Bam.

(Guess which one is my pony...the one with dimples.)

I always hope to conjure up a more silky, ease-into-it start to a blog post - especially when it's been almost a month since my last post - but sometimes it's just BAM. Here I am.

I'm snacking on celery with peanut butter, stopping every other bite to de-string the stalk. If it weren't for those pesky strings I'd eat celery way more. I think somebody fogged our house with a strange, odorless chemical over the weekend because, you guys, my ponies are cleaning their rooms. CLEANING THEIR ROOMS!! Without my request. They woke up and, like, just had the idea all on their own. And we're not talking surface cleaning. They are full on, hard core, vigilante style cleaning. Going-through-old-birthday-cards-that-have-been-stored-in-a-box-under-the-bed-and-throwing-out-dried-nail-polish-bottles clean. The hall has growing mounds of "get rid of" piles. I don't even care that I look like a spy dodging laser beams when trying to get from my office at one end to the living room at the other end. They have music playing and everything. I'm sniff sniff getting all weepy sniff sniff...so proud of my little organizers sniff sniff!

I've had such a circus of life and head-stuff going on I could write and write and write and still just scratch the surface. This post could go any direction: "life is so amazing" or "what the bleep am I doing?" or "everything's just as it should be and I'm totally chill with it all" or "it's time to dump the whole thing on it's head and start all over". Yeah. It's all part of the circus. It's all pretty good too. I'm not a-feared of looking into the deepest of deeps and somehow manage not to spill my cuppa laugh juice while in the dive. I suppose it makes me hard to read to some folks but theman...theman always sees every layer, every beautiful and wrinkled and festering and luminous and expanding and dying off layer of me and somehow manages to still want to tie himself to my soul. I'm mostly at a loss for words when it comes to trying to express how grateful I am and how unbalanced I'm pretty sure it is - what he puts up with compared to what he receives in return. I grow him a garden and sometimes make dinner. Sometimes I clean the house too. Sometimes I make him apple pie and carrot cake. Other than that....

The Lake Oswego show was an awesome experience. HUGE thanks to everyone who purchased a painting from me! You are the coolest people - coming out in the rain, looking at my work, loving it enough to buy it. I'm grateful beyond words. Frank and Kathy...dang, was it Kathy?...the cutest people of the whole weekend. A retired couple with a zest for life and art. He (an artist) and i had a couple of awesome jam sessions talking about plaster and color and texture and the way we relate to the surface. On the first day I met them he wore a bright turquoise shirt - his favorite color - and visited a while. They came back later that day and bought a painting that matched his shirt. He loved the zing of bright red I had inculded. The next day they popped in to tell me they loved it in their house. That alone made my weekend. I have a few stories kind of like that. The richness of the experience is lingering.

Between my last visit here and now I've been that ball on the end of an elastic attached to the paddle of home. Thrown out and sprung back. Sometimes ricocheting off other surfaces first - like pony 2 turning 12, painting and installing rooster art with local high school art students and their teacher, our annual town celebration (hello small towns), taking my master food preserver certification test, packing my bags for my upcoming adventure at WDS and hanging with my homegirl Laurie in Portland for the weekend, and last but totally not least - preparing for my Pipe Dreams Online class starting the 16th of this month. (it's going to be awesome! You can still register if you want in.)

Bam. Here I am. I'm done with my celery and have moved on to gum and iced tea. I'll be back super soon with paintings for sale, a killer pineapple jam recipe, the current amazing window display of high school student art in our downtown windows, and the top 10 reasons to hand-water a garden.

i've missed you.

Comments

[Ilene Harris]

So happy to be reading your post again, so, yeah, just jump back in once more,. And, gotta love those wild ponies,,.

[dorylyn]

I am so glad to hear you are having fun being busy! I just signed up for the pipe dreams class. Totally spaced on that! Excited!

[Tammy M]

missed you amazing artgirl! so happy you had such a great weekend at your show, I signed up for the pipe dreams class and cant wait! Blessings and joy to you this week! {hugs}}

[connie freedman]

congrats on your show stephanie! love your tent with the dark background, what a way to show off your art!! I am hungry for celery and peanut butter now! you nailed it about the strings... xo

[Jenny Lee]

What a wonderfully grateful post. I have two chickens (10 & 11) and they serve as such constant reminders of all that is good in life! I love your story about the couple that bought your painting. I can imagine them. I want to be "that cute couple" with my husband some day!