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! 

Oh boy the holidays are coming…..

Hello Blog…… 

Update from Paine Falls…… the car has a magic button on the steering wheel you have to press exactly 4 times to make the weather alert stop.  Phew, now looking forward to winter again! 

Home today and it's a Monday.  Very odd not to be at work but as we all know the holidays are right around the corner so it's time to start construction.  It was supposed to be a small a job, again.  There is no such thing in an old house.  Everything morphs into dust, horsehair plaster, old growth sawdust filtering through the sunlight on this beautiful November day and softly landing in every crack, light fixture and glass surface.  It's makes the holiday season seem exponential festive.  I would never know any holiday is right around the corner if this house wasn't  in some sort of mayhem.  

It started at 8:00 am.

When we are done we have will have 7 new three pronged outlets, junction boxes and alert the chipmunks, new wiring!  This is the last of the wiring to be done in this house!  I am backwards counting to next Monday when the girls arrive from Colorado.  Hyper cleaning, cooking and steelhead fishing to come! 

Every room will need to be hosed down and linens washed.  I just wrote, wash me, on the upstairs bathroom sink, in the dust.  My dear husband felt this was so import ……. I'm not sure why as we have lived here 30 years.  The mystery of marriage. 

The studio is busy!  Firings are going pretty well.  

I have decided to photograph this work tonight and get it up on the website.  Somewhere in cyberspace is an esty account with my name on it, I am contemplating resurrecting it.  Still on the fence over that decision but I have a lot of pots at the moment…… 

There are alway some surprises.  The warping on this platter is ridiculous! 

This is a first for me, have never had a platter warp to this extent.  It's Standard 211, which I have been using about a year now.  It's ok, not thrilled with the clay body but the supplier is right down the road and it was easy to get. It does throw well. 

 Our local supplier just started carrying Laguna clay so I am onto testing Laguna 614 and 612.  We will see……. 

On the white clay body, I have abandoned my old Standard 240 white stoneware for Tucker Mid Smooth Stoneware.  It throws like a dream and I had used it 10 years ago but could never plan ahead enough until I was down to my last box and then hit the panic button.  The supplier was right down the road and thought I really did not want to abandon the Tucker stoneware, Standard fit my lifestyle and I made it work.   Well it's been ten years I guess I have matured a bit and think I can plan ahead so I'm back with Tucker. Everybody stop laughing….. 

 Love the company and the clay loves my glazes.

Lots of changes in the studio….. 

Love, love, love the end of a cycle!  The glazing is pretty much done, the messes has been made!

When one cycle ends it's pretty hard to start another one without a good super clean! 

Today was the day.  After loosing control in the house I thought I could gain control in the studio, Break out the mops, music and disco ball! 

And yes it's that time of the year…. Honey pots, jam pots, pate' dishes, batter bowls 

and the utensils to go with everything.  Tie a good recipe on the handle, pair it with the proper pot and it's a nice gift.  These little things sure help sell pots! 

The weather here for November has been just stellar!  I have 5 raku pots that have been waiting on my table for a year.  I see them every time I walk in the studio.  My raku kilns are right out the back door, burners are right there and ready to be hooked up to the tanks.  Three tanks, I need three tanks.  Last year I bought three new tanks because mine were expired.  I store them next to the kiln with a plastic pail over the nozzle and out of the elements.  I can fire at a moments notice!  Unless your other half uses one on the grill and takes the other one to his sister to grill hot dogs.  Really?  Another mystery of marriage and one he could die from…..  

Between tearing up the house for more electricity and now absconding with my propane tanks his stocking is going to be full of coal! 

And if you are still reading…… I tasted the sauerkraut!  I watched it on the sink and it watched me.  It bubbled and fermented away.  On the 5th day I couldn't stand it any more and put it in the fridge.  Every morning in the dark kitchen I opened the refrigerator door and it was like a religious experience.  The blinding light would pour forth and instead of the milk I would see two quarts of sauerkraut.  I couldn't bring myself to eat it.  Too many childhood memories…. Sunday I downed my coffee and thought;  Don't smell it just taste it.  I took a small fork full from the middle of the jar, held my nose and ate it.  OMG!  It was delicious!  I couldn't believe it!  Butch walked in and I said: Hey, wanna taste the sauerkraut?  It has microbes for your gut!  He looked at me funny because he had been watching this stuff on the counter too.  Just taste it!  He did and said;  This is not sauerkraut because I like it!  

So we both really like this stuff and now I am making Kraut Crocks with weights and lids so I don't need to see it bubbling.  Think I'll try carrots next…… and yes, always the pickles!!

How much sauerkraut can one eat before one eats too much.  The power has been out in the house all day and so far I've had my bowl of Raisin Bran for breakfast, a half quart of sauerkraut and an apple with peanut butter.  Do you see where this is going….  Thank god it's the electricity that's out and not the plumbing!  

   

Stop telling me what to do…….

It's Thursday and I am home, happy dance!  More like happy crawl, yesterday we unloaded 4000 pounds of clay and 15 bags of chemicals, all tucked and stored in my office.  100 test tiles extruded, two kilns unloaded and reloaded, more test tiles thrown on the wheel, office vacuumed and 11 new glazes tests mixed, logged and going up in the glaze firing.  But alas I have been waiting to rant…. it's a short rant but still a rant. 

Apparently we have become a nation of blithering idiots and don't know when it's cold or hot or where we are going or, or, or…..

We have a new car, why?  Because the clown car has 251,000 miles on the odometer and Butch thinks he can get another 250,000.  The shocks are gone and if I ride more than 100 miles the chiropractor gets a call as my ass has been scraping the pavement for 95 miles.  But the Versa keeps going and Butch is the eternal optimist and he is Finnish.  Love my truck but it gets 15 miles to the gallon and has 150,000 miles, I am Scottish with a bit of Hungarian thrown in, a tight wad pessimist (great combo package there)  We needed a back up.  The car and truck are bare bones, no power anything.  The Versa has wonderful fold down seats and I have made a lot of deliveries in this car over the years.  35 miles to the gallon, it's a winner!  We shopped for cars for over a year and finally landed on the Nissan Rogue.  We wanted cruise control because we are road warriors!  But you have to buy the package so we got unwanted power crap; windows, auto lights and other stuff I don't even know about yet; I still have not figured out how to program the clock or the radio.  The owners guide reads like the phone book.  It's in the looming pile of "too be read immediately" next to my chair, and it has no pictures……

Last Sunday when we ventured out on that awesome 3.5 hour hike, we took the new Rogue.  We left the house at 8:00 am everything was running normally.  We drove 20 minutes south, a higher elevation and the temperature dropped a good 10 degrees.  The Rogue sounded alarms, flashing lights and an annoying bell, which isn't annoying when hearing it once or twice; after 20 miles I was ready to throw myself onto the pavement but oops, power locks and child restraints.  It was announcing the temperatures outside were dangerously low and we should be on alert for driving conditions.  Then it flashed all four wheels tire pressure.  Words failed me, we just looked at each other as we were held captive because of those great power locks.  I cannot tell you how many times we have sat in the driveway trying to get out of this car.  The doors unlock when you pull the keys out of the ignition, thanks Nissan because I am an idiot.   Thankfully we got to the park and hiked thinking after 3.5 hours the temps would rise appropriately and the Rogue would come to it's senses.  After 3.5 half hours of hiking my body temperature had risen quite a bit and I could be responsible for a bit of global warming.  Hopped in the car and all the alarms still went off.  We set off down the road with the windows open to cool our large perspiring selves and to hear wind whooshing instead of alarms.  After 10 minutes we had to close the windows and started pushing every damn button we could find to no avail.  We rode home and cursed the car.  The temperature rose and the Rogue shut up and we did what all good people do….. forgot about it.  Until last night…….  I know it's chilly, I know it's raining, I know it's windy, I have a weather rock!  I don't need my iPad flashing a weather alerts in the dark kitchen either. 

This morning the coffee pot is flashing red in the dark kitchen, I guess the iPad needed company. I am standing on a cold floor with bare feet and an my empty coffee cup, there are no glasses on my face.  But I know red flashing anything probably means bad things.  Your coffee pot needs cleaning, so does the floor but it's not happening at 5:30 am.  I unplugged it and made french press.

The computer has alerted me to low mouse batteries and I have a million emails needing to be answered. Shutting it down I walk away into the inky blackness and onto the backyard patio.  Wearing no glasses on my face or shoes on my feet but alas by the time my night shirt blew over my head I knew it was gale force winds and since my ass was wet it was probably raining.  Even the weather rock might be a little high tech for my taste.

I entered an elevator last week and it talked to me the entire time.  Told me what floor I was on and when to get off. Just kill me…….. 

My new kiln beeps when there is power outage, tells me how many times I fired it and how much it costs.  I can see why so many are returning to wood fire kilns and maybe that should be in my future. 

My dear friend Keith just ordered a temperature controller for his crockpot so he can perfect yogurt. 

Here is my temperature controller.  

 Remember that knee surgery and they made me buy cold packs for some outrageous amount of money?  Well they work as heat packs too.  One on the top and one on the bottom of my free styrofoam shipping container, layer in towels and walk away for eight hours.  Keith I know you will love your temperature controller and you probably don't want this styrofoam box on your beautiful kitchen floor but for me it's LOW tech and I can handle it right now. 

  Go to the studio talk to your kiln or just make pots for 8 hours.  Presto, yogurt and nobody said a thing.  Before the heat packs I used a wool sock filled rice and nuked for a minute.  There is something that holds heat like no other gadget I know and it wraps around my neck on cold winter nights.  Kind of like a cat but without a litter box and it doesn't demand snacks. 

rant over back to work……. 

Sunday I played hooky …….

After sitting in the gallery blogging, not much walk in traffic on a Friday.  I closed up the gallery at 5:00 pm and like all urban lemmings headed out to Happy Hour at Don's Light House, just down the street from the gallery.  We started this Happy Hour ritual about six months ago (the girls are coming home for Thanksgiving, we are getting is shape) and if I never make a sale in the gallery and it closes I will be attending the Friday ritual of Happy Hour!  I have drunk drinks I would have never imagined drinking, why because it's Happy Hour and they are dirt cheap!  Favorite place is LUX for pizza and drinks, under $20 for two people. I would never put lavender in vodka but they did and I drank it and it was good!   At Don's Light House I had my first martini and a bowl of mussels and really great sour dough bread for dipping.  In the land of booze we are not very hipster drinkers so when the server asked Butch if he wanted his plain vodka martini on the rocks he said Yes.  I opted for no rocks, and the pomegranates. I figure I have enough rocks already, I really don't need anymore and I wanted something healthy like pomegranate.  Our drinks were served immediately; mine in a traditional fancy schmancy martini glass and his in a short stout glass with ice….. and immediately the whining started.  Hey why did you get yours in a fancy glass and I got mine in this one? How come yours is pink and mine is clear?  Because you ordered plain and rocks!  It's the same drink with ice. But yours is pink.. Fine, do you want to trade so you can have the fancy schmancy glass and get healthy?  No, I'm fine…….. then the two huge plates of mussels appeared with a plate of sourdough bread and we forgot about the drinks…..  

We ate, we drank and all for $20 plus tip.  

We stopped in the Waterloo Arts district for the art walk.  I feel in love with praxisfiberworkshop  and then walked down to the Brick Ceramic + Design Studio  Love Love Love this place and wish them so much good. Cleveland really needs a place like this! 

Ran home to put the chickens up for the night before the night stalkers were out and about.  Landed in the driveway around 7:15 pm all was safe!  They are all molting and there are feathers everywhere, I never know if one has been a snack for the rowdy raccoons or just dropping feathers.  This time it was feather dropping,  they look awful and told them they should be ashamed.  Yes, I have sunk to chicken shaming. 

Ran back in the house and dashed upstairs to grab a sweatshirt, made the mistake of laying down on the bed for two seconds.  I never got back up, 11.5 hours later I woke up in my clothes at 6:00 am!  Next to me sawing logs, in his night clothes, Butch fast asleep! It could have been Big Foot I would have never know or cared.  Never heard him, never heard the elephants in the attic either.  After a week of sleeping with a flashlight, one martini, and late nights of pottery making I crashed! Crashed and burned! Found my work clothes in the dark, swore off martinis, made coffee, let sleeping giant lay and I felt pretty good.  Out in the studio by 7 am.  Loads done in the studio, worked until 11 pm that night, a few breaks along the day.  

 The elephants final got bisqued, now if I could just get them out of the attic! 

Sunday morning I never made it back to the studio and instead spent 4 hours hiking the local park and doing food prep for the week to come. 

 

We are sooooo camping out here as soon as we can get away! 

Fall in Ohio is just beautiful! 

Who knew deer loved to play volleyball when nobody is looking! 

First batch of sauerkraut is bubbling on the counter!  I cannot believe I made this as I have nightmares of the stuff in my folks basement.  Crocks of bubbling stinking stuff, it was at my Grandma's too.  

I'm not even sure I will like this but after reading the virtues of lacto-fermentation and apparently my gut needing this wild bacteria or yeast or stuff just floating around and landing on random cabbage I thought I would try it. My gut also needs a pair of suspenders.  I used the leftover whey from the yogurt which I usually feed the chickens.  One more day and I can taste it…Ooooo I can hardly wait. 

And everybody has bad sauerkraut story……. just ask them! 

We also picked up a Sunday paper and took the time to read it!  I can tell the holidays are coming, has anyone else noticed that you can buy a pallet of toilet paper for $6.00?  What a great way to tell me the relatives are coming…..

Another kick butt week here in the Falls

     Oh what to write about..... I am sitting in the gallery on a lovely Friday with no foot traffic to speak of so I started jotting down notes.  Thought this would be the shortest post to date but whoa, stuff happens!

     Here's the recap ..... And I wonder where October went!  

Let's just talk about October and the best holiday on the calendar, Halloween!  We, two old people, live in the old caretakers house across from an old cemetery, catch the drift here?  What is better on Halloween?!  Some years we get loads of kids and this year we didn't.  But we had candy for loads of kids!  It's in a big bowl by the front door, when Halloween is over we leave our lights on an extra hour hoping there might be a few lagging beggars, nope!  The light gets turned out, do we move the bowl? Nope.  What do I  have to walk past every time I get the mail or go to bed or get coffee in the morning?   Yup, the bowl....... Which after a week, is empty and the two old people who live in the old house across from the old cemetery can't bend over without grunting, all in seven days. It's like we were bulking up for Armageddon or just winter.  Isn't there a rule somewhere, if a candy bar doesn't have Carmel it doesn't count..... So that left Kit Kats and Reese Cups (peanut butter flavored crisco,dunked in chocolate) who can resist those?  And what about all those tiny wrappers?  I think I tucked ten in my sock so I couldn't count.

And if things couldn't get any scarier we had an election a few days later!  I vote, I always vote, you can't bitch if you don't vote and I rock the bitch end.  Our little local election all in all went well, sort of, no big surprises and the school levy passed.  We have voted in the same place for 30 years.  There were always the old retired librarians.  The ladies that normally sitat the table with their thermos of coffee and tin lined with waxed paper and homemade cookies wasn't there this time.  Different worker bees, turnover I guess.  A lovely woman escorted me to the ballot box and talked the entire time.  Arriving at the ballot box she announced: well I'm not gonna tell ya who to vote for but just do your Christian thing!  Whaaaaat?!  I voted and ran away.  Nothing is sacred anymore, not the voting booth and not politics as I just heard a certain Republican candidate preach about the pyramids being built so Joseph could store grain for his people not bury a bunch of dead Pharaoh's.  It's science people!  What happened to science?  And you can't possibly run a country on fairy tales!  I am so tired of shaking my wand at people it ridiculous!

And speaking of ridiculous...... I was asked to send a carved teapot and tea bowl to a lovely show.  Great exposure, yadda yadda yadda.  Price for both; $205 total.  Last week I received a check in the mail for $95.  Commission over 50% and I paid the shipping..... Awesome, my ego thanks you, my other self needs to pay the electric bill.

School, great tests from the kiln last week! 

So much information!  Glaze post this weekend for anyone interested!

Working into the wee hours this past week too.

I hit the bed around midnight and dead sleep until at 2:30, some creature was scurrying around and woke me up.  It's fall, everybody wants a bed and a candy bar.  I have been up for two nights trying to figure out what it is and exactly where it is.  This morning I lay in the darkness with a flashlight clutched to my chest and I heard it!  Zapp, flashlight on and nothing is there.  I am loosing my marbles because I am stealth! Turn off the light and lay in wait.... Thank god it was a flashlight and not a bazooka, the house would be leveled.  This went on for two hours while Butch sawed logs, big logs.  What animal would even venture into this house with noise like that?  I have set traps and still nothing.  I think it's between the floor and the ceiling, I think it's an elephant. 

And I can't help thinking in the darkness, I bet he is chewing on all that wiring we just put in, mmmmmm tasty new plastic.  I am on high alert for smoke, scurrying, voltage zaps and I am sleep deprived..... Stay tuned.....

In other news..... I'm back to making yogurt and trying my hand at lacto fermented sauerkraut.  Yup, riveting stuff here!

Another week in my fabulous life…...

It's that time of the year when I jump in the shower and wonder which one of us left the Starbucks coffee cup in the corner next to the soap.  It is paper but then it has a plastic lid to keep the suds out so you can drink and shower.  Hmmm…. I hope it was Butch but it could have been me but then I can't remember and really it is genius! 

Work is picking up as students finish projects and the semester ticks by.  Things heard in class this week.  This is the part of my job I love because I am not an instructor I am the lowly lab tech who scurries around loading kilns, grinding kiln shelves and mixing glazes. If you have a breathing mask on you become invisible!  It's like having super powers!  

 Last week I could be found on my hands and knees scrubbing display cases and got super excited when I found a 1975 nickel!  Who said this job didn't pay?  While on my hands and knees a young girl sat in the hall lamenting to her instructor how she just couldn't work today because her job sucked at Big Lots.  She spent yesterday on her hands and knees inventorying stock, wiping down shelves and moving bottles of juice and …… she was crying!  Her instructor says:  Oh honey I am so sorry, wow thats really awful.  I'll see you on Monday.  WTF? I am right there!  On my hands and knees moving glass display cases that weigh as much as a VW bus and ceramic sculpture giant things students made 10 years ago and sweating like the beast I am!  Hey "Honey" I am having a party here and I am 60!  She walked past my mess of dirty buckets of water and clay crap everywhere and looked down at me……. nothing, not even a hello. Oh wait, that's right I am invisible!  Hope she didn't hear my invisible mouth say, screw you. Ok,  I said the "F" word and I said it with gusto! 

Best comment last week…… another young girl say something I say all the time, and I quote:

"I can't possibly throw in leather pants!"  If I were the instructor I would of said; leather pants are great and we can hose you down at the end of class.  Nope, she left and came back two days later in Pleather (plastic leather that you really can hose down)  

Once again I had my mask on mixing glazes when I over heard a student in the throwing room exclaim she was in fact a super virgin!  Well this got me giggling into my mask and I almost hyperventilated.  

What the hell is super virgin and do you get to wear a cape?  Saving peoples virginity before lunch!  

Whoosh, off to the parking lot to check vans and the steamy windows of Smart Cars because I see quite a few of those in the parking lot and can you imagine loosing your virginity in a Smart car?  Give me a Buick I say or even better a Chysler Newport!  

After work I have managed to work in my studio until 10:30 or 11:00 pm and stuff is getting done but I have become a bit of a troll and have the hygiene to prove it! 

In deed the two people who are supposed to be blissfully married and living together in reality, just grunt at each other as we move through the darkness of the house at odd hours of the night coming or going, which explains the Starbucks coffee cup in the shower.

We made a pact that we would joyfully get up on Sunday mornings and start hiking.  This could kill me,  I have only fallen down one embankment and my prince charming came to my rescue!  Well actually he said:  What are you doing down there?  and that concluded our second hike.  

Thought you might enjoy last Sundays hike.  

and I am getting stuff done…… really.

Ok I am really late for work and I still have to vote!  Go vote it's your civic duty….. don't be invisible!