Sidetracked Charley

I was hanging out a load of wash yesterday morning in the fog. Time was short and I had tons to do in very little time so when I looked up to see this view of the sun coming over the mountain and through the fog I told myself I did not have time to run back into the house, find the camera and immortalize this scene. The do-bee was having major subconscious debates with my more laid back muse who eventually won. I got the camera and re-emerged on the porch sure the scene would be forever altered and I would curse taking the time for nothing. Sometimes you win one. Actually, yesterday I probably won more than I lost. That is not bad for a day in the middle of Mercury in Retrograde. I am just too tired to totally appreciate everything that did go right. Give me a day or so and I will probably bore you with the not-so-instant replays. I had a spiritual adviser at one time that said it was never wise to brag about the miracles that happen in your life. Be appreciative and say a private ...

Don't you love the internet? You Google an image to illustrate a vague idea you have about a blog and TA DA! I love this one. In fact I loved this one so much you may see it again and again. Especially on days it is being particularly hostile to me. Like today. Yes, I have one of those applications - a Firefox add-on - that allows me to block all the crap. But Facebook keeps inventing more crap I need to block. Ergo the first few minutes on my news page results in just resetting all my blocks. If I can get to my profile to begin with. None of my bookmarks on my tool bar or my Yahoo homepage will get me there. I get a white page unless I circumvent whatever they are doing and get there by way of a link they put in e-mail notifications of notifications of comments on Facebook. The Notifications on Facebook are also not working well. Some I get only through my e-mail notifications of notifications. Some not at all. And I laboriously set up automatic loads of this blog to my main ...

I shared so many pictures of the iced over Lake Coyote I felt I owed my readers the more normal look. Well, normal for spring with a heavy snow pack. The "log" in the center of the picture is actually the top of a weir and is the normal width of the stream. The Little Coyote is out of its normal banks and moving along at a right good pace for a head waters. I have hope there is a substantial enough flow to scour the bottom of reeds and grasses that have taken root there in the past years of lesser flow. Taking this picture yesterday I paused to reflect how wonderful it is to be on the other side of a crisis in the making. There is a special joy and light when you have dodged the bullet be it a near flooding out of your property or a total crash of both your computers. Oh, yes that happened later in the day. I booted up my laptop with the intention of doing some serious buff and fluff on the hard drive before vacation. Basically this means combing through the photo files ...

April! I have been trying to loose weight and I have gained. I have planned to be ahead and I am behind. I wanted the lawsuit to be over and it continues to August. So frustrated as only Francis Bacon's art can make me feel I woke this morning to face the too short days remaining before I depart determined to focus on what I had achieved this month - not what remains to be done. I have gotten the taxes done. And I am going to have a nice refund check waiting for me when I return from Moab. Yesterday I covered the last of the white canvas on my 26" by 62" painting. I finished my triptych - Tres Cruces. I have been accepted in two summer fairs and when I return home I will have 11 paintings to frame for those exhibits. I have switched from my satellite ISP, which was increasingly unreliable, to DSL for Internet. I have been on a seek and find deployment around the house locating camping gear and summer clothes for the Moab trip. I have celebrated the spring weather by w...

To speak of many things.  Of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings.  And why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings. Lewis Carroll The events of the opening months of 2010 have given me pause. Winter is a time I step-by-step my way through and with spring comes a regeneration of energy, a list of todo's to make my house and land better. But this year with the ruling by the judge on whether I can keep my house pushed off to August I find myself wondering if I even want to keep it. I certainly do not want to spend any time or energy or money on improvements if I might lose it. So April finds me rethinking my life and my goals. This spring and summer will be about enjoyment of the land around me and my fur kids. It will be about growing my art business. And it will be about re-establishing my sense of inner peace and spiritual connection. Nothing ruins that like a lying contractor and the legal system. Or it seems of late Facebook with all its glit...

Some days the cards are falling your way. Some days they are not. Things have been rather dark lately and at times I was not even sure I should dare to hope for a change of my luck. But from the beginning of 2010 there seemed some glimmers of a possible change of luck. Small in the beginning - like I made it through the winter with bills paid. And then DSL fiber optic lines arrived at the top of the hill and I could drop the expensive satellite (and troublesome). Then I landed the commission for a painting. Not money in my pocket but on the horizon. And then the special order for the koi mask. But so I would not get cocky everything did not move that smoothly or rapidly on either of those. And expenses I had not considered seemed to balance the unexpected income. My prospects had been dismal for so long I was finding it difficult to appreciate what was happening. Taxes loomed. I nervously accumulated all the receipts and tax documents. A couple years ago I had to pay an unbelievab...

I will readily admit it: I love to cave. Just me and the fur kids and some creative project or just a good book. Being locked into a tower in the middle ages would not have been torture for me. And I actually survive on being snowed in for a couple weeks at a time. But I am not totally a hermit as I thought. A friend was sharing with me a Zen philosophy they got second hand about the nature of people. They did not remember the source of this knowledge so if any of my readers can enlighten me I would appreciate it. Seems, per this philosophy, people came in three categories - for clarity let's call them A, B and C. They used 1, 2 and 3 and I got immediately confused. Type A people are totally happy all by themselves. People belonging to this category are hermits or mystics or recluses. St. Francis of the Assisi and the Dahlia Lama, monks that take vowels of silence, etc. The type B people are those that do best in one on one situations are alone. They shun gatherings or "let...

A friend hosted a potluck dinner yesterday. She grilled the meats and the rest of us brought something to add to the spread. Unlike the church events this one was rather gourmet and it was also a sit down affair. Laura sets a lovely table. But what always amazes me at these events is even without prior arrangement of who was bringing what it turned out great. As anyone been to a potluck were there are all deviled eggs? And why not? Wouldn't the odds predict this happening from time to time? And don't we all have a dish we can be counted on for bringing: "Oh, here comes Aunt Sally with her 5 bean salad!" I like to do a Salmon pasta salad for summer picnics. Will show up with a special homemade chocolate item around Christmas: Homemade truffles or dried apricots dipped in dark chocolate. But for last night I made a spinach and Portabello mushroom quiche. I don't do that for just any potluck! The kitchen is a total disaster. I begin with fresh spinach and fresh mu...

The one major problem with planning a vacation in the Colorado Plateau area of the western United States is there is absolutely too much to see! And the map above leaves out  Arches National Park because it is not on the Colorado River but above it. The first road trip that my sister and I took to Utah we just sampled several of the parks but this year we have decided to focus on the parts of Arches we did not do justice after the broken camera. And Canyonlands National Park which we just barely took in. "We glide along through a strange, weird, grand region. The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock." —Explorer John Wesley Powell, 1869. Canyonlands National Park protects and preserves an immense, wild, desert wilderness at the heart of the Colorado Plateau. Sculpted mainly by water, including by the Green and Colorado rivers, this wilderness contains hundreds of colorful canyons, mesas, buttes, fins, arches, and spires. Prior to the park’s establ...

My sister and I are again planning another trip to the promised land. A pilgrimage to the holy shrines of Canyonlands in Utah. We are taking her husband along for this return Thelma and Louise Roadtrip. There were a couple muttered threats of divorce if we didn't. Our first trip was in 2004 and I have been painting pictures from the photographs I took since then. It is past time for a creative and spiritual renewal. The whole lawsuit was getting in the way of my joy about this adventure. With all the postponements and revised docket schedules I had fears that a major court appearance would fall smack in the middle of the two weeks we had scheduled. The good news to come out of Monday's court date was that nothing requires me until to alter plans before August. So Moab and my two summer fairs are safe. As are the garden plans. My friend, Dianne, is coming up to house sit and take care of mine and my sister's fur kids and water the plants. We leave May 2nd. So lots to do ...

I named this particular blog Side-Tracked Charley because my life had taken a turn I had not anticipated. The contractor I had hired in August 2006 for an estimated $17,000 job threw me for a loop two years ago by claiming I owed him another $21,600 over and above the $33,000 plus already paid to him. He wants to take my house to pay the debt that in my opinion he has never proved. Tomorrow, win or lose, it will be over I hope. But I have thought that before. This Easter weekend I have been looking at the sidetrack I have been on for two years. And not just the legal side but the stall it has put on my plans - my life. I am generally not one to blame outside issues on my problems but in this particular case their are some definite cause and effects. He took all my money and so I have not been able to move forward on any of my remodeling plans or even finish the deck to the studio I paid and arm and leg for. Nor if I had the money would I be able to find the motivation to pour into...