Yes, it is cool enough here that I can stand drinking coffee after noon! What a beautiful day - highs in the low 80s, low humidity. We seldom have a summer day like this around here, and certainly not lately.

I spent Sunday-Wednesday fighting a bad cold. The human body’s ability to sneeze so much always shocks me when this happens to me. Getting sick does explain why I was in a super depressed mood last week, though. Today I feel great!

Last night I set up a space at First Friday Indie Market in downtown Greensboro, and it was a delightful time. I had been dreading the heat, since this takes place in a parking lot and the high reached the high 90s. However, the humidity was low, there was an occasional breeze, and the organizer put me in a place where I had a little bit of shade to sit in. I barely broke a sweat.

Susanne joined me and put some of her colorful blank books and marbled papers out for sale. Between her friends and my friends visiting, we had a marvelous time. Our work goes well together because we do the same thing in completely different styles. And we enjoy each other’s company a lot - we are very much alike in personality, and we energize each other.

So I have already applied to do October First Friday by myself, and Susanne and I have applied for a tent in November and December.

I’m not really worried about having enough to sell anymore since I don’t sell much anyway! It’s nice not to be focused on the money. Now I can do some fun stuff, and either I’ll put it out for sale or not - makes no difference and my work will probably improve for it.

I do want to make some small inexpensive books for the kids. Whenever I sell a book to a child, my heart fills up with the thought of what they might do with it.

I went to the farmers’ market and came home in a much more positive mood. Simply put, I’m just not studying those negative people. I bought a CSA share for the month of October from Handance Farm, marinated goat cheese for me and to take to the department party next Friday night, apricot/pecan/cream cheese spread and organic whole wheat pita bread from Annah at Zaytoon’s table, corn from Clapp Farms and Vern Switzer’s farm, milk from Homeland Creamery, salad mix from Flora Ridge, hamburger from Rocking F Farm, and red onions from Faucette Farm. I scoured the red and yellow onion skins from their baskets to include in the next batch of paper. The red skins will be awesome!

Sandy and I will take advantage of the gorgeous weather to put down pine needles over the cardboard mulch that I have spread out, weed, and prune. The willow and Carolina Sieva butterbeans are just now producing. They are mostly vines and leaves. The Henderson bush beans were very productive this summer for such small plants. I might plant more of them next year, although I do appreciate the verticality of the pole beans. And peppers - wow, so many different kinds of peppers. The tomatoes seem to be done.

Now I need to tear up and soak some paper for recycled pulp to mix with the cotton pulp left over from last Sunday. I gotta use it - pulp doesn’t last forever, and I filled up my freezer space when I realized I was getting too sick to deal with it. I’m thinking blue for this batch, with red onion skins. The skins will probably turn the paper purple around them. Yeah.

I will have handbound books, matted woodcuts, and a few cards (see below) on handmade paper. Susanne Martin will share my table and she will have handbound books and handmade paper. The event lasts from 4-9 p.m. Since the beach is probably a bad idea, come to downtown Greensboro instead! You’ll be safe from Hurricane Earl and have lots of fun at First Friday!

“Squirtly”, copyleft Laurie O’Neill, 2010

Really, I’m just putting off having to change out of my jammies and leave the house.

This week was the first week of classes. It was frustrating at times, but I probably made too much of the aggravations due to sleep deprivation. Last night was tough again due to itchy insect bites and a lingering background headache that was hours old. Plus Theo yowling every hour or so. Once he settled down I slept until 9:30 this morning and it felt so good.

Last Sunday I finished peeling and cooking the pears, and froze most of them. They were so good and it wasn’t hard to do at all. My hands are much better, and this proved it.

I worked on cutting down a flower bed that is overrun with soapwort and laid down a thick layer of cardboard, to be covered with pine needles. This soapwort is a curse. Don’t plant it unless you have a place for it to spread that you don’t plan to use for anything else. It sends out runners like mint and breaks off when you try to pull it up. Nasty stuff, and not pretty enough to be worth it unless you plan to use it for its herbal properties.

The garden produced another round of field peas and butterbeans, and the peppers are going gangbusters. I could probably pull a bunch of carrots too. The fig tree is full of a second round of unripe figs. I picked my sole seckel pear, but it wasn’t quite ripe. It has gotten dry enough that the critters are stealing my tomatoes again, but at least I got a few before it happened this time. I had to water yesterday and unless we get some rain from Earl I’ll probably have to water all week. My rain barrels are full so I’ll try to use the water from them.

On Monday I finally heard from the instructor of the class I was going to take. I looked at the syllabus, and after about five minutes of thought, dropped the class. So I do not have any college classes this semester. I guess that the Library Information Studies program really does not have anything to offer my interests, which is disappointing. I was interested in conservation, but this class was all about organization. I might talk to my art advisor again - I could easily switch over to art history if I took a few more classes, and maybe I could do an internship in the summer with Don Etherington’s book conservation studio. That would be an awesome opportunity, since they are close by. My advisor had mentioned that briefly the last time I talked with him.

Tuesday I took Theo to the vet - he apparently is extremely allergic to fleas. I couldn’t find any on him or the other cats, and the vet found scant evidence of flea dirt. Poor thing licked himself raw in places and had rashes in others. I doused everybody with Advantage and Theo got a steroid shot. He is going to be an expensive cat if I have to keep them all on Advantage or Frontline year round. The good news is that the blood work showed a very healthy cat. He has gained 1.8 pounds since we adopted him on Oct. 31.

The rest of the week I pretty much worked, came home and puttered in the garden for a few minutes, watched an episode of Mad Men (I love Peggy Olson!) on iTunes, and went to bed early. I’m back on a vitamin regime and taking probiotics, so I hope that my flagging energy will come back this weekend.

Wow, this was one long week with little to show for it.

I work with history graduate students and faculty at UNCG and classes begin Monday. The week before classes begin is always a busy one. My class this semester will be on Tuesday nights: “Intro to Archival Management.” It is a crosslisted class between Library Information Studies and History. I have considered getting a M.L.I.S. way back to my first year in the M.A. in Liberal Studies program. Considering my deep love for books, both structure and content, it seems like the perfect match for me. But alas, that is not what Library Information Studies stresses these days. They moved to the 21st century without me, with a practical focus on digital databases and web site construction. The art department is the same - it has a book class, but a prerequisite is a design class, using Adobe on a Mac. This class might be the closest one at UNCG in the kind of content that I’m most interested in.

I left web design behind several years ago, when I decided that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life playing catch-up to the developing technology. Plus, I noticed a lot of web designers applying for jobs as secretaries.

Sandy and I visited my friend Ginny and her husband Cecil briefly on Tuesday night. She gave me a big box of pears, and I got to see her preserving closet firsthand and her studio!!!!! which was like a good dream. They had converted their garage to a studio room with windows, so it is spacious and contains a large loom, sewing machine, spinning wheel, worktable, and plenty of room to move around. We made a deal that I would help her with weaving questions and she would help me learn to wrestle my sewing machine into submission. I would love to be able to quilt and since hand-stitching is problematic for me, machine quilting could be the answer to quenching my quilting/mixed media/fabric design craving.

I printed some cards on handmade paper and made handmade envelopes to go with them to sell at the First Friday Indie Market on September 3. Steve finished matting some of my woodcuts, so those will be for sale also. Susanne has agreed to join me at my table so we’ll have her wonderful work for sale and I’ll have some good company. I need to make some more new “stuff” though.

Now I need to finish putting up these pears. I was going to can them but I decided that I don’t have the time or energy to deal with a water bath, so I am freezing them instead. And eating them of course - yum! I love pears.

But Will It Make You Happy?

On the bright side, the practices that consumers have adopted in response to the economic crisis ultimately could — as a raft of new research suggests — make them happier. New studies of consumption and happiness show, for instance, that people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of material objects, when they relish what they plan to buy long before they buy it, and when they stop trying to outdo the Joneses.

This was a very timely article in the New York Times, considering the new mattress and refrigerator that I have craved and really needed for so long and bought just this week. I spent a pile of money, but I’ll pay it off in one or two months from my savings, since I try very hard not to carry any credit card debt.

And it is a nice segueway into my other pieces of life this week. A little over a year ago I wrote this post about how I planned to live out my life. And I’ve held myself true to it. I wring out all the goodness I can out of this life, although it has not been as easy as I would have hoped this past year or so. Regarding the statement from the article above, it is possible that I spend a little too much time anticipating the future rather than living in the present moment, but so be it! I’m pretty happy, happier than many people, I think. Much, much happier than I used to be.

I signed up for Albie’s class at An Artful Journey in Los Gatos, California in February 2011. I’ll be able to spend three whole days working with her at a beautiful retreat in the redwoods. This is a done deal. The first night there I will be celebrating my 50th birthday!

And I signed up for Art & Soul Hampton again in early May 2011, although I’m just going for the weekend this time. I wasn’t planning to, since the Embassy Suites screwed up my billing so bad the last trip and staying there is expensive. But I’ll see if I can find a cheap hotel nearby for two nights, drive up on Friday night and come home on Sunday. It is a terrible time for me to take off work, and there is almost always a family reunion that weekend. Still, I really wanted to take this class and this class, and since it is within driving distance and I won’t miss work, I decided to go ahead and do it!

Because anticipation is spicy and juicy and keeps my energy and hope alive!

Oh, there were other things that went on this week that I was going to write about, but writing this made me want to get up off my butt and do something else.

Ah, a sweet comment from Albie Smith. What a wonderful way to start a Saturday.

So many things have happened this week. After I posted on Sunday, I messed around with my woodcuts and used my printing register for the first time. The two new proofs (Jake and a Spannocchia scene) were not to my satisfaction, but now I see what I need to do once I can carve again. They were pretty good, actually. I got the sly expression in Jake’s face in just a few lines. It was subtle, so I’ll have to be very careful when I refine it.

I printed off a couple of Mama Kitty and named it “Waiting for more.” Then I went to the studio, dug through the books and stuff on the floor from the shelf crash a few weeks ago to find my woodcut prints. Luckily they weren’t damaged. I piled these books up on the metal shelves next to the door. This will end up being a hassle later. Steve is framing a few items for us and he is matting my woodcuts from a couple of years ago. So I should have them for sale at the Indie Market Sept. 3. Susanne is either going to share the table with me or I will put some of her work out for sale, so it will be an interesting array of book and paper arts.

I opened the refrigerator and saw something that I noticed early in the morning but didn’t make a connection. This time it was obvious - there was water dripping from the top of the refrigerator. I opened the freezer and almost everything was thawed out. I’d sort of expected this to happen soon because it is older than our stay here (9 years) and it has been making clicking noises for a long time. But I hoped that it would last until the next Energy Star appliance rebate program in the fall. Luckily I had the little chest freezer that I bought last fall for paper pulp, and it had enough room for the few things I saved.

When I opened the refrigerator part again, it was warm and I hustled to get what I could into the dorm-sized fridge in the studio in the back. We had just enough time to get to Sears and order a new one that would be delivered Tuesday. I am very happy to have the excuse for a new Energy Star refrigerator with a lot more room. And I added a lot to the compost pile over the next couple of days. It was a bit sad to lose so much food but that fridge was badly in need of a purge anyway.

Then we drove to Summerfield to have dinner with Steve and Rita Maloy, and had such a wonderful time. Steve gave me my first full-time bookstore job and I worked with him for 6-7 years. We have so much in common with them both and they both are so funny - I laughed so hard. Almost everything they served for dinner was local - either from the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market or from their garden - and so delicious. Sandy normally would not eat eggplant and he asked for seconds on the eggplant parmesan. And blueberry sorbet! I never knew that could be so good!

Okay, so the next few days are spent going in and out of the studio a lot, and the door tends to stick. Finally I got most everything back into the house. I was finally able to get to making paper with the cotton/corn shuck pulp, and when I opened the bucket, it smelled bad and was beginning to rise like bread! Well, it wasn’t so awful that it was undoable, but it wasn’t pleasant. I didn’t want to waste it. Susanne’s husband told me on the phone that it would be okay after I dried it in the dry mount press, and it was. I added dill to the pulp to help with the smell while I was pulling it, and it was a lovely addition.

I cleaned up everything and took some items back to the studio to store, but huh? The door won’t open. The aluminum shelves had fallen down behind the door. I finally got back into the studio this morning, and I have another big mess on my hands. I had to push the door hard enough to bend the frame of the shelves to get inside. I was worried that I would break the door, but the only other way I could see to get in would have been to cut the bottom panels out of the door. With our mosquito problem, I did not want to do that.

Anyway, that is the saga of my totally screwed-up studio situation. I think that the only thing I can do is to 1) seriously purge to make enough room to move things around and 2) move the yarn to more lightweight shelves and put the heavy books and supplies where the yarn and light items are now.

And really, all I want is to spend this time making stuff. Really, universe, is that too much to ask?

OK, this is too long. I’ll start another post with my second cup.

A quick lunchtime post to say that I am in better spirits, despite the fact that my wonderful friend Masoud Awartani died yesterday. He and his family have many dear friends and he will be sorely missed in our community. He had been in bad health for three years, but in the end it was hepatitis, not the cancer, that took his body from us. His spirit will never die.

I was thinking last night that it is very odd that I have had five friends die in the last couple of years at the age of 48.

My chiropractor and I decided to discontinue the chiropractic work and at some point I am going back to the Hand Center for more physical therapy. I have had a couple of good nights of sleep and my hands feel better.

Last night I boiled a bunch of okra stalks with soda ash and set the pot out on the deck (with Sandy’s help) for the stalk pieces to soak in the soda ash water today. After work I’ll rinse them out good and Susanne will help me make paper pulp in her beater. So there is papermaking in my near future.

Hopefully soon I’ll feel up to handling my camera again, since I am enrolled in Photography I this coming semester!

Just to let you know that I’m still around…a very short post. A very frustrated and depressed post, but I’m trying.

Last night was a bad one with my hands. A lot of numbness, and that disrupts my sleep. Plus, I’ve started getting these frequent muscle twitches in my neck - not painful, but disconcerting. I’m still seeing my chiropractor, so I guess that we’ll address this on Monday and decide what to do from here.

Anyway, this means that it is difficult to type. In fact, it is difficult to do ANYTHING. Anything except walk, so that’s what I did early this morning. I’ll keep this up until my hips say no. Which is a real possibility, unfortunately - I had some major pain yesterday in that region that felt suspiciously like bursitis again.

I’m reading Anne Lamott and Pema Chodron, trying to figure out how to get through this with my sanity intact.

I started Weight Watchers last week and lost 1.8 lbs my first week. I figure that my weight is something that I can do something about, and it should make it easier on the rest of my body not to carry thirty extra pounds around. The short time that I spent in therapy several years ago taught me one good thing - focus on the things you can control.

If I don’t post for a while, I’m probably still here, thinking about all the artwork and gardening that I’d like to do.

So hot that the rear view mirror glue melted and I found it dangling from the ceiling in the “new” car yesterday afternoon. It was too hot to touch. I should have expected something like this since my check cleared and the title arrived in the mail yesterday!

I’ll go to the chiropractor this afternoon, where I will probably get some kind of heat treatment, I suspect. Keeping my somewhat numb fingers crossed. He’ll probably want me to come back fifty million times, or maybe twice.

On top of that, I went out to the studio to play last night, and when I shut the door, several of my shelves fell down and bounced all the contents all over the already chaotic room. I just sighed and walked back out. Something in the universe seems to be messing with my ability to carve out some art time.

I had paint leftover from painting the bedroom this weekend and I brushed it over some old calendar pages and newspaper for grounds for Melly’s online class. And I had some fun with making stamps with sticky-backed foam so I’ll do what I can in the little studio corner of my bedroom for now.

Blog went down for a few days. I did a software upgrade and so far it’s stable. It’s not up to the latest upgrade (there was a problem with that) so it might happen again. I plan to get it up to snuff at some point this summer, and I might even work on changing the design again.

Right now, I’m happy that I have a weekend at home ahead of me. I have fun artwork to do, yard stuff to do, and I found a dresser from the 20s-30s at a consignment store that I like a lot. I decided to fix up the room that I use for an indoor studio/second bedroom, so we’ll be painting those god-awful puke colored walls and getting rid of the pink carpet. I don’t do pink, y’all. At least I don’t if I have the energy and money to change it to yellow or purple or something in between.

I sold the Tercel to Susanne this week. Sniffle. Seriously, I miss that car already. It was the first new car I ever picked out for myself and paid for myself. It was 18 years old and still has plenty of life in it. I replaced it with my mother’s 1995 Chevy Lumina, mainly to save her the aggravation of selling it herself.

So I guess I’ll have to figure out a way to personalize this Chevy. I’m thinking polka dots and a dinosaur panorama on the dashboard? Maybe mermaids painted on the sides?