Now it is Fall

This afternoon it was Indian Summer, now it is Fall.




It was sprinkling when I got up this morning, cleared up somewhat this afternoon and was super hot, and started raining again by early evening.

Cruiser got me up really early this morning, I don't know what his problem was, but it set my day off wrong. I watched CBS Sunday morning and read the newspaper and finished the next study. I went out and realized how weird I get when I paint all the time. I always feel more connected to God, but less connected to people. Then I took a nap, but the neighbor and his chain sawing woke me up too soon.

Late afternoon I tried to go out and take some pictures, since it looked like it would be a good sunset, and it started to rain again. I did not go to Table Rock, since I was afraid it might rain once I got all the way out there. I could not get a good sunset shot in the city and in the rain, but I did take some pictures of some fall color. When I got home, the neighbor across the street came over and introduced herself, her name is Elizabeth. She seemed pretty nice, maybe a bit older than me. We talked for a while and then it started to really rain. I was grateful for some human interaction and honestly, that was the highlight of my day.

Once it started to rain again, it felt like Fall. The leaves are turning and streets are starting to fill with leaves, which a blustery wind is now blowing around everyone's yard. Today the high temp was supposed to be 85, tomorrow the high is supposed to be 63. It is amazing how the temperature here can just plummet 20 degrees in one day.

I'm chalking up today as one of those off days where nothing seems to go right and you are better off staying home and keeping your mood to yourself. Thunderstorms are now supposed to go on all week. I hope my mood does not!

Raspberry Rhubarb Jam

This afternoon I finished sealing the wood table and steamer chairs in the backyard. I may have to move the steamer chairs into the garage for winter, but they needed sealing anyway. I finished the chairs and was half done with the table when I lost control of the can of sealer, because it was too hot from sitting in the sun, and spilled 1/4 of the can on my legs, arm, and the grass in the yard. (Shelly, move that can into the shade, it will get too hot.) Fortunately, I had turpentine, so I cleaned myself off with turpentine and then soap, finished sealing, and took a bath. Now I don't know if I'm red from sunburn or skin exposure to sealer or scrubbing. The smell of turpentine has changed, it smells really bad.

This morning I went out to the fruit and vegetable stand and bought some raspberry rhubarb jam. Actually, they call it a spread. What is the difference between jam and fruit spread? I love rhubarb and have never had it with raspberry. It is excellent, tart from rhubarb and sweet from raspberry. I'm going to get another and send it to Lani for analysis, so she can tell me how to make it myself.

Otherwise, I ran my errands yesterday morning and started two studies. I finished one and am half done with the other. I got some information on being part of emerging artists at the Capital City Public Market and I need sales tax number. Which means I need to file for a fictitious business name. I don't need to file for a fictitious business name if I use my legal name, but my legal name is Sheldon and I don't want to use Sheldon. I don't sign my work Sheldon. I need to send the name form with a payment, like a check, and I don't have checks with my new address yet, who uses checks anymore? And when did checks get so expensive? So, I ordered checks. This is a tedious process.

Although I live in a small city, it's still a city, and sometimes it is really noisy around here. Someone is always tree trimming or lawn mowing. My neighbor, Kurt, spent this week chain sawing his entire backyard. One tree is now well pruned, but I swear there is no other vegetation left. There is some loud engine running noise late at night. I don't know what it is, but it may be near-by road work. There are too many dogs in Boise. Sometimes the barking goes on and on, but I have experienced much worse. I figure with winter all of this will end. That's the upside of a cold winter.

At the same time, I sit in my studio and work at night and I can hear croaking from the loudest frog. I don't know if it is the world's loudest frog, or if it is really several. When the frog is done, the crickets start. Mr. Squirrel was in my neighbors tree a week ago, the tree is full of acorns, and making an incredible racket. He's high up in the tree and whipping through those acorns and raining down shells. At first you can't tell what is raining down through the leaves so fast because you can't see the squirrel. Either he was in a big hurry to store up for winter, or those acorns are small, maybe when he gets the shell off there isn't much left. He has not been around for a week and I figure he's enjoying the late summer, winter can wait.

Country and city was what I had in mind, and I seem to have found it.

Recall the Child Within

The weatherman predicts that the heat wave here is ending Monday when it will rain. That means Sunday and Tuesday are probably the great puffy cloud days we have here in Boise and will be good picture taking days. I am stalling on a trip to McCall and Sun Valley until the Fall color is in full swing, which will not be for another week or two, but I think I will hike up to Table Rock. Table Rock is a scenic overlook just above the city with a white cross on top. The Idaho Historical Society owns Table Rock, except for cross and the 4 feet around where it sits. (And no Supreme Court lawsuits to get rid of it!) I'm sure the cross above the city will make me homesick for Simi Valley.

HP is already sending reject emails. 1 down, 3 to go. I have not heard from Idaho Health and Welfare. Yesterday I applied for 2 jobs at an insurance company that appears to be new to Idaho and provides insurance for those who used to be on Medicaid, but needs to know Medicaid rules. They had two jobs, one was more technical, both including resolving issues via phone. I'm hoping my County experience with Medicaid may transfer to private insurance. I also applied for another job with the State, this time in the Department of Labor.

Friday is errand-running day, as long as I have the luxury of being able to do this on a weekday and avoid places like Target on the weekend I am going to take advantage of it. When I read the Idaho Driver's Manual, I found a few things missing from my emergency pack related to being stranded in the snow. One is sand or cat litter, to provide traction for a car wheel stuck in the snow.

My next SCORE appointment is Friday October 8, so that gives me some motivation to write out my business ideas. I spoke to the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho about membership and being a museum artist. Being a museum artist costs me an extra $10 to regular membership, $45 total, and they will send me the membership form. Being a museum artist allows me to participate in ArtMart for Christmas. There is also emerging artists at The Market, three artists every week. I have enough paintings to show to pursue doing commission work of children, but my research into other subjects and avenues to sell them always makes me feel like I need many, many more pieces.

I am having trouble with a leg cramp in my left calf. It is a terrible charley horse that comes up when I wake up in the morning or from a nap. I haven't had one of these since I was pregnant and I am definitely not pregnant. The only causes I can find that might apply are flat feet, I have hardly worn shoes at all since I've been here, or an electrolyte imbalance. The electrolyte imbalance could be possible as it has been hot and dry here and I am always thirsty, so on my shopping list today is Gatorade G and tomato juice. I should get some bananas, but I don't like bananas anymore.

That none of the Native American Indian quotes were really true is still upsetting me. I think I might send them to Snopes or Factcheck to research. When researching these quotes, I did find something more about my coyote spirit animal. At least this is not pretending to be much more than someone's opinion. The coyote wind is from the South, and teaches us to recall the child within. This seems appropriate considering my soul retrieval. The coyote is known as the Trickster, but this guy, who calls himself Wolf's Moon, adds some dimension to this idea,

"For the two-legged beside whom Coyote walks, there will be an aspect of their personality that is deeply playful and mischievous, yet they are equally capable of deep contemplation and introspection. Though this may at first appear to be a great contradiction, such dichotomy is all a part of the paradoxical Medicine of the Trickster that is both the Wise Sage and the hapless Fool."

So I will pick my own enlightenment topic today, Paradox, with a poem called Spirit of Coyote by Wolf's Moon,

A cry fills the night
the haunting sound, a familiar one.
Carried upon the ribbons of moonlight,
a song that has been heard for centuries,
never changing, yet heralding change.

Generations & tribes of two-leggeds have long since come and gone
and always, across shifting times and People
Coyote’s song lingers on . . .
the melody often strong in our ears,
in other moments, but a distant echo we vaguely hear.

He sings to us of Family and the sacred bond of love.
Coyote asks of us to expand our hearts beyond blood ties
to include all the People
human, winged, four-legged, finned,
as members of our Clan.

Coyote sings to us of Changes to come.
He is Trickster, Joker, the Fool & the Sage.
Both the Wise Master and the Servant of Folly,
Masleca sings to us
that Truth lies within the Paradox

So, enough job applying until Monday, I am painting and writing business proposals this weekend. And going on a hike.

Reverence for Nature

There are four jobs posted on the HP website that have the same title and the same description, but different requisition numbers. I applied for all of them. The HP employment site is better than most, but it is almost impossible to find which jobs I am qualified for or what the job really is through all the HR jargon. The titles are long, and complicated, like "ITO Srv Delivery Rep IV." Which is higher, a I or a IV? Am I supposed to know what ITO stands for? It is easy to apply, once you have all of the information entered, and I am sure HP is just inundated with applications all of the time. Then they probably have some scanning program by keyword that kicks you out before a human being ever looks at your application. I wish I could talk to someone at HP, show them my experience, and have them tell me what jobs apply, if any. They would have to take the time to talk to me, but would have one application instead of four. HR really deteriorated with the extensive use of the Internet.

Otherwise, I played phone tag with the SCORE rep, did some drawings for more paintings, and attempted to clean all of the cat hair out of my studio. In my 6 months that I lived with no TV, I appear to have lost my TV restraint. I did not watch TV much at Dad's. I felt bad leaving my cats by themselves all the time in the studio and there was no TV in there. Now I turn on the TV when I brush the cats in the evening and then often I don't turn it off until I go to bed. That I now have Turner Classic movies doesn't help. I hope my TV issues are just a phase.

Applying for jobs isn't very interesting to write about and as much as I hate to move on from the enlightenment topic Nonconformity, the next one is even better. The next topic is Reverence for Nature, with an initial quote from Chief Seattle,

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings. (But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears.) The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond and the smell of the wind itself, cleaned by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man for all things share the same breath, the beast, the tree, the man. (The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes.) Like a man dying for many days he is numb to the stench.

I added parenthesis around the lines that appear on-line, but were left out in the book. The only problem is, according to Snopes, these words were not written by Chief Seattle, but by screenwriter Ted Perry for the 1972 film, Ecology. There is only one legitimate quote attributed to Chief Seattle, which is pretty much, thanks for buying our land.

There are several more Native American Indian quotes in the book. I could not find the quote as printed in the book by Oren Lyons, known as the Onondaga Faithkeeper, regarding how his people think seven generations ahead when making decisions. Oren Lyons did make a speech to the UN in 1992 that includes bits of the quote. There is a quote from Wolf Song of the Abenaki tribe about the sacred hoop of life. I could find nothing about Wolf Song on-line, except for a bunch of people using him and parts of this quote for their own purposes, including art and sappy personal spiritual journals. Then there are two quotes by Walking Buffalo about nature's university and living in cities being an artificial existence. According to the site I could find, Walking Buffalo is a childhood name for a Sioux War Chief known as Red Wing, and his history on-line did not match the background given for him in the book. There is a quote by Luther Standing Bear about all life containing the essence of God, but now I am so disappointed in the illegitimacy of all of these quotes that I'm not going to look him up.

Wow, that was enlightening. The supposed spiritual quotes from Native American Indians are mostly created or abused for someone's own modern purpose, except for the misquoted Oren Lyons, who appears to have abused his own Native American status for environmentalism.

Oh well, the topic is a good one. Serenity can be found in nature. Observing the beauty and the power of nature can help me remain humble. Walking with my feet on the ground helps me feel a connection to life that I do not feel in a crowded city where sometimes my feet touch nothing but cement. I guess I don't need any quotes or poetry to know this, I just need to go on a walk or a hike. I now live somewhere where in 5 minutes I can be out of the city and my feet touch the ground in my backyard every day.

Driver's License

Over the weekend I moved the Virgin into the sun and planted her some pansy. How do you spell multiple pansy? Fred Meyer guarantees the pansy will come back next spring. In the corner of the yard that she used to live in the Virgin did not get any sun and there are these 4 stepping stones in the middle of the yard in a square for some unknown reason. So now Virgin and pansy are occupying two of the stones.

I think this is a raspberry plant trying to grow right next to where I need to open the side gate. My neighbor has a raspberry plant on the other side of the fence, and I think this grew from hers. If it is still there in the spring, I think I will move it over and away from the gate. I like raspberries.


I now have an Idaho driver's license. I spent the morning reading the Idaho drivers manual. The driver's manual is long. I downloaded it earlier and spent most of the day reading it, since I had to take a test as a new resident of Idaho. Who knows what is different from driving in So Cal, I can't remember the last time I read a manual to take a test. There was more stuff about winter driving and about yielding to livestock. Livestock has the right of way, but the manual pretty much says go ahead and hit everything else, if you have to, rather than causing an accident or killing yourself. Bet that's not in California's driver's manual.

I waited about 5 seconds in line at the Idaho DMV. I paid $3 to take the test. There are 40 questions on the test, which is on the computer. I got 4 wrong and you are allowed 7 wrong, so when I finished question 37 the test stopped and I passed. The license cost me $30 for 4 years. The license picture is kind of yucky, but mostly because I just don't look like I think I look anymore. Where did my lips go? I could have paid a few dollars for a license for 8 years, but I'm glad I didn't, 4 years of that picture will be enough.

This afternoon I finished another landscape. I tried a bigger size from one of my studies, 10.5" x 14.5", which I found to be a good size for me and I don't think I want to do a landscape any larger. Overall, it took me about the same amount of time as the study did, but I don't know if that is because I did the study first or not.

Now I am calling my brother, Dave. He broke both of his wrists less than a year ago when he flew over the handlebars on his bicycle. This week, he had almost the same accident in the same place and broke his arm. Good thing it's only one this time, but apparently he would have broken his wrist again except there is a titanium plate in his wrist from last time. Pretty soon Dave's arms are going to be all titanium and he will have to find something else to break. Or start driving a car.

Monday is Mow the Lawn Day

In case I had trouble getting the cats in from their evening stroll in the backyard, I bought some tapioca pudding. You know, the kind in those little lunch box cups. Cruiser goes nuts for tapioca pudding. All I have to do is pop open the lid and he comes running. Once Cruiser comes in, Spit follows, if she isn't already in. I fight Cruiser for the first big spoonfuls and then he furiously licks the inside of the cup. Spit comes over to see what the fuss is about, but she's not interested in tapioca. Spit more likely starts prancing and talking for her evening brushing. I don't know where Cruiser's tapioca thing came from and sometimes I wonder if he would like vanilla, but I like tapioca.

I looked all over for 1/2 an hour for the Health and Welfare manager's phone number so I could call her today and it wasn't until I finally found the 1st manager's number that I realized I never got a card from the 2nd one. So, I sent an email and received a prompt response that they are still in the process of filling the position, will keep me posted, and thanking me for my patience.

I looked up Art Galleries in Idaho and found one that looks decent in Boise and a nice one in Sun Valley. When I was unpacking, I found some old promo pieces from someone I went to Art Center with and so I looked him up on-line to see if he was doing anything. He was much older than me and now that I think about it, I don't know what he ever did for money. Turns out, he went to school in Idaho ten years after Art Center and earned a Master's degree in Art. That was weird. He now exhibits in San Francisco and a gallery in Sun Valley, which is the nice one I found. They are not taking artist submissions, but I think I will call them and ask if they will look at my work, maybe throw around my Art Center buddy's name. I don't think he is still in Idaho and I could not find an email for him.

The Art Museum of Eastern Idaho also has an ARTmart that starts in November. This is for work that sells for under $200. I can submit 3 pieces at a time and they sell them in their Studio Gallery during the holidays. I just have to be a Museum Artist, so I need to call them and find out what that means. The only problem is that they are 4 hours away.

I researched jobs at Hewlett Packard and updated all my resume and contact information on their website, but I have not submitted anything yet. I also found one job at the VA, but applying for Federal jobs is so complicated that I'm not sure it is worth it.

Monday is mow the lawn day, so I went out this afternoon and mowed the lawn and got a workout and some sun. It appears that once I brought up the cold summer, So Cal started a furious heat wave. Yahoo Weather says the high today in Simi Valley was 101 and 106 in LA, but I read elsewhere that it was a record 113 in LA today. It was 90 in Boise and just perfect, although a bit hot for lawn mowing. In the middle of mowing the lawn, my other neighbor introduced himself. His name is Kurt and he recently quit his truck driving job. He was gone all the time and said he could not see himself sleeping in his truck in Montana in the dead of winter. When I talked about trying to pay the rent while doing what you really want, he laughed like he could relate.

I like mowing the lawn, especially here where I know lawn mowing season is short, but I keep forgetting how much work houses are. The automatic garage door reverses itself on a regular basis and on Sunday it would not close at all. I had to look up what the sensor lights are supposed to look like to refresh my memory and worked on it for half an hour. There was nothing wrong with the sensor lights and I finally concluded that at certain times of the day, the sun shines directly into the main sensor and it either won't work, or falsely thinks there is an obstruction. The sun stays pretty low on the horizon here, because we are so far north, and the garage door faces south, sunrise directly into one sensor, sunset into the other. The post man said he rang the doorbell last week, but I didn't here it, so I tried the doorbell and that doesn't work, either. I don't like doorbells, so I'm not fixing it, but if you come over, be sure to knock.

Kurt asked me if anyone had given me a hard time about my California plates and encouraged me to get some Idaho ones. He said there are some Idaho natives that hate Californians more than anyone else. And where is Kurt from? Los Angeles via Eureka, California, although he has been here since the 70s. Some biker guy I met last Saturday was also from California somewhere around Newport Beach. He's been here since the 80s, although he said it took him 10 years to get here once he decided he wanted to move to Idaho. I told him it took me 4 months. (Because he was kind of a jerk.)

The Big Game

On Saturday, Boise hosted one of the largest women's 5K events in the nation, ESPN, and the Boise State versus Oregon State football game. The set up and the crowds started on Friday night and downtown was nowhere you wanted to be on Saturday, unless you were running in the 5K, playing in the football game, or already parked in the Boise State University parking lot. A woman at the workshop was late because she was busy painting her husband's upper torso with BSU colors. I went to my workshop and then went home and stayed home. I think I was the only person in the neighborhood at home and it was quiet, quiet, quiet.

BSU beat Oregon State 37-24. I only watched parts of the game and I actually missed the end because I was watching John Stossel. I did watch part of the interview with coach Chris Petersen, he seems like a regular guy, and he looked relieved that the hype was over and they could just get back to playing football.

According to the Sunday paper, now is time for the best selection and prices on buffalo. Right there in the everyday grocery store, Fred Meyer. I must be in Idaho. I guess you can use it in place of beef and it cooks faster. Nope, no buffalo for me, thanks anyway.

It is hot here, in the upper 80s all week, and I am enjoying it, especially since I know it isn't going to last. It still cools off in the evenings and the poor cats are confused. Do I shed or not? I'm taking a brush-full off of them every night.

Since I rejected the last enlightenment topic, I better move on to something I can meditate on for a while. The next topic is Nonconformity with a passage from Walden by Henry David Thoreau,

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

The author talks about those two voices, the one that tells you to follow your dreams and the one that tells you to be practical and like everyone else and that you are being foolish and selfish. Hey, I hear those voices all the time! I am not crazy, I just march to a different drummer. Right now I feel a bit like that music is far away, though, I just can't quite catch the beat and I am feeling a bit unfocused. I often try to keep one foot on each side of the fence, the conformist and the nonconformist side, without doing either one very well. Maybe it's time to listen more closely to the music I hear.