I was telling my friend Joyce about my sweet potato vines, how they go crazy, require so little care and keep that lovely Spring green color throughout the hot summer. I said I would take a picture to share, so I went out today and took a few shots. By the end of the summer, it is hard to even get into the house. The only reason they do not extend over the sidewalk in front of the house is because I mow them when I am cutting the lawn. I just mowed. Can you believe all this started from five small plants?

I mowed the lawn yesterday when I got home from work so that I did not have to worry about getting it done over the weekend. So now, I can dispose of my time as I see fit. An early morning romp with Asha, a little grocery shopping and a little time in the studio. Bliss. 

This is a quick drawing I did before work yesterday. It is of my mother as a young woman. The photo I used as my reference source may be  viewed here.

This is a facial study I did in graphite. It is ATC sized.

The time has come for this roof to go. On Thursday, the roofers are supposed to come and replace it. It is starting to get blustery and the forecast says rain is in the offing. I hope not, because this needs to get done. This is my before picture. Hopefully, by next week, I will have some wonderful after pictures.

Another postcard…

Another postcard.

It has been raining here for days. My dilapidated roof has finally started leaking into my attic and down into my ceiling. My time has run out and I must get the roof fixed. On top of that disaster, I have found myself with an unexpected houseguest. 

Last night as Asha and I were upstairs in bed, I saw a truck drive slowly down our street and the driver was calling out some name, the way one calls a pet. I assumed the person was looking for a lost dog. As the truck passed my house, I saw a creature run out to the street towards the truck and then sit and look after it as it drove away. I went downstairs and opened the front door. Sitting in front of my door was a little cat. I went outside and snuggled it for a while, hoping the person would drive down our street again, but the person did not come back. The rain was pouring down and so, there was nothing to do but bring the cat in and make it comfortable. She isn’t very excited about meeting a big dog and has been hanging out down in the basement. I must say that Asha has been great and has been very polite about not rushing up to the cat and scaring it even more when I have brought it upstairs. I am now leaving the door to the basement open in case the cat wants to come upstairs figuring that she will do so when she is comfortable; but, so far, she seems content to sleep and relax on a table where I have my clean bed linens and throws stacked. She seems pretty healthy and not too thin, but she hasn’t eaten any of the cat food I put down for her. She does not have a collar, but my sister (who has several cats) says many people don’t put collars on their cats.

I have placed fliers in the surrounding blocks hoping that she has an owner who is looking for her and I called the humane society and the nearby pet’s office in case someone calls in looking for her. If no one comes looking for her, I will try to find her a cat person’s home to go to; but, failing that, I may have just added a new member to my family. A cat really isn’t in my life plan, but sometimes one just has to suck it up and do what one feels is the right thing. Leaving this poor little thing out in the rain was not an option, and turning it over to the humane shelter is not one either, because it is a kill shelter. There is a local cat adoption/rescue organization around that I may call, but I’d be willing to bet that it is full to the brim. So, I will try to find an alternate situation for the cat; but, unless it is a safe place where the cat is wanted, I guess it will remain here. She is sweet, loves to be stroked, petted and held, but bites a little (not in a mean-spirited way though, just kind of playfully).

If there are any cat people out there who are experienced in how to help a cat overcome a fear of dogs, any advice would be appreciated.  

*edit*  Well, my sister and her boyfriend stopped by and my she is a he.  Duh.  Sometimes, these things are hard to find. 

Last Sunday’s early morning romp with Asha was at Gage Park.  It was a beautiful morning. More pictures may be seen here.

The playground in a local park is filled with fun creatures made of cement. Yesterday, on my early morning jaunt with Asha and a friend, I took some photos at this playground. The rest of the photos may be seen here.

I did a couple more quick watercolor studies yesterday. The first one is of Asha and is postcard sized (4×6). The second one is ATC sized (2.5×3.5).

I finally finished a hand drawn postcard for someone I agreed to trade with a month or two ago.  It is done with watercolor pencils on watercolor paper.  The scan turned out a little rougher looking than it looks like in person; but, you get the idea.  It felt good to do a little drawing. 

It was a week ago today in the evening that I managed to get myself to the hospital emergency room in extreme pain and vomiting violently. I spent another five hours of lying on the bathroom floor of the ER waiting room and I am sure I totally grossed out the other ER patients who were waiting to get help by forcing them to listen to my awful wretching. Finally, I got in and, after they tried and failed multiple times to get an IV into me they gave me a shot of morphine and something to ease the vomiting. I was admitted to the hospital at around 2 in the morning and at 9 am I was in the operating room having my gallbladder removed. As it turns out, I was lucky, because my gallbladder was infected and ready to burst. If it had burst, I’d probably still be in the hospital now with weeks of care ahead of me. My, what a painful ordeal. Happily, now the offending organ is gone, I feel only a minor amount of pain and fatique from the procedure, and I am taking it easy at home for another week or so.

I must say that emergency room staff must be the most blasé people on the face of the earth. What an awful place to have to be when you need the most help.

Today, Asha and I went on an off leash romp at the Kansas Historical Museum; or, actually, the trails around the museum. We were joined my our buddy Matt. I have to give Matt credit for getting up early on a Sunday morning so that he could meet us at 7 am for our adventure. He also took me to lunch today to celebrate my 50th birthday. More pictures of our adventure may be viewed here:

http://pics.livejournal.com/couchart/gallery/0007rp7b

When I am at work, I usually have National Public Radio playing in my office. Since NPR is mostly news and classical music, it doesn’t usually distract me from concentrating. Yesterday afternoon, I found myself  roused from the details of my stock holdings table by sounds that invited me to what I can only describe as…life. I found myself mesmerized by the piece I was hearing and found myself moving in my chair. After the piece finished I went to the radio station’s playlist on the Internet to find the music. It was Boccherini’s Quintet No. 4 in D Major, G. 448 “Fandango.” This music haunted me all day and so, when I was at home last night I found a version of it on iTunes and downloaded it. Not being a wordsmith, I cannot adequately describe this music, how evocative it is, how joyful, how quixotic. All I can say is that it makes me wish with all my heart that I were a dancer. But I AM a dancer in the confines of my own living room and, if you were a fly on the wall, you would see a heavy-set woman. totally lacking in grace, pirouetting, clacking invisible castinettes and leaping to the best of her limited abilities.  How wonderful to be introduced to something so joy-producing in the middle of a long work afternoon, after a long week of working late nights. How I LOVE art, whether it be sound, images or thoughts. It can make me feel that life is totally worthwhile. This piece of music makes me feel joy. I don’t know about anyone else; but, I can’t knock joy.

Over the past few months, I have been purchasing pieces of art off of ebay. It takes a while to sort through all that is out there, but whenever I take the time to do it, I invariably come across some little gem of a piece that I would love to have. I really like the idea of supporting other artists directly, the ones who don’t go through the gallery system to sell their work. I don’t need a gallery to tell me what is good or important art, or to take a big chunk of my money while doing so. I have purchased pieces from galleries; but, I really would prefer to deal directly with the artist. The Internet makes doing so easy, for which I am glad. If you want to see some of my recent purchases, follow me.

 I decided to start doing some straight painting again, and by that I mean to use only brush, paint and canvas.  Although I have always preferred oil paints to acrylics, I am not set up to do oil painting right now and I am not sure I could tolerate the requisite exposure to toxic substances like I used to do. So, since I have a few tubes of acrylic paint around, I decided to give them a shot. I am not enthralled with the results in this piece; but, as the intent was just to get back into the practice of using strictly brushes to paint, it got me started towards that goal. This piece is 4 inches by 6 inches in size.

For many years now there is a movement of sorts here in Kansas called the “Rails to Trails” initiative. The idea is to take abandoned railroad pathways and convert them into nature trails where people can walk, bicycle and ride horses. In the newspaper last week, I saw that a new section had opened up near Topeka called “The Landon Trail,” so I decided to take Asha out at first light yesterday morning and check it out. During the work week, Asha and I do two walks a day, once at around 6 am before it is light and another when I get home from work. Because it is usually dark out and I also don’t have as much time, we confine these walks to our own neighborhood during the week. Although the neigborhood we live in is a very pleasant walking neighborhood, a full week of twice daily walks in it do get a bit boring. On the weekends, I like to take Asha to some off the beaten track where I can let her off leash and she can run, zoom and explore the environs. 

Our trek yesterday morning was fun, although parts of it were still pretty icy, which made for some slipping and unsteady walking. The coolest part of it was that a very large number of what I think were geese were holding some sort of convention in a field next to the trail. We stood for a long time and watched as more and more geese came from afar, drifted and soared, circling the field and then slowly descended onto the field, completely still until they were a few feet above the ground when they would slightly flap their wings to slow themselves into a very easy landing. How graceful their flights were and how wonderful it was to see this from so close a perspective. As one group circled directly over our heads, I could hear the the sound of their wings. It was such a treat and I was so very glad we were there.

More pictures may be seen here.  I love my weekend treks with Asha.

I took my doodled mutant birds and made them into artistamps. Of course my issuing authority could only be “Poste Ashaz.” Asha is Postmaster General.

There must be a convention in town. On our pre-dawn walk this morning, Asha and I saw seventeen snowmen!  That’s a lot of snowmen. We had a big snow on Saturday night. On Sunday morning I took Asha to a big park nearby and she got to run around in the deep, fluffy snow. She kept looking for things to chase; but, it seems that all the wild critters were snug in their holes, dens or whatever else they call home. Asha would stick her nose under a bush and come back up with her face covered in snow. Too bad I didn’t take my camera with me as it would have been nice to get some pictures of Asha frolicking. I took a hard fall onto my knee and nearly took several more (wild flailing that must have been amusing to any onlookers). One of the things about getting older is that falls and knocks are harder to take than when one is young. I know that this is only going to get worse as time goes on. 

I watched a movie, “The Libertine,” which I found rather interesting. It had some very good performances by the cast, the music was excellent and I liked the cinematography (although it has been panned by some critics). It was definitely not a “feel good” movie, in fact, it was quite depressing really; but, I don’t mind that in a film at all. 

I did some doodling today with a graphite pencil.  I think I ended up with what can only be called “mutant birds.”

When Asha was a puppy, she was intriqued by birds. She wanted to get close to one so she could give it a good sniff. Whenever she would try to get close, the bird would fly away. Asha doesn’t give birds the time of day now. She is SO over them. Then, there were the squirrels. We have lots of squirrels around here and they fascinated Asha. They even talked to her, which only increased her interest. But, whenever Asha would try to get close to one, it would run up a tree. So much for the squirrels. They can scamper all around Asha now and she just ignores them. But, there is one type of wild life that is plentiful in our neighborhood, that is Asha’s current obsession AND that has the good sense to stay on the ground where Asha might one day actually be able to get up close and personal. Rabbits, or, as I like to say when we see one “Asha, a wabbit!” We can’t leave the house without smelling where they’ve been in the yard and to be on the lookout for them during our pre-dawn walks. This morning we had the luck to come into contact with three, count them, three rabbits. Asha has never been able to get close enough to one yet; but, she got to watch them from a very short distance this morning. 

Perhaps I should download the song “Wild Thing” to play to Asha. I can just hear it now…

Wild thing
I think I love you
But I wanna know for sure
C’mon on, hold me tight
I love you

Wild thing
You make my heart sing
You make everything groovy
Wild thing

Last night, I took my camera along with me on my walk with Asha. I live next to a neighborhood that has many large old Victorian style homes and the neighborhood really gets into decorating for Halloween and Christmas. It is a several block area that is aglow with lights and massive decorations at this time of year. My picture taking was actually quite unsuccessful because, when I attempted to take a shot without my flash, the lovely colors of the lights came out but everything was blurred due to the slow shutter speed. When I used my flash, everything was washed out. At any rate, here is one picture I took, which I cropped and lightened quite a bit in Photoshop.

When Asha stays at home on my work days, we do two walks a day. The first one usually takes place at around 5 or 6 in the morning and the second one takes place when I get home from work in the evening. Due to it being the time of the year when the daylight hours are few, both our walks are done in the dark. Asha dozes the daylight hours away snug on the couch or bed or stretched out on the carpet somewhere. 

The good thing about it being cold outside is that I don’t worry about putting “acceptable” clothing on. It doesn’t matter that what I have on are some old blue and green plaid flannel pj bottoms and a flowery sleep shirt and that the combination makes me look like a Salvation Army reject. I just slip my bare feet into my high top squall boots, pull on my ankle length down coat, slap a warm cap on my uncombed hair, and away we go. No one will ever know…unless of course I get run over or have a heart attack out there somewhere. Then, the fashion police will know. But, at that point, will I care? I think not. So for now, this will just be my little secret.

At doggie daycare, formal “school” pictures are taken a couple of times a year. Invariably, Asha has the “I hate this routine” look on her face. Although certainly not happy looking, at least in this one taken on Halloween, she did not look like she was being led to the gallows.

Fall is an emotionally evocative time for me. It is a time when I feel melancholy, but in a way that I enjoy. I love walking with Asha as the leaves rain down and the cool air whisks them around. As we walked through the neighborhood this morning I was noticing the brown color of the leaves until I turned down our street and saw a carpet of yellow. It brightened my spirit. And as it turns out, the carpet of yellow was spread out around my own house

I was contacted by a woman from Tennessee who now lives in Saudi Arabia about doing a 3 for 3 trade. She picked one of my collaged cards and said she would love a card depicting the American Curl Cat. Apparently, she has a wall dedicated to these cats. I did two and I hope she will like them, or at least one of them. They seem a bit lifeless to me. I think I was a little too caught up in trying to get the details right rather than allowing my movements to flow more. Oh well, it is good to practice.

Behind the cut are some photos I took of the Zoe girl this morning during our ramble at a local lake.