Loving My Life

I've been off doing fabulous things rather than posting.

First, I'm nearing the December 1 deadline for those participants who are taking part in Mailart 365.  We decided we'd make a piece of mail art a day for a solid year.  I'm not the only one who tends to work in bursts rather than in daily dollops.  I'm also not the only one who gets to put in overtime in the next ten days to finish on time.  I've posted 252 of my art pieces since December 1, 2010.  I've completed 271!-which means I have fewer than a hundred still to make and 19 days left in which to make them.  It's a fearsome deadline, but also no deadline at all, because the aim is 365 pieces of art, not a calendar date.

I've also been posting a photo every day on my 18-day-old blog about the art and life of Middle Bass Island.  This project, as you might surmise, is walking hand-in-hand with my efforts to get various photos and documents and pieces of paper and whatever else passed through my parents hands dry and de-bugged.  I'm pretty sure I have a year's worth of potential postings. My favorite post so far is the one on November 10 showing photos of Jim Roesch raising the flag at the Main Dock early one morning.  Jim and I talked for a few minutes afterwards.  I'd remembered that he and I cleaned cottages together one summer for Jim Bretz.  A few years later, I think he worked at the Shoppe at the Dock when I was waitressing there.

Jim's wife Mary owned the shop My Aunt Erma's on the island, and one day when Mother and I popped in to buy something darling, Mary remarked that Jim had more jobs as a kid than anybody else she'd ever heard of.  I can probably tie him in the jobs-as-a-kid category, and so can most everybody who spent summers on the island.  Things needed to get done, and there were a limited number of people to do them.  All hands on deck.

Otherwise, I spent several hours today at the ginormous Unique Thrift Store on Preston Highway (the same awful, busy, nothing-but-strip-malls street down which my Chihuahua was found wandering before being delivered to the Humane Society).  Every holiday they throw a 50 % off sale, and today (yesterday; November 11) was no exception.  The store opened at 9:00.  I arrived at 9:15 and didn't get my hands on a shopping cart the entire three hours I was there.  I found materials for three art projects that I've been contemplating; as well as embellishments and a canvas and some paints and even more things that I didn't bring home. There were a number of things I'd like to have purchased, but after the first half hour, I was making decisions based strictly on weight.  That meant no books and no cast iron and no bulky what-have-yous.  Even so, by the time I came trickling home, I was ready for a nap and lunch.

Tomorrow I'm gong to my friend Karen's exciting exhibit, complete with music and poets, at the Iroquois branch of the Louisville Free Public Library.  It runs from noon until two, and I'm hoping to return home with photographs.  In between these adventures, I'm still working to get my etsy shop open.  I made a banner that I hate.  I have items for all three categories of sales:  hand-made, supplies, and vintage.  Things need a little tweaking still, and I must sort out how I'll store items between posting and purchase; but if it's to be done, 'tis best done quickly.  Christmas waits for no one, and the stores are full of jingle bells and mass-manufactured pseudo-necessities.  Art, now -- art is worth giving, and worth getting; it changes us; and not for the worse.  I must get on with it.

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