It's the pits

The bottomless pit I call my studio. Why does everything end up in there? Why do I save it?
I'm still working on clearing spaces and getting rid of things. This week at the mixed media group in Lodi we are having a tail gate party, which means we fill up our SUVs or whatever and open it to all hands. Everyone can paw through and find treasures to use in their art work. Whatever is left gets dropped at a thrift store. I used to love to collect, now I love to give away. The more space that opens up in my studio, the happier I am. I want to take out the bigger table and move back the drawing table that's in the country place. This will give me more floor space and seating will be less cramped. I also have big boxes stored in the studio that contain old papers from work. All the notes and supporting docs for research projects that I have long forgotten. They can all go away. I'm never going to finish them, and I am not even remotely interested in them now. Some people when they retire from academia, they continue on in retirement. I have other interests that were put on hold for so many years, I only want to pursue them now.

I opened the country place this past weekend and spent several days there. It was so quiet and peaceful. Even my little dogs were relaxed and happy. I saw one other dog in a golf cart, the spitting image of Lulu. Fortunately Lulu was looking another direction and didn't see it or she would have been having a frightful fit. Lulu didn't see any other dogs. Nikki could care less, she likes everyone and everything. The big excitement was eating at a friends place and having a visiting squirrel come up to the screen door and knock to get food. Lulu could not understand that at all. She contented herself with patrolling for squirrels the rest of the time we were there.

I need to have help emptying out the screen room and giving it a good cleaning before putting things back. Heavy things like the futon and picnic table. I'm hoping to get grandsons Trevor and Nathan to come up with me and take charge of this. After that's done I'll be ready to entertain.

While walking we found some good manzanita branches cut and piled alongside the road. Phyllis is painting faces on one she found at the horse ranch last month. She was hoping to get more, so we brought them home for her. And one bigger one without good "eyes" for Francis to make a cane.

Other than that the only things I brought home were linens to wash and clothes that were stored during the winter that need freshening up. It will be a big laundry week! The girls had to have a bath when we got home. Here's their bath picture.

I took my android with me and had the games to play. It would not connect to the WiFi but I hope we can work that out next trip. I also had my portable DVD player, and lots of audio books on tape. Fortunately I had plenty of batteries. I finished one book and then listened to short stories while I scrubbed and swept.

My friend Cat went to a talk about birdwatching and bird songs at Sequoia Big Trees State Park. She had such a good time and came back and told me lots of the things she learned. I wish I had knows ahead and I would have gone a day earlier so I could have gone too. We do get wonderful birds in our park. It is fun to try to identify them.

The Lodi mixed media group is about to start a zine project. We did it at the Sacramento group a few years ago. Each of us does a page and then we distribute them to the other group members, and put together a zine where each page represents a different artist. I've got to start thinking out what I want t o do on my page.

Now, I had better stop journaling and get to work. Back to the pit. LOL I'm reposting the pics of the studio when it was just built and clean - before I loaded it up with "stuff". It's a reminder to me what it could look like.