life with flowers

I hope you have a nice day.

shadow

I hate the word abscess. And dentists. Or rather, having to see them.

I'm looking at this and it seems so faint. Dentists must have secret x-ray vision.

I still like rugby!

The otter went home with my good friend Amanda the other day. She studies river otters, and gets really excited over finding otter poop. Well, this one likes rugby, and unfortunately for her, I do think he'll be pooping any time soon. Sorry Amanda!

Click on the picture to make it larger. There is a close up of his face here.

Also, I never grow tired of bubble wrap. It begs to be popped.

Memorial Day antics

The weekend was nice and longish. We had some friends over yesterday for dinner (steak, crab and hamburgers for children), and then when they left, the men of the house had a camp out in the backyard.

The Meep was all for ghost stories, but instead they resorted to... movies on a laptop. Part of me here says what a great idea! The other part thinks that camping is something you do without a tv. Er, laptop. Whatever. You know what I mean, but do you agree??

Anyway, son and husband both went right to sleep after movie watching.

Today I spent cleaning, drawing, and just plain lazing about outside. It was fabulous. What a good day to smell flowers.

crabs smell and so do my hands.

Four things I've learned today:

1. Eating outside is effing awesome. Especially if I get to eat crab and drink mojitos with good friends.

2. That may be mint in my backyard, but it is elderly mint. And what I mean by that is that it's not very minty.

3. Our boy is even better with little kids than we imagined. He played hide and seek like a champ and STILL said please and thank you. We should have company every day.

4. My husband and my best friend seem to be the same person, simply with different parts. This is why I love them both so much.

turkey on the lawn

We were driving down a quiet street last night on the way to the boy's fencing lesson, when low and behold, we spied a female turkey casually walking down the street across people's lawns. She picked her way through the grass, and every now and again gave off a low cooing cluck. Not quite a chicken noise, but she most certainly wasn't a dove either. She was completely indifferent to my car as I slowly drove along next to her, and unafraid of the group of people sneaking along behind her with cameras in their hands.

my one blurry picture of the event

It was a lovely, unexpected thing to see on a busy Tuesday evening.

i like rugby.

in progress, for a friend.

Skipperdoo says he spilled his wine.

Poor Skipperdoo.

gone baby gone

After a full weekend, the in-laws have departed, having helped us fix our small and yet very heavy toilet AND cleaning the bathroom afterwards. The good news is that the visit forced us to clean and organize our house, and because of that, now we are intent on keeping it that way. I wonder how long we will be able to keep that up, but if it's through the week I'll be mighty impressed.

Saturday we had delicious strip steak that the husband grilled on our newish grill, fabulous pasta salad and baked fried prepared by moi. It was a good meal, but after tonight, I am going back to being a vegetarian. It's been a lovely trip back into animal meat country, but I've been feeling the effects a little too much. I have to wait until after tonight because I still have one Zweigle's white hot left and I will be eating it THIS EVENING. Mmm, delicious white hot made of pork and veal, I shall miss you so even though you are made from piggies and baby cows. Truly, I will. Once the white hot is gone, I may be missing out on sirloin and bacon, but I'll feel better physically. Not as tired and weighed down.

In other news, I was able to complete one of my twice weekly drawings - a bear that I'll be posting this evening. I was pretty convinced I wouldn't be able to get another one out this week, and I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. The Meep named the bear Skipperdoo, which in my opinion, is a fabulous name for a bear. I also, on request, drew a flower with two blooms for the step-father in law, but neglected to snap a picture before they left. I was glad to get a chance to do them both.

between paint and painting.

The kitchen cabinets are all hung and now only missing hardware. It makes quite a difference in the kitchen, and I'll post pictures soon. In other good news, I may have stayed up late, but I did clean off my drafting table, and even unpacked an entire box of supplies!

I am beginning to miss painting. I have spent weeks painting walls, cabinets, drawers... but no canvas. I have piles of it neatly bundled in the basement, and have had no time to get to it. On top of this, I'll be starting class again in a couple of weeks, so I'm only going to get busier. I'll have to start digging around for some time!


This zebra ended up going to a lovely, quiet man in California. It was the first painting I ever sold, and I loved it. I hope he's enjoying it.

drawing day & the half the in-laws.

Today would be, by all accounts, one of my drawing days. Two days a week - Tuesday and Thursday, I set aside time to both start and finish a drawing. My unspoken pact with myself says I must complete two a week. My in laws, however (one half of them = husbands mother & stepfather) are going to be here from out of state tomorrow and my house still looks like we moved in last week. I love my in-laws, but I am a little ashamed of how disorganized we currently are. There are boxes everywhere and I am still finishing painting the kitchen cabinets.

See that thing covered in boxes in the corner there? Yeah, that's my drawing table. Here you can see various painting implements, one cabinet door and three of the drawers that go to our $60 VOA buffet table for the empty kitchen wall.

So it looks like I will be spending a large amount of time this evening finishing the cupboards, unpacking, and decorating. I'll let you know how it goes!

Deer me. Dragons and Deserts too.

We had two deer in the back this evening, both smaller than the one we had yesterday. One was quite skinny, and appeared to either be limping or just have very stiff hind legs, almost as though it might have gotten hit by a car. Watching them, the meep said, "do you think that's why he's eating our delicious crab apple leaves? to get his strength up?"

Ricky sometimes likes to get a little feisty in his tank. Once in a while I'll walk into the room to find that instead of his usual, ridiculously lazy self, he has decided to climb up the wall. I can't imagine what he is thinking of his strange glass house. Sometimes I think he dreams of deserts.


He never knew one, but some other bearded dragons, somewhere down his family line, did. Maybe he somehow remembers it.


A little pen and ink Ricky, telling you he'd like to be out in the wild.

Deer O Rama

Look what I found in our back yard today. We've known that we had them back there, but they have pretty much been keeping to themselves since we moved in.

Why, hello there. Just so you know, your crab apple branches have delicious tender leaves. Mmm... I sure have enjoyed them.

Isn't her coat gorgeous? I believe she's shedding her winter coat so right now it's not brown or gray, but almost a calico. It was absolutely beautiful, and this last picture I was able to take from quite close up. The deer let me come all the way to the back corner of the yard, and when it left it took its time. It wasn't scared, it just meandered away. What a great moment.

I moved

All of my posts, that is. So I didn't really write all that are below this one on the same day, i promise.

I cleaned the old site up and trashed a LOT. I basically put a smack down on ebay, for one. Maybe that way I'll be a little more organized. Ha ha. I crack me up. I keep moaning internally about the time it will take me to repost paintings and so on, but chin up!

So take heart-- I will not procrastinate as much as I'd like, and gradually the blog will look better and be refurbished again.

home again home again jiggidy jig!

Thank goodness it's Friday. Ricky sure is glad:


and, as promised a better picture of the mice:

slovenly, but at least interesting.

Seriously. I wish that I had that neatness gene that makes my mom whirl through rooms and leave them spotless, but I just don't. This is actually pretty clean, above. I feel better just looking at it. That's not even a picture of the turkey tail and FOOT that my co-worker mounted and brought in for me that is on the other end of my desk (which wraps completely around my office). I'll have to add a picture later. It is definitely disturbing, and weirdly impressive.

In other news, drawing is going well, although I haven't been painting or making anything. As previously mentioned, too much house stuff going on.

Ick... phone pictures. Better ones later. Lately I have been drawing conversations. These little mice are having one. Stinky cheese and cats-- who doesn't love talking about them?

Meh.

The new house feeling is suddenly wearing off. I stayed home today for an appointment with a plumber to replace two of the four spigots on our house, and after three hours, some banging and drilling, discovering that my dishwasher drain is rigged with duck tape (yes, folks, tape) and said duck tape catching on fire ever-so-briefly-- our water refused to come back on. I had to call the water authority to turn it off at the street so that the plumber could take apart the main water valve coming into the house and drive to the plumbing supply place to pick up another one. It was fabulous. At least he fixed the kitchen sink while we waited for the water authority. sheesh.

Warmer weather is here, the trees in my yard are in bloom, and i wake up at 5:30 every morning to birds talking to each other outside our window.
The new house is amazing. We talk about how it's almost like living in a vacation: the big back yard framed by woods, the quiet, the old people, not knowing where everything is (boxes, people... everything is still in boxes).
Really, it is quite lovely.