Back in the ring

Coming out of the gray haze and spasmodic coughing of bronchitis ( That sounds so much more impressive than chest cold ), I notice everything I missed for the last five days and mainly

 that the skies are clearing !!

  

Not only that but my Daffodils are blooming and the Mimosa tree next door is in full glory on one side of the wall while the orange tree on the other side invites us to a crop of sweet juice oranges.  

It was Mozzi, I believe, that cured me with kitty energy.  He sat at the foot of my sick bed and purred.  Thank you Mozzi and Monsieur , you too, for putting me back on my feet.   

Don't rain on my parade

Well, since you asked…."no, this weather is not normal! "

 The winter is not over yet but this year we have already reached the wettest winter since recording was begun by Meteo France in 1980. 

To show you just how much not normal , we are getting 5 times more rain in the south of France than Paris and our temperatures are 2 degrees above the seasonal average. 


 So While Paris has 102 mm so far, we have had five times that.  Our total last year was 505 mm but now we are already past 553 mm of precipitation with little storms still coming. 

The worst disaster caused by the rain so far has to be the derailing of  the "train des Pignes" last week.    A huge bolder, the size of a car,  pulled away knocking  several cars of"Le Train des Pignes" over the side of a mountain in the Alps, killing two and injuring seven. 


 Sobering.  We have all been on that train at one time or another!


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2554650/


  I heard from the florist down the street that in Nice when it snows, people pull over to the side of the freeway and when it rains people wait for a sunny day to go out if they have the choice. 

We are spoiled and unprepared for all this rain and that is a fact. 

But the Alps that frame the city look fabulous with their winter whites so the ski stations will do well this year even if the Carnival suffers.  

These are interesting times …that's a fact.  

To Venture out or not, There's the Hairball

 
      Hamlet's Cat Soliloquy
To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell. To sit, to stare
Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal's opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt. To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our re-admittance gain: aye, there's the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
What cat would bear the household's petty plagues,
The cook's well-practised kicks, the butler's broom,
The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to, when, of his own free will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
with a mere mitten? Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbour's yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans' faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?
Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold of decision.

by Jack Kolb, Department of English UCLA 

My friend Bruce sent this great little poem today.  I don't know this Jack Kolb but he sounds distinctly English and he knows felines.

  This poem is particularly apt for those of us with cats… as we have had almost a week of incessant rain in Nice.  

There has been lots of hesitating at the door and Mozzi's upturned face as if we could turn the weather off and on for him at will.

 Today our marmalade fur person is off somewhere, respraying his territory and communing with nature. He spent quite a bit of time last week under the radiator but that's all changed now that it's a cloudless, glorious day. 

One of Bruce and Roxanne's noble beasts, here in Nice

Hunting Island , Beaufort, S.C.

I am still looking back to my trip to South Carolina.   I never got to finish posting it and a few of you are curious to see the pics. 

I am behaving like Frank, a student I had when I taught second grade.  Frank seemed to take quite a few steps in place before he could move forward…and I mean literally.  That was how he got himself to run.  So here are two steps back, or in place…before I get started on 2014 and looking forward.

 When Dave and I left Charleston we headed for St Helena Island. This area of South Carolina is a Gullah stronghold where many of the first slaves lived.  There is still a very strong population of Gullah people in St Helena and at least one of the older ones spoke a dialect which was unintelligible to me when I asked him for restaurant ideas.   We were there on a Sunday and everything was shuttered but the churches .  In fact I could have walked to at least five churches near our motel in St Helena and I considered going to a service.  

 Actually, I would have loved to sing gospel, but instead we went to the Foolish Frog,  the best place to eat and the only place open on a Sunday.    It was our friendly, young waitress who advised us to go to Hunting Island before leaving the area .

Dave at Foolish Frog overlooking a view of the marshlands

 This island is a state park and one of the large secluded barrier islands.  It has been affected by an impressive amount of erosion too.  This effect creates dramatic sculptures of upturned trees in the sand and occasioned two removals of the lighthouse over its long history before it was decommissioned. 

  Here are a bunch of shots of the island, including the only storks we were to see on our trip.   They had found a pond in St Helena.

This osprey had a fish or is that an eel?

Big ole drumsticks all over the beach

The centerpiece of the island is an 1895 lighthouse.

Dave knows birds but they don't have these Storks in Oregon where he lives.

 Dave poses for me

This momma alligator poses too.  She moved into the visitors center pond and has made it her home for a few years.

Early morning start for the road to Bluffton.

Enthusiasm : New Year's wish

Well, if we want to take the metaphor of rebirth to describe our hopes for the New Year then I am excited that I am being christened once again into the world of creation…. specifically engraving and drawing.

I woke up again to the fun of art because Monsieur has given me a whole set of professional wood and linoleum carving tools for Christmas. 

  It may be just a phase until the nice weather appears …. but I won't question this new enthusiasm since there has been a long dry spell where my heart just wasn't in it. 

 I thought that I had entirely lost my mojo. … all of the tricks, in fact, of my gris gris bag that I tried to get that enthusiasm back. 

So if I don't post for a time on the blog , I am probably working on my "lino" project.  I have been experimenting this week with different materials and techniques and carving with my new "gouges".   I'll put the results on my art blog. marympayne:art.blogspot.com

and ….

  Happy New Year to all of my faithful readers.   Thank you for your participation this year .  And, please, go out and find your gris gris bag this year and cast a spell for enthusiasm…. your own.  

That is what I want for each of you, to find that thing that engages you and makes you want to leave the house a mess, so you can go do it. 

Bonne Fete

Snow is thrilling to me, especially since I don't live with it on a daily basis nor see the havoc it can create. 

 But I am also "frileuse"( frileux masc. ), a French word that I love because we don't have the equivalent in English.  It means sensitive to cold.   I have never lived where it is cold so maybe that is why I chill easily and don't often visit the snow. 

 Still I would love a white Christmas.   Snow seems to symbolize enchantment and miracle when I see it fall.  It transforms all that it touches like a wizard's wand.  It speaks to me of wonder.

 It's holiday time, Christmas for some, Hanukkah for others, and for others still…. just a welcome change of pace.  

Enjoy your time away from routine,  whether alone or in fellowship.  

 Light a candle, listen to music and think of snow. 

tumblr, landscapes

Mama tendance. com

Mama tendance. com

Maverick Mr Fix -it

So much for the art blog,  I didn't have a minute to concentrate on it last week.   I was watching over a big project that needed to get done asap.

Apparently how you fill degraded stucco

the steps are going in

almost finished, we just need to burn off the ivy roots and paint the wall

 There seems to be an archetypal maverick handyman out there who works most often alone and with little equipment.  I have found them in every town I have ever lived in: London, Milan, San Francisco, L.A. ,Carmel, Nice.   

   If you are lucky enough to have a roof over your head you will need one of these fellows sooner or later. The names of the good ones are carefully guarded and only swapped about like family recipes.

Many of these fix-it men are loners, rebels, and misfits.  Some of the ones I have met don't do well in the real world, often lacking the knack for getting on with others , managing money, or finding love.  

 Some of them are good at engineering-type-thinking…can solve complicated spatial or mathematical problems…but mostly intuitively without "book learning".  The good ones have a"knack" …what we call a "bricoleur" in this country. 

  I have never met one handyman who was not nervous that he wouldn't be paid at the end of the work.  Most of them will ask for money as they go along even though the agreement is one-third up front.    Perhaps this is because the fix it man often ends up doing some damage to something of yours during his project or the work on an old house may introduce a whole new set of problems.   I have never had a straight forward job…there always seems to be some complication that arises. 

One of the many stories I can tell about my experience with mavericks is the time we hired two lads to paint the interior of an apartment when we were living in a walkup in London.  Since we were new to the country, we asked for names from a friend who was in the decorating business.  She sent us a pair: a short and a tall one.  It was just a straight forward painting job. 

On the first day of their work, I happened to mention that we would eventually take out the carpet and we could use them for that too when the time came.   When we got home that day the walls were painted and the carpet ripped up so that tiny hairs of the under carpet padding were stuck in the fresh paint!   To top it off the tall chap had walked out on the little one.  ( Luckily he had already painted the ceiling). 

The kitchen was the following day's work.   The solo painter asked what we proposed to do there and I said that we needed to paint the green cupboards ,  that I would be finding someone to put wallpaper on the wall and then maybe I would look for some hand painted tiles to put among the white ones.  Then I directed him to paint the cupboards thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong. 

Because of the tiny dimensions of the flat, monsieur and I didn't come back until late that day.    I immediately noticed :   The cupboards had been painted but the breakfast table had been moved to the center of the room and there were five or six holes in the back-splash where tiles had BEEN KNOCKED OUT!  

After I finished exclaiming about the missing tiles I asked why he had knocked them out without a clear directive and he said, "  I wanted to surprise you".  He had.    

 After he was gone, I picked up the circular table to put it back where it had been and BEHOLD under the floor length table cloth: a huge puddle of white paint on the floor.  I don't know if he intended to leave it like that or not or I had just surprised him and he whisked the table over it.  

What was really naive of us though , was letting him bring his friend the "wallpaper guy" after he had replaced the tiles and finished the kitchen.  

 He was so surprised when we fired them soon after they had ruined the second role of expensive Designer Guild paper, on the third day.  

   The friend who had sent the boys admitted that she was trying them out and had not worked with them.   In the end she sent us another handyman, this one did wonders while wearing the same odoriferous shirt all week…. another misfit, but a great worker. 

 There always seems to be a catch if you hire Maverick Mr Fix it.   In fact the only reason to take on a handyman rather than an "artisan" is that they will give a fair price and will often deliver a fair job.  

 One needs to be present and check on the work frequently to make sure it is what you want each step of the way.   Often too, you need to have rags, small brushes, wet sponges and paper towels handy if you want a clean result.  The idea of cleaning as you go is not always the maverick's best quality.


The name Misfit may sound pejorative to some but it just means an "individualist".  I sometimes consider myself one as there are definitely women mavericks too.   Misfits just don't see it the way others do.   But we need them and they need us so I am so pleased I have found Monsieur L. 

 He started by trimming the trees in my yard but said that he could do the masonry jobs of repairing a degraded wall and building new steps to my studio also.    I wanted to get it done as a surprise before Monsieur got home so I agreed, signed and away we went.   

 PS.  The work was finished as of two days ago and the steps look fine and so does the wall.  He even burned off the old ivy roots and painted the wall by the steps for me with paint I had on hand.  

  There are only a few bits of damage to the frieze and lower paint trim but maybe I can repair those myself.  And the price was right.  Thank you Mr L.  but….

  

  For now,  please go away and have your holiday,  I need to lie down……for a week.