Star House and Yellow Leaves

I cannot get a glass of water without having to share with Cruiser,


Cruiser has his own water, but mine seems to be better. This is now an evening ritual, Cruiser comes running as soon as I run the water, I have my water, then he has his out of my glass.

When I went out to the Eagle gallery, I took some pictures, but it's looking pretty bleak,


When I buy a house in Idaho, I am going to buy a house that is a color. The landscape is so brown and grey here in the Winter that it seems depressing to drive up to a white house, like this one, in Winter. A red brick house with white trim and a few blue spruce in front sounds good right now.

Then I went over to Star. Eagle is just northwest of Boise and Star is just west of Eagle. Star has mostly big properties, is less pretentious, and older. I went and looked at a house I saw on Realtor.com that I thought was close to my dream house,


It is too big, 4,000 square feet and 3 stories, but it is on 5 acres with a running stream. My dream house is an old restored farmhouse on at least 2 acres with a running stream. This house faces Northeast and that 3rd floor looks like it would make a great studio.

Here is a great example of the job opportunity spam I get because of CareerBuilder:

"This entity seizes an opportunity to suggest Ghost Shopper post at the Creative Minds INC. With your resume being found at CareerBuilder, the personal branch of given enterprise went the extra mile to look into the personal history report you placed at the job connection web-resource and went to be contented. This organization harbors a hope that your accomplishments will find application to the general benefit of the whole entity.

Essential requirements to be employed:

1. Age qualification: older than 27
2. Accession to Internet
3. 3-5 hours of Spare time daily to exercise your specific responsibilities
4. Non-conviction certificate

Appointment odds:
On its own, this appointment makes a wonderful medium of itself of obtaining profit for regulars while taking to to the enterprise. If keen on reveling stuff cared for most of all by you and push fortune in this business, being a Mystery Consumer is a real challenge for you. As an example, you can have a nice meal in eatery you like or purchase belongings in hypermarkets contributing to entity."

Whoever this is needs a better translator. Would anyone really interpret this as a real job?

Here are the yellow leaves,


I intended this to be more abstract and less busy. Oh, well.

It has been much colder, which makes me lazier and the grey landscape is getting to me. Idaho has no Winter flowers. In So Cal at least the camellias would be blooming. The paperwhites I had indoors finished, so now I go out and check the progress of those crocus bulbs every day and dream of Spring. The Idaho Botanical Garden has a class on February 15 called "What's Blooming Right Now" and I think I will go. Something out here must be blooming, maybe I just need them to point it out. They also have a class on painting botanicals this month and I think I will go to that one, too.

The Idaho Arts Commission posted an administrative job opening and I am going to work on my letter of interest today. Then I am going to print it out and go there and try to hand it to a person that will talk to me.

The Master's show is back at the Autry,

http://theautry.org/masters-of-the-american-west-2011/masters-2011-overview
There are only 8 women out of 75 artists and 3 of the women are sculptors. This seems like a poor showing for women painters and being part of this show is another one of my dreams.

Boise's Inversion Layer

Here is Cruiser and Spit sharing the chair to stay warm,


This is the neighbor's grey cat,


She hung around in the neighbor's kitchen windows all afternoon last Sunday and terrorized Spit. Here they are pretending to ignore each other,


Later Spit moved behind the wall at the edge of the window and kept peaking around the corner to see if the cat was still there. Spit likes to play hide-and-go-seek, except that she only likes to hide.

Boise gets an inversion layer that hangs over the valley and traps cold and pollution. I guess the inversion layer has been bad and that is why everyone is complaining about the cold this Winter. I don't know any better, since I don't know what Winter is usually like, but for the last few days I can smell dust. I cleaned the furnace filter and was tempted to do early Spring cleaning, but it is not my house, it is dust outside hanging in the air, trapped by the inversion layer. It reminds me how dusty Simi gets during the Santa Anna winds, and boy, do I not miss the Santa Anna winds. It is not windy here, which I really appreciate.

Darcy picked up a Heloise Hint for me. You know those little plastic bags covering your newspaper during wet weather? Well put them over your socks before putting your feet into your snow boots and you will stay warmer and dry. I don't get the newspaper, so Darci sent newspaper bags, thanks Darci! It does not look like it is going to snow again, although I am sure that it will. It is colder here this week, but no forecasts of snow. I'm glad I do not live in the Northeast.

Mom sent part of an article from Sunset magazine that includes the best city not to have a car, Portland, and the best city to start a business, Salt Lake City, with first runner up, Boise. The article talks about Salt Lake, a place where you can have a real job and 20 minutes out you can be skiing or mountain biking or fly-fishing or at the airport catching a direct flight to Paris. Boise is the same way, except for the direct flight to Paris, and who really needs that?

The CA EDD keeps sending me stuff and my unemployment application is looking good. I checked the CA Codes, hey that Master's degree is good for something, and I think I really do qualify. This is a great relief and I do not feel the financial panic that I did a few days ago.

I applied for a job with the Idaho Department of Labor last Sunday and that should be one that gets me another 100 score. It is limited service, but that is fine with me for now. With unemployment I will probably have to register with the Idaho Department of Labor anyway, so I can check out how it works before they give me a job.

Otherwise, I am working on approaching the job applying differently. I'm working on finding good companies to work for in Boise and then finding people that work there that will help me get a job there and if I can't find someone that works there I am going to just drop in and hang around until someone will talk to me and take my resume. I need to practice networking and I just suck at networking.

Today I'm taking the Ponies and Glenn's Ferry to the gallery for First Friday, which is this week. When I get my first unemployment check I am buying more framing. I finished the yellow leaves painting, which came out a bit busy. I will post that tomorrow. Now I am moving on to a painting of a barn in Fall from a picture I took in Crouch, Idaho. Now that they are framed, I notice that some of my paintings look much like my very favorite painting, one of Frank at the Grand Canyon with puffy clouds and the edge of the canyon behind him. I have not been able to get back to painting the same feeling in that painting until now and I painted that painting in 1995. I am very pleased.

It's February already. One more month and it might start acting like Spring.

Children

I started reading The Artist's Way and read about the basic tools. They include writing 3 pages first thing every morning. Three pages of whatever, stream of consciousness stuff. The author calls it a mind-dump, removing all that crappy thinking we all have before the day starts. This sounds like a really good idea. Then there is the artist's date. 2 to 3 hours just you and your artist self (kinda like you and your inner child) doing something the artist self wants to do and replenishing our creative resources. I already get to do this lately, but I thought some of the things the author counted as replenishing were interesting. She counts cooking and any regular, repetitive action, like knitting, as replenishing. I always thought baking bread was nurturing (even more so when it actually rises and is edible) but I did not think of it as nurturing my creativity.

This morning I saw snowflakes falling, although they melted before they hit the ground. I let the cats out this afternoon before it started raining again. They both usually roll around on the patio first, they roll one way, then back, then stand up and do it over again. Poor Cruiser, this afternoon he put his face down to roll, thought better of it since the cement is so cold, put his face down to roll again, thought better of it again, and finally just stood there so I could scratch him.

More rain is predicted tomorrow, then snow Sunday and Monday. Monday's low, 17 degrees, Tuesday's high 21 degrees, Tuesday's low 2 degrees. 2 degrees! That is really cold for November in Boise. At least by Wednesday the sun is supposed to come out. The cold doesn't bother me as much as no sun. Someone this afternoon said that Farmer's Almanac predicted that this Winter is going to be super cold with Boise under a foot and a half of snow. This is what Farmer's Almanac really says about the Intermountain region:

Winter temperatures will be above normal, especially in the south, with the coldest periods in late December, mid-January, and early February. Precipitation will be below normal, with near- to below-normal snowfall. The snowiest periods will occur in early and mid-December and early and late February.

I'm hoping the Farmer's Almanac is right, although they seem to have missed the super cold Thanksgiving week.

I am half-way through the next painting, which is going much faster and is bright colors. For the rest of winter I am only painting bright colors and sunny days.

The holidays are coming and I am missing my daughter, so I am picking my own enlightenment topic today, Children, with a piece from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran,

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

I can't say it better. I think it is interesting that my daughter and I used to do a lot of replenishing our creative resources things, like baking. We used to make bread shaped like a teddy bear (which always rose and tasted great) and every Thanksgiving we made an apple pie.

Ice and Sun

The lawn and the rooftops are covered with ice and the air was clouded with a cold mist this morning, but now the sun is out and the sky is clear blue.

Erika, that I met at the workshop, suggested that once we had ice on the ground here I should find a big empty parking lot and practice driving on ice. She and her friend then proceeded to suggest the best parking lots, which were all far from my house. I told them if the parking lot to practice in is too far from my house I am going to end up practicing on ice on the road to get there and that defeats the point! I'm thinking that the parking lot for the bowling alley down the street is the ticket, or else there is a big hospital around the corner with a big parking lot. Maybe the hospital would be better, then if I get in an accident and hurt myself I can just walk on over.

Several people have told me they have allergy problems here year round, but the frosty weather seems to have put an end to mine.

Cruiser is driving me nuts every morning this week and sitting at the computer is a battle. He's on the chair, then the desk, then knocking over the lamp, then back to my lap. Yesterday he was whining, whining, all day, so I went out to get away from him in the late afternoon. (If he's having trouble with the cold weather, then it is going to be a long Winter.) Mary Kay invited me for Thanksgiving and I told her I would come if I can bring an apple pie. I make one every year and I was wondering if I made one this year who was going to eat it, so that problem is solved. I was thinking of using Honeycrisp apples this year, although if I am going to show off I may stick with the usual Golden Delicious. Honeycrisp apples are fairly new and popular here. They are similar to Golden Delicious and according to what I found on-line, they are excellent in a pie.

The next enlightenment topic is Fear and Risk-Taking, with an excerpt from In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods;

In envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth:
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'T is better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all.

The poem was written in honor of Arthur Henry Hallam, another poet and friend of Tennyson, who died at the young age of 22. At the age of 18, Hallam fell in love with Tennyson's sister, but Hallam died before they could be married. This is pretty much the same topic as yesterday. There is nothing that inspires growth like failure, so make growth a goal. If you think of failure as teaching you something and getting you closer to your goal, then it is really not such a bad thing. If you don't try, so you can't fail, then you stagnate. I'm wondering if we should let people fail more, so they can grow. Growth is painful and I tend to avoid it as long as possible.

I am painting first thing every morning, but the painting I'm working on now is slow going for some reason. Luckily, Cruiser can't get up on the drafting table and he does not enjoy walking around on the paint palette, although Spit likes to drink out of the water jar. Yesterday I went to wash my brush and there was Spit with her head in the jar and I had to wait until she was done.

Animal Management

Dad was gone for the second day Thursday and I thought I would get a lot done. Instead it was a day of animal management and frustration. Dog out, dog in, feed dog, dog out, dog in, cats out, dog is barking in the house, go investigate, probably the coyote we saw this morning going back, better go back to the cats, cats in, dog out again for the day. Then I wrote on my blog and started laundry and filled the bathtub so I could stretch some watercolor paper and the water was brown. Looked like dirt. Guest bath toilet water was brown, too. Well problem? I'll leave it for Dad. Tried the oversize sink in the studio and that water was clean, put the paper in that, try to paint, but Cruiser is whining, whining, whining. Finally put the dog in and went out for coffee. Met some nice women and felt better.



Finished 2 more studies Friday and was glad to have Dad back home. Finished a drawing for a larger painting and transferred it to paper today, but will start the painting tomorrow. Today I'm feeling PMS. Tomorrow is a full moon. The mover sent a revised quote, minus the queen bed and plus some tools, and including my move pick up date, August 17/18. I guess they need a 2 day range and will let me know which day closer to the move date. I have some paperwork to sign and send back and this is making me feel committed and doubtful. I went out for coffee and started thinking about the beginning of a children's book, The Adventures of Cruiser and Spit, that would be modeled after this blog and started to cry. It must be PMS. Went home and gave the dog an overdue bath.

The next enlightenment topic is the Now, with a poem by Omar Khayyam,

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

This did not speak to me, the past is done, you can't change it. I liked what Darcy sent me better,

The real art of living is beginning where you are. Martin Vanbee

Then Prayer, with a prayer by St. Francis of Assisi,

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood, as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal light.

The above text is from the book, Internet versions are different, omitting O Divine Master and changing light to life. (Which is right? I am annoyed by this.) This is obviously a good topic for me today and I am not going to expand on St. Francis, but I think he would have appreciated my work with animals this week and clean, almost dry, no longer itchy Sophie laying on the couch with a blanket, so she doesn't get a chill.

A Pause in a Struggle

This is Dad's dog Sophie. Dad got her from the animal shelter and she appears to be mostly Ebizan hound. She runs like a gazelle and rarely barks. She and the cats had a face off through the studio door, three tails puffed up three times their size, cats laying flat to the floor and Sophie's head down, but no growling or hissing. Today Cruiser wants to go out, even though he can see Sophie right outside the door. All three want to spend their day laying in the dirt and sun, but I'm not ready to see if they can do this together. Sophie picks up chunks of sap in the yard that get in her hair and had two big dark pieces stuck on her face that looked like scars and made her look like she'd been in a bar brawl, so over the weekend I got them out with butter and a comb. This takes a bit of work, but Sophie got to lick the leftover butter off of my hands and is now my best friend.

My friend, another artist, used to say about doing other things before starting an art project, "I'm not procrastinating, I'm mentally preparing myself." So today, I have two drawings on the watercolor paper and a set of reference out for studies that do not need a drawing, and I cleaned under the sink. The cleaning is a combination of wanting to feel like I'm earning my keep, my inability to tolerate mess, and mental preparation. Putting that first paint to blank white paper is always a struggle. Once I get started, procrastination is not an issue, but today starting will now be after my lunch and a nap.



Being at my Dad's feels like a pause in a struggle. Life has been so hard for the last few years and nothing I tried seemed to work out. How do you get over feeling failure and devastating loss? How do you move on? Everyone says move on, but a year after selling my house I wasn't feeling it, I still felt sad and angry. I found a picture of a tree at my house a few months ago, a tree that I used to call the tree that God planted because I thought it was a weed and tried to pull it out a few times, but it kept coming back so I finally gave up and let it grow and by the time I left that tree was 10 feet tall, but the picture made me cry. At Dad's I finally feel some recovery, like I'm building strength in reserve.