It has been a while!!!
The summer has gone briskly by while we seemed to be spinning at times.
After our trip to Calgary and the launches of ArtWalk in Creston and Riondel I took the time to go on a brief Greyhound Bus trip with my sister to Duncan, BC to visit an ailing auntie and my cousins nearby.
Auntie Lorine fell and broke her hip earlier and was hospitalized and then in a seniors facility. First there was the hope she could go home eventually but it became apparent more care was needed. At the time we visited she was in a "transition bed" and, the day we arrived, her family (and many other families) had been informed the facility was closing in a month (an illegal government maneuver which is being appealed) and the 100 residents would either go to the new 50 bed unit that was opening, and already had a 100 person waiting list, or perhaps hover in the air!!!
There has been much brew haw haw since and the BC Ombudsman has just recently said there will be an inquiry into the bed situation and closings of beds and moving around our elderly and separations of families.
At one point, when it was pointed out that moving fragile elderly could cause an attrition (read death rate) of 25% the man in charge had the gall to say he could live with those figures.
Obviously, it wasn't his mother!!!
Fortunately, at this time my aunt is stronger than when we saw her and has been moved to a more permanent situation for her, but it was flash backs to getting my mother into adequate care.
The day after I arrived home, even before I could get a shower!!!, the pump on the well went out. We had a week of hauling water, begging showers, and bucket flushing.
I grew up without a well and my dad hauled water in barrels which was transferred into a barrel by the door and bucketed into the house, but we had an outhouse, and the lack of one was not handy, and James was hauling water for 2 households as our son and his girl friend have spent the summer in the guest house.
So, the pond did not get its liner. The new pump and PVC pipe came to very near $3000.00, but when we remember the former pump lasted for 20 years the cost is not so bad. Also, a very special blessing is that, in getting rid of the old galvanized pipe, we got rid of our rusty water problem!!!
James taught his week long class in acrylic painting at the college again this summer and we helped organize and put on a summer long show of artist's hand pulled prints at the library.
It has been a slow tourist year but nice to see those we have.
James and I got fishing licences for the first time in years and, though I've only made it once, James has gone a few times and brought home a tasty meal.
My computer had serious problems and was in the shop on and off for nearly 2 weeks - not quite as long as Skeeter had to be at the vets. Poor wee tweep, we don't know what she did but she very badly cut the top of a back foot and the inside of that thigh.
The doctor bandaged her foot and stitched her leg and kept her in so she'd be quiet and heal, and a week later when she should have been able to come home she pulled out all her stitches and had to be restitched and more extensively bandaged and didn't get to come home for another 2 weeks!
Skeeter is home now and up to her old tricks, spending some of her nights out, and generally loving "out" so much more than "in." She came home favoring that leg but is improving quickly.
Larry and Lisa are in the process of moving to Victoria where Lisa will work as a nanny to her sister's little ones while her sister writes her master's thesis.
I'm feeling like summer will be over and I haven't done any of the work I had planned. With car sharing, and running too and fro, I haven't worked on any art myself. Also, I absolutely melt in hot weather and end up just sitting in front of the fan. I have great plans for reordering rooms as it is absolute gridlock of my and my mother's stuff since last summer. I want to move the woodworking out of the room it is in and make that room into expanded gallery and a place to work in fabric. That part of the house, the shop, is 4 steps lower than house and on a concrete floor and cooler!!! in the summer.
A friend of ours has just "retired" from pottery. He has for many years been a master potter but felt it "was time."
I have not had such success in "retiring" from birdhouses. I actually finished 3 recently and as one went as a wedding gift, and one sold, I'll need to finish a couple more. I did inform all the businesses that had carried them over the years that I wouldn't be able to supply them but I believe I can still make them for our own gallery and sell a few on line - at least until I've found another medium to work in.
The joy has been not having hand surgery this summer - the first in 3 years - and that is the incentive NOT to build too many birdhouses as it aggravated the condition of my hands.
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