trying to get stuff done

I’ve been trying to tick things off my non-existent list last week and continuing this week. I watered all the plants that are inside for the winter, replaced one of the chains on the hanging basket of staghorn fern that rusted and broke and then took it outside and hung it up and gave it a good watering, bought some plastic drawer units to finally organize my desk,

moved drawing tools and batteries out of the drawers of the buffet that I use in my bedroom and put those drawers to better use, bought two larger drawer units to put in my closet for shoes and hats and scarves and purses (I do actually have a couple of small bags for when my clothes don’t have pockets). 

I sold my pecans, 213 pounds worth for $138. I held a small box back in case I didn’t shell enough and I’m still picking up about 20 a day in my yard though the trees are about done. After getting 3” of rain total last week I decided to torch the enormous burn pile on Saturday which was a nice sunny day. Took several tries to get even a small part burning. It would dry out an area and flame up and then die down then flame up then die down. It did this all day, mostly smoldering. By Sunday morning it had smoldered maybe a third to ash. I already had a full garden cart of tree and brush debris so I piled it next to the unburned part and then attacked the virginia creeper and greenbriar that are taking over the wisteria over at Pam’s old house. Robin and BF Evan came out and helped me and we piled two garden cart loads on the unburned part of the burn pile. 

My poor garden cart got crunched though. After I emptied it on the burnpile and before I started on the wisteria I had temporarily parked it behind Robin’s car and when Evan pulled out he didn’t see it. I walked around from the other side of Pam’s house to see Evan bending over it picking up the end piece that had broken off apologizing profusely. Well, my fault for leaving it behind the car where it couldn’t be seen. One end was broken off and crumpled, the other end was still attached but crumpled and both sides still attached but one crumpled. Anyway I rolled it home and took a heavy hammer to it all and managed to get it back together though seriously lopsided but hey, the sides are on and it rolls fine. That's Pam's garden cart in the upper left corner that I have commandeered. 

After our fine weather the last three days, today is overcast, rainy, and very windy, sustained 16mph with 30mph gusts with occasional howling so anything ticked off my list today is indoor stuff like messaging my PC doctor to order my bloodwork before my appointment at the end of the month so she’ll have the results when I go in. I have given up on SPOT helping with the neutering of the kittens. They aren’t pursuing it as far as I can tell and they don’t return calls or messages. So I got the number of another organization that helps with neutering and called them and left a message (this is the group that helped with Cat’s spaying), called the vet to confirm procedure, and am waiting to hear back. Since I was willing to give SPOT a donation for helping, Marc and I just decided to use that money and pursue it ourselves. The main goal is to get the little female fixed first, 

then we can deal with the two males later. 

I guess I’ll vacuum the house this afternoon, maybe hang up the rest of my crystals.

I don’t guess I’ll be going to yoga class tonight with this wind as the weather forecast shows thunderstorms right when I would be leaving. High wind and rain on the highway at dusk? Um, nope.

getting ready and a new view

The goods are packed and the display is dismantled and stacked ready to load in the car. We leave in a little while to drive to the city to set up for the Open House. It's an amazingly compact display and if we put down both back seats everything fits in the trunk and back seat space. I packed the goods and supplies differently this year and I think it's more compact than before. I still have to work on the pricing though but I have all day tomorrow to do that. Then we head in for the opening Friday night from 6 to 9 PM.

The two ginkgoes are still bright yellow and still full of leaves though they are drifting down and beginning to carpet the ground.

The bluebonnets are coming up and filling in their space in the front yard and the little woodland violets in the grass in the backyard are beginning to bloom.

The pansies and violas too.

I have a new view to get used to behind the long daylily flower bed. The neighbor bought an 8' x 40' shipping container for storage and had it put about 4' off the property line. It hides the previous view of all the smaller storage buildings and will cut off the late afternoon sun and changes our view of the sunsets but maybe now the day lilies will face my yard when they bloom instead of her property.

minor chores, stats, and the further destruction of this nation

Sunday I repaired 3 plate flowers, two totems, and restrung a wind chime. Apparently that took me just about all day. Oh, and I hung one of the paintings back up in my studio.

Yesterday morning when I logged on I had less than 100 views of my last blog post. Then I visited FB and commented on an NPR post about whether or not smoking pot during pregnancy harms the fetus (my personal experience...no) and boy did that get a lot of attention and replies all day, pro and con, some supportive, some judgmental, some rude, you know how that goes. I replied to a few of them but I only have so much time to waste on FB and so I quit even looking at the replies. Happened to check my blog stats a couple of hours later and 485 page views and by the end of the day 743, and the previous post 344. This morning 910 and 408 respectively. Wow. I guess people went to my page to see who was this person with this opinion and then went to my blog. Doesn't mean, of course, that they actually read it.

Anyway, the main thing I accomplished yesterday was I finished cleaning the chandelier. Yay me! Now if Rocky and Gunnar would show up I could get it hung. What I didn't do yesterday was start on the model for the auction piece, well, not physically. I did think about what I was going to do, visualizing it in my head. Guess I'll try and get started on it today.

And that's about all I've got unless I want to point out how feckless Trump is (in general), who has no intention of imposing the bipartisan sanctions passed by Congress against Russia for election interference and Congress is letting him get away with it that he already signed into law (because, you know, he thinks he is above the law) and the Republican party (in particular) in Congress are in voting to release a memo which is just Nunes' uninformed opinion of some intelligence concerning the FISA warrant against Carter Page while voting to block the Democrats' memo on the same intelligence (they're not releasing the actual intelligence, just a biased guy's opinion whose background is in agriculture and not in intelligence) and by so doing are actively working to undermine the investigation into Russian election tampering which the CIA says they fully expect more of during the midterm elections. Just try diagraming that sentence! Meanwhile Trump plans to take credit for Obama's economy that's he's been coasting on as it takes about a year for a new administration's policies to take real effect and his plans for improving the infrastructure center around privatizing which means every fucking national highway and bridge will now become toll roads transferring even more money from the 98% to the 2%. So, yay and MAGA!

picking up the pieces

Overcast and wet on Saturday with temperatures in the mid-60s. I noticed Friday evening that the last chrysalis had turned black so I put it outside away from the tea cup and the next morning a monarch was hanging from the end of the stick. 

So three butterflies out of 6 caterpillars. Should have been four or even five if I had gone to get the superglue before the fallen chrysalis disappeared from the pot I had placed it in. I assume it became a meal for a bird like the one the other day.

And my attempt at hanging the antique glass shade from the light fixture was successful and while it doesn't cover the fixture it does cover the bulb and it looks much better than the wood and wicker shade it had previously.

Yesterday I finally altered the other art light fixture that I bought an embarrassingly long time ago, as in a couple of years, and never hung because once it arrived I realized it was unsuitable, for reasons I won't go into, for where I had planned to hang it. Well, I finally decided to hang it in the dining area since I conceded that there was no way to hang the chandelier there. The other thing about it is that it only hung down about 11” which I felt would make it hard to see how pretty it is. So I got new fittings and a 6” section of copper pipe and added it between the lamp and the ceiling plate.

Now to finish cleaning the chandelier and I still have two birdhouses and a wind chime that I need to find permanent places for and several plate flowers and totems to repair so I can get started on that auction piece on Monday.

getting back in the mood

We've warmed up to more normal winter temperatures and I'm finally emerging from my state of lethargy. This week I have actually accomplished a few things, mostly minor but at least I'm ticking some things off...made more progress on the chandelier, finally got the piece of copper tubing I need to hang my other art light fixture, filled and hung the big bird feeder back up, took the recycling to the center and the newspaper to the vet, returned the tile samples and had lunch with a friend, got my prayer flags back up (and I do wish the Dalai Lama would send me some new ones, these are looking a little tattered), 

a few other things that I can't recall right now. Not yard work though. I've stood out there on these beautiful blue sky days this week looking at the flood and then freeze damaged flower beds which are pretty pathetic right now 

thinking I should be working in the yard and even though the birds and the 10 petal anemones seem to think it's spring,  

I'm just not feeling the urge yet.

My goal for today, however, is to jerry-rig one of the antique glass shades from the light fixtures from the old city house. When I bought that 100+/- year old house in the mid-70s, one of the first things we did was to take them down and put up ceiling fans in those three rooms. As I recall, there was a pink one, a clear frosted one, and a blue one. I don't know what happened to the blue one, it disappeared many many years ago and since the clear frosted one needs a completely different fixture from the one I'm working with, I think the pink one will go well in my room.

Rocky stopped last Sunday while I was out pulling up my hand-full-of-clover-a-day from amongst the bluebonnets (if I don't pull the clover up it will quickly overwhelm the bluebonnets) to let me know he thought he would be able to get started on the rest of the house one day this week which I mentally amended to next week because that seems to be how it goes. In any case, since I was reminded yesterday that I promised to donate a piece to a silent auction for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo financial aid fund from which my granddaughter Autumn was the recipient of a grant last year, I need to start on a piece specifically for that whether Rocky starts next week or not.

more of the same

Y'all are probably tired of all the posts about rebuilding but, unfortunately, that's what's happening here.

Now that I have three of the four torn out room spaces over at the shop cleaned up I spent Sunday afternoon moving stuff out of the big bay and into the two farthest rooms. We are not only storing all our stuff from the two rooms that flooded in the house in the shop, but still much of our friend Gene's stuff from his old studio even though he has come and fetched some of his smaller equipment and our grandson's bedroom furniture while he tries to find a permanent home. Then I rearranged the glass and equipment in the shop and set up a new cold working station for me (I was set up in the garage before) and did the basic grinding on the 6 small feathers.

Monday morning, time for my weekly visit to FEMA. Today though I had good news! They finally accepted my identity last Friday and sent the order for disbursement of funds. I left there and went straight to the bank but no cigar. Not yet. Should only take a day or two more or I will know the reason why.

With the ongoing construction in the house and moving my stuff back over to the shop and my visit to FEMA and yoga at 5:30, I won't get started filling the next mold today (Monday) (which is not a feather piece but a moon piece, sort of a precursor) as I'll need several uninterrupted hours which I won't get til tomorrow. But first I must visit with my friend Caroline who I depended on heavily during the first month or so of this whole ordeal. Well, her and my sister.

I say I will get the uninterrupted hours tomorrow (today) but Rocky is planning on starting the paneling tomorrow (today) and I have to choose a door. Just pick the door and bite the bullet which means I will probably have to drive to Rosenberg today so I won't be making much progress on my stuff for the open house. I guess it's starting to wear on me because I have more to do to get ready for that like make a new sign, cover my display board with new fabric (which luckily I have...I think), repaint the shelves, and find a new little cabinet with a couple of drawers (all casualties of the flood). And I had an anxiety dream this morning about it all.

I dreamed that me and another person were setting up for a big art show and as we were setting up a lady came up and said she was just in love with that blue piece and wanted it and her male companion put the money on the table so I looked for the tubs with the stuff in it and realized I had forgot them so I told the guy I could go and be back in 15 minutes. OK, I'll wait he says. Then I couldn't remember where I parked the car and couldn't find it and then when I got to the house (?) I couldn't get in and had to climb a tree to get over the fence to get into the shop and there was traffic and I finally got back and stuff was spread out and I was looking for the blue penis piece (my description in the dream, it's one of the botanicas) because I didn't want to sell that one and it was still there and I woke up.

the current state of things

cold front, dust, and errands

More cold air blowing in today (Friday). I'm wearing long jeans for the first time since early last spring. Supposed to get down to 41˚ tonight. May even have to turn on the heater! Rocky and crew are busy working in the studio room. It's a good thing I can close off the rest of the house from the back part as everything is covered in dust of one kind or another in there. Not only did the brick planters come out but after consulting with Rocky we decided to take out the short brick wall so that back corner could be squared up. I'm sacrificing a closet in the garage that was small and dark and basically unusable to that end.

Originally, there was an entertainment center built above the continuing brick from the planter to the right that we started tearing out during the demolition.

I'm having a sort of an empty day today while the guys work. Can't fill the next mold because it takes a lot of concentration and no distractions, don't feel like working outside with this cold wind and overcast sky, can't work over at the shop cleaning the last room because I want to be here in case something needs my attention. So, I went to the library and picked up the two books I requested though I didn't expect them both to come available in the same week. Guess I'll get comfortable on the couch and read.

Which I did.

Today (Saturday), while the sanding was going on, I left to run about a million errands, dragging my sister along with me, foremost of which was to the Lowe's about 45 minutes away to look at the birch bead board paneling. I had already decided against it but one look confirmed my decision. It didn't look nearly as good as the picture, not as light or light grained and they didn't have the pine (and I haven't been able to find it on their website either though Leonard tells me they do have it). I also looked at and talked to the woman at the desk about doors. Another agonizing decision I have to make. I need to replace two doors, one imminently; the other I'll probably put off forever as the problem with it is only cosmetic, some veneer coming loose on the inside. The door into the little backyard sustained more damage even though it sat in the same water as the door to the garage. Both doors are plain jane solid core slab wood doors with veneer on both sides, the kind of door no one recommends for exterior use these days. Mine seem to have functioned just fine for a long time if original, the house is about 60 years old. My other objects of acquisition were a new toilet seat, successful, and a new hand cart/dolly, unsuccessful.

We did make one stop on the way at the big garden center there in Richmond so I could get some wildflower seeds, which must be planted now, and failed in that respect so I bought some sweet pea seeds instead which also need to be planted in the fall. After Lowe's we headed for Shopping Mecca in Rosenberg which is sort of on the way back. We did have to do some backtracking but I tried to keep it at a minimum. Target for several items but only scored one out of three (warm fuzzy socks); Spec's, the liquor warehouse (stock up for Saturday margarita nights); a stop for lunch at Panera; Kroger for Rice Dream and a few other specific items; (backtrack) Penney's for long sleeve shirts (fail) and shower curtain hangers (so mundane and because I forgot them at Target); Michael's for magnets (only two on the new shower liner and I had run out of money so my sister bought them), then home.

So home, the garage door is down which I thought odd but I lifted it and opened the door into house and realized my error when I pulled down the paper they had so carefully taped up to protect stuff.

Oops!

more repair/remodel underway

I had to decamp from my in-house studio again because Rocky showed up on Wednesday morning with a load of sheetrock promising to be back first thing in the morning to start. I was in the middle of filling one of the big DF (drowned feather) molds and had open dishes of crushed and powdered glass spread out on the work table (no problem, Rocky says, the guys will get all this stuff cleared out in no time, um, no, that's not happening) and so Wednesday I finished filling the mold and then emptied that room once again, setting up in the back bedroom, except for the big table and my desk. Computer is back on the dining room table.

So Thursday the styrofoam ceiling tiles came down

to be replaced with sheetrock

and the brick planters were demolished and the remains piled on Rocky's trailer

to be trundled over and tossed into the bunker on the shop grounds. It's already got concrete and brick trash in there and since we will never ever empty it we might as well fill that sucker up. As if this amount of brick and concrete will add visibly to the level.

I'm putting the bead board paneling on hold til Saturday when I can drive the 45 minutes to the closest Lowe's that has it to look at it in person. The birch bead board that I selected looks very pretty in the picture on-line but it's also $40 a sheet. If it's as pretty as the picture online indicates, I'll leave it the natural wood color. At least that's the plan. But I decided I'd best look at the actual product before I have Rocky order it. There is a pine version which I can use if I decide to paint it (and I'm sort of leaning that way as I write this because wood yellows and darkens with age and it's half what the other costs and the birch is a veneer as opposed to solid wood like the pine).

Today, tape and float.

more of the same

I have sort of reclaimed my studio in the house. After taking down all the old paneling and associated pieces around the doors and windows, removed all the exposed insulation, pulled all the nails, and cleaned up after myself, I have reclaimed my studio even if temporarily. I've set up my desk in a different configuration mainly because this whole situation is different and I have an auxiliary work table, also temporary since it belongs to my sister and because I need to be able to break it all down quickly when work begins in here, and moved my computer off the dining room table and back here. I'm sort of enjoying this stripped down version of my space, all the furniture that I had to make work gone, all the other stuff that I had refused to deal with for years taking up space, gone with no guilt (although plenty of that stuff is in boxes somewhere). Now I get to think how I want to make this space work best and then add in whatever furniture is needed to make that happen.

I set up 8 more color samples yesterday, all for sand. 

They're all combined colors ranging from 4 - 8 different colors and transparencies each. I've always worked with transparent colors, my objection being that opaque colors are so flat, they have no depth, and they don't really portray the reality of, well, reality hence my combining similar but different colors and different transparencies just to get something that looks like sand. We'll see. In the meantime I'm cleaning up the four molds I have ready and measuring them so I'll know how much weight of glass it takes to fill each one.

I worked out in the yard some, more cleaning up and digging up trees...pecans and hackberries mostly...pulling up tens of little yew trees and grassy weeds and the black and blue salvia which is proving to be greedy. Still finding things that didn't make it like the purple verbena. Some things are coming back like the gerber daisies and the four o'clocks, a few of the rock rose survived but you know what liked the flood? The day lilies. They haven't looked this full and lush in years. Guess I'm not watering them enough.

weekend chores

It's been pretty busy around here the last few days. Friday, I got my spinach, lettuce, and beet seeds planted, finished cleaning and drying the last of the few bottles of frit that got damp, and worked on organizing the shop, cleaned and moved stuff and made some space so we can work in there.

Saturday Grandgirl Autumn was spending the weekend at home and she and her boyfriend came out to visit. I moved more stuff around in the shop, made a new template and cut out more forms for the color samples, and finally hosed down and brushed and wet vac-ed up the dirty water from the floor of the room that has been my in-house studio. I had hosed it down before the tiles were scraped up but not since. It looks so much better and no longer has the ick factor when I walk on it barefoot. I've set up a small table in there so I can get some work done and it's where I'm working on the color samples for the drowned feathers but it's too small. I think I'm going to set my desk up this week.

you can see the path I made to the door with the mats

Sunday, I dug up all the wild blackberry vines that had sprouted since the last time I dug them all up, repotted a pot bound plant into a bigger but not big enough pot, worked on cleaning and putting away the things still left on the driveway...the paddles, a baseball bat, a small cooler, a pair of swim fins, the thing that holds my 3' wide paper, a couple of plant stands, a box of seashells and assorted other items, a couple of plastic bins, a mop, an extension cord, stuff like that and I finished setting up my samples and they are ready to fire which probably won't get done til late today. Maybe.

Today we have to drive to the city. And Tuesday I'll be back at the Civic Center to find out if I've been 'verified' yet.

one foot in front of the other

Every day has one or two or three or more goals. Sunday I got two done but they were the main goals. I had a few others, you know, if I had time and energy. I'm satisfied with achieving the main two especially since one of them took most the time. I scrubbed both sides of all the rubber floor mats that interlock and cushion the hardness of standing on concrete in shop and garage and set them out, propped on chairs or trees or whatever is available, to dry. Finally I covered as much of the exposed sub-floor in the kitchen as I could. Not a great floor covering but better than the sub-floor.

The other task was cleaning the metal frame of my desk, the two desktops, and the counter top from my cold working station in the garage and get them moved off the driveway and inside. The cabinet part of my cold working station is toast but the top is still usable. The minor items on the list were to finish cleaning the bathroom, finish vacuuming the house, and hosing down the floors on the slab one more time.

We moved back home on Saturday. The cat and dog were a little freaked out by the changes but enough remains the same so that they are getting used to the new normal. Today is yoga class but if my arms at 5 PM are as tired as they were Sunday at 5 PM I may not go, waiting til Wednesday instead.

Stopped to talk to a neighbor while walking Minnie last evening, trading damage stories mostly, how we are coping stories. Mentioned that the kitchen tiles had to come up because the sub-floor was wet. She said that 'they' are saying if the sub-floor got wet the floor has to come out. Nope. Not doing that. Not tearing out my hardwood floors, they are just a little wavy, I'll take my chances. I've got that high powered blower blowing under the house through the vents and I move it every day or two or so and Rocky is going to assess the floor joists and sub-floor when he gets under there.

I have mostly cleaned out the yard and gardens. Some things survived, some things looked like they were going to survive and then wilted like the Philippine violets and the toad lilies, some things survived in one place and died in another like the yellow bells over at the shop,

some things were washed away as if they had never existed like the ox-eye daisies and the periwinkles and the four-o-clocks and the purple coneflowers and 99% of the orange cosmos. 

My one german verbena survived for which I am glad and the black and blue salvia and the rock rose looked dead but some of both are already coming back. I'm not sure about the roses as they mostly look OK but some branches are starting to die. The flower beds at the back of the property are all mostly intact though I did lose the bulbine that I replanted after it froze last winter. The penta looks unfazed but it's losing foliage from the bottom up but that just may be normal for this time of year.

an ordinary Saturday

Every time I think it's getting hot enough out there that working outside all day is no longer an option and I start to stare at the slab of wax on my work table, another front comes in and cools it off for a few days and I'm right back out there. I'm done with all the major projects for this spring...new raised bed and improving the area of the garden, get the garden planted, get the blueberry bed in, new flower bed, remake the end of another flower bed, so now it's just maintenance...watering, weeding, getting new things acquired in the ground, repotting others into bigger pots, digging up all the pecan trees the squirrels planted, trimming around the beds, cutting the dead wood out of the shrubs, that sort of thing.

Yesterday, I finally completed a task I started last November. I didn't start out the day with that intention but since my path across the side yard has changed the scattered mayhem of the sandstone paving slabs, which I had traversed several times already that day, finally got to me. 

Depending on the season when I am walking over to the shop, I either walk down the driveway to walk in the sun or I walk across the grass close to the house to walk in the shade. You might remember that last fall I unstacked the sandstone slabs and laid them out helter skelter in preparation for reconstructing them into a short walkway. Short because the original walkway that these comprised was at the city house and it was a short cut from the sidewalk to the front door and the driveway. Anyway, yesterday I found myself putting together a jigsaw puzzle with no picture to guide me. Wouldn't have been too hard a task except that the pieces were all really heavy.

There's always small open areas where the stones don't fit exactly so I drug out my glass doorknob collection and rummaged through it and selected some to fill in those spots. We used a lot them in the city house but since moving out here we haven't, so far, bothered to change any out. 

I have one old glass doorknob that was an exterior knob and probably faced west and has turned purple from the ultrviolet rays of the sun.

I going to get up in a minute and start to make some tomato sauce and maybe put up some of the peaches I picked up on Saturday. The local orchard didn't have enough to open but if you messaged them they would hold some for you to pick-up. I'm happy to now be on their call list. These are the white flesh peaches and so sweet and delicate. I made a pie yesterday and still have too many to eat before they go bad so I'll be putting some of them up in the freezer too.

But back to the tomatoes...Marc made a great tomato pie and we've been having them with lunch and I've been giving them away and cutting them up for the freezer and still I am overwhelmed with tomatoes. My daughter took a whole window sill's worth home with her yesterday and I replaced them immediately with that day's pick and then some. I thought I would only get about 6 or so but I actually had the biggest pick so far.

It was late when I relinquished the kitchen back to Marc, too late to come up with or fix anything for dinner so we settled for this...