It was raining hard and steady in Ajo when I left, and I guess it followed me. Here I’ve been in Phoenix for three hours and it’s now raining here.
It was nice when I first got to town. How come I miss the city when I get here? I don’t miss it when I am in Ajo, but I get all happy to be back when I get to Phoenix. The shopping!! The lights!! The movies!! The traffic!! yes, even the traffic seems great when I’ve been away for awhile, maybe it’s the anonymity.
I screwed up, today was the first day of the English class. I thought it was an online class, but it really was a distance learning class where you had to be there for four sessions. I missed the first one and so cannot take that class. Oh well, the teacher directed me to Rio Salado, where new classes start all the time and said I could take the same class online (totally online) through them, so I am in the process of getting my transcripts over there right now. I can sign up tomorrow.
I really want this class, it’s researching and writing scholarly papers. Very needed.
Yoani Sanchez, with her book Havana Real and her blog GeneracionY.com has driven me to the fridge again. This time I thawed out the goat cheese stashed there for the delicacy of pasta salad with feta cheese and greek olives. I’m so ashamed. Not only am I endangering my diet, but by my not being able to do anything about the hunger of the Cubans I am fostering my own binge behavior.
I only took a few spoonfuls, but it is more cheese than she will get in a month, or maybe many months.
I am categorizing this entry with many food categories.
I have so much homework to do, and I’d better get cracking. The due date for about 6 hours of homework is Sunday night and tonight will not be the night for it since I am going out with my honey to celebrate my birthday. Sounds like I know what I’m doing tomorrow, huh?
My two new classes start Monday, I had better start keeping up, I will have a very busy couple of months beginning now.
I’m shopping hp mini laptops right now for my continued education. I can’t decide how big I want it to be, but I know that I don’t want it to be very big. The last one I had weighed a ton. I’m much to old and feeble to lug around too much weight… alright, the truth is I’m just too lazy. Maybe I could get away with saying I’m practical and don’t want to waste calories that way.
I am reading a book by Yoani Sanchez, a blogger from Cuba. She grew up there, excaped to Switzerland for a couple of years and for some reason returned, determined to live free in Cuba.
Ha! Fat chance, I say.
The book is called Havana Real and the blog is Generacion Y. http://generaciony.com/. It is translated into, like, 20 languages by volunteers. This is an important blog.
In comparison, my blog is a school girl’s diary.
Go there, read this, it’s really great.
I haven’t blogged for awhile, been too busy, I guess, with school and the day of the dead dolls. The bride is done and just adorable, I am working on the red hat club doll now.
We met Heather and Paris at the cheap Tuesday movies last night and saw Horrible Bosses. It was really funny and Jennifer Aniston was a complete crack-up in it. Good cast and great jokes. I’d see it again, we were laughing all the way through. It would be a good movie to own.
Well, the one class started, and I thought I had the book online, but it turns out that I have the software that goes with the book, but still need the book. I love this thing, though, I can put it on speaker and it reads to me. I am seriously thinking about investing in a webster speaking dictionary and a thesaurus.
I am currently shopping a notebook thing, one that has the internet capability and I wouldn’t mind if it emulated a phone, too. Not sure how that would work, but I’m shopping for it anyway.
The big kiln has been having some problems; first there was the element that burned out, next it seems something is wrong with the thermostat.
I fired a huge shelf of stuff, this pic shows about half of it, and it didn’t get up to cone 06. I didn’t know it had mis-fired, so when the kiln was unloaded down to the bottom shelf I put my stuff in a box and carried it home. Sadly, it was still fragile, and I had a lot of breakage.
The good thing is that the most fragile piece, the one that I particularly worried about, did not break. Yippee!
I have fixed what I could and put it in the medium kiln, it filled it completely and I even left out everything that wasn’t a rush. The large kiln is cheaper for my needs, but at this point I am close to panic about the Day of the Dead dolls. They are due in the gallery October 3rd, so time is screeching up on me.
I cannot wait for cold weather, cold enough to shop for womens hoodies would be just fine with me.
I try not to be the person complaining about the weather, it’s just useless, either suck it up or move on, you know? Complaining isn’t going to help anything. Complainers just wear me down, it’s a juice drain, and I need all the juice I can get at my age, so I try to keep a positive attitude, but this is going on an awfully long time, this triple-digit heat.
Oh well, sweating won’t kill me if I’m careful.
I plan to enter this myth in a contest, I’ll let you know how it goes, this is an updated version of last term’s assignment.
;
Once upon a time Winter lived as an old woman, and her daughter was Fall. These two old women lived near each other and they argued all the time. When they were younger, when Fall was a young Season, she danced and gusted with the ragged and flouncy trees, wearing bright yellows and warm reds, pulling the leaves off the trees and tossing them around. The most damage she did was out of carelessness, not malice.
When Winter was younger, a long thousand years ago, she was a hard-working mother who quilted snowbanks and dark, long nights for nesting, and where hard-shelled seeds came out of storage for the animals who lived with nature. Most of the bad Winter weather in those days was generally the result of trying too hard, rather than malice.
But as the Seasons got old, oh, maybe a thousand years or so older, these two old women seemed to be angry at each other all the time, which caused no end to troubles for the wildlife who lived in the seasonal rhythms of nature, because when Winter was angry, fields froze early and crops were lost. The year’s young in the forest; the mice and bunnies and foxes and such, had a very hard time of it when Winter was angry. When Fall was feeling mean the wind cracked the tree branches, and took the shingles off the roofs, and it rained at harvest time. Fall had her mean little ways to incite Winter, sometimes just by twisting words, or with a sharp bite of wind, proving yet again that Fall was stronger, more assertive, smarter, more enlightened, and incredibly patient, seeing as how she was better in all ways than Winter. Winter, in turn, was never satisfied with the Season when Fall handed it over; it was never good enough, those broken branches exposing the tree to cold, wet ground to mess up the beauty of the first freeze. It’s true that these two Seasons found many occasions to argue.
One day Winter came to her house to prepare for the Season, and Fall was there waiting. Fall was taking up residence in Winter’s place, and the root crop wouldn’t set, the apples on the trees longed for winter to come and turn their juices to sugar, bears and lizards yearned for the cold hibernation time. This time when Winter came to her own house, Fall blew right over her with a hot gust of challenging words, without even a greeting. She was very rude indeed to Winter, and it started to rain on the harvest.
Fall didn’t know it then, but Winter was already carrying heartbreak that day. Her friends, the Snow Goose family, had been through a hard Fall season because a wet harvest ruined most of their crops. They were already counting every seed in preparation for travel to the winter home, when disaster struck. An angry, freezing storm that quickly turned mud to ice, and brooded and snapped over the land, covered their lake overnight. The Snow Goose family told Winter that they were planning to pack up their survivors and go somewhere more clement.
Winter knew Fall was partly responsible, and she was disappointed in her daughter, that she would rain on the crops so unthinkingly, because she knew that the Snow Goose family lived in nature between Fall and Winter, but Winter had to admit that her own anger at her daughter probably had caused the sudden cold snap. When Winter came home saddened and cold, the first greeting she heard was from her daughter informing her of what all was wrong with Winter. The gust of autumn wind was terrifying in it’s suddenness, and it shook the trees.
Feeling smug to have gotten in the first blow, Fall braced herself for Winter’s snappy comeback, but it didn’t come. Winter couldn’t move, it was finally just too much bad weather and she lost the will to fight.
Fall looked for Winter’s mood, and immediately saw the change in Winter’s eyes, the old mother’s eyes registered a frailty that Fall had never seen there before. For the first time in as many generations as you can count, they looked at each other, really allowed themselves to see the other. The two women stood speechless for a moment, and the air softened and the birds unclenched their feet, just a little wary. The daughter became alarmed at the lack of anger in her old mother’s eyes and quickly embraced her old mother, thinking she might be feverish or have some other illness, because even with the Seasons, change is the only constant. Hard winters give way to gentle winters, or long winters, or wet winters, or busy winters, and without even knowing it, Fall turns gradually into Winter. That they both realized all this in a flash was clear in their eyes.
Immediately upon this realization, while this clear vision of her mother as precious was new, Fall apologized for her rude behavior and vowed out loud never to vex her old mother again.
Now Winter was very surprised at this, and when Fall persisted, Winter argued that Fall could never do such a thing for any length of time, she was incapable of it, they both were. But Fall talked gently to her mother and at last they both agreed that something had to be done. It was something to start agreeing on at least. Fall and Winter went the same peaceful way from then on, searching always to keep peace happening in every moment. They actually came to respect each other truly, and to treat each other with kindness and joy. Long busy Fall days respectfully and peacefully turned cooler, with rains after the harvest like it should be, and Winter respected Fall by creating icy ponds to reflect the leafless trees, and with clear, sunny days for skating, and enough white snow for sledding and hot chocolate.
For several years, oh, more than a hundred, probably, Fall and Winter had to work really hard to not argue, but soon they discovered that they were on an adventure of learning to know each other. Sometimes, for hundreds of years at a time, the daughter refrained from correcting her old mother (more often than not), and the old woman decided that Fall was actually pretty good at maintaining a Season after all, and soon they were really enjoying each others’ company.
The whole land breathed a sigh of relief.
School’s a GO! I stood in line today to make some last minute changes. The date for online (convenient) changes is past. I needed a signature or two, so I got to meet the teachers. These are all online classes this time.
I didn’t mind the time spent waiting in line, it was cool in the buildings, damn hot outside.
My darling said something about starting to build outdoor fireplaces in my Ajo back yard, but I hope he did not start today. That is something best left for winter temperatures. I won’t be cooking on it in this heat anyway, so what’s the hurry? I definitely do want one, though, for individual pizzas if nothing else.
Sam is choosing wedding themes, we have all been looking for ideas in books and on the web. It’s fun, there are some really beautiful weddings out there, I never knew there was so much to it. The only time I got married, it was a justice of the peace , my son, the groom and his parents. We didn’t need all the fun stuff.
Sam is picking Rehearsal Dinner Invitations, for goodness sake, how sweet!
When Paris and Heather got married, my one job as mother of the groom was the rehearse restaurant arrangements. Heather got to pick the restaurant and I did the rest.
It was a really great celebration, and the two families got to visit for the first time.
With Sam and Ken, the families are already hanging out together since a good part of both the kids’ families live around these parts.
No news is good news, I guess. So there really isn’t much going on here right now, and that’s probably okay. I’ve been getting my annual doctoring out of the way and struggling with school finances. Other than that, pretty much nothing else is going on to write about.
All the boxes that we had are packed and there really isn’t much else I would pack right now if I had more boxes. The walls are bare, the cupboards are almost empty, and all the chickens and flamingos are gone from the soffit.
one small pile of boxes
I skipped last year’s medical exam. I just don’t think I need to be poked and prodded EVERY year, I’m perfectly healthy and have always been perfectly healthy, but I was backed into a corner with my insurance nagging me about the missed medical work-up so this week and last week is filled with all the different appointments needed to insure that I am indeed as healthy as I think I am. This morning is another appointment. After this one I only have two more appointments before I will be done for another couple of years.
My brother plans to spend the winter in Ajo this year. He has spent several years going through the disability appeal process, and now it looks like he might actually have some success. The poor guy is so beat up and stove in that he aches every winter in Central Oregon every time it gets cold, and it gets cold there and just stays cold.
I’ll be taking online classes, six credits, (been concentrating on all the financial parts this week) and am looking forward to spending some quality time with my Bro. He’s got a dry-wash machine that we want hunt for gold with. That should be a lot of fun.
I have a friend who is always such an inspiration to me. Actually, several of my friends inspire me and I am totally in awe of many of my friends, I have a great bunch. But this one friend, Christina, is especially inspiring because she cares for her quadriplegic son. She cares for him very, very well, too.
She can’t let up the hammer at any time. This woman does not have the luxury of spending the day in bed or in front of the TV because she’s having an off day. Her world just keeps coming at her at 60 miles a minute.
Today her tummy was a little upset, but she’s such a trooper that she didn’t even mention it until our lunch was done. How can she be so tough? I thought she was on a diet or something, (we all do diets at one time or another).
Now that we’ve returned to our respective homes, she has to get ready for work. No complaints; it won’t do her any good to complain, her world just keeps charging at her.
You’d think she’d get down once in awhile, but she is the most ‘up’ person I know, always praising the Lord for this and that, joking around and such.
Pretty darn brave, and great to be around. I am really glad she’s my friend.
Once upon a time Winter lived as an old woman, and her daughter was Fall. They lived near each other and they argued all the time. When Winter was angry, fields froze early and crops were lost. The year’s young in the forest; the mice and bunnies and foxes and such, had a very hard time of it when Winter was angry. When Fall was angry the wind blew all the leaves off the trees and the shingles off the roofs, and it rained at harvest time.
Fall had ways to incite Winter, sometimes just by twisting words, or proving yet again that Fall was stronger, more alert, more assertive, smarter, more enlightened, and incredibly patient, seeing as how she was better in all ways than Winter. One day Winter came back to her own house and Fall was there waiting. Fall had taken up residence in Winter’s place, and the root crop wouldn’t set, the apples on the trees longed for winter to come and turn their juices to sugar, bears and lizards yearned for the cold hibernation time. This time when Winter came to her own house, Fall blew right in with a hot gust of challenging words, without even a greeting. She was very rude indeed to Winter, and it started to rain on the harvest.
Fall didn’t know it then, but Winter was already carrying heartbreak that day. Her friends, the Snow Goose family, had been through a hard Fall season because a wet harvest ruined most of their crops, so they were already counting every seed as it came time for travel to the winter home, when disaster struck in the form of an angry, freezing storm that quickly turned mud to ice, and brooded and snapped over the land. The Snow Goose family told Winter that they were planning to pack up their survivors and go somewhere more clement.
Winter knew Fall was partly responsible, and she was disappointed in her daughter, that she would act so unthinkingly, because the Snow Goose family lived in nature between Fall and Winter, but Winter had to admit that her own anger hadn’t made the weather any happier either. When Winter came home after talking to the Snow Goose family, saddened and cold, the first greeting she heard was from her daughter, informing her of all that was wrong with Winter. It was finally just too much. She lost the will to fight.
Feeling smug to have gotten in the first blow, Fall braced herself for Winter’s snappy comeback, but it didn’t come. Fall looked for Winter’s mood, and immediately saw the change in Winter’s eyes, the old mother’s eyes registered a frailty that Fall had never seen there before. The two women stood speechless for a moment. The daughter became alarmed and stepped in to embrace her old mother, thinking she might be feverish or have some other illness, because even with the Seasons, change is the only constant, and hard winters give way to gentle winters, or long winters, or wet winters, or busy winters. Gradually, without even knowing it, Fall always turns into Winter.
Then, at that very moment, Fall vowed never to argue with her mother again, but she knew she did not currently possess the key to conviviality, the key to getting along.
Now Fall apologized for her rude behavior and vowed out loud never to vex her old mother again. Winter was very surprised at first, and then when Fall persisted, Winter argued that Fall could never do such a thing for any length of time, she was incapable of it. But Fall talked gently to her and at last they both agreed that something had to be done. It was something to start agreeing on at least.
After that day, Fall and Winter went the same peaceful way, searching for the key to getting along for a long enough time to come to respect each other and to treat each other with kindness. They eventually came to realize that somewhere along the way they had acquired that key and were using it. Long busy Fall days respectfully and peacefully turned cooler, with rains after the harvest like it should be, and Winter respected Fall by creating icy ponds to reflect the leafless trees, and with clear, sunny days for skating, and enough white snow for sledding and hot chocolate.
For several years, Fall and Winter had to work really hard to not argue, but soon they discovered that they were on an adventure of learning to know each other. The daughter refrained from correcting her old mother (more often than not), and the old woman softened a little, too, and soon they were actually enjoying each others company.
The whole land breathed a sigh of relief.
We sorted though all of our Christmas things. There were six big boxes up in the attic and another two on a shelf in the garage and we got it whittled down to three mid-sized boxes plus the tree stand. About half of it was donated, and another quarter thrown away. I’m pretty proud of us.
We’ll take the Christmas stuff to Ajo next time and store them in the garage, and slowly but surely we are getting moved out of here and to Ajo.
These Day-of-the-Dead dolls are getting pretty exciting. I couldn’t come up with a delicate enough structure out of clay, The finger bones are not sturdy enough to do out of speckled buff or dover white, but I figured out a way to mold them and attach to the doll to make it sturdy enough to fire. After it’s fired it is no problem.
I am playing around with jewelry for them, too. To get ideas of classic designs I visit sites like diamonds international reviews and such. Can’t get enough of shopping, even if I’m just looking.
I am now trying out a modeling clay that I just found out about, I guess it’s been around. This stuff you bake, the longer you bake the stiffer it gets, and you can stop the process anywhere from rubbery to melmac.
I will use this skeleton hand to make a mold and then attach the hands to my day-of-the-dead dolls using the s’graffiti method. That means I can make the hands out of the same clay as the bones, I just have to attach the hands to something, lay the three-dimensional molded hands over some flowers, or skirt material, or hat. They will be too delicate to hold up on their own, but it should work fine attached. Next problem, feet.
We had another good time for the occasion of my honey’s birthday, long past now, but still we celebrate. Any excuse for a party, I guess.
The food was good and the company was good. We watched Tucker and Dale Versus Evil, which was funny, I love the actors, Alan Trudyk and the guy from Reaper, Sock. I know Trudyk from Firefly, one of my all time favorite series.
Sam and Ken's card
New Binocs!
This week, with my darling working his 9 to 5 for a few days (and a lot of $$$, I was impressed), I am looking for college money. In particular I am looking for money for fiction, since I have a couple of short pieces I like enough to submit.
It’s an interesting search, to see what’s out there. Most of the money is offered by a school for current students at that particular school, none that I feel like going to so far.
But the search continues!
I almost hate to wear clothing when it is so hot as it has been this week. 100 and above all week, we even got, like, 108 one day. I’m sick of it and it just started!
We had a nice month of May, though, which is unusual but appreciated.
Anyway, I have been dressing in light billowy cotton blouses and loose waders, or pedal-pushers, or whatever those short pants are called that are not short enough to be trousers, but too long to be called shorts. Nobody wants to see my thighs, those days are gone.
I am just about out of loose cotton blouses and have been shopping on-line, I feel a lot more comfy sometimes in maternity clothes, especially for the loose cotton blouses.
Maybe I’ll make some, I have plenty of cloth.
I promised you a true story from a friend of mine who went homeless for a few days. This was right after heart surgery, decisions were made and situations changed. He’s doing great right now and feeling healthy. Anyway, he wrote this about that.
———– &&&&&&&&&&&& … &&&&&&&&&&&& ————
Original by Mike
Stay outside – spend the day. Enjoy! Spend the night too, outside. Don’t sleep.
Watch for people or dogs. Gives a new perspective.
Saw jumping squirrels the other day while I was in the park. They didn’t climb the
trunk and run out to the seed pods hanging from the droopy little branches. No, they
stood under the branches and jumped up hoping for a handhold to grab onto.
Success! After a few failed attempts, success, yes!
A solid grab with hand over hand motion, and the (squirrel) kid climbed that branch like a seasoned circus performer climbing up a webbed rope.
So why would they do that? Was it for security / observation reasons? Shortest
distance between two points? What?
Pop quiz needed. Quick, what is the prime of 345? Don’t answer, I don’t know either. Maybe those little guys just might have more sense we give credit to.
Stay up very late tonight – and keep your eyes peeled.
.
Everyone’s got to be someplace.
That was almost a mantra back in the sixties, it was an answer to questions about thinking something is a good idea???? and then doing that idea stoned???? that’s kind of how my young adult reasoning said, that so what if it was dumb, somebody had to do it and I was there, so??? Everybody’s got to be someplace.
The answer to everything.
During my mid-life crisis (who knew it would look like that in retrospect?), I started using the phrase again, and getting footloose, so it should not surprise me to have two friends right now on the road. One friend, who is twenty one years old (so very young from where I sit) is heading off to school in Alaska, and his going-away party had a keg of Killian’s. It was nice, I met his mom, who turned out to be great. Tim and I have been friends for a couple of years now, having met in International Business.
The other friend, ten years younger than me, has less focused, but no less magnetic and necessary, goals.
My fellow geezer (he’s much younger than I), mud buddy, has agreed to share some of his adventures in the Phoenix nights, like Lonesome George says, “I’m outdoors, ya know.” That’s the song about the three drinks in a bar.
But I digress.
So mud buddy will be sharing stories from the studio, stay tuned.