Prioritizing: Breakfast with Buddha

As I contemplate one more work day each week, starting tomorrow, I realize that I'm going to have to Triage even more than usual. I'm reading BREAKFAST WITH BUDDHA for book group, and although it's lite, the message of Buddhist non-attachment is clear, and helpful for me to remember, as I spend more time at work and less in the studio. I am determined to at least put a little paint on canvas, even if it is just a little, every weekend I'm home.

Here are my 2 most recent paintings: Brother, David, and my friend, Anita, who didn't want me to take her picture...I hope you don't mind, Anita.




I don't expect to get rich or famous, but something in me will only be happy if I keep making these... both to hone my skills and just to see what comes out. So, What is the meaning of Life? This is what makes me happy...and trying to be good and kind as much as I can. Why are people good? Buddhist and book questions, interesting to ponder.


And for my online class
in Three dimensional
doll construction, here's
the finished Yellow Doll.
I don't think she needs
legs.


I guess as long as I can still make things, I can stand going to work five days a week...and be grateful I have a job. Doug says he and Amal went to a Halloween party with him as the 99% and her as the 1%...you can just imagine...

Best wishes to friends and family in the Northeast, already under snow. I see snow on our mountains...not long before it hits sea level, I'm thinking. When you can't "do it ALL," Prioritize!

More Fun, No Art...Oh, well

Again this year, Brother David rented this Huge studio space at Fort Worden, with acres of tables on which to lay out the layers of his prints. I am SO jealous! It was fun to see his work to date (last Tuesday) then go to Akamai to buy art supplies and to dinner at Finn's together.








Large pale rainbow from the Fort Worden common. David enhanced the colors on his FB page...stunning!



Fall is creeping across the North West...not as stunning as VT last year at this time, but not bad at all.

I am certainly a rich woman when it comes to brothers! and Life is Too Short not to drop everything when a visitor shows up. This last weekend, brother, Hugh, came over from Seattle after a 6-week tour of the Midwest with Connie, selling Holland America tours. He posted great Roadside Attraction pictures from North Dakota down to New Orleans.


I've been keeping a list of local sights for when company comes.


In my 6 years here, I've never been up to the Sol Duc Hot Springs. Here's a hairy tree along the way.
The mossy trees in this damp climate fascinate me, probably
because they were never
part of my experience living in the NE. The hairy branches make a fascinating pattern high up into the air. The Spanish Moss festooned trees in Savannah, Georgia were the closest I've come before.

We admired the steaming hot springs (98-110 degrees) at the Spa, and vowed to come back with bathing suits and fluffy robes after the re-opening in March. Last March Hugh and I hiked to the Olympic Hot Springs, east of this mountain chain. Legend has it that 2 dragons fought over territory at the top of the mountains, and since they were so evenly matched, neither could win, and each eventually settled
into his own valley to create the steaming baths.

A beautiful triple waterfall above the hot springs. As you can see, Hugh is growing his beard to play Buffalo Bill in Village Theater's production of Annie Get Your Gun.

On our way back down we visited an ancient stand of trees, some of which were alive in 1492, when Columbus sailed to "discover" the New World.











The light in the NW forest is quite magical.

Then it was on to Murdock Beach--one of the many, mostly-deserted beaches along our coast, where some particularities of water and wind create the spherical and strangely-scooped out rocks I've never seen anywhere else.


After all the exploring, we'd worked up quite an appetite...we Foodie Hastings don't need much of a provocation to start cooking! And Hugh had been away from his kitchen for 6 weeks.











We heard about Pannecotta on NPR in the AM, looked up a recipe on the web, and that's what's sitting in the small ramekins (Cream and cream, cooked a little with sugar and vanilla, then jelled) OMG!

Hugh is whipping up a fruit sauce for pork tenderloin baked (perfectly) with garlic and herbs.


Sunday morning, after bacon and egg sandwiches and blackberry pie for dessert, we hiked to the overlook to check out progress on removal of the Lower Elwah River Dam...the water (white area to the left) has been diverted around the former dam and power plant so those parts can be dismantled.

Public access to the upper dam, on Lake Mills, is closed, but there is a web cam.




Ah, some ART after all: My Water of Life banner hanging at the ceremonies last month for removal of the tallest dam yet to be taken down in the US.

And finally, a bit of Wildlife, that my friends back East will appreciate: a slug, as long as Hugh's hand...and he's 6'2" tall with long hands!






Back to ART tomorrow, on one of my last few precious Tuesdays off: Finish the latest portrait of David, more soft dolls for my online class...and Barb Kobe says that I really must finish the HOT FLASH class, complete with dolls to make...

Take time to explore your own neighborhoods and cook with family and friends--Life is Good!

Precious Time!

Time is more precious than money...but without money, it gets awfully cold living outdoors. Corner of my deck with white stone patterns on gray gravel through the newly-cleaned railings...Amazing how much mold can build up in 5 years!

My Sungold and Sweet 100 tomato plants, attached to rebar with quilting scraps have almost given up, and are certainly not cost-effective...but after the HUGE garden in Saugerties, NY, it is


kind of nice to step out back and pick something I can eat. As I talk with my patients, more and more are short of money, scared of the future, and trying to grow more of what they use. I wonder if this trend of Wall Street Occupations will lead to more true attention to the needs of the People as opposed to the desires of Corporations, who have declared themselves people? We have good conversations as I treat hand injuries, since my clients come from the whole spectrum of this small, but varied town.



Through the magic of the World Wide Web, I'm teaching an online class in Three-dimensional Cloth Doll Construction, as well as Doll Making as a Transformative Process, and now a downloadable paper doll class through Barb Kobe's site: http://www.healingandtransformativedolls.com/ I've been sharing the progress on my latest doll/sculpture with class, along with all the mistakes and changes in direction I do along the way. I am sharing process with students all over the world--how cool is that!


Today is one of my last Tuesdays off for a while, as I will be the only OT at work from the end of this month until we get another. Aaron is opening his own practice in Sequim, and I said that I will try to do the work of 2 for the time being...Why are women so eager to try to fix everyone and everything??? Can I keep my work time down to 44 hours a week?

Anyway, I do appreciate my time more than ever today, as I am telling students to keep lists, take pictures, make sketches, so they can come back to their own flow of projects, knowing how challenging it is to pick up a dropped thread in my own life.

So, I celebrate Tuesdays, weekends, hours after the children are asleep, or whatever few moments we can carve out for ourselves!


I'm going to keep the portrait series going. Here's stage one of David from a picture I took last weekend. He's doing a week-long studio retreat at Fort Worden in Port Townsend--what luxury, and how frustrating! I'm going over this afternoon to have dinner with him and then Hugh's coming for Crab Festival this weekend. I have the third blackberry pie waiting in the freezer...Life is GOOD!