Color COVID

At what point do I get to wake up somewhere other than Vladimir Putin's America? Here it is- May 9th- and I'm swaddled in my winter clothing, picking through the woodpile searching for a few sticks to burn? It's actually flurrying with the sun out and we're all still quarantined from COVID 19 and WTF!! When I walked back from the mailbox, it was near white-out conditions...
I have begun the lovely task of assembling annuals, perennials and shrubs and vegetable plants to populate our many gardens and beds but I had to hustle them all back into my studio so they didn't freeze to death last night. And what of the hummingbirds?!  There have been a bunch of them- right on schedule!- flying around and landing on our feeder; I may have to install a nectar heater! But where do they spend the night?

This isn't half of them! The seedlings and tender things are all over our dining table and every available window sill. (We have temporary shelving on several windows...) Even today, the wind is so strong and sharp that they're all hunkered down inside.
So I had an exciting adventure yesterday morning. I called our local hardware/feed store and ordered and pre-paid for the horse food I need so that I wouldn't have to enter the building. As is typical protocol now, they said they'd leave the two bags on the rear loading dock. I drove our trusty car (running like a top!) to the back of the store, put it in reverse and hoped for the best. I say this because the driveway leading up to the loading dock is seriously narrow and surrounded on both sides high concrete walls and a chain link fence too boot. Add to the already trying circumstances is that I have my sunglasses and face mask on so that the mask was causing the sunglasses to fog slightly. I carefully calibrated that the right passenger side of the car was the trickier side to gauge my proximity to the imposing wall and backed up... BAM!!! Oh, I hit something!!
I pulled my car forward, exited and went to survey the damage. Trusty the Car looked fine but when I turned around, I realized that I had hit the corner post and it had caused the chain link fence to bow out. Yikes!

See? Nothing! Bernie didn't even get scratched! (I had feared having smashed a taillight or dented the fender area.)
Needless to say, I was mortified and knew I had to do the right thing. So I gloved up- already in my mask- and entered the store, which of course, was packed with customers and there were no sales people free. I exited and instead confessed by cell phone what I had done. I also walked to the back of the store and found three (3!!) male employees on the loading dock (all wearing masks) shaking their heads and... LAUGHING! Like "hahahaha; dumb blonde!!" In this case, I really didn't care as I confided just how stupid I felt and offered insurance information if they needed to press charges or put in a claim. But they were great and made plans among themselves to straighten it out. (In truth, it wasn't that bad!) They actually asked if I had gotten my two bags of beet pulp okay (yes, but need I remind you, these weigh 50 pounds apiece!) and told me to "have a nice day". I told Bob that the next time he went to our hardware store, he should view my signature "Damage by Rita" installation. I may avoid the store myself for a while as I'm certain they'll all be giggling at me when I come in...

Waiting For The End of The World

Well... maybe not the end as we seem to be receiving (thankfully!) way less accumulation of snow and ice than previously projected. Bob had run out on Saturday and stocked up on provisions and I'm glad he did. Despite there being less precipitation, it's a nasty, messy mix of ice and rain and snow and... remind me why we live in New England?!?!

I've been running outside to minister to Maggie and all of her needs- hay, grain (2x a day) and fresh (unfrozen) water. (Plus I like to go out and hang around with her for a while as I think she's bored. I offer her encouragement and break up the monotony.) Maggie does insist upon standing out in this unpleasantness despite 24/7 access to her lovely stall. She even goes in and drags her hay out; what's a horse owner to do??!?!

Robin and I see eye to eye. She wants to go out, but is pretty happy to return inside and get toweled off. In the picture above, she's imploring me to stop fiddling with the camera and PLEASE OPEN THE DOOR!!

I'm happiest in my studio with the wood stove generating almost too much heat. I call it The Florida Room. I finished sewing diamonds all the way around my latest piece yesterday and today I embark on a new-ish project. I am (finally) starting my latest book, "A Pot To Piss In (or: What's an Artist Urn? (Earn)) about income disparity and my lowly place in the economical hierarchy that is modern day America. I have actually been playing with these ideas for a couple of years but become so extraordinarily depressed when contemplating the magnitude of the situation that I have not gotten much further than a few trial images and then holding my head in my hands in despair. Alas! I like my artist book offerings to be funny (or at least trenchantly amusing) but this one seems dark and unrelenting. Perhaps I'll win the lottery before long and can change the timbre of of my tome to one of financial success and optimism! Fat chance!

... And as Happy a New Year as is Possible Under the Circumstances

An interesting beginning to the New Year... I can say that Bob saved the day yesterday. I woke up at about 5:30 and I felt chilly. That's unusual for me as typically, I retain the heat from sleeping under the two hundred blankets with which Bob and I cloak the bed. (Over night, I almost always cast off sweat pants and socks as we sleep and when I stumble outside to let Robin eliminate I am enveloped in an invisible warm envelope.) In any event, it was only 60 upstairs- which is cold as the heat in our house reliably rises and the bedroom is often a good seven or eight degrees warmer than the kitchen. When I went downstairs, it was much colder and obvious that the furnace hadn't come on in a while.
I woke Bob up- such fun to be awoken on New Year's Day to a cold house. Bob tried the furnace and likewise, it didn't come on.... we made a fire in the wood stove.
The immediate tragedy of freezing to death warded off, Bob did some investigation with the furnace itself and found that the on/off switch had been tripped. (Probably be me as I brushed past the furnace in the utility room to flip on the outdoor flood lights at 3:00 am when Robin needed to pee...)

(Our little helper, rooting around for stray bits of dog food on the utility room floor.)
Anyway, Bob got the furnace working and we were happy for about a half an hour. Then Bob tells me that he went outside and checked the propane tanks and... they were all three empty! So he shut off the furnace (again) and we heated quite happily with the wood stove, planning on calling our propane supplier the next day.
The next day turned out to be a holiday (who knew?) and  we had to order on Tuesday. In the meantime, the weather continued warm so no big deal (although as an interesting aside, a good friend (Hello Sheldon!) had inquired about us heating with wood. I said, "Oh, with both Bob and I heating the studios with wood, we usually heat the house with propane. Running three wood stoves is a lot of work!" Little did I know.)
So on Tuesday, Bob orders propane and they came and filled the tanks and a general "hooray" arose from the denizens of The Bauhaus Chicken Coop as warmth would fill the land. The house was still warm from the continuing wood stove fire so it wasn't until early the next morning that we realized the blasted house was cold and the danged furnace wasn't firing and catching. It seemed to want to try, but something wasn't right.
Bob went on line and- intrepid guy that he is!- watched several videos about things that might cause the furnace to not start. He cleaned a widget and make a tweak here or there but still no luck.
Bob re-called the propane company and they dispatched a technician. The man arrived pretty quickly and looked at all the possible fittings and switches and I'm seeing dollar signs flash before my eyes as these guys aren't cheap. But he said the furnace looked in good shape and clean and went outside to test the hoses and line. There he discovered that the delivery man had SHUT OFF the gas coming into the house! He opened the valve and ta-da!! the furnace kicked right in. We aren't even being charged as the technician said that delivery guy must have mistaken our delivery to one that had a leak. So all's well that ends well and we're warm and happy. (The weather got cold right after this episode transpired...)

Yes, a shot of left over (from Lil' Robin's birthday party) balloons, now taken up residence in the downstairs shower stall.

New Computer...

And it's about time! I bet all the philistines among you thought I had simply abandoned blogging as so many before me. But no! I am not that easy to get rid of. Almost a month ago now, our computer gave up the ghost. Bob went to turn it on and was greeted by a stony faced black screen. The timing was, of course, the absolute worst in history. I was just finishing installing my work "Better Guns and Gardens" at Artspace and there were images to send and artists statements to email for that show and my upcoming inclusion at Odetta Gallery. I was frantically uploading and sending off requested info from friend's computers during dinner parties and from work. A nightmare!(I am not even going to hint at how much unbacked up stuff we have sealed in that hard drive; we are going to have to pay for date transfer...) The good news is that we have a delightful new computer that has oodles of giga everything and we don't even seem to be upset with Windows 8. Yes, there are swirly, squirrely screens that flicker past at light speed and all manner of needless shopping apps but it's not THAT bad! I was worried.
And above, testimony to all the hard work I've been doing in preparation for that NEXT show at Odetta Gallery in Brooklyn. The studio is warm, wonderful and workable thanks to:

Remember "Yodel"? Yes, Yodel the Woodstove is now installed, thanks to Bob and our good friend Joe. They Saws-alled a hole in the studio roof and put in the new pipe. It works great and just in time; as I was finishing my book project, the weather started to get cold and I had begun to work in the living room (old studio) for a time. The studio heats up in no time and I couldn't be happier- or toastier!
But here's the pain side of all this work:

Kind of gross, all the splits and needle stabs I'm enduring. I jabbed a needle like 1/2" into this awful open bleeding thumb crevasse and then danced a mighty jig to stop from screaming. That really hurt. I guess that the down side to having a show in which all the pieces are sewn. But the work looks great and I plunge on wards, fighting through that old agony and ecstasy...
One more picture for good measure as I'm pleased as proverbial punch to be up and blogging again:

Dead flowers! A fitting last bouquet, plucked just before the cold weather began in earnest. Lovely perennial chrysanthemums from friend Bob. Well, they were lovely before they dried out, but they persist in our bathroom as a remembrance of this recently departed last gardening season. Only funny thing here is that I didn't take  picture of the new computer. Maybe next posting.

'Round the House

I may be (too) busy with art deadlines and am neglecting household arts (like cleaning or painting baseboards) but Bob has been busy making nice with the fireplace. Look at that! We now have a respectable replacement for the hole that was variously covered with plastic, plywood, insulation boards, a flat file cabinet and simple exposed 2x4's and wood siding. But then Bob made good on his promise to finish off the fireplace with cement and he even made feet for the boards that were chopped off at half mast:

Very Temple of Dendar, indeed! And it came in handy as we had friends for our Tuesday Night Pizza occurrence and we actually had the first fire of the season. (Oh say it isn't so! First day of Fall next week...)
We do (obviously) have several other things to attend to like the sundry dry wall holes that occupy the living room and beyond:

Holes? Did some one say holes? Here's a delightful closeup:

Look at the depth, the complexity of that hole. It was hidden behind the sheet rock that I had up when I used that wall for drawing on. I could spend too much brain space wondering how it got there in the first place!
On a cheerier note, we really do have a dining table, completed by the same old hodge podge chairs and the addition of Mid-century modern ones from Bob's mother's house.

And say! what's that displayed on the dining table? No, not the attractive zinnias in outrageous colors, compliments of the cut flower garden but that book, cutting a rakish diagonal? Yes, that's a mock-up of my almost completed book, "Better Guns and Gardens". hate to say it, but I'll be glad when it's done! I've devoted so much time and energy that I'm beat!! But the end is in sight! I will have a life again...

Yo-de-le-odel-a-ee--oo!!

Hey! There it is! My little wood stove! Bob cleaned it all up and now we just need to get some pipe and an insert that goes through the roof. (Bob's also making a metal pad that sits on the floor so that I don't burn the studio down when putting wood into the stove and sparks and the like spew out.) The stove is cute; nice and small so that it doesn't dominate the room and interfere with traffic flow.
But here's the funny part: when our good friend Joe (Hi Joe!) introduced us to the stove, he said it was a "Yodel". I took this literally and when we got home, I googled "Yodel wood stove" and up comes some crazy yodeling pickle (who thinks this stuff up?) and links to some wood stove company named "Jotul". I think there's an error until it dawns on me that Yodel is actually spelled Jotul (with a little accent line through the o) because it's Norwegian! It's pronounced Yodel... it takes me a while.
Anyway, call it what you will, it looks great and as the weather is starting to turn colder, the idea of extra heat is compelling. By the way, the side of the stove has a really cool insignia:

Nice design. I was afraid the stove would be homely or dumpy, but it's attractive.
In the meantime, here's a piece of advice. If you're planning an art show, don't bother spending good money on cards to advertise. Most cards get chucked right into the trash can and the few unfortunate ones that survive get pressed into service as... SILENT BUTLERS!!!

Yuk, yuk, yuk.

Windows Are The Eyes of the Studios Soul (or something!)

I heard banging before we embarked on our mystery trip to obtain (ahem) art materials and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a window! Installed! Bob actually got it in today... YAAAY!!!
It was a misty, foggy submerged kind of day, but look at that: I got a window!.
This side of the studio looks pretty complete; those little cross pieces in the corner of the window were only to hold it in place while Bob affixed it in place. We also picked up the wood stove for my studio- really cute! A Norwegian make of wood stove called "Yodel". It will fit so nicely and not take up a lot of space. Thanks again to our good friend Joe.
One again, I feel we're on the road to progress in the studio department.