Precious...

It is 4:10 PM, and the sun is hanging low in an overcast yellow sky. Most of the leaves have fallen from my front yard sycamores, and the pseudo-lawn is filthy with them. Sorry, too frigging cold now to get out there and rake. I am still recovering here! But inside the little yellow house, it is cozy. Inside the cow woman, too. It is a good idea to take my internal seismic readings, often. My tectonics change really fast. Great upheavals are rare these days, but tiny tremors continue. Anything can upset that delicate balance of the inner landscape. Happy today that I am vertical, dressed, and actually fed my recovery a dandy women's meeting after missing my home group due to dastardly virus. Zicam and vitamin C limited its half-life to 3 little days. Love it when that works. House is fairly clean and uncluttered. That will change, no doubt. Whatever, no big storms on the horizon at the moment. And Precious is the teddy bear on the right. Angel Bear, she came to me in one of those mysterious moments. Once upon a time, I would attend an Epiphany party with a group of women from my then-church. We did a gift exchange where we each drew a number, then went in order, either opening a new gift, or taking one from someone else that was already open, and the person you stole from could do the same. The rule was you could only have the same gift in your possession three times, then you had to let it go. I opened this little angel white bear ornament. Lordy, I wanted that little guy. Alas, he went away. But, on Valentine's day, my daughter gave me this one, a cupid bear, that I decided was actually an angel bear. She rode with me in the back seat of my car in my commuting days, and now cuddles with Precious on the chair I had as a tiny tot by the side of my bed. Precious, now that's a story for another day.

Down time...

Second day of dreaded cold. Funny how a little virus can totally upend my life. I did get up, take a bath, which helped my aching back, dressed in casual, warm clothes and sojourned over to RiteAid for some new night-time cough stuff. Very difficult night with tight, painful cough. Now I am up, still dressed, about to shuck jeans for sweats and crawl back into bed for a nice nappy-poo. Thank you, Coricidin and Tylenol. Without drugs, this would be a world of pain, for sure. Oh, and I stopped into the coffee shop that was Cafe des Croissants, then Starbuck's and is now Louie's. They display local artists. Wonderful venue, with red walls. I could handle that. Yes. Just need FRAMES. After the end of the year, I will get a resale license, buy those suckers, and set myself up for business. I have enough paintings to do that. Yes.

Pass the Mucinex, please....

I am up for a while, vertical after a horizontal morning, dabbing delicately at my runny nose, waiting for the Dayquil Non-Drowsy Daytime capsules to take effect. Yes, the cowwoman has her first winter cold. Little scratchiness in the throat, snorty breathing through a new layer of mucus accumulating. Took that Mucinex, too. Great stuff. Horrid commercials. Meanwhile, the world seems to have gone on without me. I notice there are beaucoup leaves piling up out front, waiting for my attention. Sorry. I am all bundled up in my Victoria's Secret fleecy, fluffy wraparound robe (Country Collection, and on sale, to boot), still recovering from yesterday's debut at the renovated gym. They took away my weinie circuit! I wandered around the weight room, spotting a familiar machine here or there, then tried out some new ones, with spotty success. Sore in new places. Just adds insult to injury to be laid up with this $$&*$@ cold. However, it is perfect timing. No school or appointments to miss. Oh, wait a minute. It's always perfect timing. I'm retired!

The devil made me do it...

The cow woman went shopping today. I have been struggling with this #$&^*@ printer for YEARS. It never printed my business cards right the first time out of the gate. And sometimes, not the second or third either. It kind of cleared its throat before picking up the stock, and dropped the print too high on the page. I might get two cards off a sheet of ten. Expensive, when you add it up. And, lately, after printing each page, it would stutter and whine until you opened the cartridge door and shut it again. Clunkety clunkety clunk clunk. Enough! I looked up printers online, and made a beeline for Best Buy, where I picked up a spiffy new Canon that has wireless technology. Okay, I don't have wireless technology yet, but I am ready when it arrives! Now, years of dealing with new peripherals have taught me that nothing works the first time you install it. Well, actually, my wireless mouse did, but that's pretty simple. I did depart from my usual seat-of-the-pants, I-don't-need-no-stinking-manual attitude, and sat down to read the steps necessary and execute them in the manner and order presented. Or tried to. Right away I got an error message that the "inner cover" was open. Whaaa? After trying over and over to do the same thing, I squinted my eyes at the tiny display screen on top of the printer, and figured out where that inner cover was, and closed it. Tada! The print head and cartridges went in without too much sweat, and how smart is it that there are six of them, so you don't have to replace a tri-color cartridge just because you are out of blue. And I can open the top of this one and see the whole cartridge assembly. I loaded the paper tray and prepared to hook my new baby up to my system via the USB connection, and jeez, another error message. I flogged that dead horse for a while before deciding to start over again. In the end, I just ignored the message that the printer wasn't present, restarted my system, and voila! There it was after all. Yay. The whole process took about an hour and a half, and never once did I have to pull hair out of my head or even bite my tongue. I have printed twenty new business cards perfectly so far. I love that this baby packs up all compactly when not in use. And it has a paper tray! Inside! How efficient can it get, anyway. Then I made myself a turkey, cranberry and toasted almond sandwich on my TJ sprouted wheat bagel that I treated myself to. Okay, they each have (gulp) 300 calories, but I did split it into thirds, and the mayonnaise was low fat. Hey, as celebrations go, this was pretty tame. And pretty tasty, too.

Inquiring minds want to know...

I was watching Pickle, enconsed on the bed as she is every morning, and watching me shed my PJs and pull on my outfit du jour. What must she think about this process? How lovely it must be to have only one outfit to worry about. Actually, she always looks worried as she watches me. And I got to thinking about what vulnerable creatures we humans are to need layers of fabric to stave off the elements. And how vain we are to have so many fashions to choose from. I have often noted that fashion is a real racket. If you subscribe to it, your clothes are out of fashion even before you walk out of Bloomingdale's or Nordstom's. And so many fashions are geared to skinny littlewaifs with no breasts or hips. No one seems to be creating for big girls like me. So I keep my wardrobe down to basics. Kind of preppy for dressy events. Lots of waffle weaves for casual. Jeans. Lots of jeans. Cords, too. Sweaters, I love sweaters. Okay, I have a lot of clothes. This is a short life, and I don't like to worry about what I wear. And I don't like to wear the same thing twice, ever. Sad, isn't it. And Pickle only looks worried because she has these furrows in her brow, anyway. I am heading for the day when I can just throw on my sweats, and not worry about what anyone thinks of me. That makes a lot of sense to this old gal.

Grace notes...

I think birds are God's grace notes. You know, those little extra trills that are not necessary, really, but seem to bring a lightness and beauty that would not be there without them. We had a flock of mourning doves that lived across the street from us in the house on the edge of the world. Every so often, they would brave our proximity and feast at our bird feeder, and usually manage to knock it down, too. Their sweet cooing gave every day a grace, for sure. They mate for life, these birds. Kind of special, that's for sure. Oh, they are not nearly so brightly colored. There are hints of pearly violet and blue in their gray feathers. I just gave them this with a little more intensity. I think it works. Yes.

Kind of amazing...

I was channel surfing in the great electronic sewer that is Sunday evening and came on this PBS documentary about dogs. Now, I know all these very different appearing breeds all came from the wolves that were smart enough to ingratiate themselves to men in exchange for leftovers. This program actually went as far as stating that dogs assisted us in becoming civilized, by so enhancing our hunting skills. Gosh, in school, they taught us it was the end of the Ice Age and hence the emergence of stable climate zones for growing our own food. Well, perhaps the canine species gave us our leg up. And dogs are so attuned to our species, they will learn things that even chimps will not, just because they want so to please us. In one experiment, foxes were bred through three generations for tameness. And another amazing thing happened; they became multi-colored and got different attributes, like curly tails, too. And, since we share a lot of ailments, dogs and humans, scientists were able to map a genome in the DNA of boxers that caused a particular heart ailment, which could then be used to find that same genome in human (and much more complex) DNA Now, that's thinking. All this just proved to me once more that dogs are special creatures. Owning one makes a person much less likely to have a heart attack, for instance. And their special appeal to humans may be that they are like children, always. I mean, look at Pickle. She will never grow out of her baby face. Hopefully, some pretty awful Pickle habits will be outgrown, though. But if not, she can always turn that wide-eyed Pickle smile on, and melt my ever so protected heart.

Troubled waters here...

Oh, not in the painting. That is smooth sailing. But I am all turbulent here. Much happening that is tragic all around me. Climbing up onto my tiny island of sanity, painting and just trusting HP to take care of all those other folks who are ill or sitting in a big pile of troubles of their own making, letting it all be what it is supposed to be, knowing I could not change it with all the power available to me. Meanwhile, I actually had a few moments feeling guilty because I don't have the trouble these other folks do. I am like this swan, filled with grace. For the moment, anyway. I know that things can change awfully fast. Not today, okay, HP?

Creation du jour...

I smeared a whole bunch of yellow onto this canvas last night, then dredged up this image today. I love the way objects just kind of materialize out of the ether onto the surface. No big hassle here, it just appeared there, the little red finch. Birds have this innocence about them, and a curiosity about the world, too. It was kind of gray outside, and the leaves were hip deep on the psuedo-lawn before I went out there to rake, in between sessions with this bright and sunny little guy. I am kind of blown away at the ease I am feeling with the paint these days. It is no longer my enemy, and while it has not lost its ability to surprise me, often delightfully, it obeys me most of the time. No joy greater than going to bed at night knowing there is something new in the world that I made that day.

The cowwoman makes a mess...

Homely little painting of rather prosaic bunch of humble flowers in juice bottle. Hmmmm. I just didn't know what to do. It was too cold. It was too warm. It was blah. Today, I took a small brush into it to flesh out the flowers a little, then scumbled the hell out of the background, color on color, until it popped a little. Not a star in the firmament of my opus, but not a total loss, either. Every canvas is about learning something new. This one taught me to not give up too soon, just keep plugging away at it. There is always hope when you can paint over it, and paint over it, and paint over it.

Mea culpa, mea ultima culpa...

I have made the return journey from the fuds. Unfortunately, it required a little bit of rule breaking. Not God's rules, not even my mother's rules, oh, no no no, MY rules. I try to be oh so circumspect here in the little yellow house. Only fresh foods. No preservatives! No trans fats! Whole grains! Locally grown, organic even! Seasonal! Okay, tiny concession to Italian sausage (chicken at least) and Cool Whip. I'm not perfect, after all. But on my way home from my very righteous meeting yesterday afternoon, faster than you could say non-complex carbohydrates, my little black Focus just turned into the drive up at the new In and Out. The guy outfitted with the soda jerk hat assured me the line was short at that time. I kind of gasped when I saw about twenty cars in front of me. Turned out this is short for this place. They took my order when I was about ten cars away, and the line just plodded along and a mere seven minutes later I had my order: hamburger with the works, fries and a vanilla milkshake. Now, I doubt there was any skim milk in that sucker. And those fries, fresh as new mown hay! And the hamburger, on a soft as cotton white-bread bun, ah, heaven! To be fair, this was dunch. Or maybe linner? I didn't have any lunch, because my stomach hadn't transitioned to the new time yet. And I didn't have any dessert, either, unless you count the milkshake, which was a beverage. Right? Mother always said moderation was the key. And fast food, once a season, seems pretty moderate to me. Is it winter yet?

Down in the fuds...

I just read an email from yet another of my geriatric set, about the joys of growing old. Not in that picture today. My sponsor calls this the fuds. Yeah. Well, it is raining, and although the powers that be gave me back that hour they so rudely usurped last spring, an eager newcomer woke me up at 8 AM, thinking it was 9 AM, and I had not slept well during the downpour in the wee hours. So, not a happy camper here. Yet, as I gaze through the blinds at the front yard, it does look rather festive, decorated as it is with golden leaves on the now greened-up psuedo-lawn. And I will go fetch that newcomer at 1:30 to ferry her to the 2 PM meeting, because that is what we do, help the alcoholic who is suffering. Must be hell to not have a car in this weather. So, grateful for my Jolie, little black puddle-jumper that she is. And I will pull on my boots and look tres sophisticated in the skinny jeans that fit again. And I am thinking of having lunch out at the new In and Out that opened where the old Lyon's was torn down. I watched it rise from the ashes, as it were, wondering if it was yet another County bureaucracy, and thrilled to find it not. Actually, maybe I will put the fuds on the back burner, and sojourn over to TJMax to paw through the racks for a while. That always bucks me up. Or I could consider painting my walls pink, as in this photo that got taken when I accidentally put a pink filter on. Don't know which button to push to do that again, but it was fun while it lasted.

It's not easy being me. Sigh.

Okay, long time, no blog. No paint, either. Like, the more time I have, the less I accomplish. Life kind of blindsided me, again. Dear ones are going through rough seas, and I feel like I am floundering here in my powerlessness to heal them. I do know that it is essential that I not sink, in case someone needs me, I need to stay afloat. So now rising up out of my doldrums. There is a canvas all primed in a perky yellow waiting for my attention on the kitchen counter. And I just popped one of the leftover Halloween candies, Butterfinger, my favorite, in defiance of the waistline fairy who waggles her finger at me all the time. Take that! I will work out especially hard for that little transgression. Actually, in my tiny life, nothing is very wrong at the moment. Laundry could use some attention, likewise the happy mess that I live in. Ah, but she who dies with a clean house has lived a pretty little life, you know. I'd rather go to the movies. Oh, and this image is a detail of the fourth painting I ever did. They do that in art books, you know, show details of famous paintings. I am amazed by the attention to detail I had in that early time. I had tamed the paint, I see, got it to spread out in the way I wanted. And I wish this were the whole thing, actually. It is more interesting than the original. Live and learn. Change and grow. Hope lives.