Sunday, November 22, 2015

Eeeeck, They Are On There Way……..



The season is officially on and the Chick-lets are making their way to our door.
We are preparing…… 


The soup is on, the paleo-pumpkin custard has been baked, the elf has started the decorating insanity (he just loves) and I am drinking…. 
Bloody Mary's are the drink of the weekend here at happy acres.  By the time I got to three-sies I was riding the vacuum.  

Since the last post the dust settled, the wires have all been tested and the clean up has started.  We are panic cleaning per usual as it's been a whacked out week ……. again.  We hit the floor yester-morn with mops, buckets and dust rags.  Butch hit the downstairs and I started up.  The Chick-lets had left their rooms in pretty good shape after the last visit so I carefully calculated 2 hours tops and then out to the studio.  Time to do the Mom thing and strip the beds, dust and spramp things up a bit.  Filtering down through the long shadows of daylight, I watched dancing snowflakes through the grimy window panes, hmmm guess it's time to take out the air conditioners.  Finding the screwdriver, easy cheesy and lugged them downstairs to the back door where they will be bagged and tagged for next year.  Upstairs I ripped a pillowcase off the bed and stood back gasping.  Holy stink bug heaven.  There was a whole army of stink bugs between the pillows!!!  GROSS!  I ran for the hand broom and swept them up in a dust pan, dashing to the bathroom and giving them the swirly flush-o-rama ride to eternity!  Ran back to the bed and pulled more pillows, more stink bugs than the last pillow.  They were between the pillowcases, sheets, mattress pad and mattress, every nook and dark cranny in that room had stink bugs.  There were hundreds of the stinking little bastards.  At one point I abandoned the the hand broom and scooped them up with my hands, running to the bathroom screaming.  Then in a flash of panic I grabbed the vacuum.  OMG, I am brilliant and sucked them up way faster than the hand broom!  As I sucked and danced; singing Die Another Day (thank you Madonna)  And then I gasped and chocked a little, when they hit the dust cup and are pinned to the side of the cup by the cyclone force they exploded sending stink fumes into my breathing space.  Wonder if Mr. Dyson considered stink bugs when he invented this vacuum?  I don't think I even have words for the 2 hour cleaning job that morphed into a day and a half.  Every curtain washed, all bedding, mattresses flipped, chairs flipped, closets turned out and vacuumed.  Wow the upstairs is clean!  The weird part is we live here and once fall hits we see one or two walking down the wall but that's it!  When you looked in both the rooms they looked clean, no sign of stink bugs and no smell until they get riled up and tossed around.  We have had two HARD winters, apparently it's doesn't bother the stink bugs.  The room next to magnolia tree was the absolute worst!  No branches touch the house but they fly, like B52 bombers, landed on the air conditioner and apparently sent up a flag to their fellow stinkers. 
They entered the rooms through the vents of the AC window units.   I'm gonna have nightmares tonight.  This is the same room that had the fleas….. it will now be referred to as the infestation room. 

I don't think I was home one night last week and things got down right cranky by Friday.   School has been crazy!  It's the last final weeks of class so firing every day has commenced.  Kiln shelves scraped, as fast as the kilns go up, they come down are unloaded and repacked.  Then it was time to run the tests on the new Laguna clay 614 to see if it's compatible with our glazes (remember that 4,000 pounds in my office)  .  And then I had to mix up 6 or 8 or was it 12 new tests just for fun…… 


and about the time I was getting really cranky the Audit students popped in my office/storage closet and surprised me out of my socks.  A great bottle of vodka, a gift card for a fancy restaurant and the nicest card ever, thanking  me for the hard work.  Well bowl me over and pour the vodka!  Makes you work a little harder and with a smile.  The Audits, all five of them just rocked my world last week and it could not have come at a better time, when I was pretty bitchy.  Thank you, thank you, thank you! 

Wednesday we had an Northern Ohio Clay meeting.  We had a fantastic lecture by the new guy at Kent; Peter Christian Johnson I could have listened to him for another hour.  His lecture was followed by Seth Nagelberg, Asst. professor and new chair of the ceramics dept at Cleveland Institute of Art.
So good to see a big turn out, see old friends and new friends, and of course see a table full of amazing food made by potters and served in pots made by potters!  We rock!  
And thank you Valerie at the The Brick for hosting! 

Thursday there was a faculty exhibit at the college and I dashed up to see the work. I'm not faculty so no work from me.  I'm great standing behind a counter greeting people in my gallery but honestly this schmoozing and small talk crap makes me nuts.  I am a fish out of water and please don't ask my opinion because you're going to get it and you won't probably won't like it.  I'm old and I'm honest. 
 I made a loop, said Hi to my boss and a few friends, saw Mary and left.  Home to pack for W78th. 

Friday another Third Friday Opening at the gallery!  I made room for Mike Taylor's work this month.  Mikes work will be on display until Christmas.  Mike founded http://www.westmichiganclay.com in 1994 and I like his pots…… a lot! 



The ferns and lanterns have been moved and the new plates and platters are a nice addition. 
I am not hanging one christmas ornament until the day after Thanksgiving!  And I don't want to hear one Christmas carol until the day after Thanksgiving!   I'll be open for 
Black Friday from 3pm to 7 pm  INFORMATION …...


I am the mug queen, Friday night I sold over 25 mugs in two hours.  I should have run back to the studio Saturday to make mugs but instead I was sucking up stink bugs.  I did get a few pots made though….. 


And it's time for me to be mixing my own glazes.  I have this thing about blue glaze, I don't use it.  Every potter makes something with blue glaze.  Not me, ever.  It's a hard line in the sand I have drawn about blue glaze.  I hear floating blue and drop to my knees screaming.  
I have a cone 8 icy green, almost blue glaze the works pretty well on porcelain but it's green!  My bucket was almost empty so I mixed up a 7500 gram batch.  Spent a day glazing and fired the kiln.  Came home from work and opened the lid to unload.  Are you kidding me?  Apparently I was little heavy handed with the cobalt, just like I was with the vodka this morning.  


I was ready to smash the whole load but it's porcelain and it's carved so I packed it up for the gallery. 
I have pale yellow dinnerware that has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust.  Guess what looks great with pale yellow ….. these blue dishes!  Hammer put away…… 

And here the biggest news of all!  Daughter #2 has declared loudly over the years…. I HATE NATURE!  Abby, let's go fishing!  I'd rather walk on fire to get to the mall.  Her Victoria Secrets catalog keep showing up here …… its a comedy catalog for me!  Anyway out there in the mountains of Colorado she had a come to Jesus moment last week.  She asked her sister if she could teach her to fish.  I got a phone call immediately!  Hey Mom, I'm taking Abby fishing.  Why?  She just figured out if she is ever going get a date up here in the mountains she better learn to fish.  So it's about dating, not fishing, right?  Right, but I'm taking her fishing.  



Hahahaha she's hooked!  Her first fish and she almost wet her pants and then she cried a little.  
Ok this makes me crazy because I now have two daughter who love to fish and fish more than I do!  All the years they were at home and I begged them to come to the river with me they thought it was awful.  Ten years later I'm still in the river, fishing alone!  I predict fishing trips in the near future! 






























10 comments:

  1. when we were living in our motorhome looking for a place to live we had an invasion of those stink bugs, they were everywhere and our cats wouldn't even go near them. I'd wake up in the middle of the night hearing them buzzing around.

    your blue looks matt ? I like a rutile blue.

    been years since I've been fishing but I remember those mountain trout and lake kokanee were so good cooked over the campfires

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  2. Another cool post. I was almost out of breath by the time I finished reading.
    Just when we think we have it all together the kiln gods give one more kick in the pants! It's good that this one worked out well!

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  3. Morning Linda Starr! I remember reading your adventures in the mobile home!!

    We are headed to the river to soak a line this morning and I bet into the afternoon! On the river, very excited!!

    We will probably be eating turkey for thanksgiving and not fish though 😄

    Have a great Thanksgiving!

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  4. Good Morning Suzi! The kiln gods have to be laughing and chanting...... See we told you there was a place for blue!

    Have a great Thanksgiving! Hope you put your feet up and someone else is doing the dishes 😀

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  5. We are battling stink bugs as well... but not in the epic proportions that you are!
    Happy Thanksgiving!

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  6. They have got to be about done as the freeze has set in up here! Happy Thanksgiving Michèle!

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  7. Happy thanksgiving to you and yours.
    I was so ready for a break.
    Good luck with those bugs they are gross!
    I'll be looking for a bottle of cheer from my students, hint, hint.

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  8. Have a Happy, bugless, Thanksgiving with the family!

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  9. Happy Thanksgiving Meredith!! Yes, this break was needed!! Eating turkey today to head back into the trenches on Monday! Christmas vacation is coming!!

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  10. Brenda! And a belated Happy Thanksgiving to you! So far one is down with some ick, and the other one is giddy with oxygen overload! Yeah for holidays!

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