#uncoffeed...

detail - The Typists - poison ivy lower left You take a few in-between moments to check social media,{current news/facebook rants/stats on Medium} to see if you're (still) relevant. It's readily-available dopamine. Over time, those stats equate to oxytocin synthesis if they continue to mount. I check my business email regularly while I seek a paycheck; I'm online to find editing clients, pimp out my illustration skills, work out logistics for another art exhibit. Between moments I tend the yard.  I'd do it anyway, but I'm compensated by a rent reduction and I am grateful. There's a lot of work that needs doing here. We got 2 weeks of rain and the grass got almost calf-high. I had to make several passes of incrementally closer shave to get the lawn back to maintenance level. Some areas of the yard grew tall weeds, and these need to be taken back manually. I know I'll find boulders and stumps in those areas. And bees. I got stung twice this week. The poison iv...

It all started with a bottle cap. In those days I worked at the Holiday Inn on Sprinkle Road. I used to meet coworkers at Bell's Brewery about once a month; we called it a Front Desk Meeting even though I worked in housekeeping at the time.  Tim could no longer work or play guitar, so he spent a lot of time watching TV.  He'd usually have thoughtful questions for me by the time I got home.  This is how I could tell what he'd been watching. "If you could take any person out of history - and it can't be someone easy, like Hitler - who would it be?" He looked at me placidly, waiting for an answer. "Just a second," I said, looking at my hands still full of things brought in from the car. "I have to think. Any other clues?"  His face remained static so I went to the kitchen and put things down. I heard him respond from around the corner. "For me, it would be the guy who invented bottle caps ." So it was the History Channe...

A girl of about 14 came up the driveway and offered to shovel - from my car straight to the road, she specified, not the full circular drive - for $40.00.   I laughed.  That's a $50 job at least, just my side, and she doesn't know about the gravel and the carpet . I had $3 in my wallet;  I gave it to her for taking the time to come up to the cottage. My snow shovel was rescued from the side of the road this summer. It's sturdy and can hold more wet snow than I should lift. I developed a snowplough method of push-and-dump.  I learned that leaves are easier to shovel with snow on top of them.  Also, the carpet in the driveway makes for easy snow removal.  I was happy to see the green moss, but wondered whether it was actually harmful to uncover it and let it be snowed over again. I'll admit I had a little bit of fun. Deer were hiding under the trees, and the foxes ran through the yard too fast for me to take a picture of their frolic. Even the ...

You remember my bestie, Abbey the Cockatiel. We're even better friends now - she  flies across the room, smacks into the blinds and falls to the leather ottoman, and then yells at me to help her down because she claims she can't get to the floor from eight inches up. "Go for it, Abbey," I tell her. "Just jump. Or fall. You'll be alright." It can't hurt worse than smacking into the blinds. But she holds on with her beak and inches her feet down until she's no longer comfortable with the grip. Then she creeps back up to safety and yells at me some more. Wait...is that my book? :) I let her get on my arm and she crabwalks up to my shoulder. If I look at her, she hisses, but if I chatter my teeth in response to her doing same with her beak, she inches over and kisses me.  And if I seem to be turning my head she bites me. This is love. Yesterday I went into the neighborhood without her; Abby took a nap.  I chatted with some artists wh...