Life imitating art, again

Even the elementary school teachers are getting into the recreating famous paintings craze, so Damon chose The Scream by Edward Munch: 

Took a little finagling as our sunroom table is covered in, well, just about anything you could imagine from knife sharpening tools to oatmeal cream pie wrappers to sunglasses to art supplies. 

Liam wants to know why the guy is screaming. I say too much time stuck in the house. Anybody else have a vote?

Life imitating art

Thing 1 has two art classes this semester. This assignment was to recreate a painting. She chose "Saint George and the Dragon" by an unknown French artist. 

With some peanut butter bribery, Bosley was willing to be the Dragon. Honey got to be the Noble Steed. Yes, that's me in the pink footie pajamas, towel with crown, and trying not to giggle in the background. And our blue-clad Saint George, equipped with shield and spear, fought a ferocious battle...

until the cameraman called Honey's name and she wandered right out from under Saint George and everything went to pot.

We think it went pretty well!

Motivation for a Monday

Thing 1 decided to share some art with this viewing audience. This original was done about three years ago:

                                     

The retooling occurred last week:

The lesson is, for whatever your craft, whatever your passion, whatever you’re trying to survive right now, don’t give up. Keep working, because it will get better, times will get better, you will get better. 

Don’t give up!

"Lightning has just hit my brain..."

That title is from the movie "Hook", featuring Robin Williams as Peter Pan and Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook. I saw it with a posse of close friends when I was in junior high, I think, and it's remained a favorite ever since. 

Anyway, as Dada prepared a lovely bacon/eggs/sourdough toast breakfast this morning, he finished off the current bottle of orange juice. Liam protested that he wanted some, so I told him to go bring in the next bottle from the garage. He was dumbfounded that there would be more out there, never mind the fact that we store them out there all winter, every winter, as we have one of those ridiculous side-by-side refrigerators that isn't wide enough to shove an extra large pizza into, and the garage keeps in plenty of cold. 

As he returns, loudly proclaiming that he'd never noticed the bagged bottles of orange juice outside the door to the garage, in my head I heard the Holderness family spoof of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". One of my favorites for sure. 

Then it hit me, like lightning. All those centuries and lifetimes of men being the hunters while women were the gatherers. I mused aloud to Dada, "wait, the MEN were the hunters?! They can't find ANYTHING! How did THAT work? The good Lord would have had to said to each deer, 'you, get out from behind that rock. They'll never find you otherwise. You, get farther into the field because they won't think to check the woods for you.'" 

Dada smiled, knowing he's guilty of not always hunting until the lost item is found, and gave me some grief about sexual prejudice. 

I continued anyway, "OH! So THAT'S why they followed the HERDS. Even men could follow a herd. 'There they gooooo!'" 
It's all so clear now! Women would have checked under every leaf for berries and under every rock for edibles, hence the "leave no stone unturned" gatherers and the men could traipse after the herds of buffalo or mastodons or whatever was in the area. Got it!

And there's our history according to me. You're welcome. And thanks to the amazing Holderness family for speaking the truth in fun. Haha! I take no credit other than copy and paste. If you haven't explored them, go check them out- they are a hoot!

A day in the life of remote learning- Take #462866383754383

I can read. Truly, I can. I LOVE to read. However, I misread that Damon had a class meeting tomorrow instead of today. There he sat, while I was on a call myself, waiting for his teacher to show up. When it dawned on me that no such meeting was taking place, I rapidly scanned his emails and found what we needed. Again. Oh, tomorrow. 

As Yzma says in “The Emperor’s New Groove”, “well, he ain’t getting any deader. Back to work!”

Thankfully there was no death, but there will be Beatings.

The kid switches over to math, which he’s generally strong in.  Then he starts whining about not knowing what to do. 

“Did you watch the video she posted?”

“No.”

“Generally when there’s a video posted it’s to teach you how to do the problems that follow.”

Trying to load video, more frustration ensues as it won’t load. I circumvent the process by searching for the same exact video on YouTube, find it, and start it up. 

“There. Watch video.”

“Video is booooorrrriiing...”

“Watch video!”

*mild grumbling from both parties*

I head into the kitchen to make coffee, rummaging madly in the fridge for the can of whipped cream I KNOW we didn’t already blow through, where IS it, are you kidding me, we CAN’T have gone through that one already, too, oh, whew, there it is, in the door, who put it there?!

*attempt to discreetly shake and squirt whipping cream into coffee* 

*singsong from the sunroom, “I don’t need to follow the directions...”

*from the kitchen* “FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS!”

It’s getting dicey, folks. Hump day on Week 5...

Bread and hot pie

 Dada is our resident bread baker, so when a friend asked, "would you guys like a sourdough starter" it came as no surprise to me that he jumped at the chance. To his credit, he did ask me, too, haha!

So here he is, finessing his skills with a future sourdough loaf. No, the potting soil didn't go into it. Yes, that's a marble slab that we've had for years. It's the cutout of a counter where the sink would be placed, and he bought it for a ridiculously small amount of money since to the company holding it considered it as waste. It keeps a cooler temperature for working with dough, so it's perfect. 

Bread making is definitely a lesson in patience. It takes time to find the right spots in your home that are A) warm enough, B) safe enough from dogs and kids, C) visible enough that you don't forget about it when you inevitably get sidetracked into other projects while you're waiting for it to do its thing! We had a batch rising in the sun puddle upstairs in our bedroom, one cozied up beside the crock pot, and one enjoying the steam from the dishwasher. 

Dada and I got dressed for Easter, but the boys were still in their pajamas. That's pretty much all I wash these days, and major props to this sweet man who fixed the washer! The kids were astounded and commented, "wow, is this what is used to sound like? It's so quiet!" Well done! I am getting spoiled having this terrific hubby of mine home all the time. It's going to be rough when life returns to some semblance of normal. 

It was the quietest Easter we've ever had. I'm sure many of you felt the same. We attended our church online, and we caught most of Uncle Kelly's service online as well despite their technical difficulties. I'm pretty sure it was the first Easter without grandparents in attendance in a long, long time. We didn't do clues for baskets but bags of candy were quietly slipped onto their beds during the day, to their great delight that evening. I think candy is our kids' love language, haha! 

I did enjoy a belly laugh with Thing 1 the other day when she handed me a riddle meme to which I proudly and confidently declared a completely wrong answer. She started laughing at my confidence and then neither of us could breathe at my answer. It depicted a combination of an angle, which I mistook as the less than sign, like this < which was followed by a steaming mug of coffee which was in turn followed by the symbol for pi. I announced, "you are less than hot pie!"

She almost died. "I got it right away! You are a cutie pie!" 
/acute tea pi/

I liked my answer better. Teehee. I'm fairly sure that line will be worked in to as many conversations as possible when the other person is unsuspecting... at any rate, it was the hardest we'd laughed for awhile! 

Fun and games

Because being home with everyone is not enough of an adventure, our washing machine decided to throw in a little fun and games, as they say in “Father Goose”, one of my all-time favorite movies. I’ve been a Cary Grant fan for forever, and his role as a feisty curmudgeon opposite the proper Leslie Caron is just fabulous. We quote from it a lot throughout my family. Since you're home anyway, might as well watch it. 

Anyway, our washer and dryer are on our upper floor, so lest you panic and think there was a leak, or worse, a flood, that was not the kind of dramatics we experienced. No, this was more of a slow death. For months now it has sounded like an industrial washer, chugging and shuddering away as though it wanted to burst its seams. I did a small load of whites a few days ago and it was fine, perhaps a little smoky smelling when I pulled them out, nothing to write home about. The next load was a probably slightly-too-large load of darks. I remember thinking that I wasn’t hearing a lot of chugging and rattling and vibrating and the usual living-on-the-edge sound effects we’ve gotten used to.

When I pulled the load out, I noticed that they were still quite wet. Very wet. Hmm, let’s try the spin cycle and get some more water out.

Beep beep beep!

Spin cycle apparently finished while I’d been tied up monitoring who was on which device for what class, ad nauseum, I checked again.

Very wet. Wringable. Slightly dirty water.

Okay, the lighter stuff goes into the dryer and the sopping wet stuff comes with me. To the clothesline we go! Commence literal drip drying to start, and since it was 70 degrees, everything was probably 75% dry by the time I took them back in to pop them in the dryer.

However, now we have this:

So God bless my engineer husband who doesn’t mind taking things apart in his spare time. He had already ordered new bearings weeks ago in anticipation of this event, and he’s been working between meetings in our poor, sad probably 14 year old friend. Pretty sure we bought this set when we moved into The Best Nest when I was pregnant with Liam. No shame, faithful appliance, no shame. 

I had a different project today from the usual playing in the dirt since it is much less warm and much more windy. Like 25 miles an hour winds. Not a huge fan of being outside in it. Even the dogs are protesting. So I worked on a bookshelf that had been vomiting. Now our book nook is tidied up and will hopefully stay that way for a hot minute. I discovered an entire bin worth of books I haven’t read yet, so I better get crackin’!

It's beginning to look a lot like SPRINGTIME!

Once again, the photos loaded wherever they darn well pleased, so bear with me through the chaos. 

Speaking of chaos, yes, it really is two in the morning. We experienced some storms tonight and our Great Pyrenees is a Great Big Chicken when it comes to storms. She takes it upon herself to move furniture and pace and pant, and when a large dog moves furniture and paces and pants, you know it. And you get up. Especially when you have pots of dirt sitting around inside like so many sitting ducks. But that's another story. 

Here's a side view of the shed showing how badly it needs a new roof. The lower side is not too bad. The very top, however, is another story. 

I know some of y'all have gorgeous harbingers of spring like tulips and crocuses and hyacinths. I get these cuties with the delicate pink veins running through them. One of their nicknames is Fairy Spud. I think that's adorable! 

Because Dada tills up the dirt in the back forty garden every year, I have to remove anybody who started growing on their own lest they get turned under. I had five of these guys, yellow mulleins, who needed rescued so I transplanted them along the drainage ditch/creek that is our back border. Someone evidently thinks he is delicious- look at all those nibbles in his leaves! We've seen a lot of deer lately, and there are tiny fuzzy baby bunnies being hidden in our strawberry patch, which seems like a dream place to grow up to me! However, we've also seen several small snakes. I am glad they're here, especially close to the garden, but that also puts them close to the baby bunnies whom I am hoping do not turn into snacks. 

Also, snakes, I would greatly appreciate it if you would please eat ticks and whatever was eating my tomatoes last year- a vole, perhaps? Thanks. ~Management

Here's the back garden with the ditch beyond it. You can just see the edge of the fence around the strawberry patch to the right. The dying cherry tree is on the left. It gives us about 7 cherries a year, haha. 

Mentally slide this photo of a trench in between the other trench pictures, because it's the middle shot. Since we live in what used to be the Great Black Swamp, some of our areas are rather, well, swampy. Dada, being an engineer, decided to help things out a little and dug a small trench to help our lowest lying area to drain to the back ditch. 

And because he's an engineer, when I asked for two openings in our already existing fence this year, he made me these snazzy closures that are just like big buttons! I'm so tickled! We used to have one large opening in the side of the garden closest to the house. Last year for whatever reason we had an opening facing the ditch as well and I found it very convenient for filling my watering can in the ditch instead of hoofing it all the way around every time. Made me appreciate  not having to run to a river daily for water and count the rest of my blessings as well. 

Dada's bane and one of my great delights:

We ran out of winter and didn't get our apple trees pruned so they look terrible but they're starting to bud, so they will be gorgeous with blossoms pretty soon. We are going to have to go crazy with trimming in winter 2020-2021. Ugh. 

I still have more dirt to play with, so yesterday it was All Pots on Deck. Some of these will hopefully be lemongrass, basil, chives, marigolds, delphiniums, and a mix of annuals that came in a seed packet claiming to be terrific for cut flowers. I guess we'll see if anybody comes up. Some of these guys are inside on the bar right now and some I tucked up against the back wall of the garage in the small garden outside as I knew we'd be having storms. Didn't want anyone getting tipped off the table...

Deer hoof prints

Drat, this is the last photo of the three trench pictures. Apparently they wanted me to show you them in reverse, haha, with the water going uphill from the ditch back into the swampy woods:

 This one followed me around while I took all the other photos and had been out galavanting around with Dada doing nature Art for one of her classes. 

"Take my picture. Take my picture. Take my picture." 

Consider it taken, kid.