While at the plein air retreat, one morning I sat at Eric Rhoads’ table. He told us of a science experiment where 2 identical plants were watered with different water: one with tap water and the other with microwaved water (cooled down first). Within a week or two, the microwave-watered plant died. DIED!! For the umpteenth time, I am so glad I don’t own a microwave.
OBVIOUSLY, I learned a ton about plein air painting. But since most of my readers are non-artists, I won’t bore you with those things. . .
. . .except for one thing about painting: I learned that I do much better when painting plein air alone. No one was critical, no one was rushing me, but when it was just me, alone with my own transportation and own schedule, I enjoyed the process more.
I learned that French easels are the cheap-o version of a mobile easel for brand new painters who don’t know diddly-squat about what they need. Occasionally an experienced painter will use one; fortunately I discovered one of those guys to give my easel to instead of seeking a trash can big enough to accommodate the thing.
Apple sells a thing called an AirTag that you attach to stuff that you tend to lose, and then when you have lost the thing, it beeps or something. Maybe it gives you an address where it was last seen. Pretty clever, but I would look funny with it hanging off my reading glasses.
My favorite blog, The Frugal Girl, recently featured me in a Meet a Reader post. The Frugal Girl is the only place besides my own blog where I am active online. Took me a few years to consent to participate in the meet-a-reader, so I had a lot of time to decide what to include and what to omit. It was fun to interact with everyone who commented.
A friend and former neighbor sent me a link to an article about Three Rivers: msn (whatever that is). It seems to have been written by someone who hasn’t been to our town in about 30 years.
Simply Home
Behind Wutchumna, oil on wrapped canvas, 18×36″, $1500
CACHE Gallery hours are Fridays 1:30-4:00, Saturdays 10:00-4:00, Sundays noon-4:00.
ONE MORE THING: Tuesday, November 12, 6:30-7:30, I will give a demo/talk called How To Draw at CACHE. Contact me if you are interested, because seating is limited.
Because I ran off to Fall Color Week on September 29 – October 6, there was no Learned in September list. After spending an intensive week learning about plein air painting, I couldn’t remember a thing about September. Fortunately, I had already started a list.
September
If you schedule a meeting with someone, perhaps someone at a company to help one choose the best Medicare plan, it is assumed you will be using a cell phone. If you give a landline number because perhaps your cell service is spotty, they will be perplexed as how to help you. It certainly would be helpful if such businesses would say that a cell phone is necessary before one goes to all the trouble to schedule an appointment. (The meeting got cancelled before I learned how the landline would be handled.)
There is a method of healthy* eating called Zoe, a way to learn how to eat for your optimal “gut health, blood sugar, and blood fat”. The website has all sorts of information except it doesn’t tell the price. Nope, you have to “start the quiz” first in order to “choose your plan”. Does that make anyone else nervous? *Who even knows what “healthy” means anymore??
There is too much in the world right now: too many websites, too many opinions, too many podcasts, too many books to read, too much art to see, too many friends to stay current with, too many patterns to knit, too many yarns to try. I cannot keep up, and don’t want to. FOMO is real, but I will NOT cave in to it. (This is not new information, but I feel it strongly right now.)
I read this quote on a site called The Boring Newsletter—Frequently Taxed Questions: “Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.” -Ellen Goodman. I don’t know who Ellen Goodman is, but she is right and I am very thankful to be abnormal.
Boring Warning — if you ever need to remove hidden tags on a Word document, there is no way to do them all at once if you have a Mac. Why would anyone need to remove hidden tags? Because Word’s indexing is in combat with Adobe InDesign’s book formatting. They hate each other. They might both hate Mac too. It’s a rough world out there in Puterville.
Mineral King Country, a book by Henry Brown published in 1988, finally landed in my life. I was aware of it but didn’t have a copy. I recently acquired one (thank you, DJ) and read the foreword, preface, and introduction. This book covers Mineral King history between the mining era and the Disney days.
Cerakote cleans foggy car headlights in 3 steps. It is wonderful stuff! Costs about $17 if you are interested. My friend found it at WalMart and I found more on the big A, of course.
A few repeat photos of Mineral King in September
Simply Home
The Best View, oil on wrapped canvas, 10×20″, $450
CACHE Gallery hours are Fridays 1:30-4:00, Saturdays 10:00-4:00, Sundays noon-4:00.
ONE MORE THING: Tuesday, November 12, 6:30-7:30, I will give a demo/talk called How To Draw at CACHE. Contact me if you are interested, because seating is limited.
August in 2024 has been a month of activity and learning and a full schedule. Good thing I don’t teach drawing lessons during this month because there was no extra time. Most of my learned items this month are accompanied by irrelevant photos.
This has nothing to do with anything other than I liked the smoky morning light on these little puzzles from my childhood.
1.William Faulkner is not for me. I tried As I Lay Dying as an audio book and only made it through the first CD on my recent road trip. So much repetitive pointless conversation by unexplained characters. So I chose some rather mindless but entertaining “literary” fiction (which I think means modern but not formulaic) by Anna Quindlen, an excellent storyteller.
2. On hard curves on Interstate 5, vehicles lose hubcaps. I don’t know why, but it probably has something to do with excessive speed and centrifugal force (my hubcaps are all intact and in place—thank you for your concern.)
No curves here but I kept both hands on the wheel when navigating those hubcap-thieving stretches of highway.
3. My peripheral neuropathy is most likely due to being in the “pre-diabetes” category. This feels quite unfair and rather unlikely, but there is no other possible explanation.
4. I have learned to use a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) in an attempt to understand what is happening to my blood glucose levels when I eat this or that or eat things in a particular order or drink vinegar in water prior to a “bad” food or meal. It is a combination of interesting (because it is fun to learn) and highly annoying (better when I learned to silence the warning alarms) because I had to keep my phone with me constantly. This was a real nuisance in Mineral King, and then I had to borrow a charging device. I don’t take my phone up the hill because there is no signal and the camera is crummy.
I forgot the title of this piece but I know who has it!
5. I learned about a texting problem: messages will only go through when texting a non-iPhone from an iPhone IF YOU ARE USING CELLULAR SIGNALS. They will NOT go through if you are using wi-fi. That sure explains a lot of missed messages.How do you know if you are texting an iPhone or a non-iPhone? If the messages are blue, it’s iPhone; if the messages are green, it’s not.
6. Indoor malls are a thing of the past. I learned this in Salem, because I am not a shopper at malls, having always preferred catalogs and not being one who views shopping as a recreational activity. The mall we visited had each store open to the outside. I wonder what is inside all the space where people used to walk from store to store. I wonder why people stopped doing that (besides the fact that the malls are now all outside access types).
This is not a mall. Malls are not photoworthy.
7. Frass is the sawdust made by insects chewing on trees. (Thanks, DV)
8. Learned the ins and outs of In-N-Out Burger. I read the book about it by Lynsi Snyder, who is the big kahuna there. I’ve only eaten there once, and not being a burger aficionado, it was probably wasted on me. The family is full of very rough edges, and the book read like an infomercial. But now I know, and it was worth reading, since memoir is my current favorite genre.
This will not be in Simply Home; it sold awhile ago. I didn’t learn about preparing for a solo show because I’ve been there and done that. No tee shirt because I don’t wear clothes with words on them (except for the tee shirt that says “Easily distracted by plants”, which was a gift).
When my friend who loves to bake uses crushed graham crackers in a recipe, instead of smashing them with a rolling pin, she double-bags the crackers and then runs over them with her car!
2. What in the world? I’ve never heard of this brand of vehicle. (The name sounds like a made up woman’s moniker.) I got closer to look, and the Farmer said, “Better not touch that—it is about $100,000”. FOR A CAR?? WHAT’S IT MADE OUT OF?? And why in the world would someone bring something that fancy up the exceedingly rough Mineral King Road??
3. Somewhere I heard about the novelist Michelle Huneven and her book called Off Course. I checked it out of the library because the description said it was based in the Sierra. Sure enough it was, and I loved figuring out where the places were (because most of the names were changed except for a few mentions of Visalia, Fresno, or Bakersfield, and one mention of Mineral King.) It was a disheartening story of adultery, and the main theme is that it never turns out well. In spite of being a subject that I usually don’t choose to read about, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, probably because of the familiarity of the location. She does write very well, with completely believable characters. (HOWEVER, she made a mistake when she confused Jeffrey and Ponderosa pine cones.)
4. Did you know that if you use scotch tape on tomatoes, they will last longer out of the fridge? Cover the place where the stem was, and supposedly the tomatoes won’t go bad as quickly. I’ve read that wrapping the stem ends of bananas in saran wrap slows deterioration, so maybe plastic wrap, bags, and tape are magical for produce.
5. Did you know that when someone gets commissioned as an officer in the United States Marines, they can choose the location for the ceremony? I had the privilege of attending such a ceremony for a friend in Exeter, right in front of the B17 mural on the side of the ambulance building, in the parking lot of Monarch Ford. CONGRATULATIONS, AMM!! (and thank you for the invitation)
6. 50% of people who have peripheral neuropathy never learn the cause; the state of “pre-diabetes” can cause it; if you aren’t low in B vitamins, there is no point in taking them to “cure” it; electronic pads, compression socks, red light therapy, herbal cures, acupuncture—don’t waste your money; nerve damage does not heal. (I traveled a long distance to learn all this.)
7. Your Car Says a Lot About Who You Are made me laugh on YouTube. It’s on a channel called Dry Bar Comedy, and it was clean! (Heard about it from Dave Ramsey)
My life isn’t only focused on Mineral King and making a living with art. While I am puttering at the cabin or at home, painting, yardening, knitting, splitting wood, listening to something, I think.
Sometimes I think about things that I don’t understand. None of it is very important or life-altering. As a Questioner, I wonder about stuff. Here is a current list:
Sun tea: Who cares if it brews in the sun or in the refrigerator?
Sun-dried tomatoes: Who cares if they are dried in the sun, in a dehydrator, or on a shelf in the back window of your car?
Sea-salt: What difference does it make if the salt comes from the “sea” (don’t they mean “ocean”?), from Death Valley, or from those dreaded salt-mines?
Artisanal or hand-crafted: Does this actually improve the flavor?
Anti-science: since when is asking questions “anti-science”? I thought questions were how you figure out what is true.
Tailgating: it causes accidents, creates tension, and never causes the one in front to drive faster. What is wrong with people??
Horror movies: who wants to be scared? Why?? Isn’t life scary enough?
Have you noticed that there is a tremendous amount of advertising for beds, mattresses, and linens? Do you think there is some sort of correlation with the explosion of high-energy drinks available? Here, get amped up, and now you can’t sleep? Just buy a new bed!
If you leave comments and don’t hear back from me or see them appear, please be patient. It means I am in the Land of No Electricity, Phones, or Internet, probably thinking of more things that I don’t understand.
And now maybe you don’t understand why I used all these photos of sunflower paintings. Easy—because it is summer!
I didn’t learn much in June; is this the result of 2 weeks spent blowing my nose? Here is my monthly list, minus many AHA! moments.
1. The lotion I’ve used on my face for more than 20 years is no longer available. Why do companies stop manufacturing items? Yeah, yeah, because they aren’t profitable enough. Sigh. I looked on eBay and the least expensive is $75. No thanks. I used to balk at paying $13.
Expect more wrinkles yearly.
2. My normal preferred route to Hume Lake was closed due to construction. There is an alternate route, one that involved roads I never knew existed, paved but one-lane. In the past I would have taken the new route without question, excited to learn a new way. However, in his old age. Fernando is only cautiously adventuresome. Sigh. Maybe I learned acceptance of limitations of our advancing ages.
3. A friend needed a room in Newport Beach for a pickleball tournament. Did you know that $120 is considered a bargain??
4. Colds can slam you at any time of year, regardless of how carefully you avoid sick people. Something changed with Covid; I used to go as long as 5 years without catching anything. Or did something change with age, as I moved into the S’s? Never mind. Was it Covid? I don’t care. What have I learned? Never mind. Just complaining a little. (Do colds last two weeks for you too?? They used to last 7 days.)
5. I am skeptical about the claims of many medicines, particularly those for colds. A cold will last as long as it lasts and will do whatever it does, regardless of our attempts to stifle or shorten it. Here is an article that backs up my skepticism: Doctors question value of other cold medicines. . . I realize this is the internet, where opinions and experts abound, and there is much contradiction, but this article backs up my own experiences.
6. Even if I am grounded in Mineral King by the sorry nature of my numb feet, it is still a great place to hang out in the summer.
7. I hired someone to feed the cats and water the yard but she never showed up*. Four different friends have stepped into the void. I learned to accept a (HUGE) gift of help, and unfortunately, to not trust someone.
*It wasn’t a hot weekend and the cats had access to their regular abode, water, and dry food that they usually ignore.
I learned so many interesting things in Texas about the culture, history, and of course, wildflowers. Here is more, this time in list form. There is even more I could add, but I expect you have a life. Much of it appeared in my Texas travelogue posts: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six.
COWHIDES IN THE GROCERY STORE?? Yeppers. (The grocery store, called H E B, was ENORMOUS, of course.)
2. Prepping for and laying sod is an enormous amount of labor. Now I know how to do this.
3. Ever seen a 3-D printer? Fascinating. It uses coils of plastic, much like what is in a weed-eater, and follows a preset program.
In about 1-1/2 hours you can have this little item in your hand. (A plastic shark wasn’t what I had pictured for a souvenir of my time in Texas!)
4. Harvester ants are really interesting—their “hill” is huge, and they wear paths in the soil in their labors. They are red and bite, but not nearly as bad as fire ants.
5. This poor photo is of a castle, built next door to friends of my friends. You can read about it here: Unknown Castle.
6. Gas was so much cheaper! (It’s hitting $6/gallon in Three Rivers now.)
7. The speed limit on the freeway was 75. Is it that high in California? If I went anywhere besides Visalia or Exeter, I might know the answer.
8. These are the funniest squishy Tupperware containers I’ve ever seen. N was surprised by my ignorance; I reminded her that we attended a Tupperware party together in the 1980s and told her I hadn’t paid any attention to the stuff since then.
9. Speaking of convenience stores, there is an ENORMOUS truck stop chain in Texas called “Buc-ees“; the mascot is a beaver with buck teeth. It is HUGE. Jee-um asked me how I liked their convenience stores, and of course I replied that everything is bigger in Texas.
10. N and I had fun working our way through a few watercolor exercises in the neatest little book, designed for the purpose of practicing watercolor. (I won’t be switching from oils—it was just for fun.)
11. I relearned how much fun pingpong is.
12. This is the brightest caterpillar I’ve ever seen. I didn’t look it up.
Food
13. I had venison for the first time in many years; also had brisket, which is meat cooked for a very long time; they call it BBQ if it has red sauce on it, the kind that is sort of sweet, which we call “bottled BBQ sauce” around here.
14. My friends (with the sod project) asked me if I liked queso. I said, “Well, that’s Español for cheese, and I love cheese.” Wrong answer. It is a cheesy dip for tortilla chips, just downright scary good.
15. Instead of root beer floats, they often serve Dr. Pepper floats, because Dr. Pepper was invented in Waco.
16. I ate something exceedingly good called “Texican Tamale”. It was at a restaurant called “Mickey B’s”, which apparently is where Randy Travis likes to hang out.
17. Boiled peanuts do NOT sound appetizing, but they are pretty common fare in Texas convenience stores.
18. Finally, I learned how very dear my Texas friends are to me. Travel is such a series of inconveniences, and as I was fixin’ to go, I questioned why I thought it was even necessary, or if it would be worth all the trouble.
It was.
P.S. The seller of the Texas mug refunded my money and then sent me a replacement. Yikes, it is ugly (offends my inner color junkie) and I don’t want it!
The blue on the Texas is faded and pink looks so wrong.The blue is beautiful and perfect with the interior of the mug.
This month I will publish two Learned posts, this one and a Learned in Texas. I shared several things in my little series on being in Texas but there is still more.
1. If you want to search for a term on a website, on a Mac you can use the command key (clover leaf) with F and you get a search box at the upper right corner of the page.
2. Locks of Love takes hair donations to make wigs for kids and charges the kids. Wigs for Kids takes hair donations and doesn’t charge the kids. Wigs for Kids (I don’t know how they handle gray hair.)
3. Northern Lights! In Washington, Three Rivers, and even in Texas! I didn’t see them anywhere, but CK graciously shared her photo with me.
4. I should have known better than to succumb to the temptation of a Texas souvenir in the form of a fragile item. I wanted to replace a broken favorite mug with one of a similar size (15-16 oz.) and found this on Etsy. I mistakenly thought that this fragile item would be packaged in a manner that it wouldn’t arrive in pieces. Alas, I was disappointed. At least I didn’t have to fight for a refund.
5. I finally learned to recognize the difference between Eastern redbud and Western redbud.
Eastern redbud on the left; Western redbud on the right
6. ALWAYS save your postal receipt with a tracking number if you have to return something for a refund. Companies are so eager to sell to you, offering “full money-back guarantees”, but if you can’t prove that you returned it, they will balk. Never mind the fact that it arrived at their warehouse—PROVE IT, YOU SUCKER CUSTOMER. And if you order something with that guarantee, call the customer service number to see if it actually works while you still have time to cancel the order. Some places don’t answer the phone if they even have a number to call; many don’t reply to emails or to the contact form on their websites.
7. I had never seen a fossil, somehow missing all the elementary and secondary lessons on the topic. My good friend Jee-um (that’s how “Jim” is pronounced in Texas), a retired geology teacher, sent me one after he learned of my educational deficit! This is an echinoid, but it looks like a miniature starfish to me.
8. “Functional medicine” is a new term to me—it is a way of practicing medicine that gets to the root of the problem rather than just prescribing something to mitigate the symptoms. A friend told me about this, so I looked it up, as one does. The friend told me that there are practitioners in the area, so I looked that up too. Alas, it took me to the chiropractor I already saw, the very one who tried to sell me a $3500 package of all sorts of things that might or might not treat my neuropathy. Sigh. The saga continues. . .
Did these shoes wreck my feet back in the ’70s and ’80s?
9. No matter how certain I am that a painting is finished, there is ALWAYS room for improvement.
Tomorrow: Eighteen Things I Learned in Texas (Yes, EIGHTEEN, and that doesn’t include all of the things I told you about in my six Texas travelogue posts.
I started reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, a book about accepting the fact that our time is limited and we won’t ever get our to-do lists finished. Alas, it was taking too long (heh-heh), so I went to Bookpecker to read the five bullet points. They are: 1. Accept your limits; 2. Focus on Meaningful Tasks; 3. Prioritize quality over quantity; 4. Live in the Present; 5. Embrace uncertainty. (I summarized the summarized bullet points for you. You’re welcome.)
Vermeer’s Milkmaid. I painted this with the idea of quality over quantity, BEFORE reading the summary of Burkeman’s book.
2. Did you know that you can substitute 1/2 milk with 1/2 yogurt for buttermilk in a recipe? (I haven’t tried it).
3. Slippers: I was sorry to see that mine were wearing through on the soles, and especially sorry to learn that the yarn for a new pair was $40. WHAT? Then I learned that they have faithfully served my feet since 2010. (Life is like a roll of toilet paper—the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.) Finally, I learned that I cannot stop and restart the agitation segment of the cycle on our fancy washing machine (many of our appliances croaked in 2020). I also (re)learned that I am not very good at following knitting pattern directions, but once again, I got away with it. (notice the 2 new slippers don’t exactly match each other.)
Before feltingpartially feltedfinished felting
4. Have you ever heard of a yogurt strainer? I hadn’t, and learned of this item on The Frugal Girl blog. It is a convenient way to drain the whey from yogurt so that you have “Greek” yogurt. (I just pour mine off as it accumulates in the pan I made it in and save it for making bread.) I am tempted by this item but my policy of no unifunction items in my kitchen keeps me from succumbing. The woman who told me about it also uses it when making lemon curd and almond millk, two items that are not on the menu here. (Here is a list of the various yogurt strainers on Amazon.)
5. Did you know that there is no cure for neuropathy, particularly idiopathic neuropathy, which means the kind for which no reason is known? Sigh. I learned this from a friend who has had it for 30 or 40 years. (I have an appointment in June with a neurologist anyway. So there.) My hands are over my ears chanting, “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!” as I refuse to accept this information.
6. I found this book in the library in Three Rivers and checked it out because of the title. The characters were too weird for me to relate to, so I quit after the first two chapters. There are too many books that I want to read to bother with those that don’t hold my attention.
The Lemon Cove Woman’s Club asked if they could print my drawing into cards. I said yes, if they could find the original. They couldn’t. Then I remembered that it is hanging on the wall over my dining table!
7. This is a relearn: The women’s club in Lemon Cove has the actual historical name of “Lemon Cove Woman’s Club”. Isn’t that funny? (Exactly which woman did it belong to? Did Nora Pogue Montgomery call it this because she was reluctant to give up her family home?) You can read about it here: Tulare County Treasures.
P.S. By now I’ve probably learned many more things while in Texas. Although it will still be April while I am there, I’ll probably put them in the Learned in May post. Or, in Texan, “I’m fixin’ to put them in May’s post”.
For some reasons, I couldn’t scrape up appropriate photos for this month’s Learned List. So, let’s enjoy a few photos that Trail Guy took on a recent walk.
John Bray Estates is a website for luxury coastal property in Cornwall, England. If you like to look at homes, both inside and outside, this site is like See’s Candy to a sugar addict.
Skills Millennials Won’t Use is quite entertaining. There are things I’ve thought about for awhile, such as the ability to drive a three pedal car, reading a face clock, dialing a telephone, reading a map. There are other things that I agree with—not liking meatloaf or jello, not using paper napkins. There are things that surprised me—not wearing Crocs was the largest. Enjoythis list! It is very long—almost 200 items!
I read this quote in the memoir Driving Hungry by Layne Mosler: “A rich man isn’t the one who has the most; he is the one who needs the least”. By that definition, I am very wealthy!
The two most common reasons for neuropathy are unmanaged diabetes and back trouble. I have neither, so the mystery and saga of my feet continues. . . (what I learned is that my back is fine).
Surgery is very stressful; I had the privilege of sitting with a dear friend while waiting for a delicate surgery on her husband. We simply chatted about this and that, nothing too heavy or scary or formal. She hadn’t asked me to be with her, but I insisted, because I knew in my gut that this was scarier than they made it out to be. We both learned that the presence of a friend is a valuable comfort even when it wasn’t requested. I also learned how much I truly care about these friends.
A thymoma is a tumor on the thymus gland; it is better than thymic carcinoma. I would like to not know this, but a dear friend is now experiencing it, so here we are, learning about unwelcome health troubles.
Have you ever had rutabaga? We got a couple and didn’t know what they were. A friend enlightened us, and I cooked them without any idea of how they would be, figuring anything is good if you add enough butter. Turns out they are actually quite good for you, sort of a mashed potato substitute with fewer carbohydrates and lots of good nutrients.
There is a website which summarizes non-fiction books in 5 bullet points. It is free, because they make their money by people ordering off Amazon through their site. It has the weird name of BookPecker.My hope is that it will speed up my journey through my To-Be-Read towers of book.
Goodbye, March! You are the Most Beautiful Month, and we will miss your weather and your colors.
