We woke up to six inches of snow--deeper than Luci's legs are long! The actual temperature 9, the wind chill minus 6.
At noon, two adorable little boys from next door delivered us three homemade English muffins and shredded rotisserie chicken! And--because I had made brownies last night--I had a bit of dessert to send home with them.
The snow is melting with no more expected, but we're heading back down to 10 degrees again tonight.
Luci was a shy little dog when we first met, most likely traumatized by numerous moves from one strange place to another. After being mysteriously parted from her first family, she'd wound up in a "kill shelter" from which the excellent SNIPSA rescued her for adoption. Then she had shots and surgery. Janet took one look at her online and said she knew she was the dog I was looking for. She said it with the certainty Elena later proclaimed that her name was Luci, and both Janet and Elena were right.
When she walked, she walked slowly. She didn't run at all. She didn't chew on shoes. Even with a painful tummy, she jumped up on my bed that first night (and every night since) and slept all night Like any other orphaned puppy, she just wanted lots of love and affection. She was--dare I say--perfect.
Now that she knows this is home, she's shown me more every day about who she is: she walks confidently on a leash. She'll get in the car, albeit reluctantly. If I give her a taste of something she doesn't like, or maybe likes enough to save, she'll bury it in the ground and cover it up. Inside, her burying spot is under the bed. But she will never, ever, reject it outright--as if she doesn't want to hurt my feelings.
She runs like the wind, laps and laps, round and round. She fetches the ball and then plays Keep Away.
She is no longer a normal shy little dog. She has a big and lively personality. The first few times I got up in the middle of the night and stayed up for a bit, she would wake up just long enough to cock her head in a gesture that I took to mean, "Are you crazy? It's sleeping time!"
So for the first time ever, on Valentine's Day morning at 1:00, it was she who woke me up. I figured she had to go pee, so I put on my glasses and started looking for my bedroom shoes. One was right where it was supposed to be. The other was MIA.
"Where's my shoe?" I asked her.
Next thing I knew, crazy puppy that she now is, she brought it to me--but refused to hand it over. She had Keep Away in mind, not bringing me what I'd asked for. She ducked her head and did her haul-ass run around the circle of my house, up on a bed, through the living room, through the kitchen, up on another bed, and to the back door.
I'm laughing--so naturally she thinks she's cute and entertaining and she has more where that came from. So she does it again, hauling a gray bedroom shoe that is almost as big as she is. Finally I retrieve my shoe and we go outside, but not for long--it's freezing!
Have I turned this girl into a crazy lady, like me?
Or was she always Crazy Lady and just biding her time to show me?
This weather makes me introspective. Some weathers make me chatty, but not cold weather. On days like today, I'm drawn to the casita to putter and paint. Luci has a lot of pent up energy because her human isn't inclined to go outside and shiver while she runs at lightning speed around the yard. I suggested she just go run by herself, but she's not that kind of girl. She did a few laps for my amusement, but when her audience wandered back into the casita she wanted to come back in.
In the background of today, the sound track was the impeachment trial and the result we knew we'd see but had to see to believe it.
Tomorrow I'm going to give my heart what it desires and spend the entire day playing, listening to music and podcasts. Tomorrow I'm not listening to news all day. I would like to go an entire day without hearing the name of the Mar-a-lago Man. Or Mitch. Or Republican.
My first text of the morning was from Jan--who watches weather forecasts. She kindly warned me that we're expecting a big winter freeze and have been advised to find alternate sources of heat in case of a power outage.
My second text and call of the morning was from Kate who said I could come spend the night in front of her fireplace and "even bring what's her name if she'll be good and stay off my sofa.
So I spent the morning at Lowe's and the hardware store and every place I could think of to find fake or real logs, all of which had sold out.
When I got home, another friend, Jennie, had delivered Valentine treats for Luci and a gift certificate for Mike's Dog Store in Sunset Ridge. Luci and I went straight to Mike's Dog Store and found some kibble she really likes and discovered that a ten-pounder only needs half cup a day of dog food.
Curran and Harvey across the street brought in my heavy pots of succulents and offered us fire wood if moving to the casita is necessary.
So all in all, with the prospect of dipping to an almost imaginable 9 degrees by Monday, everything is sort of okay.
I love this rainy cold day, playing with watercolor, a gift class from Laura Horn in Australia.
After making hundreds of circles (which I'll continue doing because I love doing them), I'm finally trying what some of the teachers advise--to use my journal of watercolor paper to make big messy shapes and drips. I wanted to avoid this part, as I do not like messy. Once I've "messed up" a page, I feel like I've ruined my journal. AS IF it's for a big art show or something!
And so today, I made pages and pages of messy, some of which are--while not art--vivid and alive and promising. Tomorrow, she'll teach us the next step--adding marks without using brushes.
I also love the work of Jane Davies; it intrigues me. She sometimes lets her chickens walk across the page to make marks and often plays the ukulele as background music. I love watching her paint. She often has what looks to me like a completed piece and she puts a big swath of black over the top, me thinking ,"Ugh Oh, you're messing it up. Stop." But then it gets--surprisingly--even better.
Luci is down for the night and I'm going to watch an episode of All Creatures Great and Small and call it a day. A day is a very good thing. I'll take all I can get!
I met a man once who said, "I'm not marrying or dating again--unless I find someone who's as happy to see me as my dog is."
I get it--even though I've actually had no recent offers for dating or marriage.
This morning, I returned from my first pedicure in months. Even though I have a fenced yard now, I can't bear to drive away with Luci all alone behind the gate, looking longingly in my direction, probably hoping I'll let her out so she can have a little romp next door with Carma. (The truth is I'm afraid someone will take her.) So I left her in the house for two long hours.
I probably could have taken her to the nail salon and shoe shop. I'm learning that many places welcome dogs. I was the only customer in both shops, as it turned out, and the clerk at the Birkenstock Store said yes, sure, bring your dog any time; we love dogs.
When I returned, Luci got up on the dining table the better to welcome me home eye to eye. She stood on her hind legs and trustingly threw her two front legs around my neck, wagging her tail and whole self in an ecstatic puppy hug, her first table top hug--and definitely mine!
Then I got package from the Senate. A note of explanation, but no name of the sender. The minute I opened it, I knew it had to be from Tom--as anyone who knows Tom would know! It was a United States flag, flown over the capitol on the day after Biden's inauguration.
That gift and my happiness to receive it said so much about Tom's love of America and our shared excitement over this election. I love it!
My energy is still low; all I could manage today were the pedicure and getting new walking shoes. So tonight, I got in bed and bounced around from one art video to another. ending with a vlog by a British woman who calls herself The Unexpected Gypsy.
Usually I watch videos because I'm attracted to the art, but in this case, it's the artist herself I enjoy. She's refreshingly who she is--no make up, messy hair, moody.
I stumbled across one last week in which she was talking about her depression during lockdown, watched a couple of minutes and moved on. Tonight's episode was about moving from her former studio space, which she loved, to a new space, which she loved even more.
"Sometimes you have to let go of what doesn't belong to you any more," she said.
I love that line!
If I made vlogs, I'd have to at least comb my hair, put on a dab of lipstick, and clean up the room where I was filming--but Gypsy here just turns on the camera and goes about her day and talks to her viewers as if we're her best friends who just popped in.
Her closing line's good, too:
"Keep your vibes up and your lights bright"
I woke up feeling sluggish and sleepy this morning, with the energy of a flea. I suppose that could be an after-effect of the vaccine, but who knows? I watched some random movie that was pretty terrible, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, then decided I felt sorry for my peppy little pal with no one to play with, so I dragged myself out of bed and tossed her new ball back and forth giving her half an hour of running.
"You're not playing like you usually do," she said--with her eyes. So then she started throwing an old sock all by herself, chasing it, and shaking it with all her might. (I don't believe the sock survived the encounter.)
"I know," I saId. "I'm tired today."
"Well, let's go for a walk," she suggested.
"I don't want to, I don't want to," I protested, hoping at least for a little sympathy for my malaise.
"Come on," she insisted. "It will make. you feel better."
So we did. And I did.
Then Jan and Carma came over for a porch visit and the two furry girls greeted with each other with joy and tumbled into various configurations of puppy happy on the rug.
After that, we drove out to Luby's drive-through for some chicken fried steak. It wasn't very good, but I managed to eat half of it and gave Luci some, then we went outside for one more run.
"Why don't we have chicken fried steak every day?" Luci said--with her big brown grateful eyes.
"No way, "I said.
I'm one of the lucky ones who's now gotten both vaccines. I'm having a tiny bit more pain and reaction to the second one than the first one, so Luci and I are curling up in bed for the night, me reading about image transfers, Luci curled up like a sweet little fawn beside me. Hopefully, everyone will be vaccinated soon and we can begin to return to some of the things we've been waiting all year to do. Dr. Fauci said that when 80% of us are vaccinated, we could have herd immunity.
For those of you who draw, paint or collage, or who are interested in exploring images and stories, Flickr Commons is an excellent source for copyright-free photographs from around the world.
Lyn Belisle's class, Natural Expressions, includes a tutorial on finding and using these free photographs in your art work. Check it out--for photos of people, vintage cars and houses, street scenes, animals, trees, and flowers.
A shelter dog's past is a mystery. I wonder where she came from and who loved her first. I wonder how she got separated from her first human(s). Nobody would willingly give up such a sweet girl, so I'm wondering if maybe her first owner got COVID. While some orphaned animals show signs of having been abused, my guess is that whoever trained her to walk on a leash loved her a lot. She loves attention and affection so much.
Since she didn't get a runner in her human, she can rip up the back yard running all by herself, but she wants me to watch and laugh. The more I laugh, the faster she runs.
She has learned to communicate clearly--mostly with her eyes. Two or three times she's barked, but mostly she's very quiet. If Jan or I say "no" to either dog, Luci immediately jumps up on each of us as if to say, "Please keep liking me! I didn't mean to do a bad thing."
Luci has often been spotted sitting below the open window looking for her best friend, and Carma often whines at the window when she hears Luci outside.
Our adventure this morning was spending an hour in the Volkswagen dealership checking out my brakes. Every serviceman came over to meet her and she got lots of pats.
When we got home Janet stopped by--her first puppy-mama--and Luci was wild with happiness to see her!
Now she's chewing on a pork chop bone she buried for safe keeping during the night, and I'm about to disturb her chomping and take her for a walk.
In Tuscany, I loved watching Nellie drawing in her journal. In addition to taking photographs, she also captured street scenes and sculptures in sketches. One day she showed me how to tape over a picture with wide packing tape, soak it in water, rub the picture off the back, then glue it into a journal or use it in a collage.
I still remember that vividly--just as I remember visiting her in in her home in Florida and making artist trading cards by tearing bits of pictures and words from magazines and gluing them onto regular playing cards. For someone who has no talent at drawing, the concept of collage was, and still is, intriguing.
I've been watching videos by Nitsa Malik. She takes her own photographs and other high-contrast images and transfers them to paper, wood, glass, and canvas. She makes it look so easy. I spent yesterday transferring pictures from glossy magazines to paper. Three of them were successful, most were not. But I had a fun day trying and will continue doing it today.
Her book, The Mixed Media Photography Book, arrived last week and I'm studying it the way I studied The McCalls Make It Book my daddy brought back from a trip when I was about 12 years old. I absolutely love learning how to do manipulate images and this book has introduced me to so many techniques I intend to master.
