Quiet day on Friday. I slept very badly Thursday night and thought I might be doing a nap again, but I stayed up and slept much better last night. Still feel a little groggy, but another good night should clear that.

Friday is grocery day with Denise, but yesterday had some extra running around. My tenant's insurance was expiring so it had to be renewed. It seems so expensive, but if anything ever happens I know I'll be glad I have it. Then to Zeller's for cat litter and food plus a new shower mat and dish rack. Then to Ed's News to pick up my magazines and finally to Overwaitea. Had to buy meat this week, so it was a rather expensive run, but that's only once a month usually.

Found a great pattern I want to stitch for my craft partner Cynthia. It's a bellpull that will help show off her Norwegian heritage, which she is very proud of. I've been working on finding something special for each of my close friends and this makes #2. For Annabelle I'll be doing a series of maps that show the countries her ancestors come from as she has become very interested in her family tree in the last few years.

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Robert Frost
1874 - 1963