Pink Friday

Nothing Today
A Day of Nothing
Nothing is good
Have a GREAT Day!

Topsy Turvy

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"

~Alice from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland

Last week Anet & Denise blogged the theme of “color week”. It looked like a lot of fun and their photos inspired me to give it a try so under the heading of better late than never, I thought I’d follow suit starting Monday. And since that makes me hopelessly out of step already I thought I’d post this Friday Fill-ins, today.
So here goes:

1. On my laziest day I like to drift.
2. Reading makes me feel like I'm being productive.
3. I love little birds and big hugs.
4. This summer I want to just be.
5. Searching for creative focus made me start my blog.
6. Red will be Thursday's color for "color week" and orange will be Wednesday's.
7. Tonight I'm looking forward to dreaming, tomorrow my plans include 2 trips to town and a dreaded social engagement and Monday, I want to see the sun!

Bumbling Along

From Annie Dillard's
Teaching a Stone to Talk, Expeditions & Encounters:

INSECTS

I like insects for their stupidity. A paper wasp - Polistes - is fumbling at the stained glass window on my right. I saw the same sight in the same spot last Sunday: Pssst! Idiot! Sweetheart! Go around by the door! I hope we seem as endearingly stupid to God - bumbling down into lamps, running half-wit across the floor, banging for days at the hinge of an opened door. I hope so........What are the chances that God finds our failed impersonations of human dignity adorable? Or is he fooled? What odds do you give me?

So, What's On Your Fridge?????

Years ago when Larry was stationed in Germany he bought a collection of antique letterpress cuts from an antique shop near Giessen. They sat untouched in boxes for 30 years before we decided to sell some on ebay. That was a couple of years ago and they’ve paid for a new septic, a wood stove, a couple of computers, and a few other odds and ends. Now that we’ve decided to keep the remaining thousand, I’m always thinking that I should be using them in some way artistically....you know, utilize their designs, while leaving the original pieces intact. I’m not detail oriented enough to undertake printmaking or art books.....just not my thing. I’ve fooled around trying to do something with them in clay but haven’t been satisfied with the results (yet). Yesterday, inspired by Anet's jewelry work, I decided to finish these ceramic magnets that I started years ago.









While painting, my mind wandered aimlessly from the magnets I was working on to the fact that I still had Goth’s baby magnets on the refrigerator, to needing to clean the fridge, and on and on..........which pretty much brings you up to speed of how I came about writing this rambling and pointless refrigerator post.



We all have refrigerators and what’s in, and on them, tells all sorts of little details about who we are.

So, are you like my sister in that you like to keep your fridge clean, or is yours plastered with kids’ art, shopping lists, and photographs? Mine’s usually a mess with pictures,








important phone numbers, home school schedules, quotes, affirmations, shopping lists, comics,










and most importantly, a construction paper heart that Goth made me when she was five reminding me that I need to try to “bee love”..........

you can’t find better advice than that.

So, what’s on your fridge?

Gone Fishin', Be Back Soon.....

metaphorically, that is. There’s a saying around here that we have 9 months of winter and 3 months of relatives. I guess I’m going to switch that to 9 months of blogging and 3 months of everything else. When I started this, the challenge for myself was to write and post a paragraph each day. I mean how hard can that be, I should be able to do that right? Well, for the most part I have, and I really enjoy blogging. Even more than that, I enjoy reading all of your blogs and connecting with each of you. But I also know that before long we’re going to be snowed in again. So I’ve decided to slow up on posting for now while I work in the yard, play in the mountains, soak up the sun, fix the roof, garden, paint the porch, read, and make some art. See you soon ..........if anything bloggable happens!

(The image in this post is from a beautiful little art book called Gold and Fish Signatures by Paul Reps)

Rilke's Words

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and....try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

The Fetterman Massacre

Once up a time, long long ago the earth beneath my feet was the last unspoiled hunting ground of the Lakota (or western Sioux). The short version of this complicated story is that gold was discovered in Montana and The Bozeman Trail was built through their sacred land. The United States government convened a peace commission with the Lakota to negotiate reparations, but instead of bargaining in good faith they brought in soldiers. Bravado, hatred, and betrayal abounded and as a result 81 soldiers arrogantly charged a thousand Indian Warriors; the soldiers all died, including Adolph Metzler, a young man believed to have faced this horror with only a bugle. His body was found covered by a buffalo robe; the reason for this tribute remains unknown.

Early every morning Larry and Mattie walk this blood stained battlefield. They’ve done it hundreds, if not thousands of times. It feels very still there, strangely harmonious and peaceful. There is a single tree, deer, antelope, wildflowers, and badger. The only reminders of the massacre are plaques lining the pathway, and wagon ruts made over 120 years ago. Sadly, people are still dying today, they are just very far away, and they’re dying for oil rather than gold. How tragic is it that we as a species haven’t evolved beyond killing one another to get what we want?

Walt Whitman

Wickedly frustrated with the weather around here the Muse convinced me (years ago) to head south. We sold our cabin, packed up, and bought 40 gorgeous acres of wildly secluded waterfalls, springs, vipers, hills, woods, bears, ticks, coyotes, and whippoorwills; complete with a cool barn-house, chicken coop, and the biggest studio building we’d ever had, all for under $50,000. I had never been to the south and, to put it nicely, I wasn’t attuned to the dynamics that some areas possess. Despite their great beauty, the Ozarks have a complex culture uniquely their own. Among other things they’re home to lots of revivals and UFO sightings which made sense because even I found myself wanting God or the Aliens to come to my rescue. Any ways, we didn't live there long but we did have a couple of brushes with the other worldly while we were there. One was with Walt Whitman. After having been infertile for 7 years (despite medical intervention) I had given up on the idea that we would ever have children and my sister was due with her first baby. I was thrilled for her, but as her due date neared I was feeling sorry for myself and frustrated. This is going to sound silly, and I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, but the day before my wonderful niece Marcee was born, Walt showed up out of nowhere. The gentlest, most wonderful soul, he was just the distraction I needed that weekend. He stayed about a year, lived with us, ate with us, and played with us. But while we watched over him, we never had the feeling he was “ours”. Walt belonged to himself, a spirit rather than a possession. Miraculously I became pregnant, Goth was born, and Walt started to wander. He’d come back and check on us but he never stayed. Then one day I got a phone call from a distant neighbor we hadn’t met before. She said that her husband had just been involved in a tragic accident and wasn’t likely to awaken from his coma, and that Walt had been comforting her...........that he was all she had, and was there any way that we would let her keep him. There was no need for her to ask, Walt knew what he was doing. He was truly a blessed spirit, great comforter, and a furry, heavy breathing, comical angel. I still love him.....

Meme

I had no idea what I was going to post today until visiting My Total Perspective Vortex yesterday and saw that Mama Podkayne had posted this meme:

Ten Years Ago What Were You doing?
The Muse and I were making art for a 2 person show at the University of Kansas and potty training Goth.

Five Things on Today’s “To Do” List.......
Water the plants
Help Goth band her baby pigeon
Grocery Shopping
Laundry
Figure out a blog post for tomorrow!

If I were a Billionaire......
I would pay off my mortgage, put aside college money for Goth, get the roof fixed, stow a small amount away so that I could live modestly in old age, and gleefully spend my days giving the rest away.

Three Bad Habits (only three, Mama???):
Cutting my own hair
Wearing my heart on my sleeve
Blogging :)

Five Places I’ve Lived:
In my head
Michigan (21 years)
Kansas (4 years)
Arkansas (1 year-UGH!)
Wyoming (16 years)

Five Jobs I’ve Had:
Artist
Mother
Care provider in a group home for teenage girls
Foster Care transporter
Dick Blick Art Supplies (the best retail job in the world!)

Tag - you’re it!

From Wanda Coleman's Book Heavy Daughter Blues.....

Voices



i hear voices. i hear them often. i’ve heard them
since childhood. soft persistences
shapeless. they come unexpected. hover on my sleep
pierce and distract my study
speaking in rainbow they discuss me as if i’m
the ghost. say wrong things about me. tell me
i’m different i don’t belong
i hear them. the voices. the noise of lies & analyses
threatening to follow me into life.

Motherhood is Making Me an Idiot

The other day Goth came to me with the perpetual problem of being unable to find her remote. Because the cable in her room is routed through her playstation and the vcr before it actually gets to the television it requires the clicker to change channels. So, after assuring me that she’d done everything humanly possible to find it herself I went to help her look. You’d have to see her room to understand, but trying to find anything in it at all requires a preliminary cleaning. So while she was searching and I was sorting things into piles of wash, discard, and put away, I inevitably became distracted by my own lecture about the many benefits of trying... just trying mind you....to be a little tidier. And as I drifted off into some motherly cliché the background noise of the television (tuned to the world’s most inane programming) heightened my annoyance to such a degree that I lost all sense of reality.

Me: “Why in the world don’t you change the channel?”

Goth: “Because I can’t find the remote, remember?”

Me: “Oh, right.....................”

Happy Mother’s Day Everyone!

O.K............... Go Ahead and Laugh!

I'm not sure this post even needs words but if any of you know the Snow Miser will you please tell him I loved The Year Without a Santa Claus but it's time for him to take a vacation already!

My Lucky Girl

When Goth was little she used to watch Bill Nye: The Science Guy videos over and over again. I don’t remember which episode it was but he did a segment on probability. To her three year old brain the whole probability thing was a non issue. What interested her were the four leaf clovers he used in his explanation. After 30 plus years of life I had never seen a four leaf clover in the wild but in her innocence she was determined to find one........ and she did. In fact she’s found six.

It’s kind of sad that now that she’s almost all grown up she doesn’t look anymore. Maybe it’s only later in life that we return to the understanding of how important little things like that are. Things like believing so hard in something that it finds you.................

No More

I generally try to keep things light on my blog because that’s what it’s about for me. I’m not trying to have an impact (through blogging). I’m just trying to share One Small Square of the world........the one that I see from here. Unfortunately there are a few realities impossible to ignore even while hiding out in the woods of Wyoming and they become a part of my small square........

Our Backyard Bird Count

Yesterday we decided to do a little spring cleaning to get the barn ready for the Muse to use as his summer studio. We aren’t particularly fussy about things like that so it wasn’t exactly a big deal. Our main goal was to put in a staircase so that we could access the barn’s attic space. Up until now we hadn’t been using it because of the spiderman like antics required to get up there (but we need the space to store some scrap lumber along with a plethora of other worthless treasures we’ve been accumulating). Once the stairs were finished I climbed up, turned on the lights, and discovered that unbeknownst to us we have a few more pigeons than we thought we did...........quite a few more pigeons! A loft full of pigeons. A little subdivision of nests and eggs and babies in tidy rows lining the rafters. It’s like a very efficient pigeon factory that we’ve been cluelessly the landlords of.

On the bright side, NPR had a little blurb on the other day about woman paying extraordinary amounts of money for facial masks made out of bird droppings. In an effort to provide you with accurate and up to date information I googled it and found that one bird poo facial will cost you about $250. I think I may have found my calling.

Abracadabra

If there’s one person you’d want to keep away from an actual magic wand it’s George Bush.....

That was a line from this week’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me on NPR. After yesterday’s mind numbing afternoon of grouting I decide to listen to their podcast and goof off with Photoshop, all the while hoping that in the back of my mind I would come up with a post for today..........I didn’t. Still, their show was hilarious, I had a good time, and the floor is almost done, so maybe if I dig deep I might unearth at least one coherent thought before tomorrow’s post........... or maybe George will let me borrow that wand.

To Listen to Stars and Birds............

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury; and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.

~ William Henry Channing

Oops!

I spent the first 21 years of my life growing up in suburban Michigan so my experiences with nature up until that point were pretty limited. Luckily the Muse recognized how misplaced I was and whisked me off to live in the woods. Although I loved it immediately it took a while before I started to understand that nature has it’s own modus operandi.

We hadn’t been here long when we stumbled across this baby eagle on the ground (he was much smaller at first, but those pictures are really blurry). His parent’s nest was hopelessly out of reach 40 or 50 feet above us and we weren’t able to tell if it was occupied so we took to checking in on him a couple of times each day. At first his parents attended to him regularly (with yummy decapitated prairie dogs) but unfortunately they stopped feeding him after a couple of days. I called our local game and fish department and a warden came out, took one look at him, and explained that if he had been a bald eagle they would have rescued him but because he was a golden eagle it was their policy to let nature take it’s course........ Apparently it was completely normal for the dominant chick (are they even called chicks?) to oust it’s weaker sibling to it’s death.........he just wasn’t a keeper. Because those were our pre-internet days, we headed to the library and found that a complete diet for our new charge consisted of a mixture of organ and muscle meats. Rabid vegetarians that we were (at that time) we hungrily went shopping for prey and our days became regularly scheduled games of tossing meat at the taloned carnivore. Time has blurred my memory, but I remember this as going on for two or three weeks before we finally found a rookie warden (from a different game and fish office) who clumsily came to our rescue. He looked like he was fresh from college and needed tending to as much as our little bird did (and the fact that he showed up completely unprepared with a torn cardboard box and a pair of gloves didn’t exactly inspire confidence either). But together, we managed to capture Oops and boy ranger used his belt to tie the box shut before taking him to a qualified rescuer.

That nest in the eagle tree is still used every summer and as far as I know, there haven’t been any more oustings.

Our Cabin

After seeing Gwen's great little door and Ruth's weekend and Anet's neighborhood I decided that I would post some pictures of our rustic cabin. I like looking at houses and seeing where other people live so I thought you might enjoy it too. Some of the pictures I took yesterday but all of the outdoor shots were taken last summer.

Warning Satire Ahead........

This is an excerpt from a play the Muse wrote in 2003 called Yesterday the FBI Came. It can be found in it’s entirety here.

Playwright: (opens door) Can I help you?

Child: (shyly, talking in a low voice) I’m selling candy. Would you like to buy some?

Playwright: What kind is it?

Child: It's chocolate. (getting more animated as she makes her presentation) They're shaped like cruise missiles. They are red, white and blue. We’re selling them to help the children in Afghanistan. We hope to be able to send each child a Game Boy. It is a national program to enhance our understanding of other cultures. Each chocolate bar has a message for the evil-doers. (she opens a candy bar and shows it to the playwright). It says “kick butt”. It is all so exciting! My mother says I’m doing my part to help fight the war on terrorism. If I sell the most candy in our school system, I get a trip to Disneyland! Would you like to buy some?

Parrot: Buy some! Buy some!

Playwright: How much are they?

Parrot: Cheapskate! It's for the children of Afghanistan.

Playwright: You know bird, chocolate is poisonous to parrots. (parrot shuts up)

Child: They're $2 a bar.

Playwright: (looks at parrot). I'll take 10.

Child: (excited) Oh, thank you very much. You're so patriotic! (hands the playwright ten candy bars)

(playwright takes out wallet and pays the girl $20)

Child: Thank you again. (walks off porch and down sidewalk )
(playwright returns to his chair )

Parrot: (mocking) You're so patriotic!