adventures

of aplantfancier

Tag: writing

  • bark at the moon

    Back at work today on adventures #4, in which I cannot draw a dog. This of course is the whole point of the endeavor — to practice. To build a practice. Consistency, repetition, progress. Right?

    Man, it’s hard to stay positive on so little sleep.

    The puppy is near four months old. She’s been with me for just one week and I’m exhausted, I love her, I hope I’m doing it right. She’d never been on a leash and I don’t know why but I didn’t think it would be this hard. I leash trained a cat for goodness sake.

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  • puppy101

    I’m working on layering some detail into the grass this morning, down in the furnace workshop. I’ve got towels going in the laundry room outside the saloon doors, and upstairs I hear the rattle of the puppy’s stuffed worm, a hand-me-down from the cat, and the telltale thump of a jump down from the bed, where she knows she is not allowed.

    I knew puppies were like babies, but like nothing can prepare you for the reality of a baby, human or otherwise.

    We’re on day 7, and I finally kind-of slept last night. It’s trash day, and I’ve already been out with her on the leash three times, watching the trucks, getting treats, bristling, getting treats, mostly not barking, getting treats. She’s beginning to deescalate.

    She’s fascinating. I’ve loved training the cat, and so even though the puppy is unfamiliar, in some ways she’s easier. Many of the same concepts apply. They’re both food motivated, but the puppy is biddable, the puppy wants to please me.

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  • ch ch ch ch changes

    Welcome. Been a minute since I was down in the furnace workshop. I mentioned that I queued the blog so that I could be present over the holidays, but I did not mention that I also queued the blog because three weeks ago, while I was having my coffee and watching the Today show and doing my morning check of the rescue where I got my lovely cat, there she was.

    A burly little golden floof with dark, soulful eyes and a graceful black snoot. My heart, I realized, was suddenly racing. Oh no, I thought. Now? This is happening right now?

    It was. Because I knew her when I saw her.

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  • WIP

    Hi, welcome! I have a confession to make. I’ve been meeting puppies. I’ve been reading dog books and stalking dog reddit and trying to get “AI” to tell me what kinds of dogs these rescue pups are. Trying to see the future. Medium, or big, or perhaps extremely big? Can I picture that? Will this dog be kind to my cat? Can I know that somehow?

    Meanwhile I’m plugging away at the little adventure comic and plugging away at the laundry, down in the basement, snow piling up outside and muting the light trickling in through the glass block windows.

    I’ll have to get up early and shovel before I go to work, but I can only be glad. I put 50 plants in the ground in the last weeks before the weather turned, a garden hail mary. The more snow the better. One year we got so much, even the gladiolas made it.

    I’ve got all the lamps on; the little 70s swivel neck I found in the basement of my apartment in Seattle near 15 years ago, the green glass bankers lamp on the bench, the silver clamp lights I paint under.

    I swept and vacuumed the floors, and dusted the worst of the cobwebs, and now I’m here, brush in hand, thinking.

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  • icicles & cherries

    Some photos from my walk with the cat, on a warm day when everything was melting.

    Happy New Year

  • not a prodigy

    Around this time in 2022, Thanksgiving week if I remember right, I biked over to Blick and got a little Cotman student watercolor palette, and a 6×8 watercolor block, and a couple of brushes — I’d always wanted to learn to paint.

    After a couple of frustrated months, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to invent painting, and I did the sensible thing, I got on YouTube.

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  • hashtag goals

    It’s that time of year again, reader. Time to look back and look forward while the year winds down. Time to have a tiny little existential crisis and set a bunch of intentions and then just hold on for dear life when nothing goes as planned.

    I felt really stuck and overwhelmed all last year, but suddenly I look around and I realize I’ve managed to wrest a new reality out of the old one, and I think I’ll be much happier here. Maybe change is always painful, even when it’s good. Does everyone else already know that?

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  • company @ christmas

    Yesterday the temperature rose above freezing for the first time in weeks, and the cat and I spent some time outside, investigating the rows of icicles forming along the new gutters, and the deepening tracks of the rabbit road. The snow was melting in soft, wet heaps, and the cat made nose prints and paw prints while the sun shone out of a clear, blue sky.

    We had company last week and through the weekend, which ratcheted both the cozy festivities and my usual holiday stress to new heights. I miss having that full house, but I think we’re all glad that things are back to normal.

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  • adventures in going overboard

    Company’s coming day after tomorrow and outside it’s still snowing and snowing and snowing. We usually don’t get much til late winter. All bets are off I think.

    The cat is over her cold, and we went out for a while this morning to stamp around in the backyard, marking out our pathways, stopping to observe where they intersect with the rabbit road.

    They’ve already eaten the raspberries down to the ground.

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  • content is king

    Laundry day. I’ve got towels and sheets and clothes of various temperature requirements lined up in little heaps. The laundry room is right next to the furnace workshop, through a pair of slatted saloon doors, so it’s the chore of choice when I can’t tear myself away from whatever I’m working on. Something is getting done. Not much else, but something.

    And also art.

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