Off Leash

My sister wrote:

“We went to a great 13-acre dog park this morning with [the pooch] and she got lots and lots of exercise and fun with the other dogs. Off-leash is so fabulous.”

I wrote back:

“I think the idea of a dog park is pretty darn cool. Gives me the idea for a Middle Aged Woman Park.” I have to agree with her; off-leash is fabulous. Which got me thinking about what I do when I’ve slipped my leash in order to retool, refresh, rewind.

I love to read, listen to good music, knit [of course], cook, work with my hands, dance, eat, nap. If I could design a Middle Aged Woman Park to please not just myself, but other candidates for the Red Hat Society, what would it contain?

Shopping, natural and man-made beauty, food, climate control, peace, and safety. Places for pondering and solitude, other places for teaching and learning.

There would be Ann Taylor for the skinnies and Coldwater Creek and Avenue and Lane Bryant for the rest of us. There would be a really good used book shop as well as the Big Two. There would be a mini-mall that sold needlework supplies of all sorts, and a bead/gemstone shop, and art supplies, a teahouse for the Ladies Who Lunch, a really good vegan restaurant, all sorts of ethnic foods like I remember from Seattle Center during and after the Worlds Fair in 1963. [Yes, I am that old, and pictures from the Fair are among those that got briefly baptized during the move.]

It would be large enough to meet the artistic needs of 99% of the populace and small enough that everything would be in easy walking distance. It would be enclosed and air conditioned, with skylights. There would be an abundance of seating for the easily tired, ramps for those with accessibility issues, and Fashion Police not for the women, but to keep out men in golf shorts, Speedos, and open shirts with honking gold medallions on their grizzled hairy chests, not to mention adolescent males with their trousers at half-mast and adolescent and post-adolescent females dressed like hoochie mamas.

And it would have cute cops on bikes, like Bass Hall and Sundance Square in Fort Worth. The silver-haired ones would be *mine*.

Clapotis, elle est fini, and am I the only one who is having issues posting photographs on Ravelry? I can log into Flickr, and when I drag-and-drop to the blank square on my notebook page on Ravelry, it tumps [v., Tx, transitive] me back into Flickr. I was not in the mood to sign up for the help line IM last night.

I have been methodically adding FO’s and linking to blog posts. It would be nice if I could show what the FO looks like, without people having to go to the posts.

I do believe that I will wear my Clapotis to work today, with either my teal T-shirt or the lovely faux suede one that Firstborn gave me for my birthday several years ago [oh, how I miss August Max Woman], and my turquoise earrings and cuff that I inherited from Mom.

Going back to bed now.