Shanty Town

Just a quick posting to assure my friends and followers that, yes, we DO live in Shanty Town! The standing tree remnants (that is, trees that broke off at about 10 feet in height) made swell posts for an impromptu clothes line. You will recall that we had many things demolished/crushed/ruined/destroyed and buried in that tornado; the clothes line* was such a victim.
So being given lemons we made... well, we did laundry while the sun shone and Bob rigged up a new outdoor drying system that is really New! and Improved! as with fewer trees, we get way more light and air. The clothes dried in record time and (of course) smell great.
Just don't ask me to wash our fine hand washables in the stream!

* Don't get me started about towns that have residents that protest people drying their clothes outside. The idea that you need "Right to Dry Laws" is preposterous. Unless you're the CEO of a utility and materially benefit from people using incredible amounts of electricity and are hopelessly cynical and greedy, the only reason to object to drying clothes outside is aesthetic. And that's lame! I object more to black and orange mulches, often favored by suburban McMansion dwellers!

Twenty Five Big Ones

Doesn't this look weird? It's our laundry that came in from the cold- and it smelled great, too. But it looks (to me anyway, but we all know where that goes.) like some sort of odd layered dessert. What's a trifle? Doesn't that have layers? I guess you had to be here... (Very old painting in the background!)
In any event, Bob and I successfully celebrated 25 years of being together. This year, our anniversary was late, late, late. (For those of you who don't remember, we celebrate when the frost kills the basil). We officially celebrated Monday, but went up to visit our friends Don and Elizabeth in their new New Bedford digs on the weekend. We spent an utterly relaxing time, looking at art, walking their dogs, eating interesting food (that we didn't have to prepare!) and not working on my studio. It was a much needed break.
Of course, I forgot to bring my camera on this road trip, and spent the entire weekend lamenting this egregious oversight. Somewhere between Columbia and Foster, Connecticut (who knew? Foster CT?) there was a rock painted like an eagle and an even better on painted like a lizard (nice and mottled and gnarly). There was also a hot dog wagon shaped like (gasp) a hot dog and a few other choice things that got away. I suppose having taken (yes, this is true) over 7000 (that's seven THOUSAND) pictures for the last auction has something to do with my resistance to dragging my camera along everywhere. Just maybe, but you should have seen the things we saw...
Including some very good art: a digital show with interesting kaleidoscope images of birds grooming their feathers and the colorful geometric patterns they generated. Some nice subtle drawings, too. Also our friend Don Wilkinson's one person show at Colo Colo Gallery- very different scanned images of small figurines made huge and heroic. A true departure for Don!
Tomorrow we continue work on the studio. I do have one door that works, which is a major achievement, thanks to Bob's persistence and determination. The double French doors are slated for installation too. That will be a big step towards civilization. Bob had the light on in my studio yesterday when I came home. Despite only plastic on the windows, it looked cheerful and made me believe that I really will get in
there soon.
Oh and here's a gratuitous photograph of the last flowers I picked this year.

The Woman Who Mistook the Laundry Pile for Her Dog

Isn't that cool? When Jules and I are out on our morning walk, we like to jump on the frozen puddles and break the ice. (It makes both Jules and I very silly to do this). But as we approached this particular puddle, I was drawn up short and pushed Jules out of the way because it formed a perfect ice spiral. Of course, I had neglected to bring my camera and I had to return about an hour later to shoot this picture. Bob observed that it looked almost like the rings in the center of a tree. I pointed this out to a couple walking their dog and they were suitably intrigued by it, too. Luckily no one had smashed the ice!
Getting back to the title of this posting, however:  I sing to Jules fairly frequently (between you and me, Jules is a saint because I'm no great singer). So because of my messed up left eye and the habit I now have of taking my right contact lens out when I'm in the house I see in a corrupted and odd way. I was changing my clothes in the bedroom and I glanced over to Bob's closet and saw (what I took to be) Jules. I started into some (truly stupid) song about going for a walk with my dog and I was going on for quite a while while I tied my boots and simultaneously realized that the large black shape was really a laundry pile and my dog was just then entering the bedroom, wondering for whom I was ululating. Jules looked embarrassed for me but I  think our dirty socks enjoyed it. Maybe I should take the laundry on our walk tomorrow.
Here's another shot, but including my feet for scale (shod in my new hiking boots).