the excellent lived in face

Just saw Olivia Newton John on the bbc Graham Norton show. I have to spout. He is so funny, do love him. But. Much comment on how great she looks and my my she is 61 years old. I object. Her forehead never moved. Her hair is the color it was forty years ago and there is suspect puffy lip syndrome. I'm just tired tired tired of it. What the hell is wrong with being the age you are?

I like my salt and pepper hair. My mouth is beginning to have a few lines around it from whistling for years. My face and forehead are in continuous movement when I'm talking or listening and responding to someone. I have character, damn it! Too bad of me to take it out on the innocent O. N. John. There are plenty of other examples. She just tipped me over I guess. I love a good lived in face. People not in the movies or on tv are mostly good faces, it would seem. It would be nice to see an ad or movie with a few normal looking people. Agggh.

Peace.

Volcano slows mural

Back into the lushness of Houston from the spring of Palo Alto and San Francisco. A month away really messes up one's schedule, gets you behind on bills, wash, weeds and friends. I'm amazed that my garden did well. Just replanted it before I left..........how's that for trusting the rain and the stars? (And a kind son who came and watered).

But the biggest job waiting is the mural. We're about two thirds done with it. While I went to Calif to attend to the mother the house and all concerned with both, my mural partner and friend, Elena, went to Barcelona to visit her daughter. We didn't expect a volcano. So she's still there. And I started back on the mural alone today. Not a problem, just not as much fun. Elena has a Spanish accent and a fiery attitude about politics......she keeps me entertained. We talked on the phone today...she's going to have plenty to say about the airlines when she gets home.

It's amazing how out of shape you can get in a month of walking around s l o w l y with a 91 year old. I was groaning on the ladder today. And my painting arm was making silent but insistent pleas for me to cut it out and go read a book.

Peace.

blasting the termites and forgeting the light switch

Still posting from California.
I am sad to say that I have joined the war between nature and humans. I didn't want to be part of this war....I believe in peaceful co-existence. But the termites were taking more than their share of my mother's house. So, I had to let the poison brigade in the front door. Preparations of safe guarding any indigestibles and plants were taken....which only convinced me of what a violent move this was to be. The house was tarped. A warning sign posted to keep us away for two days. And today we returned to clean up and return the house to normal sans the termites. And a few carpenter bees. I am sorry I had to be part of a poison solution. But I'm glad the fifty year old wood structure will last a bit longer. A few plants too near the house look shocked, but all is in better shape than I had imagined.

As to my mother....still suffering from Lewy Body Dementia...although she still tells wonderful stories and can keep up her end on political conversations....she has forgotten how to turn on the lamps in her room. She asks me again and again to teach her...and I do. And she tries, and cannot manage this once simple task. We have taken another step on down the road.

Peace.

back road dawdling

Took the tiny cute mother out on a wild ride today. With my long suffering life partner in the back seat and tiny cute mama in the front seat, we set upon the back roads of California hills allowing whimsy to lead us. Hairpin turns, one car roads, muddy and impossible turnouts, a bit of rain and glorious views cleared my head of any crackly ordinary chore dreary thoughts. The roads through the area between San Francisco and Santa Cruz may look merely hilly from a distance, but the car, the transmission and my adrenalin say they were mountains. Happily we saw few other cars until we resurfaced after mazes of old stage roads, onto incomparable hiway 1.

The surf was wild and foamy, the wind enough to stall a few seagulls and the smell of fresh was exhilarating. This is perhaps the best time of the year to dawdle around in back roads here....the hills are Irish green, blossoms abound and the undergrowth below redwoods, madrone and oaks was a fairy land. Which suits my mother very well...she has the magic of belief and wonder about her and enjoys every cloud, every forget me not and every twist of the road. The back seat other half of my life was patient and enduring. And in Pescadero there was pie and coffee.

Peace.

mid-century housing, the Eichler

Away from the mural. In California. Amidst the mother in assisted living, the house with termites, and bountiful pollen.
It is funny how one perceives things. I was just at my nephew's wedding, all nice and family and all that. In talking with another nephew, I found he thought of my mother's house as having the look of military housing. I was flabbergasted. How funny. The house that belongs to my mother is an Eichler, built in the 50's of stained redwood and glass with a slanted roof. No attic, no Tudor redo, no traditional barbie house, no grass. It is what is now called "mid century", and rather desirable.
I have always liked this kind of housing.... I grew up in it and felt the inside-outside California vibe of it, and it's connection to nature and the land around it. And I ended up in a house much like it in Houston.

But my nephew is right. This sort of house does not appeal to everyone. It doesn't have an attic or a basement or drywall. You can hear the rain on the roof. You can see the garden from almost every room. You are part of it. Certainly it is getting a bit rundown after 50 years, and I have a lot to do just to keep the termites at bay and the garden trimmed, but there is meditative peace here. The house dwells in the garden, they co exist and belong together.

Peace.

achey breaky wall mural

Working, working, working on the mural. The mural of Mozart's Magic Flute. In a big third story room for an opera lover. It's been a while since I've done work on a ladder, balancing on one foot, reaching my brush to the far corners of the top of a wall. Criminey, I'm freaking too old for this. While I'm there I'm all bravado and blazing brushes but when I get home I'm beat and can be found in the kitchen fumbling with the advil bottle for a quick fix of ease the sore muscles.

O.K. It's actually quite fun, but the stamina that once was, isn't. Today I found myself quite irritated with the house paint that wouldn't behave, the idiots in the traffic on the way home and then, heaven help me, I had to go to the post office and wait in line on tired feet. That sent me over the edge. Crispy shimp at the local Chinese helped. Tomorrow is another day, another wall.

Peace.

the woe pit

Whoosh. The sound of February speeding past.

Enter March. I'm mulling over my show which opened Feb 25th........a nice opening with well wishers, friends and curious parties. I always get the blues after a show goes up. I always think I won't this time, but there I was again in the woe pit. Do performing artists feel this way? Writers whose work is out of their hands and in the bookstores? To let go and put it all in the hands of someone else is hard for a neurotic person. A person who wants to continue tweaking. A person who always thinks they can do better with a few more weeks.

Because I'm working on this mural with my friend, Elena, I am saved some of the doldrums I normally conjure up. I have to concentrate. And it just feels good to have my hand holding a paintbrush and trying to do the best job of painting on somebody else's walls. And painting with wall paint...........that's an interesting twist as well. It's going well. Time to load up the pie tins, the paint clothes, the lunch of almonds, carrots and oranges and head out to the new challenge.