WIP - Cougar

Okay, I'm pooped. I have been working on the cougar all day. Took a couple of breaks. Gizmo instisted on it!

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Except for softening the cougar's outline so he appears to be coming out of the cave and not just a "cookie cutter" effect on top of the darkness, I think he is finished.

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The rocks have only begun to take form, so bear with me on this.

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If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Happy to help if I can.

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Enjoy!

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~J~

All art, poetry and writings are copyright & cannot be reproduced in any form without written permission from Judith Angell Meyer

Cougar

When I last wrote I was expecting to be in surgery Tuesday the 22nd. That's been three days ago already. Jeez. Anyway, that was canceled. Seems not all the test results were in, nor even completed. So my primary Dr. took care of that. By Thursday all the reports were in and I was given the okay to get the surgery. My Dr. was going to have to explain to the surgeon and the anesthesiologist, why the bifascicular block in my heart wasn't going to be a problem. He suggested that without the explanation, when the anesthesiologist read the ECG, he'd just throw up! So now I wait for surgery to be rescheduled.

In the meantime, the little piece I'm painting for the SAA's "Small Art, BIG Impressions" show this fall, opening at the Wildlife Experience in Parker, Colorado on November 4th, is finally beginning to look right. The cougar is so small that even my magnifying light is barely enough. But I'm finally getting the watercolor to mold its body.

Have done nothing but pencil illustrations for a long time, and I guess it's just taking a while to get the watercolor brush going again. Too much time away from the work I should be doing.

The whole painting is 5" x 7" making the cougar about an 1 3/4" high x 2 1/4" wide. The cougar is the watercolor start, and the source picture of the rocks and cave is where the cougar will be walking out of.

I'm pleased with the start now, took a while. Now to get it finished in time. It has to be entered by August 17th.

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We actually got one heck of a thunder and lightening storm tonight and with it came this real cool wet stuff. Took me a while to remember it was rain. It was a nice one too, and cool! I took my popcorn and sat out on the porch to enjoy the wind and cool and the wonderful fresh smell of the rain.

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Delicious.

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Good night all.

All art, poetry and writings are copyright & cannot be reproduced in any form without written permission from Judith Angell Meyer

New Old Motor Home

I have forgotten completely to show off "my" motor home. Took a while to get the engine back up to snuff, and of course cleaning the years of dust. It was Mom and Dad's since 1985, and they toured all over in it. They bought it for an ambitious trip through Canada to Alaska, and then back down the coast to Washington, then back to Colorado.

It is a 1984/5 Toyota pickup with a 1985 Dolphin camper on its back. Mom and Dad always took good care of their things, and passed that on to me, but I cannot believe how well this little camper is preserved. I know my parents, and camped with them all my childhood, so I know for a fact that Mom cooked three times a day for Dad. Sandwiches for lunch maybe, but I'm sure there was always coffee and probably soup. Then the catch of the day for supper. So, when you see the stove you will not believe that she spent years of camping trips cooking in that camper.

In this one I am standing at the door looking toward the back of the camper. The galley on the left, the bed in the rear across the back, closet over and to the right of the bed, then the bench and table on the right side.

This one looks the other way. Back to front. The driver's seats are all the way front and a step down. The overhead bunk is low, so I usually go out of the camper to get into the driver's seat. You can see the over the cab bunk bed, where I'll be storing my easel and art supplies. To the left and beyond the table is the bathroom, which has a potty, shower and sink. (Not a large space.) It is my hope that I can drive someplace in Colorado and just sit there for several days. Hiking, taking sketches and pictures. Maybe read a book. Mostly just being outside in our beautiful state. (And higher than here. It is currently 3:20 p.m. and 101 degrees.)

Of course I'll have Gizmo with me. It will be interesting to see where he will settle and call his own. It will be different. I don't plan on, or especially intend on using KOA's. Will first set my sights on the valley where Hans is and settle in there for a while.

I guess this it. Hope you like my little home away from home. I'm sure it will give me a lot of pleasure, as it did for Mom and Dad. Now if I can just take as good a care of it as they did ...

Good intentions

"Good intentions just don’t get the job done, like procrastination doesn’t do the job .... " That would be me getting my blog started for the past two weeks. Still no rain here. My son mowed the lawn and took care of trimming the long tree branches. The brown "lawn" crunches!

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My writing is off at the moment. Writing down ideas, but not taking the time to put it all together. However, I have been working on the cat portrait commission, and it is going well. Her cat was blind, so I am painting her just as she was. She is a pretty cat. I have been a long time with this commission. So, it is time. I will stop on this one for a while to finish a small piece for entry in the SAA "Small works, BIG Impressions" show. I also have a pencil portrait on my drawing board. It has been laid out and is ready to go, so I will advance on it as soon as the small SAA piece is done, and then go back and forth between the two portraits as I need a break from one or the other. The system works out pretty well, and I don’t generally get so tired of one media that I have to take a week off, say. I can just keep on going.
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I seem to be getting slower by the day. Only I’m not just slower, but the joints take longer to smooth out so I can walk more like a humanoid and not a primate! My eyes are getting old too, and I have the beginnings of a cataract on my right eye. Dr. says it isn’t going to cause me any trouble for a long time, but I have him check it once a year anyway!
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Yesterday was quite a day. My friend had called me to come help him get his printer to work. I ended up having to bring it home here to get on line to download the newer printer drivers he needed and it all worked out well. I think I got lucky. I wasn’t done with that until about 3 in the p.m.. When I got home I checked my messages. I had calls from both the Women’s Clinic, and from the hospital. I expected that the Women’s Clinic was calling to confirm my Monday appointment. One of the calls did that, but the other one was more vague, so called back and the gal said that as near as she could find, the call must have been to confirm that the procedure they were going to do Monday was approved by Medicare. So ... Then I returned the call from the hospital, which was a gal in Pre-Op. She had called to go over my medical history for my surgery on Tuesday the 22nd. I sort of asked her what surgery. She had all the right information, and while I had hoped that the surgery could be done ASAP, this was really fast. I figured that since it had been two weeks between appointments with the Dr. who would be doing the surgery, that I wouldn’t have a surgical appointment until the end of July. SO!! I will have my surgery on this coming Tuesday at 9:40 a.m. This could be changed. At the time of my call they hadn’t gotten the confirmation back from the whole surgical team, but barring any problems ... I guess I’m on my way. With this timing, I’ll definitely have the time to heal before fall/winter chores.
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This year the cotton off the cotton wood trees was as bad as I have ever seen it. It drifted against the house, and along the driveway. I didn’t think the stuff was ever going to quit coming down. Now if I’d been 7 or 8 years old, I’d have delighted in the wind fall, (so to speak), so I could fill the pillows for my dollies! Can you believe me playing with dolls? Filling the pillows for my sister yes, but me ... ol’ Tomboy me! Well, I remember doing that none the less.
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I have finally changed my house insurance. Have been with the company for 37 years. They just did an upgrade, or reevaluation of the cost to rebuild and was able to lower the monthly payment some. I have, for the same many years, had my car insurance with the same, other, company and when I went to add the motor home to it, they suggested I give them the opportunity to price my home insurance with them as it looked like they could also lower my car payments. So I did that, and I’ll be saving right at $41.00 a month on the house, and about $30.00 a year on each of the vehicles. And, I was able to add benefits/coverage I couldn’t afford before. My insurance was already fairly low because of no accidents and because the cars are all older and, of course, because I am older and because I have enough vehicles to be under "fleet" insurance. This gives my kids a great giggle. So looks like I’m set for a while in the insurance department. Actually at the price of gas these days, I could probably take the insurance off all but one and they would become my mothball fleet.
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Best get busy. I have a few things to do before going into completely helpless mode for a while. Maybe I’ll be better at Blogging, do you think? What I’d have to say might be oatmeal, but then you never know. It might get pretty funny with me trying to do things around here, under the restriction not to lift anything over 10 lbs. (Gizmo is really not going to like that one!) (He is 11 lbs!)
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"We are all different expressions of one reality, different songs of one singer,different dances of one dancer, different paintings - but the painter is one." -- Osho, Indian Spiritual Leader

Noisy Morning

I woke up this morning to a raucous noise! Started out low, and gradually got to a pretty serious volume. Turns out a gaggle of Grackles had found the cat food bowl on my porch and were vying for positions close enough to snatch a piece. They were perched on the rail and on chairs and on the buggy, while the one bird on the bowl had its beek open screaming and screeching its head off to keep its position. Of course he couldn't eat anything when he was so busy scolding everyone else. Finally, he'd get pushed off and the next one, not having a better plan, just stood on the bowl screaming too.

I sure wish I could have gotten a picture of the scene. But the buggy, blocked the view from the french doors off the bedroom. And to come around to the family room, no matter how slow or quietly I moved -- well -- they sensed I was there and flew off. The cat food must have been really good though because they kept coming back to try again and again.

Okay already, I'm up now.

This week is supposed to get hot again, but today is lovely. Light breeze and upper 70's. My son has been here all weekend working on the Lady. (His dad's old caddy.) Enjoying himself. Yesterday we finally got an icecream cake for his birthday. I think he was hoping we'd forget since it was his 40th. Of course we couldn't be that sensitive. We're family after all. He was on the road during the time of his actual birth date. The child will soon be as old as I am.

Well, have a good week all.

It Starts

It Starts

She could not understand what I was saying.
I was just telling her about my summer vacation.
Our annual family motor tour.

Mountains with snow that stops where the clouds begin
Pines that climb the mountain
until the air is so thin they can no longer grow.

Snow melting from the peaks
becoming ribbons of liquid ice,
tumbling faster and faster
polishing rocks into pebbles
until the stream becomes a river
flowing with deep silent power to the sea.

Deer in the forest and horses on the trails.
Eagles dancing on the thin fresh air.
Rocks as big as a house.

Puzzlement covered her face
Disbelief in the slant of her eyes.

I was just as puzzled.
Had she never been there?
Could she have never seen a mountain?
Had she never been out of town?
Was that possible?

I went home - still pondering
Realizing how fortunate am I.

I changed my words into a picture
so she could understand.
Her eyes grew so big.

She was amazed at what she saw.
I was amazed at her reaction.

I brought her a new world
Could I do it again?
I drew another picture, and another, and another ...

I have never stopped being amazed.

All art, poetry and writings are copyright & cannot be reproduced in any form without written permission from Judith Angell Meyer --

The Bumble Bee Murder Mystery

Hello all! It has been quite a while since I have written in my blog, and decided that while some of you have seen and heard this story, that a lot of you haven't, so here is the tale of the mystery of the bumble bee murder that happened at my house a couple of years ago. Enjoy!

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Once upon a time, on a day I was late getting home from work, I put the key in the lock and right away I knew there was something wrong. There were no greeting sounds from my little dog scratching to get me to hurry up and open the door, and whining to tell me all about his day. My heart jumped into my throat! What could have happened to him.

Rushing now, I flew into the kitchen, and still no Gizmo. As I started to the hall, I noticed there were some innards on the floor. What in the world ...

So I followed the trail and there were more and more going down the hall. My gosh, there were guts everywhere.

As I turned into the bedroom, the trail led right up to Mr. Bumble Bee.

Oh my gosh, there he was. Guts still coming out of his little body. Wings torn off and lying about. What a horrible death. I was about to pick up his torn and battered body when I heard a noise coming from under the bed. I continued to follow the trail ....

And sure enough, the murderer was still in the room. There, trying to look innocent and hide his involvement, was my little Gizmo. He still had guts on his head, and body parts around him. Oh poor Mr. Bumble Bee, how could you kill your favorite friend? He had no explanation, so there was only one thing left to do ...

Gizmo had to be banished to time out in his pout house. I feel so bad, but there was nothing I could do. I could not condone murder in this house. Slowly he began to look sorry for his sins, but I was hard hearted and wouldn't let him come out.

Lesson, don't bump off a bumble bee or you'll be banned to life in a very cramped pout house. No room to run. No toys. Only bread and water.

Sorry Gizmo, this hurts me more than it hurts you.

~ The End ~

All art, poetry and writings are copyright & cannot be reproduced in any form without written permission from Judith Angell Meyer

Another wild day

Okay, another windy day! Today the storm got closer to me than it did yesterday. We had what is called a "gustnado" ... Sounds weird, but they say it is a wind storm that gets up to 70 mph. One came blowing through here at about 3:25 this afternoon. I went out to the porch to see if it was a tornado forming, and had to hold on to the post. When I saw a racoon running from the barn area right past me on the porch and kept on heading north, I knew he was trying to outrun the storm, and that if he was that concerned I'd better be. It passed in a total of maybe 10 minutes. I have debris everywhere, but there was no damage. The noise I heard was next door though, and the wind took off the entire west side of his barn/shop. Plastered it up against the east side of the barn next door to him. The barn is probably 85' long, and two storys high, so that is a lot of siding to put back up.

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They had just gotten full bore into the project of cleaning up the area and practically gutting their house to renovate it. This is going to set them back. Right after the wind there was a complete calm which almost rattled me more, I thought, "Oh gosh, is this the eye of the storm?" But over two hours later, it is still calm.

I hope it stays that way.

This was one wild and woolly day ...

Like I said, wild and woolly ... I spent the day with computer troubles ... during a rare large tornado. We had very unusual conditions. The wind was cold and out of the south east. Traveling at 30 to 52 mph, it rushed up against the front range causing an updraft forcing the air to circle around back on itself. The tornado was from 3/4 to a mile wide and traveled 35 miles. Then either formed again, or skipped over to Laramie, Wyoming and formed again. Windsor, Colorado got the worst of the storm. The photo on the right is someones house. Or was ... At the left is a photo of the tornado. You can see how wide it was, and when you think of it traveling at 30 to 52 mph, you could hardly get out of the way. I mean we're talking speed limit speed here! On the west side of Greeley it took out a dairy. They lost about 25 cows, and had a time rounding up the other 375. They had trucks come in and transport them to safer ground. But think of their mess. They are milk cows that have to be milked twice a day. They have no barn. And that is a lot of cows to deal with without the proper setup. I wouldn't want to hand milk 375 cows. The tornado took out several new housing developments in Windsor, but also some of the old historic section of the small town. It is estimated that over 100 homes were lost. This photo is from the old section of town. I don't know what business, but it might have been a mill at one time. And then there was the assorted vehicles turned over on the road. The storm also turned over five tanker railroad cars, and there was at least one grain train car that was upended. Over turned vehicles littered the highway along the tornado's full path. The most poignant picture I saw while watching the news was a young boy, maybe 10, and he was standing at what looked like curbside. He had a hold of his dogs leash, and he was hugging his pillow to his chest. His eyes were full of shock and disbelief. At least I only have to re-rake and not rebuild. I am counting my blessings.


As for my computer troubles ... thinking about how to tell you the story, it is so complicated. All I wanted to do was install software to connect two computers together for the purpose of transferring files. Sounds slick and simple. Well, it wasn't. And when I finally got to the point of printing out the instructions so I had them right there in my face, the computer froze up on me. The monitor went blank and stayed blank. It had a sort of glow in the background, and the on/off button wouldn't turn it off. Nothing worked, and my daughter and her husband are telling me it is dead. Dead Jim. Possibly there was a surge during the storm, and even though I have a surge protector, it killed my lovely new flat panel monitor. I'm told that is a problem with them. Or can be. It is new enough to be under warranty, but I so hate the hassle. At least I do have my laptop, (I haven't killed that yet), and I was able to unplug the satellite cable from the desk top and plug it right in. So far that is working perfectly for me.

It is midnight thirty and after the day today I think I'd best shut down and go to bed.

I hope you all had a much better day!

Be well and take care.

Credits: These photos were taken from the news coverage of CBS 4 Denver.com. The photo of the tornado, specifically was an Ullmann photo.

Two in a row by golly

I was reading from Ted Kooser's book, "Local Wonders, Seasons in the Bohemian Alps," and got to thinking about how much I remember from my days in Kansas as he talked about the osage orange hedges, and then about garage sales. This brought me to remember a poem I wrote about 22 years ago to a boy I went to grade school with. Kindergarten specifically. I shared this with a friend, and then shared it on PoetrySoup.com so thought I really should share it with everyone. Someday I'll meet this boy again, and can let him know in person.

"His First Love"

I remember the heavy round wooden tables
Built low to the ground,
Just right for kindergartners.
He would always sit close.

I didn't notice.

Out-of-doors on the playground was a giant oak.
He made me an acorn pipe, then taught me how.
I made lots of acorn pipes, giving them all away;
Even his.

He stood quiet with little fists pushed deep in his pockets.
But I didn't notice.

The sun was goldenShining through high windows
Down on the low round table,
Particles of dust dancing merrily on the beams.

He handed me a present,
And as the royal blue paper with tiny pin stripes
Crossed the sun's raysThe stripes lit up like diamonds.

Gently opening the paper,
Careful not to lose the sparkles,
I could feel the whole class watch.
I was embarrassed.

Inside was a book about a velveteen kitten.
She was black and feminine.
She wore a pink bow,
And she was fuzzy to the touch.

I treasured that book.
As time went by I rubbed the kitty's fur
Until she was loved slick and smooth.

I don't remember saying thank you.
I'm sure I did.
Surely the teacher would have reminded me;
There in front of the whole class.

Over four decades ago - yet -
The memory of that special gift is as clear and bright
As was the sun beam that day.
And I would like you to know Jimmy Wilson;

That I noticed.

All art, poetry and writings are copyright & cannot be reproduced in any form without written permission from Judith Angell Meyer --