Sunday, December 29, 2019

Marcmas and a mini Granny Camp


Christmas day was quiet as always as was the day after. This little town basically rolls up the sidewalks. Friday though was Marc's birthday, Marcmas as it's known around here and no, nothing is sacred. We went to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and as true Star Wars fans we liked it. It was a great end to the saga. We went to see the first one when our daughter was 6 weeks old. We sat in the last row so I could easily slip into the lobby if she got scared from the noise or started crying but no, she didn't utter a peep through the whole thing being the good baby she was. We were going to do some shopping as long as we were in shopping mecca but Sarah was bringing grandgirl Autumn out to spend a few days for a mini Granny Camp so we put off the shopping til my sister gets back.

Autumn and I went over to take care of the Demon Duo yesterday before browsing through the only two shops left worth poking through. I was sitting on the floor waiting for the cats to come get some attention and raised my device to take a pic of Daryl when...

Minnie photobombed the cat

Later when Autumn and I had given the cats all the attention they wanted at the moment, Daryl got up and went out into the garage through the pet door and Zack had moved on to the couch cushion to look out the window when Daryl came back in and went straight to the kitchen. We got up to leave and I went into the kitchen to give Daryl one last petting and this is what I found...


Yay cats!

Neither of us found anything special at the first shop though I did take a picture of some really awful earrings someone crafted out of badly painted sea shells


but at the second shop I did find an old glass drawer pull sans the bolts but I can replace those.


That's six I've managed to find over the years. I'm slowly replacing the drawer and cabinet pulls as I really don't like the ones that came with the house that stick out on the sides and get caught in my pants pockets. They don't all have to be antique glass, just something I like so I also found this one at the same place. 


There were two of them so I think I'll go back today and get the other one as well. JT's is a huge shop crammed full of stuff, trash and treasure. 



I've found some really cool stuff there over the years. It used to be just a nightmare of stuff piled helter skelter but they have been cleaning it up and organizing it somewhat over the last couple of years,



 and yes, this  is organized.

And now Autumn and I are headed to the movie to see Jumanji: the Next Level and tomorrow I'm driving her back to Austin.




Tuesday, December 24, 2019

hard to know sometimes which is the real reality


I was having one of those dreams yesterday morning where you are sleeping and someone comes in to see why you are still sleeping and you're trying to wake up and get up but can't get your eyes open and when you finally do get them open a crack you're struggling keep them open. Finally I was awake in the dream and I was at some sort of retreat or some place and it was the last day and time to leave and we were responsible for cleaning the room and doing the dishes and my two roommates had already left leaving me to do all the clean up but there weren't even any towels to dry the dishes. There were other people in the room though I don't know what they were doing so I finally just shrugged and got my bag and left. I thought I still had most the day to explore but I wanted to check on my flight home, find out when the bus to the airport left and what time I had to be there. I was walking down a long hallway, someone had given directions to the lounge but I passed the intersecting hallway and some guy walked me back and to the lounge and left me there. I was kind of confused and getting anxious because I couldn't find out about the bus and I was afraid of missing my flight so I thought I could just check my ticket but when I pulled it out it was all gummy and I couldn't pull the pages apart and then I started waking up for real and was having trouble pulling out of the dream and opening my eyes. I had to lay there and tell myself this was a dream and I needed to disengage from it. Finally I was able to wake up and open my eyes. Weird. What the hell was that all about?!

----------

There's a gray cat that comes to drink out of the turtle pond in the mornings. I've seen it several times now. It leaps up on the top rail of the chain link fence and then to the rim of the pond. I'll let Emma out and she will saunter over and the gray cat will move behind the dead stalks of the lizard tail (water plant) as if Emma can't see it. Eventually when it feels it's safe it will leap back up on the top rail of the fence and down and runs across the yard. Not sure if this is a feral cat, it looks well fed and healthy, or belongs to a neighbor.

The last two days have been sunny and warming, upper 60s, til the sun goes down anyway. Today is really nice too. I need to get my purple poppy seeds in today since I should have gotten them in last month and the red ones already have a good set of true leaves. We have our full winter landscape and while I usually leave most of the dead foliage til spring to clean up, I am cutting down the dead and brown ginger stalks.


I'm still tending to the Demon Duo every day. Minnie does not care for me playing with the cats.


Well, it's christmas eve for those who celebrate and so to those I say have a wonderful day today and tomorrow.




Saturday, December 21, 2019

baby, it's cold outside reprise


Yesterday, Friday, the only thing I accomplished was going over to my sister's house and tending to the Demon Duo. 


It was cold and wet and overcast and anyone who's been reading me for any length of time knows what that means. Today wasn't much better, still cold and overcast but not drippy though I did manage a quick trip to the grocery store as well as tending to the cats. Potato leek soup is on the schedule for tomorrow. It was originally planned for about a month ago but then I got busy and the weather warmed up and the potatoes got eaten, the chicken broth and half & half got used, and the leeks went on the compost pile so I had to replenish my ingredients.

I finally notified the gallery that they would not be getting the heron box but that I had another piece that I thought would be suitable and they were happy for my sale and will take the substitute so I've been trying to get all the requested info...images, bio, artist statement, resume...updated and sent for that and another exhibition of pate de verre that I've been invited to participate in. That one is also in February so I'll be packing up the work and getting it sent off to it's separate destinations in January.

Meanwhile we're well into that period of time I refer to as the 'lost days' so called because everything seems to get put on hold for the last two weeks of the year what with all the holidays squeezed in. Back before we retired from the etched glass we would always just close til after the new year.

Well, that's all I've got. Haven't been able to wake up it seems since last Wednesday when I had to get up at 5 AM so I think I'll creep back under my blanket in front of the space heater on the couch with my book.




Thursday, December 19, 2019

unexpected cold and a vote for the rule of law



Well, damn. It was only supposed to get down to 30˚ last night so I didn't cover the ponytail palm. At 7:30 this morning it was 27˚ and the bird baths were frozen solid. I also didn't turn on the little heater in my sister's makeshift 'greenhouse' because at 30˚, everything would be fine. So I hope everything is fine. Plenty isn't here that remained outside...the penta, the star of India, the black and blue salvia, the ginger, the hibiscus, and more badly burned by the below freezing temps but not dead.

I had to get up at 5 AM yesterday to pick my sister up at 5:30 to take her to the airport. She usually flies out of Hobby to visit our brother over the holidays but he made the reservations and so she was flying out of Bush Intercontinental, an hour and a half drive with no traffic. Fortunately it was early enough that traffic through Houston was minimal, only one or two slowdowns which resolved quickly, and I used the Beltway on the way home to avoid rush hour coming back. It was exactly 3 hours round trip. I didn't do anything else all day. Except I did make it to yoga last night, the last session til after New Years, and I stopped by my sister's house to check on the Demon Duo. Remember those two cute little kittens I kept for two weeks last summer? Yeah, them.

We did get the car unpacked Monday and the display and associated materials stored in the shop, but I haven't unpacked a single thing and may not for a while. And I may just sit and read today.

So, yeah, Trump is officially impeached right along party lines except for that Republican in Democrat clothing Tulsi Gabbard who didn't have the courage to vote either way, saying only 'present' when her name was called, straddling the fence...didn't want to piss off the Republicans. I wish I could say it was unbelievable the lies that just rolled off Republican tongues yesterday but unfortunately it was not only believable but expected. And Trump reacting in his disgusting selfish pathetic whiny name calling and hateful way, also expected (he tweeted 80 times in 3 hours last Saturday all about how UNFAIR!!! it all is). According to him he has been treated worse than the women in the Salem witch trials (though I fail to see how getting a vote of no confidence is worse than having a big rock tied to your feet and tossed in the lake to see if you float [witch] or drown [innocent]), worse even than Jesus getting crucified on the cross. And then there's McConnell who has been all over the news announcing he has no intention of conducting a fair trial or even trial at all since he is coordinating Trump's defense with Trump and plans to acquit even though he will have to take an oath to be an impartial juror and Lindsey Graham who has already announce that he is not going to be an impartial juror who will also have to take the same oath and you know that the rest of the Republican weasels in the Senate regardless of the many who supposedly secretly support impeachment will do what McConnell tells them for fear of being targeted by Trump's ire and voted out. In fact Republicans are crowing that this impeachment vote by Democrats will assure their defeat in 2020, especially the House members who took over previously Republican seats in 2018. Seems to me what they don't understand is that they lost those seats because the population of those states no longer support Trump and his Republican ass kissers. Seems to me that this vote will assure their reelection. Fortunately Madam Speaker Pelosi is delaying sending the impeachment to the Senate for trial until the House can be assured of a fair trial in the Senate which I don't see ever happening as long as McConnell is majority leader. I'd rather see it continue to hang over Trump's head and further investigation into his contempt of the constitution. And not just the Constitution but our Bill of Rights as well. Trump thinks he should be able to have his political opponents assassinated. This shouldn't be allowed, he said, they do things differently in Guatemala.

Which is exactly why, Mr. Trump, we have a Constitution limiting the power of a President and a Bill of Rights to protect the citizens.




Monday, December 16, 2019

over for another year


We sold nothing but snowflakes after the first two days. I'm disappointed that none of the feathers sold even though they got a lot of attention. I surely thought I would sell one or two. No matter, this was still our best open house ever if not in number of items sold, in total sales amount due to the sale of the heron box whose proper title is River Stories: The Blue Heron and in fact I still have to print out the little story and mount it and send it to the collector who bought it.

These open house weekends have periods when there are a decent amount of people coming in interspersed with periods where no one is there. Our friend Gene, the fused and stained glass artist, brought two silly card games...Spot-it and Moose in the House...which we would play during the slow periods. Late in the afternoon last Saturday Gene and Marc and I were playing Spot-it, a deck of round cards with pictures in which every card has one match to every other card. 


There are several ways you can play with these cards but we mostly played the version where each player starts with one card with the goal being to end up with the least amount of cards in your stack. The rest of the cards are in a stack and players call out a match when they see it and snatch the top card up and put it on the appropriate opposing player's stack. Anyway, it's fast and it's silly and competitive and Gene and I at least were laughing so much, each of us determined to beat the other, and so loud during this one game (I won) and when we finished and looked up everyone else had gathered around to see what all the unrestrained laughter was about.

On Sunday friends Bill and Larry came by and Larry told us a story we had not heard before. Bill and Larry were my very first commission job, a window with a victorian style mandala straight out of one of the Dover design books when I was just starting out with my etched glass business after my divorce from the rat bastard and I had moved back in with my parents, before even I met Marc. At this time in their lives my parents were upper middle class and had built a Mexican villa type house after they sold the house us kids grew up in, a three sided stucco around a courtyard in the back and wrought iron gates across the front of the small entry/front door. The front door opened onto a large dining room with the stairs to the second floor bedrooms and activity room, my dad's study/library and kitchen and garage in the left wing and the living room and master suite in the right wing of the house, Saltillo tile floors and oriental rugs.

I had acquired a small air compressor and a gravity feed sand pot and I would do the blasting in the yard off the garage. I had done some simple little surface etchings and framed them for hanging in a window and I was at a small art and craft show in Galveston which is where they saw me. I had just turned 25 in the spring (so this would have been 1975) and their window was fairly large and odd shaped and so they had to get the glass cut and bring it to me to etch (I assume they came and got it and had it installed after I was done because I had no way to get it back to them in Galveston where they lived). So Larry is telling me the story of how we met the way they remember it...here was this young girl barefoot with a rope for a belt (I think it was actually a narrow rainbow striped sash on my bell bottoms being the hippie chick I was but yeah I was probably barefoot but a rope is how they remember it) trying to make a few bucks and maybe even homeless (an image of the poor little match girl comes to mind) so they commissioned me to do this window for them. Larry says they were a little surprised when they turned into this upscale neighborhood with big houses on big lots to bring me the glass and when they drove up to my parent's house they were a little flummoxed thinking I must be the daughter of one of the servants or something and should they go around to the back of the house to knock but the gate to the back was closed so the front door was the only option. So they rang the bell and this elegant woman wearing a long pink chiffon and feathery peignoir answered and they very timidly asked for me. Oh, that's my daughter, she says, she's gone to the grocery store but will be right back, and she invited them in to wait in my dad's study. They were so astounded, he said, their eyes were like saucers. I arrived soon after and we conducted our business and they left and as life would have it our paths continued to cross and we have become friends even though we don't see them very often but this was the first time they have told me the story of how we met from their perspective.

Of course, Larry told it a lot better and a lot funnier. They moved to Houston at some point and through the years Larry tried his hand at painting but abandoned it when he couldn't get any commercial success and Bill is an artist in his own right and still creates the most gorgeous delicate metalwork sculptures though he doesn't have any representation currently. He's supposed to send me some images and when he does I'll post them.

Anyway here are the other artists sans one who only did the first weekend and I didn't take pictures til this last weekend.

Kathy Poeppel and Dick Moiel, blown glass and our hosts:


Gene Hester, fused glass:


Bob Straight, fused glass, wood turning, metalwork:


Eric DePan, blown glass:


Liz Conces, fused glass:


V. Chin, ceramics:


Leslie Ravey, wood and leather work:

    

Handweavers of Houston, woven and dyed fabric:


and of course, us, cast glass:






Friday, December 13, 2019

a day off


Wednesday was the first day in weeks, maybe months, that I had an empty day with nothing that needed or had to be done (not that there hadn't been a few days where I didn't get anything of note accomplished but usually because of the weather). The 15 snowflakes that I rolled out, cut, dried, trimmed, and added the powder and frit to on Monday and Tuesday were in the kiln and until they came out and I could do the small amount of finishing they required (which I did on Thursday) I was pretty much at loose ends.


So I looked around and noticed that the little yellowish gray warblers that winter over here have arrived. And my camellia that I got at the garden club plant sale last spring that I sorta cheated to get (members can't buy plants until 30 minutes before it's over so I got a friend to get it for me) that was so potbound (the reason they were donated I imagine) that I practically had to bare root it to give it a chance to survive and put it in a much bigger pot so I could baby it all summer...is blooming! It has four flowers on it today. I'll plant it in the ground this next spring now that I know it's doing well.


Wednesday night was a yoga night and so I drove to El Campo and was the only one to show up and just as I was telling Abby that there was no need to hold the session on my account another yogi showed up and she also was fine with canceling especially since Abby had a party to go to so I got in the car and came home with the flat coastal plains of Texas spread out before me and that gorgeous full moon rising just off to the right right in front of me. Driving in for a canceled class was worth being able to see the Cold Moon/Long Night Moon on the way back. 


And speaking of yoga, I found out through an article in the Houston paper that there are yoga classes here in Wharton. The woman wondered if art and nature and yoga could help the residents recover from the trauma of the flooding that happened here as a result of Hurricane Harvey back in 2017 and so she got a grant to fix up an abandoned house in a small park here and to offer the facility to the community. They've been doing yoga and art therapy for about a year (! I had no idea) and so my sister Pam and I went to the Tuesday night session last week, the only day with evening classes which worked out for me. Anyway, Abby is in no danger of losing us as it's very low key, aimed at absolute beginners who are out of shape, working on breathing (which was all we did for the first 10 minutes) and stretching and minimal spinal twists and strength building exercises. Really it's just perfect for my neighbor so I'm taking her with me next  week. 

We all decided to do another Friday evening preview for the three new artists (a wood and leather worker, a ceramicist, and the hand weavers association) joining us for the last weekend of our open house with our glass artist friends so that's where we'll be this weekend.




Wednesday, December 11, 2019

fall reading list




LaRose by Louise Erdrich – Landreaux, always so careful when hunting, takes a shot at a buck and hits something else instead. With his heart in the pit of his stomach he finds his best friend's son and the best friend of his own 5 yr. old son, lying on the ground. The death tears apart the two families and Landreaux falls back on his heritage as a native american for a solution to the pain he has caused and he and his wife Emmaline give their beloved youngest son LaRose to Dusty's parents. Dusty's father, Peter, sees the damage it is doing to LaRose and proposes sharing the boy and in this way over the years the two families start to heal but it is rocky going as Dusty's mother, Nola, half sister to Emmaline, is suicidal and his new sister Maggie and LaRose take on the responsibility of making sure she doesn't succeed. Meanwhile LaRose's two older sisters adopt Maggie as a sister giving her the support she so desperately needs. As the story develops we learn about the very first LaRose, sold to the local trader by her mother Mirage, and her special abilities that have been handed down through the generations to each subsequent LaRose; we learn the story of Landreaux and Romeo, two boys taken off the reservation and put in boarding school and the event that tears these two friends apart and sets Romeo on his lifelong quest for revenge. When Romeo lands a job at the reservation hospital he sneaks and peeks and eavesdrops until he thinks he has the truth about Dusty's death and finally something that will destroy Landreaux and when he reveals to Peter the story he has concocted in his mind, it very nearly does.

Earth by Ben Bova – a sci-fi novel and I still don't get why he titled it 'Earth' as much of the the book takes place in space or Jupiter. And the whole book is as unlikely a scenario as was ever written. Plus, I think he must have written this for a much younger audience. Backstory: Earth is in the path of a death wave sweeping across the galaxy when aliens appear and give Earth the technology to build a shield and survive as well as interstellar travel with the caveat that they search for other life on other planets and give them the shield technology so that as much life can survive as possible and as a result humans have spread across the galaxy. Fast forward to the present: Tray, a young man who is 1,000 years in the future from his own time due to interstellar travel/suspended animation is the only survivor of a starship that exploded killing all on board including his fiance. Tray had been sent out in a pod to make measurements on the other side of the solar system when the explosion occurred and his pod put him to sleep until he could be rescued nearly 400 years later. Back on earth he is in a mental hospital/recovery unit and the doctors decide he is not overcoming his survivor's guilt and want to wipe his mind of those memories. Tray doesn't want that, to lose the memories of his fiance, and so after being invited to a party for a member of the governing council (why would a nobody get invited to this party?) where he meets the second highest ranking member of the council who takes a shine to him as well as a wealthy young woman who also takes a shine to him and he immediately forgets all about his fiance (I've already forgotten all their names), he manages to sneak away from the facility. Anyway, the next day, the President of the council talks the #2 guy, the leader of the opposition against a plan by the President to basically enslave all the other intelligent life they have discovered, into a little vacation going into the ocean of Jupiter to see the leviathans that inhabit it and Tray along with the young woman and her 'boyfriend', get invited as well (?). Anyway, at the last minute before the submersible leaves the ship, the President gets an emergency call from the council and must stay on the ship to deal with it but y'all go ahead on without me. The submersible malfunctions and loses it's ability to rise back to the surface so they must evacuate in special survival suits to be picked up by the ship when, surprise, the opposition leader's suit leaks and he dies. Back on earth Tray and his now girlfriend and her father work to expose the President's murderous work by getting Tray appointed to the council to fill in for the opposition leader (yeah like that would happen) and blah blah blah. Don't waste your time.

I know Who You Are by Alice Feeney – When Ciara was born, her mother died leaving leaving her to the care of her Irish father and brother, a dirt poor family. A week before her 6th birthday after being yelled at by her older brother who has just been traumatized by their father, Ciara runs to the shop to look, once again, at the red shoes she so desperately wants for her birthday. It's late in the day and getting darker when she is kidnapped by Maggie and taken to London where she is given a new name...Aimee Sinclair. Aimee adjusts to her new, better life with her new 'parents' who run a betting shop and has no desire to return to her real family. When she is 6 thugs kill her parents and she is put in foster homes when she keeps her identity a secret. Thirty years later Aimee is a rising star actress, getting her big break, and her husband of two years accuses her of having an affair with her leading man, they have a big fight, and the next day he has disappeared. Aimee calls the police who turn over all sorts of evidence implicating her in his murder. She is arrested when they dig up a body but released when they show her a picture of the two year old dead man who has her husband's name but is not her husband. The story has a big twist/surprise ending but I got very tired of Aimee always going on and on in her head about her secrets and how she is always acting and no one knows her true self and she was finally getting what she always dreamed of. It was OK.

The Boy by Tami Hoag – either I had a hard time getting into this book or I didn't have much time to read because it seemed like the the part I had read never got bigger but then I did get into it. Detective Nick Fourcade and wife Detective Annie Broussard are awakened in the night to attend a murder scene, the 7 year old son of Genevieve Gauthier who had been brutally stabbed to death and the mother attacked as well. Soon after arriving at the scene a rainstorm washed away any evidence there might have been outside and inside nothing was found to point to a suspect. As the investigation unfolds links are found between the mother, the police chief, and the crime scene investigator while the mother's own past raises questions about her possible involvement. Meanwhile, Annie is conducting her own part of the investigation and discovers that the boy's 12 year old baby sitter has gone missing and in her attempt to question a friend of the missing girl, the son of the police chief's fiancee, she realizes he and his mother are physically and emotionally abused. The case seems to be going nowhere with enough animosity between Fourcade and the police chief that nearly gets the detective fired until the very surprising twist at the end that I did not see coming.

The Witness by Sandra Brown – the book opens just after a horrible car accident that Kendall and her 4 month old son survive as does the driver but the woman in the front passenger seat did not. Kendall gets herself and her son out and then barely manages to pull out the unconscious driver before the car continues to slide down slope and into the ravine and is carried away by the water from the heavy rains they have been having. She flags down a car after getting back up to the road and the three of them are taken to the local small town hospital. When the driver regains consciousness he has amnesia and Kendall claims he is her husband. As she is sneaking out to disappear, her 'husband' who suffered a broken leg among other injuries, confronts her and she is forced to take him with her as she goes to ground. Flash back several years, Kendall, a young liberal lawyer who moved to a small town in South Carolina to take the job of public defender and who met and married Matt, was thrilled with how his father embraced her into their family but as time goes by she starts to resent how 'present' he is in everything about her and Matt's life together. Then on the day that she plans to tell Matt she is pregnant she goes to visit one of her clients and discovers that Matt is having an affair. Big fight, Matt storms out, and Kendall decides to forgive him and goes looking for him and stumbles on vigilante justice as they castrate and crucify a young asian man for having consensual sex with a white girl and all the prominent citizens in town are participating including her husband and father in law. Kendall flees for her life and after alerting the FBI, settles in Colorado where the FBI finally find her and are taking her back to testify when the car accident occurs. Her husband and FIL eventually escape, find out about the child, and set out to find the boy and kill Kendall. Will she escape again before the FBI agent recovers his memory, will Matt and her FIL find her? It's an OK book, portions of it held my attention better than others.

The Partner by John Grisham – new partner in a law firm in an unhappy marriage with a child that he learns isn't his after all discovers that the other partners are aiding and abetting a client to defraud the government for $90 million with their cut being $30 million and their plan to fire him and not give him a share. He plans meticulously and fakes his death and disappears to Brazil with the $90 million. Four years later, he is 'found' by the firm hired by the intended recipient of the money, tortured, and returned to the states to the FBI for prosecution but he can't tell them where the money is because as part of his meticulous planning, he doesn't know. His girlfriend has managed that part. It's a pretty good story, all his planning and revenge with a little twist at the end.




Saturday, December 7, 2019

shell shocked


I started fabricating the heron box on Tuesday and finished Wednesday except for one small detail and stood back and was pleasantly surprised that I liked it much better than I thought I would since I had decided that because of all the trouble and things going wrong the end result would be lackluster. Then I set up my display and packed up the goods finishing about 6:30. Thursday morning I took apart the display, we loaded everything up in our truck cleverly disguised as a car and headed in and got set up. That night I made most the cookies I volunteered for the opening Friday night and took a few quick photos of the heron box. Friday morning finished the cookies, got my price tags all made out, gathered up everything we needed to take with us, and then sat down to add the last, and to me crucial, detail on the heron box...the two little feathers extending from the crown of the heron. Using an alcohol lamp I shaped two short pieces of stringer, a long thin rod of black glass, in the flame and glued them on. An hour and a half later, with the heron box, we headed in for the Friday night preview that started at 6 PM.

A man who bought a piece from me two years ago showed up Friday night and bought a small piece and by the end of the day today we had sold 3/4 of the snowflake ornaments but about 3 PM, one of my few collectors showed up who has three of the small bowls we used to do and we did her front door years ago and when I thought she was leaving I went to give her a hug and she said she wasn't leaving yet that she was going to buy something. Great I said. From you she said. Even better I said. So we walked back over to my display and she asked if I could guess which one she wanted I pointed to the blue jay feather because she and her daughter had pointed that one out earlier. No, she said and pointed to the heron box. She had not uttered an oooh or an aaah about it previously. Really I asked stupidly, are you sure? Don't you want to sell it, she asks? Well, yes but I just finished it yesterday and don't have a good picture of it. So I cleared off a shelf off the display and my friend Kathy got a piece of poster board and held it up for a background and the daughter held the light for me while I took a few pictures and then I wrapped it up and off it went.

Ah, heron box, I barely knew ye.

So here it is. In real life the blue box has more life/luminosity. 


Some of the better shots were before I added the two little pieces of stringer, the light was better but the piece not completely finished.


And tomorrow is another day. We've had very low attendance but as my friend Gene says it's not how many people come but if the right people come.

So far, the right people have come.



Monday, December 2, 2019

Ellen and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day


Saturday was not a good day. I got up early, well, not early, but earlier than I usually get up. Friday I nailed the hangers on the frames for the feathers, used the push pins to secure the back board in, and successfully managed to get four of the five feathers glued to the back board. It was late in the day and I put off the last one for the next day. So I got up Saturday and started messing with it before I had even had any coffee yes, I know, big mistake and long story short totally fucked it up and spent the whole day trying to fix  it so I didn't start assembling the heron box which I had planned to do but it's probably a good thing I didn't as I probably would have fucked that up too.

So, because I had let the floors go for too long, too dirty even for the robot mooka to suck up, I decided to do something about it and instead of vacuuming, I decided to sweep to use less electricity to save the planet and in my attempt to get the pile of dirt and dust from the corner made by the leg of the secretary desk and the wall, I managed to knock one of the pieces of our small art collection off the wall and it crashed to the ground at my feet.


It's ceramic and I'm going to try and glue it back together but the pieces are so thin and there are so many and I am heartbroken.

Sunday was better. I got the last feather mounted in it's frame but it was a near thing. I thought for a while that I was going to have to cut a new board for the back. And I got the powder and frit on the last set of snowflakes and they're in the kiln. I was determined to get the bottom slab glued to the bottom of the heron box Sunday but I dithered about it all day until finally it was too late. Do it with epoxy...do it with silicone...do it with epoxy...not sure I have enough epoxy in the double syringe I bought...silicone has its own set of problems. I finally settled on the epoxy and in case I don't have enough I'm going to apply it around the perimeter first and then what's left in the center. And I'm going to do it today! I pretty much have to since set-up is on Thursday. Cross your fingers for me that it all goes smoothly.

Anyway, here are the feathers in their frames. I attached two hanger bars so they could be hung vertically or horizontally, however the buyer prefers, assuming of course that there will be buyers.






     





Friday, November 29, 2019

random stuff


We had a good Thanksgiving with the family at our daughter's house (our last Thanksgiving in the city) and I didn't take a single picture...my sister, Marc and I, our daughter and her husband and our son, and all four grandchildren and we got to meet Jade's boyfriend for the first time. So now we have a Mike, a Mikey, and a Michael.

I took my remaining pecans in Tuesday to sell. The boxes and bags completely filled the trunk of the car. I had 232 pounds of pecans which got me $162 and change. Not too shabby.


Sunday night one of the TV stations showed The Princess Bride which is probably the most perfect movie ever. I always watch it whenever it comes on because...perfect. Not one of those where you can just have it on and only pay attention to your favorite scenes because the whole thing is seriously funny and...perfect. I read a while back that they were thinking of doing a remake. NO NO NO NO NO! No remake! You do not mess with perfection.

Saturday, there was a Tom Hanks marathon on another TV channel and Forest Gump was on when we sat down for lunch. Tom Hanks is one of my favorite actors. The man is phenomenal. I don't watch this one when it comes on except for one scene which I will watch every time. It's the scene near the end when he arrives at Jenny's apartment and learns he has a son. It makes me tear up every time.


Remember scavenger hunts? Do people/kids do that anymore?

There's a possum that lives under our house and being nocturnal, it only comes out at night and it drives Minnie nuts. Usually it stays outside the fence that encloses the little backyard which is the only outside Minnie is allowed in after dark but the other night her usual barking turned into high pitched frantic yipping and when I went out to investigate the possum practically ran over my feet in it's haste to climb the chinese fringe flower tree while I tried to catch the dog.

And what is with the Charmin toilet paper commercial? A bunch of naked bears refusing to pick up a pair of tighty whities. Why do they even have underwear when they all go around naked!!!

I just saw 6 or 7 large noisy groups of cranes fly overhead going east northeast.


There are a couple of words that I mis-type (I say mis-type because I know how to spell them) 99% of the time. 'Out' for 'our'. For some reason my left index finger always reaches for the 't' next to the 'r'. The other one is 'twon' for 'town'. I have no idea why my left ring finger wants to hit the 'w' before my right ring finger hits the 'o'.

Today, I have only one week to finish stuff and be ready for the open house. Will I make it?




Monday, November 25, 2019

the state of preparations, the state of the yard, the state of the union


Plodding along with the preparations, what gets done, gets done. What doesn't, doesn't. As long as the heron box is finished and the feathers mounted in their frames, everything else is extra. I do wish I had been a little more focused on getting the planned lizard with lichen (on the log I posted about making the reproduction mold for earlier here) with the lichen made from the modeling glass and the lizard and log cast but I wasn't so, a project for next year. This has probably been one of my least productive years. The last two days I've been making more snowflake ornaments but I ran out of the liquid medium (more on the way) and now am trying to fill the rest of the kiln shelf with stuff I can make from what I already have mixed up and still I have no idea what to do with any of it once it's all fired, like the pansies. Saturday I made 3 pansy leaves but one I squished back up. Maybe I'll do a butterfly or make another pansy.

It's a gorgeous day yesterday as was the day before and today is shaping up to be as well. The gingko trees finally turned yellow but not before already losing many of their leaves and in just two days (seems like although the trees have been steadily raining down leaves for weeks), the tallows and the pecans have become bare.

     
The picture of the gingko on the left was taken at 3 PM, the picture on the right two hours later with the lowering sun illuminating it.

My pecans trees are still holding onto some of their leaves but they've dropped enough to carpet the ground making picking up the nuts impossible, impossible to see them. No worries though as I think 99.9% of them have already fallen and I am weary of picking them up anyway. I'm going to take one more small bucket to be cracked even though I'm sure I have more than enough shelled and then Tuesday, I'm selling the rest.

Wandering out in the yard I've noticed the early spring bloomers are already starting to sprout...the woodland petal pinks are shooting up like giant blades of grass; the baby blue eyes, the rocket larkspur, the love-in-a-mist all sprouted and starting to put out their first true leaves; the bluebonnets spreading out, the sweet little yellow oxalis is blooming.


Later (yesterday)...I just closed up the shop for the day getting less accomplished than I wanted or think I can. As usual. May be done with the cold work on the heron box, just have to wash it and check a couple of things before I start putting it all together. The shadowbox frames are painted but I'm still indecisive on the color for the backboards for the feathers so today I'm going to the frame shop and pick my friend Margaret's brain since she has a good eye for that sort of thing. Made zero progress today with the modeling glass but I did get out the dragonfly and bee reproduction molds. Supposedly you can press this stuff into silicone molds and it pops right out after it dries. These aren't silicone but RTV (room temperature vulcanization) rubber but I thought I'd try anyway.

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The public hearings of the impeachment investigation are over. Now they review all the testimonies given and decide if there is enough evidence to write articles of impeachment though they are still getting materials turned over to them and an important court ruling on whether or not the White House must comply with subpoenas is supposed to come down today. It's plain Trump is guilty of trying to extort Ukraine, just one of his many corrupt acts since he has been in office, even though the Republicans keep trying to deflect to the debunked conspiracy theory against the Bidens, mostly they just ranted and raved during the public hearings, and refuse to accept Trump's guilt, demeaning and accusing dedicated state department employees and a decorated veteran whose loyalty is to America and the Constitution of lying. If the House votes for impeachment it goes to the Senate for trial. It's so disheartening to know that none of this will cause the Republicans to do the right thing and protect our democracy. McConnell has already said that the Senate won't impeach even before the public hearings and many of the Republican senators have indicated that they don't care what Trump does so long as they stay in power and they are prepared to do Putin's bidding. Never forget that 8 Republican senators including Devin Nunes, Rand Paul, and John Kennedy, 3 of Trump's most vociferous supporters, spent last Fourth of July in Russia and these men are touting Putin's party line and advancing Russian propaganda. As one tweeter wrote: REPUBLICANS ARE DEFENDING RUSSIA. LET THAT SINK IN.

As bad as the last three years have been, this coming year is going to be ten times worse, 100 times worse. The Trump cult is already circulating a fake image of Schiff with Epstein and last night Rick Perry, the Energy Secretary, said on TV that Trump is the chosen one and sent by god to do great things though as I recall god destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for being filled with people like Trump.

As hopeless and discouraging as it may seem, people are still coming forward with information and remember, Republicans were adamantly behind Nixon until the very end when suddenly they weren't. There are some Republicans that are willing to go down with the ship, maybe because they refuse to see the rising water but I hope there are plenty more who will run for the lifeboats.

If all else fails, vote blue no matter who for every office up for election in 2020.