And it's Saturday

* I have a low-level headache (allergies, I assume) and I slept badly last night - lots of vivid, suffocating dreams (I assume that's the heat and humidity we have. I 'sleep hot' but if I have the air conditioning cranked TOO much, I get a stiff neck because the only place it works to put my bed in the room is near a vent - and closing the vent wouldn't be an option, the room would wind up too hot.

One dream involved going to church - here, in town, except my mother was present and they had moved the pews around to form a three-sided square with a collection box and the communion table in the center. (The pulpit was still at front). There was a guest preacher - a young Asian-American woman, but her sermon was so disorganized as to be incomprehensible, and at one point I leaned over to whisper something quickly to my mother and a woman sitting in front of us turned around and told me, at length, in an angry half-whisper, how "disrespectful" I was being and how I needed to be quiet and listen, and let other people listen.

And I guess a person's personality stays pretty consistent in their dreams, or at least mine does: I shrank back in the pew and closed my mouth and could feel myself starting to tear up. Yes, even at fifty, I still have that happen if someone "reprimands" me for a minor violation of the rules. I'm not the kind of person - I have NEVER been the kind of person - who can either think, "Well, that's, like, your opinion, MAN" or justify to myself that the rule-violation was OK, or, even more, snap back at them that it was a necessity I violated the rules....no, I draw myself inward like a sea-anemone that's been poked by a glass rod (I saw that on a nature show once) and usually don't talk for the rest of the time.

There was also some thing about the youth group kids having to hand stuff out to the congregation and I was the one who had to arrange it and make it happen.

And then the thing that ultimately woke me up? There was a potluck that day and I had forgotten to make the carne machaca I had said I would, and so not only did I fail on that count, but I would have five pounds of chuck roast moldering in my fridge that I had no way to use up. And after I woke up for several minutes I continued to excoriate myself for forgetting to do it, and that there was no time now....and then I realized, wait, today is *Saturday* and this is the day I'm planning to do it. (I'm going to put it in around noon).

One of the reasons I'm not a fan of summer is that I don't sleep as well, and I have very intense and packed dreams. I think it's because I don't relax into a deep sleep because I am both too warm, and I can't have heavy enough covers on me, and so that primitive part of my brain that's always worrying about predators eating me stays awake, and maybe it pokes the other parts of my brain by giving me weird dreams. I don't know. Maybe that's not right. Or maybe I remember the dreams better because I don't sleep so deeply and wake up a lot.

* I did go antiquing yesterday, but just to one place. I bought a slightly-older cookbook (a pamphlet, really, of cookie recipes put out by the Kansas State Ag Extension - copyright 1975). It had several recipes for no-bake cookies and given the climate I live in and the weather right now....if I'm going to make cookies, they will have to be no-bake. (I think one had dried apricots in them...)

Heh here's a copy for sale online (I paid half that for mine, and it's in equally good shape).

I also bought a copy of "When All the World was Young" by Barbara Holland. (I knew I recognized her name - she's the one who wrote "One's Company" about living alone, and also "Endangered Pleasures.") This is a memoir of her growing up years in the 1940s and 50s in Washington, DC, and it looked kind of interesting. (And Holland has an interestingly wry "voice").

I looked at a lot of things though. That's the shop where I found the vintage My Little Pony back around Christmastime and I confess I go back periodically hoping to find another, but no luck.

* Also, a recent Etsy purchase came: the 1939 edition of the "Prudence Penny" cookbook. (It turns out she wasn't a real person. There was an  actress *credited* in a couple shorts as "Prudence Penny" but apparently the newspaper columns the book was based on were ghostwritten, in some cases by men. (Similar to, but not quite, the idea behind "Christmas in Connecticut") . It's an interesting book, though, and I always like vintage cookbooks. This one has a whole chapter on "meat substitutes" and I suspect it's perhaps a tail-end-of-the-Depression thing (a little too early to be a rationing thing). However, they're not strictly vegetarian: there's a bean loaf recipe that recommends putting bacon slices on top of it while it cooks, for example.

There's also a chapter where "she" allegedly hit up movie stars (exclusively men, as far as I could see) for recipes. So there's a recipe for baked beans from Wallace Beery, and pancakes from Gary Cooper, and it tells how Clark Gable broils a steak.

There's some blurb on the dust cover that says something about "dishes men like to cook" so I am wondering if it was a cookbook aimed at *men*. (I suppose there were enough single men around, or men whose wives disliked cooking, that they might jump at a cookbook ostensibly aimed at them)

After all: I tend to buy "cooking for one" or "cooking for two" cookbooks, even though I know how to divide recipes. (I admit though, I did look at a cooking-for-one cookbook yesterday at the antique store but put it back on the shelf when I glanced at the chapter on desserts and it made the comment that desserts were only for when you had company....because something, something, calories. Maybe most single people had company more often back then but if I stuck to that rule....well. I think once in a while it's fine to have a dessert, even IF you don't have company. To me, the "no dessert unless you're throwing a dinner party!" rule feels like it's punishing people, in a way, for being alone, and not pushing to socialize more.)

* I also went to the bookstore and the JoAnn's and I admit I also kind of ran out of steam. I had thought of going to the Target but then decided against it (nothing I absolutely needed there) and also the same with Ulta. It was **hot**. Heat really takes it out of me, especially out running around to a lot of places, especially when everything is paved over so the heat reflects back at you. (it seems less hot out in my yard or out in the field...)

I bought a couple of remnant pieces of quilting fabric at JoAnn's - one with unicorns on it, one (a very small piece) with cartoony sloths, one that looked like stained glass and turned out to be a tie-in to "Beauty and the Beast" (at least it doesn't scream "cartoon movie fabric" and will probably work in whatever project I use). I remember when I was a kid, pretty much the only "new" fabric I could afford (for doll clothes, for toymaking, for piecing, when I started doing that) was remnants. (I also remember remnants being relatively cheaper than they are now. Now, the discount is not much - if any - off the price buying fabric off the bolt would be; the only benefits are the serendipity and also maybe not having to wait in line to get fabric cut).

But yeah. I think I want to get back to doing more "scrap" type quilts, where I don't have to worry about "do I have enough fabric to go everywhere it needs to go in the pattern" (and yes, you can sub fabrics in ANY quilt pattern, but it seems....harder to get it right....on some of the more-modern rotary-cut quilts than the older piece-by-piece quilts.

Another thing I remember being a thing when I was a kid, that you don't see so much in fabric stores any more, are those cut-and-sew toys, where you get a flat "critter" kind of like a pillow, but shaped, when you make it up. Those were a big big thing in the 1970s into the 80s. I don't know if times have changed, or if people buy those other places (Spoonflower used to do them, and sometimes one of the higher-end quilt fabric companies will put out one or two to coordinate with a given fabric line). But these were just ordinary fabric companies (Springs Mills, maybe?) printing them. Sometimes they were licensed characters (I remember in the early 80s seeing both Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake characters) or just random animals or dolls. (As I've said before - I had a giraffe named George made off of one of these printed panels; he was one of my favorite toys when I was 4 or so).

Now I wonder how common those were. They were a big part of my childhood, because my mother sewed and I liked stuffed animals and they made economical toys...but maybe they kind of went away because not very many people bought them?