Things
are going to be a bit boring around here as I've started on the
fabrication for the A&M job cutting the stencil for the first
panel which I have already changed from the diagram which is an
altered mess. It's got as much white-out on it as it does ink. Been
working on it two days so far and might finish it today.
It's a
short day though (yoga) and there are a couple of other things on the
agenda. Like decide on and box up and send off a piece to a gallery
for their annual anniversary show, something I should have done
already. That alone could take all day.
I
did make some progress on the finish work on the cast pieces but have
not got anything finished. Well, maybe the pink flower with the bee
and the leaflet. They are done but I still have to glue them
together. 4"w x 5"h x 2"d
I
used to read a book a week or more. Now it seems if I get one read a
month I'm doing good.
In
A Dark Dark Wood by Ruth Ware –
Nora receives an invitation to her ex-best friend Clare's 'hen' party whom
she hasn't seen or communicated with in 10 years. Nora
transferred to another school after she and her boyfriend broke up
and she tried to put that past behind her. She reluctantly agrees to
go with Nina, the only person she kept up with from school days, also
invited. Nora, or Lee as she was known in school, and Nina arrive at
a remote glass house for the weekend to be met by Flo, Clare's new
bestie, who has arranged the weekend party. When Nora finally asks
Clare why she was invited to the party but not to the wedding, Clare
tells her it's because she wanted to tell Lee/Nora herself that the
groom is Lee/Nora's long lost boyfriend whom Nora has never gotten
over. Next thing, Nora is waking up in the hospital battered and
bruised and with no memory of the past 24 hours which slowly comes
back to her. James has been murdered and the police suspect Nora.
The shooting was an accident Nora remembers, they were all clustered
in a group with Flo holding the shotgun which was supposed to have
not been loaded, fearful of the intruder coming up the stairs. Or
was it? And why did James come out there unannounced in the middle
of the night? And who was setting her up? Nora escapes from the
hospital and returns to the glass house to try and recover the last
bit of memory where she is followed and confronted by Clare, also
bruised and battered and away from the hospital. We learn the secret
Nora has been keeping about the break-up with James and who the
murderer is and why. It was stupid, a stretch of a motive. I was
enjoying the story well enough until the end.
Ashley
Bell by Dean Koontz – I like
Dean Koontz or I used to. It seems to me though that lately he can
spin a good yarn but has trouble finishing it, bringing it to a
satisfactory conclusion and I feel like he could have done a little
bit better on this one. The story was good enough, kept me engaged
though towards the end it felt a bit repetitive. Bibi Blair, young
author of one published book, suffers weakness in her left side and
goes to the hospital to learn she has incurable brain cancer. The
next day or so, a stranger comes into her room with a dog and Bibi is
miraculously cured. When she returns home, her delighted parents
send over a masseuse and dabbler in the occult who uses her powers to
find out why Bibi was spared from the cancer. The answer was to save
a life and the person whose life she is to save is Ashley Bell. This
is no easy task as the Wrong People have her prisoner and intend to
kill her. Bibi sets out to find and rescue Ashley only to be
constantly sidetracked by her own deep secret that she has hidden
from herself since she was 6 years old. Bibi finally comes face to
face with Ashley's captor who is not exactly who he seems to be.
Like I said, it's a good story that kept me engaged. I just wish it
had ended better.
The
Stopped Heart by Julie Myerson -
This is two story lines that run intertwined with each other.
They sort of intersect in that each storyline has a character that
sort of senses the other storyline even though they are separated by
possibly 150 years in time. Mary and Graham, bereaved of their two
young daughters in a random act of fate trying to make sense of
continued life without them and 14 year old Eliza and her siblings,
the little kiddies, and their relationship with James, a laborer on
her father's farm who turns out to be a con man and a serial killer. We know how
Eliza's story ends as the book begins with the almost end of her
story. So Mary and Graham move into a new house to try for a new
start after the murders of their girls, the house that Eliza and her
family lived in 150 years previous. Mary is uneasy there at first as
she keeps seeing children and a red haired man in the garden while
Graham is preoccupied with his troubled daughter from a previous
marriage. They become friends with another couple in the village and
Mary is pursued by Eddie, the husband. Eventually, a skeleton is
discovered buried in the shed at the back of the garden, an event
that starts Mary's emergence from the fog of grief. I kept expecting
the storylines to merge in some sort of supernatural way but I got to
the end of the book without it ever happening. I was more interested
in Eliza's storyline than Mary's. Mary had an annoying habit of
answering every statement, opinion, or question with a question.
The
Girl In The Red Coat by Kate Hamer - I
didn't realize when I checked this and the previous book out that
they were so similar in some ways. Both are about the loss of a
child and both are written using alternating storylines. Beth,
single mom who's ex-husband has settled down with another woman, and
her 8 year old daughter go to a storytelling festival and get
separated in the fog that drifts in just as Carmel hides and then
goes into one of her fugues where time changes and she can't move.
(It occurred to me that these were probably petit mals though it was
never alluded to in the story.) She has a talent unknown to
her or anyone else, she can heal people. Her talent hasn't gone
completely unnoticed though and she is abducted by a man who has been
watching her. One storyline deals with the mother and her search for
her daughter and her sorrow and self blame and her life and how she
finally starts to pick up the pieces of a life again and the other
storyline is of Carmel and what has happened to her and the life she
eventually leads as an itinerant healer on the revival circuit in
America and how all that comes to an end. Carmel and her mother are eventually reunited though it is
nearly six years later and the last page of the book.
Plugging
away at the second diagram, almost finished. I'll be cutting the
first stencil next week. I'm really dragging my feet, keep finding
small distractions, counterproductive to my desire to get it done and
over with. Some of the dawdling is because I really don't know how
to do this job, how to translate these photographs into etched glass,
and I have to make DECISIONS. The decisions I make now determine how
it is going to look in the glass, whether it works or not.
I've
also been working on the cast glass. I filled the mold for the leaf
plaque Tuesday and it came out of the kiln yesterday. I used transparent
green in the leaves and then backfilled it with black and yes the
black will overpower the green and make it very subtle. Which is
what I want. The moonflowers bloom at night.
It's
been de-molded and I have washed it in vinegar and the green is very
subtle. I was thinking I may have needed a thicker layer of the
green but now I'm not so sure. A good light will pick up the green
more and I think once I do the cold work and polish the leaves a bit
it will look perfect. I've balanced the moonflower on it's little
pedestal on the plaque and it looks really good. Though I just had a
thought about my whole plan to float the flower above the plaque on
the pedestal. The whole weight of the flower and the shear force and
the small surface to surface area of the pedestal to the
plaque...hmmmm. Should have put a hole in the wax model for the pedestal to sit in. Well, I have decided to have a stand made for it
instead of having it be a wall piece. That could change though.
I finished the diagram or nearly enough. I was going to start the
stencil today but I think I'll wait til Monday and spend the day
doing cold work on my castings.
re
my post about choking...took Autumn home and my daughter says to me
mom, you know we love you, your family really loves you but we
laughed so hard when we read your last post. Autumn piped up, it was
horrifying! My daughter said I'm sure it was and then she ragged on
me to go to the doctor now that I have insurance. Coupled with all
the other ragging I got in the comments and on FB, I guess I will see
about making an appointment with someone.
re
the layout of my blog...I have changed the comment section so that
there is a reply button beneath each comment so now maybe I'll start
replying to your comments. Some of them. Sometimes. Maybe. But do
check back. I may just surprise you. And me.
It
has rained every day for 8 days straight, not all day but off and on during the days and nights. By Wednesday we had
already had 7”. I haven't checked the rain gauge since. It's not
mine anyway, belongs to the new neighbors now. Frank Of The
Bountiful Garden's house finally sold and the new owners have moved
in. They are also artists/crafters. Robert does metal work and
wood work and what all making stuff suited to the Renaissance fairs
and fantasy/graphic novel conventions and such. Debra works in clay,
not really sure exactly what, if it is functional or sculptural or
maybe both and also makes costumes for these different venues and
maybe paints too. They are still getting organized and getting the
greenhouses converted to studios so I haven't seen any of their
actual work and only chatted with them briefly a few times. They are
a bit younger than us. She still works full time and commutes into
town.
For
those of you who don't know who Frank Of The Bountiful Garden is, he
was our neighbor who with his wife Dorothy had a nursery there at
their house and were mostly retired when we bought this place. They
kept that place immaculate and Frank had a garden and fruit trees
that produced prodigious amounts of food and he was very generous,
always coming over with something to share, sending my daughter home
with bags of stuff for the kids. Dorothy died about 4 years ago and
Frank quickly declined and died almost two years ago. Both in their
early 80s. Their son and daughter kept the place for about a year
and finally put the house on the market. Frank built that house.
Anyway, I would write in the blog about Frank and Dorothy
periodically.
Did
I mention I have a functioning kiln? No, not the one that
skyrocketed and turned a small leaf casting into an alien geode of
fused boiled glass and plaster. It's still broken as the expensive
part we bought didn't fix it. No, we finally plugged in the old
kiln, our first Paragon glass kiln that hasn't been turned on for at
least 6 years and we haven't used for at least 10 years though my
sister and her husband were and it was in their barn, and it came on
and so we cleaned it up and did a test cast of one of the bark pieces
and it worked fine.
So
now we have our third firing going. The second firing was the new
leaflet for the pink flower and the moonflower that goes with the
leaf plaque. The molds were so dry that my volume measure wasn't
very accurate and as a result I had way too much glass in both molds
and had to grind off a considerable amount on each casting.
Still
have to take off a little more and I started the cold work on the
surfaces. All this going on while I am still trying to finish the
second diagram so I can start on the first stencil for the A&M
commission. August is drawing to a close and I've been telling them
I'll have the first stencil cut by the end of the month.
Anyway,
the pieces that are in there now are four more of the bark pieces.
The last one I'm casting in white so it will get fired separately.
The next firing will be the leaf plaque for the moonflower.
Last
Sunday when I went in to pick up Autumn (a last minute surprise visit
as the twins spent a month in Poland and Israel this summer and
needed to work the rest of the summer at their jobs as helpers at the
summer camp program at a local gymnastic gym which ended a week ago
yesterday so Autumn called and wanted to spend the last week of
summer with us), I stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up a few things,
among them this box of peaches. As you can see, we've already eaten
half of them.
We
didn't do a whole lot, mostly because it rained every day and I had
to work on these diagrams and she had summer homework to finish.
Even so we did have some fun.
The
twins turned 18 this summer so I asked Autumn if they had registered
to vote yet and she said no so the first thing we did was download
the forms and fill them out. Autumn mailed hers and is taking Jade's
home so she can sign it and mail it off.
And
because they are still practicing how to drive, Autumn chauffeured me
around all week.
She
did have one project she wanted to do which was to fancy up her blue
jean jacket with colorful cloth and ribbons and trim.
We
went to the movies and saw Bad Moms which was funny and sweet. Kind
of a date movie for going to with your girlfriend moms.
We
made an attempt to go to the beach. I had checked the weather report
for Matagorda and it showed partly cloudy but no rain even though it
was raining here. I didn't think that was unusual because often in
the summer when it is raining inland, it is sunny at the beach. So
we headed out and quickly drove out of the rain and then about
halfway there we drove into the rain again which was coming down so
hard I could not see 20 feet in front of me and I even pulled over
for a few minutes. But then we drove out of it again to a sunny sky
until we got to the beach where we parked at the little pavilion with
the picnic tables and walked down the path through the dunes to the
beach. This is what we saw...
...another
storm raining like mad over the Gulf and moving inland. We hadn't
been there 5 minutes when it started to sprinkle and then the wind
picked up and the rain started pelting us. We were soaked to the
skin before we could get back to the car and, not planning on going
swimming, just walking along the beach, we had not brought any towels
with us. note to self...ALWAYS take a towel when you go to the
beach.
We
had taken Minnie with us for her first visit to the beach which she
seemed to be enjoying in the 5 minutes before it started raining
though she wasn't too sure about the surf. Minnie doesn't like the
rain much even when she is inside and dry so when the rain came in I scooped her up and
carried her as we dashed back to the car and by the time we got there she was just
a quivering lump of wet flesh. She rode home in my lap.
And
of course, we did the little shops in town and Glen Flora where our
favorite resale shop is where everything over a dollar is half price.
PS...I
know it looks like Autumn wore the same clothes all week but what
really happened is that I failed to take pictures as stuff happened
so we staged all these.
I
used to think I was going to die in a car wreck since I had been in
so many but then that stopped happening though I am aware, every time
I get in the car on the freeway, that that is a possibility. I used
to be afraid of drowning, not because I couldn't swim, but because I
always thought it would be a terrible way to die but I've since read
that it isn't as painful and horrible as I imagined. I would like to
die of old age in my bed, peacefully, without being ravaged by some
disease but I'm thinking now I will probably just choke to death.
Anyone
who has known me for a long time and has shared enough meals with me
knows that sometimes my throat goes into a spasm while I am eating
when something scratches or touches a sensitive spot which produces
coughing, sneezing, frozen vocal chords but no choking. And then
there are the times I actually aspirate liquid or food and choke a
little because that little flap that covers your airway when you are
eating or drinking doesn't always work properly. This is one of the
reasons I'm a slow eater.
Once,
I was dreaming I was eating candy and my mouth started watering and I
aspirated saliva to the point where I could not breathe at all and
Marc had to Heimlich me a couple of times. That was kind of scary
since I wasn't even eating or drinking anything and was sound asleep.
And another time eating, that was worse, when my eyesight started
going gray around the edges before I could breathe again.
So
last night we had just sat down to dinner, roast with potatoes and
carrots and I'm chewing my first bite of roast and all of a sudden I
can't breathe, my airway was completely blocked and my first attempts
at trying to clear it were unsuccessful. Marc jumped up and
Heimliched me a couple of times which dislodged the obstruction just
enough that I could start forcing some air in and out.
This
was the third time he's had to do that but this was the first time I
pissed myself. And by that I don't mean I just wet my pants a
little, I mean my bladder totally let go and by the time I could
breathe a little easier but still struggling, I was standing in a
puddle of urine and my pants were soaked. I knew it was happening in
a distant way, just as I knew Autumn, who is visiting for her week,
was watching with a look of horror on her face, but my whole focus
was on dragging air into my lungs and expelling it as forcefully as I
could to remove whatever was blocking my airway. At this point I
knew I wasn't going to die and after a few more minutes I could
breathe more or less regularly. 'Well', he says, 'that hasn't
happened in a long time'. 'It's happened before?!', Autumn
exclaimed.
'I'm
sorry you had to witness that', I told Autumn as I went to change
clothes. The only word I heard of her reply was 'traumatic'.
Forty
years. That's nearly twice as long as it took me to attain legal
age, several years longer than any one place I have ever lived,
almost twice the number of years I was in school, the number in the
Torah that meant a really really long long time we can't even count
that high.
Forty
years ago today Marc and I stood up in front of family and friends
and made promises to love and cherish through better or worse
forsaking all others til death do us part. Seemed easy then. It
wasn't always easy. In fact, many years it was downright hard and
seemed impossible. More than once we were on the brink. But
somehow, we always managed to persevere either through stubbornness,
fear, devotion, uncertainty, acceptance, or maybe just love.
I've
not been making much progress on the diagrams for the A&M job,
the small animal hospital, even though I've been liberally applying
the I-don't-care tool, taking out lines and rearranging things to
make it easier. The glass is due to be delivered this week
so I'll have plenty of time to get the one I've been working on
finished. Friday and Saturday and Sunday morning we worked over at
the shop clearing out the bay that we have been using to store some
stuff like lumber and florescent light fixtures and bulbs from the
old shop in the city, moved the kiln out, and got it swept of cobwebs from all the daddy
long legs that seem to think our shop is a great place to live and
shop-vacced of dirt and leaves and sawdust while Marc built two
racks to hold the glass while we work on it. We need to move the big
work table in there as well. Because these panels are so big and
heavy, we're having to work in the small bay of the shop instead of
the large bay. I could explain why but it's not important. Well,
not important to you, no need to understand all the minute details of
working with glass panels too big and heavy for us to easily lift and
move. Long about noon every day, we were drenched, hot, and tired.
There is no shade over there. Did I mention we're in the Dog Days?
Speaking
of August and the Dog Days, I checked the 10 day forecast last week
which had us in triple digits this week and today the 10 day forecast
gives us high 90s for next week but by the week of the 22nd
maybe low 90s and maybe even high 80s. And I swear, the past few
mornings, while it is still getting up to high 90s during the day,
felt almost as if...dare I say it? Dare I tempt the gods? Um, best not. Regardless, whatever the forecast says, and it depends on
which weather service you check, the rest of this week is supposed to
get up to 100˚ and already the heat index today is 111˚.
And
speaking of the kiln I know, we weren't speaking of the kiln,
the new controller board did not fix the kiln. It won't come on with
the old board or the new one. Marc did, however, plug in the old
kiln, the one we haven't used in probably 10 years or more and hasn't even
been turned on for at least 5 (we had loaned it to my sister and her
husband and after his death we got it back) and it came on and he ran
a short firing program and it seemed to function well so we're doing
a test firing today, one of the bark molds. Sort of annoying, all
these months I could have been getting some pieces made if we had
just turned to the old kiln right away.
And
speaking of the kiln again and the shop in general, our friend and
fellow glass artist has been given a certified letter from his landlord terminating his occupancy and he has to
vacate his studio and the property by mid-October. He's been at that
location for 40 years, bought and moved a small house onto the back
of the property, and easily has three times the amount of crap and
equipment that we do. He has no idea what he is going to do, where
he is going to go, what he is going to do about his house, but he is
selling off all the stained glass stuff and lots of other things he
has accumulated. He wants to take a year off. He wants to move out
of the city. He will be bringing his kilns and glass and tools and
cold working equipment and storage units, what he decides to keep or
what we want, out here where we will have full use of whatever we
want while he gets his life settled again. So, of course, all this
will be going on while we are working on this stupid job.
So,
last Sunday, I took Robin home and met up with her twin older
sisters, Jade and Autumn, who are now 18 and we took ourselves off to
a tattoo studio. However long ago it's been, over two years at least
because I remember the conversation while sitting in our little
apartment in the city house, they decided we should all get matching
tattoos so that they/we would always have a reminder you know,
when I'm dead and all.
Anyway,
I was going to get a tattoo when I turned 50 but I never did because
I couldn't decide what to get and I didn't want anything
just to have a tattoo, being a sort of permanent expression. Then I
sort of forgot about the whole thing. So when they brought it up I
agreed immediately but we have had to wait til the girls turned 18.
Which they did this summer.
I
let them decide the design. I figure they will be living with it a
lot longer than I will. So what we decided on was the yin/yang.
It's a meaningful symbol for me in my life and I hope, I guess, I
have imparted some of that to them. We thought about fancy ones, and
there are some really nice designs out there, but in the end we all
got just the plain symbol, small 1 1/4” in diameter. Which is
relevant as I'm pretty basic as Jade pointed out. Probably we will
have them embellished later, each to our personal taste. In fact I
am already thinking about how I might embellish mine.
So
Sunday, we took ourselves down to the tattoo studio and got our tats.
Autumn and I got ours on our ankle, Jade got hers on her left side
'close to my heart' she says to me. made me a little teary
We
finally got a good rain a week ago last Sunday and then again on
Monday night and Tuesday morning. About 6” in all. Which was
really nice as it's been since before I left for Scotland that we've
had any to speak of. Cooled things down a bit for a short-lived day.
We're in the Dog Days now. It's currently 91˚, heat index 101˚ and
it's supposed to get up to 97˚ today. The Dog Days don't usually
make themselves known til mid-August.
Last
week Robin, the youngest grandgirl, was here for her week, the only
Granny Camp of the year. The week just flew by. Neither of us could
believe it was already time to return her home yesterday. As
mentioned in my last post, I was very lax in taking pictures.
Monday
we did the grocery shop and just hung around the rest of the day.
She's 15 this year and this is the first year since she was little
that she didn't sleep til noon or 2 PM every day. She was up every
morning before 8 AM and went to bed early every evening, trying to
maintain her school sleep schedule.
Tuesday is the day we went to
take a closer look at the bottle tree that I mentioned in my previous
post. Wednesday we went to see The Legend Of Tarzan which we both
enjoyed. Besides all those nearly naked gorgeous men, it has always
been a favorite story of mine and I watched all the Tarzan movies as
a kid.
After
the movie we went to the lumber yard to get the wood for our driveway
bottle tree guardian then to yoga (no picture) and Thursday we worked
on it with help from Marc. Robin worked the drill press (and again I
did not think to get a picture) until she had had enough. We got all
the holes for the bottle necks drilled in the 4”x4” and I drew
the pattern on the metal for the 'wings' and the cross pieces of wood
but they haven't been cut out yet.
And we made a pie.
Robin had
looked up recipes and picked out a lemon cheesecake pie which, once
baked, had to cool completely and then chill for 4 to 5 hours so it
was Friday before we actually ate any of it. She took one bite, got
up and spit it out, and said it was the nastiest thing she had ever
put in her mouth. Marc and I had some and it tasted fine to us, not
like a cheesecake exactly but it wasn't a cheesecake but a cheesecake
pie. Having never made one before or even tasted one before I have
no idea what it was supposed to taste like.
Friday
we went to an estate sale and then did the shops in Wharton keeping
our eyes out for suitable pieces for the plate flower 'head' for the
totem.
Saturday
I worked all day at the antique store and that evening we made the
plate flower.
Sunday we headed out to Glen Flora again to go to our
favorite re-sale shop where Robin got a slinky black dress for $5
and
the antique Emporium next door where I found another antique glass
shade for the ceiling fan.
Then
it was time to take her home and meet up with the twins for our
outing. More on that next post.
