A couple of days past

When I opened my blog just now, at 4:49 p.m., the temperature gauge read 103 degrees. Our record for consecutive days over 90 degrees was 18. And that record was set 107 years ago. Today is day 20 of the new record. Now what should I do with this child; urge it on, or shoot it down?
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Enough of that.
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Since I haven't posted an update on the cougar in a couple of days, I thought I'd just give a day to day accounting. I should be posting the cougar again tomorrow.
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A while back we had a wind storm that while it was furious, was not the micro-burst wind that I told you about earlier when the side of the neighbor's barn was peeled off by the wind. But this one was out of the west north west, and it was kicking up all the loose dirt in its path. I noticed it at first because of the yellowish light out the window, something you look for with tornado conditions. The picture shows the dirt in the air so thick that it blocks the sun to the degree you can look at it. Like most of nature, on one hand, beautiful, and on the other, frightening.
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.Then just Wednesday I was attracted by a Robin outside of the bedroom window. It was making these very melodious tones, and as I watched, the bird was preening itself, and sounded very like it was experiencing an extreme pleasure. Just as I was feeling I was intruding, this fairly large object sailed right past me and smashed into my bedroom window. I mean he really did a nasty header into the glass. This one is a Flicker. Beautiful larger bird, but very stunned. Its beak was open and head turned sideways and he would try to shake "it" off from time to time. But every time he took a step, it was wobbly. I took a couple of pictures through the window, then went out and to photo him. That was when I knew for sure he had really addled his brain. It took quite a while, but he walked farther and farther, little by little, and finally he was gone. Really glad he recovered before the cats spotted him!
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Today the winter hay arrived. I have a barn full of the sweet smelling alfalfa. The horses were lounging by the barn gate the whole time, talking to me with soft nickers hoping to get a bite of new season hay. The trailer left quite a bit behind on the ground, so I shoveled some treats their way. Trouble is, they are typical kids. Today a treat, and tomorrow they will be at the gate expecting more, and this time it most likely won't be soft nickers.
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Have a good day. Stay cool. And don't complain any more than you have to.
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See you tomorrow. (Late!)

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WIP - Cougar 3rd Update

Update #3 on the Cougar.

The rocks are looking pretty solid now and am moving on to ...

more rocks.

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

New settings

Hello to all my friends and readers out there. I have begun to get a lot of automated spam on my blog which is most annoying. So, to help reduce unwanted solicitors cluttering up my Blog, I have activated some new settings. One of which is word verification. I never understood how this was helpful, and always found it annoying to have to type in the letters and numbers on a graphic, but now know that the step takes a human to type in the "code" and automatic spam just can't read or type.

Those of you who have a subscription to my Blog will not be affected by this, and you will continue receiving your updates as I post something new. (The subscription form is below my profile on the left side, and only requires your e-mail address to activate.) Since I have no way of knowing who all my subscribers are, You might be receiving two of these messages. My apologies in advance.

For the rest of you, thank you for taking the time to take a look and comment from time to time. It makes my day to know that you enjoy my Blog enough to say hi.

Western Regards,

Judith Angell Meyer

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