Stewart Creations

My week of stereotypes:
In a typical week in the small town of Ajo, Arizona, I see a pimply-faced teen white boy who works at the grocery store. He got his picture in the local paper when he got his GED a few months ago. I also see lots of snowbirds, geezers, and desert rats (dry-camping in the desert for free) at the store. In my public studio space, I see snowbirds and lots of artsy-fartsy types; there is one guy in particular who is from the neighboring Indian Nation, and really looks the part, with long hair, soft voice, and downcast eyes, and there is a bunch of homeless middle-aged American Indian men who have lived in the alleys of Ajo since I can remember, but the rest of the Tohono O’odham kids I see (along with the Mexican kids) are high school dropouts in the GED program near the studio. My next-door neighbors are losers in grimy t-shirts, with motorcycles (that never run right), tattoos, and bad teeth.

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Today when I went over there, Mom told me that the doctor said that Beto had a belly full of beetles.
“No, no,” he said, “not beetles!”
Winnie just talked on over him, like she’s getting more and more prone to do.
So I spent some time figuring it out, it was just acid stomache, but several times Winnie went on back to the beetles again, as if it were true. As if she believed it was true again.
What finally got through was that she THOUGHT he said beetles, but that wasn’t real. It would sure sound funny though, if you thought you heard it.
She had a plan of chugging a couple of Budweisers and taking a laxative, then you’d get rid of those beetles.
It was funny and sad and, well, it’s complicated. I don’t wasnt her to get all worked up about something she imagines is real, but it’s hard to keep her from thinking she heard right, or if she says it that makes it so, or she thought it was a true statement and then got stuck on that even in the face of Beto’s explanation of what he said, she couldn’t process it.
But it was a little funny ha ha, but a little sad, too.

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I was worried that Mom had too many drugs, turns out I didn’t do any harm by cutting out one of the meds.
Her bllod pressure is fine, and I think she’s clearer thinking this week than last, so maybe we’re on the right track.
The doctor agreed that she probably doesn’t need both meds if we monitor her blood pressure closely.
So we will.

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I’m sorry I didn’t take the camera today when we walked the dogs. Fae flushed a quail from under a bush and she had a large clutch of eggs. They were beautiful! It’s hard to believe they can nest on the ground and basically out in the open and not get their nests raided all the time by coyotes or snakes, What brave birds, or can it be called bravery when it’s their instinct?

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Trimming plates is time-consuming. I find that I have not got the guts to make them as thin as they need to be. So now I have a set of plates that are too thick to be really special, someone will get them as gifts or I will sell them and whoever gets them will love them anyway. But I know. Firing tomorrow or the next day and then off to make another set, but THINNER!!

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it’s five somewhere in the world… or wait, it’s five here right now. I guess I’ll have a cocktail. I hope I can lure my sweetie in to join me. I’m making quesadillas and I have some eggplant/chickpea dip. Maybe I can lure him in and put a cold beer in his hand.
We sure enjoy our retirement, I have a chance to catch up on all the fun things out there in the wide world web, like vlc media player for free and our free radio stations, and we love putting the movies through our wii player. Heather bought us Netflix for Xmas. What a treat!

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We’re filing taxes for Mom for the first time in maybe a decade. She has missed out on the rebates and Obama Bucks and other goodies because she hasn’t filed. We found a way for her to get some money back and will probably take it over with some HR block coupons and get it done today or tomorrow. Mine could be filed now, too, since I will probably get money back. My sweetie will wait until the last minute because he has to pay something.

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1 9″ pie crust
1 whole lemon, quartered and seeded
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 stick of butter or margarine (cut into chunks)
pinch of salt
blend all ingredients for a couple of minutes, pour into pie shell and bake 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

You can pour the filling over granola and bake for lemon bars.

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Rodent Time!

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our baby LRRR came to visit for a few days. We are so lucky to still have him in our lives.

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new my story reads more like a fairy tale, here’s the beginning:
Once upon a time Winter lived in 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 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, and just 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 root crop wouldn’t set. Without even a greeting, Fall darted right in with a sharp jab of challenging words. She was very rude indeed to Winter.

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The pizza dough was used for individual pizzas and also for an apple tart. It was delicious.
Branson Missouri vacation smorgasbord delicious. Which to my mind is the best reason to go to Branson, for the buffets. Laughlin, Vegas, Reno, all the Indian casinos, too. Love those buffets.
But we did alright at Mike’s today with our individual pizzas and apple tart. The wine was good, too.

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Yum yum, what a great breakfast! I’m eating some of my favorite rice dish, it’s cooked with various grains like barley, wheat, red wheat, wild rice, quinoa, … whatever I can find, and I throw in some french peas or chickpeas, or another kind of legume. This batch had some walnuts and sesame seeds.
I microwaved a little leftover rice with some green beans I cooked last night and added soy suace and D’Amore. I must have been hungry, because that tasted so very good that I think it’s time to make some more rice.

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Lunch-time sandwich garners much attention.

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We are packing about a quarter of all our stuff. It all of a sudden feels like a move!
I’ll keep posting whenever I get to a connection, but I think I might get out of the habit if we don’t get signal pretty soon in the Ajo house.
We get to stay until school starts on the 17th. I will want to come home a couple of days early to get ready for school, but that still gives us over two weeks. Our longest stay yet.
The dogs are going to love it.

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I slept until almost 9:00 this morning. I just stayed glued to the mattress, I guess. I woke up once at around 6:30 and had an impulse to get up and get something done right then, but apparently, I fell asleep again.
Then we went to IKEA and had lunch there after we shopped a bit. Then we shopped some more and got home in the early afternoon. I beat the rush to the Post Office and only had to wait fifteen minutes, so Aunt Elaine and Billie and Renee have their in the mail. Tomorrow I will send off the rest. We are really making headway on this Christmas thing.

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Tomorrow (and maybe tonight) I am going to hit the oven hard! I need baked goodies for Christmas Day. we are inviting the kids and anyone else we can find to come over between noon and four for wine, dessert and fun conversation.
I can hardly wait to see who shows up. I will have to remember to buy some dry wine, I prefer a sweeter wine, but some of my friends actually have sophisticated tastes. Not me, of course, I like stuff like white zinfandel and sangria. (And lots of it.)

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We celebrated the week-end before Christmas party last night. My son and daughter-in-law, Sammie and her date, and me and the Mister. I wore big oven gloves, like a material handling industrialist, and pulled goodies out of ovens for two days before the meal. It was over in an hour and a half, and we moved over to the TV and couch for the new Simpsons.
We put the kids to work decorating the Xmas tree and gift-wrapping the coffee table and putting the festive tablecloth on the dinner table.

We all had a real good time, and fell asleep soundly not too long after everyone left… we did, at any rate. Today I had leftovers for breakfast, yum yum.

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If we didn’t have so many dogs and houses, we could think of a vacation to the Bahamas, or at least Florida. My neighbor, the one who had the fairy-themed birthday party, is from Florida, and used to hop over to the Bahamas all the time with her dad. They didn’t need an orlando car rental, but they rented one on the other end, in the Bahamas. Thing about that that makes me feel uneasy, they drive on the wrong side of the road over there! Getting used to that would be hard for me.

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We got to babysit Boyd-Lur overnight and we had such a good time!

He seemed real excited to see us, and we had a great time walking the dogs just now, up the cove in the Phoenix Mountain Range.
But now it’s back to shopping for gifts, like maybe if I drop enough hints I can get some digital television antennas. I will need something in Ajo, there is not much to choose from as far as TV and internet connections. I may have solved it at with some kind of dish thing, but I still have to shop that.
Back to the malls!

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I am looking for kiln time now that I am not taking ceramics any more. I might consider taking the occasional class as I can afford it, but for now I can’t afford private lessons, being a starving student. The kiln fees in Ajo are okay, a little on the high side, but I am increasingly uncomfortable with my welcome there. I don’t know what happened, but I am getting ‘you’re not wanted here’ signals all over the place and am a little saddened. But I carry on, and have been shopping for kiln space here in town. There is at least one other kiln in Ajo that I might get space in. A kiln costs thousands of dollars and then you have to have it wired in by an electrician and then it cost lots to run, it takes so much juice, so it is too expensive for me right now to own one. It costs about five to ten dollars a bread pan to fire and I need to fire them twice, so it’s not cheap any way you look at it, but since I’m totally hooked on ceramics at this point I need to spend the bucks. I can make little boxes and decorative stuff with only one firing, but food dished take the two firings. Something will work out if I just keep my sunny disposition heading in the right direction.

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I’m so ashamed, I got an 80% on the last math test. When I got it back, the first thing my eyes lit on was a problem marked wrong with a stupid, stupid mistake, a simple oversight. That was four points right there. I will sure be more careful on the next test.

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My first time in the new studio was a blast! I made four little boxes for Xmas gifts and a bread pan for sale, using a white porcelain mix I had never used before. It was very smooth and creamy. Dover White, I think it’s called.
Here’s my very own shelf.

There is a show and sale starting December 1st and the theme is kitchen. I want to make some mortar and pestles, those are always great to gring spices in, and I might make some recipe card holder/spoon rests, I’ll put a pic here if that happens.

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It’s at the fun stage, the layout. Oh heck, every stage is fun, especially this Mario Quilt.

I was looking for Mario’s props, his spy gadgets and foes, but they looked too complicated to make a straight-forward quilt block. Mario is okay with just some stars and cubed stairs. I need to make 15 more little cube blocks and add a border to the stars so they are as big as the Mario blocks.
I might experiment with a different way of joining I have been wanting to try.

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I woke up today thinking I would spend most of it in the ceramics studio since there is no school on Thursday, but when I was changing into grubbies for the studio I remembered that it was Monday after all.
David Bradley, my pottery teacher (professor, actually) went to a sculptural workshop and came back last week with a great slide show. And a beautiful poster, I don’t know the did the poster printing, but it was beautiful and the pieces shown were really inspiring. I loved the human form sculptures, look at the ‘mudfire’ sites for more examples.

So while I’m in the mood and the weather is so perfect I am going to play with some clay pieces I have here at home. I am seriously making Xmas gifts this month.

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