Dandelyon's Worlds

My daughter stopped by to visit. She wanted pictures of the cat that was hers from about second grade to last year, because she wants a portrait tattoo. So we went through a lot of old pictures, and I argued with my little printer until it stopped telling me the photo paper tray was empty, so we could both have copies of some of the ones that didn't have duplicates hanging out in the box.

I found some lovely memories, like the card I wrote to one of Mom's sisters in California, which had gone there full of photos, been treasured, and then found its way back to my mother when she went to take care of a different sister in her last days (Mom was one of five girls) and returned to me. And a very nice photo of me filking, though I don't know when or where. A while ago, anyway. I'll share that soon on FB, and here too, if I can get it to post properly.

While she was here, she got to pet two of the kitties--the bold boy, who came right up to check her out and obtain adoration, and the black girl, who was hungry enough to be lured into sight by kibble tossed one at a time on the floor, and who eventually decided that a sedentary human who was willing to offer food must be safe enough for scritches.

After she left, I ate, logged in to tonight's zoom filk briefly (they were winding down). I have no regrets about spending the evening as I did, since I have managed a lot more hours participating in zoom filks than in chatting with my daughter. I sang one song, without my throat screaming at me, which made me a lot happier than last week, when attempts to sing only lasted a verse or two. I have music things to work on, and being sick is No Help At All for practicing, much less trying to put together a shortish EP so I'll have something up available before the next Bandcamp Friday.

Then I moved on to working on taxes, though I was too sleepy to want to even look at numbers way too soon. Dumb dyscalculia makes it a bad idea to even enter numbers after a certain point. I really wish I hadn't gotten sick in early March, which is when I'd planned to get this done. But there's nothing on the calendar for tomorrow, and it will be cold and rainy outside all day, so there's no reason I can't power through and finish them.

I also spent a little time listening to songs for the song swap. Some of them are easy "I'd love to do this song" or "this will be very low on my list". Some are a lot harder, in part because I'm finding it hard to hear the words in some of the demos. It's not as if I think that a demo for this purpose has to be great, but to rank songs requires, for me at least, to hear and like the words. I want to make whoever wrote the song I cover happy with the result, and I want to be happy with it too, and getting a song that aligns well with my skills and outlook will, I think, make a big difference.

Going through the process of listening to these songs makes me appreciate the FAWM set-up so very much, since the site is designed to have the words right there in front of you, on the same page, while listening (unless the FAWMer didn't publish them, but most people do). Having the words in one place while the audio is in another is awkward at best. It takes more time to set things up to read and listen without the wonderful FAWM site. Ah well, once the taxes are done, I'll have more spoons for that.

And I still have to plant tomatoes. The poor babies will be much smaller than usual when they go into the garden this year, I'm afraid.

And...no, I don't need a to do list here so much as I need to stop writing and go to bed. So I will do that.