"Untitled" Spring Bay Studio -- 2005

I'd been thinking of this piece the last couple days...there's been a whole lot of stuff happening 'roun' here, some of it good (Art Stuff) but a lot of it has been dragging me thru the mill, Hell, an' lots of other places. So -- this lil' face seemed to be in my mind, something of a peaceful spot amidst all the turmoil. Family stuff, an' lots of DRAMA with capitals not even beginning to touch the depth of happenings. Le's jus' say that it's a good thing I gave up on Gin way back in the day...I shudder to think of what I'd do with it now.

The Art stuff is jus' a shade from being completed...I'm excited about it..an' naturally want to grab all of the things that are nearly done, but know that the minute I touch any of it, it'll get ruined. All of them are drying with the last coat of varnish, so it's naturally making me want to touch an' see --- "AREN'T YOU DRY YET??!!" -- The Dog jus' pokes her head up from whereever she happens to be laying at the moment, an' gives me this "Whaa??" kinda look. There are dayz that I am one happy lil' person that she can't talk. Expecially when The Husband has hauled off an' spouted off something stuiped...OOPS !! Did I say that? Well, he usually is the first to admit that he said something off the wall..but STILL -- Hmm...where was I? OH!! -- The Dog will jus' look at me if I'm trying to have a conversation with one of my pieces on the table, but she must be used to my muttering, because she doesn't seem to mind.

I've gotten the bug to go off an explore some of the neighborhood yard sales...with a lot of the seniors moving out of their homes (some have been the original owners from the early '50's) an' selling off all that STUFF in the attic, I'm REALLY tempted to go an' grab what ever my lil' hands can stuff in a bag. But, since I also have these things called Utilities, they probably need to be taken care of first...then find the yard sale stuff later. It's sorta sad to see some of the neighbors go -- the other thing that REALLY sucks, is some family members have gone the "quick" route of selling the homes to Contractors, who in 3 days, come back to the house after the sale, start ripping the place apart, remodel the entire thing to appeal to high-end buyers, an' sell for outrageous prices. The house across the street had that happen, an' even tho the young family is quite nice, the Contractor was one of the most arrogant, boastful $"^%_{#&_^+&| I've met in some time...he had this grand idea of selling the place at over $45,000 more than the value of the place....his lil' bubble was quite burst when it sold for less than $200,000. Greed always comes back an' bites when you least expect it...

So -- I'm sad to see some of the folks leave. But that's one of those things. One of my neighbors is 86 an' still drives everywhere..is super busy with lots of public service things. She nearly wears me out. An' she walks up an' down the street nearly every day. Puts some of us (ok, ok -- I don't do walking, but at least I do exercise for 1/2 Hr/ to 45 min. every day) to shame. I know she's thinking about sellin' her place an' movin' back to Georgia..we'd discussed it a little over a year ago. She may stay...

So -- the quandry is to not go overboard on the sales...not fill up what space I have out in the studio with lots more stuff...But at the same time have treasures that'll go really well with my work. It's drivin' me nearly over the edge, I'm tellin' ya!! What to do, what to do...

Lady of The Tulips -- who is nearly standing over her tulip beds tapping her foot waiting, now, IMPATIENTLY for the tulips to start popping up out of the ground. The daffodils are goin' overtime with their blooming, but the Tulips are either waiting for a bus ticket to Omaha or something else hat I probably do NOT want to know...

*** Well I am very sad to say, that with all my best intentions, I never did find any of my food coloring for St. Patty's Day...I didn't exactly sit down an' cry, but I realized that I'd just have to have my beer "regular" instead of Green...an' lets face it, it's better than nothin'...

I've been painting a frame that just made it's way into my lil' studio the other day...I was absolutely a wreck tryin' to decide whether or not to go ahead an' paint it. I mean, the voice of "You're gonna screw it UP!!" was workin' overtime in the back of my head -- I MEAN -- it was jus' about to make me ill. So, I finally took the plastic wrap off the frame, an went to work. It's gonna get posted on here probably tomorrow, 'cause right now it's dryin' out in the studio. I slapped gesso on it, then painted a spiffy pale blue with lil' lines that resemble waves. Had so much fun with it, I was almost sad that I got it finished!! But, Not To Fear!! -- I picked up a couple other ones, so that'll keep me busy for the rest of the week. Once they finished dryin' then some of my pieces will finally have some nice new homes. I don' want them to feel like they've been left out in the cold...

An' speakin' of cold -- I think I'd mentioned that we dropped a bundle not too terribly long ago on our furnace. The entire idea behind the work, was to get the blasted thing to run the way it was designed to run -- an' it was anything BUT running the way it was suppossed to...we had these horrendous gas & elec. bills during the winter...more than I care to say...well...I will...over $150 for a month of heating!! SO -- with the maintenance guy tellin' me that with the most recent visit, "Your furnace will be runnin' like it's suppossed to!" -- I was naturally skeptical. Well Yahoo an' La-Dee-Dah!!! -- we jus' got the recent elec. bill, and it DROPPED $50!! It's still high, but it's gettin' back to where it should be. -- Now just as long as the winter makes up it's mind to pack 'er up an LEAVE, we'll be doin' allright. Now watch, now that I've said that it'll be 32 degrees tomorrow...sigh..

Have to make this short..well, sortta short -- got to go check the paint an' see what The Dog is up to -- she got herself all worked up last night 'cause The Youngest sprayed her all over with flea spray...you'd a thot she'd been given some sort of shot for nahsty attutide...she was MIFFED!! -- I mean, she ran herself all over the kitchen, the studio, the front room, dining room, into my youngest son's bedroom, all worked up an' acting like it was the end of the world...then she finally layed down in the front room, with her back to everybody else, an POUTED for over an hour -- wouldn't look at ANYBODY no matter how hard we tried to make her turn around an' look at us -- talk about a rotten spoiled brat...great day....it's was actually really funny, but we tried VERY hard not to laugh out loud. She kept starin' at us like we were absolute Scum - of - the - earth. Am I glad dogs can't talk...sheesh....

Lady of The Tulips -- who is now considerin' whether or not to get some paint to cover up a mess the middle one made on his walls...he painted all of his bedroom walls black....my nerves...

~~ Some good news on the home front ~~ An' it couldn't be any better than happening on St. Patricks Day!!

Recently I'd mentioned on here that The Husband had taken his DOT physical so he can remain a certified Truck Driver...the only problem with the test was that his blood presure was about to literally drop him dead on the street...he was given 3 months to have it straightened out by the Clinic where the physical was given. He'd also gone to out regular Dr. to get on some kind of medication to help...the tests for those came back good, so the Dr. said that the main thing was for him to do what every Doc sez...Loose Weight...Eat Healthy...Cut Sugar..blah, blah, blah...

Well ~~ we immediately got into WOAH mode, an went to a Herbal Shop to find something that one of the Longshoreman told The Husband to get that would lower his blood pressure, was organic, and cost only $20 for a bottle that would last over 2 months. We were all over it in a (no pun intended..) heartbeat. Found what's called Blood Pressure Drops -- their made up from Cayenne Pepper and some other herbs -- taste like the very devil, but by gosh and golly, those things have dropped his blood pressure enuf that he was certified to have his CDL for the next 2 years!!! Zippa-Dee-Doo-Dah!!! My oh My, what a WONDERFUL DAY!!!

The Husband has also been taking a combination of Hawthorne Caplets plus some other drops, the name of which escapes me at the moment ~~ But the main thing is that they work, were less than $50 and the cost savings was so much less than if we went the conventional route, with pharmacys, Dr. bills, etc., etc -- I'd known about some of these herbs for awhile, but it never really meant anything 'till we went to the Herb Shop an' the woman was wonderful with us -- pointed out what all would combine to work with another herb...that type of thing. Now the hardest part will be the losing of weight...he does work outside a LOT -- but the sitting inbetween changing out containers is whats the bad thing. He has started back in eating veges, which he'd gotten away from...Got into this THANG with eating hamburgers from the local drive-thru...I'd been tellin' him it'd come back an' bite him HARD...well, I didn't have to say TOLD YA SO...jus' the scary part of possibly losing his job was enuf to lay back on the junk food.

The attending clinic Dr. said that the herbal treatment is a good idea, an' since we've got zero insurance, I do not EVEN want to think of the cost of prescription meds...The Dr. said for The Husband to stay with what he's takin', since it seems to be working. To say we're relieved is putting it mildly...But how GREAT is it that the good news came on St. Patricks Day!! I can see my grandfather dancin' a jig now!!! -- Way up in the clouds!! --

Lady of The Tulips - who's still wonderin' where her green food coloring has gone...I just recently found one of my very best ever beer mugs, an' it'd be a CRIME not to have green beer today...now -- where is the box of food coloring??? sigh....

"His Calculations Were A Bit Off" Copyright 2005 Spring Bay Studio


I'd thought about this piece the other day while my middle son & I were driving down the street goin' somewhere -- I think to get him some odds an' ends at the music store...

We'd passed a car "parked" on the side of the highway...with both the front tires all lopsided from the rest of the car...front end smashed all to pieces...basically the car was abandoned. The first words out of my son's mouth were, "Looks Pretty Good!!" I naturally started laughing so hard I nearly cried. But then I told him it looked like something that would happen to one of our cars...jus' have the entire thing fall apart at the biggest intersection in the City....Whereas this particular vehicle was left on the side of the road an' nothing happening around it, I told my son that if that had happened to me, I'd probably be in jail wanted by the FBI, CIA, ABC, CBS -- you get the idea.

So after getting home an' goin' back to doin' the mundane things that are lurking around the house, this piece suddenly popped into my lil' head. I'd thot about some of those scientists who claim to have all these absolute methods on achieving some sort of "Discovery" --whether it be in space, mining for gold...whatever. Always with the most exacting methods known to mankind. Only, once in awhile they, uhh...jus' happen to fall short of the goal. Sort of like the car we saw on the road...sortta jus' stopped short of it's intended destination -- wherever that happened to have been.

I've also gotten about 3 pieces in the works -- little pieces compared to some of the other ones I've been making. I recently picked up a pack of those prefinished canvases, in the hope that I can corral the amount of work I put together, and get them onto something that will be a little easier to frame. I'm STILL working on getting 4 pieces framed for the shop over next to the Bay...I'm suppossed to call the owner by next week or so an' see what she has available in terms of space to hang some of my work...I'm REALLY excited about the possibilitiy of having my work Out THERE for people to see. My middle son thinks it's jus' too cool for me ot have this chance. Some of the local galleries don't carry something like what I do, an' I've lost track of the people who have told me, ~~ "We Ohhnly tahhke SERIOUHHS AHHHHRRTTT..." Jus' what the H*** that's suppossed to mean is any guess, but it seems to mean that they jus' want to keep some of their cronies happy by keeping the same-ol same-ol in their walls an' call it a day. Too bad for them ~~ There are probably some fantastic artists in the area that wouldgive their eye teeth for an opportunity to get their work out in the public view...but some snoot has this thing about keeping apparences (man, I really spelled that one lousy...) spiffy for her / his friends...Sad...

So ~~ It's off to the studio for now -- my youngest is now looking for another job...but the recent find for him -- in way of applying for a job --- does not entail ME driving all over creation to get him from point A to point B -- the newest interview will be over at the oceanfront, and it's ON THE BUS LINE!!! YAHOOO!! I MEAN -- LE'S HEAR IT AGAIN!!! YAHHHOOOO!!! I've ranted too many times on the Really bad drivers here, so any chance to have one of the son's get a job opportunity that's on the bus line is an absolute PLUS in my book! Now -- jus' as long as he get's the job we'll be doin' fine!! The job he's had for the past few weeks has only been payin' him (get this...) $6.00 an hour --- working in a warehouse loading trucks with freight for Wal Mart....I guess the lousy pay goes along with their slogan -- "Always the Lowest Price...Always!" Goes for workers pay, looks like....sigh...

Lady of The Tulips ~~ Who has to decide whether or not to paint a frame a pale, pale blue, or go with White like all the other "Beach" frames she's been seein' at local Surf, Beach an' "Stuff" shops....Which oh which shall I use?? ~~

~~ Shame ~~ Shame ~~ Shame ~~ Everybody knows yer name...

Well...tha's one of the sayings that I often heard when trying to explain away some event that I'd somehow over looked, or blew off -- or jus' flat out forgot...

It isn't that I forgot to get something on this blog for OVER A WEEK -- it's jus' that there have been -- les' see....24,596 other things that have come up -- happened -- occured -- all that and more. Then -- out of the blue, one of our "friends" suddenly popped up with a new girlfriend, never mind about the wife back home an' all of that...jus'came over to the house with new "friend" like there was nothing out of the ordinary...got to admit, a lawyer would have a field day with that lil' occurance...I'd just come in the door from retrieving something that I'd left at the grocery store, in the shopping cart, so I was already NOT in a good mood...an' the WIND was blowing me all over the place...so my temper was less than short...my mood matched the black-inky dark night (it was after 8 p.m. at this point) and then there were probably 2,890 bad drivers on the road in the short mile-and-a-half from the grocery store to my house...an' I drive up to see this CAR in my driveway, an' my mind is sudenly a whirling dervish...Walk in the house an' WHAM -- see all this nonsense at my dining room table...

Well -- there have been so terribly much more THANGS happening around here, but this is not the afternoon to rant....I'm trying to limit the rant-ness to less than 4 times a week around the house, an' figure that the rant-less I am in the house, then by all that's right an'; spiffy, there sh0uld be less on my blog, too -- SO -- that being said...I've gotten a LOT more accomplished on the ART side of life...I'm thinkin' that there must be some kind of muse that's set up shop jus' over my right side, who's gettin' me into the creative drive that I'm sure has never occured before. I got up the nerve to finally get some of my work framed...I've applied hanging wire to the back of all my collage pieces to this point, but recently I'd taken pieces of my work to a local shop, an' the shop owner wants them in her place (!!) but I have to frame them. I'd been afraid to do this...why, I've no idea, but when I realized that there are frames deep enuf to gather all my piece an' extra goodies on them, then it jus' came down to what size I needed to get . A quick drive to the art/craft store was the EASY part...the hardest part was gettin the frame that I thot would look best for each piece...so they aren' t cookie-cutter looking. And once I got the first frame, then it seemed that all this NEW stuff has suddenly jus' started bubblin' up from somewhere that I didn't even know existed...SO -- the finished pieces will go into the newly bought frames, then the works in progress will get finished over the weekend, an' framed probably by the first part of next week!! That's so much fun!!

I'm also gettin' the vibe for SPRING!!! -- While I work on my various pieces..there is sometimes out of the BLUE one of the Surf Tunes poppin' up in my head...usually when Istart to gather pieces of collage paper that happen to have water designs, or if I gather some pieces of Shells, Fish...whatever the piece seems to call for...In the last month or so, one of the Beach Boy's songs was floating around in my head..."We've Been Havin' Fun all Summer Long..." -- this while I was trimming some blue shaded pieces of cardstock...I usually have some music playin' in the studio, but it seems when the radio isn't on, then these ol 60's songs jus' come floating back to me. An' especially when the Mermaids start to get more developed while I'm sketching them out ~~ WHOA!! ~~ Then the Beach Music really kicks in... An' the weather man sayin' that the temps are "suppossed" to be warming up "like just before the spring temps will arrive" -- Ohh...I'm all about the SPRING happening here!! An' with the new work gettin' underway...well..Naturally I'm all about finding some t-shirts in the storage basket...An' if some of those winter pounds have gotten in the way of the t-shirts fittin' like they did last year..well then, that jus' calls for another trip to the thrift store!! HA!! None of that going-to-the-new-store- business...NO!! I'll gladly let some other sap pay the high price for some thing that was sold for over $20....I'll pay the $1.99 thank you VERY much!!

Some craft items have also found there way into the studio in the last couple weeks...I'd tried not to let some lil' items get into the shopping cart not too long ago. But they looked so forlorn jus' sittin' there on the shelf...an' I truly do not like to see SAD things on the shelves of any, an' I mean ANY art/craft store, so NATURALLY they had to come home with me..They will behave nicely an' join in with the other pieces in a collage gettin' together on my lil' craft table -- an' before ya know it ~~ WHAM!! ~~ A whole new piece, filled with joyful happy craft pieces, swayin' to the Surf Music an' havin' a good time lookin' forward to Spring!! Bright colors of BLue paint..some clever cardstock pieces of squares, triangles, rectangles...an' of course, some Fish stamps!! Les' hear it for the arrival of SPRING!! WHOO-HOOO!!

Lady of The Tulips -- who was all about diggin' out last years flip-flops...but had to make a sad face when she realized that she literally "Blew out my flip-flop..." -- the bottom of my most favorite pair of flip-flops came apart one afternoon jus' when I got back home, and realized they were Deader than a Door-nail....very, very sad...