Category Archives: Mostly me

Mostly me, My own damned opinion.

Newest painting

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It’s different. it has a colorful background and a slightly stoned looking cat.

Goofy cat

I’m still doing the painting project. So far I have 40 paintings. Some are okay, some are bad, and others are just plain weird. There’s no particular theme. I’ve probably done more cat paintings than any others because they’re rather easy. No one cares if the cat isn’t realistic. I swear sometimes my own cat doesn’t look realistic. When she sleeps, she’s so calm. But when she’s awake – bitey scratchy thing.

I allowed my son to move back in and his old habits are already coming back. I really wish he could stand on his feet, but there’s something broken. I can’t fix it. All I can do is wait for the crash. sometimes I think I’ll out-live him. As a parent, that makes me sad because I can’t fix his problems. That’s not my job anymore.

Sometimes, I’m ready to raid my stashed liquor, but common sense takes over. When I die and the kids find all the stashed alcohol, they’ll probably think I’m a secret alcoholic. Not so. It’s stashed because it will be drunk by my son very quickly if he finds it. I rarely have a drink and since I’ve been on multiple medications, I don’t want to risk a bad interaction so I abstain.

I guess I’ll start mowing the lawn. My son won’t get to it. I never understand. I have bad knees, brain damage, bad wrists, ankles that give out, and excruciating pain in various other parts, but I manage to get things done because they need to be done. Otherwise, my house would be a hoarder dump, people would avoid me because I would smell bad and look dirty and I’d just be wandering around mumbling.

Oh wait. Parts of my house look like a hoarder dump – I need to finish my re-arranging of the upstairs areas. I smell bad because I had my morning routine disrupted by a trip to the ER and then to the free clinic. And here I am mumbling at you.

So I’ll end here, go do some organizing, mow the lawn while I’m still stinky and then take a shower. And mumble at you another time. Peace and tranquility to you.

My own damned opinion.

Time to feed the cat and other musings.

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The Gingersnap has a routine. There’s 15 minutes until she is fed and she has already tapped my arm. Next she will touch my knee and stare up at me while licking her lips. If it were morning and I was in bed, she would do the poke where she manages to hit my forehead practically dead center with one claw.

If that fails, she bounces to various pieces of furniture and shoves things to the floor. Once I get out of bed, she will lead me to the kitchen, frequently looking back to make certain I am following. Once in the kitchen she will stare at her dish stand until I fill a bowl and set it down.

If it’s her evening mealtime, she will come to wherever I am, to do the arm tap and knee touch. If I don’t comply, she will jump up on the counter, desk, back of the couch, or table, and sit and stare until I head for the kitchen.

Right now now, I’m being glared at. How dare I leave her alone for FOREVER with only three bowls of food to last for 78 hours! She could have starved! Of course there was still food in one bowl, but that doesn’t count. The other two were empty! The amount left in the bowl was the equivalent of the amount she gets in a normal feeding, but she could have starved.

I went on a road trip to visit my now closed alma mater, Northland College (1892 – 2025). Keeping the college open was no longer sustainable, even with a reduced curriculum. One hundred thirty-three years and now shut and abandoned. From the outside, it looks like everyone packed up for the end of the week like normal, except the campus was dead silent. No people except for a maintenance person in a truck.

They didn’t stop and ask why I was wandering the campus. Honestly, I might have burst into tears if they had. There were only a couple of empty campus vehicles parked near one of the buildings.

This was my first Wisconsin home for two years – Anna McMillan Hall. The second floor window to the right of center was my first room. The second room was in the rear.

I found a Civics textbook in a resale shop up there. I don’t even know if they teach civics anymore. With what’s happened in the last three elections, I would say that Civics has gone the way of Handwriting, diagramming sentences, and Social Studies, along with Literature, World History, and Geography. We have become a nation proud of our ignorance. The great technologies that were to give us access to the world’s knowledge have made us more ignorant, gullible, and just downright stupid. We now lack the ability to sort out truth from misinformation. Just my opinion.

Bookbinding, My own damned opinion., Painting & Drawing

I’m a bit behind in my paintings

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Partly because I was setting up my studio, and partially because I’ve been in a lot if pain lately. Probably because of setting up my studio and too much lifting. I keep forgetting I’m old.

I made a book to hold the second group of paintings.

This one has 26 pockets to bring the total to 50
Latest paintings

There are cats for the most part.

I’m currently 2 scheduled paintings behind. I’ll catch up. I’ve also been clearing out fabric scraps at the Makerspace. I’ve emptied one bin and have the bin equivalent in unusable scraps in a trash bag to take for recycling. I still have two bins to sort.

I’ve been winding the lengths I’m keeping on pieces of mat board and standing the wound fabric upright in the bins. It’s much easier to see and touch the fabric. I didn’t bother to measure the lengths. For right now, I just want to get usable fabric organized. You wouldn’t believe how many tiny scraps were in the bins. Why was someone saving a 2” by 2” scrap of felt?

There were all kinds of tiny scraps. I suppose they could have been stitched into a “crazy quilt” but I doubt it would be worth the effort. If one of our sewists wants to take the bag and stitch the scraps together, I’m all for it. I have my own bag of scraps waiting for me to sew. I don’t need to add to my hoard.

I hate to give stuff to Goodwill. One of the local agencies gives vouchers to women to get clothing there. But the pricing for the donated items has gotten outrageous. Or so I’ve heard. I don’t shop there. I’m going to check with one of the local Hospice organizations that operates a resale shop. If they will take my clothing, I’ll give the extras to them.

My next project needs to be weeding out my closet and dresser. I probably have enough extra clothes to dress an entire homeless women’s shelter. My youngest granddaughter took half of my sweaters. She would have taken them all, but she doesn’t wear v-necks.

I almost never wear anything but tee shirts, flannel shirts, and an assortment of leggings, knit pants, and sweat pants. If the clothing exchange still existed, I would take my stuff there. When I retired, I gave them 7 bags of my work clothes so women who needed nice clothing for work could make use of them.

Tomorrow, I’ll take pictures of the studio.

Crafting, Mostly me

Studio

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I signed a 6-month lease for a studio at the Maker space. It’s a whole 48 square feet. I moved in my drawing table, a chair, and some smaller things. I have a cabinet which was left behind two tenants ago and what I think is a microwave stand. I stacked them to save floor space and form a half wall at the entrance.

There’s already a wall from a different studio on the side where I created the half wall and I’m going to bring in some wire cubes to form part of the opposite wall. The back wall is the block wall of the room the studios are in. I’m debating whether to bring in the bi-fold door that’s been in the basement since I moved in. It would make a good backdrop and I could use S-hooks to hang my shop light so I have light at night.

We had an inspection earlier this year and they had a few recommendations for electrical drops in areas instead of extension cords. We should have put them in when we were re-wiring the place prior to moving in. We’ll probably do it if we extend our lease for another two years and acquire Suite A to expand into.

If we do extend the lease, I’d like for electronics to move to a different area, so I can expand to put in a nice printmaking area. Every tour, someone asks about block printing. If I could enlarge my area, I would get a good press to accommodate a variety of sized prints.

In other news, I’ve managed to do a few more paintings. My schedule has been disrupted by pulling assorted muscles doing heavy work. I shouldn’t have to do it, but The Boy Wonder is notorious for his lack of assistance.

Next update will include pictures.

Mostly me, Painting & Drawing

Where did I leave off on the paintings?

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They’re not all good. Painting such tiny paintings is tough. But I hope that by the time I paint 100 of them, I will have improved. I’m scheduling my life now. I have so many unfinished projects and so many unused craft supplies that I could open a second-hand craft store in my garage.

I’m running out of time. I probably only have ten or twenty years left, or an hour after I leave the house. I don’t want to leave a giant pile of craft supplies that will be tossed away. I don’t want to die and leave the neighbors talking about the craft supply hoarder. Recognition of the problem is the first step even as I sit here trying to decide if I really want to spend money on some more paint markers.

There’s a void I’ve filled with stuff like that. I think it goes back to the nomadic life of a military dependent and oldest of way too many siblings. Everything I had had to be shared. I had nothing for myself. Dolls, games, art supplies, books, and even clothing. The only thing I have left from my childhood is my original birth certificate. I don’t even have my baby pictures any more. That’s the only thing that is not my parents’ fault.

My daughter took my pictures and albums to make a scrapbook of my life. She didn’t get to create it though. Her house caught fire from an electrical fault and everything was lost, including my baby book and photos. A few charred fragments were found outside afterwards, but everything else was gone.

You may ask “doesn’t your family have some of those photos?” Well, no. The Crazy Lady ( mother, dearest) burned everything in the fireplace during her mental collapse. Paintings I did in college which were in stored in the attic — broken, torn apart, and burned. Actual furniture from the living room — burned in the fireplace. Clothing, books, whatever — shredded and burned.

Her fragmented mind created fantasies — people were breaking into the house and taking things or leaving things, the children living at home had been replaced, but sometimes they came back. My father tried to get her help and take the kids, but no. This was the olden days where mothers got to keep the kids in the divorce. He almost got them, but her sister spirited them away to California where her other siblings and her mother had settled.

Why am I telling you this? Probably because I’m just as crazy, but in a different way. No one is out to get me. People aren’t talking about me or looking at me funny. Well, no more than they would any other white-haired older woman dressed in tee shirts and leggings, wearing a ball cap. Comfort first, looks second. At least I comb my hair.

I think I’ll go get those markers.

Newest of the series. So far, I have 17 out of 100.
Mostly me

Bummer.

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I got a bill from the state revenue department almost $600. I forgot to file my annual sales tax form. I actually didn’t sell anything last year. It’s not the first time. It’s not even the first time I’ve forgotten. And I used to work for them processing returns.

That was the last job I worked. I was already retired from my regular gig as a slacker for a university library. Actually, no. I wasn’t a slacker until my last 60 days. I just did my job until I noticed that my completed re-classification work was being trashed – quite literally. The shelves of materials I had redone were being emptied.

My second part of my job was digitizing 19th century medical theses. The scanning project was not cancelled but was never going to be completed as the person responsible for creating the meta data for the image uploads decided not to do it and our boss decided that was fine. (They were long-time friends)

The third part of my job was searching for articles published by our faculty and creating reports for a campus library committee. In theory, I was only searching for medical results, but ultimately wound up doing various allied health publications as well. I attended the first two committee meetings before my boss decided it would look better for a professional librarian to present my results.

That led to my early retirement. My little 1000 day retirement calendar changed to 90 days after being yelled at by the woman who had been my supervisor that she was no longer my supervisor and I should have known that! No one told me that my supervisor has changed and for months I had been leaving my timesheets in her mailbox.

After being yelled at for not knowing who my supervisor was, and since I was doing what I considered basically make-work because I couldn’t be fired without cause, I figured I could do similar activities at home with having to get out of my pajamas. So what does that have to do with sales tax? Absolutely nothing.

Yet here I am mumbling and bumbling. I make books. I do book binding and give classes in book binding. I’ve done a few sales but randomly and I’ve always sent off my sale tax forms and a check. But last year, was a bad year mentally. I didn’t do any sales. I did do classes but nothing was sold. I hope to take part in a couple of small local sales this year, but not more than two.

Here, have a cat. That’s Gingersnap. She was once feral. She loves regular meals and soft warm places to sleep. She’s not much for cuddling, but occasionally likes a scratch between her ears.

Ginger in her new box.
Crafting, My own damned opinion., Painting & Drawing, Watercolor painting

A bit behind.

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As usual.

I’ve been offered a small press for block printing for my area of the maker-space. I’ve been asked on tours if we have such a press. A member offered me a small one. I have a few people interested and I have money to purchase it.

I had been thinking about re-purposing my heat press into a printing press for my own use. I would merely use the pressure plate without applying heat. If the small press gets even moderate use, I will invest in a larger one for the area. When I give tours, I am occasionally asked if we have a printing press. It would be nice to say yes.

I finished a few more paintings. One of my maker-space friends and I sat painting and talking while I was waiting for members to show up for needed help. My office hours aren’t too busy, but I find that having the regular hours helps those who are interested in the craft area.

I included the (butt) pear painting under the improved painting.

I didn’t leave until almost 2 in the morning. I didn’t have to get up early since I don’t dog sit anymore. My taxes are finally done and sent. Whoopee! I did forget to file my sakes tax return so I got a bill for $600+. I’ll get it sorted. I didn’t do any sales last year which is why I forgot. I usually complete the form when I’m setting up my tax folder for tax season,

Here’s an interesting article I found online which contains clues about why our delightful congresspersons, the Muskrat, and Fearless Felon can’t conceive of the needs of normal people. It’s not primarily because of the wealth they’ve accrued, but because the power they gain from that wealth affects their brain and lessens their empathy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-causes-brain-damage/528711/

I guess I should be glad I’m not wealthy. I would hate to become someone who cannot empathize with people.

My own damned opinion., Painting & Drawing

I got caught up with my painting

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Latest small paintings – numbers 8 through 10

Hopefully, by the time I finish number 100, my painting skills will have improved. Working small is a lot harder than I thought. That pear looks like a butt and the strawberries look slightly moldy. As I get better, I’ll probably redo these early ones.

I’m using a limited palette – 12 colors . I still have trouble mixing colors in such tiny quantities. That should improve over time as well. If I didn’t have to be so concerned about money, I’d sign up for a watercolor class that’s being offered this spring for $125.

I’ve taken classes from this instructor before back in the olden days, pre-Covid, but with the uncertainty about what’s happening with Social Security payments, I can’t take the chance that the checks won’t be delayed or otherwise messed up.

And I don’t believe all the ads and videos that talk about Social Security stimulus checks and payment increases going around social media. Until the money is in my bank, it doesn’t exist. Not when government services are being trashed right and left by someone who shouldn’t be anywhere near our government agencies.

I saw a TikTok of some nut-job billionaire saying that if his mom doesn’t get her check, she won’t call SSA because only fraudsters would call about missing checks. Obviously, he has no clue. I can tell you if I had billionaire son, I would call him first and then spend as much time as I had to, on hold with the Social Security office.

The wealthy have no clue. The phones would be constantly ringing with pissed off old folks wanting to know where their damned money is. The rich are just selfish and greedy. The only reason some of them give generously to causes is because their accountants do some shifty accounting so they don’t pay an equal share of their income in taxes.

Okay rant over.

In other news, the sibs are planning a reunion this summer and have some crazy idea that they need to figure how to get me out there since I “don’t drive.” I’m not certain why they think I don’t drive, but I’m not going to tell them differently. I don’t need to be around people who were brainwashed by my mother to believe I’m incompetent, lazy, and difficult. It took a long time to shed all the toxicity from growing up. I don’t need to be reminded of it by them.

Crafting, Mostly me, Stuff

Still stressed but good medical news

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My last blood test results were in normal ranges. In another couple of months if all stays improved, they’ll start weaning off my meds. Yay, Rah!

I’m a little behind on my paintings. I have two in progress but I’m not satisfied. The size limitation is what gets me. I have a chance to start watercolor classes again, but I’m leery of spending money for a non-essential while the Social Security issue is in crisis.

The Melon Felon is going all out for Fascism. I’m surprised he hasn’t had a sparkly gold uniform made. Probably, there’s one in his closet with bogus medals hanging on the jacket and he’ll start parading around in it next month. Enough said.

It was Craft Night again. This time I took a new cat coloring book and some markers. I need to make a list of unfinished projects and work on them. But not too fast. I can’t die until I’m done with all of them. Given the number of items in progress, if I never start a new project but just work on existing ones, I’ll be close to 200 years old when I die.

Crafting, My own damned opinion.

More paintings and stress.

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Sorry. I’ve been stressed about my Social Security check. This month’s will be deposited. Next month, who knows. I used to accept that Republicans had a differing world view from mine. While I’m sort of a registered Democrat for election purposes, I’m more of a free-thinker.

What I want from my government is provide a stable framework of laws and regulations to ensure that every citizen has an equal chance to live a good life. But the current gang of grifters, sycophants, and haters has no moral compass, no loyalty to the principles of the Constitution, no conscience, no care, even for their constituents.

I doubt I will live long enough to see this country return to a nation based on Constitutional principles and laws. Right now, laws don’t matter. The orange buffoon sits at a desk and scribbles his signature on whatever is placed in front of him. I seriously doubt that he even knows what his proclamations really say, or even cares if he does.

Okay. Rant over. New topic.

These are all the tiny watercolor paintings I’ve done so far. It’s a year-long challenge. There are a couple based on Van Gogh, a couple of interesting objects from the neighborhood like the pizza oven and the hydrant, Devil’s Tower from a road trip, and some from other sources. 7 done and 93 more to do. I’ve spaced then out to very three days because I tried certain other timed projects that were daily and never completed them.

My first 7 watercolor paintings. They’re supposed to be this small as a way of not being overwhelming.

The first challenge I participated in was to knit 52 pairs of sock in a year. I did manage to complete 39 pairs in varying sizes from Barbie doll sized to ornament-sized, to baby and toddler-sized to the 15 pairs of socks I actually still wear. The last two 100-day challenges were never completed. I would find myself skipping days or not completing even a single project within the time frame. This current challenge is spaced out to 100 tiny paintings in a year. So far, so good. One painting every three days is working so far.