A Castle for Barbie

Ok, so it's been a long long time since I've been here. First I was insanely busy getting ready for art shows, then I was depressed because the shows weren't good; then I was busy for the holidays, then I was depressed because....well because it's the holidays. So I'm gonna try to do better in the new year. Thanks to all the people (2) who wrote to ask what in the world was wrong with me.

So here's what I was busy with for the holidays.


Finished - 2 days before Christmas


In Progress



My daughter and I built this for our granddaughter/great granddaughter Emily, who is four and obsessed with Barbies and princesses. It was the most fun I have had in a long time. I love a project you can really obsess about. I think obsessiveness runs in the family. JD didn't have any projects going on so we were able to use his shop and small pieces of left over wood and moulding for all the trim.

Here's Belle about to go in the front door.



Here's ...I forget who this is....in the entrance hall.

Yes, that is purple cut velvet on the walls. It's a Castle. My daughter made the parquet floor in the entrance from 2" pieces of mahogany scraps. The parquet floor in the living room came from an old headboard.

And finally, here's Belle in one of the bedrooms.

It looks small for a bedroom in a castle, but Barbie is a big girl and we made the house as big as possible and still fit in the house and that's as big as the room could be. Actually it didn't quite fit in the house. It went through the front door but we had to take the bedroom door off and cut off a piece of the stop molding to get it in the room it was being hidden in until Christmas. It's about the size of a piano. We may have overdone it. The top is waist high. I said when she's older she can use it as a bar, or a kitchen island.

Here's a couple of pictures I was gonna use but I never got around to writing a post.

Elk in the Smoky Mountains, Cataloochee Valley.

It was mating season (October) and they were everywhere. Magnificent animals. I had a lot more to say about our camping trip but it's too late now.

Tiny House in Mooresville, Alabama.

We had been up to Amish country in Tennessee and stopped by Mooresville on the way back. I don't have any pictures from Amish country because they don't want you to take their picture. Did you know there's a big Amish community in Eldridge Tennessee? I didn't until my sister told me about it a few months ago.

That brings me up to date. There must have been more stuff going on than that but that's all I can remember. Here's to the New Year and more stuff.

Art in the City

The rain didn't keep the crowds away from Artwalk in downtown Birmingham Friday night and it's always a fun event. People love to come downtown if you just give them a reason. I didn't set up this year but JD did and I was there and free to walk around and see all the artwork for a change. The thing about doing shows is you never get to see anything else, except in a just passing by kind of way. It's so nice to be able to visit with the other artists. I have to mention my friend and fellow artistGina Cochran; she's started a blog - art and autism - about her son, and if you or someone you know is facing that problem I'd highly recommend it. She's an excellent writer.

Next Sunday I have a show at Deerwood Lake in Shelby County, then we're going to North Carolina for a few days, then we have three shows in a row; Bluff Park in Birmingham, Mecca in Carrollton, Georgia, and finally Kentuck in Northport. With all that's been going on this year I am seriously short on work so I'm going to be very very busy. Times like this I tend to panic and develop serious creative blockage. It doesn't help that is raining and dark all the time either. Light, I need light.

Back to the easel.

Clothes That Don't Fit Anybody Anymore

Mama couldn't throw anything away.

She passed away in July and now my sister and I have all this....stuff to go through. Why? Why would someone keep a box of old socks? Or a box of plastic lids? Or boxes and boxes of magazines from the seventies? Broken knicknacks, broken furniture, broken appliances, all the leftovers of forty years in this house.

Now she's gone and all I feel is anger. The truth about my mother is she was a strong willed, domineering woman. And out of her grandchildren and great grandchildren she picked favorites and actively disliked others. For no reason. And the one she disliked the most stayed with her when she was bedridden and tenderly fed her and changed her every day. Her favorites took advantage of her all their lives. My sister and I told her they were taking advantage of her but she wouldn't listen. When she died all her money and valuables were gone and all that's left is a rundown house and all this broken stuff. We had to borrow money to bury her. I'm so angry, angry with her and angry with myself that I didn't do more to stop what she was doing.

It's a terrible thing when a grandparent plays favorites in such an obvious way. So much bitterness and hurt feelings tore the family apart.

I hesitate to post this, don't say bad things about the dead and all that, but I needed to say it so now I did.

Gray Rat Snake

Saturday I came in the gate to go in the downstairs back door and this is what was waiting for me, stretched out in front of the back door.



It was huge, about 4 feet long and I don't know my snakes that well and seeing dark blotches on it I thought it could be a copperhead. I screamed for JD who also thought it could be a copperhead. So I stood at the top of the retaining wall to watch it while he went in and checked the internet. We determined that it had round pupils and was thus not a poisonous snake and was in fact a gray rat snake. So we decided to live and let live and just watched it crawl back under the dog house where it has probably been living all year and is probably hatching babies right now. The fact is we have a LOT of mice and rats around here. Our two cats do a wonderful job of catching them but I guess they could always use some help. One of my chores every morning is to go out and shovel the dead rodents off the steps and out of the yard. Always several mice and sometimes rats, rats the size of squirrels. I think they're catching them in the bushes across the street; they couldn't possibly be living in the yard.

That was really gross, who admits to having rats?

The thing about the snake though; I THINK HE WAS TRYING TO GET IN THE HOUSE. Rat snakes will do that. They're often found in the rafters of barns and my sister found an enormous black one in her kitchen cabinets one day. They ended up tearing the cabinets out to get to him.

So he's still out there and now I am very very cautious when I open the back door.

Notes From the Front Yard

photo from Editor B, Flickr

I wasn't fast enough to get my own photo but I saw one of these yesterday in a flower container in the yard. I thought it was an earthworm until I saw its head. I went inside and googled it and found out it is a hammerhead worm, a type of planerian. It doesn't eat plants but one variety does eat earthworms and is capable of decimating an earthworm population. The one I saw was about 4 inches long but they can grow up to 10 inches. Thought to originate in Malaysia they are now spreading around the world, probably in imported potted plants. If you see one don't kill it by chopping it up; every piece will turn into another worm. Here's more information on Dave's Garden; you can see in the forum that 2009 is the first year they are reported in Alabama.

And here's one of the few plants that is happy in my yard - an evergreen wisteria I planted last year. It's not really evergreen in this zone but it did come back. This wisteria is not invasive at all and easily contained.

Emogene O'Mary 1926 - 2009

Mama was a strong willed woman. Jesus came to take her back in April when she was in the hospital but she said no. Really. That Friday when I saw her in the emergency room she looked like death. Later she would say that she saw Jesus, and she saw Jamie (her favorite who died three years ago) but she didn't want to go. But last week she said that she wanted to see Jesus, and Jamie, and go fishing, and early Monday morning she passed away quietly in her sleep.

It was an infection that sent her to the emergency room in April; that infection brought on terrible and complete dementia that took away her mind and cut her off from reality forever. They cured the infection but her mind was completely gone. They sent her home where hospice and family cared for her until the end. She talked nonstop 24 hours a day to people who weren't there. She ate well. She didn't suffer.

I can't believe she's gone.

Why?

Someone stole our garden hose night before last. It was attached to a spigot at the shop, about 50 feet from the house, as it has been for six years, and now it's gone. Why? Why would someone steal an old worn out hose? It was full of holes patched with duct tape. Nothing else seems to be missing. In fact, and this is the real mystery and we can not figure this out, the culprits seem to have left something of theirs. I don't know what you call it but it's like a block and tackle,some pulleys and lots of heavy chains, that you might hook in the ceiling of your garage and use to lift an engine out of a car. It says on it that it has a two ton capacity. It would lift a whole car if you wanted to. It's an expensive, heavy thing and we can come up with no theories as to why someone would leave it in our yard. And take our hose.

So I guess we came out ahead if we can sell this pulley and chain thingy and get a decent hose but I really would like to know what was going on in this person's mind to do that.

Another Hiccup

I haven't even gotten up to writing about a couple of bad things that happened so far this year and then last week, last Tuesday my gallbladder attacked me and I went to the emergency room and they took it out and I came home Friday and here it is Tuesday a week later and I feel like crap. It doesn't hurt that much now, I'm just mad. I just so angry that I got sick when I had so much to do. Not to mention the cost but I don't want to talk about that right now. I'm not even supposed to drive for another week. I'm the one that never gets sick. I'm the one with the cast iron stomach who can eat anything. Not anymore. And Gallbladder. What a disgusting word. I don't even like to say it.

I don't have a picture to go with this post. I'm not sure what it would be.......maybe a bowl of jello as that's the most exciting thing I can eat right now.

Looking on the bright side, I am hoping to lose some weight real quickly since I'm really not able to eat for a while.

"Local Woman Enjoying Mid-Life Crisis"

My daughter over at Who Knows What just got a red convertible and we took off yesterday with the top down, slathered in spf 55 sunscreen. We were going to Blountsville to find the daylilly farm which sells daylillies and fried pies and had a big ad in the local paper. "Go to Blountsville and follow the signs" it said. We never saw the first sign and no one in town had ever heard of it. It's OK though, the lady at the antique store said she had all kinds of daylillies and would bring me a big box full next weekend for five dollars. Don't you love small towns?

We bought some things at the grocery store and had a picnic in the park. The table was under a big tree and a soft breeze was blowing and it was really pleasant. We were so amazed at being able to sit outside in late June when it's in the nineties that we couldn't stop talking about it. Every few minutes, one of us would say incredulously, "Gee, this is really pleasant."

We came home a different way and everything is so beautiful and lush this year because of all the rain we had earlier in the year. It was a really good day.

As you know from my last post, we had a yard sale last weekend. Not such a hot idea. No, really it was a hot idea, as it was 97 in the shade that weekend. I don't think anybody wanted to leave their house. We live near a main road and I've never seen it so dead. I mean there was no traffic. It was almost eerie. We kept wondering if it was some holiday we'd forgotten about. It was torture to sit there and we all swore we would never ever do this again. So naturally we're going to do it again. Only we're moving it to Who Knows What's house because she lives in the Oneonta metro area and they have a newspaper we can advertise in but we are waiting until the weather is better.

Even though it seemed like a big failure while we were doing it, at the end of the day we had enough to get the Netflix box and a wireless router to watch movies instantly so it wasn't a totally wasted day.

I need a convertible.

Boss Says Let 'em Go

We're having a yard sale Friday and Saturday. I haven't had one in ten years so it's kind of a big deal to me. I've always had a hard time letting go of stuff. One thing I learned from my Mom & Dad is never throw anything away, you might need it some day. The other thing I learned is Food is Love, but that's another story.

Anyway, the time has come that I realize I will never need a green & orange quilt or a cow cookie jar or a box of crocheted doilies so time to clean house.

We used to be in the antique business. By antique business I mean we rented booths in different antique malls. We made pretty good money at it. Let me tell you being an antique dealer is the best job in the world. The mall handles the business, you spend all your time going to garage sales and estate sales and auctions. It's so much fun, like a treasure hunt all the time. It's addictive, like gambling, and bidding at an auction is such a rush. Little country auctions are the best because the regulars get to know each other and it's like a party with your friends every Saturday night. Anywhere you travel you look for out of the way shops and flea markets and this is your work. When we first started twenty years ago it was so easy to find things you could make a profit on but more and more people started doing it and competition drove wholesale prices up and then China started copying any kind of antique or collectible you could think of and it got hard to make enough to pay the rent. I miss it terribly.

So we don't do it anymore but we still have a lot of stuff, good and bad. The bad is the result of a lot of box lots bought at auction, like the green and orange quilt. I didn't want you to think I deliberatly picked that out. Unless you like green and orange in which case come and get it. $2.00. Third Street by the Railroad Tracks.