Instead Of Complaining, I Just Did It

When you're retired you truly don't pay much attention to time. For instance, if it wasn't for the uploading of pictures taken with my camera I wouldn't know I had acquired it towards the beginning of August. The uploading creates folders that have dates on them and the first two pictures taken were these.

The date on the folder they were stored in is 8-9-15 which was the first day I took pictures with my then new camera. The full woodshed and the amount of wood we still had to stack. 

The weather was hot and humid and we're in our later 60s so we just didn't have the energy to do that much work. We decided to wait for cooler Fall temperatures which usually start happening about the middle of September, but this year they were a lot later arriving. Towards the end of September we were reaching the high 80s every day. 

Once the weather cooled off my not retired husband's business picked up due to people wanting to get their septic tanks pumped out before winter so they wouldn't have to deal with a back up when it's below freezing outside. When he comes home, he's tired since dragging hoses, shoveling dirt to get to the cleanout covers is hard physical labor and he is not as young as he once was. Needless to say, he wasn't getting to the wood pile the way he normally does. 

I decided this week that I'd do some of it for him. I am sadly, seriously out of shape. However, I plugged away at it until the pain in my joints and muscles would call a halt to my activity. I didn't do too badly, it took me most of 4 days but this is how it looks out there now. 

It's going to rain for the next few days and possibly snow this weekend. However I am out of pallets and plywood to stack the wood on. A neighbor said he'd stack the rest on my deck for me once we get the table and chairs put away for the season. I will take care of that in a day or two and this snowfall, if we get one, won't last so he'll have plenty of time to do it in. I know I can't. My joints are so swollen today I can barely move. I feel a very satisfying sense of accomplishment though. 

A little Tylenol and an application of Arnica gel to the complaining joints and I'll be puttering around the house in no time at all. And tomorrow when I see the doctor, I'm going to find out what kind of regular exercise will keep the muscles I built doing the wood stacking in shape. I'm going to need them to get all that stacked wood into the woodstove for warmth. 

Happy Fall Y'all

Current pictures of Mother Nature's artistry as she paints in my little corner of these not always so United States.

These pictures are all from the hayfield across the road from me. We're about 30% color and the next bunch I'll take next week should begin to be awesome. I'm also planning on seeing if I can find the time for a drive to the back side of the lake to see what I can find of interest there. 

And yes, that is an ice cream truck in the bush in the first picture. No, it's not an accident. The rear tire needs changing and with the weight of all the refrigeration equipment the driver is uncertain that the front wheel chocks will hold, So, he pulled it up into the bush to keep it from rolling forward and off the jack. It was jacked up right after I took the picture. I should have waited a few more seconds before pushing the button. 

Life In The Country

According to our local weather people we are at 25% Autumn color. So, I took my camera and went out with it to capture the 25%. I think I should have waited for 50% so I could see it. The first picture I pulled over to the side of the road and captured the cornstalks. I was sitting inside the car since there were cars coming up behind me and it's a 55 MPH speed zone. I wanted to take pictures not get hit by a car. The last 3 pictures were taken standing in a hay field about 3 miles away from the first picture. I got out of the car for those.

The second picture I used the zoom to see the colors. It wasn't until I backed it off that the aircraft appeared. I didn't use the zoom for the last picture. I was standing in the flight path for the Griffiss International Airport and that is a military plane.

It was a gorgeous day, I enjoyed it.

Haunted Kitties, Wild Sunflowers And Puppies In The Snow

Just a couple of things I've been working on. The store is going to have an event on October 17 to try and get people in to shop. I fear this is going to be one of those situations where nobody will support the business when it exists but will whine about the lack of places to shop when it closes. 

I don't know why or how people became so negative about everything. I'd like to remain positive which means I spend a lot less time online and more time doing things I enjoy. The Wild Sunflowers are blooming. They won't last much longer, I'm going to enjoy them while they're here. 

Busy, Busy, Busy

And this is what I've been busy doing.

And this.

And this.

All are finished, inventoried, priced and boxed for tomorrow delivery to the store along with the others in my last blog post.

Now all I have to do is wait and see if people will buy them.

Oh, and I have to keep painting just in case they do.

New Camera And Reawakened Interest In Painting

There is a store locally that is selling strictly hand crafted items by local artists. I've been asked to sell my wares there. It works much like a show, we pay $35 a month plus 10% of sales and the store owner does all the work. I really don't have much to sell yet so I've started working on painting things to sell.

Now that I have a camera I can take pictures of my work and share them on the blog. Which makes my artwork more fun.

On the last post I shared a piece that I had done some time ago and after looking at it, I decided it needed something so, I got out the paints and this is what I came up with.

I definitely like it better. I added 2 roses and did a transparent green effect around the entire arrangement which made the white edges of the flowers pop out and become more visible against the background color.

Yesterday I did this one.

 I'm looking forward to creating many more and with my new camera, now I can share them.

Random Thoughts From The Retired Me

Some day I may figure out how it is I get close to 2000 pageviews a month on a blog that isn't updated regularly. Since I haven't a clue I'll just consider myself special or something.

It took awhile but I have organised my home and life to the point where I am the happiest I've ever been. My problem now is I don't wish to go out of my home into the maelstrom that I am safe from behind my closed door. It's bad enough I have access to it online I really don't need to experience it on a face to face basis.

Maybe I feel this way because I'm closer to my expiration date and my peace has become more important to me? I don't know, I just know that I can make a faster getaway from the information superhighway than I can while driving in my car. No speed limit online. Well, unless ones provider decides to limit it, but I can still find that little red x faster than some people can blink. Most of the time I use it before I get into trouble, lately it's become more important to me to speak my mind than to stay silent.

Online I can "slip out the back Jack," In person I'm apt to get my nose punched. I suppose I could pretend that I wear glasses all the time instead of just for reading, but these days people don't care if they put out your eyes. They want their right not to be butthurt unless they can do something about it, like knock your teeth down your throat. I wonder if it's all that online arguing that builds that kind of frustration? I wonder who I should contact to suggest a study about that? We waste money on everything else, why not to answer my questions?

Anyways, back to the organisation. I have closets and drawers in which I can find everything. The cans and stored foods in my pantry are now not past their expiration date.  I've rearranged the kitchen so that things I use regularly are easier to acquire. I've even changed the location of my chatchkies.

I have a small collection of hand painted Fenton Art Glass Cats that were buried on a corner shelf in the dining room. I've moved them to the top of my computer hutch where I get to admire them in the moments when I need to sit back and stare upward while requesting guidance. Some of them need to be elevated more for clearer visibility but I haven't decided what to use for that yet.

My husband's book work and tools (sigh) still take up space in my livingroom, but with everything else organised to my liking I don't seem to mind so much. I assume that is due to less stress and being more relaxed. I do have one more area that needs organising. Actually it's not so much organising as replacing that's needed. My paints have all gone past their usefulness.

I will need to find some way to dispose of them, clean the bottles and recycle those. Then I get to go shopping for more paints. They're all water based acrylics so it's not such a bad thing as it would be if they were oils, but there's close to 100 bottles partly filled with separated or dried out paint. Disposing of them will take days of fighting to get the contents out of the bottles. If I were less eco friendly, I'd bundle the lot of them up and just throw them in the dump, but I won't do that. It's not the right thing to do. Easier, but not right.

I'm going to go and replace them in September so I'll something to do to occupy my time now that I have my house organised. It cleans easily this way and doesn't take as much time. Which leaves me too much time to spend online unless I find something else to do.

I'm going to actually buy a camera this month. That will get me out of the house to take pictures that I can share on the blog, and it will give me something to look at when I try to duplicate the scene with paints. Fall is gorgeous here and this is farm country. Just the kind of bucolic scenery that begs to be celebrated with paint. I might get lucky and capture a deer or two in the process.

In the meantime I found the latigo I needed to hang my latest painting on my front door. I scanned it in instead of taking a picture so part of it is cut off at the bottom. I had finished it quite awhile ago but couldn't find the leather to hang it with until I got busy and organised my life. One of my neighbors wants me to paint something like it for her door. Fortunately the paints I need for her decor are still good enough to use.