Playing Catch-up

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get. I've got a new project that's taking most of my attention lately. It's not pottery. I'll tell you about it eventually, but in the meantime, I've been attempting a Picture a Day album on Facebook, and hey, I'm almost at 2 months, which is a record for me. So I thought I'd borrow some of those pics and get caught up here.

In May, we had our usual round of baby birds hatching everywhere. Jim fights the sparrows so the bluebirds, mockingbirds and thrushes will have a chance. We were happily watching these mockingbird babies, but one morning they had vanished. Darn cats!

I signed up for summer pottery classes, was ecstatic because I finally got to play on the throwing wheel, had connected with a former pottery teacher who was going to make me a heckuva deal on her kiln, wheel, etc., and then I got such awful tendonitis (tennis elbow) in my left arm, that I've gone back to handbuilding and don't think I want to buy the equipment. This phase has lasted longer than some.



I'm having way too much fun with my iPhone, yes, me Cat Bounds, who used to detest cell phones. But this is an elegant little computer I take everywhere, and I use the camera and photo apps (examples above) more than I do my serious cameras. Literally, whatever I can think of, there's an app for that.

My sister had multiple strokes; this is a photo of Ian in her hospital room. She lost all use of her right leg and arm, but she is making amazing progress since she went home and even drove to church last Sunday.



My herbs have done pretty well, despite the searing heat and drought that began in June. I've dried a few, but mostly I like having them growing fresh so I can pinch off some stems to toss in whatever I'm cooking.

And of course I've been cooking summer veggies. Tonight we're having another veggie meal, this time including fried green tomatoes. Can you believe I've lived in the South all my life and haven't had them before?



The best thing about Facebook is reconnecting with family and friends I wouldn't have contacted any other way. I got to chatting with Lynne, one of my former junior high English students (I only taught for 5 years), and she and I went to lunch, and then she brought Mickey (another one of my darlings) over for supper. Can't tell you how much I enjoyed seeing them again and catching up......and I have this thing for Perrier. That company will know when I die by the drop in sales. Anyway, Mickey brought me a gift of Perrier, which totally touched my heart. He said he remembered the bottle always sitting on my desk in front of the class.


Marley thought we'd brought him home a live chew toy and was a little dejected when we gave it away the same day.

Oh, and here's our kitty adventure. Jim and I were headed into Little Rock, and at the same moment we saw a kitten on the edge of the freeway raise its head. That little image was burned into my mind, and I said, "We need to see about it!" Which began a small argument about why we shouldn't. "It's probably dying," he said, hoping that would end the matter, but I thought that's the most awful place to die, alone and scared. At least it should die with people trying to save it. So, (long story short) he unhappily found an exit, and we backtracked along the service road till we spotted the cat again, now lying flat. I navigated the knee-high grasses and standing water, a towel in hand, and scooped it up, expecting to find it bloody and broken, but amazingly it seemed to be okay. We took him home and did the best we could to make him comfortable, but I've got cat allergies and was already stopping up. We knew this couldn't be our kitty, and he wouldn't eat or drink. I posted his photo on Facebook, and my nephew, Josh, texted me to say his brother-in-law might want the cat. Eureka! Things were looking up for this pitiful little guy. Josh and Trista came that evening, and Trista immediately had him eating and clinging to her. They took him home and found he was covered in fleas, so after a good bath he perked up a lot. Yesterday they took him to her brother, and I'm just thrilled that Kyo has a new name, a new home, and someone to love him. Anyone with a heart would have stopped just like I did; it's the heartless ones who discard animals the same way they litter the highways with their trash.

And that's mostly it for now. Marley is hibernating indoors. We can hardly get him to go out to pee. I don't know how he holds it sometimes. I credit him with opening my heart to animals....... maybe Kyo owes his life to Marley.
Thanks for stopping by.
Love,
Cat & Marley

Pottery, Paintings, iPhones, and Almost Eaten by a Bulldog

Okay, it's spring......again. We had spring, and it ran away, and we went back to winter clothes, and now it's here with a vengeance, rain, storms, hail, and near 90 degrees a couple of days.

Marley hurt his foot (we still don't know how), but I took him to the vet, and now it's all better. I was a basket case, though, almost as much as when Dave used to get sick or hurt, and when I told a couple of friends afterwards about the ordeal, complete with an American bulldog that kept lunging at us (for 2 hours) while its skinny owner thought it was funny that she had no control over him chatted happily and preened herself in her spike heels and jeans with the knees blown out, Colleen said I should have taken pics for my blog........she was right. But I do have some things to share with you.

I've been going to pottery class at the Arkansas Arts Center for 3 weeks! It's just as interesting as I thought it would be but painfully slow at getting to the exciting stuff like using the wheel (which won't come till next semester) and glazing and using the kilns, which we're (hopefully) doing next week. My first impressions are that this is an art you'll probably be good at if you like it, but of course people who have been doing it for years are better than us newbies, by far. My humble little pinch pots, coil pots and slab pots are not things of beauty, but I'll show them to you once they're glazed. Three weeks and not one finished piece yet........sigh.

But I think these pieces of pottery showing glazes and colors do look like art.

This is Jane showing us how to wrap a slab around PVC and newspaper for support. She's a good teacher and knows her stuff.

This is a painting within a collage that I finished for my kitchen. I'm probably the only one who likes it, but sometimes that's enough. Those are pear leaves sprayed gold, and the driftwood came from the Oregon Coast, my real home I've been longing for since I was 2 years old; I dyed a piece of cheese cloth for it, and that's a piece of iridescent stained glass that I cut in that little square. I wanted a finished edge for this collage and the other 2 I showed you earlier, but I couldn't find the edging I wanted at Home Depot, so Jim made it for me. What would I do without him? Collages on wood just look sooooo much more finished with an edge.

This is a peek at the painting that's been dragging on for a while. It's not there yet, and I may just paint over it. I'm more interested in playing with clay right now.

And I've also been playing LOTS with my new iPhone. It's the second best birthday gift I've ever gotten, Marley being first, of course. But who knew I'd like it so much? I love apps, and there's literally one for everything. I even like the camera, and I have an app that gives some really fun photo effects. Of course you can do those in PhotoShop, but it's more fun to see the effects as you're shooting. Camera phones have come a long way, Baby, since my first one. The first photo at the top looks a little like infrared photography.

This effect is unpredictable but colorful.

And this is an abstract, posterized, pic of Marley. He's on the left side, looking right, and you can see his little nose sticking up.

Next time I'll share some more effects as well as some of my pottery. Thanks very much for stopping by!
Love,
Cat & Marley