Feed the Birds

Here's the second shrine, which turned out to be more of a decorative object, possibly, and less of an interactive one, since I've decided to give it to my mother for Mother's Day next month.

Clicking on the pictures will show a close-up image.

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Happy Birthday, Cello!

Cello's 40th birthday is Sunday, and we had a little party for him today. It was really difficult, because he's away from the office so much. We wanted to surprise him, so we didn't want to tell him, but he kept calling and saying he had another stop to make, or someone else he had to see, and we kept waiting and waiting for him to get back. He finally showed up at about 3:00.

We had all dressed in black, and Dave and John had decorated his office with black balloons and crepe paper, and put black streamers in the doorways, including the elevator door. It was pretty impressive.

Later in the afternoon, there was a chocolate cheesecake. Oh, and leis! A sparkly tinsel one for Cello, and black ones for the rest of us. Dave really went all out. Cello said he's saving the stuff to use this summer when Dave turns 40 . . .

I had kind of an adventure this afternoon after I left work. I had ordered some tea from Stash Tea, and had it delivered to the office. I guess I had gotten complacent with Adagio, who uses FedEx to deliver. I expected Stash to use FedEx, or, more likely, UPS, but they used the post office.

The postman tried to deliver the package yesterday morning, apparently. Although I'm sure there was something there at the office when he tried, the elevator was probably turned off--it opens right into our office, so it usually doesn't get turned on until either I or Cello get in in the morning--and he assumed that the office was closed rather than climbing the stairs. Understandable, I guess.

I had had it shipped to the office because I thought it would be easier, of course, but it ended up meaning that I had to go to the downtown post office to pick it up, which was the adventure.

I hadn't realized it, but I actually drive very close to the post office on my way home every night, so while I'd never been there, I thought it would be a piece of cake. As it turned out, they had moved, for one thing. And for another, it was, of course, tax day. And then once I'd found the new location, parked, and stood in line, I was told that I couldn't pick up packages there, I had to get back in the car, drive a couple of blocks, drive underground into the parking garage, and pick up the package in a different building. Or, who knows, maybe it was the same building--by the time I got there I was so turned around that I couldn't tell.

But it all worked out in the end. I got my Stash.

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More

After I posted the pictures last night, I got busy doing something else, and then was too tired to write anything about them. It was kind of fun to let them stand for themselves, though, maybe. My camera isn't the greatest for taking close-up shots, but at least it gives an idea.

The outside (top and sides) is covered with wide printed ribbon, then lightly varnished. The hearts on the doors are glued-on wooden pieces, and there are various pieces of paper collage both inside and out. There's a little mirror on the top shelf, and silver metal beads spelling out "WISHES." On the inside of one door is a tiny spring clothespin holding a miniature tarot card of The Sun (the card isn't glued in, so the clothespin could hold anything--a fortune cookie fortune, maybe?); the word inside the other door is "BOUNTEOUS," which dictionary.com says means "Generously and copiously given."

There's an image of an old key glued to the floor symbolizing hidden secrets. The key and the mirror are both important, I think--the mirror, in addition to being a reflective surface to bring light in, also reminds anyone looking in that ultimately, we are responsible for fulfilling our own wishes and dreams, and that we have the ability to do that inside ourselves.

I worked on a second one tonight. This one is painted green, lightly distressed and antiqued, with sort of a "garden" theme--it has a tiny pile of terra cotta pots, and a birdhouse, and a little chair . . . I varnished it tonight, and can put in the ornaments tomorrow. I'm trying not to overdo it, to leave plenty of room for personal treasures. They're sort of like "interactive" art, maybe. Sort of whimsical, yet it has a use, it's not just decorative.

I haven't decided what's going to happen with them yet. It's a really interesting process to me. It's very difficult for me to allow myself to make art that isn't structured, to allow myself to just do something, anything, without being attached to the outcome. To allow myself to make mistakes. Although, in general, that's where the exciting stuff happens. You have to get to the point where you're not afraid that you're going to ruin it, and that's very hard. But if you only color inside the lines, you never figure out what else you might be able to do.

So anyway, I'm finding it very liberating and exciting. Photos of the new one tomorrow, hopefully.

Someone wrote tonight and asked me if I had been inspired by Joseph Cornell. I had never heard of him, but oh! What wonderful stuff! I Googled his name and found the WebMuseum link above. Really amazing stuff. Kind of like Nick Bantock's work, but three dimensional.

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Wishes, Secrets, Dreams

I finished the first of the little shrines tonight. I'm calling it "Wishes, Secrets, Dreams."

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The Bloody Claw

Bob and I have both really been enjoying Apple's iTunes. Bob could never really use it before, since he was still on a dial-up connection, but once we finally did what we should have done months ago and got him networked to the highspeed connection, he can actually listen to the previews and watch videos and everything. He's been buying bottles of Diet Pepsi and checking the bottlecaps, and he's gotten quite a few free songs, which he's being very frugal with. I bought him an iTunes gift card because I wanted him to splurge a little, but a couple of weeks after I did, he's still got 8 of the 15 songs left.

I haven't been quite as frugal, although I haven't bought much of anything the past few weeks. I did splurge the other night and buy several songs, a couple of older Barenaked Ladies ones, a few from a new artist that I'd never heard of--Ari Hest--and one that I'm absolutely enamored of: Regresa a Mi, by Il Divo. There's a video on the iTunes site, too, which is wonderful, and made me swoon, and makes me want to go to Italy . . .

The full album won't be out for a couple of weeks. I can't wait!

Spring arrived here with April, and I wore shorts to work every day last week. It was a little chilly on Thursday, and windy all week but even so, the sun was shining, and the weather was beautiful.

The flowering trees are blooming, the herbs in pots on the back porch are starting to come up, and the backyard is covered in violets. I've been making an effort to keep the birdfeeders filled, and every morning there are goldfinches and purple finches at the finch feeders, doves on the ground eating what the finches have spilled, and various other birds at the other feeders, the ones with sunflower seeds in them.

Yesterday there was a big blue jay, too big really to sit on the feeder. He would fly down to the feeder, perch on it for a second, and grab a sunflower seed, then fly up to a branch on the tree, hold it with his feet, then peck at it with his beak to break the shell, then eat the nut, and fly down to get another one.

I have a couple of feeders hanging on the fence, too. Those are really for the squirrel. He hangs upside down from the fence and reaches in and picks out a sunflower seed, then hangs there and eats it. I know I shouldn't encourage the squirrels, but they're cute, and I figure they need to eat, too.

Writing about the squirrel (okay, it wasn't really writing about the squirrel, it was writing about the blue jay and wanting to type "paws" instead of "feet") makes me remember what happened Friday night.

When I came home I noticed that there were a lot of clumps of fur in the hallway. Obviously the cats had gotten into it while we were gone. We picked up both of them and looked them over, but didn't see any obvious wounds. Then I saw the bloody pawprints across my desk, and we found a bloody claw on the dining room table (that would make a great title for a movie, wouldn't it?). From the look of the claw (Dinah's claws are thin and sharp, and Pye's are fat and blunt, mostly), it seemed to be Dinah's, and she seems to be favoring her right paw a little bit.

She won't let me look at it, but I figure I'll have Bob help me tonight and we'll look at it and see if it looks like she needs to see the vet. We're just guessing what happened, of course, but we think she probably got a claw hung up on something, probably my office chair, panicked, pulled too hard and ripped off (probably just the outer sheath of) the claw, screamed, scared Pyewacket, and they got in a tussle, causing the clumps of hair.

It's always been a fear of mine--that one of them will get hung up on something while we're gone and rip out a claw, but I guess now that it's happened we've proven that even if it does happen, they're not going to bleed to death. Bob trims Pyewacket's claws more often than Dinah's get clipped, because Pye will lie on his lap and let him trim them, while it takes both of us to do Dinah's. But we'll do them tonight, and check out the injured one. Poor baby. Not that it seems to be bothering her that much.

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