Hiatus

The move's done, the boxes are all empty, and most things have found their new place. My year (okay, more like fifteen months) of transition is officially over. And now, it's time to retire the blog.

At least for a while.

In a few days, the blog will come down. Will it come out of retirement? Who knows? for now, it's time to put it aside. I might still write for myself, but I have too much to ponder on and wonder about that isn't for public consumption.

Thanks for spending the last year with me. Best to you and yours, and in one way or another, I'll be in touch. :-)

Turtles, and Possums, and Deer—Oh My!

One thing about being at Mom’s is the variety of wild life. Sure, my neighbors had a couple of yellow-crowned great herons or something like that in their tree, and sure, I had a ton of squirrels and birds around, but that’s been nothing like just a single day at Mom’s.

As for regular stuff, she’s got a great birdfeeder set up in the back, and tons of birds visit. Naturally, of course, the squirrels love it too. And Howard, as you can imagine, loves running out to chase the squirrels. As we took our walk Thursday morning, he even spotted a deer. Then came Saturday.

Mom and I spent most of the day working in the house. We spent a little time seeing our creations from the day before, but we also got her computer stuff set up, I caught up on some blogging, and she worked on organizing her inbox and favorites. (Of course, you can give a person file folders, but if they don’t think they’ll remember what they put in each folder, they won’t do any good. Well, at least I gave the (knowledge of) folders.)

Sometime late that morning, I noticed something in the back yard. Well, my goodness! It was a turtle! Howard had never seen a turtle, that I knew of, and I figured he’d be intrigued. But to protect the turtle, I did leash Howard.

When Howard finally spotted it, he was indeed interested.


And he followed along behind it, sniffing, and sometimes getting close enough to jump back with the turtle stuck his head up.

Of course, then the turtle withdrew into his shell, and Howard, being the dog he is,, well, knocked on the door. Yes, he pawed at it. Me, fearful for the turtle, pulled Howard back. This went on a while, and finally, I decided they’d both probably had enough.

Later that day, we spotted the following out Mom's front window:


On Sunday morning, we saw this cutie:


When Howard and I went out to see if we could see the bunny, alas, he had just hopped away. But we looked down the road, and we spotted two deer---one near the road and one in the woods. They didn't want us too close, so the pictures aren't very good, but here ya go:




But I think Howard's most exiting time came Saturday night. I was in the living room, taking care of a little computer things and watching a little tv. Howard had already gone in my room to go to bed. Then he came out. He rushed to the back door, demanding to go in the back yard.

I let him out, and a few minutes later, he was ready to come back in. When I let him in, this is what I noticed in the bird feeder:

Umm Hmmm: a possum! I clicked a few photos, then went back inside. As I was uploading the pics to leave for Mom, Howard went and knocked on her door. She came out, I filled her in, and we all went back outside. This time, though, Howard found the possum and thought he had to stay there, bark at it, and keep it in place. What a little hunting dog I have!

The poor possum, of course, was terrified, clinging to the highest point on the bird feeder pole.


Finally, though, I offered to take Howard on a walk, and he was willing to leave the possum. We walked down then back up Mom's street and called it a night.

Art

Naturally, I had no desire to spend any additional time in a car. And fortunately, our activities on Friday did not require any such thing!

Friday gave me my dabbling time in fabric and colors. Mom had lots of white cotton doggie bandanas on hand, so we set to work. First, we tie-dyed a few. Now, not having done this before, it was harder than I’d expected. I felt like I was flying blind a little; I really didn’t know what it’d look like when done. But I still tried three different ones, using a different design and colors on each.

See, to tie-dye this way, you fold/twist/tie then pour on the different colors in different places. Then you wrap it in newspaper then in a plastic bag, and it has to sit overnight. In other words, no, this is hardly something for anyone wanting immediate results.

But our tie-dye done and wrapped up, we then turned to marbling. Mom had shown me this before, and the few things I have that are marbled have met many oohs and ahhs. But what I never knew was that you could marble things other than scarves! See, I really just don’t wear scarves, so the “ahh” of the marble effect was often lost on me. Sure it looked cool, but it wasn’t me---the “it” being the scarf, not the design.

But now! Ah ha! I’ve learned you can marble other things! Our goal on Friday was doggie bandanas, so that’s what we worked with then. And with each one, I learned a little more. I made a couple with a great teal color, swirled with a little black, gold, and silver---so Howard, of course, can be properly dressed for fall football Sundays in Jax. ;-) (When you put them on him, him being a black dog, it looks fabulous!) We also tried to make some Aggie ones, but making a maroon proved to be a little tricky. We finally got a good one, and another dried to a great shade. Maybe Mom can get a lot of a good maroon color and market those over in College Station.

Saturday we got to see the results of the tie dye. I was really happy with the design of one, but the color didn’t turn out what I wanted. What should have been a black and orange (yes, for Halloween) turned out a deepest darkest greenish black and yellow. Still, the design was cool, and I could see how to tweak it just a little for improvement. I learned also by looking at the other two. One of those too, though, turned out a different color than expected. But Mom’s still experimenting with all of this too.

Having done all of this, though, I had the bug. And so the other night, I got online and made an order for more things to dye and marble. I ordered several market bags---maybe if I make my own grocery bags, I’ll be better about using them! (I really do want to get in a better habit of doing so—especially now that I’ll take a local newspaper, and I’ll have those bags to reuse to empty Sophie’s box.) I also ordered more doggie bandanas to make; Howard will be too cool. But also, I really think Mom could find a market for these. We need to figure out more of the cost of the colors and how much time each takes, with the soaking in alum, printing the design, the cost of the water solution (but that’s reusable), and time to press and rinse. Once we get a little better at them, and figure out a cost, I think I need to send some of these we’re making out, with info for those folks’ friends to order more. We’ll see.

Ah, and I also ordered some silk wine-bottle size gift bags. How cool to take a bottle of wine to someone wrapped in a hand-made bottle bag?!

My order is being processed, and it should ship and be delivered this week. In the meantime, Mom’s experimenting with some canvas bags she had lying around. And so now, she’ll have a little time to learn more, and my order will be there so that when I get back there next Monday, we can color and print and such, and they’ll be ready on Tuesday before I head out on Wednesday! Sure, I have lots of guidance in the process, and a lot of it is the pure benefit of Mom’s experience and artistic talent, but I must say, there is something personally satisfying about making something so unique.

A Day Trip

After getting the critters tended to, we were off again, this time headed south in Texas, to Mom’s. We got there later than planned, of course (that seems always to be the case when I visit her), but we got there and enjoyed a nice dinner out on the deck. I was, though, quite tired, so it was off to bed early.

Thursday (after taking Howard on a nice long walk), we decided to head down to Houston to see my sister. Granted, the last thing I wanted was to add three hours to my already thirty-plus hour time in a car, but it would be nice to see her. (And wouldn’t you know, but that three hours turned into over five hours.)

And so, we headed to Houston and had a nice Tex-Mex lunch with my sister and her youngest daughter. (with Tex-Mex nachos done right, thank you very much. I don’t know why people in other states don’t understand something as simple as a nacho, but oh well.)

Afterwards, we headed back to their house, picked up her oldest daughter, and the five of us headed to south Houston (ergo, the extra two-plus hours) so my sister could pick up her dog at my brother’s vet clinic. That was nice, of course, because he was surprised to see Mom and me, and I hadn’t been to his clinic before. He wanted us to stay for dinner, but by this time, it was 4:00, and we were facing an hour minimum back to NW Houston then another 1.5 hours to Mom’s. Add another almost hour at the clinic, plus good-bye time at my sister’s, plus a stop by a Houston grocery store (they have a lot more selection than the small town where Mom lives). I knew, doing some fast math, that dinner was not an option if we wanted to be back at any reasonable hour—especially considering I had a dog and cat who’d be hungry, and a dog who’d need to go out.

Anyway, so we did hang out there about another hour, back across town, said goodbyes, and off to the grocery store. We were home, as I’d predicted, about 9pm. Yawn! Indeed, I was tired again. It was a nice visit, and Mom and I got to listen to two French lessons in the car. Six more to go!