Ugh...cold - February 29, 2024

Happy Leap Day, and happy birthday to my Aunt Bonnie, who turns about 20 today.  :)

Yesterday was Office Day.  It went by unusually fast, for I had exciting work to do.  For the first half of the day, I scanned and emailed a 2-foot tall stack of documents.  Wooohoooo!  Great fun!  But it gave me something to do.  After lunch, I worked on my new project.

My new project is to figure out how to start a county document archive.  My love of history and genealogy makes this work kind of exciting.  I'm researching the law, talking to archivists, making lists.  The non-fun part is being powerless to make decisions and get 'er done.  Bureaucracy, you know.  The hard part will be figuring out how much space is needed (somebody else will have to figure out how to pay for it).  Our county offices are bursting at the seams with paper that must be kept, and their records are stored all over the place.  I've got to get a handle on what's out there, and where it is, before I can figure out how much space an archive will need.  Today, I'm having lunch with a couple of clerks to find out where their documents are.  In a few weeks, I'll be going to an archivist training class.  It surprises me that The New Boss is sending me to that class, for I probably will have retired before this thing gets off the ground.  Maybe he anticipates that I will volunteer at the archive.  He might be right.  ;)

Warm...for now - February 27, 2024

The delightful warm weather we've had for the past few days is about to be gone.  It was windy yesterday, and even windier today.  Already this morning, I've heard limbs crashing in the woods behind the house.  

Don't wear a dress today!  :)

As I was having my first cup of coffee in my recliner by the living room window, I heard an unusual noise that sounded much like leaves being blown across the yard.  It wasn't the wind, it was a big flock of birds flying over.  I'd seen these big flocks from a distance but had never HEARD them.  It was kind of awesome.  A little while later, I came out to the porch and heard a chorus of chirping; the flock had landed in the trees on the far side of the pond.  That was kind of awesome, too.  Later, as The Husband was leaving for work, the flock had moved on, but we startled a big blue heron that had landed by the pond and watched him try to fly away in this wind.  It's a miracle he didn't get slammed against a tree.

The forsythia decided to bloom today.

I am going to painting class in a couple of hours.  Still working on the tractor picture.  My paint palette has been in the freezer since the last class. At this rate, the canvas will decompose before the painting is finished. 

* * * * * * * * 

I remain mildly fixated on pop-up cards.  Yesterday, a YouTube video suckered me into buying the SVG files to make a paper house.  I downloaded the files and began cutting the pieces last night.  There are a gazillion pieces to this thing.  The likelihood of it actually getting built - satisfactorily built - is slim.  I got handed a new project at work.  Plus, beginning in early March, I'm going to fill in at the office for a lady who is having knee surgery.  So my idle time is about to shrink.  

 

Monday - February 26 ,2024

We could not have asked for a better February weekend than the one we just had.  It was warm and sunny - a little windy, but tolerable - both days.  Daffodils are blooming around the porch, in the front beds, and along the driveway.  

The daffodil bed is lovely (from a distance) once a year.  The foliage conceals a tangle of dewberry vines that I have given up trying to eliminate.  The vines, themselves, are not all that unsightly, and they do make berries (though the critters get them), but they make it tough to weed out other weeds and saplings. 

Tulip foliage is sprouting, but they are old bulbs that have been in the ground for years, and they probably won't bloom.  (Although I did replant some that I dug up when I was planting something else; they might give it a try.)  

I think the milkweed seeds are sprouting.  I planted them in the phlox bed, and these sprouts don't look like phlox or any of the many weeds that inhabit that bed.  Keeping my fingers crossed.  

I was excited to find a few larkspur sprouts in the zinnia bed.  I planted the seeds last June, if you can call throwing them on the ground "planting."  A local gardener gave me the seeds when I commented on her lovely larkspur crop.  She just reached over, stripped the seeds from a dried stem, and put them in my hand.  I scattered them in the zinnia bed when I got home, and when I raked the leaves from that bed last week, there were a few larkspur under them.  I so hope that one of the plants survives to make more babies for next year.  The leaves are still lying next to the bed.  If we get another bad cold snap, I will put them back.

Zinnias aren't up, yet.  

Hellebores are going to town.  I love them.  Later today, I'm going on a hunt for hellebore babies.  

Friday was such a nice day, sunny and warm.  I had a 9 a.m. meeting to attend.  After the meeting, I went to the election office to vote early in the upcoming primary, did some food shopping, and came home and planted some cabbage and broccoli seeds.

Having seen it done in pictures on the internet, I planted these seeds in clear plastic stacking storage drawers.  I'm not sure I did it properly - I put a 4"-deep layer of dirt in the drawers, wet the dirt, and poked the seeds into it.  Maybe I should have planted the seeds in seed-starting cells so that their roots would be less disturbed when the plants go in the garden.  We'll see what happens.  

I am ready for The Husband to get his *ss on the tractor and get the garden soil ready for planting.   At the end of the growing season last year, he ran the tiller over the garden and I planted mustard greens for a cover crop.  The greens did not do very well, and a soil test revealed the cause: there is no nitrogen in the soil, probably because we tilled about 12 tons of un-composted dry leaves into the garden plot.  We need to spread the nitrogen fertilizer I bought a couple of weeks ago, but we keep getting little rains that make the soil too wet to work.  Yesterday I had a look at the garden.  It is not standing in water, but it is pretty mushy.  I was happy to see that the tiller is hooked to the tractor, so when the soil finally gets workable, we can get right on it. 

My sister and her daughter came here for lunch yesterday.  They are both into landscape gardening and had been working in my niece's yard.  After lunch, we dug up some sedum from my flower bed for my niece to transplant to her yard.  Last week, she brought me a box full of "surprise lily" bulbs, the little reddish ones that come up in late summer.  (She lives on her ancestors' home place, where somebody, a hundred years or more ago, planted daffodils and surprise lilies, and the property is covered with them.)  There must be 200 bulbs in the box.  If I had any gumption, I could plant lilies all over this yard.  I planted a few of them yesterday after my company left, but I hope to give most of them away.

I also planted - or, rather, PREPARED to plant - a pack of lavender seeds that I bought Friday.  The package instructions amounted to "put them in dirt and give them light and water."  I have tried this method in the past, several times, without success.  So I went to the internet, which said the seeds need to be "stratified," which means they need to be exposed to cold.  The internet had several methods of doing this.  I ended up sprinkling the seeds onto a moist paper towel, putting the towel in a plastic bag, and putting it in the refrigerator.  I told my telephone to set an alarm for 10 a.m., one month from now, at which time I will put the seeds in dirt and put them under the grow lamp.  

Yesterday, The Husband and Son #1 worked on the "new" truck he bought last weekend.  They replaced the water pump and the thermostat.  They took it "around the block," which is about 5 miles, and it did not over-heat, so it appears they fixed the problem.  It's a fairly sweet ride, considering how old it is.  Son #1 may claim ownership, if he can afford to keep gas in it.

At Home - February 22, 2023

After umpteen days (it seems) of being away from the house, I was expecting today to be an "at home" day.  My plan was to make one more pop-up card, then make a plan to move some other projects along.  

All of my projects seem to be eternally in the planning stage, don't they?

It's because I keep getting interrupted by other plans.

And because I am not quite skilled enough to pull off some of the sh*t I want to do.

Anyway . . . . 

This morning at 6:30, Granddaughter #1 sent me a picture of two t-shirts (for sorority big/little sisters) and asked if I could get them to her by next Friday.  Of course, I said yes.  They have to be mailed all the way across the state.

I was not planning on doing that kind of craft today.  My work table was littered with cardstock and cutting/marking/gluing supplies, with some paint supplies shoved off to one corner.  

Admittedly, it was getting out of control, but I needed to do one more card before I put all the card-making stuff away.  But The Granddaughter comes first.  I cleaned up the work table, pitched all the card stuff in one box, all the paint stuff in another.

I did not have any t-shirts.  But the Dollar General up the road had some thin ones.  They'll do.  Brought them home and washed them.  They're drying now.

Meanwhile, I have cut the vinyl lettering (holy moly, it actually worked).  Gonna fire up that heat press soon, and if my luck holds out, I can make it to the post office in time to get it in today's mail.

So far, so good, unless these cheap shirts come out of the dryer two sizes smaller than they went in the washer.

The time I've spent jacking around with pop-up cards has not been wasted, for I have learned to use the software and the cutting machine without too many foul-ups.  Now it's time to bone up on the heat press.  My machine is cheap and kind of janky, and most of the time I can't figure out how to make it count out the seconds and beep when it's done.  ("One, mississippi, two mississippi....")  Cross your fingers that these cheap shirts don't melt.

Addendum:

The t-shirts are in the mail, along with a few surprises.  Expecting the worst, I bought two of each shirt.  Good thing.  I kinda screwed up the first shirt with tape adhesive.  (It will probably wash out, but I made a duplicate just in case it doesn't.)  The overall design included some large and small polka dots that wanted to peel off with the carrier sheet.  This required a little engineering.  They may come off in the wash, too!

Presidents' Day - February 20, 2024

Yesterday was Presidents' Day.  The Husband and I were both off from work.  We spent the first half of the morning at the doctor's office, having some tests run on The Husband.  

On our way home, we stopped to eat lunch.  As we were finishing up our meal, another couple came into the restaurant.  The man looked familiar, but I could not summon his name from my memory.  Eventually, I said to The Husband, "There's an old guy in here that I think we went to school with."  The old guy was probably saying the same thing to his wife about us.

Yesterday was also Son #1's birthday.  We took him and his family out to dinner, gave him a gift certificate to a music store for his birthday gift.

We tried to give him the truck that The Husband bought from his uncle over the weekend.  He came over Sunday after church, and he and The Husband took it out for a long test drive.  It over-heated.  They think it needs a water pump and a thermostat.  Son #1 is something of a shade-tree mechanic and can make simple repairs, so yesterday after lunch, The Husband bought the parts.  I guess they'll work on the truck this weekend.  

When we came home from our errands, I puttered around in the yard.  Raked leaves out of some of the flower beds.  Pruned some dead clematis from the arch.  Checked to see what survived the January deep freeze.  

In the few hours I had at home between the doctor visit and the birthday dinner, I played with making pop-up cards.  The Valentine's Day card project spawned a fixation. I must know how these things operate.  

My kitchen table and the floors all over the house are littered with paper bits.  They're not hurting anything.  ;)

Today is painting class day.  And lunch with The Old Boss.  And Granddaughter pick-up after school.  It's a good thing we have that spare car that The Husband bought a month ago, because my daily car has a nail in a tire, and my Wrangler hasn't been cranked for months and probably has a dead battery.  

I hope the spare car has gas in it.  :-\

Truck - February 18, 2024

The Husband has an 80-something-year-old uncle who decided to sell his 2003 Chevy Silverado pickup truck.  King cab.  125K miles.  We went to look at it yesterday.  He drove it home yesterday afternoon.

Our driveway is not going to hold very many more vehicles.

But it's a great truck. 

And we have a grandson who will need some wheels pretty soon.

* * * * * * * * 

After dropping The Husband off at the uncle's house, I went shopping.

I know!  Can you believe it?

All I bought, other than groceries and two giant bags of dirt, was a package of cardstock.  

In about two weeks, I am going to fill this thing - 

- with trays of tomato seeds.

Friday - February 16, 2024

We had our 44th Anniversary Dinner last night at an Italian restaurant.  

On our first anniversary, I was four days over-due with Son #1 (and four days away from his birth).  We went to Memphis with the frozen top of our wedding cake, planning on dinner at a steak restaurant we liked, but it was Sunday, and the restaurant was closed.  We chose another steakhouse.  Our cake had crumbled all to heck when dessert time rolled around.  When the waiter saw it, he gave us a free dessert - cheesecake, I think.  

Before we started on the long drive home, I went to the ladies' room.  There were only two stalls, and one of them was occupied.  The remaining stall was against a wall, and on that wall, less than 2 feet from the stall, was a radiator that prevented the stall door from opening all the way.  I managed to squeeze in but squeezing out (without giving the baby a concussion) was tricky.  By the time I got back to our table, The Husband was about ready to send for help.

Last night's dinner was less stressful.  The restaurant had a Valentine's Day menu that was still running, and on that menu was a Chocolate-Covered Cherry martini.  Now, I love me some chocolate-covered cherries.  The martini was . . . okay.  It was pink and frothy and had chocolate syrup dripping down the inside of the glass.  If we'd been at home, I'd have put my whole face in the glass to get at that chocolate, but The Husband frowns on that sort of thing in public.  *snicker*

It had a kick, though.  By the time we got home at 7:30, I was longing for the bed . . . for SLEEPING.  I'd gotten up at 4:30 a.m. and would've been useless even without the martini.  I managed to stay upright until 9:00, when I gave up and went to bed.

Up at 4:30 again this morning.  It was still dark when I came out to the porch with my laptop and coffee.  The barred owls were awake and hooting at one another.  One of them has a call that sounds like something from a Tarzan movie.  

* * * * * * * 

Yesterday, I saw the first crocus bloom of the year.  The daffodils are up, 6" tall or better, and budding.  It appears that last year's new hydrangeas made it through the cold snap, but barely, even though they were covered.  Another bad freeze might do them in.  

I don't have a plan for today.  I went outside and cut back a couple of my rosebushes, but didn't venture very far from the house.  The yard is squishy, made even squishier by mole tunnels EVERYWHERE.  I need to find the mole trap and set it.  I need to start some tomato seeds, or at least gather up the supplies.  Earlier in the week I bought the fertilizer and lime recommended by the garden soil test.  It's too wet to apply them right now.  

Yesterday, I worked on the tractor painting and made it worse instead of better.  Ended the exercise by painting over a whole section of the tractor's "innards" (on purpose); will re-do it when the paint dries, if I don't paint the whole thing white and start over with a subject that is not a #*@*! old tractor.

Anniversary - February 15, 2024

Come 7:30 or so tonight, The Husband and I will have been married for 44 years.  Can you believe it?  I can't.  How can that much time go by so fast?

* * * * * * * * 

After I take care of a couple of work things, I am going to work on my tractor oil painting.  Here's a picture of it (propped against Not-Daddy's Radio):

This is from an image I found on the internet when I searched for old tractors.  I don't know who/what created it.

It doesn't look like much right now.  That rear tire is a b*tch.  And I should have picked a tractor that did not have its insides so shamelessly exposed so I wouldn't have to paint them.  That is not a lime behind the back wheel.  I don't know what it is, as it's covered up with weeds in the picture.  It's probably some kind of wheel/cog.  I'll see if I can find a different picture of that model that shows it better, but I'm going to cover it up with weeds, anyway, like the picture.  

No clue what to do in the foreground.  The tractor may be parked in a grassy green field by the time I'm done.

And the weeds may be morning glories instead of goldenrod.  ;)

  

Spoke too Soon - February 14, 2024

I guess it was too good to be true.

I was so excited to learn that my friend still had Daddy's radio.  It was incredible that he had found the parts to fix it.

We met at noon in the parking lot of the painting studio.  He put it in the back of my car, opened the top, and started showing me what all they had replaced.  When he closed the lid, my excitement began to wane.  It did not look like Daddy's radio.  The brand was correct, but the front panel did not look like I remembered.  My friend assured me that it was the radio I had brought to him, some 30 years ago.

When I got home, I called my sister and asked her to describe the radio as she remembered it.  "Well, it had a dark gray or black case.  A bunch of knobs across the front, and some metal switches.  And I remember a semi-circular dial...."  All of these features were correct.  But I remembered the radio having two semi-circular dials, and this radio had only one; there was a square speaker panel on the right, where the other semi-circular dial should have been.  I did some research on the model number of the radio I brought home.  It was built in the 40s; the story I remembered was that Daddy had bought the radio new, when I was a baby (in the late 50s).  

I texted my nephew (oldest of my parents' grandchildren) and Son #1 and asked them to describe the radio.  My nephew sent a picture of what he remembered the radio looking like.  It had two semi-circular dials.  I texted the picture to my brother, along with a picture of the radio I had brought home and asked which of the two most resembled Daddy's radio.  He picked the one with two dials.

So I am convinced that this is not Daddy's radio.  And I'm also convinced that if Daddy's radio still exists, my friend doesn't have it.  

:-(

* * * * * * * * 

In painting class yesterday, I worked on an oil painting that I started back in December, a picture of an old rusty tractor.  This was a mighty ambitious project for a beginner - all those tractor "doo-dads."  I worked on the tires in class, and worked on them some more on the back porch once I got it home.

Oil is not a good medium for me.  I am a messy painter (oil paint is forever if you get it on your clothes).  This morning, while writing this on the back porch, I stopped to go to the bathroom, and as I was washing my hands, the mirror showed a big blob of burnt sienna on my chin that wasn't there last night.  Evidently, I had smeared paint on the porch table yesterday, and had gotten into it this morning.  I scrubbed my chin clean, but 30 minutes later when I was getting dressed for work, there was burnt sienna paint on my chin again.  After getting dressed, I went on a hunt for a stray paint blob and eventually found it on the bottom of my laptop.  

Good grief.

Perhaps I should stick to watercolors.

A Relic Restored - February 13, 2024

Wow!  Just wow!

When I was a baby, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, my father worked on a river boat.  In those days, no one had cell phones and computers - we were lucky to have a party-line home phone - and it was difficult to know when/where Daddy would be leaving the boat and coming home.  My parents' solution was to buy a Hallicrafter ham radio receiver.  We did not have a transmitter, but we could find the boat's communication channel on the radio and figure out approximately where it was and what time Daddy would be getting off the boat.  For an antenna, Daddy strung a copper wire out the living room window to the top of a nearby willow tree.  That radio would pick up channels all over the world.  

Daddy quit the river boat when I was a toddler, but the radio still served us.  When the TV would blow a sound tube, we could pick up the TV station on the radio and listen while we watched the mute TV.  The words and the mouth movements sometimes didn't *quite* match, but that was the case sometimes, anyway.  

Daddy loved that radio.  Eventually, it migrated from the living room to his bedroom.  He would listen to it, on and off, all night.  He loved "Radio Reader," and got my boys hooked on the program.  They'd lay in bed with him and listen to Dick Estelle reading books aloud.  But by the 90s, the radio had quit working.  The old tubes and parts were hard to get.  The radio became a dust collector. I bought Daddy a small radio that picked up stations other than am/fm radio, but it wasn't nearly as enjoyable for him. 

In about 1991-1992, I took the radio to a repair shop to see if it could be fixed.  The manager of this now-defunct chain store was a ham operator and belonged to a radio club, and he had good hopes of finding the parts needed to fix the old radio.  At that time, I was operating a business, myself, and was working long, stress-filled hours.  The radio was the least of my worries.

Maybe more than a year later, I remembered the radio, but when I went to the repair shop to check on it, the shop was closed, out of business.  I had known the owner for quite some time and was able to get him on the telephone.  He said that the stuff from his shop was stored, somewhere in the county, in a pole barn that belonged to a fellow radio club member.  He said he'd see if he could locate it.  I "knew of" the guy who owned the pole barn and figured my chances of getting the radio back were slim to none.  My repair guy never called me back.  

Yesterday, I remembered the radio again.  It has been 25+ years since I've seen/spoken to the radio repair guy.  I didn't even know if he was still alive.  I found his son on Facebook and sent him a message.  He replied with his father's telephone number.  I called him last night.  

He has the radio.  Twenty years ago, he took it to his brother, an electronics whiz, to see if it could be repaired.  The last time he tried it, it worked.  He is going to hook it up and try it out today.  Whether it works or not, I'm going to pick it up this afternoon.

I am thrilled, and utterly surprised that he still has the radio after all this time.

Son #1 loves radios, has a nice CB radio setup, himself.  If he wants it, the old Hallicrafter may live at his house.

* * * * * * * * 

Yesterday's rain changed to snow around 6 p.m.  We got a pretty good dusting.

It's not sticking on the roads, but bridges and over-passes are treacherously slick with "black ice."

Today is painting class day, but I don't know if the ladies are going to venture out.  If they open the studio, I will probably go.

L-o-n-g Day - February 12, 2024

It's 1 p.m, and it's already been a l-o-n-g day.

Son #1 was scheduled for a heart cath today and needed me to take him.  (Thankfully, the test did not reveal any serious problems.)  We had to be there at 6 a.m., which means we had to leave his house at 5 a.m., which means I had to get my butt up and moving early.  As soon as the football game was over, I set the coffee pot to come on at 4:30, told my phone to wake me up at 4:40, and went to bed in the spare bedroom (so the alarm wouldn't wake The Husband), wearing the clothes I planned to wear to the hospital.

Most nights, I read in bed for about 5 minutes (if it's not a particularly interesting book) before falling asleep.  It's like I have an off/on switch that activates when I'm horizontal.  And, though I get up early, most days, I generally sleep through the night.  

Not last night.  

At midnight, I woke up hungry.  Got up and ate a piece of toast, drank some buttermilk, read a little while, went back to bed.  At 2, I woke up again, still wearing my glasses.  Got up to pee.  At 3, I knocked my Kindle off the bed; it hit the hardwood floor with a loud pop.  (Good thing I'd already peed, eh?)  At 4, I just plain woke up and got up for good.  

It was good hanging out with my son today, even though it was kind of scary.  Considering his family history, I'm glad he got checked.  

I need to find something productive to do for the rest of the afternoon.  A nap sounds enticing, but it would ruin me for two days.

Whatever I find to do, it will be inside.  It's raining, and colder than a well-digger's butt out here on the porch.

Finis! - February 11, 2024

The Grandchildren Pop-Up Valentine Card Project is finished!  

Can I get a Hallelujah!?

It was a mistake to mail Granddaughter #3's card before I finished her siblings' cards.  I texted their mother and warned her that it was coming.  She will hold it until the other two cards arrive.

I am not particularly happy with any of the cards.  This is "par for the course" for me; I am never happy with anything I do. Hopefully, most of the grandchildren are too young to wonder if I was drunk when I made their cards.  

* * * * * * * *

Rant:

I hate those web sites that make you click through screen after screen to read a whole news story. Henceforth, I refuse to keep clicking.  

While I'm ranting, how about these politicians, eh?  

* * * * * * * * 

I would not let myself go there on the subject of politics, so I went outside and puttered around in the yard.  Turned the compost, raked some leaves out of the beds where perennials will soon be sprouting, planted some radish seeds that have been here for years and a few broccoli seeds in the flower bed by the back door.  

I also re-styled Richard's hair.  He's been sitting there, bald, for a couple of years. 

Let me tell you, it's HARD to get chia seeds to stick to round things.  You have to soak them in water, and they get all gelatinous, but not gelatinous enough to defy gravity.  His hair slid off the back of his head about 10 times.  Spooning in back on reminded me of feeding a baby, where you scrape that same spoonful of sweet potatoes off his chin and feed them to him again.  ;)  There were a few banana pepper seeds in Richard's try that got mixed in with the chia slime, and they stuck to his head just fine.  I left them there.

There are still some chia seeds in the packet.  I'm going to rough him up with a wire brush next time.

Rain - February 9, 2024

It is a yucky, rainy day at my house.  Not cold - almost 60 - just gray and drizzly.  

I just walked two more Valentine cards to the mailbox.  Still have two to go.  Last night I tried to do a card with pop-up flowers - another video tutorial.  This required cutting and assembling 7 flowers and then gluing them together at their tips so that they pop out when the card is opened.  I assembled my seven flowers and clamped them together with a binder clip.  Evidently, the binder clip squeezed out some glue.  My flower assemblage is stuck together, flat as a pancake, this morning.  

Back to the cutting machine.

I need different glue. :-/  

* * * * * * * * 

There was a news story on NPR a few days ago about a new tomato (or at least new tomato seeds) about to come on the market.  It is purple, genetically modified - crossed with a snapdragon - to increase the lycopene in the fruit.  In the pictures, it is VERY dark purple.  It's a cherry tomato.  I ordered some seeds a couple of days ago.  10 seeds for $20. 

At that price, they'd better be good.

Sidetracked and P*ssed - February 8, 2024

Grrrrrr.  

About those Valentine cards for my grandchildren . . . . 

Last night after dinner I sat down to paint the remaining three cards.  As I had already shot my best ideas on the ones I'd already made, I went to YouTube to steal somebody else's ideas.  ;)  This was a mistake.  

I saw "pop-up" cards.

There was this really cute one that opens up to a planter full of grass with tulip-like hearts mingled in.  

Now, I had a brief love affair with pop-up cards a year or two ago.  It lasted long enough for me to acquire a stash of paper and other supplies - scissors that cut pretty borders, all kinds of tape and glue, embossing powder, ya-da ya-da - and it all survived last year's craft room purge.  So when I saw the heart-y pop-up card video, I thought, I can make that, and I stopped the video, went to the cra - er, studio - and dug it all out.

In the stash was a stack of glitter cardstock in colors that my granddaughters love.  It nearly took my breath away.  What pretty cards it would it make!  So I go back to the video and learned that each card required cutting FORTY-FIVE tiny (1/2") hearts, which would be glued together in groups of 3 to make the heart-flowers.  45 x 3 = 135 tiny hearts.  No way.

But ... 

There's a cutting machine in the studio.  I hadn't used it for a long time.  The cutting mats aren't very sticky anymore, but there's one good-ish one that would do.  And the machine even had a pre-designed, perfect heart shape that I could re-size and duplicate 135 times.  I wasn't sure the cutting machine could handle that glittery cardstock, so I cut out 135+ hearts out of plain cardstock, pink and red, and glued 45 of them together in groups of 3- enough to do one card.  

I finished that one card before I went to bed.  Let's just say it was not as pretty as the one in the video.  I should've done the hearts on thinner paper, I think.  

So this morning I got busy trying to re-vamp the video project to suit the supplies I have on hand.  I really, really wanted to include the glitter cardstock somehow, so I decided to test it in the cutting machine.  It is thick, and gritty, and I knew it would dull the blade, but I knew I had spare blades, so I went for it.  I cut 3 glittery blue butterflies - small, medium, and large - had my blade set to 6, 0 pressure - and they came out pretty good, with just a tiny bit of snagging.  So I cut another set of butterflies in pink.  They, too, came out snagged but good enough to use.  So then I tried some green ones, and this time I flipped the cardstock over so that the glittery side was down.  BIG MISTAKE.  My mat was already not very sticky, and the cardstock shifted when the cutting started.  I stopped it right quick, flipped the green over, and started over.  It cut half of the first butterfly, and then just started moving across the page, cutting nothing.  

The blade *shaft* had broken.  The cutting tip fell off, but the shaft did not fall out.  I made several attempts to pry it out, knock it out, dig it out, but no luck.  I gave up and ordered a new blade holder (and a new blade for a spare).  

Well, that shoots the pop-up card idea.  

But I had that one I made last night, and though it was not very professional-looking, I put it in the mail to Granddaughter #1, away at college, and went back to looking for ideas for the other two cards.  (One is for the LRB, the other for The Grandson).  

Overload.

Paralysis!

I gave up for a bit and went back to try again to get the blade shaft out of the cutting machine blade holder.  And this time I did it.  Took it apart from the top, where I don't think it's *really* supposed to come apart.  If you squeeze it just right, though, the top cap can be eased off without breaking the little nubs that hold it on.  There's a magnet inside.  It was easy to get out with a little screwdriver, but a bitch to get back in (wouldn't turn loose of the screwdriver - had to use a skewer).  When I put it back together, the depth dial wouldn't turn, but I took it apart and reassembled it, and it worked and fine cutting out a Valentine card I downloaded from somewhere.  

So, yay for the blade-holder.  :)

Not so yay for the card it cut out.  I made a mess gluing it together.

What the heck.  She's THREE.

Office Day - February 7, 2024

Whew, I'm glad that's over with.

It's not that I dislike the people I work with - they are a great bunch of folks.  

I just prefer to be in my cocoon.  

I'm pupating. 

Pupative.

(The spell checker says that's not a real word.  I beg to differ.)

Tomorrow, I'm going to paint Valentine cards for my grandchildren.  I've already done a couple - two down, three to go.  Friday I am going to mail them.  

I even have postage stamps.

I think.

Heebie-Jeebies - February 6, 2024

This is a rare p.m. post.  I was too lazy to do it any earlier.  Too lazy to do most anything, in fact.

Woke up at 4:30 this morning and read until The Husband got up at 6 and turned on the TV.  The book is about portraits of Benjamin Franklin and the people who painted them, and it is surprisingly interesting.  It's a real book, too; you'd have to lick your finger to swipe these pages.  

Cooked breakfast.

Thought about doing a load of laundry, but . . . nah.

Wrote a proclamation (for work).

Read my work email.

Thought about going to painting class, but wasn't sure if they were having it.  The teacher has been sick, and classmates have had surgeries, trips, deaths in the family, and such.  One of the ladies has been opening up the studio on Tuesday, but she didn't text us that she would do that today, so I just assumed we weren't having class.  At 10:30 the teacher texted that she was there, but by that time my mind was on other things.  

Around noon, Son #2 called to ask if I could pick up Granddaughter #2 from track team tryouts at 5:30.  I said sure.  I was still in my housecoat and hadn't had a shower since Sunday morning.  

Eventually, I got up and showered and put on some actual clothes.  Went to the grocery store.  Picked up the kid, bought her some supper, and took her home.  Came home and made some muffins for breakfast this week.

Tomorrow is office day.  

Yay.

Road Trip - February 5, 2024

We are back from a weekend trip, halfway across the state, to watch Granddaughter #1 ride in a horsemanship competition.  We bravely drove the "new" Jeep we bought at the auction.  The Husband took it to a mechanic last week to have some new wheel sensors installed, and all the "uh-oh" lights on the dashboard went off, so we decided to chance it.  It did fine.  That hemi engine burns a lot of gas, though.

Granddaughter #1 won two ribbons - 5th and 6th place - in a western event.  The judges critique both the rider's posture/form/dress as well as his/her ability to control the horse.  The contestants are riding horses that are not familiar, and some of the horses can get a little cantankerous.  Granddaughter's horse in Saturday's's event was the plodding-est beast in the world - reminded me of Eyore - and he did NOT want to jog or back up.  She finally got him to do what she wanted him to do, but it took some work.  Sunday's horse acted better.  But there were a couple of other horses that got "fired" from the event for acting up.  I guess by Sunday they'd had enough.

This morning, I am sitting here on the porch, drinking coffee and listening to the birds as I test my new battery.  It came Friday, but I was doing laundry and drawing #*!@ bluebirds and didn't want to fool with the battery that day.  But there it was - it and all the road-trip accoutrements - piled up on the kitchen table this morning.  I cleaned off the table and got my screwdriver.  For a minute, I thought they'd shipped (or else I'd ordered) the wrong battery.  It looked w-a-y longer than I remembered, but it fit.  I probably haven't given it a fair chance to show its stuff, as I only let it charge to 50% before I pulled the plug and brought the laptop to the porch.  There's an extension cord right under my table that I put out here just for the laptop, but I don't think the laptop likes it and I suspect it might be the reason why the old battery gave out so soon.  When the battery poops out, or I get too cold, I'll take it inside and juice it up good.  

And then dooooooo...what?

I need to work on the bluebird.  The intended recipient of the future masterpiece is 92 years old; I should not fiddle with this too long.  The trouble is that I can't decide how to do it.  I've tried watercolor, colored pencils, and pen & ink, and have yet to produce something worthy of gifting.  And you want to hear what's worse?  The intended recipient is the mother of a professional artist and former art teacher.  How's that for pressure?

I took my art supplies with me on the road trip and did the birds in colored pencil.  They need a little more work, but they'll do.  If I don't screw it up trying to do a background, this may be my final version. 

* * * * * * * *  

The battery says it's good for another 3 hours, but I'm cold, and should be painting.

* * * * * * * * 

P.S. - Just to let you know . . . .  I did it.  I finished the bluebirds.  Ta-daaa.

Groundhog Day - Friday, February 2, 2024

Phil the Groundhog (from the town whose name no one can spell) did not see his shadow this morning.  I hope our resident groundhog keeps his butt in his burrow this morning, for I am D-O-N-E with winter, and the sun is shining here.

Yesterday after talking to my sister about bird paintings, I painted a pair of bluebirds with watercolors.  As with the first colored pencil drawing, I could not decide how to do the background.  After looking at some online pictures - photographs as well as drawings - I decided to put the birds in a peach tree and surround them with abstract pink blossoms.  It looks awful, reminds me of Victorian cabbage rose wallpaper.  I am going to start a third version today, and regardless of how it turns out, I am going to give ALL of the renderings to my sister, including the bluejay.  

Want to know what the worst part of this is?  My sister's friend's son is an artist and a former art teacher.  He will critique my work.  He will probably give me an F.  ;)

But this adventure has been instructive.  If nothing else, I learned to how to paint cabbage rose wallpaper. 

I have decided to do the bluebirds with colored pencils, not watercolor.  This weekend, we are going to watch Granddaughter #1 at her equestrian event.  It will be a long road trip, so I may take my pencils and work on it in the car.  

* * * * * * * * 

You will not believe the story I am about to tell you, but it is 100% true.  Make of it what you will.  ;)

Lately, I've been moderately fixated on honeybees.  For years, I've worried about them, as a species, because if they struggle, we will, too.  I've been using them in my artwork, trying to learn to draw and paint and embroider them for different projects.  I plant flowers for them.  But, like the bluejays, I rarely get to see them up close and personal.  

Yesterday was a nice day, and so I propped the back porch screen doors open to let in some fresh air.  (The porch is wrapped in clear vinyl for the winter.)  As I was sitting here, surfing bluebird images, I heard a buzz and looked around to find a honeybee bouncing his way across the porch screens, trying to fly.  He bounced all the way around the porch, and when he got to the door near me, instead of flying out, he skipped the opening and resumed his bouncing on the screen about five feet from me.

I said, out loud, "I wish you'd be still so I could get a good look at you."  And he landed and went still.  I looked him over and said, "Ok, you can go now."  He started buzzing again, and turned around, and flew RIGHT AT MY FACE.  I leaned sideways, but he kept coming, and I waved my hand and said, out loud, "No!  Get out!" And he hovered for a second then zoomed right out the door, like he had known where it was all along.  

. . . . 

Ok, yes, I need to get out more.  ;)

Commission - February 1, 2024

I got my first "commission" Tuesday afternoon.  Don't get excited.  It was just my sister, asking me to paint something as a gift for her ex-mother-in-law.  She said her "e-m-i-l" likes bluebirds and cardinals, but really any kind of "regular" bird would do.  She did not specify a medium.

I decided to do a bluejay because they are colorful and funny and impressive with their bad selves.  We don't see many bluejays in our yard until it snows and we put out birdseed.  The bluejay suddenly comes out of nowhere and RULES the birdfeeder...until the woodpecker arrives.*  I cannot accurately draw any kind of bird "from my head," so I googled "bluejay" and found some images to use and was able to freehand a reasonably recognizable bluejay.  Because I could not decide what medium to use - watercolor, pen & ink, or colored pencils - I did a pencil sketch on 140# cold press watercolor paper, thinking it would work for anything I had.  

The plan was to mask out the bird, do a loose watercolor background, then put in the bird in detail.  Problem was, I couldn't decide what color the background needed to be until I did the bird.  Next thing I knew, I was coloring the bird with colored pencils.  And I like it, so far.  But it's all pastel-ish, and needs some color in the background.  And I'm scared I'll ruin it.

So I took a picture of the colored pencil drawing and sent it to my sister and asked her to help me decide whether to put in a background or leave it as is.  She was no help at all in that regard.  PLUS she said she thought I was going to do a bluebird or a cardinal.  

So.

I'ma do a bluebird.  

*For kicks, I just googled a bluejay call.  I'm on the back porch (yea, it's cold), and the neighborhood birds might have heard it, because suddenly they're all chattering.