Sad, Not Too Sad

           First things first.

          I know you wanna know how Meepling is doing. He died Monday morning. I’m sad, but not all that sad. Do I wish he would’ve lived? Yes. Yes, I do. But my life is definitely a lot easier without him. He consumed my thoughts and took up a lot of time. I knew it would be short-lived though, so I didn’t mind. He’d only require intense care for a couple of three weeks.

          “Are you going to try again?” you ask.

          Nope. I’ve got new feeders on order and we’ll take out the house so they’ve no place to lay eggs. That’s supposed to work.

          Winter is coming and we’re settling in. We don’t go many places so that limits my opportunity to garner ideas to write about.

          My ideas to make pretty things are never in short supply. There are so many things I want to make that it’ll probably take me years to work through the list. And my list keeps growing. I’ve been so busy with commissions that I haven’t had a chance to work on my list, but that doesn’t make me too sad either.

          This week I finished my first Brag Board. I didn’t even know what a Brag Board was until I was asked to make one.

          Mike cut the board for me and rounded the corners. I sanded and painted it. While it was drying, I made my patterns.

          The next day, I set up at the kitchen table (which is where I work) to transfer the images and paint.

          I came back from doing something and this guy was sitting right on the board.

          “Tiger! You can’t sit there!” I told him and gave him a little push. He got up and stretched. The Penny Saver, a free paper, had come in the mail and was still sitting on the edge of the table. I pushed it to the middle. “Here. Sit on this.” He did, but he wasn’t very happy about it and soon left.

          I have to be mindful when I’m painting. I’ll get up to do something, get coffee, change my paint water, wash a few dishes, whatever it may be, and Bondi sometimes gets up out of my desk chair, too. The issue is when she comes back. She can’t jump directly into my chair, it’s a little too high for her. Instead, she jumps up onto one of the kitchen table chairs, up onto the table, across, and down into my chair. Sometimes my chair is turned wrong and she can’t get into it. She’ll stand at the edge of the table and cry until someone comes and turns the chair for her. Then she burrows under the blankets I keep there for her. Bondi doesn’t care if I have a wet, painted board on the table. She’ll walk right across it. What a disaster that would be, especially on a commission piece.

          I was painting on the brag board and Bondi jumped out of my chair. It’s so funny. I’m so used to having Bondi sit behind me on my chair that even when she’s not there, I sit on the front edge.

          But anyway, Bondi got down. When she was ready to get back in the chair, she did her thing. She jumped up on a chair and up onto the table. Sometimes she lets me pick her up and I can lift her over the board and put her behind me, but this time, for no reason that I can fathom, she didn’t want me to pick her up.

          “Okay,” I said. I picked up the Brag Board, pushed it a little to the right, and lifted it high enough for her to get under.

          I heard a slide.

Something slid.

You guys may think I’m smart, but I’m not. Oh, I’m not exactly dumb, even though I do dumb things, I just don’t think very fast.

“You’re not careful,” my handsome mountain man has admonished me more than once.

It amounts to the same thing. I was careful when I picked the wet board up. I didn’t want to touch or smear the paint. I’d just forgotten that my oatmeal-lid-turned-paint-palette was sitting on the board.

I heard it hit the floor. Just like your buttered bread always lands upside down, I was sure my palette would too, and there’d be paint all over the floor.

Since it had already landed, there was no use in getting in a hurry now!

I got Bondi settled and covered and turned to address the mess.

Surprise! It had landed right side up!

I get lucky sometimes.

I finished the board, let it dry, sprayed a protective coat, let it dry, and set about attaching the juke.

I had everything on the table and left for something.

“What, Peg? What did you leave for?” you wanna know.

Honestly, I don’t remember. I’d tell you if I did.

I came back to this.

Tiger likes to help.

I wanted a picture of the Brag Board with photos attached. Where am I going to get photos? I wondered. You’d think, with as many photos as I take, that I’d have them all over the place, but I don’t. I don’t have any reason to print them. An image of my address book pops into my head. There’s a pocket in the front where I’ve stuffed photos from years past.

I didn’t pay any attention to what photos I was pulling out and this is what I ended up with.

One of my nieces holding a baby, Kevin and me at his wedding, a nephew, a cute little redheaded niece with her boyfriend and cats, Kevin with an old prom date, Kat’s memory card, a bathtub full of little girlies, my cute little redheaded niece with her boyfriend again, and another cousin with her kids.

Brag boards don’t have to say brag board on them. Since I was asked to make this one, I Googled it. Grandkids make life grand, was on one. Or it can simply say Family, or Home.  For the kiddos it can say, Look what I made, or Every child is an artist. They don’t even have to be brag boards. I saw one for the laundry room where you can hang unmated socks. Clean. Single. Looking for sole mate, it said.

          One of Mike’s cronies likes my stuff and has bought several things from me. He was here last week.

          “What are you making now?” Lou asked.

          “Brag boards,” I said.

          Like me, he’d never heard of brag boards.

          “It’s a board that says Grammy’s Brag Board on it and it has a string where you can hang pictures of the grandkids,” I told him.

          “I want one. Can you get it done by Christmas?”

          “I think so.”

          “How much?” Lou asked.

          I hadn’t given much thought as to what I would charge. That’s something the other gal and I’d never talked about.

          It was a simple design, a heart, and some lettering...

          “Thirty dollars,” I said.

          “Everything’s thirty dollars with you,” Lou quipped.

          “Okay!” I relented. “Twenty-five!”

          Mike spoke right up, “Peg! You’re going the wrong way!”

          I was okay with thirty.

          If you Google brag boards you can find them in a range of prices. Something you have to consider is what it’s made from and how it’s made. Mine is thirty-six inches long, ten inches wide, one inch thick, and hand-painted. I suppose there are ways I could make them cheaper. Use thinner wood or particle board, vinyl letters, decoupage, that kind of stuff.

          My friend Susan, who ordered the first brag board, gave it as a gift. “My friend loved the sign!” she told me. And, of course, that made me happy.

          I made the mistake of offering Lou a different image. “You don’t have to have a heart,” I told him.

          “How about a cardinal?” he asked.

          Once again, I didn’t really think it though. A cardinal will indubitably take me longer to paint than a simple heart.

          “He’s a good customer,” I told Mike. “I’ll do his for thirty.”

          Mike cut the board for me and rounded the corners with his jigsaw. I sanded it and because it’s rough-sawn, it had character, if you know what I mean.

          I painted one side of the board and let it dry. When I went to turn it over, I found it stuck to my paint towel.

          Sigh.

          I’d forgotten to set it up on something. I kinda thought about it when I was painting the sides and got paint on the towel, but I didn’t care if I got paint on my paint towel — I just didn’t know it was gonna stick!

          I set the board up on two small jars and painted the other side. It was late in the day and once I’d finished painting, I was heading to the recliner. I knew Bondi would be going with me so I left the board where it was.

          The next morning, I was at my computer tapping out my morning love note, Mike was sitting at the table eating his morning bowl of Crispy Oats, when he said, “Bondi’s gonna get on your board.”

          I turned around, plucked Bondi from the table, and put her behind me in the chair.

          I was deep into my note when Mike says, “Tiger’s gonna knock your board over.”

          I looked but really thought he’d just get on top of it and lay down.

          Thump, rattle-rattle, bang, were the next sounds I heard.

          Sigh.

          Tiger did knock it over. In fact, he knocked it off the table. No use to get in a hurry now. I finished my note and turned to pick my board up. It had a big scratch on it.

          “I told ya he was gonna knock it over,” Mike said.

          And you couldn’t reach over and stop it, I thought but didn’t say. At least not then. I did say it to Miss Rosie when we spoke on our morning love call.

          I took the board back out to the kitchen patio and sanded the scratch out.

          “Since I’ve got to repaint it, what can I use to fill that knot hole with,” I asked Mike. “Do we have any wood filler?”

          “I don’t think so, but you can use Durham’s.”

          “Can I sand and paint it afterwards?”

          “Yeah,” Mike answered.

          I found the can of Durham’s in the garage and read the instructions. One of the things it said you could with it was mold it.

          I mixed up the Durham’s and mixed up too much. I thought I’d try it in one of my silicone molds, but did I need to oil or powder the mold first? I turned to the internet and it turns out that I didn’t have to do anything to prepare the mold.

          I made a window, the first mold I grabbed from my box of molds. And I broke it when I took it out of the mold. I didn’t have any plans to use it anyway. I was just testing it and using the leftovers.

          I sent Lou a bunch of cardinal pictures and he picked one.

          I saw something on the internet about using glycerin to extend the drying time of your acrylic paints. I thought I’d give it a try. That would give me more time to blend the different colors in the cardinal. Mix with your brush water, it said, but didn’t say how much. I mixed it about half and half.

          I hated it! It was streaky. Was it the surface I was painting on or was it the brush I was using? I changed brushes and it was still streaky. I’m gonna have to sand it off, I thought. But before I resorted to a fresh start, I’d do everything I could to try and save it.

          Applying a coat of fresh, non-glycerin paint on top did the trick and I don’t hate it anymore.

          What do you think?

          We had our first snow. It didn’t amount to much, at least not here. I know some places got a lot more.

          I don’t mind winter. I love the snow and how it makes everything look. And I don’t have to go out in it unless I want to.

          Raini’s ball is on the roof.

          It has several nubbies missing which creates a flat spot. I tossed it up and it never came down. And it’s staying up there, too. I’m not going up to get it down and risk sliding off the roof. Maybe we’ll get a nice day and I’ll venture up then.

          Raini has been playing with her second favorite toy, a soft orange boomerang with a squeaker — which is long gone. The first thing the dogs do is get the squeaker out.

Raini’ll growl and shake this thing so hard! I know! She’s hit me in the leg with it a time or two.

          Last week, after I vacuumed, I started seeing bits of yellowish foam all over the place. I puzzled over where it had come from until I noticed a piece of it peeking out of a little rip in the boomerang. I guess I didn’t know that stuffing was what made it soft.

          Speaking of Raini, she got into it with Bondi this week. It’s been a long time since we’ve had any squabbles. I’d given both girls a frozen bone. Bondi plays games with treats. She’ll wait until Raini eats all of hers, then she’ll eat her treats in front of Raini. If Raini gets near, Bondi growls. Well, that’s exactly what happened on this particular day. Bondi challenged Raini and Raini let her know she could take the bone any time she wanted to.

          I saw a post on the Heeler page on Facebook. A lady said her two-and-a-half-year-old Heeler killed her nine-year-old Lhasa Apso and the Heeler had never shown signs of aggression before. Everyone jumped on with similar horror stories.

          An internet search said it’s rare for a Heeler to kill another family pet. I have to keep in mind that there are over twenty-two thousand members in this group so there are bound to be some. Now I’m back to I don’t want Raini to kill Bondi! I’d sooner give Bondi away than have her be killed.

          “Miss Rosie,” I said on the phone one day. “If something happens to Tux, would you take Bondi?”

          She hesitated. “You know I love Bondi and if it were up to just me, I’d say yes.”

          I do know that she loves Bondi. The Kipps have watched her for us before when we went to a funeral and stayed the night in a motel. Miss Rosie loves that Bondi is a lap-sitter and snuggles under the blankets and sleeps at her feet at night.

          I asked Miss Rosie before I said anything to Mike. Mistake.

          “I don’t want to give Bondi away,” Mike said. “I’d rather get rid of Raini.”

          “Raini would be harder to rehome,” I pointed out. “And you never know what kind of a home you’re giving her in to. Plus, she’s bonded to me.” I could see her making her way back here after giving her away. “I know the Kipps would take really good care of Bondi.”

          “I don’t want to give her away,” Mike reiterated.

          “Fine. We’ll just keep them both and take our chances.”

          We’ve been kenneling Raini whenever we leave the house. That way they’re not left alone together. Not that that would make much difference. If Raini took it in her head to kill Bondi, the deed would be done before either one of us could stop her. Nonetheless, I like her to be kenneled. Now when we come home, she doesn’t jump all over me. Once I dump whatever I’m bringing in, I let her out and sit and give her some loves.

          Let’s end with another sunrise photo. I want to show you the difference in what my camera sees even though the photos were taken seconds apart. This is what it sees if I zoom in. I haven't done anything to the photo except reduce its size. I didn't enhance it in any way.

          This is what my camera sees if I zoom out. It's lost all of the rich orange colors.

            With that, let's call this one done.

            Done!