A pitch and a save

Eventful events. 

A good thing

I submitted a pitch and got the go-ahead for book #10! Final illustrations for book #9 are going in today. Am a book-making machine. A book-making machine with no lunch breaks. I'm happy about it all, though. 

such happy

And a sad thing

Got a call from Gavin while he was walking along the highway to his friend's house. This is not a place you like your kid to be when they call you, because it means something bad has happened. I picked up with, "ARE YOU OKAY?" He was, but in the ditch by the road was a very dead kitten, with a very alive kitten curled up next to it. Gavin is a gentle person who keeps his shit together, so he climbed down the embankment to rescue the wobbly little baby from the gruesome situation while still talking to me on the phone. I drove over to pick them up, took them to the feed store for baby cat food, and then Gavin asked to return to the dead kitten to double-check there weren't any other survivors. We didn't find any, but I admire the hell out of him for wanting to go back to that sad scene to be sure.

Chickens. Birds. Kittens. Sure. SEND US YOUR BABIES, UNIVERSE. We will take them all, why not.

Memorial Day weekend

Rough week. But a bird was rescued, and a fence was painted, and afterward we had a beer under the lychee tree in the summer heat and I felt good things about life as a whole. 

The painting is nearly there, underdrawings for the next paintings are ready to go, and I have been doing research about silversmithing. Gavin is building a forge in the backyard anyway, so I can cast some jewelry with the same equipment. Have been carrying around a little ball of sculpey, trying to worry it into the shape of a bat or a cockroach or a tiny toad. We’ll see.

Having some bbq. Happy weekending, folks.

death and oranges

Been alone with the kids for a few weeks. 

I fought with a painting, put it aside, started over with a smaller canvas. The eyes and nose are still pissing me off, but I'll get them under control after blocking in the dress.

I'll taper those reaching fingers a bit more on the next pass, make them a little less human. The orange is doing ok, I'll soften the shadow. 

Oranges and sneaky hands is a theme I come back to because of stories my mother tells about thieving creatures of the night and the temptation of fruits you can't find in the underground . 

(Chronicles of Muu is about one of these guys - link in side bar)

chicken update

I let Plucky out of the coop to exercise the babies, and she went into full fighting cock mode, chasing me around the yard with my skirt in her beak, trying to slash it to ribbons with her heel spurs. That is gratitude for you. And the chicks are still small enough that they roll down the roosting ramp like dumplings, so she puts her head out and looks at me expectantly until I come scoop the little dingdongs up in handfuls and stuff them up into bed with her. 

She's back in the coop until I can figure out how to build a playpen with the roll of chicken wire I bought. 

I've got a stack of coop-building books and a hammer. I can do this. 

I'll be billing her for the shredded hippie skirt. 

Oh no

Today's work involved applying wound pressure and mopping up a child's blood. My job is mostly talking people through using the print system/quacking at babies, with exciting bursts of screaming drug addicts and the infrequent horrific child injury.

When I pulled up at home after filing incident reports,  the boys were outside painting the new fence with cherry stain like they were swabbing it with blood. I sat and looked at them for minute, until Zenny ran up to the car, yanked the door open, and yelled, "YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT THESE BABIES."

Plucky was home. She disappeared the day before Easter and I had counted out her due date to this weekend, so I had a big bag of chick crumble in the passenger seat, which I had picked up from the feed store behind the library on my morning break - before one of my preschoolers lost a fight with a book case while her mom was gluing together a foam sandcastle.

There are ten of these adorable little nuggets.

TEN.

WE CANNOT HAVE TEN CHICKENS. That stupid handsome rooster from up the road listened to none of my lectures about chicken birth control (which was basically just me chasing him around with a hose).

Plucky is a really good chicken mom. I picked up each of the little black fuzz balls and looked at them for identifying marks - a little golden spot on the cheek, a stripe under the chin, one with funny eyebrows. I love them.

This is an appropriate Mother's Day gift; cute, noisy, and super inconvenient.

Things that are not mousse

Chocolate mousse is out of favor because it's full of heavy cream and egg yolks and raw egg whites, and it has been replaced in the modern recipe scene with "silken mousse" made with tofu. Well, folks, I have tried this "you'll never believe it's healthy!" concoction and I am here to tell you that it is pureed tofu. You scrape perfectly good melted chocolate into the blender with a hunk of bean curd and whizz it together into a goop that bears no resemblance to mousse at all. Delightful. The possibilities are endless:

tofu + brown sugar = flan
tofu + gravy = mashed potatoes
tofu + clams = chowder

Fry it with cheese and it's scrambled eggs! Microwave it with raisins and it's oatmeal! Freeze it and it's ice cream! You'll never believe it's not the thing that it isn't!

SURPRISE it's tofu

I mean, I still ate it, but consider yourselves warned.