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i decided to wrap my sense of absurdity with my craving for warmth and my desire for instability up into a large package. and place it for safekeeping in the decision making portion of my brain. where it is resting. quite comfortably.
but i am afraid you will have to be kept in the dark. until i arrive in venice.
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i pulled my wool turtleneck out of retirement. i took it to paris in winter back in 2005 and ended up wearing it nearly everyday. an extremely handy travel piece.
and my trusty black raincoat. which is way cuter than these pics would lead you to believe.
and my super stylish norwegian shades.
and my...
so if you're in venice in december and see kung fu panda strolling your way. it's just me. say hi. okay?
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hello! i hope your day was grand in one way or another. i spent a day here at moss cottage piddling around. reading travel books, blog hopping, watching Bread & Tulips, reading, prepping my travel journal for. travel.
feeing thankful.
that sort of thing. very un-holiday like, but perfect for me. a super excited soon to be 50 year old woman embarking down my very own bulldozed path of change.
a leave of absence i requested from my school district was approved and starting on december 14 i'll be out of the classroom until august of 2013. it was a long and difficult decision process for me. there were other routes i could have persued, but i chose an unpaid leave. this is both frightening and liberating. i'm going off the grid for 8 months. it's a risk i am willing to accept for an insane situation that i am unwilling to accept.
i'll miss many of the sweet children in my class, but i know they will be well cared for by my replacement. it will take them a couple of weeks to adjust, but after that they will be just fine.
and so will i. so will i.
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my sister and I on a small ferry zipping from one little italian village to another. i remember this boat ride so clearly. the wind, the smell of the sea, trying to spot our rental villa from the boat, my spell of seasickness, clambering off the boat and walking the rollicking plank held down by 2 men. each of us passengers dashing across one by one.
we stopped for refreshments. everything was aqua and white. the sea shimmered below us. blue blue blue. an older gentleman- a writer giving an interview to a young woman at the table next to us. the man said with an accented voice, "I detest..." for the rest of the trip i wanted to use that word and say it exactly the way he did. but there was nothing to detest. so i couldn't. then the waiter looking all over for us because we took the restaurant's copy of the check. whoops.
these little italian boys playing and shouting and chasing and laughing just outside a grand old church. oblivious to us.
it's all living here inside my glass dome of memory.
we waited for the boat back to Amalfi. i saw this woman alone. with her cane and her book, warm sweater, her white bonnet of hair. and as i always do when i see older travelers, i thought of my future self. and wondered what sea i might be sitting by in 25 years. waiting for a boat to carry me away. reading a book that has yet to be written.
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thank you thank you thank you to the overwhelming positive response and registration for TICKET TO VENICE. i am honored by your enthusiasm. i've been crazy busy here at command headquarters. simultaneously preparing for departure to italy in a few weeks, launching the class, and receiving much awaited news about another matter. (that i will share in a separate post!)
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pssssst... registration for TICKET TO VENICE has begun! Class starts December 15, 2012.
When you register you have immediate access to the class blog. I've been hard at work getting it all set up and it's ready and waiting for you.
Click HERE for more info and to register.
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By tomorrow I'll have class information posted in my sidebar! Just click on the Ticket To Venice icon in the next 24 hours for full details.
Feeling drunk & nervous & delirious & terribly terribly excited!
Okay back to video production. The sun is blazing. The air is cool. The light is extremely excellent. My coffee's hot. Life at the speed of sound!
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ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
guess i better pack my swim costume!
oh hi! just me here laughing in the face of chaos.
all photos from The Guardian.
you can read the article & see more pics HERE.
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snatching little bits of my day for cut & paste. it's the beginning of a long luxurious 3-day weekend. mmmmmmm
playing around with pam's printables!
my sister dottie, is on her way up from san diego to spend the day with me! supah dupah happy about that. it's my favorite kind of blustery cool sunshiny day. for the first time this fall i've turned the heat on.
it's quiet here. beams of sunlight and leaf silouhettes are moving across the wood floors. the cat posse is drowsy.
i've halted video production to make a cup of coffee and sit here in my art room for a bit and blog about this & that.
i made this cut&paste awhile ago in photoshop. click on the view this photo link to print the high-res file. it's 8x8, but you can resize if you want.
p.s. my sister dottie just called to say she stopped for a nap on her drive up. ha ha ha
we moss girls take our naps seriously. when you gotta take one you just stop. ANYWHERE.
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i got some library cards on etsy a few weeks ago. so far i haven't done anything with them other than grab them in between other projects and make little patterns with my watercolors. and ... i pulled out my tiny orla kiely book this evening. it's wee size is perfect for scratching my collage itch. we who dig paper get those fairly often. ya know?
a cold front is blowing its frosty self down the coast from alaska tonight. i for one have rolled out the welcome mat and hope he plans to stick around for awhile.
did i ever show you my venice apartment? is my memory going to get worse when i stop being a 49 year old and turn into a 50 year old in january? huh? will it? have you ever spilled salad dressing on your absentee ballot before? seen a parrot sitting on someone's shoulder at your polling place? okay i'm going to stop asking questions now and show you a few pics of my apartment.
the view
from the other direction
see the little place with the balcony? that's it!
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i've started making videos for class. oh the glory! oh the madness! oh the cursing! oh the fun!
i haven't filmed a class since FTB way back in early summer of 2011. i'm rusty. but i've got my can of WD-40 out and it really seems to be helping.
a blogger friend is in town visiting and we're meeting up today for lunch. we've never met before, but i'm not nervous because we've emailed and chatted since 2007 when i began this here blog.
the longer i blog the more i enjoy these kind of meetings. everyone i've met usually turns out to be exactly how i thought they would be. and that's nice.
i'm dying to spill the beans about some work related news, but i'm waiting on a few things.
in the meantime i march to school everyday and do my thing. keep the bombs diffused, and try not to be absorbed by the power of a few children's chaos.
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About a year and a half ago I bought a new Nikon - the D5100. Got it for the reticulated articulated screen back and the better video quality. It has a series of special effects, one of which is the one you see above. Color Sketch. It's as easy as selecting that effect then taking a photo. I was thinking it will be really handy in Venice to take some pics in this mode to sketch from later back at home. For a beginning sketcher like me it really helps to see the shapes so clearly outlined.
Saturday feels like a balm. A calm smooth sea. A perfect bubble where I can fall into the rhythm of my creative work. The pieces are falling into place as I mold and shape them. It's good to see progress.
You know that lovely duet from Nashville... If I Didn't Know Better...
You can download it free at The Civil Wars website HERE. They wrote it! I have their Barton Hollow cd and it is fantastic.
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