Ice

Well, I guess it's never really a good time to have an ice storm. 

The mystery to me is, if the air temperature is at or below freezing, why in the world doesn't it just snow instead? But no, It's got to be freezing rain, which then turns into ice. 

There was a pretty dramatic ice storm here some years ago, before we moved to Cooperstown. The ice was so thick on just everything, that the weight of it on the lines pulled the poles down. It was an odd thing to see, the lines still running from pole to pole, but the poles hanging at sharp angles or laying on the ground for as far as you could see up and down the road. Breaking trees sounded like dozens of guns going off, one after the other, followed by branches, small, medium, and large, crashing to the ground. You certainly did not want to be anywhere near under a tree then, and we have lots of trees here.

Fence picket with a cloche of ice

Here are some images from the current ice storm. The ice on the grass is just as thick as it is on everything else, which makes walking, even on the grass, a big be-careful. 

I took my walking-stick/cane with me when I went out to tend the chickens, and I'm sure glad I did, because I'm pretty sure I would have ended up on the ground if I hadn't.  

Here are some other things I learned:

• Ice on grass is doable, just pay attention and be careful.
• Ice on accumulated leaves is much trickier than you'd think, probably because of a combination of the ice, and the fact that the leaves will move around when you step on them.Try to avoid walking on iced leaves if you can.

Interesting configuration

•  The trees creak and crackle in the slightest breeze. That's both interesting and creepy.

•  It's well-nigh impossible to get from the house to the chicken house without walking under a tree somewhere along the way.

• Flat ground is way better to try to walk on than even the slightest incline. 

 

 

 

 




Half-inch of ice on everything.

 
















• It's astonishing how freakin' slippery the ground is, even though you'd think the grass would provide suitable traction.

Unless another wave of precip comes along, it looks like we're close to done getting it, at least at my house. 

Happy Trails, and thanks for reading!

Ordinary World

As we crowd and overtake midnight on this fourth day of November, I'm thinking this is probably why I don't blog every day - I want everything I write to be meaningful and touching, moving, impressive, stunning...I want every piece to be spectacular, but sometimes the best I can come up with is ordinary.  I'm afraid this is one of those ordinary days.

I have a certain circle of friends with whom I converse on a fairly regular basis, and some of us have had a similar conversation, where somebody wants spectacular, but gets ordinary. I say welcome to life, Darling. Most of life is ordinary. Don't discount the importance of ordinary, I tell them. Most of what happens, happens in the ordinary world, on an ordinary day, to ordinary people. We can have spectacular moments (even spectacular days), but it is unreasonable to expect every moment of every day to be spectacular. Ordinary is the Dark Matter of life - there is so much more of it than there is Spectacular. It's always so interesting to me to find myself In a position to have to heed my own advice.

So here I am, experiencing an ordinary day, wishing like everything that I had something blindingly poignant to write in today's blog post. Oh, well, as someone dear to me has been known to say, "You pays your money and you takes your chances." 

Good Evening, Dear Readers :)

V~

Art Happens!

Anyone remember back when those "Shit Happens" bumper stickers were all the rage?  You saw 'em all over the place, although we did observe you were more likely to see one on a raggedy old beat up car  and less likely to see one on, say, a new Lexus. But they were quite a thing for a while, probably twenty, twenty five years ago. My friend Roger observed that "Shit doesn't just happen, there are active (you-know-whats) out there!"

It was also along about that time, I was a practicing artist. Oh, I still had a day job, and stuff like that, but I lived in a little house where I'd made one of the bedrooms into a studio. I had a nice sturdy easel and always had several paintings going. That's how I do it - get one started, and while it's "cooking," start another one, and so on. 

I started out with watercolor, then learned how to draw (a little backward, but that's just me) then moved on into pastel, and then oils. I was active in a couple of art societies and one of the old Artisan 9 galleries, and was easing my way into festival type shows and whatnot.Oh, my goodness, how I loved making art, and I got pretty good at it.

But something switched off when I moved out of my little studio-house. I still had all my gear, still looked at everything with the artist's eye. I still always thought about what would that look like in a painting, but did precious little actual artwork after the end of 1995. Got to be embarrassing when I'd run into an old friend I hadn't seen in a while, one who'd known me as an artist when they'd ask me what I was painting these days. I'd have to drop my head and tell them it'd been a while since I'd picked up a brush.

I guess I "took my art supplies on vacation to Cooperstown," which is a good thing, because that means I didn't get rid of my supplies. I still have them. Still have that big wonderful easel, and the paints and brushes. 

So I had a little time this weekend to do a little straightening in the garage/shop/barn, and rediscovered that easel. Had a brief conference with the Universe and said, yes, I believe I will, and carried that easel out to free air, blew the dust off with the air compressor, wiped the rest of the dust off with a damp rag, and brought it in the house. 

Got a couple of canvases (because, you know, I like to have more than one at a time going) and drew some images on them Saturday night. Sunday morning I applied broad acrylic color washes for underpainting, and in the afternoon began applying oil paint to one of the canvasses. Sure feels good to be back in the saddle, yes it does.

Back in the day I used to say, "Art Happens!" 
Now my thinking is more that "Art doesn't just happen - there are active artists out there!"

National Blog Posting Month?

 I've been infatuated with the concept of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, since I first heard about it some years ago.  The object of NaNoWriMo is to get 50,000 words of fiction down in the thirty days of November. 

There's a whole culture around the process. 50,000 words in 30 days breaks down to about 1667 words a day. Certainly not impossible for a serious writer, but a pretty serious writing assignment, sure enough. So far, it's always felt like it would take more time and dedication than I've had available or would be willing to give to a project for thirty consecutive days. Cares of the world, and all that. One of these days I do intend to participate in a NaNoWriMo - but, once again, not this year.

Meanwhile, in response to NaNoWriMo, another writer has fired off a concept called National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo. This is way more my speed. So, beginning on day two, here we go! NaBloPoMo! 

My co-workers may be relieved that I have another outlet for my verbosity so that maybe they won't have to read long chatty emails from me every day...and I've just had an epiphany - maybe this is what I should have been doing all along!

What the - was that?

Cooperstown NY draws some pretty interesting characters, and you’re likely to find them doing just about anything.  For example, you could have someone who might test out at a genius level IQ, might qualify for Mensa membership if he were interested, but might be  the sort of person who maybe didn’t mainstream in the classroom all that well. Or maybe he did. Who knows. He might have had a fancy degree in some esoteric liberal subject, I don’t know. He never mentioned it if he did. This was a quirky and very entertaining night maintenance man at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum we'll call Jim (changing names to protect the innocent). Night maintenance doesn’t pay as well as, say, Senior Vice President, but it’s a lower profile position, so you can get away with more stuff, so it’s got its plusses.

Maintenance had these nice blue sweepers, and Jim named his Monica, after Monica Lewinski, and her infamous blue dress. (If you remember your fairly recent history, you should be able to make the inference.) Jim also had a blue macaw at home, which, it seems, was nearly as quirky, entertaining, and smart as Jim. I wish to goodness I could remember that bird’s name. 

Jim told a story about one Saturday afternoon that he leaned back for a nap. Apparently while he was asleep, the kids came in, put a pizza in the oven, and turned on the oven timer, because the next thing Jim knew, he awoke to this odd droning sound and someone saying, “What’s that? What is that? What the hell is that?” He arose, still half asleep, and followed the sound into the kitchen, where he found the blue macaw on the stove, examining the timer, asking what the hell it was, as it buzzed.

I remembered that story at 5:45 this morning.

Last night my phone battery was low and I plugged it into the kitchen island while I was downstairs. That phone happens to have a very handy alarm that wakes me in the morning (which I must remember to turn off on mornings that I don’t wish to be awakened at that hour).  According to the order of things, it went off at 5:30 exactly as it had been set to do. It was plenty loud enough; I certainly heard it all the way upstairs, but I wasn’t quite ready to get up just yet. Apparently Cookie the cat was, though, because the next thing I heard was the unmistakable, hearty sound of a substantial piece of glass breaking on the tile floor. This time I was the one saying “What the hell was that?”

It seems Cookie went downstairs to see “what the hell was that” about my 5:30 AM alarm and when she jumped up on the island, or tried to, it was higher than she anticipated. She caught the placemat I had set there with coffee cups on it, and pulled the whole thing forward in a precarious manner.  It wasn’t any coffee cup that had broken, though, but the glass sugar bowl. 

I came downstairs to find glass and sugar splayed out all over the place, as you can imagine. I located the broom and swept it up - thought I got it all swept up this morning, but I am still finding bits of glass here and there.

Cookie is fourteen years old in chronological years. I don't know how old that is in cat years, but I know she is young for her years. I am impressed that she is so conscientious, to attend to an unruly alarm downstairs on the kitchen island the way she did. I guess I'll be getting a new sugar bowl - and I will certainly make sure not to leave my alarmed phone downstairs again!

Morning Pages

In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron describes (among other things) a writing process called "Morning Pages." It's really sort of a blend between a meditative process and a writing discipline, recommended for accessing and encouraging creativity. It's also therapeutic, useful in helping one get to the core of a matter and/or get through stuff. I've used morning pages for all of the above.

It's been a while since I wrote morning pages on a daily basis, but I think I will return to that practice, and here's why: It helped me before, and those pages are interesting to read now. 

I came across a notebook while ago that contains morning pages from the days shortly after Steve's death. I know that somewhere there is another notebook of morning pages for some time prior to and through that event as well (although I'm not quite ready to see those pages yet).

I thought this notebook of morning pages would be much more difficult to read than it has been. In reading it, now, almost two years later, I see how much I was trying to adhere to some kind of routine in order to keep from utterly disintegrating and blowing to the four winds. Even the routine of the morning pages themselves - beginning with the date, a series of affirmations, filling three pages with writing, no matter what - this lent something of a sense of order to a time when my world had gone completely off its axis.

I wrote about the earthquake that frightened me so, and about Muffin the Cat as his health and mentality deteriorated, and about how nice it was to look out the windows in the daytime, but kind of scary at night. There is a great deal in that book of morning pages that, as I read, I can imagine having done, but do not actually remember. Woven into the everydayness of it all are touches of that spiky humor for which I am known among my friends. Not for public consumption, though. I'll keep my morning pages to myself for now, but I will write more of them, yes.

So. Morning Pages.

One from the "Well, this is Awkward" Department...

This summer I was contacted by someone on facebook with a friend request. His profile picture depicted an attractive silver-haired man.  Problem: the photo was of a fella who lives in Hawaii, but the person who friend-requested me insisted he was a businessman in England.

The old darling flattered me effusively, saying the nicest things. Now, I know I'm likeable, but almost everyone I know really only talks to me like that after they've gotten to know me pretty well. Even my dearest friends haven't gushed that much right out of the box. "To know me is to love me," keyword: Know. 

This guy can't possibly know me that well, and I am traditionally suspicious of anyone who goes on too much too soon.

I guess he caught me in a weak moment. Oh, sure, I was cautious, but, yeah, I chatted with him on facebook. He sent me more photos of the same guy. I noticed that the photos he sent me all looked like upscale clothing catalog shoots - nothing that looked like a personal photo taken with one's own camera.

Bold declarations of love, eternal love, talk of making a life together. Playing the sympathy card with talk of having been orphaned at a young age and having a four year old child whose mother died in childbirth. Asking me questions, and then telling me how oh, so very much we have in common. He was pretty slick, but there were several things that didn't feel right. He didn't Skype, for example, (and wouldn't), and while he wanted to exchange phone numbers, apparently a phone call was impossible as well. Really, I do know better, but it sure was fun to have someone make a fuss, you know?  I must say, I enjoyed the rush!

It's a six hour difference between England and Oklahoma, so our window of opportunity to chat was either in the middle of my night (his early morning) or the middle of my work day (his evening), and for some odd reason, my employer actually expects me to work when I'm on the clock! Go figure.   The Institute actually has an official "No Personal Texting" policy, which all employees had to read and sign. Personal texting on one's smartphone is an activity for which one could be fired on the spot. I'd like to think surely they wouldn't actually fire me, but it is the policy, and I don't want to force them into that decision. I don't have to be Norma Rae today. 

Meanwhile, my daughter and her daughter came in for a visit from New York. I'd told my grown children about my "new friend," and they were both very suspicious. My sister had given me a most frightening warning about this sort of thing.

Unfortunately for this would-be relationship, this fella never gave me any information that I could verify through other sources. There was absolutely no activity on his facebook profile, and I was his only facebook friend. The timeline of the story he told me was wobbly, with the only constant being his bold and effusive declarations of  eternal cosmic love. Listen, if anyone came on that quickly and with that intensity in person, I'd be looking for the nearest Order of Protection. This was too much too fast! I'm thinking the reason I didn't shut this guy right down immediately was that there was, in my mind, a sense of safety in distance. Six time zones away, he's not likely to show up out at my gate asking to be let in without me knowing about it in advance. Well, that, and how pleasant it felt to be flattered so. I'm afraid this may be one of those times where "my ego is not my amigo."

So how did I find out about the photo?

When my daughter comes for a visit, she likes to throw a get-together. The day she arrived, she had invited my niece over for a visit. My children were teasing me about my "new boyfriend," so I showed Kandice a couple of the photos of "himself" that he'd sent me. Next thing I know, she's snapping a photo of these pictures with her smartphone and telling me about a way you can Google images. I had planned to follow this up later when I had a minute after things calmed down, but it seems she got to it before I did. 

She was mortified, afraid I would be angry with her, but I know she loves her Aunt Vicki and doesn't want to see me get hurt. She called my daughter to discuss how to break the news to me. Later that night, the kids came to me and said, "Hey, mom, we found something you need to see."

A little surprising, but, then again, not really. Whoever this guy really is, he's pretty good at what he does - most of the time. 

I learned a lot about what is actually an industry of Internet Romance Scammers. They use flattery and pretty pictures to get your attention. They are astonishingly crafty. The rhetoric escalates, usually including talk of a visit, and then they have an "emergency" and need money. Of course, they never come to visit, because they are not at all who they represent themselves to be. It's all about the money. They target men and women. They are almost never the demographic in which they represent themselves.

I actually did "break up" with him when the kids showed me what they found, but he kept messaging me, so I played along a little bit longer, just out of curiosity. It took about six weeks from the first contact to the "emergency" request - an urgent request for a "loan" of 10,000.00 British Pounds, which is almost 16,000.00 USD. 
No, I didn't send any money.

Bright sides:

• I had a clue
• I had savvy family members who knew how to find out about these things
• I listened to the people who love me
• I didn't send anybody any money

Maybe the biggest bright-side of all for me is that this really shook me out of the doldrums. I am delighted to discover that I can feel again, and with that door opened, a new chapter awaits....