"Please absorb all that."

Garner's Modern English Usage, which I got from the thrift store the other day, is a hoot! (Thank you, Michael, for recommending this.)

Look:

"Please absorb all that."
Not likely---my brain is too (or, not enough) spongey! [Spongy? Really? Looks wrong.]

I'd just mentioned here that turning sixty was a turning point in my physical aging--and it surprised me (and still surprises me, at sixty-three)--and there it was in the Guardian yesterday:
Studies suggest aging is not a slow and steady process, rather...  "Scientists find humans age dramatically in two bursts – at 44, then 60".
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Reduction Prints

But old dogs do learn new tricks. bink and I made "reduction prints" for the first time during our usual Sunday morning coffee at my place. (Actually, it took us till 3 p.m. to finish printing them.)
My tangerines, top; her asparagus, below. (These are 5" x7" cards.)

It was confusing at first---using one block, you carve & print each color at a time... (lightest to darkest)...  You are not only visualizing the image in reverse (tangerines don't care), but you are thinking of the whole image in layers, from front to back.
Once you get started, it's fine--but futzy. Even tidy Virgo bink made a messy print.
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Through Linda Sue, I recently met Abby, blogger of AbbyNormal, (not thrift-store-volunteer Abby).
She asked about what I do.
Here's a brief overview--plucked from some of the 71 posts on my old blog (2007– ) tagged "About Me".

THiS IS ME:

I volunteer now where I worked for six years as BOOK's Lady (Toys too), at a thrift store in my city's poorest neighborhood--a mile from where the police murdered George Floyd. Lots of street business goes on there too.
I love the store, but the stress-to-pay ratio was atrocious.
This spring I started working as a special-ed assistant with autistic high-schoolers. Love the kids, love the pay, hate high school.

BELOW: February 2020 (right before Covid) Me, far right (gray sweater), having lined up staff for my online campaign for the thrift store to win Best of... Which we did!

A couple friends turn up in my blog all the time--bink & Marz.
Here we are on Camino, walking across Spain in 2011:
Below, L to R: me, bink, Marz.

I don't have much bio family.
Here are some of my roots:
TOP: my mother's father (far right) w/ his parents and sister, Kentucky, 1912
BELOW: my father's father––in a photo, far right, held by a brother (because my grandfather had already emigrated to Milwaukee, WI)–– Sicily, 1913

BELOW: Very representative of me NOW--photographing the girlettes' (dolls) and bears' summer solstice parade last year. (Marz is holding the parade balloon bear, and bink took the photo.)

All for now! Have a lovely week, everyone!