Mitzi and the hags

Here are the 3 witches I just finished, plus Mitzi. She didn't sell on eBay, so she's joined the coven. I did a Google search to see if I could find the names of the 3 witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth, since that would have been an easy way to name them. It seems that Hecate was the head witch, but I'm not sure if she was one of the three. At any rate, Mr. S. did refer to them as the "black and midnight hags" and some of the other characters called them the "weird sisters." Apparently they were known for their "eye of newt and toe of frog" recipes. I'm so sorry I can't share one with you.....

So yesterday I answered the phone and it was Melva looking for the Sweethart bus. Melva was an elderly person and the Sweethart bus is part of our municipal bus system that has been set up to provide rides to the elderly. Our phone number is very similar to their number and it's easy to transpose two numbers. We've been living with this for over 20 years. Melva understood that she had the wrong number and told me she didn't have a pencil when I offered to give her the right one, so I suggested she try again. She did, and she got me again. I took down her info, which was fairly simple. She didn't want the bus to pick her up today. Then I called the bus company on her behalf and canceled the bus. Good thing I didn't get a busy signal. Mr. Gadget thinks it's funny when I do this for people, but I just tell him that we'll be old and confused one day and I hope I'm fortunate to get someone on the phone who's friendly and helpful.

So as if the phone number wasn't enough of an issue, we also have an address issue. There are two #4's on our street. It's a long, boring story about how this came to be, so I won't go into it. This is our mailbox....which I suggested painting red so as to make giving directions much easier. We've even added a 4th line to our address for shipping purposes by putting "red mailbox" right under the street address. Sometimes this works and sometimes not. What we hate to miss are those pizza deliveries....

You might notice that the mailbox post is a little beat-up looking. That's because Mr. Gadget has had to resurrect it many times because of mailbox vandals who like nothing better to do than to drive through neighborhoods in the middle of the night with baseball bats. Some folks have encased their mailboxes in concrete or bricks in their efforts to outfox these rascals. We haven't gone that far, but I must say that things have calmed down since the teenagers grew up and moved out.

So now I'm going to start a big pot of veggie soup. It's gotten a little cooler here in the northeast and can now officially be called "soup weather." I'll throw in some carrots, celery, onion, tomato, cabbage, and pasta. And maybe I'll check the cupboards to see if I have any eye of newt.....