
I’m in a bit of a holding pattern, waiting for several things: the Mineral King road to open, a week-long plein air painting trip to Monterey, the indexer to finish repairing the index on the TB book, and my show, Simply Home, to open.

What’s a person to do while waiting? Stuff, both personal and professional. (What word did people use before “stuff” became a ubiquitous filler?)

Personal stuff: enjoy being home, work in the yard, do some work on the landscaping at church, read, organize some messes, hang out with the cats, you know, just stuff.

Professional stuff: my art has been retrieved from the Silver City Store and also from the Mural Gallery. This means that I have to change information on my inventory lists, and put card packages away.
Finally, some time to think about and design a calendar for 2025. This will be based on the upcoming show, Simply Home. Yeah, yeah, I KNOW that people care more about Mineral King than my art, but I am trying to earn a living here. (My farmer dad used to say that he “scratched his living out of the dust of the earth”. Maybe I just scratch mine out with pencils, or smear it out with paint. . .) So, because I am an active citizen of Realville, I have ordered fewer calendars than in previous years. This means if you snooze, you lose, unless the demand warrants a second order.

Oh that’s right—it is time to design a new Christmas card. Yeah, yeah, I KNOW that fewer people send cards every year, except for those flat ones full of tiny photos of themselves doing glorious things throughout the year. Not me. Each year I design a new card and send them to my drawing students (and a small handful of distant friends), using the United States Postal Service.
And while putting away the paintings that did not have a chance to sell at Silver City, I studied them and decided that they each deserved more attention.
More tomorrow on that.