the cat, the studio, and fall bloomers

 
I don't know what's going on with Emma. Wednesday was the last day she ate or I saw her drink water or pee besides what food and water I forced down her. And then Thursday and Thursday night she had several episodes, kind of a cough or a gak followed by a sneezing fit, something she has never done before, even woke me up Thursday night and Friday she didn't even want to go outside, just kind of hiding between Marc's desk and the wall. Anyway I called the vet on Friday to see if I could bring her in because...not eating, drinking, peeing (since Wednesday), or pooping (since Monday) but they couldn't see her til next Monday afternoon, three days later. So I dithered a little bit and then called the other vet in town, explained what was going on and they said to bring her in.

This is a much bigger outfit than my regular vet but they were really nice and I nearly swooned when the vet came in...good looking young man, black hair a little longish, gorgeous blue eyes, that was all I could see because of course we were all wearing masks, very attentive. So he examined her, listened to her heart and lungs which he said sounded fine, no way to know what was going on with her other organs without blood work but she didn't have diarrhea and wasn't throwing up which he would expect to see if there was a problem there. We settled on subcutaneous fluids, a B-12 shot, a med to stimulate her appetite, and a pain med. So Saturday, still not eating on her own but Friday night she peed and pooped so those systems seem to be working as long as I can get enough food and water down her. It's worrisome, not just the not eating thing but that he said that when cats suffer a trauma and start to get better, they continue to get better, they don't regress. So I don't know if this is related to the accident or if it's a separate issue altogether since she is an older cat, about 13.

(I wrote the above Saturday afternoon) Later Saturday...did I say I don't know what's going on with this cat? I don't know what's going on with this cat. Tonight, she appeared in the kitchen so I offered her some food, the other flavor in the house, the one she had quit eating and she ate about as much as I had made her eat already today. So she's eaten almost as much today as the whole last 5 days combined. And I saw her drinking out of one of the water bowls a little while ago. So go figure. Now, Sunday she ate more this morning and is currently laying in her favorite spot under the yellow ginger in the little backyard.

Other than that, I haven't done a whole lot. Abby asked me to lead the yoga class Wednesday so she and her husband could celebrate their anniversary so I did. Did my volunteer work at SHARE on Thursday. It was a food truck delivery day so no clients but unloading the truck and storing it all away. I spent the morning filling a freezer with loaves of bread. I've spent 4 or 5 hours working in the new studio room over at the shop, trying to arrange the shelving units, moving all the frit in from the big bay and cleaning those shelving units. I still need to get the sink hooked up. Right now all the jars of frit and powder are either in boxes or on a cart or the table. I don't want to put it all back on the shelves until I'm satisfied with the arrangement of all the shelving and I'm not quite there yet. 

And I made a strawberry crostata last night, easily the best one I think so far.

And since it's fall, even though you can't tell by the temperature since we're back in the low 90s and humid, fall things are blooming like the purple phillipine lily and it's white version,

the tall orange cosmos, 

the heritage rose putting on a new flush, 

the yellow angel trumpet, 

another banana tree sent out a bloom, 

the mist flower, 

the rain tree.

nothing quite so glamorous as a formal wedding or wine fair

The weather had cooled off finally after that hot August and September. We had a few weeks of days in the 80s but this week it has been hot again. Back up in the 90s during the day though it has been dropping down to 60 during the night giving us a 30+ degree temperature range. I used the opportunity of the cooler days to empty out the store room over at the shop in anticipation of pulling down a three section piece of the sheet metal that the shop is built out of that was up on the ceiling of the built-in part of the shop, the three small rooms which are going to be torn out and rebuilt. All the wood, including the support beams are soft and friable from termite damage.

 The (mostly) empty storeroom. The wall on the left is the back wall of the built-in part.

 Some of the stuff that was in there.

The demolition I started last year.

Even though the days have been hot, it does cool off to acceptable levels in the evening. I've been sitting out with the puppy running around in the yard. It's pleasant really as the humidity has dropped, that's how we tell if a front has moved in. There is just a slight hint of coolness in the air coming up from the ground, almost too subtle to feel unless the breeze moves a little. The pecan trees are dropping their brown and crisp leaves steadily and the Big Backyard is about half covered. They crinkle nicely when you walk through them.

I know all my readers are wondering why I haven't been writing about pecans yet because, of course, my life is intensely interesting and you remember everything, but no nuts though this year. When I got back from Canada I picked up 8 or 9 gallons of immature nuts from just the front third of the Big Backyard that had been falling since the beginning of July. After three years in a row of bumper crops I guess our trees are having a rest. To tell you the truth, while I will miss the home grown fresh pecans and the extra cash from selling the excess, I will not miss the chore of picking them up and shelling them.

I do have some left over from last year that I never got around to shelling.

Marc hauled the old truck bench seat, our first outdoor furniture we put under one of the pecan trees where we sat and watched the sunsets in the winter when we first bought this place, to the transfer station today. It was falling apart and had been colonized by fire ants on more than one occasion. I'm working towards getting a real outdoor bench seat but I won't put it back in the same place, I'm going to plant the azaleas that are currently in pots there. Besides, it's not really the best sunset viewing spot.

It looked like this when we first dragged it out there.

Here's the space now sans bench seat.

And I have finally started on some new waxes. Not my next body of work of course. Why the hell would I start on that next? These are just warm-ups since it's been so long since I did any model making, a set of three magnolia leaves that will have various stages of the flower to seed added to them.

the further adventures of shop repair

I finished re-caulking the two windows in the big bay area of the shop last Friday, inside and out, the work I had started on the previous Wednesday until it started to rain. While I was working on the outside I could see that all the old caulking around the frame of the windows is dried out and cracked. Will need to re-do that as well. I just wonder if I really need to scrape out all the old stuff or if I can just go over it with new stuff. Since I had the 8' ladder out I checked out the top of the walls where they meet the 3” or 4” overhang of the roof. I hesitate to call it an eave. Some of the metal is rusty on the surface but some of it is so rusty that the metal is flaking off. Not sure how I need to approach that. Besides that, there are stretches of about 6” - 8” where the wall has pulled away underneath the overhang. I'm thinking that that's where the water leaks in. I'm not sure the limited kinds of caulk available at our small town hardware store will be up to the job. The guy there did mention some tar like stuff in a can. I may have to check that out.

Yesterday, I got the 8' ladder and peered at where the wall meets the roof on the inside where it leaks, which is not an easy thing since there's a sort of ledge there at the very top which is all rusty and corroding and I saw a hole! So obviously, it's not the outside section on the wall, it's the actual roof. So then I got the 12' ladder out and looked at the roof where the hole I saw from the inside was. No hole that I could see, but what I did see was that the edge of the metal roof panels have corroded away in varying degrees where they end in the shallow channel on the top of the overhang. There is a notch where the water is supposed to drain out but it was all clogged with rust so the water slips under the corroded ends of the roof panels and into the inside. Confused yet? I didn't have my camera with me on that 12' ladder so you will just have to use your imagination.

Here's a cross section:

Since my idea of patching the hole with a piece of sheet metal and silicone wasn't going to work, what I did was scrape away as much of the rust as I could and cleaned it as best I could while perched on the 12' ladder and then I filled in all the gaps with silicone where the roof panels had corroded away. Actually, I did four of the 16” sections. So, we'll see. It's suppose to rain today and Monday. I doubt it will work as a permanent solution as there is no way to tell if the silicone sealed against all that rust. I may be investigating that tar.

Oh, and the toilet is still leaking. Well, the floor was wet and there is some question as to whether it is leaking from the toilet or the valve that comes out of the wall.

In the meantime, I am still waiting on two deposit checks. I thought these people were in a hurry.

I'm driving in to the city later today to stay at my daughter's house while she and her husband spend a couple of days away with her husband's brother and his wife. I'll be the cook and chauffeur, fixing dinner and ferrying the kids to and from school and the boy to his job.

a new chapter, a big spot, and...can you guess?

do I have to mention/write about Halloween just because it's Halloween?

While I did make some wax sheets over at the new shop when I was doing all that model making, I guess you could say we are now officially back in business.

This week, we have been working on an actual job. Over there. In the shop.

I need to get the horseshoe nailed up.

I found the horseshoe on one of my many river trips on the Rio Grande in Big Bend. I had pulled over in my canoe to attend to some business and I found it laying in the scrub and sand, some poor mexican horse's lost shoe. The Rio Grande is no boundary to them and they cross over at will wherever it is shallow enough. I came across horses in the river and on the banks quite often, have even had them come through camp.

So, I figured, his bad fortune, my good fortune and I picked it up. I've considered it a gift of sorts.

Anyway, we finally started on the left-over commission from last spring. I worked in the new shop Wednesday and Thursday getting my part done cutting the stencil and doing the cream etch part (that usually comes after the sandblasting but this one is a little different). It is a different place but I liked working in there, at least with the bay doors open because it is so open to the outdoors. I'm sure it will be a different story this winter since the bay doors will be closed and there are only two small windows in the back wall.

It ain't pretty (yet) but it's functioning.

It seemed so big when we first got it. But now, after moving so much stuff over there, it doesn't look so big any more. Of course, we are really only inhabiting the double bay area and the big store room and the single bay somewhat right now. And after the first day or two of demolition and finding what I found in the inside part, I abandoned that for the time being.

Today, Marc is starting the sandblasting.

So, I got my stitches out last Wednesday and am glad of it. They were very annoying as I could see them in my peripheral vision and the sun glinted off them. Right now, it is a big ugly lumpy red spot. It got a little infected I guess. It was healing fine so after the first two days I forgot about the ointment I was supposed to be using. Monday night I noticed it was sore and red so I started using it again. Today, it is not quite as red perhaps but still big. Worse (visually) by quadruple than the carcinoma, which is clear now according to the second lab report.

The little bit of vanity I have has photoshopped it out.

One happy camper with a shop to work in.

accomplishing little things and the Friday selfie

My sister is out of town this week so I have her two little dogs. I also go to her house every day to feed and spend time with her two cats. They've been all happy to see me, come running when I call, up until Wednesday when they evidently decided that it was my fault they had been locked up in the house alone for the last 6 days and they were taking their ire out on me. Fine. I won't pet you then.

I also worked two of her days at the antique store this week.

Having the dogs here makes it harder to get anything done since I don't have a big fenced yard, just the Little Back Yard, which I put them out in several times a day for short periods and although the shop yard is fenced across the street, the gate is not secure, and I won't leave them in the house alone except for short periods. When we are out in the Big Back Yard, I have to keep my eye on them because they will wander as far as I let them into the 13 Acre Field and the Wild Space.

Marc has been working on getting the sandblasting system hooked up in the new sandblast shed. All the air pipes are in and the exhaust fan so even though he still has to put the plywood and shelf up on one wall and build a shelter over the air compressor, we are, for all intents and purposes, back in business.

It is still so hot here and humid. Too hot to get much done and nothing done unless it's in the shade, which Marc hasn't had over at the shop. It's not too bad in the shade as long as you are being. perfectly. still.

I've been trying to get small things accomplished. Like picking up the immature pecans that continue to fall. I bet I've thrown at least 12 gallons of varying sizes on the burn pile and every day, pick up another gallon or two. I pick them up for two reasons...one, I go barefoot and when the ground is littered with small hard lumps it's not so pleasant. The other reason is that the larger ones that fall will eventually shed their husks and I won't be able to tell the difference between the good ones and the bad ones when the good ones start to fall. If we get any good ones. If there's any left to fall by the time they get mature.

I've repotted a couple of the transplants from the old city property. I'm clearing the old garden of weeds and the plants left over from spring. This was the absolute worst garden we have had since we've been out here. We got one or two small tomatoes and a couple of japanese eggplants and a handful of jalapenos and that is it. The weather was freaky what with the late hard freeze but mostly I think, no bees. I have seen so few bees this year. The new garden is going to be over at the shop across the street where it will get more sun and we have more room but it's too hot to build and prepare the beds so we may not do a winter garden this year.

I built two small crates to hold all the glass samples and I've finally gone through all the boxes left over from our initial move and the final move this summer. I donated a bunch of stuff to a shelter and filled a box with stuff to take to the store and sell. I have a couple of boxes of stuff for the grandkids to go through the next time they come out here.

I repaired the tea cup bird feeder again and I think we've fixed it so the squirrels can't knock it off the hook any more. It's been doing brisk business from the titmice, chickadees, and the cardinals with an occasional curious wren. The last brood of cardinals has been coming, the immature males and females. One of the young males is just now getting his grown up plumage and he's very spotty red and brown.

And I finally repaired the shadow box that I acquired years ago to hold my whistle collection. I wrote about my whistles here if you are interested and you can even listen to five of them (well, you used to be able to listen, the links have disappeared). I have a few new ones since I did that post...the boot, the long antler, and the bright blue ceramic one that you put water in and it warbles like a real bird.

gaping holes and dangling wires and a selfie

Well, I guess we're out. We have stripped the old shop of supplies, tools, equipment, light fixtures, and glass. We have taken what we want from the old house.

The entry glass and the large window and the other large window at my daughter's house were delivered to the new shop Wednesday. The air compressor, the refrigerator, and the pony tail palm were delivered out here yesterday. Our son-in-law brought out the old truck yesterday as well. There's still a few pieces of good lumber that I want to retrieve and some more plants, either through digging them up or cuttings, and the rest of our pavers that we repaired the driveway with last summer when we had to have the main sewer line replaced but by and large, we are done there.

The sandblast booth may have to be abandoned since we couldn't find anyone with the ability or willingness to move it for us. It will fit on our son-in-law's trailer if we can get it on there so we may make one more attempt before we give up. We did not disconnect the plumbing from the old cast iron ball and claw foot tub. Even if we had, I'm not sure we could have gotten it out of the bathroom without removing the toilet and sink (very small room) or even then.

So now we get to turn our attention to setting up the new shop. Lots of things to be done...taking down the old cigarette smoke infused paneling and replacing it with sheetrock, pulling up the old indoor/outdoor cigarette smoke infused carpet in the rooms, putting in insulation and sheetrock in the large bay area, getting the air compressor hooked up and a shelter built and the air pipes placed, building a permanent glass rack, getting 220 plugs installed for the kilns, getting the AC/heater installed in the rooms for starters. Also, the roof in the big bay leaks in two areas so we need to get that looked at.

I'd like to get a rudimentary work area set up pretty quick and devote some days to work while we remodel.

I also have a lot of plants to get settled so I started removing grass along the south side of the cement bunker yesterday so that I can get these bulbs and other plants in the ground. I'm happy that the dirt seems really good, doesn't have the clay we have across the street. It's not the best time of year to be digging stuff up and shocking it but at least the summer has been fairly mild this year.

More digging up grass today.

this is how my life is going...and a selfie

Before we can move anything into the new shop, it has to be cleaned. It's been a while since that building was used on any kind of a regular basis and while the shop bay area is not greasy, the whole place is grimy and old spider webby. We've hired a service to do that for us but they haven't worked it into the schedule yet.

Also before we can move the shop, we have to finish the work we have but this week was a short week because I had signed up for a garden club outing and last week had production problems.

Next week may be a short week also because of the opening of the exhibit at the museum in which we have two pieces. The reception is Thursday night while the 'meet and greet' the artists is Friday. So if we go (a 3 hour drive there and a three hour drive back), and we should go, it will require an overnight stay.

I'm talking with another small builder on Tuesday to see what he will offer for the city property and then need to pursue the big builders.

I still have one drawing to finish and a proposal to re-do and one of my jobs is getting impatient.

And just forget any gardening time. By the time I have time it will be too hot.

I wanted to get a haircut this week and that's not happening.

Plus I'm trying, and not very successfully, to keep up with the reading of and commenting on the blogs I follow.

There is just too much going on.

tearing my hair out

And we lost our internet access at home on Friday (which is why I didn't do my selfie post yesterday). We have service but it isn't recognizing our IP address and we get a window saying some other computer is using it, it as in our IP address. What the hell does that mean? Has our internet connection been hijacked and what the hell do we do about it?

I'm posting this on the computer at the antique store.

Edit: Yay! We got the internet back! Turns out it was a source problem, the source being the cable company.

first look and a selfie

Wednesday we closed on the new shop. Signed multitudes of paper, handed over a check, and got the keys, walked across the street to city hall (gotta love a small town) and got the water switched over and then went to check out our new space.

OMG, it's huge! Overwhelming. We looked it over fairly quickly then walked back across the street to home. Still had/have plenty of art work to get done by Monday.

And besides, the enormity of what we had just done started to sink in.

Yesterday, we spent some time over there opening it up to air it out (must have been smokers) while Marc measured all the rooms and I took pictures.

It's about 2,000 sq.ft. Bigger than our whole house. The country house, which is bigger than the city house.

So, would you like to see? Come with me...

The new shop.

Starting on the right, the old paint bay. The back wall used to have doors back there and they are, in fact, leaning against the side of the building. I think we will put them back on so that both ends can be opened up. We think this will be the cold work room. There is a door on the left wall opening into the large bay space.

The large double bay space. Don't know how we are going to utilize this space. I'm waiting for Marc to decide where he wants to set up the sandblasting booth, whether he builds a new one in the space or we move the old one (a tuff shed on the driveway of the city house) onto the property. The doorway on the back left wall opens into...

a medium sized dark room with only one small window. We think this room will just be general storage. That's a fiberglass stand alone shower on the right which we will probably remove. It's pretty funky.

Another view of the big bay space and the other door on the left wall which leads into...

the 'living' areas.

The first room has a sink and cabinets...the 'lunch' room.

The second room is the 'office'.

The third room is the 'lounge'. These are the designations we have given them so we known which room we are talking about and does not indicate how the rooms will ultimately be used. The back wall of this room leads into...

the bathroom...sink, toilet, closet. We will probably turn the closet into a shower. There is also a door to the outside.

The old dog pen and dog house. Would make a nice enclosure for chickens. Wouldn't want too many.

View of the property behind the shop.

This concrete bunker is in the yard in front of the building. When I asked what the hell that was used for, she said she thought they stored barrels of something in there. I guess it wasn't always a body shop.

The view inside. There are drain holes so water doesn't accumulate.

Plenty of work ahead for us. First order of the day, getting a professional cleaner in there.