The Needlepoint Wall

I had so many projects going yesterday morning that by noon, it felt like I'd lived a full day. I collected some tax information online so I could sit down and do our taxes -- always my favorite activity of the year (NOT). But I didn't actually do them because Dave needs to give me his W2 and there's a long story why he couldn't do that, basically involving a forgotten password. So it looks like taxes will wait until next weekend.

I vacuumed, I did two loads of laundry, and then I took Olga to the cemetery for a walk among the daffodils and primroses. It was bright and sunny when we left the house and, no kidding, ten minutes later it was gray and raining. So Olga got a little damp but surprisingly she didn't seem to mind.

Oh, and I hung up our newly framed pictures:

Here, above King Zack, are our Egyptian geese and Vivian's watercolors of Olga, along with a framed picture of Olga (this one) that was hanging in our hallway. I moved it because I used that space for...

...our needlepoint wall! Yes, not only did I hang Dave's birth announcement, but also a needlepoint my stepmother made me when I was a kid (the bicycles) and one my maternal grandmother made back in the 1930s (far right). They look good together, don't they?

In the afternoon I polished off an issue of The New Yorker, reading about Afghanistan and (in a separate article) Wendell Berry, whose work I have never read. He sounds like an interesting guy, an advocate of a simpler, agrarian life and the family farm. Maybe I should try one of his books.

In the evening we returned to watching "The Gilded Age," It's gotten better since that first clunky pilot episode. The actors seem to have settled into the characters and I'm sure I'm getting more used to them too. I'm trying to narrow our proliferating TV subscriptions -- I cancelled Apple TV and Disney+ for the time being. Each subscription doesn't seem like much by itself, but when you're paying £5 or £10 per month per channel, it all adds up pretty quickly. Now we've just got Amazon Prime, Netflix and Now TV (which I will probably pause once we're done with "The Gilded Age").