Sabbatical

It has been more than a year since I posted last. I don't really know what happened. Something broke. I broke.

It has been coming on for a long time, little fractures and cracks, I don't know why everything finally shattered. I have my suspicions but will keep those to myself.

There was no reason really for this year to have been missed almost entirely, it should have been a happy one, but I did nothing, achieved nothing and felt nothing, at least darkness told me there was nothing.

I am trying to find myself again, to find a purpose, to stop hiding. I don't really want to though, hiding has become comfortable.
Despair and discouragement have become sort of friendly, like it would be too much of an effort to discard them.

But promises have been made, I promised my youngest son I would try, I would pick up the paint brushes again and I would use the gifts I have been given.  He is away for two years, doing hard things. If he can do hard things, then I must also.

Not only did I break but because of it, I have neglected everything around me.  I thought if it all got bad enough someone would pick up the slack.  Well, I should have known better. Now there is a years worth of neglected house, yard and self to re-do.  Decay. Everywhere.  The thought of trying to fix it all makes me want to hide even more.  Entropy is not my friend.

I will try, but I don't want too.                                                                   

Pig

Sweet darling beloved Miss Piggy died in her sleep last night. We had her three years, I have no idea how old she was, but not old enough to die thats for sure, she should have had many more years.  Maybe congestive heart failure? or a heart attack I don't know. The guilt is terrible, I should have caught the problem sooner, I should have noticed something was wrong.
Beautiful Pig I am so sorry.  I love you forever Pig.

moms

Though these paintings have been posted before on this blog, I am revisiting them as I have thinking so much lately of mothers grandmothers and children.  Another artist I follow has been posting often of her paintings of Madonna images ( that is you Janet ),  I love the freedom and expressiveness of her work.  My work is  much more, hmmm how does one describe it, anal?  Too often does detail consume me and I forget the whole.

 This one of the Amish woman was done for a book published years ago called Grandmothers Wonderful Wisdom.

 This one was done for a book proposal on mothers and lullaby poetry, the Koala and Polar bear pictures on the sidebar of the blog were part of the proposal. It was not accepted.

The last painting is one of my favorites. Though it was done years ago, I still like it, usually I hate my own work.  This painting is full of symbolism, from the ossuary motifs to the pomegranates and gold in the border.

For a very long time  now, I have had a dearth of creative spirit. Perhaps if I re-visited this favored motif it would regenerate the barren soul? I don't know.  Faces of children enchant me, the relationships between women and their offspring is so interesting to me.  A man can walk away from their child and sadly too often do, but a woman cannot ever totally sever herself from her child.
 Even if a child is born unwanted or even hated the bond is still there,  I think often of a woman I know who has lived a horrific life of betrayal and misery with family who used her, sold her repeatedly,and left her mentally and physically broken yet she still desires to love her mother, a nearly impossible task.  Occasionally her mother reaches out to her but she has learned the relationship is so toxic, for self preservation she has little to do with any family. Yet the desire for love is still there on both sides. 
I have come to the conclusion and it is grows stronger with time that our family is an eternal concept not just that family will continue on but family is a continuation of relationships before this mortal life. 
We must have loved our family before we came here, before they and us were corrupted and changed by the sin, temptations and sorrows of this world.  We must have loved them before the veil of forgetfulness fell between  us and  our immortality.

As you know, those who read  my blog, we had a flood in the basement, there was a large wooden chest that needed to be moved, it was mostly filled with my mothers things, stashed from her death twelve years ago.
Much of it was stuff I had given her or made for her, several porcelain dolls I made from scratch, with complex clothing etc, and I realized once again how often I had tried to "buy" my mothers love.  We had a difficult relationship to say the least, I was a different child, artistic, and could not toe the line of perfection she so so wanted from me, my sister could and did therefore she was favored.  There was no unconditional love in our house.  I was over thirty when I finally realized my mother did love me she did not like me there is a difference.
The point I am trying to made I guess, though it seems I am rambling, is I loved my mother, she loved me and the love was there long before we entered the mother daughter relationship. 

The relationships between mother and child, glorious, difficult, tense rewarding, exhausting, trying, uplifting, refining, satisfying, heart-breaking and permanent.
How can we ever deny or sever the relationship with this person who by the grace of God gives us our physical body and sets us on the path to eternity? This is the most sacred of Gods requests of us, to work in conjunction with Him to prepare a physical body for another spirit.  This is sacred territory, birth, it is so close to God himself and His creative power.  There is no greater joy in this life and no greater trial, expect maybe marriage.

Well that's enough for now, I gotta go feed the chickens.

Tuesday, I think.

If it seems like I have not been doing anything interesting lately, it is because I have not been doing anything interesting.....will try to do better.

sorry.

Wow. I can't believe it has been so long since I wrote. Sorry about that.

It was November since I wrote. Things have been a touch stressful in the last two months. 
On December seventh my husband was working with the strike force officers watching the liquor store for parolees who are not supposed to be in possession of alcohol, the boys and I were out getting groceries so we decided to run by the liquor store and pretend to buy beer or something, we don't drink at all but we thought it would be funny knowing Tim was watching the place. 
When we got there he was in the process of making an arrest.  We drove right past him but he was so busy lectureing the guy in the back of the squad car he didin't see us, it was good for the boys to see Dad in action.
On the way home it started to storm, we were talking and I said how very grateful I was to not be in the hospital this year, the knee surgery was so hard on me.
At home one of the boys went to work, the other with a friend and the third onto the computer, I went outside to check on the birds....and I fell and did a massive face plant.  Right away I knew I had broken my nose, the fountain of blood and the misplaced nose was a dead give away, and instant nausea, oh my gosh I had no idea breaking facial bones could make a person so sick.  Son number three called son number two and they took me to the ER where Tim had pulled of the surveillance and met us there. Eventually son number one showed up. They had a great time making fun of their mother, every time they made me laugh it hurt.  So my nose and frontal bone was broken and I had a concussion. Lovely.
Then the next week we had a sewer flood and backup in the basement. Lovely. 
It was so stressful I though I was going to lose my mind, I was still so sick from the concussion.
Then Christmas, which was storming like crazy and we were supposed to travel to my sisters. Husbutt was reluctant to even go so he was a bit of an ass, but after everyone pulled their attitudes out their rectums we had a really good time and traveled safely.  On the twenty-sixth of December I had surgery to repair  my nose and it went very well, much easier than the Dr. had prepared me for, the bones slipped into place and they did not use morphine and that was a great blessing. I don't do well with morphine, it tends to stop me from breathing.
The flood restoration company has the basement family room torn apart, the last few days they have been replacing sheet rock and bead board. It seems they jarred a clamp loose on the  main water line coming into the house and it started leaking, I had to take the sawzall to the new sheet rock to expose where the leak was and call in a plumber. Lovely. He finally showed up today to address the problem, the water had to be shut off from the city line, the city guys arrived to shut the water off, the line broke.  There was a twelve foot high geyser in the drive way. Lovely. 
There was swear words involved, and not just mine.  It is a good thing it happened today and not yesterday, today it was at least above zero and not below like it was yesterday.
Miracle the ancient handicapped duck is in the house now, the other birds cornered him and beat him to a bloody rag. He is recovering but I must admit having a stinky duck in the house is a bit much, but until the wound on the back of his neck and head heal, he can't go back outside.  Scoliosis the chicken is inside too, the below zero weather is so hard on her, she is a screwed up little mess and needs a bit of extra care.  She had been sleeping with the chihuahuas and lays her eggs in their bed.
The sub-zero temps have been brutal on the birds, Benjamin the turkey was shivering, he is now sporting a wool sweater and he seems to not be shivering as much. Poor guy, his big fat tummy is nekkid and he was miserable.
Fluffy McNutter the grey cat who decide to live here, is gettin along well though Tasmanian does not like him much, its a cat thing.
My blood pressure had been sky high, can't imagine why.

This next few days I will be painting the storage room, and laundry room. Yeah.  As soon as I get everything moved back into those rooms, we can get the family room addressed and the  new carpet laid.  This really had been a mess.  On the bright side, I am hoping to finally finish laying the wood on the stairs which had to be postponed a year ago when I had the knee replaced.  Things will all work out, it always does and the hand of the Lord has been manifest in nearly everything.  We are blessed, a wee bit stressed but blessed.

Another one?

 A couple of posts ago, I mentioned Son#3 and I had been at the Humane Society shelter, there were a  couple of bunnies there who had been dumped out by the dam.  We felt so sorry for them we were tempted to bring them home, we resisted. A couple of days ago the boys stepped out into the back yard to check the bees, a little brown bunny scurried by in a bit of a panic.

 It seems somebody has dumped another animal in our yard.  Since it is fully fenced the only way for it to have gotten in a yard full of dogs is to have been placed there intentionally.

 So now we have a bunny. She has made herself right at home in my office.  I am not amused.  When spring eventually shows up she can move outside for now we don't even know she is around except for the liberal sprinkling of bunny poops in my office every  morning.  She is using the papers put down for her and trying very hard to be a good bunny.  Still no name, though I am seriously leaning towards  Osidnaa, short for Oh Shit I Don't Need Another Animal.

 Does she look comfy or what. Speaking of comfy, Yoda kitty has taken over the wool in the vintage suitcase. There was screaming involved to get her out of it, and I yelled a bit too. She was very reluctant to give it up.

 Tigger was dumped in our yard two years ago.  Recently he discovered the vintage doll bed.  For him to see that it might be comfy, jump in and fluff the little quilt and settle down just cracks us up.  He is such a funny little dog.  He may have been dumped on us but to whomever dumped him we are eternally grateful, he is the best, most personable dog ever.

 Can you see the grey cat in the cupola?  The stupid cupola thingy is on the chicken house roof. 
The grey cat seems to think he belongs here now.  This is the only photo I have of him, but since he has abandoned his family and moved in with us I am sure there will be more. 
He wears a tag and I have called his people three times now, they send their herd of small children to retrieve him and within the hour he is back.  He lives about a block and a half away so he must really book-it when the kids release him.  Since he is their outdoor cat he must feel he is a free agent and he has decided this house is the one for him.  As I type this he is downstairs asleep on one of the boys beds.  He does not seem to care there are six cats here already nor does he seem fussed about the dogs. 

Oops I lied, he is actually in the kitchen stuffing his face again.  I guess if they want him they can come get him, but until they make him a house cat I think he will continue to make his way to our house.
Quite frankly the thought of more animals makes me even crazier than I was, they ALWAYS show up here.  But he is a super nice cat and really huggy and sweet, quite the little lover boy.  Two extra animals within one week.  crap. it's really not funny.

Spinning milk fiber.

At the yarn store the little bag of milk fiber was irresistible. Beautiful pearly white, high luster, fine and silky, it was just gorgeous, and obviously I bought it.  

Milk fiber is touted as a environmentally favorable fiber but I don't think it is since it takes nearly 100 gallons of milk to make a pound of fiber. Seems to me that is an awful lot of cow for a tiny bit of fiber.

  To make a long complicated story short, the milk is dried the protein or casein removed ( casein is also used in making artists paints by the way) then it is bonded with acryilate or acrylic at a molecular level.  It is extruded through spinnerets, think spiders extruding spider silk and then used in the textile industry.  The raw fibers are beautiful and quite frankly a bitch to spin.

 Since I spin solely on a  spindle I found the slick fibers to be obnoxious to say the least, maybe if spun on a wheel it would be easier to hang on to.  Though I can spin very fine fibers like silk (which I love) and Merino (which I love more) these fibers had no "grab" and were difficult to attenuate, they tended to drift apart and because of the fineness were prone to breaking if the spindle was the least bit overloaded.

 But I kept at it, though there was much swearing involved, until I had over five hundred yards of very fine, almost thread like singles yarn.  This afternoon I dyed the damnable stuff with acid dyes since  milk fiber is protein based.  It is a very slick fiber but I think it's biggest drawback is it is NOT WOOL.    Anything that is NOT WOOL is probably not worth messing with.

 After it dried I really liked the color though the thread is so fine it does not show the luster well.

 This last photo is a bit washed out, but it is wound on an old cone and ready for lace knitting.  I will show you the finished project,eventually.  Its a matter of deciding what lace pattern to work with.

For the very last photo, Benjamin Button our sweet bird, wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and encourages Ham. Or Beef. Preferably pie of some sort.