some progress

Rocky hailed me as I walked past his house when I was out walking the dog Thursday. He thinks he's got another week on the current house and then he'll be able to start. He plans to drop by this weekend and look over the elevations and details I drew up for the back bedroom and bathroom, start making his materials list so there is some progress on that front.

And Gunner also showed up Thursday and got the 'new' light fixture up above the dining table. Took a bit of finagling but we finally got it up and even though I lowered it 6”, it's still hard to see because that's a dark corner of the house being the NW corner. Plus it was overcast on Friday when I took these pictures in the morning. I'll try to get a better picture of it installed when we have a sunny afternoon.

     

And, after spending an afternoon working on making the wax blank earlier this week, I finally decided that I didn't have enough time to create anything new for the charity auction so I had the gallery in Dallas send back a piece that I wasn't all that happy with, not that there's anything wrong with it. But I know how these auctions go and it's highly doubtful that the piece will go for it's worth so I'd just as soon it be one I don't care about all that much. You might remember this one.

So, I haven't been very good about updating my website lately, in fact it's been over a year!, and a google search for pate de verre only pointed people to a document on my website on the history of the technique but not to the home page and an image search didn't come up with any of my images so I seem to have dropped out of sight. Hence, I am spending the next few days trying to update my website, thinking about completely redoing it and removing the etched glass pages since we are retiring from that, and creating a new pate de verre board on Pinterest as the one I made long enough ago that I don't remember when seems to have disappeared, trying to boost my visibility.

And finally, neighbor R seems to be hiding out since Tuesday. Haven't seen hide nor hair of him or the chickens. Maybe he's “butt-hurt” by both his immediate neighbors not being too happy about his shoot first attitude. I guess he's keeping the chickens in the coop because as nearly as I can tell, he hasn't erected the orange plastic fencing yet. I thought I would offer to help him if I saw him out and about.

Well, another overcast day at the beginning of a long stretch of overcast days so says the weather app.

ugh

good guy with a gun?

I had an encounter with my 'new' neighbor, R, yesterday. They've lived in Frank of the Bountiful Garden's house for about two, two and a half years now (and that property is way more than they can manage). They moved from Katy, a 'small city' engulfed by the big city. This is the guy who's first response to stray or loose dogs in his yard is to shoot them. He's a bit disabled, suffers from lymphedema, can't move very fast and uses a fancy walker so apparently he keeps a gun by his side at all times (but I kinda think he probably did already before moving out here), on disability, wife still works and commutes to the city. He's also one of those people who wears a big cross and tells you to have a 'blessed' day. After the third time he shot at some poor dog I told him don't shoot my dog. Fortunately, so far, he hasn't hit or killed one. Unfortunately those bullets still keep going. I'm glad there is a vacant half acre between us.

There are two reasons dogs (or raccoons or possums or cats feral and otherwise) come into his yard. They have two outdoor cats and so they feed them outdoors in their garage which they keep open so the cats have access which also gives dogs and other critters access and sometimes those critters beat up on his cats. The other reason dogs (and raccoons and possums and hawks) come into their unfenced yard is that last spring they acquired a baker's dozen of baby chicks which have grown into mature egg laying chickens that they do not restrain at all during the day (they do lock them up in a coop at night) so these chickens wander all over the place...into the vacant half acre (I've chased them home more than once from the edge of my property plus trying to train Minnie not to chase them) and into the neighbor's yard on the other side and across the street. At one point during last summer he put up plastic orange mesh fencing, the kind contractors use to cordon off areas, on two sides of the property...my side and the back, the other side neighbor has a fence around his back yard...leaving the front open so the chickens were still able to roam out of their yard.

So yesterday, I took Minnie out so she could run around some in the empty half acre and R was taking down the orange fencing in order to use it to cordon off a large area around the old greenhouse coop for the chickens so he wouldn't have another “butt-hurt neighbor”.

“Oh, yeah?, what happened?” I asked.

The neighbor on the other side took issue with R shooting at his dog that had escaped the fenced yard and I guess was chasing some chickens.

“I didn't know it was his dog”. Really. He didn't recognize the dog he has lived next door to for two years?

Anyway, I supported my other neighbor and told R that guns were not always the solution (something I repeated at least twice more before the conversation ended).

“I have a right to defend my property”, R says a little tightly. And, true, when he first started encountering dogs in his yard (at this time going after the cats) he called the sheriff to ask what his options were and so since there is no animal control in the county, the sheriff told R to just shoot them if they were being a nuisance. I wonder if R told the sheriff he lives in a residential neighborhood and not isolated out in the country. I wonder if it would have mattered to the sheriff).

I agreed, he did, but there were other ways to do that. I also told him this was the country and everybody in this neighborhood probably owned guns but the only time they shot them off was when they were hunting.

“I'm not going argue with you about defending my property,” all up about his 'rights'.

Told him again there were other ways to do that. like fence your fucking yard

“I'm glad I missed,” R said.

“So am I,” I told him, “but that bullet kept going,” something I've said to him in the past when he has told me about shooting at and missing some poor dog that was probably abandoned out here.

After once again telling him guns weren't always the answer I told him I just hoped he never hurt anyone then I paused and told him I wanted to be a good neighbor so I was going in and I scooped up my dog and headed back to the house.

“Have a blessed day”, he says as I walked off.

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.

two surprises

Way back right after the flood when I was pulling things out of the house and reported losing all my art and design books (but not my glass art/technique books which were on a higher shelf which was fortunate because more than one of those is out of print now), I received a message from a FB 'friend', a man I have never met but who comments on my posts now and then. He had been following my tale of woe and asked about the art books and for my address, a message I never replied to because I was kind of overwhelmed at the time and it just slipped past me. Eight days ago he inquired again whether I had lost all or most my art books. To which I replied yes, but that I was not that upset about it and planned to donate the survivors to the library, only a few that I really cared about and I listed about 5 titles and I gave him my address. Yesterday, the mail carrier came up the driveway and handed me a box. When I opened it, this was inside.

This is not an inexpensive book. So, John Fletcher who lives in Michigan and whom I have never met or spoken to except to exchange a comment now and then, you have a beautiful and generous heart. Thank you for your thoughtful gift.

So because the universe wasn't through showing me that there is still beauty in the world, when I checked on the four chrysalises I saw one monarch had emerged and two others had turned black indicating that emergence was nigh (within 24 hours). 

When I saw it flex its wings, I gently lifted it out and put it on one of the plants I had brought inside. The next morning it was still there still exercising its wings slowly so I gently lifted it up and transferred it to the rose bush in full sun. The next time I went to check on it, it was gone. 

I had also taken the two chrysalises out and put them on the plant stand 

and by early afternoon, another had emerged. 

Just now, when I checked again it had also flown off but the third chrysalis was gone, not even the empty shell left behind. I sifted through the dried up leaves below and found it with a jagged hole in the side, victim I suppose of a bird. 

I guess I should have considered that when I placed them so near the tea cup.

anxious days and sleepless nights

I've been sleepless for two nights. Or mostly sleepless. Probably around four hours or less a night, if someone was paying attention which this someone is not. I only know that I wake up at some point and then am mostly awake until dawn when, sometimes, I can grab a couple more hours. I've been pretty good lately about getting myself back to sleep after I wake up but not so the last two nights if I managed to sleep at all. My body has been on alert, mind whirling, adrenaline coursing amid fight or flight.

Sounds like something serious is going on, right? Nope, just faced with putting my money where my mouth is.

Last late October I got an email from a friend about spending the month of May in Portugal with another friend and some assorted strangers and did I want to join in, to which I replied with an enthusiastic yes, I could do two weeks in Portugal, which grew to three weeks in my mind as time progressed. Three weeks away from home on the other side of half the country and the Atlantic Ocean with friends. Well, two days ago I got the information, two weeks in Porto and two weeks in Lisbon, and it was time to fully commit to days I will be there and buy my tickets. You'd think that would be easy, right?, especially since I had every intention of going; that I wouldn't suffer two days of anxiety before I could commit to dates and buy the fucking tickets. But I did, and I did, finally, and I will leave on May 1^st and return on May 23^th. Fourteen nights in Porto and 7 nights in Lisbon.

I know where some of the anxiety stemmed from but now I think a lot of it was the thought of being gone for three weeks, away from my nest where everything is comfy and reliable and I speak the language. I could barely choke down half a hamburger for lunch yesterday so I finally sat down and selected dates and found the flights and bought the tickets. Within 30 minutes I was already more relaxed. It helped that as luck would have it I will be taking the same flight out of Toronto as my friend and we will be arriving together.

And now committed, I slept well last night.