Can Any of You Relate?

How to handle this birthday cake issue . . . .

Just make a candle cake!

And behold my future life

in the old-age home, LOL . . . .

Sunday Seven

A roundup of this week's shenanigans --

LUNCHED: with friends at The Cajun House restaurant in St Albert. Foolishly, I didn't order the Louisiana Alligator Boudin appetizer. What was I thinking?

SAFETY FIRST: all the sprinkler heads in our apartments were checked and cleaned of drywalling/painting debris by a technician this week.

DRUM TALK: while checking the sprinkler head in my storage closet, the young technician spotted my deer hide hoop drum and told me he was making a moose hide drum with his elder. We had a great chat about drumming. He was worried his drum might warp after the wet hide was laced and dried, so I told him to buy a cedar drum hoop from British Columbia if he could obtain one, because cedar (unlike other wood) does not warp.

WATCHED: my favourite swashbuckling hero's latest movie, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Five out of five stars for the only feline with more cattitude than HRH!

HADDOCK HEAVEN: went with a friend for dinner at Brits Fish and Chips. For authenticity, to go with salt on our chips, we hit the vinegar bottle hard -- white for me, malt for her.

WENT TO: three (3) Holiday Craft Markets! My Christmas shopping is now done! At one of them, ran into two friends I haven't seen for awhile and had a lovely catch-up chat.

LAUGH OF THE WEEK: my sister is a major Chris Evans fan, so I emailed her this fanart I found on the internet celebrating Captain America A.K.A. "America's Ass." She very cheekily asked "Is this the Two of Pentacles from a new tarot deck by any chance?"

TAD & FFO -- "Smiles"

I'm linking this art post with both

Thursday Art Date with Rain 

(whose prompt this week is "smiles")

and with Nicole's Friday Face OFF.

I've recently completed my first

art course learning how to do

portraits of people in coloured pencil.

It was VERY challenging and

I'm really struggling with how

to depict shadows on skin tones.

I need a LOT more practice!

But this little girl does have

a charming gap-toothed smile,

so here she is!

A person told me recently that their grandchild

gets $20 per tooth from the Tooth Fairy.

TWENTY BUCKS!

I got 25 cents per tooth back in MY day

(admittedly 60 years ago, but still!)

What did YOU get as recompense?

And what do your kids/grandkids get now?

[Art & photo of art © Debra She Who Seeks, 2023]

Robots Will Steal Our Jobs and Then Kill Us All

And they'll steal our women too!

Annual Tattoos Post

Sunday Seven

Some things that happened this week --

ATTENDED: a musical called Crescendo by Edmonton playwright Sandy Paddick, based on the true stories of women in a community choir. All the cast members were very good singers and performed a range of music from opera to folk and pop. My theatre buddy and I had a good time at this!

BINGE-WATCHED: Season 2 of the Marvel/Disney+ series Loki. With a lot less of the first season's charm, humour and whimsy, season 2's storyline is exceedingly complex and darkly metaphysical. However, Loki does finally find out exactly what is entailed by being "burdened with glorious purpose."

LISTENED: to my CD of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem to mark Remembrance Day. It's a beautiful and moving setting of the traditional Latin Mass for the Dead interspersed with some of the war poems of Wilfred Owen.

SADDENED: by the death this week of Dr Dick Smith, Winnipeg's "Gay Hero Doctor" during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the late 1980s/1990s. He had been my family doctor before closing his private health practice to focus exclusively on fighting HIV/AIDS.

BECAME A HOARDER: I use artists' quality Prismacolor Premier coloured pencils. Just learned that the company will no longer be selling individual replacement pencils, but sets of pencils only. Immediately rushed to my local art store and bought one of every individual pencil they had in stock so as to fortify myself against the coming drought. The store owner very kindly gave me the "bulk sale discount," LOL!

WATCHED: both the Eastern and Western Finals of the Canadian Football League. Next weekend those two winning teams, the Montreal Alouettes and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, will compete for the Grey Cup in Hamilton at Tim Hortons Field. I'll be watching that too!

BAKED: a batch of banana-walnut muffins. Behold the yum --

Remembrance Day