A Quiet Week

 

          This has been a quiet week here at the Luby household, and that’s just the way I like it. Besides, someone, who we all know, would rather spend her time painting than doing just about anything else.

           I waxed “Loved Beyond Words,” the portrait of Neil, and will deliver it this weekend.

          Monday was spent doing a bunch of little, nitpicky stuff around the house. I put up a trellis that got knocked over, blown over, or otherwise fell of its own accord. I cleaned up the dog run and watered a flower that lives under the awning and never gets any rain. I tossed the ball for the dogs a couple of different times. Beyond that, it was normal household chores like cooking and washing dishes.

          I started working on some combination fall/Halloween cards.

          With the help of Copilot, my AI buddy, we designed a card for my beautiful cousin Rosemary. She likes scarecrows and has a tuxedo cat. If she hasn’t gotten her card by the time this letter blog comes out, she won’t be surprised when it shows up in the mail.

          Speaking of AI...

          They’ve put a daily limit on how much you can use it, unless you want to pay for it.

          I’ve come up against that when I was designing cards and again when I was only using the chat feature.

          I’m not paying for it. If I hit a limit wall, I’ll wait until it resets the next day. And remind myself, yes, AI makes so many things a lot easier, but I got by just fine without it before.

          I did a quick, fun, little ghost cat. I haven’t decided if it’s done yet or not. I’m thinking it needs a background. What do you think?

          “Peg, did you use a pen or marker to outline it?” you ask.

          Nope. No, I didn’t. It’s paint and a liner brush. Every pen I’ve tried has been a disappointment and a waste of money.

          “How do you do lines so well?” you wanna know (or maybe you don’t).

          Besides practice, the trick is to look where you want to go, not where you are.

          I started working on another card. This one is for a friend who has a birthday right around Halloween so it’ll be a multi-purpose card. Fall, Halloween, and birthday!

          Lori likes anything Halloween and sunflowers so this is what I’m painting for her.

          I used sparkly paint for the owl’s hat, totally forgetting that waxing it makes the sparklies disappear.

          What a conundrum!

          We went shopping this week and I have to tell you, the fall colors are spectacular this year! So beautiful! And my photos will not do it justice. However, I’ll show them to you anyway.

          Going down Welles’ Mountain.

          We were talking about gas prices on the way to Sayre.

          “I would put a dollar in the gas tank and drive around all night,” Mike said.

          “Yeah but you only made thirty dollars a week back then,” I pointed out.

          “Oh no. It was more than that. My grandfather worked for the phone company and he made good money,” Mike said.

          We Googled it. In the 1950s, a line foreman made about eighty dollars a week, whereas a factory worker made around sixty.

          Now that I think about it, maybe I got my number because of something Pop would say.

          “Thirty dollars would buy groceries for all week.”

          All I recalled at the time was thirty dollars and week.

          Leaving the parking lot of a store, a sign posted on the stop sign was looking for carpenters.

          “Thirty-seven dollars an hour! That’s more than some people made all week!” I said.

          We have to remember it’s all relative. After all, I used to weigh eight pounds.

          “I bet that’s a tear-down,” Mike said.

          I don’t know anything about this beyond the fact that it’s sad.

          This is where the old ice cream truck sat that had the vines growing out of it. They’re cleaning up the property.

          A helicopter passed overhead.

          “Life flight,” I guessed since we were close to the hospital. Then a second helicopter came into view. “Nope,” I amended. “I don’t think they have two.”

          Speaking of sadness...

          It looks like they’re packing everything they own, including the kid and two dogs.

          We did what everyone else was doing, we drove past. My heart was sad for them.

          “Maybe we should give them some money,” I suggested.

          “They need more help than a few dollars will get them.”

          Winter’s coming. I don’t know where they’ll go or what they’ll do. “If it were me, I’d be heading south,” I told Mike. “It doesn’t look like they have anything to hold them here.”

          My camera clicked a lot more this day than it has in a while. I took a few more pictures on the way home.

          We got behind this truck with an open load. Stuff was blowing out all over the place!

          I took a picture when he made a turn.

          “I think it’s silage,” I told Mike. “That big dairy farm is down that way.”

We knew our weather was going to turn and be cooler.

          “Let’s go for a golf cart ride while we still can,” Mike suggested.

          The dogs are always up for a ride, so we went.

          The leaves were “raining” down on us. I managed to catch a decent shot of one of them.

          Miss Rosie’s white lilacs are blooming.

          How do the walnut hulls get all lined up on the bridge like this? “Is it the squirrels?” I asked, but as you may well expect, Mike doesn’t know either.

          My hydrangea bush is taking on some pretty fall colors.

          Be it short and sweet, we shall call this one done!

          Done!

Neil

          I started painting Neil last week and worked on him for two days before the weekend hit. Then it wasn’t until Wednesday of the following week that I was able to get back to it.

          To refresh your memory, here’s Neil.

          And this is at the end of two days’ work.

          After I finished with the hand and foot, I put it to my peeps on the watercolor page on Facebook.

          “What can I do to improve this?” I asked

          The two comments I heard most often, other than “nothing” or compliments, were, “His foot is confusing. Commit to the knee or lose the foot. It’ll just look like he’s lying on his belly instead.”

          I was asked to paint the photo so I put the foot in. And they were right. I needed the knee to justify the position of the foot.

          The other thing I heard was to add a warm wash over his face.

          Because of the lighting he did look too yellow, but he wasn’t really that yellow. I did, however, add a warm wash anyway.

          “I’d like a darker background,” my client said.

          I darkened the background and it was too dark.

          Aye-yi-yi!

          That’s the reason I tried — for the very first time — a bokeh effect. That’s lifting in a pattern, like circles.

          The client thought it was still too dark. I went to work and lifted off more of the dark paint and added white.

Many watercolor artists say using white, or black for that matter, is a no-no. I’m such a rule breaker when it comes to art. If I think it needs white or black, I’m gonna use it.

After five days of work, this is what I have.

          The colors in the photo are not true, but they’re close.

          I may not be completely 100% done but it’s really, really close.

          Some people think that because I transfer the image I’m “cheating.” Transferring only gives me the skeleton, it doesn’t paint the portrait for me. It’s really important to have the proportions correct and transferring helps me do that. Besides, it’s not drawing that I want to do, its painting. Transferring frees me up to focus on the color, value, likeness, and expression. You might be surprised to know that even a serious portrait artist like Norman Rockwell used projectors and transfers throughout his career, not because he couldn’t draw, but because he cared more about accuracy than proving he could sketch everything freehand. It’s not cheating, it’s a tool. 

We put the gates up this week.

Mike used a rope and the tractor to hold the gate while he clamped it.

          Then he drilled holes for the screws. 

          We couldn’t leave the gates to the mercy of Mother Nature. Mike hammered in a piece of rebar, made a loop at the end of a rope, and now the gate won’t be swinging in the wind.

           “Peg, Mike’s choked up pretty far on that hammer,” you say.

Yes. Yes, he is. But it’s because that’s all he had to work with. The handle was broken. And since he sent me for a heavy hammer and he didn’t want to use the sledgehammer, you get what I find, and that’s what I found.

Let’s head to the kitchen next, shall we?

          I walked out into the kitchen one morning and found a present from one of the cats.

          Waking up to a headless mouse isn’t my favorite way to start the day.

          “Why do they just eat the head?” you wanna know.

          Instinct.

They eat the most nutrient‑dense part and the brain is high in fat and protein. He didn’t eat the rest because he wasn’t hungry.

I’m just glad he killed the mouse. He can kill them all day long and I’d be happy to pick’em up by a foot or little tail and toss it over the fence. I’m sure the possums will be happy to finish it off for him. 

On a more pleasant note...

I was making a taco salad for my lunch on Saturday. I use lettuce instead of tortilla chips and had the lettuce sitting on the counter ready to go.

I moved over to the other side of the sink, where the microwave is, put the taco meat on a plate, covered it with a paper towel, and popped it into the microwave. Then I went to the fridge for the salsa and saw a bowl of leftover green beans sitting there. Well, they weren’t getting any younger and I do like green beans. I took the bowl and set it beside the microwave.

I’ll put them in when the taco meat comes out, I thought.

I’m standing there, waiting for the time to be up, and I’m thinking about dumping the taco meat on top of the lettuce.

Well, silly me! When I took the meat from the microwave I promptly dumped it into the bowl sitting right there — the bowl of green beans!

Aye-yi-yi!

I was committed at this point. I put the green-bean-taco-meat bowl into the microwave and gave it another minute and a half. Stirred it together, dumped it on top of the lettuce, added salsa, and ate my lunch. Not exactly the way I would’ve chosen to eat it but you know what? It wasn’t half bad.

And that’s how green beans ended up in my taco salad. Life keeps things interesting, doesn’t it.

On a sweeter note...

I made a snack mix that has been renamed to Marry Me Snack Mix. I sorta wish they wouldn’t do that. There wasn’t anything wrong with the old name!

“What was it called?” you wanna know.

It had lots of other names, including Coconut Crunch Mix, Almond Coconut Crunch Mix, Coconut Chex Mix, Caramel Crunch Mix, Sweet & Crunchy Party Mix, Bake Sale Crunch Mix, and Church Social Snack Mix —take your pick.

It’s a good recipe that seems to be enjoyed by everyone.

One of the ingredients the recipe calls for is sliced almonds. I didn’t have sliced almonds but I did have a whole bag of natural — or raw — almonds. I couldn’t see buying more almonds so I just roughly chopped and added them. No one seemed to mind but I wish I’d’ve toasted them first. 

The neighbors are up this weekend, working on the old place they bought. Eventually, it’ll be a retreat when they come to hunt or just need a weekend away from the city.

Some of the guys were working in the house while Lou and Zack were clearing the huge tree they’d cut up.

They’ve put on a new roof, put in new floor joists and new floors, new walls, all new kitchen, added a half-bath, redid the wiring and all the light fixtures.

Mike rescued this guy from the trash for me. It was covered in sawdust and dirt so he power washed it for me.

“What are you gonna do with that?” you ask.

I don’t know. Even if I hang it in the cat room, at least it’s not in the landfill. 

While we were at Lou’s a whole herd of ducks waddled up into the yard. I reached for my camera and they took off.

We took a short ride on the golf cart and I took a few pictures for you.

“Is that a wire leaning against the tree?” Mike asked.

“Where?” I hadn’t seen it.

Mike backed up.

“It does look like wire,” I told him, “But it’s a vine in an almost perfect circle.” 

The barren hillside at the lower bridge.

“That mailbox has a door on the back,” I told Mike.

“Why would it have a door on the back?” he wondered.

“Well, if it’s in front of your house you wouldn’t have to walk around it to get your mail,” I said. It makes perfect sense but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one before. 

Leaves are falling.

Moss on top of an old wheel.

I took a few more pictures on a trip out to get groceries.

A new gas well. 

I couldn’t figure out what this is on top of the roof of this truck. It looks like a rubber mount with an eye hook in it and a piece of wire. I assume the long rubber bumper is to keep a cap from rubbing.

And one more picture. Big cranes at the factory in Wysox. At first I thought it was another gas well. 

We were watching a movie the other day. It’s been longer ago than the other day, it’s been a couple of weeks now. We were watching the credits scroll through so at the end we could give the movie a “like.” That way the algorithm will pick movies like it in the future. To pass the time we’ll read the names.

“Look at that one! One of the unit movers.” I said and spelled it before it went to the next screen. “m-Y-k-Y-t-Y-sh-Y-n! That’s a lot of ys!”

According to Copilot, my AI buddy, it’s pronounced mih‑KIH‑tih‑shin and it’s a Ukrainian surname. It comes from the given name Mykyta (the Ukrainian form of Nikita), which itself traces back to the Greek Niketas, meaning “victorious.” The ending ‑shyn (or sometimes ‑ishyn) is a common Ukrainian suffix meaning “descendant of” or “belonging to.” So the name roughly means “descendant of Mykyta.

I write my letter blog in Microsoft Word before I copy and paste it to my Blogger site, and over the years Word has given me my share of fits. If I forget something and go back to add it, the pictures will jump around. If I’m at the bottom of a page and try to insert a picture, Word decides to put it someplace else — at the top of the page or even on a different page — and then I have to go hunting for it. Trying to put two pictures side by side can send them skittering all over the place, and no matter what I do, they won’t stay where I want them. The pictures jump around and let me just say that my biggest frustration has been the pictures jumping around. But not my only frustration. Lately Word has been turning off my spell check right in the middle of my writing sessions, then I have to figure out how to turn it back on.

Jenn, my friend and editor, sent me this, and I laughed right out loud. I can absolutely relate — Word seems to have a mind of its own sometimes.

Let’s call this one done!

Done!