The Official Pickle Update

My, how she has grown! She is both tall and long, a regular pre-pubescent, lanky, needing-to-grow-into-herself gal. Suddenly, her bottom teeth show all the time, presumably because they are bigger than her mouth can accomodate at the moment. We are hoping that will change later, as she looks like a little thug a lot of the time. And look at those magnificent ears! Busy little thing, our Pickle. She love the backyard and happily patrols the fence line for any activity in the adjacent driveway, which she loudly protests, drawing Boo out to add to the chorus, and giving me lots of exercise chasing them both back inside several times a day. I hestitate to say it, because every time I do she proves me wrong, but I am hoping she is housebroken. Certainly, except for times she has gotten into the studio and peed on the plastic drop-cloth (which is why I hate piddle pads in the first place), she has dutifully taken her business outside. Energy, thy name is Pickle. She runs circles around Boo, then drops like a stone, and snores like a lumberjack. It is honestly alarming the amount of noise that can come from that little body. And her feet are still hella-huge, so it looks like there's a lot of growing to still do. Next Friday, she is off to the vet for her little operation. Perhaps that will slow her down, if only for a day or two. Oh, and did I mention, the other night she crawled up onto my chest as we lounged about the bed in our pre-bedtime lovefest, and spit out a tiny tooth. I almost feel obligated to get a baby book to commemorate it.

And the winner is...

Here is the completed painting I started on that sultry Sunday just a couple of weeks ago. I changed the color of the plate from blue to white, and yellowed up the pears a little, gave it more value contrast, don't you think? What? The plate is wonky, you say? Hey, you want perfection, take a photograph. Painting is about my impression of the plate, the pears, the whole caboodle. I am happy with the finished work, I think. At least, I think it is finished. Always hard to tell, you know. Aiming for a body of work, suitably framed, to do a little exhibit here in town, send it up the flagpole, see if anyone salutes it. Would be nice to have some monetary appreciation for my art, whether it is weinie or not. Whatever it is, it is mine, all mine.

How interesting...

Sunday, I went to a play. This is a rare and wondrous event for the cow-waving woman, tied as I am to hearth and home with the Pickle baby. She is happy in her Pickle pen, and now can be left for around 4 hours without worry, so I journeyed out to Monte Rio for Art, a play originally written in French, translated and performed on Broadway, where it won a Tony. It was interesting on many levels. Only three actors, all men. The action centered around Serge buying a painting, a white painting with just a few diagonal, whiter stripes, and the ensuing opinions (or non-opinions) of his friends. This play was written by a woman, and all three men were somewhat effete, although all portrayed as heterosexual. Must be a French thing. I liked them. They were like my girlfriends. I especially liked the ditzy character who kept trying to conciliate, and wound up on the edge of a nervous breakdown. And all throughout the play, I kept thinking I knew one of the actors, but could not recall the circumstances of our acquaintance. It niggled at me and niggled at me. And last night, I opened the program and remembered. Aha! He modeled for my figure drawing class, and I have several drawings of him in my portfolio, naked. No wonder he was hard to place! I especially remembered that hip-cocked stance he affected many times during the play. He was like a little bird without his clothes, not many angles and kind of tubular, hard to draw. But he was also animated and sweet. And a fine actor, too, I found out.

Changing woman...

I'm changing as fast as I can here, but it all seems to have out-distanced me, like, overnight. Fall has fallen. Gray mornings, nippy little wind in the afternoon. I turned the furnace on for a short while yesterday, only to switch it off when the internal (and infernal) heat system kicked in. Really tired of hot flashes. Ten years of these suckers. It's better than the beginning, when they were sweaty, red-faced, hair-frizzing blistering hot and happened every 20 minutes 24/7/365. Now I only get 4 or 5 a day, usually after drinking coffee (and no way is this cow-waving woman giving up caffeine, it's my absolute last addiction), but also in the doldrums of the day, the hours between 3 and 5 PM. Anyway, I am not ready for fall here. I still have the remains of my last pedicure to show off in sandals. My drawers are full of tank tops and capris. The long sleeved articles are still in their storage boxes in the back closet. And you know, I just hate dressing for the wrong season. Okay, all this is so not important, which should tell you that my problems truly are in pole-vaulting-over-mouse-turds status. It is hard to dredge up something to worry about. Hope I am up to the challenge, because I worry about having nothing to worry about.

Pandering? I don't need no stinkin' pandering!

Ah, the Republicans must be scared out of their tiny minds to put Sarah Palin on the ticket with Mr. Whitest Man on Earth. I must admit, I thought it a rather sneaky thing to do, since I was a Hilary person, and felt the tug immediately. And then I got to know and loathe this woman. I have known women like her in my lives, both before and after sobriety. They pant for power, but not the inherent, subtle, humane feminine power our sex is given divinely, but the big, controlling, my-way-or-the-highway power of men like, well, John McCain, who knows the only way to do everything (and he is not sharing that with us, just yet, you may have noticed). It isn't inexperience that terrifies me. It is ayatollah-like fundamentalism, the regimentation of all women into her particular and very rigid way of thinking. Someone should tell her that rigidity is dangerous, you can become brittle, and break easily. Flexibility comes with open-mindedness, adn the ability to see that not everyone has the same reality as I do, and even if I don't like that reality, I can accept and honor that they are as entitled to their way of thinking as I am. The Republican Party lost me when they began touting "family values". I want the government out of my hearth and home. The government's job is to keep that home safe from invasion, keep the street lights on, and the school's open. Period.

Into each life some rudeness must fall...

Someone stole my garbage can. It sat at the psuedo-curb (our unincorporated pocket surrounded by city has no amenities, like curbs) an extra day because of the holiday on our usual pick-up day last week, but, hell, it has done that on many an occasion. And I really didn't miss it till Friday, as, being a solo garbage maker, it takes a while to accumulate a bag of that stuff, and the fact that it was no longer at the psuedo-curb just meant that I had forgotten I had already put it back by the side of the house, but, gee, it had evaporated. I made a mental note to call the Garbage Company, then promptly forgot, till Monday morning, when the three trucks were grinding loudly by, twice each. Garbage day is almost as noisy as leaf-blowing days, you know. And when I called, the young man who assisted me was pretty rude. They could charge me $75, you know, but out of the kindness of their hearts, they brought me a new can at no charge. Well, how very KIND of them, considering anyone could steal my can at any time, from the side of the house, out front, and it's not like I can go anywhere else for this service, as they are THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN. A friend noted that I could bag everything up and make a monthly trip to the dump, only 10 miles away, and for $12, dump everything. Not a bad idea, actually, but I would need to also visit the recycling center to continue my quest to be greener this year. Thinking about it. And then, our fickle weather went from tongue-drooping, armpit-dripping hot to gray skies, and even a little (gasp) rain, so that when the dogs went out for their unsupervised morning constitutional (while I snoozed in a little), they trailed mud in with them when they returned, all over everything, including the pillows I throw down by my side of the bed so that Pickle will bounce when I kick her off the bed in the middle of the night for fidgeting. Loads of laundry, mopping, and vacuuming followed. Gee, rudeness is exhausting. And did I mention that my new garbage can seems to have shrunk? That means I had the wrong sized one before, or they think I don't deserve a nice commodious one after being so wanton with the last one. Sigh.

A painting a day keeps the doldrums away!

Another one, my sunflower retrospective, which will have to hurry up and get done before the flowers wilt. This is just roughed in, if you were wondering. Actually, I kind of like its esquise feel, but I know that in the end, I will doubt that anyone else will like it. So I plan on punching it up today, a good time to do that as it is gray and drizzly outside, so a day slapping paint in the studio sounds lovely. This is an activity that takes me so far away, the time just buzzes by, meals get forgotten (and that's HUGE, believe me), and I just tuck my tongue in my cheek and turn off all that chatter that normally plays on KCWMfm, 64.1 on my cerebral radio dial. Many moons ago I read The Seat of the Soul, by Gary Zukav, a physicist turned metaphysicist, who spoke of emotions like they were wavelengths. Fear, hate, anger, etc., all resonate on the lower bands of the spectrum, whereas love, compassion, joy, etc., are higher frequency emotions, and really set things to humming. I feel like I am there when I paint, in that place of joy. And I think I am finding my muse, the one my painter friend said would come if I just kept playing with it. Pushing paint around on canvas, what an interesting way to play!

Sunday afternoon pursuits...

Here is how I spent my afternoon. All us artists paint sunflowers, you know. Me, and Vincent Van Gogh, and Egon Schieler, and Gustav Klimpt, among others.
And pears, well they are just so sumptuous and wonderful to paint, with their full figure and sensuous curves. My, I had a hell of a lot of fun, inspired by my stunning success yesterday, and by the amazing paintings of Dana Hooper. Happy, happy, joy, joy. Now to order frames and get a gallery to represent me, and paint a whole big retrospective of works, and, well, just keep going. All I know is that, when I am painting, I am in some other world where things are softer and much more fun than here and now. What can I say, it's a form of meditation, one with a more tangible reward than just peace of mind, yes?

Artist, that's moi!

This is an image of an en plein air painting done at the end of last semester, on campus. We didn't have a cafeteria all last school year, they tore it down, and are in progress of erecting a regular Taj Mahal of a new one, so we were relegated to these umbrella tables or inside a nifty tentlike igloo, which always smelled really strange, like wet sidewalk and plastic bottles. Fortunate that we have really fair weather 90% of the time (or not, if you are watching the water table). My teacher was impressed that I chose such an intricate scene, but I feel ready for anything these days. Excited, can you tell? Still searching for my vision, indeed. And my mentor, Mylette Welch, displayed yesterday at the auction, too. Mylette does whimsical portraits of dogs, big, slap-happy, tongue-wagging dogs. I hope someday to own one of her paintings, and a house with lots of walls to display it. Ah, life is so very interesting sometimes. And, about those cupcakes, the artist's name is Dana Hooper, and her work is phenomenal, see her at www.danahooper.com.

How sweet it is!

Just back from the Art for Life auction, where, guess who sold a painting! Of course, it didn't get a bid until just before the bidding closed, and I was reconciled to taking it home, and being satisfied that I had the courage to TRY, which took some hutzpah, let me tell you. There were droves of fancy-schmancy people at this event, some of them rich, some of them polished, some of them veteran artists who could paint a picture of cupcakes, 6"x6", and sell it for $1,050 (this actually happened, and they were very artistically rendered cupcakes, but jeez Louise, that's a lot of $$$ for a tiny painting, and all because this artist had a NAME, which I can't get if I just hang my art on MY walls, right?) Anyway, my dear friend who supported me through the afternoon had just had a birthday, so I took her to dinner at Cricklewood, a favorite eatery here in the county, and the place to go for prime rib, which was butter soft and beyond sublime, and it was, all in all, a day of triumph for the cow-waving, newly validated, woman. Exhausted now, ready to strip to shorts and tank and lay around in the waning, very hot day, and digest that lovely dinner, and savor this moment in time, when I can truly say, I am an ARTIST.

That's me all over, and Boo, too!

Here is a quick little self-portrait I did in a jiffy, since it was due on Monday and I was away all weekend, and had only Sunday night to diddle it up. Yep, that's the cow-waving woman, and her little dog, too. My daughter says I look like Harry Potter. Oh, well. It was shortly after I went short, hair-wise, and I am wearing my Salvation Army collarless shirt I use for painting, hoping to spare (yet another) pair of pants a sprinkling of indelible oil paint. This was not my first foray into self-portraiture. I did one my first semester in painting that was honored by being displayed in the student art show. It was criticized for various reasons, like I didn't smile, I left out my eyelashes (well, looking over my glasses in the mirror, I couldn't see them), etc., so I remedied all that in this portrait. It was done at night, and I like the effect of the lighting a lot. Yes, it looks like me. Funnily enough, this is an easy and fun thing for me to do. I got into the zone and just slapped away for about an hour and a half, and VOILA! C'est moi! My teacher asked how I got Boo to pose, and I had to admit he was sleeping at my feet as I painted. I used a prior photograph. And as to how he is suspended there, just imagine my arm around his middle, below the picture plane. I like to think this painting was divinely inspired. Well, I like to think we are ALL divinely inspired. So, there.

Hit me with your best shot...

So, today, I, little old artist, me, took my painting in to be hung in the Art for Life silent auction to be held on Saturday. Now, I had to have it juried in, and they accepted it, so it can't really be crap, can it? I just know that hanging my art up for the Big Bad World to see is like stripping naked in front of everyone and handing them rotten fruit to throw at me. I plan on attending the artists' reception Friday evening, and ask some of these "artists" to tell me how long they had to say they were an "artist" before they felt like they were'nt fibbing. Or maybe I should just brave my way through, and pretend, like everyone else, that I know what I am doing. And, please, SOMEBODY, buy my weinie painting. VALIDATE ME! If someone who is not related to me would just spend a little $$$ on my art, well, how sweet would that be. Oh, it's called "Black, No Sugar". How droll am I?

Everything old is new again, and again, and that could be a good thing...

My movie buddie and I did breakfast and a movie yesterday, because her movie of choice was in its last few showings at our local Smart People's Movie Theatre. Now, I love my friend, and because she still works (AWWWW) and is not always available, I am willing to cut her some slack about choosing the movies we see. This one was Brideshead Revisited, which was once a favorite PBS miniseries of mine, starring a very young and callow Jeremy Irons, as well as notables such as Claire Bloom, Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, etc. I was interested to know how they were going to squeeze all that material that generated a six episode series into a two hour movie. Also, I wondered if the original tone of the piece would emerge, as the previews I had seen seemed to tout it as a love story. I must admit, I was impressed. It was one of those lovely Ivory-Merchant clones, with incredible cinematography, loving attention to costume and set decoration. The Jeremy Irons clone who played Charles Ryder was admirable (and had the most sensual mouth I have seen for many a moon), Emma Thompson played Lady Marchmaine with considerable restraint and Michael Gambon was dear as the old lecherous Lord Marchmaine. I did think that Sebastian was a little too gay, and terribly frail looking. But best of all, the original thrust of the Evelyn Waugh novel, the diatribe against the Catholic Church, remained, and seemed even more evident in this condensed version. I give it four and a half out of five stars, only because of the blatancy of the homosexual element, which was handled ever so much more delicately 25 years ago. I don't know if we have evolved, or just become more dense in the eyes of movie producers. It was, above all, an entertaining morning at the movices.

Is it just me?

Does anyone else have this problem? I have ITunes (and an IPod, I love that little gizmo), and the other day, I noticed that my playlist had reversed itself. It began in reverse alphabetical order, and the tracks played from last to first. How did that happen? Honestly, give me a mouse and I will screw up any program. Well, this just would not do. I have SYMPHONIES here. They are meant to be played in ORDER. So I went to Help. This facetiously named program is anything but. In the index, I looked up tracks, and found that I can shuffle them around manually, like I do when creating a playlist to burn a CD, but I didn't think that would work for 36.5 days of music (and that's only a 6th of the GBs my little IPod holds, how sweet it that). And I could sort by artist (first or last name), genre, play time, gee, anything but alphabetical or numerical number! Then I went over all the little icons around the page, because they all do something and chances are that is how I got into this mess, by clicking when I shouldn't have. Then I scrolled down every menu item on the title bar. Nada! Eventually, in some obscure place, maybe under "order" in the Help Index, I saw that one can click on the column head, and VOILA!, it is all back in the right order. Which taught me that I cannot play Freecell on top of the ITunes page anymore. And I hope it never happens again, because, chances are, by then, I will have forgotten how I fixed it in the first place.

The Pickle invents a game...

All by herself! They really mean "smart puppy" when they print it on the puppy chow bag! Anyway, here's Pickle's game. We have a couple of stuffed balls, about the size of grapefruit. They are fleecy and squeezy and have a squeaker in them, too. Little Pickle can pick up these balls and carry them around in her mouth, which is a sight to die laughing over, let me tell you. Well, one day as I sat here at my computer, she brought me the ball and offered it to me. When I tried to get it, she played keep-away, and when I did manage to grasp it, we played tug-of-war. But the best came when I got it, and threw it, and we played fetch! And she taught me this game. Now we play it ALL THE TIME, until, like now, she drops like a stone. Now we play it with any stuffed object, like the squirrel that now looks like road-kill. Once in a while, Boo plays spoiler, and takes the ball over to his corner and chews on it till he gets tired and ambles away again. And once in a great while, he plays with us. Ah, life is sweet in the Little Yellow House. Simple, but sweet. The true secret to happiness is not to want too much. I seem to have learned this lesson. Now, to not forget it too soon. That's all I ask.

Long time, no blog...

It is definitely true that the more time one has, the less one gets done, though I do have a baby here, a dog baby, but a baby nevertheless, and she consumes a whole big block of time everyday, being escorted every hour or so to the piddlepoo spot outside, continual removing of tiny objects like scraps of foil from her mouth, and refilling her puppychow bowl. And I water the psuedo-lawns and vegetable containers regularly. Daily, I sweep feathers and birdseed from the counter around the birds and lay new papers for their perusal. Most days, I light out for a meeting, getting all spiritual and recovered in the process, unless, like last night, I make the unfortunate decision to take Pickle with me, resulting in a total lack of serenity since she morphed into a Tasmanian devil on cocaine. In self defense, I signed up for a short writing course, of short stories, of course, at the Junior College, LowFat Fiction, and began a watercolor class at the (gulp) Senior Center. All the little ladies were very solicitous, and I made a really weinie painting in just over an hour, experimenting as I went along, the hustling home to the baby in the Pickle pen. All is well in the Little Yellow House, where life is slooooow and picayune. Just right, in my opinion, which is the only one that counts here, anyway.

I save the planet...

Perhaps I have mentioned that I now own a pedometer. Actually, it is the second pedometer I have owned - the first one had a puny clip and I managed to lose it within 24 hours of its purchase. Nevertheless, I was adamant that I was going to start a walking regime, and it was meaningless without this little gizmo. So far, I hoofed it over to Safeway, green shopping bag in hand, and back again, a little over 3 miles. Then the dogs and I walked to the bank, 2.75 miles, with only a couple of Boo poo stops, and a short chat with the mail lady, who pulled over to ask about Pickle. (Imagine that! Pickle stopped traffic! And sweet dog person that she was, she paused a moment to admire the Boo, too.) And yesterday I walked to my Third Step Meeting, something I have always meant to do but never seemed up to. That was 4 miles, round trip. I am not counting Tuesday at the County Fair (itr was free day for seniors), where I was on my feet for 5 straight hours, perusing the flowers, the schlocky booths selling cooking utensils, sewing machines, massaging recliners, and various other invaluable items, the amateur artwork, the cows, sheep, goats and Budwiser Clydesdales. I saved a lot of $$$ on gas this week, to say nothing of my little corner of the environment. And I am getting in shape, again. Maybe the trick is to stay in shape in the first place? You think?

The Pickle Progress Report

Well, little Pickle is going to be big Pickle. Though the breed standard is 12 lbs for bitches, she is 3 months old, and already 6 lbs. Pekingesus Giganticus. Here she is wearing her "I-didn't-do-nothing" look. She still cannot get up onto the bed or the couch by herself, so Boo is safe when there. Otherwise, he is fair game, and she trots along beside him like a barnacle on a whale, except when on a lead, when she drags way behind both of us. Well, she just went on her first walk in the neighborhood today, as we just finished puppy shots on Monday, and all those big vehicles and especially all that noise had her pretty scared. She loves her rawhide bones, and rocks and woodchips and straws. Luckily, she does not object to her Pickle pen. Just give her a milkbone and she is ecstatic, and will stay there happily till I return. And she is pretty good in the Pickle box in the car, too. Of course, she is a show-stopper wherever I take her, cute and frisky and ready to be adored by the world. Sometimes at home, she is not all that adorable, like when I found her secret piddleplace just when I thought she was on track to be housebroken. I am smarter than she is, though. I put a piddlepad there, and am slowly moving it closer and closer to the door. And we are all sleeping until 7:30 or 8 AM, thank you, Pickle. It only took 5 weeks to get her on California time. She is, all in all, a dandy little dog.

Perversity, thy name is Pickle...

In keeping with the ongoing theme of my life, which is that even though I plan and scheme, nothing goes as I think it should, the Pickle is performing admirably well. We are hip deep in dog toys around here: rubber squeaky ones, stuffed squeaky ones, balls, hard rubber knobby ones, twisty rope ties, rawhide bones, you name it, we got it. Yet Pickle finds anything left on the floor: pieces of straw from the broom, kleenex (the worst, all over the rug yesterday), a sock that found its way to our backyard (hey, not mine, really), cotton balls, even balls of Boo fur, and turns up with them in her mouth. I bought her a cute little pink bed to sleep in. It has moved from the bed to the floor beside the bed, as Pickle cannot go through the night without a pee break (sort of like me, actually), and we had a couple of accidents necessitating mucho laundry. Think she sleeps in it? Oh, nonono. I found her curled up on my cotton pj bottoms yesterday morning. I was kind of flattered, actually.
And one of the main reasons I got Pickle was to get Boo off his little Boo butt. She works on this a lot, now that his proximity alarm has been dialed down. Now she can jump all over him while he stands there in the shreds of his dignity. But let him try to play with her and she hides under a chair. This morning, they actually had about five minutes of interplay, all Boo's idea. I sat here enthralled at the vivacity. It was over before I knew it, and worth all the laundry, lost sleep, and, oh God, expense.

Life on hold, again...

I lost my wallet. Again. Seems this is doomed to happen at least once a year. That's okay. I know the drill. Go to bank, cancel VISA check card, and cash a check large enough to cover necessities for 7 to 10 business days till card comes. Call Discover Card, cancel that (they kindly overnighted me a new cardat no charge, that' how well they know me) Drive, very carefully, to DMV, fill out 7 part form, sit 45 minutes clutching little slip with call number on it, pay $22, get a sheaf of papers without a picture (no good to write a check). Good news is that last of cards arrived Saturday. After I stop by the bank this morning to establish a PIN, I can hit AAA for a new key card (handy when I lock myself out of the car, another of my favorite passtimes), and go to Costco and get a new card there. I know that drill well, too. I have lost my Costco card, all by itself, more times than I can recall. It always surprises me that whoever found my wallet (and I know someone did) didn't just keep the cash (about $23) and return the rest to me. How hard would that be? No one ever has. I guess the lesson for me is that, if I find your wallet, you can be assured you would get it back, even the cash. I would call you immediately to tell you I have it. Meanwhile, I am using the old one with the shoulder strap, so that it is securely tied to my body wherever I go. I cannot lay it down on the counter at Staples and forget it there. Or drop it somewhere in the ensuing 30 foot walk to the car. Sigh.