I Did It Again!

           I did it again!

          “Did what?” you ask.

          I did the same thing I did last year. I printed my letters and tossed them in a box just like I did last year. Now I have to spend an hour of my time punching holes and putting them in a binder. It would be easier — and faster, if I’d just put them away as I printed them.

          Sigh.

          But it’s done now and I’ve gathered letter facts for you. I know how much you look forward to that every new year.

          This is my 27th year sharing my life with you. Can you believe that? All these years and you’re not tired of me yet!

          I wrote 47 letter blogs in 2024. I missed several weeks when my handsome brother-in-law visited. Our trip to Niagara Falls was my longest letter with 28 pages and 164 pictures — in the printed edition. The online publication had closer to 180 photos. Printing sometimes causes space constraints and I can’t include all the photos. Don’t hate me.

          If you’re not much of a reader and you’ve read my letter blogs every week, you’ve read a big book!

          The program I use to write gives me a word count. “How would you categorize 121,801 words?” I asked Copilot, my AI buddy.

          “121,801 words is quite a substantial length for a novel! It's longer than the average and would likely fit into the category of epic fantasy or in-depth historical fiction, where a detailed and expansive narrative is typical. For comparison, that's almost double the length of many young adult novels, which tend to hover around 60,000 to 80,000 words.”

          We said good-bye to one of my long-time readers last year. J.D. died. He was the one and only person who wrote me real letters on a regular basis. I could usually look for two letters a month from him, sometimes I’d get three. Now, when the mail comes, I have very little reason to be excited about it.

          We lost a neighbor several weeks ago.

          I’ve talked about Charlie before. He told me his guardian angel said he would live at least until December, then she would come back and tell him if he will live longer or die.

          His daughter called him every evening. When she couldn’t get him one night, she drove up from Hughesville and found him on the floor. As far as I know, Charlie never regained consciousness and died in the hospital a couple of days later.

          I wonder if it was a real angel or if it was a self-fulling prophecy.

          Charlie was 97 years old.

          “He looks scary!” Linda said to me.

          “Who’s Linda?” you wanna know.

          Linda Higgins. She’s one of my church peeps and the sweetest lady you could ever hope to meet. In the picture she’s getting a big ol’ smooch from Pork, another church peep. I took the picture at a picnic this past summer.

          I first gave Linda a copy of my letter blog after our church trip to see the production of Daniel at the Sight and Sound Theater last May. She’s been reading me ever since. You should see the smile on her beautiful face when I give her a new letter to read.

          Winter is in full swing and just like the bears, I’m hibernating! I don’t go out unless I have to! Winter is much prettier seen through a window and from the comfort and warmth of my mountain home. Unfortunately, that limits my photo taking opportunities to grocery shopping or other such mundane trips.

          Enjoy this picture of a hawk. I didn’t realize how many bad hawk photos I’ve shown you this past year until I started counting photos.

          “You have to stop showing them,” Me said to Myself, and Myself agreed.

          I did take a couple of other photos on our most recent shopping trip.

          We were picking up a few things in Walmart when I spot this little cutie-patootie sitting in a shopping cart and my heart just melted.

          “Awww! Look at the tiny baby!” I gushed. And honestly, I thought at first it might be one of those newborn baby dolls.

          I walked over but didn’t get too close. People can be funny about strangers around their babies. “Oh my goodness! How old is she?” I asked

          The little mama knew. “Six days. She’ll be a week-old tomorrow.”

          This little one weighed four pounds at birth and her nine-year-old sister is a big help, according to her mother.

We came home the back dirt roads and I took this picture of a swamp at the old goat farm.

Mike doesn’t like to travel the dirt roads very often. It gets the car dusty — or muddy if it’s wet out. But he went that way this time because not far from our house was the site of a recent and very tragic accident.

“I don’t want to see someone else’s heartache,” Mike complained, but took me anyway.

There are several reasons people like to see the site of an accident. Sometimes it’s curiosity. Or it could be for remembrance or closure. For me, it’s to pay my respects and say a little prayer. To feel the sadness, grief, and loss I feel at all accident sites.

          “What happened?” I know you wanna know.

          It was a very icy morning just a few days after Christmas when Ian, the 18-year-old boyfriend of one of our neighbor’s daughters, was going to work when he went off the road, wrecking his car. It makes my heart sad knowing what his parents are going through. Losing a child is not a club any of us wants to be in.

          Birth and death.

It’s a cycle we’re doomed to repeat for as long as we’re on this earth.

We had an ordeal with the dogs this past week. I have no idea what was setting them off but they’d hear something, start barking, and launch themselves from the bed — and sometimes launching off of me as well! That’s a rude way to be awakened, that’s for sure! They'd go barking and running the whole way out into the kitchen and sometimes go on outside. It doesn't happen every night and usually only once or maybe twice a night.

Sometimes I know it’s the cats coming in or going out because I can hear the flap, too. Sometimes it’s an especially loud vehicle passing by on the road. There have been times I’ll be laying there reading and Bondi is asleep under the covers at the foot of the bed. For no apparent reason she’ll growl, raise up, start barking and scrabbling to get out from under the covers. That first bark sets Raini off and she jumps from the bed. Bondi sometimes follows and sometimes stops at the edge of the bed. I swear Bondi does it just to get Raini in trouble!

But one night it was four times and I was sleeping for the last three! I was so mad! “Unless someone's breaking into the house, STOP IT!"  I yell. If the barking didn't wake Mike up, my yelling at the dogs certainly did!

The next night, it happened again. I wasn’t going to let it go on, like it did the night before. After the second time of being woken by their barking and jumping off the bed, I made them sleep in the kennel. Raini never made a peep the whole rest of the night. Bondi cried/barked. After twenty minutes of listening to that, I yelled at her. She quieted for a few minutes and started again. I was tempted to let her out until I remembered that that would be rewarding her for cry/barking and I might need to do this again. She needed to learn that crying wasn’t getting her released from jail. So I yelled at her a couple of more times before she settled down and went to sleep.

The next night, after the very first time Raini went barking, launching herself from the bed, Bondi in hot pursuit, I made her sleep in the kennel. I didn’t make Bondi sleep in her kennel that night and all was quiet after that.

 

          I caught a cold. It’s the first one I’ve had in a couple of years. But a little cold didn’t stop me from working on my next commission. This is Yodi, a Chinese Crested belonging to my best old friend in West Virginia.

          Trish asked me if I’d paint Yodi’s portrait.

          “I will if you give me creative license with it,” I told her. I wanted to try a new-to-me technique where you paint the undertones.  

          “Go for it!” she said.

          Watercolor goes through an ugly stage. I know this. I know that you need to push through the ugly until the beauty comes out. At least that’s what I hope for! Beauty at the end of ugly. With Yodi, I wasn’t far into it before I messed up her ear and it was capital U, capital G, capital L, capital Y — UGLY!

          “The background doesn’t matter,” Trish’s words echoed through my mind.

          That’s when I decided to try a couple of other techniques that I’ve not used before, splotches, and splatters. I figured it couldn’t get any worse and I can always start over. Thinking and knowing I can start over really frees me up to just paint, and I’ll be darned if I didn’t turn out a halfway decent portrait of Yodi!

          I took a picture and sent it to Trish, then I sat on pins and needles waiting for her response.

          I did dishes with an ear to hear the ding of an incoming response on my computer.

          It didn’t happen.

          I waited patiently for a whole ten — maybe fifteen minutes before I picked up the phone and called her.

          “How are you?” she asked.

          “Anxious. I’m waiting for you to see the painting of Yodi and tell me what you think?”

          “Just a minute, I’ll go look.”

          In my mind’s eye, I can see her getting out of her recliner and going to the computer.

          “Oh!” she laughed a little. “Oh my!”

          “What do you think?”

          She laughed again and I could hear the joy. “I think I’m gonna cry!”

          I could hear the emotion in her voice and my eyes teared up. “Don’t do that, you’ll make me cry!”

          “That nose! It’s perfect! And her eyes! I feel like she’s looking at me! But I think it needs something on the right side to balance it.”

          “I was thinking that, too!” I told her.

          So, I got to practice a little more splotching and splattering.

          “I hope you like it because I can’t undo it,” I told Trish when I sent her the finial painting.

          “I am so in love with it!” she said.

          I’m not being prideful showing you this or any of my other paintings. I’m not trying to show off or be boastful, and I’m not looking for compliments, per se. Compliments are always nice, though. I have a hard time believing I made this! I don’t even know how I did it!

My dog portraits are certainly evolving and all I can say is all the glory be to God.

Here’s something I painted last week. A nostalgic winter scene for my best girl, Joanie. She’s an amazing, kind, thoughtful, loving, person. Always giving of herself and getting little in return. When I was talking about painting Christmas cards this year, she let me know she likes the old-timey stuff. I entered a bunch of prompts in AI and Copilot put some images together for me. I picked this one to paint for her but I couldn’t show you until I’d given it to her.

          I love making things, you know I do. As I scroll through Facebook and YouTube, I’ll stop and watch all kinds of things being made! From simple egg carton flowers and butterflies to clay sculptures to wood carvings — and everything in between! I’ve even stopped and watched art being made with scraps of cloth! I don’t have any interest in making any of those things but you never know when something will spark your creativity.

          Then I saw gel plate printing. Most of the videos were making prints for an art form called junk journals. Personally, I don’t see the point. After you spend all your time creating this, what’s it good for?

          Then I saw someone take one of their photographs, transfer it, and reverse paint it. Now that’s something I could get interested in. I used my found money to buy a laser jet printer and I bought gel plates and brayers and this week I finally had time to play.

          The videos make it look easy. Spread the paint on the gel plate, apply photograph, and lift off. Well! Let me tell you! There’s a definite learning curve! You have to have the right amount of paint, apply just the right amount of pressure, and leave it on the right amount of time. I bet I tried twenty times before I got my first ‘ghost’ print.

          “Well, Peg, tell me. What’s that good for?” you say.

          You got me. 

          I guess the joy is in the making.

          With that, let’s call this one done!

          Done!