The vultures came through the fire intact. I was concerned about them cracking around the wings or necks, but apparently, the fire gods were smiling. I decided on a bronze-like patina for them, which I think came out okay. I see all the flaws, but I hope you don’t — or can at least forgive me for them.
Now, I need to find a base to attach them to. I’m thinking simple but on the tall side.
anyway…here they are.
as of april 1, day of fools, brni and i will have been married 13 years and been together for 19 years. it’s been positively prime. 😉
i do not want to complain, but …
my birthday doesn’t even warrant proper capitalization. the effort at this point is just not worth it.
the night before my birthday, which was today (so the night before was last night) was okay until my younger son called me. he needed help getting his social security card replaced. a quick web search informed us that we could do that at the county courthouse. i had tentative plans to lounge around, take a hot, soaky, bubbly bath and then go to the studio, but that was easily changed to help the kid.
later that night the older son called to complain about his life. bitterly. these things are not only upsetting to hear, they are exhausting. so i went to bed relatively early to blot it all out and be ready for the younger son’s arrival around 9am.
and i waited.
until noon.
called. texted. waited. got annoyed.
long story short, when younger son called back, i was no longer fit to drive so brni volunteered to take him to the courthouse, which was open until 3 pm. that is, until some time in the near past where some underpaid worker pasted a sticker over the 3. the sticker said noon.
so, no lounging around, no bubbly bath, no studio, no social security replacement card. birthday is not looking so good. my mood was not happy. my mood was rather dark and prickly.
when brni felt my prickles had softened some, he told me he wanted to take me out to dinner for my birthday. i bristled at the word, “birthday” but said okay. we went to a cute local place around the corner that serves good food and frufru drinks, but also beer.
it was closed. as in, closed-for-business-forever.
this birthday is not boding well. this birthday really sucks.
went home. brni went and bought me booze. i raided the fridge for leftover frozen shit. maybe i’ll play lotro.
birthdays
bah
so, something that i have no control over, possessed me to start fixing/organizing/cleaning the basement YET AGAIN. got a good start on it with only one meltdown about never-throwing-anything-away-kill-me-now. turned into a rather nice time watching and chatting with brni while he upboxed and organized all our vinyl and put them in our makeshift modular unit.
all in all, it is a good start.
now i think i’ll take a lovely scented bath and maybe smear some soothing, mind-altering salve on my skin.
Today I worked outside for a few hours. In shirtsleeves. In January. Rosemary doesn’t overwinter here, but since the weather is no longer normal, one plant overwintered last year and so I moved a large pot of rosemary next to the house and sheltered it hoping it will survive the eventual cold snap. That’s all we get now in the winters here…snaps of cold.
I found a fresh rabbit’s foot while cleaning up the backyard. Thought I might preserve the offering, but then thought of the cats in the house and how resourceful they are. Foot goes back to ground.
Then I washed and filled little pots with the compost/soil mixture I made and put them in the sunroom window with seeds of herbs and cold weather greens in hopes of germination.
Then I put chicken wire over the pots in hopes of repelling resourceful cats.
So, I have decided to update my website galleries. As I get more serious (about time?) about trying to make a living with my artwork, I figured the first step would be to get the images of my stuff current. With prices.
This will probably lead to all sorts of sitting at the computer, maybe devoting this WordPress blog to be more artful, maybe a different blog devoted only to art? Maybe a new FB page?
odear, the possibilities of doing all sorts of things that are not actually making art. argh.
Of course, there needs to be more time devoted to actually making the art. My sister and I are hatching plans to create actual marketable art things — you know, artsy ornaments, jewelry — that sort of thing. Who knows, maybe an Etsy or Ebay store could be in our future?
and then there’s the problem that i thoroughly and totally suck at sales and marketing.
so many maybes up there.
anyway…go look at the slightly new and hopefully improved galleries and let me know what you think.
ogod i just realized that if anyone buys anything i have to figure out how to pack and ship art without it breaking.
but….
It’s been a while since I’ve felt good enough, unstressed enough and just plain interested enough to write about anything in my life at all. But today, after months of gathering bids for redoing our bathroom, I have finally received a bid that is reasonable from someone I trust. My plumber of all people does bathroom remodels. Who knew?
He sent us to the local (again with the local–I love it) plumbing supply store to look over the tubs, toilets and other sundries. The prices were far higher than those of Home Despot — er — Home Depot, so Brni and I were a little worried that we’d be looking at even more money out than the last guy who’s bid was (we thought) outrageous. The other guy we asked a bid from never bothered to get back to us, and good thing too, because after he left, I turned to Brni and said, “I don’t think we’re his kind of people. He reminds me of the insurance salesman who tried to hoodwink me into buying an annuity.”
anyway…
Not two hours after we picked out the things that make a bathroom something more than an outhouse, our plumber called. His price for the job was significantly less than Home Depot’s price. He said he tries to be competitive. I said, this is good, but now we have to factor in the tile. He said, that includes the tile as long as it’s not more than $3 a square foot.”
I choked down a gasp of sheer joy.
So this is why I feel like communicating. It looks like we will be able to afford to redo the bathroom without taking out a loan.
yay.
This little turn of this little tide has made me feel that maybe–just maybe–we will be able to do other things that real grownups do. Things like, go on vacation! It’s only 12 years overdue. I may actually hire an animal sitter to feed and water the cats, bird and iguana, take my dog and drive out to Arizona for The Traditions of Western Herbalism Conference in September. Brni said if I take Loki, he’ll fly out and meet me in NM and we’ll take it from there.
Which means I now get to shop for the perfect tent so that we can camp out instead of pay for motels, which will be how we pay for the pet sitter. heh…
It just might end up to be all good.
