I went to an art fair today and discovered a few new favorite artists. one of them was jay long. he has the kind of artwork that i could stare at for ages. i love the texture and feel of it and the element of humor is icing on the cake. sadly, his prints don’t do justice to the originals which i will never be able to afford. but you can go to his website to see the kind of work he does.
there were lots of really great artists, but his work is the one stuck in my head.
wow. what a crazy week it’s been here in the happy household. i had a total of six houseguests–my bedrooms were all full and there were non-bedrooms that had to be called into use! i had a fabulous time.
my cousin arrived on friday night. he has really gotten into biking in the past few years, so when we took him out for dinner that evening, we biked downtown. he thought it was pretty cool (and really, it is) to be able to bike to dinner and back. the next day, we went for a longer ride, about 45 miles round trip, to a nearby town for lunch and a bit of exploring. there was a pretty strong headwind all the way there, but it made the trip home that much sweeter. it was a great day–i think that’s the longest ride i’ve done so far this year!
for as much as i enjoy doing interior decorating, my sister loves to garden. and my yard was in desperate need of help. ever since we bought the house a few years ago, i have just despaired about the yard, not knowing what to do with it to make it look better. it’s lumpy, there are giant, scratchy cedar bushes stuck in the middle of the yard (for no apparent reason), past owners of the house chose to install gravel beds around the entire exterior of the place, making planting almost impossible and not really discouraging weeds all that much. and really not looking pretty. i had mentioned these woes to my sister and i think she had seen photos of the lawn before, but when she arrived on saturday evening, she gave me a hug, then turned around to survey the yard and said, “wow. this really is awful!” and started planning immediately.
on sunday morning, i took everyone out for a canoe ride. we packed sandwiches and snacks and had a picnic between the three boats. there were a few sandhill cranes and other birds and we saw some fish and turtles as well. in the afternoon, another family friend arrived and the party was complete! after church that evening, we picked up some pizza and headed over to watch the fireworks. an ice cream truck pulled up to the park. some of our friends with a toddler had joined us for fireworks and when he saw the truck, he said, “ice keem truck!” i was kind of wishing that i had a fudgesicle, so we went over to the truck together and got some ice cream. i think that’s the first time i’ve ever gotten ice cream from the ice cream truck! :)
monday, we worked on the yard most of the day. my sister and brother-in-law (who is good at overall yard design) and i went to a local greenhouse to get some plants. my sister is very good at listening and figuring out what it is that i like, even when i’m despairing that i don’t really like anything and i don’t know what i want and don’t know what will grow in my yard, she just says, “ok, how about this?” and somewhere in the conversation, she’s able to pull out truths like, “hmm.. apparently, you’re not really all that keen on flowers, you just like interesting foliage. especially in weird colors.” and “ok. it seems like the trick for you is to just find a few plants that you like and then buy lots of them so that there can be repeating patterns.” my sister’s personal style is to buy a little of this and a little of that and mix it all up into an attractive jumble with lots of blooming things of different heights. but everything she said about my style was true–i just wasn’t able to put it into words before she did. after figuring that out, we ended up purchasing some big cannas with boldly striped leaves, some elephant ears of the velvety black-purple variety, and some little spiky green grasses–some solid green and some a floppy yellow and green stripe that reminded me of the muppet who sings “mah-nah-mah-nah” along with a few other random varieties to put into pots. and then, at target, we found these great giant lime green pots that were on sale and bought three of them. the next day was spent digging and potting and cutting down the itchy bushes and moving a giant landscaping rock that had been mostly buried under one of the bushes (it took five of us all gathered around the rock to move it). and now my yard has some hope! i’m very excited about it and keep hoping she’ll come back again in the fall or next year some time to do some more stuff to it. :)
our family friend asked if she could make cheesecake for us. (“um, yes.”) that was delicious. we did a puzzle together (it’s what my family does. but somehow, i don’t own any puzzles myself yet. weird.). we watched dvd’s of the electric company and …. finally found the myrna sketch!!! it’s a cartoon that has stuck with me for forever and if you’d like to see it, find the 3rd electric company dvd and watch the third episode on that dvd. it’s a cartoon that is supposed to explain the properties of the apostrophe-“s” combination and it became part of my family’s vocabulary (somewhat like “whooooo is it? it’s the plumber! i’ve come to fix the sink!” which is on the first electric company disc.)
the last two days of my family’s visit, mr. h-s and i had to work, and my sister and her husband drove off to visit a high school friend, and all of my other guests had gone home, leaving mom and dad to entertain themselves. i think they didn’t mind. the last day they were here, new windows for our dining room arrived and my dad was able to help get those installed. it’s the first real structural change we’ve made to the house (and the first really significant chunk of change we’ve dumped into a single project) and it is so exciting! we’re replacing some jalousie windows (the kind with slats of glass) with casement windows (the kind that swing out with a crank). they will be much better at keeping winter weather out and much clearer to look out into the yard through. they’re not yet all trimmed out, but they already look sooooo much better!
oh, and i also finally chopped off my hair! it’s off of my neck and it’s a totally cute cut and there are just so many new, fresh things that i just had to write this long, loooong blog entry and tell you about all of the happy stuff that went on this week! (i didn’t even mention the trip out to the greenhouse in the country with miniature trains and two whole greenhouses dedicated to only hostas (along with all of the other tons of greenhouses!)
i think that one of the nicest side effects of having a house full of people coming this weekend is that (at least for now) my house is the cleanest it’s been (all at one time) for a long time. i still need to clean the bathrooms and do the last minute chase-the-furballs-around-the-house-with-the-handivac thing, but other than that it’s mostly clean! woo hoo!
yesterday we went to pick up the car from the repair shop. we had taken it to the dealership for this repair and they have a “clock tower” outside on the grounds. amusingly, this clock tower plays songs with a chime sound and not just to mark the hour, but all…the…time. when i had dropped the car off a few days earlier, i remember hearing ‘somewhere over the rainbow’ among other songs. they’re a bit ethereal and not always easy to identify, so yesterday when we picked up the car, i was a bit stumped at first. then, as i continued to listen, i realized that it was john denver’s ‘sunshine on my shoulders’ song. wow. that sounds really weird in chime.
this afternoon, i went to see a performance by cycropia. normally, i’ve seen them every year at a local park festival where they “dance in the tree.” but this performance was in a soon-to-be-renovated old factory. there were some really cool dances (my favorite was probably the first where five women danced sychronized in five short ladders suspended from the celing to hang parallel to the floor). they just seem to do a good job of defying your expectations of boundaries and making it look fun and effortless. here’s an example: during the ladder dance, they mostly danced on top of the ladders, making them appear to be the dancer’s floor, but sometimes, they would stick their heads through the rungs and their bodies would follow and they would be “under the floor” and once they even flipped the ladders so that they were parallel to a wall instead of the floor, completely altering the feel…. all i know is that every time i see them i think, wow. wouldn’t it be cool if that were my workout.
tonight was the last in a series of friday night rooftop film screenings downtown. it’s a new series where they show a set of avant garde films to people sitting on blankets and chairs on the roof. i wasn’t sure if we would get there on time, but i convinced mr. happy stuff to come with me and we found a spot where we could lean against a wall and watch. the films were very strange (one was an eight minute movie of light slowly moving over a lemon (like the sun moves across the face of the moon). that one was a silent film. but my favorite part was the atmosphere. i love events where people sit on the ground, close to each other on blankets or just on the grass, especially at night and especially doing something we wouldn’t normally do outside (like watch a movie). plus, i liked that it was only $4 to get in. and we weren’t a bit late. we also saw a shrew. or a mouse. or possibly a vole. it was very cute and small.
i also went strawberry and sweet pea picking today. i am banned from jam-making (we still have a freezer-full from last summer), but mr. h-s says that i can freeze strawberries mashed with sugar for ice cream topping (shhhh! don’t tell him that that’s pretty much all that jam is!).
all in all, a lovely day!
last night i went on a bike ride. as i was biking along and smiling at all the tiny baby bunnies that sat nibbling clover beside the bike path, i realized how much i enjoy my “summer treadmill.” the winter means much more indoor biking with only the tv to keep me from getting bored. the other three seasons hold the wonders of nature. as i biked further along the path, i noticed these bouncy, dark pebbles that seemed to be bouncing onto the path. “that’s strange,” i thought, “pebbles, if they bounce, usually bounce off of the path.” and then i saw one pebble distinctly hop, not bounce. so i stopped my bike and backed up to examine this strange pebble and discovered that these pebbles were indeed very tiny little frogs! the first one that i saw hopped away if i even walked toward it, but the second one was brave enough (or petrified enough) that i was able to put my thumb down near his body to compare. he was small enough that he could have fit on my thumbnail like most frogs fit on a lilypad! so freakin’ cute! i tried not to think about all the fast bikes that go down that path and i didn’t see any squashed frogs, but i didnt’ look too closely just in case.
then, i stopped at goodwill to try to find some more capris–i’m bored/frustrated with the few i own and they’re pretty much all i wear in the summer to work–and i found at least one pair that will become a frequent outfit element and possibly two pairs (the second pair is a little weird and i will either hate them or love them. if it’s love, you’ll hear more about them on the blog later.). i also found another pair of comfy black pants (i have two pairs that i rotate between for wearing at home and it will be nice to have a third pair) and a pair of warm pants from rei that will be perfect for biking in winter. they have a little zipper pocket on the back waistband and they’re very comfy. they taper at the ankle and at first that was going to be my reason not to buy them until i realized that for biking, tapering is in! :)
finally, on the way home, i biked past some fields of tall tall grass and was greeted by hundreds of tiny, winking firefly lights.
when they were kittens, my two cats were frequently curled up together, sleeping or just hanging out. now that they’re older, they tend to hang out in different spots and occasionally have large fights. today, i caught them curled up together in a chair. one was sleeping and the other one was taking a bath and occasionally licking her sister’s head. so freakin’ sweet.
i am such a garbage gazer. when i go running or for a bike ride and i see people’s trash out on the curb, my eyes are always checking out their non-bagged items. i mean, the furniture-type trash. i can’t believe some of the things that people throw away. don’t they know that their are second hand places that will come to pick this stuff up for free and then sell it to someone else who will use it instead of it going to a landfill?! i have even briefly considered making some sort of volunteer career out of driving around town and picking up people’s perfectly good things and taking them to thrift stores. briefly.
so it just kills me when i see something on the curb that someone could use and i find myself thinking and thinking about whether or not i could find a use for that object. i keep resisting the urge to pick up this tiny charcoal grill on one of the streets where i run. my brain keeps trying to figure out if i could make it into an outdoor fireplace (with just a little cement and a few rocks? or some spare metal parts?).
recently, on the way home from church on my bike, i came across a really nice curbfull of throwaways. there were a few chairs, some flower pots, and a whole board covered with rows of nails and perfectly good embroidery thread hanging from the nails! i snagged all of the thread (hello cheap craft supplies!) and was checking out the chairs when i realized that the house was exactly across the street from one of the families in my church. we’re having a fund-raiser yard sale later this summer at the church (hosted by this particular family) so i approached the dad who was in his garage and asked if maybe they would be willing to rescue the chairs. i pointed out that the kids could paint them decoratively and sell them as art. he loved the idea and went over and got two of the three chairs. the third chair didn’t look like much–a squarish stool painted pink with drippy paint of other colors all over it (and not the on-purpose kind, just the i-used-this-stool-while-painting kind of drips) so i think he left it there. i biked on home with my embroidery thread pondering on that third chair. i thought i remembered seeing steps on it–the kind that you can either fold into the chair to make it into a regular stool, or swing out to make it into a step stool with little stairs. i’ve always liked those kinds of chairs and never had one. i finally decided that it would be very handy to have in our basement whenever we finally get the shelves on the wall because then we could reach the stuff on the top and not have to drag a step stool in every time. plus, it could be extra i’m-waiting-for-my-turn-at-pool seating. and it would look so cute if the seat were painted in stripes. ok, the last thought sold me. so when i got home, i called the family who had grabbed the first two chairs to paint and sell and asked if they could please also pick up the third chair for me and i’d stop by to pick it up the next day. i had to leave a message because they didn’t answer their phone, so later, they called back to let me know that they had been successful in getting the pink chair for me and that i could pick it up whenever. mr. happy stuff was the one who answered the phone when they called back. i heard him say, “ok… ok, thanks, i’ll let her know” and he hung up and said, “now you have other people picking up trash for you?!” that chair is going to be so cute. and so not in the landfill.
and here’s a photo of it all done!
i think i’ve mentioned before that the farmer’s market that i like to go to on weekends often has musicians along the edges. it seems that in the past year those musicians have become more varied and prolific. whereas i remember in years past that there was a piccolo player and an occasional bagpiper, yesterday at the market there was also someone playing the pan pipes along with pre-recorded music (mr. happy stuff was so excited–the music was apparently a piece from the movie, “kill bill”), there was a cellist and a violinist duet, there was a slide guitar player, there was someone playing an electric keyboard and my favorite–a group of about a dozen or so shaped-note singers. i sat down on a nearby bench in the hope of surreptitiously* listening to them a little longer. they were wearing coverings and other trappings of a conservative religion and mr. happy stuff had this slightly panicky look when we stopped as he furtively whispered, “they’re not mennonites or anything–i think they’re more like a cult!” but i assured him that i wasn’t interested in joining their religion, i just wanted to listen to them sing for a little while. if you’ve ever heard shape note singing, you’ll know that it’s not necessarily the most “beautiful” of music, but it has a certain appeal and i really enjoyed my short stop on the bench.
*i’m pretty sure i spelled this word wrong. this word has never been the same for me since i listened to a recording of one of the hank the cowdog stories where hank describes sneaking onto the back of a pickup truck as being “surreptitious” and then goes on to define the word for listeners as coming from the root word “syrup” because you move so slowly.
