Gates of Hell (Or some such place)

In an effort to keep the cold out of our house, we fashioned "curtains" from all kinds of fabric. The atmosphere changes dramatically from room to room. This particular shot officially proves there is a portal straight to Hell from our computer room. At least Hell is warm!
In keeping with the orange theme and in search for all things warm and southern, here's another color themed picture; our kitchen counter is sunny.

And it's also official that it has been a brutal and spectacularly awful month. I know I am not alone in expressing this. To whit, I am going to make a list of some of the dreadful items plaguing us this month, just for fun:
The weather (oh, did I already mention the weather?), taxes due (rendering Bob and I effectively penniless),
a number of health issues afflicting family and friends (from the minor and inconvenient to broken bones and cancer), the weather, car infirmities, snow, darkness... Enough already!
I am hereby declaring  January over! I don't care if I'm a day early. (I don't even think my sister Beatrice will complain if I eliminate the last day of January, despite it being her birthday.) Let's celebrate Groundhog's Day or Mardi Gras or something that alludes to the coming of Spring.

Activities For A Cold Day

This morning Bob and I went to secure another 20 bales of hay. What else can you do when the daytime high is like 11 degrees? Baby, it's cold! Yet another delightful effect of this "polar vortex" fun is that a horse (or cow or dog or human) has to eat more to maintain body temperature. We buy our winter hay from a beautiful farm in Middlebury and pick it up twenty bales at a time. (They store it in a huge barn, as we have limited storage.) The only trick is timing it so that the weather cooperates, work schedules permits and you don't run out. We were down to a single bale...
The next excitement is getting the hay from the driveway to the horse barn. What with snow cover, we have to be clever in our methods as you can't drive the truck to the barn.

I swear, Bob and I sometimes resemble peasants in a Breughel painting. We're swaddled in hats and scarves and gloves and boots and dragging pieces of plywood secured with ropes across the tundra- very Middle Ages, indeed! I'm supposing this kind of activity keeps us fit for the demanding enterprise of making art. Who needs aerobics or pilates when you can drag several forty pound bales around?
Here's Bob's transport device of choice:

Bob, being a clever welder, fabricated this extended arm wheelie cart out of an old hand truck. It worked surprisingly well on the snow, despite small wheels. Between the two of us, it only took ten minutes or so to move the hay from driveway to barn. Such fun!
Then it was in to the house for warmer pursuits, huddled around the wood stove and computer. I managed to get moving on a few art projects. My brain may be processing more slowly due to the cold, but something seems to be firing correctly!

Blogging for the Sake of Blogging

This is a picture that Bob took and I have appropriated for use here. We inherited all these mannequin molds from our friend Joe (who else? purveyor of all things truly weird!) We now are in proud possession of quite a heap ourselves; we're considering creating a fence from them or casting some as stepping stones through the swamp... there must be hundreds of potential uses! ( And by the way, he has hundreds of them and needs be rid of them. So if interested contact us, and we'll hook you up with some righteous body parts.)
Maybe it's mid-winter doldrums, or the fact that every time I have a day off, it's raining or snowing or a raw combination of the two, but I have not been party to a whole lot of inspired ideas for blogging. The studio is on hold until we get an electrician over here or get that stainless steel pipe to go through the roof. Or until I win the fucking lottery as we're truly broke until after we pay our property taxes.
But a swift update:
A neighbor of ours actually goes to get her mail in her bathrobe. She looks like something out of a 1960's sitcom. On the other hand, many people have taken to wearing pajamas or those loose fleecy sweat pants that LOOK like pajamas in public, so I guess bathrobes aren't entirely scandalous. I do see people wearing some mildly hysterical combinations at the local supermarkets and they are the unwitting models for not always flattering sketches I do when I arrive home. You can't make that stuff up- like stubby overweight men wearing shorts in the freezing cold weather; it's some sort of exclusive organization, because there are plenty of members . But hey! We have a stack of alien bodies piled up beside the horse fence, so I guess I shouldn't question what others do...
I've been diligent about applying to art submission calls and "opportunities" so hopefully something will come my way. Probably not, as I've been doing a good job of keeping The Loser's Club alive. (Remember that? I'll offer a refresher some day soon. Yet another exclusive organization.)

Still playing with our food! that sounds like cabin fever has stopped by for a visit, no? The above is a "bread snake" that Bob made with the heel from one of his French sticks. Got to chase away gloom somehow. Okay, this posting wasn't the finest ever, but I'll let you know when and if I get any more really great ideas. I'm off to my (old) studio to work. But in the meantime, enjoy the following picture: Spring is somewhere on the event horizon and we can dream of warm sunny skies.

(Actual dahlia from our actual yard.)

Somewhat Normal

Well at least my brain has thawed and it's functioning at a somewhat "normal" level. I seem to be capable of putting two or three words together in semi-coherent strings. Not like last week! You may have noticed that my blog ceased as my brain seized up due to the extreme cold.
So this week has presented car dilemmas that are still ongoing. Bob ran outside- in the 55 degree but seriously rainy weather- to disconnect the battery in my car so that we can go replace it. Never rains but pours; as if car trouble was a nice way to begin the New Year! We're off the the battery emporium this morning. In the mean time, I seem to be getting some where with my studio pursuits. What I need now is a real show in a meaningful space to present my latest endeavors.
This is the ongoing problem confronting the modern artist: you can keep making art until it piles high inside the studio, you can show in alternative spaces and non-profit galleries. But seriously sell things? Ha! More likely you spend much of your time (that you'd love to be in the studio making more stuff) driving around and picking up or dropping off your work. Kinda crazy. Anyway, anyone know a good gallery that's looking for a few good artists?

On other fronts, I seem to really have a problem with those pesky Gods of Bureaucracy. I am sure at least several of you have heard the tale of how my Obamacare application seemingly got sent through (get this) thirty times. And my bank said they couldn't do anything about it until it posted! (I suppose they eagerly anticipated getting 29 $29 overdraft fees! Heaven help me!) And I sat three times (for over 45 minutes each time) on the Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield "help line" while I was told to "contact the bank". Hahahaha.
I finally got a person who cancelled out my submission- but not until he had told me that the subsidies weren't being applied, and I was being charged the almost $700 a month premium. Yeeesh.
Also, I laboriously submitted to an artist's book show through an very annoying website called "Entry Thingy". (Too cute for words, no?) Only to be contacted by the curator who tells me my submission is no where to be seen on the site. Nervous breakdown and elaborate re-submission later, I hope that has been resolved. Entry Thingy contacted me to say THEY could see the application, so I trust the curator simply made a mistake. Any wonder why I'm nuts? I feel like that dead, denuded Xmas tree above. Only fat.

Stupid Cold!

At 6:00, I scraped the ice off the thermometer and lo! It was 5 below zero. I filled a bucket of water for Maggie and stepped outside and immediately all my senses froze. Along with all the available moisture in my nose and lungs. It was truly cold. stupid cold.
That's all I need to report, until we thaw out. I told Jules that we'd go for a walk- when it reached 15. That''' seem like a reasonable heat wave but this mornings standards!

The First Days of Our Fourth Year

Today is the fourth anniversary of our closing on the house. The hideous weather certainly reminds me of that day! Very cold and loads of snow. Ugh! But we are happy in our home...
It is 9 degrees outside, but there is that ever-lovin' windchill factor to make things merry and bright. Tonight is supposed to be even colder. No wonder my brain shuts down.
Some people shut down in extreme heat. I dunno; I kind of like the flip side of the thermometer. I get off on looking at the mercury rise and saying, "Wow! It's a 100 degrees!" But the cold? I'm a wimp and want to crawl back into bed.
This is the first day in at least a year that Jules and I didn't even go on a walk. We began up the driveway, but it was so cold that Jules started lifting his feet in the air and limping; possibly hypothermia, probably melodrama so we turned around and played in the backyard as best we could.
And don't tell Maggie that she looks a bit like a sofa from yesteryear in her hand-me-down Rhino horse rug. Poor little Mexican Pony had icicles on her eyelashes and looked miserable. I still had the old (and significantly tattered from the teeth of malevolent ponies) blanket that Crispin (remember him?) used to wear at the horse farm. I trussed Maggie all up in it; she has obviously been blanketed before as she didn't miss a beat. It maybe be a bit large, as Crispin was leggier than her, but I tightened up all the straps and she looked quite snug and quite a lot warmer. Of course, then she tried to roll in it as it felt unfamiliar, but I think come nightfall, she'll appreciate the extra layer. (Two hours later, she's still wearing it as evidenced in the photo above, so I think she'll be fine overnight).
And just to prove that I don't waste time when I have the accidental day off: No sirree!! I put me unexpected time to good studio use and got a jump on that new project that's been a little slow in the start up side. I also played several hundred rounds of Zuma and achieved "Sun God 5" status... something to be proud of in the New Year!

Wait a minute! That's from "Adventure" level... let me find "Gauntlet".

There it is! See? believe me now?