A Short Hiatus

We closed on our new patio home last Friday, and for the next few weeks I doubt seriously whether I will have time to stop and prepare a nice blog post. I am skipping my painting sessions, so there is no artwork to display.

We are moving some things each day, and we are trying to put things away as we take them to the house. We also spend time there waiting for various tradesmen and deliveries. Therefore, we are not at this old home much during the day, and by the time I get home at night, it's all I can do to read the paper and get the next day's things boxed up. I do try to read e-mail every few days and check on the blogs and comment, but I am not much inclined to find pictures to post and write something myself. So if you don't see a fresh post from this site for a few weeks, at least I have explained to you why not. When we get all moved in and settled, I will post a pictorial tour. Meanwhile, life is good...

Back in the Saddle Again! 2

Last week it was the baby lawn tractor. This week it was the daddy tractor. Terry spent about 8 hours spread out over three days cutting the pasture on his big (for us) tractor. This was the first time he'd been on it in three years, and he loved it, although he could only take so much bouncing over ruts at a time. Every day in the last week we have visited the new house. Several of those days he came home and cut grass in the pasture while I tried to pack away some things in the house.

We found out today that we will close on the new house on Friday. Terry wants to take his time moving, so we won't be out of this house for almost a month, by his reckoning. He would like to take something to the house every day and put it where it belongs. He thinks it will be easier and keep us more organized. He may be right, but I feel impatient. I would like to get moved sooner rather than later. However, our bed is in a store near Alissa's house, and it will be a few weeks before we can down there to get it. And we have no window coverings, and we will need to get those before we live there, too. We are ordering them and we have to wait to have the windows measured until we have easy access. So it will be at least two weeks until we can be staying there.

At any rate, things are gearing up around here, and I am becoming a little overwhelmed by the enormity of the task which is facing us. I am ready, though, to jump in and get it done. By the time July rolls around, we should be well settled in the house and enjoying our new neighborhood. I guess I am just going to have to grit my teeth and get down to brass tacks! Life is good now, but it will be better in a few weeks...

Idaho?

Here you see my latest effort at painting. It is a picture of a lake in Idaho. I have never been to Idaho, although I would certainly like to go sometime. You might be wondering why I chose to paint a picture of a lake and mountains in Idaho on a misty day when I normally paint sunny tropical scenes and/or sunsets. I am drawn to the tropics, but sometimes I like to branch out--not enough to try entirely new subject matter, mind you. I still mainly do landscapes because that seems to be what I do best. This one is a little different from my usual choices in that it is all in tones of blue, and that is the main reason I chose it. It has the colors of blue that go in my new bedroom and bathroom, so I thought it would be a good addition to the decor.

You might also be wondering where I got a picture of a lake in Idaho to paint. A few years ago, Doug brought me some travel catalogues that he had gathered when preparing for a Caribbean cruise. I loved the pictures and collected several of them that I saved to paint, and I actually painted several of them. That led me to send to other states for their travel guides, and soon I was inundated with colorful publications. Terry immediately suspected I was planning a vacation, but I gave up on that long ago. I paged through them all and marked pictures that I thought I may paint someday. Then I stored them in the closet. Last week when I was cleaning out the closet in anticipation of moving, I found all the books. I sat down and found all the marked pages and tore them out to keep in a folder to save space. This was on one of the pages, and it caught my eye for the aforementioned reason.

I must admit that I looked at all these guides quite wistfully, imagining that I would someday get to visit those states. Not likely, I imagine, for most of them, but at least I can enjoy painting the picturesque scenes from faraway places. Life is good...

Back in the Saddle Again!

Spring has finally made an appearance around here. The temperature today was in the 70's, and the sun was shining, for a change. And see what that brought out. All the rain we have been having has made the grass grow like crazy. So today the old guy climbed back into the seat of his trusty zero-turn mower and cut the grass. You might say there's nothing unusual about the first grass-cutting of the season, and you would be right. The unusual thing about this picture is that the old guy is at the helm of the lawnmower for the first time in at least three years. He has been unable to mow the lawn due to various ailments and aches. Doug had to come out every week during mowing season to cut the grass. Now Terry is finally feeling well enough to get back in the saddle. Ironically, in about 3 weeks, we will be closing on a new home that has just a patch of lawn, and that patch will be mown by others. We will have very little outdoor responsibility in our new home, which is what we were trying to accomplish because neither one of us was really up to the task of yard maintenance. And now he feels like cutting grass! Go figure..

The next machine he wants to tackle is his beloved tractor and bush hog. He has decided to reserve a patch of our farm property for wildflowers and tree growth for me, so he will cut it himself, he says. I don't really know why I need a patch of wildflowers and trees since I will not be living here to enjoy them, but he is having more than just a bit of anxiety about leaving this farm, which he loves. He professes to be eager about the new house, and indeed, we visit it every day to check on its progress. I think he knows it is for the best for us to move into a home that we can get old in comfortably and not have to worry about maintaining. However, he is having a hard time letting go of the land. He doesn't much care about the house, but he is adamant that he wants to keep the land. He is perfectly willing for Doug and Kellie to use it as they wish, but he keeps reminding everyone that he still owns it, and it is ours. I feel sure that in a year or two he will find other things to occupy his time and attention, but meanwhile poor Doug and Kellie may have to have him around a little more often. He says he will cut the grass for them. We'll see how long that lasts. While it might be helpful to have a grass-cutting "elf," he might be a pest. This sounds like a good time to interest him in the travel that he promised me when I retired three years ago.

At any rate, our new house is coming along nicely, Terry feels well enough to get out and cut the grass, and it seems that spring is finally here. Alissa and Andy and the boys are enjoying a great Arizona vacation, and I had time to actually sit in the sunshine and read a book today. Life is good...