So many parts to my little life: editing, gardening, doing stuff for church. . . but I was ‘posed to be painting.
Look! This crape myrtle tree isn’t dead after all!
Hey! Why are these iris hiding?
This sign will be repurposed, but first Trail Guy had to scrape off old lettering, and then I had to put forty-eleven coats of paint on it. Now we get to store it until the next volunteer does his part.
What? You want another sign? Okay, fast-horse quality
LOOK! The climbing roses are blooming, and they usually don’t appear until the end of April!
Wait! I’m ‘posed to be painting!
Remember this guy? I thought he looked weird. After studying him upside down with the photo, I made a few adjustments, added a bit more detail, signed it and set it aside. This ain’t no piano I’m building here. . . let’s not get paralyzed by perfectionism, because summer’s selling season approaches.
Moving on, there are 3 more Honeymoon Cabin paintings to complete.
That was quick and easy. Next!
Back and forth between the two, tryna be efficient with the colors on the brush so I didn’t waste either paint or time.
Still, I didn’t finish either one of these. Maybe the next time I can get these both finished and move on to some Three Rivers paintings. Shoulda coulda woulda had them done in time for Easter weekend/First Saturday in Three Rivers, but there were so many other distractions. As you witnessed by the beginning of this disjointed post.
I’ve never heard of sous vide style cooking. Read about it here: A Beginner’s Guide to Sous Vide Cooking on a site called “Spruce Eats”. Pronounced “soo-VEED”. Not planning on trying it. I made it through the Insta-Pot and Keurig crazes without buying anything and will continue to keep my life and possessions simple wherever possible. But it is fun to learn about what other people are doing. If you want more info, Serious Eats is a great website for all sorts of cooking info.
2. Do NOT let piles of paper accumulate! I finally went through the stack of birthday and Christmas cards and in that stack I found THREE Very Important Items: 1. a letter I thought I had mailed in October (ARE YOU KIDDING ME??) 2. a gift certificate to Luis Nursery (ARE YOU KIDDING ME??) 3. An email and phone number for a dear old friend (HI CAREEN!! WE ACTUALLY TEXTED AND I ALWAYS THINK OF THINGS TO TELL YOU BUT DON’T WANT TO BE A WEIRDO AND A PEST.)
3. “Faff” can be both a verb and a noun, considered British English. (Great word, thank you, Elisabeth from Canada!) NOUN: An unnecessary or over-complicated task, especially one perceived as a waste of time. VERB: To waste time on an unproductive activity.
4. “Cruft” is similar to “faff”. It means redundant, old, inferior, especially as it relates to code (computer stuff).
No faff or cruft here.
5. Brushing scam is an entirely new term to me. It is yet another scam, this one a “fraudulent tactic where sellers send unsolicited packages to individuals to create fake “verified” reviews under their names, boosting the seller’s credibility without the recipient’s consent. This can expose personal information and lead to identity theft or other scams.” So, beware if you receive something you did not order! Keep it, donate it, bury it in your garden, but do NOT review it online or respond to the wicked “geniuses” who sent it.
6.Lone Oak Cemetery, still there in spite of neglect, still with poppies and a lone oak, right there in the orange groves of Ivanhoe as it was 60 years ago.
7. There are tollways in California. I thought there were only freeways, but I was wrong. It is a real privilege to live in a place where we say “the freeway” and everyone knows what is meant.
8. My cousin was a voracious reader and a list-maker. How did I not know this about him? Despite all our differences, we really and truly were related!
9. I went to an awards dinner (as a guest of a winner friend) and this tiny oval-ish citrus fruit was part of the centerpieces. I took a couple home to try and they were Very Sweet. No idea what they were! I should have taken more. . .
Not taking things personally can be a form of generosity. You give people the space to say things imperfectly.”
Leaving something unsaid can be a form of generosity. You don’t always need the last word.
Being early can be a form of generosity. You wait, so they don’t have to.
Delivering your work on time can be a form of generosity. You make life easier for everyone downstream.
11. I learned how to make scrambled eggs that don’t stick to the pan. (But where did I learn this??) Put your fat in the pan and heat the pan hot enough that a drop of water dances, not sizzles. Then your eggs won’t stick! It actually works. ‘Bout time I figured this out.
And thus we conclude a month of many new pieces of information. I wonder how much I will retain.
Currently I am doing a final edit, photo edit, and formatting a book that has been a long time coming (about the TB hospital in Springville, here in Tulare County). Things are a bit urgent, so here is a post about my road trip 10 days ago, because this is my blog and I can write whatever I want. Any questions? (Besides how to comment; I KNOW commenting is a pain of signing in, user names, passwords, etc. I HATE that stuff and feel grateful to anyone willing to navigate it all.)
The drive was beautiful. It was green with wildflowers. I left at 6:30 a.m. and seemed to encounter cars coming up the hill about every 1/2 mile or so before getting to Highway 65, which caused me to ask, “Why all the traffic?”
This is just hilarious in view of heading to Southern California. I live in a place where we simply say “The Freeway”; everyone I went to visit has to refer to the many freeways in their lives by the numbers. Do they say “Five” or do they say “The Five”? And if they say “The Five”, do they also say “The Walmart” and “The Facebook”? I forgot to notice.
The photos never do justice to reality. Additionally, I was holding up my phone while watching the road (OF COURSE I WAS WATCHING THE ROAD!) and hoping to get lucky. (No film was wasted, but many photos were deleted after I arrived.) There were wildflowers on the hillsides, wildflowers in patches on the shoulders of the freeways. The hills over The Grapevine* were green, the hills in Southern California were green—just wonderful, looking the way i think it always should look. (God didn’t ask for my opinion when he designed the seasons in California so I’ll just trust that all is as it should be despite my attitude.)
The freeway system has changed since I was a frequent traveler along that route. Confusing stuff. I used the talking lady, until she told me to leave The Two-Ten and head west. Can’t remember. I just pantsed my arrogant way along, sure I could figure it out. Then The Fifteen became a tollway, not a freeway. WHAT?? So I took The Sixty west, and asked the talking lady to get me to Escondido again.
I ended up on The Two Fifteen (Hunh? What”s that one?) and eventually it fed back into The Fifteen (without my spending a dime other than burning gas that cost $5.99/gallon in Three Rivers), and things became familiar again.
I love this bridge, which we called “Dad’s Favorite Bridge” for awhile (Was he unaware of the Oak Grove Bridge on the Mineral King Road? Nope. “De gustibus non es diputandem” as he used to say.**) It is a beautifully minimalistic bridge, spanning a huge freeway, as you can see. It is south of Fallbrook, in case you are curious.
Driving home, I decided I didn’t need the talking lady, but I asked her to take me to Fresno, just for curiosity’s sake. Yeppers, once again, she tried to force me off The Fifteen (or was it The Two Ten?) and once again I ignored her. I didn’t encounter any tollways nor did I see The Two Fifteen. Boy oh boy, do I ever need an updated map.
I was reminded that in order to stay on The Two Ten, one must continually exit and then merge onto another freeway, each interchange a total constipation of too many cars. I didn’t like it, being much more comfortable on a one-lane unpaved curvy road without stripes or guard rails.
However, Momscar with its 6 cylinder engine was mighty fine in several instances. People say they hate all the shifting in traffic; I never did, but often wished for more ponies under my hood back in the olden days of driving 5-speeds.
This is the first time in my life that I remember seeing so many wildflowers on the Grapevine. It was beautiful! I also had a good audio book, The Tao of Martha by Jen Lancaster (Memoir read by the author is my favorite, but why do people have to cuss so much? Sigh.)
I did finally see why a Tesla “truck” calls itself a truck—I could actually see it has a bed like a real pickup. But the ugly factor just slays me.
I was very eager to get home, and in the second passing lane around the lake, I blew around someone poking along. After getting past, I quickly came to a traffic jam. What?? I could see that cars went all the way across the Horse Creek bridge, coming downhill. What?? Eventually we crawled back into action, passing a slightly wrinkled car sitting on the bed of a tow truck.
Dorothy was right—There’s no place like home (not The Home).
*The Grapevine is what Freeway 5 (“The Five”?) is called where it crosses the Tehachapi Mountains because even until I was a little kid, it was a country road that was very twisty. Now it is multiple lanes, high speed until you catch up to someone (who should keep right) crawling uphill in one of the faster lanes. The summit is closer to Bakersfield than to Southern California—Tejon Pass, 4144’. After the summit, it feels as if we still climb, but who knows? Not me.
** Latin for “it’s useless to argue over matters of taste”.
Walking Partner and I noticed something different a week or two ago here in Three Rivers: new speed limit signs on a private road.
This is one post. 15 mph heading upstream, 5 mph heading downstream. (This is along the river—could you guess that?)
Here’s another one: This time it was 15 mph going downstream and 5 mph going upstream.
And here is another on the same road: 5 mph both upstream and downstream, but this time there is an explanation for those heading up. “Slow blind curve ahead” could apply to the bulk of the road.
And at this intersection, it is 15 mph regardless of the direction you head.
Never mind. Let’s look at some wildflowers along the walk.
This is the kind of sign I’m used to. Custom. Interesting enough to perhaps cause someone to notice.
Walking Partner and I walk about 3.5 mph, in case you were wondering. We used to walk 4 mph, but we’ve never been this old before.
On a fabulously springlike day in February, Trail Guy tempted me away from painting: easy to do when there are wildflowers and it isn’t hot and I don’t have a tight deadline.
First, I noticed all the chemtrails. Yeah, yeah, I know, “contrails”, but I still think there are way more than we have passenger jets above. The general direction is usually south to north, or west to east. I believe something secretive and possibly nefarious is taking place. Yes, I am susceptible to conspiracy theories; often the distance between one of those theories and reality is about 6 months.
We drove down toward Kaweah Lake, parked at the upper end of the Slick Rock area and then meandered upstream along the river, with a wee bit of accidental trespassing behind the Lazy J Motel.
A great redbud in the parking lot!
We headed toward the river, went across someone’s former foundation and down these steps to the river trail.
In putting this post together, I remembered WAIT (Why Am I Talking?) and decided that the photos can do the talking today.
1.The most fun thing I learned is that Reader Sharon had a heart-shaped potato.
2. My friends went to Jordan and Israel, and I recognized all but one of the places just from their photos. Actually, I recognized that they were in Petra, which I knew was in Jordan, but I don’t understand the Biblical connection, having never read about Petra in the Bible. I learned that it was Edom, which was where Esau and his people lived. It shows up by that name multiple times, and it reminds me of a canyon in Death Valley. Here, look at the canyon I’m thinking of:
Okay, not totally. The rock walls in Petra are much smoother and more colorful.
This was 5 years ago in Death Valley. Guess I remembered it as more colorful than it was.
3. I tried and didn’t finish three books: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, The Next Day by Melinda Gates and My Friends by Fredrick Backman. The first one was repetitive and tiresome with people making bad decisions over and over; I couldn’t relate to Melinda’s life; the third was just full of depressing details and foul language. Since I was listening to an audio version, I decided to not get all that embedded in my brain. Life’s too short to spend time reading (and listening to) books that are not enjoyable. This wasn’t really a new thing to learn, but I seem to have been a wee bit mentally idle in February, so it made the list.
4. I learned the name of a new weed: Hedge Bedstraw. Weird. It’s also called False Baby’s Breath, which causes me to wonder if I should just let it grow. It’s kind of hard to pull, because it is so low growing.
5. Have you ever heard of Chocolate Avocado Mousse? Me either, but I saved a recipe because it just looked so bizarre. Seems like it would be a waste of both avocados and chocolate.
6. Finally, I learned that the sturdier Crocs that have been working as hiking “boots” for me are no longer made: All Terrain and Off Road. I found some on Amazon. I also learned that just because they seem to be the same shape as the ones that I just walked a hole in the sole, they gave me a blister.
7. In addition to wearing a hole in the sole of my Crocs, a hole is developing in the sole of my slippers. Because I am frugal, I didn’t buy new yarn to make a replacement pair. Instead, I went to my yarn stash and chose 4 possible samples, knitted up swatches, and then washed them to see which felted best. It didn’t really matter if they looked great, so I did a tiny bit of mixing and matching to squeeze out enough yarn for two slippers. If one takes the same number of steps with each foot, why does one sole wear faster than the other? Hmmm, I might be walking a little bit funny since one foot is more numb than the other. So, what did I learn? Nothing, really. But the February Learned List was short, so I tossed this in. You’re welcome.
These knitted swatches got tossed before they became cruft.
8. Cruft is a great word that wraps up clutter, junk, stuff, and porkadelia all into one little package. Here is the definition from DuckDuckGo: “Cruft is a jargon word for anything that is left over, redundant and getting in the way. It is used particularly for defective, superseded, useless, superfluous, or dysfunctional elements in computer software” (but I don’t care about computer software).
Just outside the gallery/museum where I teach weekly drawing lessons.
People love to ask artists what inspires them. This is kind of annoying, because generally speaking, artists just love to make their art, not sit around contemplating the reasons. An artist who helped me get going in oils said that what inspired him were the bills in his PO box. I’ve occasionally pondered the question of inspiration, and all I can ever come up with is so mundane, predictable, commonplace, and ordinary that it embarrasses me to admit such a thing.
a morning walk
And the answer is. . . . BEAUTY.
The same walk. . . these are fiddlenecks
Well, duh. Of course I have to surround it with something a little more detailed, something to make it a bit more challenging, because I came here to earn a living. I am looking for the beauty of Tulare County, this poor, uneducated, rural, overlooked place in the middle of California. We do not have the Golden Gate Bridge, Hollyweird, the beach, Lake Tahoe or Death Valley. But we do have Mt. Whitney, sequoia trees, the largest oaks, the best citrus, more dairy than the entire state of Wisconsin and an enormous variety of agriculture. So, I continue to look for the beauty here in Tulare County.
A little life remains in this surprise bouquet, salvaged by the oh-so-thoughtful Trail Guy from flowers knocked over by rain.
Why? To generate pride (the good kind, not the sinful kind) in those of us who wonder what holds us here (No Trader Joe’s?? Who can withstand this sort of deprivation?) And, of course, to sell. We get a million or so folks (nope, haven’t looked up the numbers) passing through Three Rivers on their way to The Park (AKA Sequoia National Park) every year.
Sitting at a long traffic light on the drive home. Those are orange trees, in case you were wondering. And why not enjoy the sunset instead of being frustrated by the wait? There are only 3 traffic lights on my weekly commute, and I can actually skip all of them by choosing less direct routes.
That’s it, that’s all. Beauty inspires me. God is the creator, I am the imitator. And sales, because without those, I might have to get a real job, and then I wouldn’t have as much time to appreciate beauty.
P.S. Happy Birthday, Dad. You would have been 94, and although other family members have that longevity, it ain’t pretty.
We haven’t gotten our 1099s from Social Security yet and don’t know if they will come in the mail or if we have to do something impossible online to receive them. As if doing taxes wasn’t abhorrent enough, there are so many obstacles and difficulties just getting stuff ready for the accountant.
Shoes
I walked a hole into the bottom of my hiking Crocs and my new Crocs gave me a blister—how is this possible when I wear the same shoes all the time?
So cute but not Crocs.
Several times I’ve sent a giant expensive heavy box of decent shoes we no longer wear to a place in Montana called Provision International. They gather huge containers of usable shoes and ship them to places where people need shoes.
You can bet your boots that I will NEVER EVER wear shoes like these again.
Watches
After trying for several years to find a watch that I can change the battery on, I finally quit buying Timex and paid big money for a watch that doesn’t need a battery. But what is one supposed to do with old watches? I have five that won’t work, the nicest because something non-battery-related is wrong and 4 because the back cannot/will not/does not come off. The one time I was successful, it was impossible to replace the back. Had to take it to a jeweler who used a special clamp.
I tried to find someone on Etsy who could use them. Nada. Listed on eBay. Nada. Contacted Veterans Watchmaker Initiative several ways. Nada. FINALLY I found a place called WeRecycleOldWatches and THEY REPLIED!! Then, after silence from Veterans Watchmaker Initiative regardless of method of contact, THEY REPLIED THE SAME DAY AS WE-RECYCLE-OLD-WATCHES! Because I think Veterans often get the short end of the stick, I packaged the watches and addressed it to them. Now, to take them to the PO and PAY to send them away. . . WHY do I do all this?
Motivation
What motivates me to do these things? I abhor waste, and it troubles me to just dump things. At the same time, I do NOT want to own things that don’t work or are no longer useful. So it seems that I spend an inordinate amount of time finding the right places and people for an endless supply of things. There is a continual push-and-pull between not wasting and a desire for a simple life.
Wrist
My DeQuervain’s Tenosynovitis is better. Only took 16 months. . . and I don’t completely trust the current state of almost painfree activity, so I wear the brace when doing wristy things. Using Photoshop or Powerpoint are particularly challenging.
Knitting
My yarn stash hasn’t been declining since the DeQuervain’s Tenosynovitis has curtailed my knitting. Yarn.com somehow reactivated my email and I almost succumbed to a sale, buying yarn after successfully being on a severe yarn diet for several years. “Almost succumbed” —saved by the fact that PayPal wouldn’t work with their site. “Try Later” —Nope, you lost a sale.
Rock Fun
My friend and I sometimes look for rocks together. It is so fun to go to the river and just putz around, without a permit, a fee, an application, a user name or a password, the option to hear things in Spanish, or hold “music”. We get dirty and sometimes we fall down while looking at rocks and digging around. Sometimes we find ones we want to keep. Sometimes they are a big project to extract and then to get up near the road where we go back with a vehicle to retrieve them. Don’t tell anyone, okay? I’m sure someone will try to stop us. . .
P.S. None of these drawings are available for sale. HOWEVER, I do accept commissions.
Good sunlit photo but before it was quite finished.
When I was designing the Ivanhoe Library mural, I dug around for photos of a building that is cemented in my memory as a beautiful old structure. (Apparently, I’ve loved old buildings all my life.) I found a photo of the Ivanhoe School auditorium in Laura Spalding’s book Ivanhoe—the Town with Three Names: Klink, Venice Hill, Ivanhoe. I was confused that her book identified it as “Ivanhoe Community Hall”, but I recognized it instantly as the building where I learned to play the clarinet*, gave my campaign speech to be the school president**, checked out books, and played the piano for the jazz band.
When I finished painting it, I added “Ivanhoe School Auditorium” and then thought it would be nice to provide the year it was built along with the year it went away.
Like most things in life, that was easier said than done. The librarian called the History Room at the main library branch, and was told it was built in 1932 and demolished in 1948.
Nope and nope. Architecturally speaking, it is clearly older than 1932, and since I graduated from Ivanhoe in 1973, I KNEW it was standing past 1948.
So, I went to Visalia (had to go anyway to retrieve Momscar with its new starter) and visited the History Room. Library Historian Hunter and I pulled three thick folders from a filing cabinet and started flipping through all sorts of old papers.
Like much in life, the building’s dates are complicated, far too complicated to simply put as “19XX – 19??” on the mural.
Here’s what we learned in two different places, along with Spalding’s book:
It was built around 1926 as a community hall. Then, maybe in 1932, or maybe 1937, “the community, who being unable to meet the indebtedness gladly disposed of it to the school.” One source says it was moved in 1932, another says it was moved in 1937; a third source says it was moved in spring of 1939.
Nowhere have I found the year that the building was demolished. Maybe demolition records aren’t kept, because the demolishers are embarrassed to be part of destroying history, or maybe because it is viewed as a hazard or junk to be gotten rid of, rather than something old and beautiful that has reached the end of its functional life.
So, the painting of the old school auditorium will not have dates, only its title as I recall it: Ivanhoe School Auditorium.
When I was a regular patron of the Ivanhoe library, sometimes we had to go to the main library in Visalia in order to find enough good material to write a term paper or do a report. What is now the children’s library used to be the entire Visalia library, which I found to be stunning and overwhelming. I also thought the building was beautiful, because it is. The architectural style is like the house my dad grew up in, built in 1932. (The house—the library was completed in 1936, so it was clearly the same era.)
P.S. I drew the library in 1989 before the new one got built.
P.P.S. I also stopped by a retail store in Visalia to see a childhood friend from Ivanhoe who told me the school library wasn’t in the bay window but was in a door off the porch. That’s why I added a hint of a door on the otherwise dark and bland front porch. I sure would like to find more photos of the building, both in and out, but those were the days before everyone carried a camera.
Not literally. Figuratively. There is a difference in these two terms despite the language butchering (figurative, not literal) that is commonplace.
Using a template to convert a book from Word to InDesign is supposed to be easy. Sure, if everything works. When does that happen??
Converting the InDesign file to a PDF for proofreading is supposed to be easy. Sure, if everything works. When does that happen?
Getting a 1099 form used to mean waiting for the mail. Now you “just log in and download and print”. Supposed to be easy. Sure, if everything works. When does that happen?
“Go digital” to get your Social Security statements—“It’s Fast, Easy, and Secure”. Easy?? Who are you kidding?
“Get 85 Free Prints A Month” from Photo Affections! It’s fast and easy! Sure, except for all the hidden prompts, tiny clever little tools to guess at, and oh, by the way, only one print per image is allowed for free.
My head is about to explode.
Let’s just look at a few photos and try to regain our balance.
The beginning of spring in my yard: flowering quince, daffodils, germander
Morning light on Comb Rocks
Presbyterian Church: you can bet they never put kraft paper over their windows because they have stained glass with local wildflowers.
Now maybe I’ll go try to balance my checkbook with all those Paypal entanglements, debit cards, and oh, oops, I used the wrong account to pay for business expenses, and what was that automatic deduction for? That’s right, the printing 10-key machine makes illegible numbers, so I’ll clean it. Well, oops, now it won’t print. (Felt great to shove it in the trash, so there.)
Never mind. Today I am painting the mural in Ivanhoe, listening to roosters crow, dogs bark, cats yowl, and cars go past. Nothing on the computer, very very peaceful. I’ll show you all about it on Monday.
