.

Today is my last French class of the term! Woo hoo! Despite my recent promise to rededicate myself to learning the language, I'm on the fence about signing up for the spring term. Maybe I know enough French? I find that I do less photography and have much less time for myself when I'm in class half the day every Saturday. So I don't know. Something to think about.

Crossing and Climbing

The other day, as I was walking past the Beatles crosswalk on Abbey Road, these folks were doing the famous John-Paul-George-Ringo pose so someone could take their picture. I love this. Is there any better testament to the universal appeal of the Beatles, and of music in general?

I only wish they'd been facing my direction. But I can't have everything.

So let's see -- what's going on around here? Winter, mostly.

We've run out of nuts and seeds for the bird and squirrel feeding saucer in the back of the garden, and I'd really rather not buy a huge new bag of it -- especially since I'm not sure it's a good idea to be feeding those critters at all. Most recommendations discourage pigeon feeding, and they are by far the predominant bird at the feeder dish -- though we get crows, too. We still have a gigantic, disgusting bag of dried mealworms, so I've been putting those out in the mornings, and they get eaten. But when they're gone we'll have to reevaluate the feeding saucer. It may be best to just use the hanging feeders, which attract smaller, more interesting birds.

I don't want things to starve out there, but I also don't want to encourage a pigeon population explosion. It's a delicate balance.

Yesterday I moved our sorry-looking marigolds off the front porch and onto the patio. Dave intends to do a garden cleanup this weekend, so they'll probably become mulch. It is time.

Apropos of nothing, I came across this certificate in one of my boxes of papers. I got it in third grade, when I and my classmates not only visited but climbed the Florida forestry lookout tower near Gowers Corner, in Pasco County. These towers were all over the state, used to monitor forest fires. I'm not sure this one even exists anymore. Can you imagine having a bunch of third graders traipsing up those stairs? Something tells me lawyers would frown on it nowadays! Anyway, it's kind of a cool certificate, even though they misspelled my name. (I'm a Stephen, not a Steven. It was a common mistake.)

I have very dim memories of that trip, and the experience of being up in the tower. But memory is a funny thing. Sometimes I wonder if I just think I remember it -- if every time I looked at this certificate I imagined what it would be like, and the imagination gradually became the memory. Know what I mean?

Frosty the Dog Walkers

Temperatures were below freezing yesterday morning when Dave and I got up. The garden plants were silvery with frost, and the windows of our neighbors' cars were covered with criss-crossed patterns like trails left by tiny ice skaters.

Dave didn't work yesterday because he had some follow-up medical appointments related to his hospitalization earlier this year. (No great surprises, fortunately; just more tests and monitoring.) One side effect of his staying home is that both of us could walk Olga in the morning, which we never get to do together.

This was the sunrise view over the nearby tennis club. Those houses on the right are actually on our street; they're the back side of the ones across the street from us. If you can picture that.

Anyway, we had a good walk and I got to show Dave the morning routine that Olga and I share, which was kind of fun. Then I was off to work, where later in the morning I got another walk -- to the bank, to get change for our lost-book cash drawer.

In the evenings, having finished "The Crown," Dave and I have moved on to "Eyewitness," a crime drama from the USA network featuring a gay subplot. I read about it on another blog and I like the show, but Dave is a little lukewarm about it. (He's a tough critic.) So last night we tried "Firefly," the science fiction show from about 15 years ago that's most famous for having been prematurely canceled. We'll probably be watching those shows for the foreseeable future! (And hopefully I can continue to squeeze in episodes of "The Wire," but Dave really doesn't like that, so I have to wait for nights when he's not around or otherwise occupied!)

Marriage -- it's mainly about compromise on TV viewing and food!