Do I have a Secret Admirer??!!!

Strange days here in the bookstore – stranger than usual, I mean.

Yesterday I opened my microwave and a wee box from Blackbird Bakery sat there. Inside I discovered the Mother of all Pink Cupcakes – tall icing, silver sugar sprinkles, wee flowers, the kind of thing Our Hadley would have picked out if she’d been taken to the bakery, shown the cakes, and told she could have any one she wanted.

tshirts 014It made a lovely breakfast. That’s how things go around here – you find a cupcake in the microwave still in the box, you check to see if it’s anyone else’s, and then you eat it. Delicious.

So  now the mystery remains to be digested: who left it there?

Was it the same person who, about four days before, left a bar of peppermint goat milk soap on the paranormal romances?

Ohhhh, the plot thickens, just like my waistline after eating the Pink Cupcake.

(I regret NOTHING.)

Anyway, if it was you, thank you. It’s lifted my spirits while Jack’s been away, and I smell of peppermint. Actually, I’m taking the soap back to the writing cabin this weekend to put in my sweater drawer, where it will keep mice away, plus counteract the hard water of northeast Tennessee.

So, random chaos abounds in a good way here at the bookstore. It could be elves, one supposes – but don’t they more often frequent shoe shops?

No, it’s probably a human or two. My friend Elissa guffawed when I said, “Yes, but only a few people have access to the microwave.”

“Everyone in Big Stone knows where the key is kept, plus half of Facebook, and you’re narrowing suspects by access? Stick to memoir writing; you have no future in crime novels.”

She has a point.

Yarn Porn?

DSCN0278Just as Jack was getting on his plane to head off to Scotland, friends of friends were having a yard sale here. And my friends told me about their friends’ yard sale because said sale sold yarn.

I guess I have a reputation or something…..

Being tied up all day, I couldn’t get to said yard sale, a knotty problem, to say the least, yet quickly solved by friends stringing together a series of emails in which I prepaid for the haul, and they hauled it to me.

The boxes and bags – about 200 skeins in all – arrived the day after Jack left, leaving his side of the bed the logical place to stash the, er, stash until I could get it put away at the weekend.

Hence “The Photograph.” I got my friend Elissa (yes, the one who shoots kittens) to document a playful moment and thought no more about it – until that night, when I put said playful photo on one of the many, MANY crochet sites out there on Facebook. The caption read, “My husband is gone for a month, so I’m trying to make the best of things” or something like that.

An hour later it had 700 likes and several very funny comments. And then it disappeared. Admin took it down and now I find my posts (on other subjects) blocked.

I don’t know which is funnier: taking it, taking it down, or taking it badly. Some people get their knitting into twists, y’know? And some are just too tightly wound.

Truth be told, makes me feel kinda empowered to have been banned from a crochet group, like maybe I could still have a shot at being cool?

Nah. I rescue kittens and my idea of a hot time while Jack is gone is binge-watching Netflix until midnight while crocheting and drinking club soda. (Wine while crocheting leads to some interesting pattern innovations.) I have long hair and wear sensible flats and the last time I had an affair it was with a fictional character in a classic novel. (Never you mind who; get your own book daddy.)

But I HAVE been banned; surely that counts for some kind of honorary coolness points?