One Less Worry

Until this time next year, the only thing I have to worry about in the meanwhile is death. I'm hoping not so soon as I have lots to do that'll keep me busy for a Very Long Time, but of course you never know.

For example, my ex-sister-in-law has metastatic lung cancer and can count her days in terms of months, and I just can't imagine being there. I'd hate to think that I was leaving too soon, though my father always said you should leave before the very end (though he was talking about parties), so there'd be something to look forward to for the next time. I guess he did that. Sadly I'm pretty sure that there is no next time; this one life is all we get.

Seriously, I'd like to live forever. I just want to know what happens. You know, with global warming, faster than light travel, genetic engineering, the Middle East, that sort of thing.

In the meanwhile, I'm wading through an ever-deepening pool of things I want to do. It's not a list exactly, because it really has no fixed order. There may be clusters of things, pockets of appealing warmth that then dissipate and flow.

First I made a necklace with my chunky beads.

Then I wondered if they'd work with all the beads one size smaller.

Yup.

I think the petite version is pretty cute.

Then I wondered if it would work as five around instead of four.

Sorta-kinda but not really.

Five just don't fit nicely. In the picture above, you can see a coppery-looking bead in the middle, towards the floor. It's surrounded by seed beads, and above that is a faceted bead, and above that some seed beads surrounding another coppery bead which you can't see as it has receded towards the inside of the beaded bead.

Not so good.

You can see it's not perfectly round at the equator, but more elliptical. You can see the seed beads at the top of the picture with a gap in which the coppery bead is supposed to nestle, but it's disappeared into the centre of the earth.

So my experiments were fifty percent successful but my taxes are done.

I call that a productive weekend, though the reason I'm telling you about it today instead of yesterday is that I ran out of camera batteries so it's not as though absolutely everything is under control, much as I would like it to be.

Still, I'm not dead yet and taxes are done. Did I say that already?