I am back ...

Thanks for waiting for me ...   Just jump in and join me mid-stream ...

Snowshoeing yesterday was not wonderful ... too many clothes ... too long a trek ... and boring ... mainly across frozen lakes ... and sometimes not so frozen which produced heavy balls of ice attached to the picks ... Sharon's old wood and deer hide snowshoes were the lightest ones there ...

It was a little like driving around Lake Superior's north shore to get to Thunder Bay ... miles and miles of boredom punctuated by jolts of spectacular.  The sky which has been grey for months was suddenly, startlingly, a brilliant blue.  The air was fresh and a perfect temperature once I removed clothing.  We saw coyote tracks ... and a dear little sleeping cabin on a tiny lake.

I preferred the bog area that Sarah and I hiked into a couple of years ago ... more to see ... wonderful shadows on snow.  I don't really like trekking across frozen wastes that go on and on.  I think I like little and pretty better than big and bold.  For Sharon and the men, this was a great opportunity to work muscles.  I like a combination of exertion and sensual stimulation.  Lise thought we should have brought a lunch.  Me too.  

But I want to get in better shape physically so the weekly snowshoe excursions and the kick-sledding will continue.

After wine and snacks at Lise's place, I headed home on foot carrying the snowshoes and found my kick sled had been delivered ... broken ... one runner bent out of shape.  Swedish steel is tough.  What in hell did the shippers do to bow it out like that? A huge amount of pressure must have been applied.  So now I start the work of dealing with the problem.

It seems to me that I experience more problems with goods bought recently than ever before ... washers, dryers ... Good god, even the poster I ordered seems to have slipped into the ether and now I have to track it down.

I have started painting again ... and every so often I experience a little success.  The owl on the chair and the dress on the mirror both work ... I think because I allowed my brush strokes to create the flow I knew was there or to create the curves and featheriness.  I used my brush like an extension of my eyes and mind somehow ... instead of like a foreign tool held in fingers.  I doubt if that makes any sense logically, but I know that the breasts, the fabric's movement and the owl's feathers resulted from something different than what was happening with the cat, the turtles, and the bathtub.  (When I have finished the mirror, I will post a photo.)