A List of Things I Am Thankful For In 2011

I was recently challenged to list one thing I am thankful for for each of the 21 days in November leading up to Thanksgiving Day. I tried to do them one by one, but I just can't keep up that sort of thing, so here goes a list all at once and in no particular order:

My spouse who supports me in my crazy plans and even helps implement them with me. 

My sons who are not children anymore but competent adults with opinions and ideas and goals all their own, who are smart and kind and generous and creative and inventive and compassionate and who remember to call their mother on the phone now and again, and their father who helped nurture all those things in them.
Their girlfriends who value their originality and compassion and individuality and do things to take care of them when I can't anymore because we live so far apart.
Friends who support me even when I'm a jerk.
My artwork that has brought me self-confidence and satisfaction and fulfillment and has brought me the company of other artists and has lead me to Mineral Point, Wisconsin.
Nature, especially prairie, and my gardens at my homes and the people who have shared time with me in them.
Music and musicians and especially local singer songwriters that you can see live and up close and musical instruments, and CDs and electronics that allow you to take it home and on the road with you.
Wild Ones Natural Landscapers organization that promotes end educates about native landscaping and the friends there.
Photography
Amazing parents
An amazing sister
The seasons and the changes in nature that it brings. The cycle of a day that brings morning light and warm glowing later afternoon light and night that brings starry skies and cicadas and morning that brings fog and dew and frost and songbirds' song.
Health and quality health care and healthcare professionals and researchers.
Flowers and florists and garden shops and nurseries and growers that supply them.
Facebook and reacquainting with old friends and meeting new friends .
Books and used book stores and small book stores.
Cats - also lemurs, horses, otters, tigers, dogs, and other animals - the companionship offered by some and the gracefulness, playfulness, and beauty of them all.
Hiking and backpacking and paddling and trips to the wilderness.
GPS's that help me with my total lack of a sense of direction and geocaching with my kids.
Schools and teachers and opportunities for individualized education.
Boy Scouts and leaders and parents and how it shaped my sons.

Lakes and rivers and paddling in them and overcoming fears so that I can enjoy the company of other paddlers and the solitude of a solo trip on the water.

Wood and making things with it like houses and furniture and such.
Good food and fine restaurants and chocolate and olives and raspberries and pomegranates and asparagus.
My senses, the ability to see color and light and the ability to hear a voice and music, the sense of touch to feel warm breeze and cool rain, the smell of a damp woods, dry corn fields, skunk, rosemary, flowers, and the essence of a loved one, the tastes of good food and salt in seaspray.

A Day With AD/HD

A friend said "I don't think of you that way, I think of you as wonderful and talented, so you shouldn't bring it up all the time." It seems obvious that she buys into the last D of the acronym, which is "disorder". But the truth is that I DO 'have' AD/HD. It is something that I deal with every day and every night, all day, all night. In a world where everyone was like this, it might not be an issue, but a world where 90 to 95%* of the people are NOT like this means that schedules and social norms are not optimal for me.
It starts most days at 4:00 a.m. when I wake up with my brain in a state where thoughts are racing. "What woke me up, was it one of the kids? Are they okay? Is it the house? Is there a fire? The plumbing? A break-in? Is something wrong? What could it be? Listen, is it TOO quiet?" If I try go to back to sleep, I am haunted by worries and concerns and every thought turns to a dozen others exploring possible worse scenarios. I have learned to just get up and put a stop to the cycle of thoughts. Sometimes it doesn't take much. Read email, look at a project, write down a couple ideas, read a bit of a book, fold a little laundry. Alone at Mineral Point, I can go down to the studio and actually work on a project, but if there are family members or visitors present, I have to sneak around so as not to disturb them. After getting the brain reset, I can usually get in a few more hours of sleep.
But when I am up to stay, options open up. It is my understanding that 'normal' people operate in sort of a routine at that point, but I do not habituate easily. Patterns of doing the exact same thing at the exact same time or in the exact same situation do not settle into my brain as easily, so I need to think what to do next. Shower or have some breakfast or do a little of something in my jammies? When I do hit the shower, I often look at the array of bottle and have to think "Which shampoo am I using these days?" The pattern of tooth brushing and shampooing and soaping and hair conditioning is not automatic. Some days, I forget the conditioner and wonder why my hair is so hard to comb, if I remember to comb it. Other days, I get the conditioner on and forget to rinse it. It is unpleasant to be out in public and discover that your hair is not drying because it is full of conditioner, and the number of times I have rinsed it in a restroom sink and tried to dry it on paper towels is embarrassing indeed. Once dressed and ready for the day, well, the good news, is that the day is open to a million possibilities. I can see before me a dozen things that all seem equally attractive and useful and necessary. The bad news is that I must decide and each decision is cluttered with an enormous amount of data that should go it the decision. Sometimes, my brain finds it easy to choose and sometimes, the monumentalness of the task of choosing is paralysing, leaving to accomplish nothing at all. So I have found that lists are good. Lists narrow down the choices to some things that I thought were important in a time of clearer thinking and if the list was prioritized in that time of clearer thinking, I can just pick the top thing on it. I have lists that go for weeks, as things are added and things crossed off and sub-things fit in between things.
If the thing that needs doing is interesting to me, I can pop my brain into hyper-focus and devote myself totally and completely to that task without stopping for hours and hours. While I am working, my thoughts are racing of course, but they are racing in a focused way about ways to make the project work, about related designs I want to try, so sometimes, I have to stop and sketch out some idea, or sometimes I can replay conversations from the past or rehearse conversations of the future or compose something that I need to write, but that might require stopping to make a note now and then too. But I can zone into hyper-focus for hours until extreme hunger or exhaustion or some muscle pain sets in and brings me back to the real world. Often I have skipped a meal or missed an appointment, and certainly I have failed to do the breakfast dishes or to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer.
Laundry is especially problematic for me, as it requires that sequence of steps so far apart from each other and sometimes laundry sits wet until it gets musty and has to be rewashed or sits in the dryer until I NEED it to wear next and well, that wrinkle-release spray has saved me from my neglect of dried laundry on many occasions. Meals are an ongoing issue. Sometimes, I am hungry on schedule with the rest of the world, but more often, if I am hyper-focused, by the time I am hungry for lunch, it is 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. so by the time I am hungry for dinner it is 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. and if I have failed to plan ahead by stocking food in my kitchen, there are now no restaurants open and well, such a schedule does not jive with that of a family or friends, so I skip that lunch and overeat at dinner. AD/HD can make writing easy, as the ideas just flow. My racing thoughts are always a few steps ahead of my pencil or my typing fingers and can have the next thoughts organized and ready by the time my fingers ready to put them to words, but sometimes, if things are moving too fast, there are too many options presented to me and I can see where each paragraph could lead in any number of directions and I see too many options. It is then that my writing become run-on and disjointed and flies in too many directions. If I know I have to produce a piece of writing, I will try to write an outline in what I know to be a more balanced state so that when I am in a hyper-productive mode, I can translate that outline to words and resist all the attractive and interesting tangents and subtplots that rush into my brain during the production writing.
Now, if the work I need to do is not interesting to me, that is when AD/HD is its most torturous. When I have to add up the long columns of numbers two different ways to get the numbers to match in order to do my books in order to pay my state sales tax and write checks to my artists, I am pained. It is all I can do to force myself to sit down to it and go through the steps. Since I do not habituate well, and only do it once a quarter, first I have to study it and remember the steps and why they are the way they are. Then I can begin to painfully laboriously tediously boringly ploddingly mind-numbingly crunch the monotonous repetitive wearisome dull numbers. A thousand things tempt me away. It is a constant process of attempting to resist them. So many important other more interesting things demand my attention and try to call me away from my boring task. It truly is an awful chore to stick to task at this point. Only fear of the faceless formless nameless Wisconsin tax "man" and concern for my artists keep me at it. It seems to take forever and each step is a new horrible tedious painful boring chore. It is worse than these words can describe. Cleaning, doing dishes, sorting papers or closets or laundry all approach the same level of tedium and the same taunting tempting teasing siren call of distraction to a thousand other more interesting fabulously fascinating things. A picture must be hung, a broken thing must be glued, a phone call must be made to someone, a run to the store for supplies must be undertaken, a snack must be had, a different pile in a different room suddenly seems more important than this one, or as the t-shirt says "Oh, look, a squirrel . . . " "Maybe I should go for a walk" . . . and take the camera along and get some pictures and come home and down load them and post them on Facebook and well, you can see where the cleaning or organizing project went, can't you?
Bedtime? What is that? I might be exhausted at 8:00 or I might be zooming in hyperfocus making design notes or writing a lecture or carving a block print or reading a magazine at 2:00 a.m. and still not sleepy. If left to my own scheduling, I would work feverishly for about 6 hours, take an hour nap, work for another 6 hours, take another nap, work for maybe 4 more hours, then take a big sleep for 6 hours. Add some meals and a morning shower and just a tiny chore or two to that and we are up to about a 26 or 27 hour day, which is very hard to compress into the 24 that we are given. If living alone and working on projects, I kinda tent to live on my own schedule like that, pushing my long sleep period around the clock over time. That does not work very will when I am expected to keep store hours or meet people for appointments or dine with people. So I try my best to comply to the real world with a more 'normal' schedule.
And so you can see, AD/HD keeps my days interesting and it represents a challenge, not only for the management that it requires to get the right things done, but also for the added challenge of fitting into a 'normal' time schedule and to interact with 'normal' people and comply to 'normal' priority schemes, and I must admit that I do not always do a stellar job at it. Sometimes, I forget to even try!
*Thom Hartmann says that if a population has 5-10% of a 'type' of people, it cannot be a defect manifesting itself as a disorder, but that it has to be of benefit to the overall population somehow, just like the population needs very strong people but if they were all very strong, they might have trouble keeping themselves fed. He sees it as a variant that has benefit to the society, for example, to keep the society flexible, creative, spontaneous when it needs to be. I wish society saw it that way and valued us.

In The Artist's Garden II

Bruce is a ceramic artist, wall muralist, potter, art instructor, and gallery owner. Bruce is an historian, neighbor, comedian, jokester, expert in local goings on, and friend. His gallery is on Commerce Street in Mineral Point. He lives above his gallery and his studio is under his gallery, with a walk out to the back garden. There, I have been privy to education, advice, stories, and some verbal abuse. It isn't always clear which.

Jawbone of an Ass

I love wandering about other peoples' gardens and I especially love wandering about the gardens of artists. You never know what you might find there, arranged artistically, of course.

Windows

We are conflicted about windows. We add them to our homes and garages in abundance, sometimes even paying huge premiums for custom shaped and sized models. Then once they are installed, we cover them up with window treatments, curtains, blinds, shades. Window treatments that we mostly keep drawn. We don't want the draft in winter or the heat of summer and we don't want the glaring rays of the sun and we don't want the neighbors to see in.

After a whole life of assuming a bigger house is a better house and more rooms are better rooms, I have a part time living space that is tiny by most modern standards. It is one big room that is defined into living areas not by dividing walls but by furniture clusterings, and the best thing about it is that anywhere you stand, you can see out windows facing east and windows facing west. At sunrise, I can see the light peeking over the hills behind and look also to the west to see the way the shadows of my building change on the buildings across the street and the way the sun lights up the tops of the hills beyond. At sunset, I can watch the brilliant changing oranges and reds and blues and pinks of the western sky, but also the subtle changes in the light and colors to the east on the limestone cliff that changes from yellow to orange to brown.

Sometimes others come to live here and run the gallery below in my absence, and one of the first things I do after I make sure they haven't wrecked the place is open all the shades and blinds. I live boldy behind uncovered windows, not caring who sees me in my "jammies" or with horribly uncombed hair. I want the light more than I want the privacy.

And just as soon as the temperature allows, and sometimes even before, I throw open the windows and sleep as though camping, hearing the varying patterns and volumes of the raindrops, awaking to the chatter of many kinds of birds, and if the morning is sunny, I can scootch over to the far edge of the bed and sleep in a little longer, right there in actual sunshine.

It is a smallish place, but I do so love the windows and the light and the air.

The Very Holiday Front Door

It's a bit late, but now that the laptop is back, I can catch up on some things. The kids went for a walk and moved some blocks of packed snow from the street to just outside the door. It made me smile when I opened the door. I figured it was one of the local pranksters and only later found out it was my own kids. Nevertheless, I converted it to a snowman and there it sat for many days, as people stepped around it to come and go as we left, and there it stood sentinel while we were visiting the 'ota states.

The Ode to the Stonemason

My friend and neighbor in Mineral Point was working on the stone wall of the building right next to mine, so I wrote him this little thing and posted it on the window, facing out. so he would find it when he was on his scaffolding the next day:

The Ode to the Stonemason

Warm of heart and rough of hand,
He builds the walls
That grace our land.

He is one lifetime on this earth,
But his art will stand
And grow in worth.

His challenge to each to do their best
That their works too
Pass what time will test.

Cat and Crow

He had a pet crow with feathers black as coal that shimmered blue sheen in the sunlight. He had a pet cat, with fur dark as deepest night and soft as velvet. The crow rode about the farm on his shoulder, struggling to hold on as he did chores, flying up to perch above on the beams of the barn when he moved too much or when he brushed her off. The cat kept near his feet, just far enough to keep out of the way of boots and tools and trouble, but near enough to catch the milk he squirted in her direction at milking time.
One spring morning he missed the crow landing on his shoulder as he left the house for the bus stop, but some days she was busy hunting or riding the breezes and was there to greet him after school, so he did not worry just then. He missed her again as the bus pulled up to his home stop when she was not on the jagged branch of the oak tree on the corner. He missed the cat too at milking time. He called for them and poked around the farm, in out buildings and along fencerows, half certain they would both turn up soon from their oddly coincidentally-timed disappearances. As the number of days grew greater, he missed them a little less each day and soon summer swimming and fishing and biking into town with friends kept him distracted. It was a mystery he would occasionally ponder, and missing them would make him sad, so he would allow himself to move on to other thoughts.
Late in summer, he and his friend were tossing a ball back and forth in the farthest reach of the farmyard, where evergreens formed a border between the lawn and the cornfield beyond. He jumped for the high ball, missed, and turned to run for it. His friend came to help look, and lifted spruce branches so that he could look on the ground under for the ball. That is how he found them. Perfect skeletons of a cat and a crow, meshed together.
How did it happen? Did the natural enemies that normally coexisted peacefully for the sake of the boy give in to instinct and battle with each other? Were they after the same mouse or grasshopper and crashed by accident? Who died first? Did the crow attack first and dive at the cat and dig its claws deep into the cat’s loose coat? Did the cat turn and claw or bite some critical artery and kill the crow, whose claws remained firmly locked onto its spine? Did the cat crawl off with its horrible burden finding rest under the tree for shelter, to bleed to its own death or to slowly starve over days?
The friend held the boy’s shoulders as he threw up his lunch, then stood silently by as the boy panted to catch his breath. They found shovels in the barn. They dug a trench along side the skeletons and scraped them in. The boy and his friend buried their bones, cat and crow together, tentative friends, ultimate enemies, partners in their tragic death. They covered the white bones with black black earth.

You Don't Miss What You've Never Known

When I was kid, we hardly ever saw this. It wasn't until after we figured out DDT was a bad thing and until after we ceased to use it and the hawks started to return that we realized they had been missing for all those years. Now you see them perched on fence posts, on the posts that hold utility wires, on the skeletons of dead cottonwood trees, on the tops of the largest of the hay and straw bales, and you see them flying and gliding and diving overhead and along the road. They are beautiful. I am glad they are back.

Guests in Town

My guests were impressed with the story of how the women who run the gallery two doors down had saved an historically significant area in town to make it into an art school, so they wanted to see it. We headed down the hill to walk around the place. It took us many times longer than I expected because I had forgotten that in addition to being historic and pretty and quaint and interesting, the place was also a botanical wonderland to my nurseryman friend, with its many species of native plants and old fashioned perennials and landscape shrubs. We sniffed the dayliles and lillies, brushing bright orange pollen on our noses and cheeks. We ate the jewel weed seeds and the wild black rasberries, staining our lips and hands with purple juice. What a sight we three must have been when we emerged back onto the sidewalk. I hope we didn't frighten any passersby!

Weather Happens

My son has helped sand the timber frame for two days now with nary a complaint, so I let him off about 3 today to go paddle his kayak. At about 4 or so it got kinda darkish and I asked the packing-up-their-things-to-go workers if they thought he'd have the sense to come in - as if they'd know. I returned to my sanding after they left. Then all hell broke loose. Lightning crashed close from many directions and gusty twisty wind sent branches flying and raindrops the size of bumble bees pounded the bare ground of the construction site. I stood on the back deck and stared down the cliff at the dock as if I could wish him safely there. I figured the best place for me at that point was near my cell phone in case he had the good sense to be in someones house after having the good sense to pull the kayak up on their dock. I sat in the car alternately confident he would do just that and hysterical that he was swamped in the middle of the lake with a life jacket not belted on properly because they never think they will need them and with those giant pants they wear now with a dozen pockets and layers of extra fabric and that are way too long dragging him down into the lake. Confident in his competence; Hysterical that he was in danger. Pretty soon, he came running up the road wet as an otter and thinking it was all the funniest thing since the bad jokes in Boy's Life magazine. The kayak was indeed on someones dock but they weren't home and of course he had memorized neither the house number nor the street name, so we set off counter clockwise around the lake in the van. Of course, none of the landmarks were recognizable to him since he'd ran it in pouring rain and from the other direction, so we took a couple false runs down some cul de sacs and he took a false run down someones back yard before pronouncing it the wrong one, and we eventually found the right cul de sac and the right house. While he ran down for the boat and paddle, I knocked on the door of the now well-lit house - and who should answer but the woman who sold us the lot. She had been working on her house next door and had run to her neighbor's to wait out the rain. We roped the kayak on top of the car in the still pouring rain and drove it back to our lot and dumped it behind some construction materials in the front yard. He made me trip-odometer the route back - one mile! We drove back to Mineral Point cold and wet while he typed phrases into my navigational device and had Jennifer, as we call her, say them in English and British. Now we are back and all the wet stuff is in the washer and we are dry and it is quiet.

I Built This

The nearest place to get treated lumber was almost all the way to Madison, where I measured the actual width of the boards available and figured out how much I needed on a scrap of paper atop a lumber display, then strapped it on top of the Jeep and headed home.

I'd been using the area as a patio but the plants kept growing up under the furniture and the table was tippy on the ground and the chair legs bit into the rocky soil.
I hauled the wood uphill and laid down a base first.





Floor boards went on top of that, and were screwed to the based layer where they crossed.
After the furniture is moved back in place, the little living area is ready for use. I have enjoyed many a sandwich out there and read many a book in the mornings before the gallery opens or in the evening when the shade and stone are cool and refreshing.

I Did That

The very cool living quarters above the amazing gallery space came with a fabulous clawfoot tub. But it had an annoying itty bitty faucet that meant one had to rinse ones hair with a cup. That faucet had to go, and as long as it was going, it may as well be replaced with the fantasy model that had a long arching spigot and a separate handheld sprayer. The week it arrive by UPS, I was gone so my wonderful neighbor accepted it and by way of politeness to satisfy the curiosity he must have endured while it sat in his gallery windowsill, I explained what it was and that I intended to install it that week. He informed me that he was certain I would give up and call a plumber. And he sent email later that evening to confirm his certainty. So I started the project about 10 in the evening, discovering after I had the old one off to the point of no return that I really needed special wrenches. But I was determined to finish the job I'd started so by around 2 am, with only a couple pair of slip joint pliers, I had the job done and tested and had dashed off an email smuggly notifying him of my success.

Baking II

I only remembered it was Gallery night when someone from the gallery next door came over to see what I was serving as refreshments. Oops! So I came upstairs and checked the cupboard. No brownie or lemon bar box mixes, no stashes of chocolate left over from Christmas, no chips, no grapes or cherries in the fridge, nothing. There was a box of Bisquick that caught my eye on my second more desperate scan of the meager supplies. I thought maybe one could flavor them and add sugar somehow to make them sweet. Making them bite size is good because gallery guests don't need plates or napkins, and what with the environmental theme of the gallery, that is a good thing. Hmmm, I had lemons in a vase, my fallback when I don't have time to stop at the florist or keep flower water changed. So I measured out the amount of one batch of Bisquick for standard biscuits (2 2/3 cups), and zested the rind of a whole lemon into it. I added a half cup sugar and mixed that dried stuff together. Then I added the usual amount of milk, afraid the lemon zest would curdle it and make a mess. But it mixed in as usual. I put some sugar into a bowl, dropped tiny blobs of the dough into the sugar, and put them on the cookie sheet, sugar side up. I baked them at 450 degrees until the tips were just brown. Hmm - they tasted kinda bland, but interesting, so the next batch, I squeezed in the juice from half the lemon after everything was mixed, and added a bit more dry Bisquick to get it back to the right consistency. That batch tasted more lemony, though both batches tasted stronger after they cooled. I sliced the remaining half of the lemon wafer thin and used it to garnish the plate when I served them in the gallery. One visitor asked about them and where I got the recipe and I said I made it up this afternoon and she said you can't just make up a baking recipe and that is when I got the idea that maybe I should be a little proud of my accomplishment. That made me wonder how I could do such an thing, and I remembered 4-H with Mrs. Palensky where we learned how cooking works. We even made biscuit mix from scratch. That is how I knew what order to add things in order not to ruin it all, and where I learned about what proportions should be used. We didn't just make things from recipes but we learned why the recipes worked and what purpose each ingredient has, and when you know that sort of thing, yes, you CAN just make up a baking recipe! Thanks, 4-H and Mrs. Palensky!

Spring Morning on Water Street

The day dawned sunny and bright, so I delayed my cleaning and organizing to capture what the back alley has to offer as it comes truly awake from a long hard winter. This is the 'back yard' of Commerce Street.

Watching the Sun Rise in the West

I sit here, looking out my west window, watching the sunrise. Did you catch anything wrong with that? The sun rises in the east, you say? Out my front windows to the west, a hill rises with stores then houses, then a yellow stone church. Out my back windows, the creek runs in the bottom of the valley, with a few businesses and then a cliff. When the sun rises over the cliff, I can sleep in the sun back there, or I can rise and work in the front, where I can watch the layers of buildings be successively lit by the sun, from the stone church at the crest of the hill, to the houses, to the stores, finally watching the shadow of my building and my neighbor's building creep down the wall of the store across the street. The drama of the bright ball of the sun rising in the east is a glorious thing, but there is pleasure too in wathcing the play of shadow and light on the far side of the sunrise. A more subtle pleasure, but one that can be more interesting, especially over time as the position of the shadows change through the year, revealing the complexities of our planet's tilt and orbit. Secrets of our world are revealed by watching to the west during the rise of the sun.

West-southwest from Madison

Wild clouds in layers of blue-gray and white and slate pile against each other in wisps and tumbling billows with crisp lines and soft mists, shot through with gaps that show the magnificient deep azure of the sky beyond and leave moving patterns of bright and shadow on the slopes of the hills where trees and pastures make layers of their own. This land is lovely, so lovely it makes a mockery of the miniscule troubles and worries we carry and makes a person just want to stop and breathe and breathe and breathe. On a day like this with sky and land making endlessly changing patterns of light and dark, that’s really all you need. To do anything more means you will miss some of the show!

Things in Rocks