Nature's "Smilie Face."

The weather might still be crappy, but it's hard not to smile when you have these bright little bits of sunshine blooming all around the yard.

Signs of Spring/Summer

For most people the first signs of the coming warmer days are groups of happily blooming daffodils, Easter candy in the stores, and for those of us out in the country, the soft, subtle colors of wildflowers. If, like me, you have horses, it’s also the flying hair of a shedding winter coat. However, for me personally, there is one sure sign that the gray days are passing. My local Fred Myer store pulls out dozens of racks of flip flops. They are the first thing you see when you enter the store. Yup, there’s your sign.

When I was a kid, raised by parents born in the depression era, and with W.W.II still a vivid memory, we all called this new form of footwear Jap Flaps. That’s not politically correct these days, and rightly so, but that’s what all the kids called them back then. They were cheap, and the rubber bit between your toes a bit rough at first, so you always got a blister, which eventually became a callous. They came in a few fun colors, but nothing like what you can buy now.

Oh lordy, now it is a veritable cornucopia of choices—stripes, dots, checks, tattoo designs, happy faces, and even the logos of the two big Oregon college teams. And that’s just the foot part. The thong part is even better. You can still get basic plain rubber (which is what I get to wear while doing yard and garden work, ‘cause I can hose them off when they get dirty), but oh my, the choices here are mind boggling. In my latest cruise of the racks, I saw the thong part adorned with fake flowers, sequins, rhinestones, and bead dangles. Some were made of soft suade-like material in every color of the rainbow. Then there are the fancy ones. Wider straps in an East Indian pattern of paisley picked out in silver or gold thread. Western themed ones in black leather and silver conchos. I even saw some with brass bits for that Steampunk look.

Every year I pick out a few new pairs, usually waiting until they have the “Buy one pair, get one pair free” sale. I live in flip flops all summer, and am pretty hard on them, especially the garden work pair. What I love most about “flops” is you can just slip you feet into a pair and are good to go. And since they make all those fancy ones, you can wear them pretty much anywhere—always making sure your pedicure is neat and tidy. Don’t want to turn someone off their food.

But, despite their jolly cuteness, flip flops can be hazardous to your health. I had one of my few near-death experiences while wearing a brand new pair. Here is the equation: New flip flops + wet deck steps = hydroplaning body flying off deck. It happened so fast it took me a minute to figure out how I ended up on my butt in the pea gravel of the terrace. I also thought my right arm was broken, since I couldn’t move it or feel it. Fortunately, all I ended up with were a lot of very colorful bruises in some very interesting places. Lesson learned.

By the time November rolls around, and it becomes too cold to wear them, I have a pile of battered flip flops—their soles worn thin, the straps faded, and the rubber with a permanent indent of my foot. They are the sign of a full, fun summer soon to be drowned out by months of rain.

I haven’t picked out my pairs for this year. They haven’t put them on sale yet. But I saw a new design that I must have. Decorating the sole of this one is a red skull on a black background. The annoying thing is, they only put that design on the man’s sizes. So, next time I’m in "Freddy’s", I’ll search for the smallest size they come in and see if they fit. If not, oh well, there are dozens and dozens of other designs to choose from, which will get me through the summer just fine.

March...Missed

The Sketchbook Challenge theme for March was "Spilling Over." March for me was so busy, I didn't have time to spill anything. So, no journal entries got made, other than here. Since I did commit to this challenge, I have promised myself to be more diligent in April.

Rain

I was born and grew up in Southern California, where there are three seasons—hot, hotter, hottest. That’s a slight exaggeration, because we did get rain occasionally, or episodes of three to four days of Santa Anna Winds, which drove everyone crazy, especially firemen. I loved fall, because I knew it meant there would be four months of cooler weather with little or no smog. When it did rain, I would curl up on the couch with a good book and enjoy the sound of it pelting the roof of the house. If it were a summer rain, I’d open all the windows so I could enjoy the scent of rain-washed plants and trees. Wouldn’t it be grand, I thought, if I lived in a place where it rained a lot. Where I could curl up on the couch, with a fire going in a fireplace (I had never lived in a house that had one), and lounge around in sweaters, sweatpants, and socks.

Be very careful what you wish for.

In 1991 my husband and I moved to Southern Oregon. In March. It was raining. At first I thought it was kinda fun. That feeling lasted about a week. I had three horses that were used to nice, warm, cozy stalls bedded in pine shavings, and hanging out with the other horses at the stable where we kept them. They suddenly found themselves transported to a gloomy place in the middle of a forest, where they had open pipe corrals, no roof over their heads, and within a day, were standing in mud, not pine shavings. Yes, they all had water-repellant blankets on, but the faces that greeted me every morning were not happy ones.

My husband stayed working in California for several months, driving up every other weekend, so I was left on my own to deal with...everything. While painting the walls of the house and getting our things settled in, I also attempted to shovel mud out of the horse pens. That was a lost cause. Since we had a wood stove, I slogged around the property looking for anything that might burn. Yeah, right. It had been raining for months. Every stick of wood on the place was soaked. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that dealing with rain on a daily basis was a big pain in the butt.

Jump twenty years. I still think dealing with rain for months and months is a big pain in the butt. Forget the nice cozy couch by the fire, forget the lounging around in sweatpants and sweaters, or hanging out reading a good book. That scenario works for me for about two or three days, then I’m climbing the walls. I now detest fall, because it is the early warning sign that six months of rain are just around the corner. Six months of gloom, fog, rain, snow, hail, and more rain.

It starts in November, and continues until May. By January, I have turned into the monster grouch, longing for sunny beaches and drinks with cute little umbrellas in them. I start begging my husband to buy tickets to Aruba. He just rolls his eyes. It doesn’t help that he loves winter weather and doesn’t quite understand my mania. A few years ago I discovered I suffer from LDS, or Light Depravation Syndrome. That was actually a relief, since there were times I thought I was going crazy. At least now I understand why.

When winter arrives, I still cringe. I still rant, complain, bitch and shake my fist at the heavens. Every morning when I slog through six inches of water, where the path to the barn has become a tributary to the creek, I grumble. At least our current horses have a nice covered barn and cozy stalls. But the turn out areas still become mud the consistency of cooked oatmeal, and the ground way too slippery to ride on. When we do want to ride, we have to trailer the horses to one of the two local fairgrounds where they have large covered arenas.

At one point my husband wanted us to eventually retire to the Oregon coast, specifically Coos Bay, where we keep our boat. Since I had dragged him to Oregon, where many of my family members had already immigrated to from Southern California, I figured it was his turn to pick the place we moved to next. If he wanted to live on the coast, well (cringe), okay. Never mind that it rains twice as much there as it does in Southern Oregon. Never mind that everything there has moss growing on its north side, or that storms roll in with 75-80 mph winds, or that it’s a major tsunami zone. Yeah, never mind all that, I’ll be fine...really.

He has abandoned that plan. I suspect it’s because he didn’t want to come visit me in whatever institution I ended up in.

In twelve year he’s due to retire. He has twelve years to find a place that isn’t insufferably hot in the summer, and doesn’t rain all winter. He’s a smart guy. He’ll figure it out. I want to enjoy the fall season again, without thinking of it as the prelude to six months of gloom, fog, rain, snow, hail, and more rain. That, and I have no desire to be institutionalized.

Equine Madness II — Mind vs Body

Remember the days when your brain could tell your body to do something, and your body would snap to it, saying, “Right! Got it. No worries!” I do. Back when I was in my late thirties, riding usually four to five days a week, and working with a riding coach once a week, my body was constantly in a low-level state of soreness — in a good way. It told me I had worked, used muscles, and my body had done, or tried valiantly to do, anything my little brain had asked. That state of being, my body totally in tune with my brain, made it possible to be in tune with the mind and body of the animal under me. Well, okay, maybe not all the time. But those times when my gelding, Tristan, seemed to know what I wanted before I asked, and we seemed to be sharing one body, are the most sublime moments I’ve ever had on a horse. You can’t describe the feeling to anyone. Seriously, you could use a thousand words, and it wouldn’t come close to describing that measure of connectedness to another creature. It rocks your world.

Jump two decades, add a ten year hiatus from riding, a new horse, and you have a totally different story. And, lest you get the wrong impression, I’m still in pretty good shape for my age. I’m not overweight, have no health issues, and work outdoors in a large garden. But that’s not riding. Riding is balance, sensitivity, and the constant search for that illusive connectedness. When you haven’t done it for a long time, and you start again, things get frustrating. Your brain, reaching back to previous experiences, starts yelling at your body, “Do this...no, no, you idiot, this, this!” Your body, asked to use muscles it hasn’t twitched in years, whines back, “Huh?...Whah? Oh, move these legs where? Are you sure?” Body procrastination.

In the meantime, my poor horse, Delight, is wondering what the heck is going on up there. And I must admit, our first ride did not start off auspiciously. After a few turns around the round pen, me flopping like a beached flounder, my saddle went sideways and I ended up on the ground. Delight stood there looking at me like I was a total imbecile, falling (pun intended) for the old “bloating like the Goodyear blimp when she tightens the girth” trick. Okay, lesson learned.

We’ve had many rides since then, and I have started working with two different coaches when I can, but I’m still waiting for my body to catch up to my brain. May take a while. My brain remembers how things should feel, where legs, seat, hands should be. Body...not so much. It’s coming back, slowly, and when we’re out of the winter weather, which makes riding hard because the ground is so slippery, things will improve quicker as I put in more saddle time.

But even with the riding I have done so far, the change in my body is already clear. My upper body strength is improving (all that stall cleaning, wheelbarrow pushing, horse grooming), my leg strength is better, and answering “the call” a bit quicker (currently that may be wishful thinking on my brain's part), and I’m starting to feel the first inklings of that constant, low-level state of soreness, which tells me this old body is still willing to work.

Actually, this old body is pretty damned happy. I still have a LONG way to go. My balance is still precarious. I still get frustrated when I know where a leg, hand, or my balance should be, and I can’t quite get there. Or worse, get it there for a nanosecond, but can’t hold it. Delight is still waiting for me to catch up, and gets understandably annoyed when she tries to give me what she thinks I’m asking for, when I’m actually asking for something else but giving mixed signals. I admire that she tries.

Come summer things will improve faster. Better weather means more riding time at home, going to events, and getting out on the trail. Soon my brain will snap to my body, “Do this, this, and this, and then this!” And my body will answer, ‘Right! Brilliant. Great idea!”

Delight will be thinking, “Gawd, it’s about time. I was beginning to worry you’d never catch up.”

(Note on the picture. It's a sketch I did in a journal, and the red text is bleeding through from the back side of the page. But I thought the drawing fit the subject, so posted it anyway, faults and all. The handwritten title slightly cut off reads, "Self-Portrait With Manure Fork")

Studio Dreams

Like all artists, I dream of the perfect studio. You know, one of those romantic, airy, high-ceilinged lofts, with plenty of space for all your artistic endeavors. Tall windows would face north, naturally, for that special North Light so important to getting colors just right. The floors would be wood, stained with decades of use (maybe the building had been an old factory in its previous life). There would be tables of different sizes and heights, one for wet painting, one for dry work. A separate station for working jewelry, with all supplies handy. An easel for larger works, oh, and a sewing station for doing costumes and refashioning pre-bought clothing. Well, you get the idea. A space for everything, and everything in its space. Oh, and just downstairs would be a coffee house, where I could nip down for a nice cup of hot Chai Tea (Sorry, I don’t do coffee).

Dream on, girl.

What I have is a far cry from anything remotely like that dream. I have a room. A small room. It is the darkest, coldest room in the house, hence the mango wall color—my attempt to warm up the place and think tropical. This room is also the computer room, writing room, accounting room, costume room, floral supply/storage room, and the pirate den. The walls are lined with various storage units, and the closet—doors removed—is full of storage units and costumes.

My “studio” is a table in this room. When I do jewelry, it is cluttered with tools, wire, beads, findings, etc. When I work in my art journals, it is littered with stamps, pencils, paper, watercolor Crayons, clip art, glue sticks and rolls of double-sided tape. If I could do any sewing (currently my sewing machine is out of commission), then said table would hold my portable machine, patterns, pins, material and possibly sketches of what the finished garment might look like. And many, many times, it is littered with bits and pieces of all of the above, which is its current state—well, except for the sewing stuff.

However, I am grateful that I have my little multipurpose room. At least I can leave stuff out on the table, walk away, and come back to it later. If I had to work on the dining room table, or anywhere else in the house, I’d have to put everything away, come back later, and dig it all out again. Big pain in the butt. Also, having the computer, scanner and printer in the same room is very handy, as I use all of them in my artwork.

So, I turn on the Probe-Droid (my portable CD/radio/tape player, which looks like something out of Star Wars, hence the name), pop in some music or a book on tape, and I play away at whatever I’m working on at the time, very grateful for this small, but “all mine” space.

Do I continue to dream of that romantic loft with unlimited space and perfect light? Sure. What artist doesn’t? It’s why I still have the big, tilt-top drafting table my husband bought for me at an auction. There is no way it would fit anywhere in our house. But it stands for the dream, so I hang on to it. Hmmm, maybe I’ll set it up in the garage, which since its remodel last summer is now insulated, and has tons of bright lighting, and two large windows—even if they do face south instead of north. Yeah, then I could at least move my bigger projects out there, not worry about spilling paint on the floor, and pretend there is a coffeehouse just around the block, instead of eleven miles away in town.

Now, if I could just get my husband to park his truck out in the driveway.... Ah well, there is still the dream.

Wardrobe Analysis=Morticia Picks Out My Clothes

Have you ever stood back and really looked at the wardrobe hanging in your closet? I had occasion to do so the other day, and an obvious fact became apparent. If a total stranger looked in my closet, they would think the only reason I get dressed is to attend funerals.

Most of the items hanging there are black, brown, gray, dark blue, or dark purple. A few bright spots of turquoise or green might sneak in, or maybe a hint of red, but they are overshadowed by the overpowering “noir” theme of everything else. In summer this dark palette lightens up a little with T-shirts and tank tops, but summer doesn’t last very long in the Pacific Northwest. The lights stay hibernating most of the year.

I live in sweatpants and sweatshirts. Or jeans and sweatshirts. Or cargo pants and sweatshirts. You see the trend. Occasionally I do “clean up” and wear jeans and a nice sweater. Until recently, other than the two fancy dresses I bought five years ago to wear on formal evenings while on a cruise, I owned only one dress—a loose, sleeveless summer floral my husband bought for me at the Orange Co., Calif. swap meet, the weekend of Princess Diana’s funeral. To remedy that, a few months ago I bought a nice simple day dress, in muted shades of blues and browns, with a charcoal python pattern overlaid. This sounds hideous, but is actually quite lovely. But again, colors that are subdued...funereal.

I also rarely wear prints. There are a few lurking within the darker ranks, but they are mainly black designs on white, or the reverse, or black on gray. This is probably because I am a jewelry nut, and prefer my jewelry to stand out against a plain background. But in all honesty, I have never been a big fan of prints, unless it’s a discrete one. Giant red poppies would never make it into my closet, let alone onto my body.

As a rule, I never wear white. I do own two white blouses, bought for the aforementioned cruise, which I have hardly worn since. I NEVER wear white pants. It’s a disaster. Always. Dirt will fly from all directions to land on my white pants. Also, I’m so used to wearing jeans that I have a habit of wiping my hands on the rear-pockets. Do that in white pants, and it either looks like you brushed up against something really nasty, or looks like someone has grabbed your butt and left their hand print behind...literally.

So, since I have declared this to be a year of challenges, maybe I should challenge myself to get out of the Morticia Adams mode, and pick some clothes with a bit more color. That will not include yellow, peach, or orange, which make my skin tone go pasty, and has me looking like I’m dressed for my own funeral. But I’ve developed a penchant for lime green lately, so maybe a new sweatshirt in that? And I’ve always liked red, so there is another option. More turquoise, perhaps? Maybe I’ll get really rash and buy a new dress...in pale blue? Then again, I saw this really lovely one the other day in black, with panels in the skirt of white dots on black...  Hmmm, I wonder how much it costs?

Drat, maybe there is more of Morticia in me than I care to admit.

Oh, and yes, the walls of my bedroom really are red, although they are not so bright as this flash photo makes them appear. And I don’t have closet doors, I have lovely velvet curtains, that match the curtains over the window on the opposite wall. It’s all very romantic.