Computer O Computer

I've been driving myself crazy trying to fix a glitch in my computer - it won't stay connected to the internet suddenly, but the rest of the computers in the household have no problem. Persnickity thing thinks it's smarter than me! So far, it is. I considered dropping it out the window on the second story, but I decided to wait until we get the bigger windows/door on the front of the house would be more fun. (Hopefully by then it'll be working and death by dropping won't be necessary). Meanwhile I click away on the dinosaur laptop that seems at the moment to be out performing the newest model.

Last night after a few hours and several Advil I thought I had found the problem! Yay! But closing one door opens another. Now my antivirus is missing a component and won't reinstall per it's very specific instructions. Somethings are better left alone until we are in a better mental state to cope. That's when the delusions of dropping things out of second story windows began to amuse me. Crawling up on the bathroom counter to reach the window stopped me from acting immediately. I know that was it.... hehehehehee

That's the way most things work: you fix one thing, another problem raises its ugly head. Or you pull up a little flooring over there to fix and you end up having to replace the floor in the entire room (and sometimes the adjoining room too!) Ask us, we know all about that! We can smile about it now thank goodness! Now we're trying to find a reputable insulator to insulate the entire flooring under the house - Cowboy researching and four different insulators with four different opinions as to the proper materials/method to use. One arrived with the wrong size/R factor insulation he was going to staple and "piece" to fit between the joists - nevermind Cowboy crawling under there and seeing it gaping 4" on each side of each joists - thank you to an alert F-I-L who was here when they arrived while we were at work!! Do you have to do it all yourself to get it right or the way you want? Cowboy has been doing so much and working full time and the decision to pay someone to do the insulation was not easy to come by. But so far its been an ordeal researching and finding someone who will show up, let alone do good work. I'm even considering crawling under there to help him! Now that's bad. Don't dwell on the visual of me under the house. What happened to the time when a person took pride in a job well done and you didn't have to worry about being taken advantage of? Or am I looking back fabricating a perfect world that never truly existed at all? Naive? Wishful thinking? Just being impatient? I know it all works out, sometimes not on my internal time frame, but it works out in its time. I look at my art space, getting organized, boxes piled high, a small clean space with a cutting mat, pencil and some paper. Fabric and boxes of supplies here and there and even things that don't belong in that space find it's way "for just a second" while some other room gets attention, then that "just a second" turns into a week because, you guessed it -- something else cropped up while preparing that other room.

Here I am writing about it rather than getting it done. I DO have an agenda today and it will involve MAKING A LITTLE ART TODAY in addition to getting some order to the space and our house in general. Yes you saw from yesterday's picture Farmhouse is a little rough around the edges, but you should see how soft and comfortable it's become already on much of the inside. I'll have to snap some inside pics to share. It's coming along, slowly but surely. I remind myself daily of the progress and Cowboy and I remind each other. At the end of the day when we're upstairs in our little hideaway snuggled in bed talking about our hopes and dreams for this place, I am reminded of something else: there's no place like home, there's no place like home.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Welcome 2010! As though it would never get here, my blog sat vacant for too many months. Months that seemed to me only weeks; weeks that had been days ran long into months before even I began to notice. And I hid, not wanting to confront the sadness and the fear of even starting this blog let alone keeping it going. One flippant comment wounded me so easily. My inner critic raised her ugly blonde head and began, "I told you so.." My Creative Muse withered in the back of my mind, ignored.

Oh, how I ran! Ran as psychologically far as a mind can get, Then BANG! Happy New Year! 2010 finally arrived! New beginnings, new adventures, new outlook. We're allowed to be out with the old and in with the new, whatever that be, is up to us. It's funny how, when you're ready, everything looks better in a new light. And so we begin again, or perhaps pick up where we left off.

I am humbled and thankful for so many things. Life has been a whirlwind the past few months - but everyone is as the holidays approach one after the other and the year winds down and we look to a new one on the horizon. We hurry to finish up loose ends only to begin weaving more.

This fall left us with an empty chair where Mom O sat and commanded us. Yes commanded us. We were lost this season without her here to organize and tell us where and when to be. She was, it seems now, the glue that kept us together, the organizer of all things family. And we had learned helplessness. We didn't have to think anything, just do and follow the lead. So we had much to overcome in the oddness of the celebrations, the sadness of the captain missing at the helm. But having said that, and surely she would shake her head at us (she did NOT like new traditions and let us know more than once)... we did attempt a couple new ideas, if not traditions, in the very least they were new experiences. And with that we found comfort and joy in unexpected places, and in not forgotten familiar faces. Big arms, warm hugs, family, friends and food. What more is there in life?

Cowboy and I - we don't do drama. We don't do it well and prefer not to do it at all. Know what I mean? We are a mixture of someone who doesn't like confrontation and someone who believes that if we just talk about it, we can solve anything. We had so many warm and loving invites over the season, and we took you up on a few and the rest we tried to find some semblance of "normalcy" within our inner circle of parents, children and grandchildren. Sometimes We were the parents, sometimes WE were the children. We ebbed and flowed and sometimes we didn't get a good bearing on decision making til the last minute. But it all worked out, it always does, doesn't it? No stress, that's what I tell my daughter-in-law - "No Stress Allowed" - And I like it that way, I think we all like it that way. I’m trying very much to live my life as such. So if we didn't get to sit at your table and break bread, it didn't mean we didn't want to; simply we had something else we needed to do or decided we needed to do or just plain it's where we ended up. It's all good. And that's what I'm looking to for 2010 - it all being good no matter what it is.

What does any of this have to do with art? Well it's the art of living life, of making way for more creativity, an exercise in thinking outside the box. At least that's what I'm telling myself. At least it's getting me dusting the cobwebs off this blog and thinking about clearing a bigger spot to work on my art table. In my new art room. Studio? Can't quite get there with that word yet this year.

Ahhh new art room you ask? Yes. This fall Cowboy decided we would move to his mama's house and we have affectionately nicknamed it the "Farmhouse". We spent so much time going back and forth working on it and collapsing at the old house we finally moved in and decided to work on it as we go. We’re still moving bits and pieces of ourselves here, in boxes and bags and more stuff than we can imagine two people could possibly collect. It is definitely a labor of love, will be a long labor of love as we do what we can, when we can, as we can. Everything in its time. And that's okay. It's life, it's how it works when you stop fighting the universe, stop trying to figure it all out and just be; be yourself in your own skin in your own little niche in the world. So this is it for us: and it's a piece of his mama and her mama and daddy, and all the aunts-uncles-cousins-friends of a few lifetimes. It is an old house, with good bones and loads of character, rooms full of memories of good times and more still to come. Grandchildren and grandchildren’s children have slammed the screen door and swung in the porch swing. It stands tall, tired and worn, but familiar and comfortable like your favorite pair of jeans. I look at it and I see what it was, where it is, and what it longs to be. A lot like me. Possibilities. Potential. A work in progress. It is Home.