house painting and bodily functions

My desire to wait til fall to have the house painted seems to be falling on deaf ears. Rocky's to be precise. He wants to go ahead and do it while it's hot. So to that end Gunnar and Henry showed up on Friday to clear plant foliage around the house which wasn't all that much as I told them first off they would just have to work around the mock dogwood and hummingbird bush because I was not going to allow them to mangle those and other things I would dig up and move but not until right before they were ready to power wash and bleach the outside of the house. So the two aforementioned shrubs are tied into a bundle but if they don't show up soon, like today, I'm probably going to release them. Gunnar was supposed to power wash the back side of the garage on Friday so I could test out the colors I think I've chosen but he couldn't get the power washer started. So who knows when all that will happen, especially since I'm leaving tomorrow for Austin for a three day workshop learning how to use a product that allows you to sculpt glass power like clay and won't be back til late Friday.

Also last Friday, my grandson showed up and got on the roof and brushed off the accumulation of leaves in the valleys and cut back all the tree branches that were getting close to scraping against the shingles then he went over to my sister's and changed out one of the hoses on her car before going to do what he came out here for in the first place which was changing motors out in someone's truck.

Warning...bodily functions ahead! If that grosses you out, skip this paragraph. Saturday afternoon I started having some sharp gas pains and by Saturday night it was full blown, didn't sleep hardly at all since some gremlin spent the night stabbing me in the gut amidst all the trips to the bathroom which only produced copious amounts of air. Yesterday was better, not constipated but not pooping freely either, no knife stabs in the gut but painful nonetheless. I was immobile on the couch all day with Minnie dutifully attendant curled up next to me. Today is better still but feel sore and bloated and uncomfortable as I am, apparently, constipated now. I don't know what I ate, nothing out of the ordinary, or what I was exposed to since I haven't left the house for days but damn! 

I had a friend once who swore she had never farted in her life. How can that even be possible?

So the weekend was lost with nothing done about any of the things I could have been doing. My desire/intention to work at least two hours every day on art is getting off to a rough start though I have tallied about 8 and a half hours on the first hummingbird model last week (here's my progress so far)

but I haven't done a new sketch since Sunday a week ago. This week will be a big zero since I won't get much done today as my goal is to get all the dishes and cutlery washed that I ignored all weekend. I guess the 8 hours a day for three days in the workshop counts though. My granddaughter Autumn who is between housing right now and staying with her mom's cousin til she can move into her new housing unit for next year is going to come stay with me at the hotel. She has a lot of studying to do and a couple of exams but we'll hang out after my and her classes. Guess I'll have to track Rocky down and let him know I'll be gone all week. Plus I want to take an inventory of my glass powders and frits in case I want to make a purchase before I head home.

Found these in one of the flower beds this morning

and spied this katydid earlier

and caught a glimpse of a tiny anole which couldn't have been too long out of its shell.