Friday, September 8, 2017

Mountain Mama / Dirty Hermit


Revisiting and updating the ol' blog today, naturally as a mode of procrastination, when I should be working on some art. Sound familiar? Exactly like this post from 2012. And here we are in 2017. I have officially circled back to being a procrastinaty, pajama-wearing SAHM, aka Stay at Home Mom, otherwise known as  "saaaaaahhhhm".
I mean, what I tell people is that I'm a self-employed freelance professional legit artist and all that jazz, and I truly do have several projects I should be working on. I just have very little to show for it since moving.

Now my kids are in 2nd and 3rd grade. (How the bleep did that happen?) Since they both started being in school full-time I've been working, but now that we moved and I quit, I am "free".
Little did I know time flies when you're free. Like...the seven hours between the time I put them on the bus and the time I pick them up from the bus feels like two hours and I'm all whattheactualeffjusthappened.
The past couple weeks I've been unpacking and getting settled in the house, but now that is mostly done and I have no more excuses to put off working on artwork...except, oh wait, I need to spray paint this patio set and hang these solar-powered twinkle lights on the deck...and now I need to blog. My sister says so.
I've also been Instagramming the crap out of everything because everything up here is so IG-worthy:



My writing brain is broken, you know. All I have is this colloquial conversational text speak now. No artful articulate literature for you! I also fear that now that my kids are potty trained I am going to be desperately lacking in subject matter. "No poo stories??" you cry. Sadly not.

OH BUT WAIT! BUT WAIT! YOU'RE IN LUCK! It just so happens that today we are having the septic tank replaced at our new house. Apparently the old tank had a crack in it and failed inspection, but there wasn't time to replace it before closing so the sellers just cut us a check. Boo-yah. Anyway, we are between tanks--tankless, as it were--and aren't supposed to flush.
This morning, my 7-year-old girl had to go #2, right as we had to be leaving the house (OF COURSE), and she flushed.
I apologized to the tractor fella that one of us *might* have forgotten about the not flushing and he goes, "I noticed."
OOOHHH SHIT.
Literally.

On a related note, we have horses again. From a mustang rescue though, so they are wild and we can't pet them yet and it's killing me. But they poop SO MUCH OMG SO MUCH POOP so maybe I can blog about that. Luckily horse poo isn't nearly as gross as kid poo, and far less gross than dog poo, so I don't mind having to pick up an entire wheel barrow full of it every other day.
The kids named them Professor Petunia and Lady Mike. They are both mares. The Professor might be pregnant. The Lady is a jerk to the Professor, but I don't totally blame her because Petunia eats all the treats. The end.

We live in the mountains now. Not the prairie, not the burbs. The actual mountains. We have views (unfortunately obscured at the moment because of all the horrific wildfires in the North and West). We have trees: mostly the piney variety but also a few aspens, which I love. We have tree houses (yes, plural). We have a mother-forking zip line. We have weird grey stripey mountain squirrels with pointy ears. We have mule deer. We have elk...poop, anyway...haven't seen the elk themselves yet. (See how I worked the poop in? Look what I do for you.)

The mountains feel more like home than the prairie or the city ever did.

Living in the mountains works well with my old saaaaaahhhhm wardrobe of athleisure-pajama-wear. I've pretty much quit wearing makeup (except Wunderbrow because you only have to do your eyebrows like once every three days, so, duh), and only wear sports bras and flip flops--in addition to a t-shirt and yoga pants, of course. Don't make this weird.
I miss wearing my cute clothes, and I miss seeing people more regularly, but...BUT...not really. I am quite the happy hermit to be honest. I love having company, but only if they don't care that I'm a dirty mountain pajama hermit.

I already acquired the necessary mountain home accessories: a hummingbird feeder, a wind chime, a hammock. My husband already acquired the "necessary" tractor--I mean, skid loader. My bad. He's going to use it to build his "necessary" shop, which I am actually in full support of so he can move all his tools and stuff out of my studio. YES, I have studio. It's attached to the barn. It has heat and electricity and windows and it's MINE. For now I will continue my tradition of using the dining room studio.

Which reminds me...I have 7 weeks to do 18 illustrations and then 2 months after that to do 4 more paintings before Christmas. Perhaps I've adequately procrastinated for today?

If I had to walk out to the barn/studio it would be much harder to be distracted by things. Just sayin'.

In conclusion, we are all spoiled brats now.



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