The Sins of the Parents become...Well, the Sins of the Parents.....

I like to mosaic.  Not exactly your "traditional" mosaic-type mosaicing, but rather, well...I break dishes, cups, saucers, ceramics items that have been cast off, and stick them onto things, then grout.

The "things" I stick them onto are flower pots, they themselves usually cast off because of a crack or a nick. But, as the flowerpot inventory runs low, and I am loathe to purchase new ones (have you priced those plain old terracotta pots lately?), I have branched out to other "palettes" upon which to stick my broken dishes....

Apologies for using the Victorian word loathe...I just did not want to describe myself as "cheap".....Sounds so Negative within such a Delightful activity....

So, I have begun looking at surfaces rather differently...There are many more venues besides typical curved pots to embellish....Like, say, for instance, an old wooden silverware chest.

This was made for my sister and brotherinlaw for their anniversary last year. It includes lots of the "stuff" of their (and our) lives....There's a church (in dark pink), a bass fish jumping (broinlaw, Don, is a fisherman), a pc of "Golden Wheat" dishes we used to get out of laundry detergent when we were children, dogs, a sleigh (Sherry collects sleighs), some pink Fiestaware (her favorite), a star (my icon) with a blonde headed baby (Amanda, who is now a grownup lady)..

Here you can see more Golden Wheat...and a picture of Elvis...

The decorated wooded chest was received with great joy and laughter. I lined it with fabric, and I think it took its place somewhere in my sister's pink livingroom...

This is The Planets....a collection of orbs depicting some of the stuff in our solar system.

Here's the other side....Saturn and his moons....

Any guess as to What the "medium" is for this creation?  Well....if you look closely, you will see that it is a dang toilet tank! Yep....found it in somebody's trash heap....Hey! It makes a great planter...builtin hole in the bottom and everything....

Of course, you cannot leave the tank LID on the side of the road, either....I've found several of these, and have made numerous creations from lids....Here's the latest 2:

These will go as prizes for the upcoming World Canine Freestyle Competition in Norman (OK) later on this month. The second one is the WCFO logo in mosaic.  Making recognizeable images in mosaic is NOT easy, but the challenge is quite fun.

I mosaic'd a birdhouse for the Habitat for Humanity fundraiser.

And then....Then, there's my bowling ball colletion...Of aliens from other planets. Here's my first one.  He's called Starman.

Dunno what her name is, but she breathes tree leaves....And sports a pillbox hat...I call her Althea.

I learned a lot making this one...FIRST of all that I must put the eyes up lots higher on the orb.....But I like him...He's my favorite color....and he has dorky teeth...He sits in an old bathroom sink in my back yard....

I have a wonderful studio setup in my storage barn. Anyone is welcome to come over and bust thangs and stick them on stuff.

 

 It is an activity that satisfies many elements in my life. Creativity, Serenity, and even, well...a bit of Anger Management....Bikeman and I haven't had a decent fight in months.....

Last year, when my  younger daughter and her two children came to housesit for us (Bikeman was playing his trumpet in Breckenridge for a few weeks; I was dancing with the younger Collies at a World Canine Freestyle International competition) and to keep watch over our older, retired Collie Baden. I stocked the house with food, and tried to think of as many fun activities as I could for the three of them to do. As it turned out, she cooked her own food and found her own activities....You can read about it if you follow the link to her blog and scroll down to last summer's entries.

I offered my studio to her if she wanted to create something from brokeness, and even made an effort to clean and organize the area a bit.

While I was cleaning, I noticed that a rubber mouse had fallen from the Halloween deocorations box.....

Hmmmmmm....always one to scare the dickens out of my children, I placed the rubber mouse beside one of the boxes, knowing that, once The Baby went out to the barn to create, she would be properly startled at the sight of the tiny rodent.....

She never went out there all week. So the mouse went un-noticed, and I had to find other means to frighten the child in other places.....(which, of course, I did, and many times)

The rubber mouse went forgotten, and the surrounding clutter swallowed it and its memory from my consciousness.....

Last night, I was looking for some table legs in the storage barn. It was dark outside, and quite late. I had just finished a wonderful session with a mosaic'd bowling ball.....I located the table legs and was "redistributing" the clutter, and what should appear but a tiny grey mouse from under the boards near the lawnmower!

I was appropriately and Completely startled, fell backwards a little, landed on a sharp piece of broken plate, and sat down hard.....

Change.....

I do not like Change. It is annoying and it rocks me out of my Comfort Zone. I'd like to stay the same age I am now.....I'd like for it to be Spring all the time....I'd like to keep Daylight Savings Time all year long....I'd like for all my clothes to fit, no matter what I ate.....And I'd like to have Andy Griffith on television all day long.

Even "good change" is bad....Like the positive stuff that can improve your life or bring you extra special joy and thanksgiving.

I'd just rather Stay The Same.

Change makes life difficult and unpredictable. It can just plain strip you of your confidence in everything that is normal and believable. It creates chaos and high blood pressure. It interrupts your sleep and limits your planning. It costs money and slows you down.

The older I get, the less I like Change....and, it seems, the older I get, the More things change.....

Have I mentioned that I am able to communicate with other species?  Yeh....It's a discovery that I have made about myself in the past few years. With a little help from some wonderful animal communicators and some kind friends who see me as quirky, but love me nonetheless, I have taken this gift to several levels higher and have actually been able to help out when the need arises. A lot of the "success" with this kind of thing is believing in what you see and feel and in the reactions of the animals themselves.

Once they start talking to me, they won't shut up....

Of course, I started with dogs. They are, for the most part, pretty willing to talk and communicate. I find it kind of amusing that most every one of them immediately wants to "show" me where they sleep--what their bed looks like. And many times they say things to me that I do not understand at all.....When I tell such nonsense to their owners, their owners know right away what the dogs were talking about.

In order to explain that point,let me digress a bit....When I met Batman, a big tricolor Collie

 one summer day, he immediately came up to me and told me "I eat bones...."  I smiled and told him I knew that (his mom and I had both started our Collies  on a Raw Diet several months before), and I was glad he was eating so good. Batman's mom and I had a little laugh about that "announcement," and continued strolling thru their lovely yard, enjoying the pretty perennials and the gorgeous view.

A few weeks later, Batman's mom called me and told me that she had learned there was "more" to the story about the bones.  She had gone to Dog Camp for a week with her two younger dogs, and left Batman at home with her husband and two sons. While she was away, Batman had gotten a bone caught in his teeth, couldn't get it out on his own, and None of the males in the house could understand WHY Batman kept "annoying" them, until, at last, they inspected his mouth, several hours later.

Apparently, this event impacted the Collie more than any of the humans were aware.....Enough so that he felt a need to announce it to a new friend, at the initial meeting.

Since then, I have tried to listen more, and realize that what they have to say is important, indeed. Still, they say the darndest things....

I've tried talking to cats. Mostly they just want to do what they want to do. They don't even acknowledge that I appreciate their beauty and athleticism. When I was telling one tom that he was going to go to the vet to get neutered, he hissed and spat at me....So, mostly, I just wait for them to come up to me, if they need to give me any information.

I've communicated with a few insects before. Praying Mantis and ants and even houseflies. It's been interesting to see flies zip out the door when I tell them that, even tho it is cool in here, they cannot stay and I DO have a flyswatter and know how to use it. Haven't had much of a fly problem in the past few months...Perhaps it is not as respectful as I should be regarding all life, but I have progressed into talking First, swatting second.... Mark Twain said that "the fly is the only animal that was made in vain."  I tend to agree with that philosophy....

And, so, this spring, when my watergarden hatched out hundreds of tiny black tadpoles....I sat on the rock and tried to connect.

I was amazed at the response I received! They all spoke together in one little pipe-y voice.

"We are many! We are Many!" they piped to me. 

"I can see that," I told them. "Do you have anything for me?"

"We are too little! What do we have that would be of importance to you?" they trilled.

"Well," I replied calmly and serenely as I could (but smiling at their humbleness), "there are lots of things you can teach me. Like, okay, well, maybe how about metamorphisis?"

"We like change! We like change! We Like change!" they chorused together.

And so it was that I began my journey of change this summer of my 58th year.....

Thru the eyes of the tadpoles I began to embrace the changes in my life, and have grown, maybe a little, since they began teaching me.

These creatures are perhaps the happiest beings on the face of the earth, and they start out Life completely different than what they will become as grown up frogs.  Even breathing is different for them
---and mobility---and vocalizing---and eating---and, for that matter, community life....All different. All changing. All a new journey once the tails are gone
and the legs grow in......

 

And it all happens so Fast! From eggs that look like clumps of jelly to tiny wiggling dots with tails to fullblown-grownup-mosquito-eating-lilypad-hopping true frogs. Family Ranidae.

Of course, it happens pretty fast in MY life as well...
Seems like we went from this:

To this:

in only a heartbeat.....

I didn't think I would like it....but I guess I really do.....After all, "amphibian" means "double life."  Perhaps this is what the Plan has been all along....If we allow Change, then we will be able to double our life...and perhaps have twice as much fun than we had before...... 

 Everything must change


Nothing stays the same

Everyone must change

No one stays the same



The young become the old

And mysteries do unfold

Cause that's the way of time

Nothing and no one goes unchanged



There are not many things in life

You can be sure of

Except rain comes from the clouds

Sun lights up the sky

And hummingbirds do fly



Winter turns to spring

A wounded heart will heal

But never much too soon

Yes everything must change



The young become the old

And mysteries do unfold

Cause that's the way of time

Nothing and no one goes unchanged



There are not many things in life

You can be sure of

Except rain comes from the clouds

Sun lights up the sky

And butterflies do fly



Rain comes from the clouds

Sun lights up the sky

And music

And music

Makes me cry