In Denial

So forget it! No matter how you beg and plead, I am not discussing my hatred of this weather. Nope, no harangues about snow and freezing rain and shoveling and wet gloves and messy, dangerous road conditions. Just not going to happen.
You just cannot get me to mention white, chilly, useless, was-fluffy-this-morning-and-now-has-crust stuff. Not going to happen on this blog.
Let's ponder the upcoming Olympics... but then again, those are WINTER sports and require that precipitation that dare not mention its name.
So how about food? How about an obscene appraisal of all the many things I've been consuming because of the cold and dark season? I suspect I have company in the vain attempt to drown my winter doldrums in the consumption of random calories... oh! splendiferous rolls of abdominal fat! Lipids and jiggly bits!

That does look kind of cool, though. Bob made theses arrangements back in the fall and they've held up remarkably well. That cone shape is perfect. See? I am capable of cheering up for three minutes. Maybe someone could stage an intervention. Please come to the Bauhaus Chicken Coop and whisk me away to a warm, sunny climate... just for a week or two. I'm not even fussy; I have no specific destination in mind. The only requirement is no cold white stuff. No ice crystals. Just warmth, maybe some colorful birds chirping and perhaps a palm tree or gigantic tropical flower or two. But maybe first send me to fat farm...

Groundhog to be Deported...

An unnecessary- nay! a gratuitous photo!- of that entirely unnecessary white stuff currently falling.
What was I saying? I was tired of winter? Oh, you have no idea... So as a punishment, we're getting more snow on Wednesday and even more snow on Saturday!
In any event, I vote to deport the groundhog (along with Justin Bieber). The Canadians seem to enjoy winter so they can have it. That winding trail in the above photo is Bob's handiwork with the famous snow blower. And if you squint really carefully, you can just see Maggie in the distance to the left. We're all hunkering down. I even missed work today because of the snow. (Well, that always is a good thing in a backasswards way; more time in the studio.)
I had spent the morning of February 2nd singing to Jules and myself about how the groundhog could not possibly see his/her shadow as it was completely overcast.But it turns out that the particular groundhog selected/elected to report on the state of all things winter, saw said shadow and fled back underground. I want spring, dammit!
However, we have signed on to do a mid-summer garden tour and I'm excited. (Something to live for!) Bob and I had volunteered our property for inclusion on the Mad Gardeners tour the first year we moved in, thinking it would be educational, instructive and cheeky to present a garden that didn't exist, sort of a "tabula rasa" that we could re-show several years later to contrast what can be done by dedicated and tireless gardeners. But I suspect the committee was utterly horrified at that notion and they declined our gracious invitation. But this year, our fourth gardening here at the BauHaus Chicken Coop, will (hopefully) be a fecund and delightful year. It will be a good excuse to buy lots of lovely and exotic plants and seeds and stuff the beds and borders!
At least the promise of some distant spring event horizon gives me hope that warmer, sunnier days will prevail. The tour is scheduled for July 12th, so mark your calendars.
In the meantime, contact the consulate and deport the bums!

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!