Commission and Taking a Break Until March 3

This is my neighbor's site,

http://dappered.com/

Sarah's job ended before Christmas, so now she works with Joe, and his site makes enough money for them both to support themselves. Go figure. Kind of reminds me of Maxim magazine.

Yesterday I finished a larger version of the baby geese study,


It is still only 7.5 inches by 10.5 inches. I thought the water came out a bit groovier than I intended, but I was going for more graphic and then didn't really like it. I liked it better once the grass was in, but mostly I just wanted to get the fuzziness and light of the goslings, which I did.

Two days of rain washed away the snow by last weekend. It has been raining off and on since then, which is making it feel like Spring. In a week, the snow on the mountains caught up to normal. The weatherman here will say, today the sun might come out, or it might be cloudy, or it might rain or snow, and some days he will be completely right. That is Idaho. If the sun is out, there is almost enough daylight after work to walk, it just has to be in the upper 40's, the lower 40's are too cold. I went for a walk this afternoon, with my gloves and earmuffs, but my face still feels warm.

Last week, at 4 am Saturday morning, and again at 6 am Sunday morning, the fire alarms in my house went off. Nothing like waking up to a fire alarm at 4 am to ruin your day, and two days in a row will ruin your weekend. They went off long enough to wake me up, and then went off. Did you know you are supposed to test your fire alarm every week? Who does that? After half a day of reading manuals on line, I cleaned the outside of the alarms and replaced all the batteries. It should not have been the batteries, the alarms were not chirping, but I did it anyway. I think it was the cleaning that stopped them from going off, since no more alarms this week. The downstairs alarm was pretty dirty, with I don't know what, bug juice?

It is really dusty in my house, as long as I was cleaning alarms, I cleaned the furnace intake vent, since most surfaces are covered with dust after a day and the filter is fine. The vent was really dirty. Considering it is hardly windy and I have very little dirt around me, it sure is dusty in Idaho. I also noticed dryer sheets glued to the inside vent of the dryer. My friend told me not to use dryer sheets, because they can start a fire, but I thought she was being silly. Today I looked and there were two of them glued to the vent stopping any air from getting out. Guess that is something I now have to check until I finish using up the dryer sheets.

Since I get a refund, I did my taxes. I got Turbo Tax, just Federal, how hard can Idaho State income taxes be? Wish I got Turbo Tax with State, Idaho income taxes are a confusing mess. I am poor enough to get an Idaho food credit of $60, the maximum, woopie! It took me 20 minutes to figure out how to complete my return in order to get it.

The Chinese New Year of the Dragon begins February 4. This is a Male (Yang) Water (Black) Dragon year. To know how this year will be for you, you need to know your animal sign and your lucky element. I am a Black Tiger and my lucky element is Earth (making total sense that Idaho would be good for me.) The Dragon is solitary, lucky, and dramatic, so the Dragon predicts a dramatic year, good or bad. My horoscope this week also predicts dramatic change, like I have not had plenty already, but I would not mind dramatically good.

I have a commission and I'm losing my framer. The commission is from one of my regular (if you can call it that) clients. They are also a dream client that always supplies reference that will make a super painting. Yesterday I went to Target and noticed the framer I use is closing, going out of business. Turns out they are retiring and really happy, but will only be open for another short month. That means I need to finish my commission within the next week or two to be able to have them frame it.

I am also starting some inner work and wondering what to do with this blog. I seemed to have achieved much of what I was after, but the inner work is because I feel a bit "stuck."

So, because of the commission and the inner work, I decided to take a bit of a vacation from blogging until March 3rd. Maybe by then I will have more of an idea of what to do next. I will be almost 50 and it will be almost Spring.

Snow Report

When I got up this morning at 6:30 am, there was no snow on the ground and it was not snowing. By the time I left for work (5 minutes early) at 7:40, it was snowing and there was close to an inch on the ground. I picked a different route to work, that included only right turns and a cut through a long parking lot instead of that risky left turn from the median. I arrived safely at work and on time, unlike most of the rest of the office. It was a scarey drive even at a very slow pace and I kept having to remind myself to breathe. By 10 am I would say there was 4 inches of snow on the ground.

Tonight I was supposed to get my haircut, but I called my hairdresser in the morning to tell her I might not make it. She was at home because most of her appointments already cancelled. I thought I might be being a wimpy girl from So Cal, unwilling to brave the snow to keep an appointment, but was relieved that plenty of hardened Idahoans didn't want to either.

From KTVB.com,

"Ada County dispatchers reported 106 crashes between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. Wednesday. Five of those crashes left people injured. There were also 75 slide-offs and 45 stalled vehicles.

Meanwhile, over in Canyon County, there were 33 accidents Wednesday.

"It was just an inch of snow, some ice, you couldn't brake hardly at all," said Steven Johnson who slid off I-84 in Caldwell.

Johnson hit his brakes to try to avoid an accident, lost control, slid off the highway, down the embankment, through a fence, and into a field.

He talked about his thoughts as it happened, "I hope I don't flip. I hope I stay upright. I hope that fence doesn't hit me too hard."

Johnson didn't flip and says he's thankful, as this accident could've been much worse on what was a day of accidents."

At lunch I went for a walk over to Starbucks in the snow. This was fun, even though on the way home the snow was getting wet and blowing right in my face. Back at work I felt damp and rumpled with melting make-up and stringy hair for the rest of the day and I am not sure I will try that again.

By afternoon it started raining and my drive home was in heavy slush. Tonight we might have freezing rain and my commute tomorrow may be even worse than today's. We are supposed to warm up for the rest of the week and have more rain and I am afraid most of the snow will wash away before I get a picture in the sunlight.

When I got home I decided not to try to plow through the fresh snow down the alley to get to my garage. That car that likes to park parallel to their garage door was there, which I found irritating, since for sure I was not going to risk sliding into it, so I parked in front. I hope my car is not covered with ice and snow in the morning. I figure 6 inches of snow fell in my backyard, although it is hard to tell since it rained on the snow that fell. My neighbor did shovel my walkway for me, that was nice.



The cats have been still going out for their roll around on the patio, although they are brief, since it is cold, but this morning they took one look at all that white stuff and said no way. They are both, I mean both, now sitting on the computer table watching me type.

Last Monday I took an alternative late Christmas card picture, since I may not get one in any snow. My brother Dave gave me the ridiculous hat for Christmas and I told him I would take a picture of myself in it anyway,

Free TV

The cats slept on either side of me last night, pinning me under the covers. We woke up at 7 am this morning, all in the exact same spot. I think we are all tired of winter. I do not like January anywhere, I am tired and have no motivation or energy, and still no snow. No snow in the valley is not that unusual, but no snow on the mountains is. Bogus Basin is still not open and if they cannot open by January 27th, they will not open this season at all. No snow has been great for the golf courses, though, they had a record year.

The spinning top tried to throw me under the bus last week and I am still amazed at her dysfunction. We have this mailing list, which some moron excuse for a programer created from our payee database and forgot the zip codes, so we each have 1500 vendors we have to look up and add zip codes. I finished mine Monday, so we printed the letters and I started folding mine and putting them in envelopes. While I do this I can watch the back of the spinning top. She's doing whatever she can not to look up those zip codes and she spent one morning researching how I received something wrong.

A large amount of paper towels disappeared and it turned out that the spinning top said she inventoried them, but then she had to admit that she did not, and distracted anyone from disciplining her (hey, it's called lying) by approaching the edge of a nervous breakdown. Before I went on vacation we received some paper towels and I signed for them and put them away. She decided we did not really receive what I signed for and created a few hours of drama before talking to my boss and I about it. Too bad my boss received and stored the darn things with me.

So, I am seething with resentment, trying to tell myself that nothing I do at work is important, so stuffing envelopes is not beneath me, degrading, watching the top continue to not do any kind of work, especially not look up zip codes, and I slashed my finger on the edge of the flap of an envelope. Those are sharp! It was bleeding like mad and I ran to the emergency kit, where one of the managers doctored me up. Let that be a lesson, seething resentment and stuffing envelopes do not mix.

That the top thought that creating some drama around me would deflect from her own lie was amazing to me. Even though she was unsuccessful, she must have been in her own mind, since the rest of the day and the following day she was euphoric. Scarey stuff, nice to know she is worse than just hapless.

Couldn't finish Albert Nobbs, once I realized it was a lesbian movie and that all men were portrayed badly, hated Tree of Life, pretentious, egocentric crap that gives "arty" a bad name, enjoyed TinTin, which I thought was in the spirit of Indiana Jones and the 3D was so good I kept forgetting it wasn't real, enjoyed Hugo, thought the sets and the cinematography were super and loved the story, and I thought The Artist was a great idea, superbly done, but boring to watch.

Free TV is funny, it includes the exact same shows that were on TV in the 1970's before cable, Rockford Files, Mary Tyler Moore, The Brady Bunch, even some of the ones that were reruns even then, like The Rifleman. I loved Chuck Conners, he was my childhood example of what men should be like, he was always fair, he was a great dad, he would not use that rifle unless he had to, but if he had to he was really good at it. Funny that The Rifleman's wife died and he never had a girlfriend. I started watching Masterpiece Theater's Downton Abbey, which I really enjoy. It is basically a soap opera set in an English manor and this season World War I started. I spent the first few episodes trying to figure out who one of the actresses was, it was Elizabeth McGovern. I can't remember the last time I've seen her in anything since Ragtime. Otherwise I can watch the local news, but free TV isn't much, good thing it is free.

Tomorrow I have the day off, so I am trying to get in some good painting time this weekend. Otherwise, I want January to be over.

2011 Review

My friend was extolling the virtues of drinking cider vinegar. He drinks it every day with raw honey. It is supposed to lower your cholesterol, in addition to many other virtues. So, I had some cider vinegar in my pantry and I decided to try it. Do not do this! You need organic raw cider vinegar that contains Mother of Vinegar. Within a day I had such bad heartburn that I could feel all the way to the back of my shoulder blade and I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I went out with my friends yesterday afternoon and evening and I felt terrible, but I figured if I did have a heart attack, they would be there to take me to the emergency room. I am finally feeling a bit better.

I am sure that my friend told me I should drink raw vinegar, but I was preoccupied with the distilled vinegar that I had in the pantry already. A good goal for me for 2012 might be to try to be a better listener.

Here is a link for organic cider vinegar that talks about some of the benefits,
http://www.bragg.com/products/bragg-organic-apple-cider-vinegar.html

When I was in So Cal, I went by and took a look at my old house in Simi Valley. It looked exactly the same, all the way down to the broken gate. They had replaced the front picture window, which really needed it. I hesitated to drive by it, my biggest fear is that they will have chopped down my carefully chosen and planted trees and roses, but all my trees and flowers were still there, although January is not their best month. If you remember what the kitchen looked like most of the time I lived there, here is what it looked like when I sold it,




If you don't remember what it looked like, imagine dark wood cabinets with missing doors and drawers and an odd sink with an elevated back that held the faucet. I made amends for destroying it by fixing it up while the house was for sale, and I also coped with the pain of selling it by throwing myself into home improvement. I put in those Pella windows right after I moved in, I loved those windows.

Here is the front entrance (in spring when I lived there) with the Australian peppermint and the Japanese Maple behind it,


You can see I like a messy garden.

Last Friday I finished up this painting,


It is a slightly larger version of a study and I still did not get the design and color of the light and dark grass that I was looking for. I also worked on it in bits of time, which seems to end up in a tighter painting. If I start and finish a painting in the same day, like I do my studies, I end up with something that looks more spontaneous, not so labored.

For my review of 2011, I took a look at the paintings I finished. I finished 21 paintings, including 12 studies and counting the cat studies as one study. Here are my favorites in order from January to December,










When I looked at all of the paintings I did in 2011, I was surprised that I did Glenn's Ferry in January, when I was so cold and tired of gray and worried about work. I went up and down in spurts, with the most work done in March, which was when I did that commission painting, July, and October, and nothing in April, September, or December. Oh, and then there is the rock, that took up November, so 21 paintings and 1 rock. I would say I got better during the year, except that my favorite is still Glenn's Ferry, which I did at the beginning of the year. The paintings I did not really like were interspersed during the year, almost every third painting.

I lost some energy in December 2010 when I was not finding a job and financial fear set in and that energy has not fully returned. By February I finally took some steps that led to a job in May and now I cannot believe I survived that stretch, but then I did not have much choice. In order to get that job, I did things that they always tell you to do, like follow up calls when you do not get the job asking how you can improve, that no one really does. There seems to be this weird mix of learning both humility and that I have value in that time, and that lesson carries through into the new job and dealing with the terrible boss. Tomorrow I start the same job, but through a temp agency with a decent raise. I suppose that is progress. The new boss is definitely progress. Once I got the job, the rest of the year seems to have been about keeping it, although there were a few important events about being of service and sharing my experience and there were a few times when I felt spiritually connected to someone in a way I have never experienced. Then there was getting fired by my sponsor, that was weird. I am glad to be starting 2012 with a new one.

Nothing like a bit of a review to make me feel empowered again. How did I manage to get here and live the smaller, quieter life that I wanted in a cute little house with nice neighbors and happy cats and a little vegetable garden? I remember taking all of the steps, but it is still amazing how it worked out.

Do not watch the film Tree of Life, unless you are a pretentious kind of person who likes arty films with no storyline that are acclaimed at film festivals even though no one knows what they mean so they over-analyze every detail reading what they want into it. I expect as much from Sean Penn, but not Brad Pitt. A waste of two hours.

To So Cal and Back

When I got home from So Cal Wednesday afternoon, both cats looked at me from the top of the stairs like they did not know who I was and then acted full of resentment. I took a nap and they came up and forgave me for a few minutes, but it appears that Spit got pretty irritated with Cruiser's interference with her love affair with Pierre while I was gone and she is hissing at Cruiser, who got me up at one am last night and would not leave me alone until six am when I finally got up. I figure he was trying to get me to make up for three and a half days of no attention in one night. This is the price I pay for a vacation.

I left for So Cal on Sunday morning. I took a cab, which I thought was a bit much at $14, but the cab ride home was even more, $16. I had a 20% off coupon for my ride home from the cab company that took me to the airport, but by the time I got home I just did not want to wait. It was still cheaper than parking my car for $9 a day.

I was really anxious about my trip, which seemed to manifest itself in me being unable to pack for afternoons in 80 degree weather. I seemed to have already forgotten what that is like. I also forgot I was traveling on January 1st and they served free drinks on the plane, at nine am! I don't know what it is about airports that makes me think about getting drunk, I must have sat in many airport bars. I know I used to slurp down two drinks on the short flight from LA to Vegas. On the flight from Boise to Oakland I thought I was going to jump out of my skin.

In Oakland I changed planes. As I walked through the Oakland airport, everyone walking towards me walked directly at me without showing any indication that they might move to the side, like a walking version of chicken. Everyone must still have been hung-over.

The weather in So Cal was unbelievable. I felt obligated to go out walking all the time. I loved being outside and wearing a long sleeved t-shirt and sitting outside on a patio all afternoon, but it felt strange to be in So Cal. So Cal is a nice place, but it is not for me. On my walks I saw manicured lawns and plants and driveways full of BMW and Lexus and Volvo and I like Boise better, it is more wild and messy. I kept wanting to mess people's hair and make-up. Knock, knock, is there a real person in there? It was weird that everything is so green and flowers are still blooming. Some trees were changing color that changed color here months ago and I walked past a lemon tree full of bright yellow lemons that I wanted to pick. Unlike Boise, So Cal is still full of color in January.

It was great to see my friends in Simi, at least Simi Valley is a bit messier, and I could not believe I have been gone for a year and a half. I wish I had more time, it was impossible to catch up in a few hours. People ask me what is different about Boise, besides the price of everything being half, and I say people are more friendly here, but they are also more private, more respectful of your space, and this makes me friendlier, more open. I think I will now have to add that Boise is messier, less kept, more free to be itself.

I arrived back in Boise without event. This time I changed planes in Vegas. The Las Vegas airport beats Oakland by a mile. I wore my bright orange BSU sweatshirt home and made the mistake of not knowing all about their bowl game, if you are going to dress like a fan you have to know a few relevant facts. I probably forgot because it was so long ago, BSU beat Arizona State in the MAACO Bowl in Las Vegas December 22nd. Who ever heard of the MAACO Bowl and why so early?

As part of my new friendlier self, I struck up a conversation with the person next to me on most of my flights. I traveled with a guy on leave and going back to his army base in Kansas, a girl from Boise returning to LA after visiting her parents, and a high-strung woman who's son was just in Sun Valley, where there was no snow. The girl from Boise returning to LA is trying to break into the movie biz and if you are going to do that you have to be in LA. We talked about the fire-setting that started last Friday and how her parents in Idaho wanted her to come home. I can't say that I blame them. There is no snow at any of the ski resorts in Idaho and most have not opened. Today was the record latest opening date for Bogus Basin, the resort less than an hour from Boise, and as of today they are not open.

On Thursday morning, Boise treated me to this sunrise as a welcome home,



Before I left for So Cal I watched The Help, Anonymous, J Edgar, and The Descendants. So far, I'm finding many movies from 2011 include history I did not know. The Descendants is a decent small movie with a great performance by the older daughter and some Hawaiian history. The Help was super, with what has to be an award winning performance by Viola Davis and set in Mississippi during the civil rights movement. Anonymous is about the person who really (maybe) wrote Shakespeare's plays. I do not know how factual the story is, but it was fascinating and the film well done. Vanessa Redgrave and her daughter Jolie Richardson play Queen Elizabeth old and young, which was much more believable than trying to use the same actress. This is unlike J Edgar, which included the absolute worst movie make-up I've ever seen. This is not one of Eastwood's best, although he does include some of J Edgar Hoover's achievements and some history that I did not know. Anyone remember the Bolshevik bombings in 1919?

From intellectualconservative.com,

"April 28, 1919 saw the first fruits of the Bolshevik plot when a bomb was dismantled at the home of Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson. The next day, a Bolshevik bomb ripped the hands off of an employee of Georgia Senator Thomas Hardwick as she opened the deadly package and severely burned his wife. A few days later, May Day, thirty-four bombs were intercepted before reaching their intended targets which included, among others, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, North Carolina Senator Lee S. Overman, Utah Senator William H. King, Postmaster General Albert Berlson, and John D. Rockefeller. On that same May Day, coordinated and violent riots of a seditious nature were launched in several cities, notably Boston, and a bomb wrecked a municipal building in Brownsville, Pennsylvania on May 2.

One month later, June 2, 1919, bombs were simultaneously set to blow up in eight American cities. On that day, bombs exploded at the homes of Boston Judge A. F. Hayden and at the Newtonville Massachusetts home of State Representative Leland W. Powers. A bomb was intercepted and defused at the office of Cleveland Mayor H.L. Davis and two bombs exploded in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, one next to the home of Federal Judge J. Thomson and the other next to the home of immigration official W.W. Sibray. In New York City, the home of Judge Charles C. Nott was bombed. Night patrolman William Goshner was killed by what the New York Times referred to as an “infernal killing machine” as was an unidentified man trying to defuse the bomb intended for Judge Nott.

In Philadelphia, the Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church and the Frankfort Arsenal were bombed. Bombs also exploded at the homes of prominent citizens in Patterson and East Orange New Jersey.

Most significantly, from a political standpoint, a huge bomb ripped off the front of the Georgetown home of President Woodrow Wilson’s Quaker pacifist U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. The terrorist planting the bomb at Palmer’s door was killed when he tripped trying to flee the scene. Palmer and his young family were not hurt in the assassination attempt. The massive explosion caused windows to shatter at the neighboring home of Palmer’s close friend and political associate, Under Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt."

(http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article4593.html)

In So Cal I watched the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Parts of that book were hard to read and they were even harder to watch. I heard the Scandinavian series is so good that one wonders why someone bothered to make an American version, but I am not sure I could stomach that film again. Yesterday I finished watching The Artist. Interesting idea, superbly done, pretty boring to watch.

I was glad to thaw out for a few days, but I am more glad to be home. What will 2012 be?