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.
Happy Solstice to all those near and far and dear to me. I’m preparing to go outside in about half an hour, start a fire in the chiminea and sit back with a glass of whiskey and watch this rare solstice, total lunar eclipse. I’ll be by myself, but I’ll be thinking of all of you, and preparing for a new and better year.
In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy this holiday card I made. Some have been printed up and sent to family and friends. If you click on the picture, it will take you to my flickr page. Click on “Actions” above the picture and then, “All sizes” to see a larger version or the original (really large) size.
Happy Solstice everyone!
For weeks I’ve been thinking there was something wrong w/my GI tract. Pain, up high, mostly on the left side under my ribs. What’s there? Heart, lung, spleen, part of the stomach and pancreas. But pain can be referred, so possibly any of the major organs that are jammed up in there. Everything I tried seemed to make no difference, going on a blandish diet, lots of nicely cooked leafy things, home cooked soups, nettle infusions, carrot juice. Soothing herbs for the tummy like slippery elm, catnip, chickweed. Dandelion, milk thistle, yellow dock for the liver…nothing seemed to make a difference. So, finally, in desperation, I go to the doctor. She did blood work and ordered an ultra sound of the abdomen. Everything seemed fairly normal except for some fatty deposits on the liver. I promptly quit drinking alcohol. She suggested I see a gut specialist, but none of them could see me for before December.
Then, yesterday, the whole area seized up. I could not move without severe, spasmodic pain. I couldn’t breathe, laugh or cry or even draw, type or drive. Walking my neighbor’s dog or going to my sculpture class were right out. The doctor said to get myself to the ER.
The last time I went to the emergency room, I had broken my foot. The place was packed with damaged limbs, broken heads, ice packs and compresses spilling out into the hallway. I hopped over to the reception desk, leaned over some bruised and bleeding people trying to see what was on the television across the hall, and asked, “How long is the wait?” The receptionist said, “I don’t know how long you will be waiting, but see that woman in the chair over there? She’s next in line. She’s been waiting three and a half hours and no one has seen her yet.” I hopped back over to the door and told Brni, “Take me home. I can fix my foot myself.”
No such luck this time. At noon, the ER was practically empty and they took me back within minutes. Once through the locking security doors that swing open towards you after an authorized person swipes their card (homeland security has hit suburban hospitals), you are a patient. I’m not sure doctors, nurses, lab techs, and physician assistants ever talk to each other, because every one of them had to ask me the same things including, “What’s your name?” “What’s your date of birth?” “Why are you here instead of at your sculpture class?”
I understand the need to make sure that the right patient is being treated for the right problem, but dudes…read the damned wrist bracelet and the chart on the wall, k?”
Anyway, because of all the organs and such all jammed up in my painful abdomen, and the fact that the pain is mostly on the left side, I get to have an IV stuck in my arm (after 4 tries–my veins were “flat”), blood syphoned off, lots of leads glued to my chest and am hooked up to a monitor so that anyone and their brother can see my heart rate, oxygen levels and blood pressure. I am obviously not having a heart attack since the nurse kept muttering, “Wish I had that heart rate.” This does not stop them from doing an EKG.
*did you all know that saline solution pushed into a vein tastes briny? kind of a cool mouth rush. yeah, i get my kicks where i can*
Being a patient means that you get to wait. You wait to be seen. You wait for test results. You wait for nurses, techs, doctors and bad news or most likely, befuddledness, but mostly you wait to find out whether you get to go home or not.
After about two hours my blood work came back and showed that I had a possible blood clot in the lung. Okay, I wasn’t waiting for THAT. Hey, I was thinking a blockage, pancreatitis, a tumor somewhere, but blood clots? People die from that. So, next up, Xray of the chest and then a CT scan of the chest and abdomen, but not before I get results telling them my kidneys are okay because you can’t inject contrast dye into someone with fucked up kidneys. So we wait…and wait…and wait. We wait until 5:20 because some little old lady drove her car into the back of some other car, biting down on her tongue, causing a traumatic event that backed up the lab and the CT scanner. I know this despite Hipaa privacy rules.
anyway…
Contrast dye is cool. In fact, despite the massive dose of radiation from CT scanners, the whole CT thing was weirdly interesting, reminding me of something out of a SciFi 3000 lab. The thing is a big, white, shiny donut, seemingly suspended in the cleanest room I’ve ever seen. For some reason, there is a happy face and a frowny face on it. They light up. The very personable tech, Joe, transfers me from the gurney to the sliding CT table, which is made up like a very low, white massage table complete with poofy pillow and knee wedge, all the while regaling me with humorous tequila drinking stories. Joe then hooks me up to the contrast dye infusion apparatus, which consists of two clear glass containers with spiral tubing coming out of them (I really like the spiral tubing–nice touch).
Joe leaves to go sit behind a distant glass wall. The little massage table starts moving back and forth, the donut starts to hum and whirl, the frowny face flashes and Joe cautions me to alternately breathe and hold my breath. A light starts flashing over one of the glass containers and then the telltale mouth rush of saline hits. After that, the light on the other container flashes. There’s a burning and pressure in my arm, then a seriously warm flush starts at the top of my head and flows down my body to my genitals, which for all the world feels as if I’ve just wet myself. And then the feeling is gone, the bed is no longer moving and the donut stops whirling. I have not wet myself.
After another 30 or 40 minutes, the results are in. No blood clots. No heart problems. No problems with any of my organs. No idea what is causing my pain. Seven hours after becoming a patient, I am released back into the world with 15 percocet, orders not to lift anything, and to see my doctor in a day or two.
I wonder how long it will take me to pee out the dye.
I tend not to board planes to go places, but when we had to cancel our road trip to take care of my sister, I had no choice but to go to the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference by airship. Happily, the flights to and from were uneventful (though I lost half my potions when the security dudes decided to stick the one quart baggie rule on me. But being so high from the conference still, nothing so minor as the one quart rule could bring me down. A week later, I’m still feeling the love.
The conference was held at the Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, NM, former home of Georgia O’Keefe. The weekend was filled with an amazing, feral energy that imbued an already enchanting landscape with a magic that only herbalists and wizards can conjure. Organized by Kiva Rose, Jesse Wolf Hardin and Resolute, the conference brought together an array of herbalists from all over the country. The featured presenters were Rosemary Gladstar, Matthew Wood, Phyllis Hogan, Kiva Rose, Paul Bergner, Charles Garcia, Phyllis Light, Jesse Wolf Hardin, 7Song, Jim McDonald and Howie Brounstein. There were many other guest presenters as well as vendors and three nights of amazing music performed by Flamenco World Company, Tina Collins & Her Pony and the now official TWH band, Rising Appalachia.
Two incredible teachers who inspired me are Kiva Rose and the uproariously humorous 7Song.
And of course, Jesse Wolf Hardin. I had an image of him as serious and unapproachable, but in fact, he’s a very huggable and goofy guy with an astounding and inspiring message for all of us. I hope to visit The Anima Center one day to spend time with and learn more from Wolf, Kiva, and the rest of their family.
Going to New Mexico is going home for me. I lived there for almost a decade back in the 60s and 70s. My body feels good in the high desert and my mind feels at ease under that big, expansive sky. I had my first born there. It’s where I hope to be when I die.
I’d never been to the Ghost Ranch when I lived in New Mexico — had never ventured that far north. Unlike Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the northern Spanish land grant region has not been built up and run over with malls, markets and trendy shops. On my way to the ranch I had to pull over several times to photograph the land. Here are some shots off I-25 North.
With its spectacular mountains and rock formations, unobstructed by tall buildings, populated by ravens, vultures and little blue-tail lizards, I spent a lot of time catching my breath in awe. For a visual artist, this country is simply astounding. I understand why Georgia O’Keefe kept a home there. Add to that, the energy generated by the conference, the experience was awe-inspiring.
This mesa dominates the ranch.
During the conference, I made notes of places I wanted to revisit and photograph. I like to take photos after an event for some reason, as if catching echoes. Wherever you turn on the ranch, you find little surprises, if you look for them.
Here’s a sweet adobe bench with surprises inlaid on the back.
A very tall carving of St. Francis.
Chimes to pleasure the birds and burros.
A labyrinth! The first I’ve ever walked. I built a small altar for my sister on one of the center stones.
Things are wonderfully low-tech on the ranch. No cell reception and I refused to bring the tiny laptop my husband so sweetly offered. So, here are some “road signs.” Who needs a GPS?
One of the guest houses.
The dining hall.
This friendly, old swayback would follow a person closely, allowing pets and nuzzles, but really just wanting some food. When she determined no food was available, she’d follow someone else.
A pretty corner in the old “Ghost House.”
An irrepressible cottonwood.
Where I slept on the “upper mesa.”
My bed — packing to go home.
One view from my room.
And in the other direction, this is the first thing I saw in the morning.
I find that when a truly awful, traumatic thing happens, I cannot find solace on the internet. I can email a friend or two, poke around on Facebook, but no way can I “talk” about it there. I am finding it excruciatingly difficult to even write about it here. When the truly awful, traumatic thing happens to my sister, my heart simply clenches. She’s with me now, dazed, confused, traumatized, devastated. She stares blankly, unmoving, with her hand gently covering her mouth. And she cries in sudden bursts that wrench my soul.
The only reason I’m writing now is to try and unclench my heart by moving my fingers so that maybe tonight I can get the first real sleep that has been denied both of us for the past three days. Tomorrow the hard work of dissolution begins. I doubt she’ll get through more than one or two things on the very long list of mundane horrors.
How do you tell someone you love that happiness will come again someday when you don’t believe it yourself?
This past year has brought many endings for my family. This past year I have found a capacity for hatred deep inside me that I simply did not think was possible. Hatred for those who hurt others to preserve their personal myths, for those who refuse to admit their faults, for those who when faced with their own bad behavior, blame and slander others with lies of denial. But I’ve never felt this much hatred for anyone, as I do for the cowardly cretin who destroyed my sister. If curses are possible, there is a very mean one on his head.
There are sixteen raccoons in rehab at this time. Deb told me that she usually has at least 30 raccoons during baby season. She has no idea right now why the numbers are so low, but we’re hoping it’s because the mamas are not being killed. There are also three groundhogs and two foxes. No skunks yet.
The raccoons vary in age from around 5 – 8 weeks. Today I found out that an 8 week old raccoon is almost a different animal from a 5 week old raccoon. They are hugely bigger, intensely more curious and they have a finer appreciation for music and stuffed animals. They are just as squirmy, but with more teeth and sharper claws, squirmy is a bit more painful. We wear surgical style gloves while handling the little dears, and today, they shredded three pairs. I finally gave up and just wore the shreds.
Raccoons are very intelligent and probably the most tactile animals I’ve ever handled. They not only want to touch everything, they need to touch and be touched. They need toys, interesting sights and sounds and they need incredible amounts of social interaction. If a lone baby comes in, we hope for another of the same age so that they can be cage-mates. Baby raccoons need to be close to each other. They need family. A lonely raccoon is a sad sight indeed. We try to give them extra attention, but it’s just not the same as being with a littermate.
The lucky thing for us about raising raccoons is that we can lavish all sorts of love and attention on them without worry that they will imprint on us. They recognize their caretakers as okay sorts of animals, but they don’t bond with us. They wild up really quick once they are moved outside. When they are released, they leave wild and don’t seek out humans. So we humans, as temporary caretakers, get to coo and ahh and cuddle our raccoons with abandon. Which is good because we can’t do that with skunks or foxes or most other critters because they do imprint on us and if that happens, state law dictates that they must be destroyed.
Yes, there is a bitter pill with all this. And more bitter are the babies who come to us in bad shape. We had two babies dropped off today that had been on their own for 7 days. Mom must have been killed, because raccoon moms never leave their babies for more than an hour at a time. Why the humans who found them left them on their own this long without calling is a mystery. The poor dears were starving, extremely weak, covered in fly eggs and literally being eaten alive by maggots. No hope for these two. So today, I witnessed my first release by euthanasia. It was terribly sad, but humanely done, with tenderness, love and respect.
Yes, there is the bitter downside.
But I also helped feed sixteen babies, was purred and trilled at, pawed, sniffed, had my fingers sucked on, and witnessed raccoons making music on toy pianos.
There is magic as well.
I have been very dissatisfied with myself of late. Before my back went out, I was fairly active, going to my martial arts school two or three times a week and going to two different styles of yoga twice a week: Ashtanga yoga and a gentle Kripalu yoga. I could walk miles without breaking a sweat and my doctor once told me I had the lung capacity of a marathon runner.
Then the back started to deteriorate. I don’t know why. It could have been a long ago diving accident or maybe I was just blessed with the bad “saboe” back that plagued my dad and others in our family. At any rate, I slowly had to give up Ashtanga yoga, then my TaeKwonDo/Karate/Aikido classes, then lastly my gentle yoga classes. I lived on percocet until my surgery, at which point I felt I’d been given a second chance.
My surgery was successful. I could walk again, and even though I was left with painful nerve damage in the right leg/foot, I was so much better that the nerve pain wasn’t more than an annoyance. Even so, I soon realized I would not be able to resume martial arts training or any sort of vigorous yoga practice. My surgeon recommended Pilates, which I began doing with wonderful results. Really strengthened my core, but did nothing for the weight gain that came with the decrease in my activity level. Eventually, I had to give it up due to the expense (why is Pilates so expensive?). I tried walking, but honestly, I dislike walking in my neighborhood because it is very hilly here and even with the bolts in my back, inclines == severe back pain. Then I got hold of a stationary bike. ouchouchouch. The seat just hit me in the wrong place, causing pain in my lower back and legs. All this fitness failure has been making me very despondent.
A couple years ago, my aunt downsized and sold my sister her treadmill. Lori’s experience with the treadmill mirrored mine with the bike, so a few days ago we did a fitness equipment trade and I think this will work for me. I’ve vowed to do at least 1 mile a day to start, and have even found a way to mitigate the boredom of walking in place in the basement — C-SPAM!! — er, I mean C-Span!!
Yes, I take my laptop down to the basement, balance it on a big box on top of an old tv-tray and then log onto C-Span and watch congresscritters grill BP, Transocean, and the rest of the culprits. Today, I did a mile and a half in what seemed to be no time. I’m up to where the tar balls hit the Florida keys.
I have a feeling that with the help of Congress, I will finally lose this post-surgery weight.
Sometimes my animals are just too cute for words.
When the weather is nice, Loki will go out on the deck, choose one of her balls, and then sit there, ball in mouth, waiting for one of us to notice that she’d like to play. She will wait for quite some time, as she has the patience of a saint.
Milo likes to hang out at the front window, watching the neighbors.
The two seem to like each other. One day, Milo was perched on his cage door, eating a snow pea. Loki likes to sit under him and wait for crumbs. This time, Loki reached up and gently took the pea from Milo’s beak. Milo didn’t seem to mind as nary a feather was ruffled. He just went inside and got another pea. That’s one picture I regret not getting.
I can hardly believe that Loki is 9 years old and Milo is 24.
So, I decided to make up some t-shirts over on Zazzle with the different dragon illustrations. The shirts also have the listing of contributing authors on the back. If you click on the link below the pictures, it will take you right to the shirts in my Zazzle store. Two shirts are shown below, but there are seven in total for the Dragon’s Lure illustrations.
Support your local starving artist! Buy dragon shirts!
Here are the illustrations for the other book I worked on, which were finished right before I started Dragon’s Lure. This is the third in the Bad-Ass Faeries series: Bad-Ass Faeries 3: In All Their Glory. For book and launch info, go here: http://www.sidhenadaire.com/promoBAF3.htm
All the illustrations are posted on my Flickr page, http://www.flickr.com/photos/thereallinda/sets/72157623765082107/
And here’s a sample…
The editor of Dragon’s Lure anthology has given me permission to post the illustrations I did for the book. The book will launch on Sunday, May 30th at Balticon. Here’s a link to the site for the book: http://www.sidhenadaire.com/books/DL.htm
All the illustrations can be found on my Flickr page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thereallinda/sets/72157623889189888/
And a few samples…
just in case you thought i’ve been idle, here are some pics of the most recent water birds, just finished yesterday.
for some reason, i can’t seem to get decent photos of these two, but you all get the idea. the cormorant is about 10.5 inches and the pelicans are about 11.5 inches at the highest point. both sculpts are sculpture clay with pigmented wax finish.
We purchase our health insurance through the local Chamber of Commerce because we don’t have insurance through any workplace and individual policies are exorbitant for our age group. The first policy we had was a PPO, which was expensive but gave us the freedom and coverage that we wanted. Then a little over a year later, they upped our premium to over $1600 per month AND said that they were charging us retroactively to the beginning of our coverage because they made an accounting error. Despite the ensuing phone call fights, we ended up switching to an HMO with lesser coverage, higher copays, and paying the ass wipes the difference their error cost us.
Last year, as punishment to the country for even debating health care, our HMO upped our premiums by something like 25% and now we are paying over $800 per month for lousy coverage. Every claim, no matter how minor, no matter how necessary, is challenged on some level. We fight for every dime of coverage even though we have paid them far more in premiums than they have paid out in claims because we are healthy people. But, that’s the game we are paying through the nose to play.
Today, we received a letter from the Chamber of Commerce’s broker, USI (dunno what that stands for). IBC (Independence Blue Cross (tada)) has decided to halt coverage for all sole proprietors and other 1099 contractors (which is what we are). Now, the broker claims that existing customers will not lose their insurance, but that no new contractors will be insured. They are also going to assess a 2.75% fee on top of our monthly premiums because…well, I guess because they had to write that letter telling us how sorry they were that IBC would no longer cover contractors. They magnanimously offered to check for the best deal in health insurance for free if we decide we’d like to not be hung out to dry by IBC. But of course, if we switch we can never ever ever go back to IBC because, after all, we are obviously deadbeats working our butts off for ourselves and our money just ain’t good enough for them.
bah.
gonna find me a good voodoo doctor and buy me a powerful juju.
So today I got my last rabies vaccine. Now, all I have to do is have a titter drawn on May 2nd and I’ll be cleared to start work at the Diamond Rock Wildlife Rehab. I’m very excited about this and having a hard time not being squirmy with anticipation.
I was a tad worried that my first grandson might decide to make his entrance to the world today leaving me with the horrible dilemma of either missing his birth or missing the vaccine (which if that happened, I’d have to purchase my own vaccine at an exorbitant rate or give up the volunteer job). But, my dear sweet boy decided help me out and stay put. What a good little boy he’s destined to be.
So, here I sit, pooter in lap, arm all itchified, drinking a celebratory Easter beer.
