scale, night, day, necklace... altogether now

it is past 2 in the morning. 

this is not a weird time to be writing for me, as you may already know. 

if it is anything, it is early. 

somehow, i wound up a couple of summers ago,
 getting my days and nights all turned upside down. 

it was not what i wanted to happen.

you know the saying about "sleeping like a baby"?

it is all too familiar to me these days.
the kind of sleep that babies entertain for a while that drives their parents insane?
where they sleep during days and
need attention when their folks are just too tired to deal with anything anymore?
well that is my natural rhythm.
my tennis teacher, used to call it eastern wendy time.
sorry world. i just have a hard time harnessing normal, acceptable schedules.
i have tried to for decades and it just is a struggle.

i really do try to make it work.
household harmony is a delightful thing. 

i have had to make sure that i awakened in a timely enough manner
 before the kids needed to be picked up from school,

which was a bit of an adjustment. 

i managed though.

not having days to do all of my errands can be troubling sometimes, 

since i genuinely dislike driving around town late at night.

 it is not the most cost effective way to buy groceries from the convenience food aisles at CVS. 

the only reason i ever like to do that is if we night owls are jones-ing
 for something to snack on,
need some medications to be picked up

and it is really late. 

sometimes i tag on my banking needs onto the trip, since the atm is next door to the pharmacy
thus, making it an efficiently run sortie.

if i am truly organized, i can also take advantage of the automatic post office machine
for my never ending shipping needs. 

that is another 24/7 kind of errand. 

the exception is on national holidays.
 i work on these days often enough, and tend to forget that the lobby doors will be locked
eliminating my access to the automated machine.

so here i am with my topsy turvy time and biofeedback doing

 day to night and night to day 

loops of wackiness. 

my eldest daughter also suffers from this diurnal affliction as well. 

she is as fully grown as i am going to get her to be. 

i think she has stopped growing... vertically. 

now i find her in the kitchen, 

a tad embarrassed that she felt she should ask a personal question.

she is home for the holidays and
is used to living her life freely as a second year college student who has her own apartment
and her own kitchen in which she can do what she likes and whenever that is,
without any repercussions.

when she was a baby, 11 months old, she would be awake at this time. 

  very happily doing baby things. 

now she is cooking black beans and garbanzos. 

that was her question... could she make herself a pot of beans
or would it be weird?

uh, the answer is... neither is a problem, just make enough for tomorrow... 

so we can have them for dinner. 

(my mr. eats a lot of beans and all the time too.

 they are his cure for one of his post-cardiac-event dietary ills.

we need as many edible solutions as are possible to his fresh dietary requirements.)

so there is my 5'-2" 

daughter in my tiny kitchen at 2:30 am making rice and beans. 

not wanting to be left out of the excitement that is happening, 

the boy likes to stay up late. 

he is not really of this biorhythm naturally.
his is completely artificial.

i know he is struggling to stay awake, but it is not without rewards. 

he gets to sniff out where the candy has been hidden in the house. 

he gets to watch net-flix movies that only i enjoy along with him. 

tonight, our selections were a james bond movie

(one with pierce brosnan... golden eye, which was awful. 

and

the other was the expendibles.

 this too had almost nothing to recommend it, 

unless of course you sold ear plugs for all the bombs and guns going off. )

so the boy was taking stock of the beans cooking in the kitchen and 

his need to go to sleep. 

sleep would win out eventually, but only by a hair. 

he has been sick since he came home from college with a very chesty cold. 

his need to fiddle with my phone, my computer stuff, the entire sofa, 

the entire bathroom, the kitchen... 

and any other place where he could share the love of the rhinovirus 

has been unsquashable. 

the boy has been so very generous with his visiting virus,
that he gave it freely shared it with  his little sister. 

so for a trifecta,

 the bean cooking girl of 20,

the overtired and still kinda sick boy of 18 who is the largest of us all, 

the extra sick 14 year old widget that can't sleep

 and feels school will be in her future tomorro, although i feel it is not prudent... 

are all in the kitchen. 

and at 2:30 in the morning

eating. snuffling. self-medicating. communing with one another. etc..
the dog is there for comic relief,
in dire hope that something really tasty will fall from the pot to the floor,
and just because, he too thinks it is exciting with us all in there.
a special 10 foot x 12 foot room.

in this very room

 that held them individually and in combinations,
forever ago,

as infants taking their first baths in its deep, cast iron, perfectly colored green sink,

as babies eating blueberries, watermelon and noodles in their high chairs,

 as toddlers hiding in only half-built cabinets,
(remember, the carpenter's family has no cabinets... 17 yrs later... still no doors)

as young tweens, eating many of the meals cooked here, 

as early athletes sharing stories about that last game or practice, 

as adolescents, spreading out homework to be done, 

as artists, industrial designers, inventors, and many other intelligent creators living life...

this room is now stretching at the edges to contain them and all their crazy. 

they are to my practiced eyes,

just plainly HUGE. 

no longer the little critters of the land. 

each has their own larger than life,
full-figured personality to squeeze into a size 4 space. 

it is no longer the land where night is dark;

day is filled with natural light;

and the children are tiny beings that need some nurturing. 

i am unsure of where i fit in all this.
i go with the shut up and drive or cook .... let them talk to each other.
learn by osmosis... let the natural order of things work.

i do know where my husband is though.
sensibly,  he is tucked into bed a mere 10 feet away
where he is happily sawing wood. 

~~~~~~~

in other news, 

i made a custom necklace over the past few days.

its construction manifesto is as follows:

1. to be constructed as a jumping off point from two necklaces. 

2. to intermix silver and gold chains

3. to swag and string beads and chains creating a mixed bibelot

4. to dangle chains as irregular accenting fringes

5. to add a few accent  blossoms to match the impossibly bubble intendee's personality

in black, white, patina, greens, yellow, teal 

6. to have the masse cascade downwards as if to graze the waistline.

7. to entertain a few drops of pearls

here is one prototypical necklace: 

peacock feathers

the second prototype:

Joyce's necklace

so of course, this is what i came out with...

i may have missed the boat completely, but i love the results. 

when the sunshine returns to my night, in my topsy turvy world, 

i will attempt to rephotograph this piece. 

this pic may be too dark for its own good. 

night night folks...

xow.