Jaci Dawn

I was sorting through all my old sketches when I uncovered a hidden trove of my children’s artwork from elementary school days. Why I had it mixed in with my stuff is beyond me (except that a lot of mine dates back to school days so maybe I just combined it all one day when we were boxing and moving?).

Blast from the past. Now I love my kids equally (despite what the girls think: they think I favor Levi), but this is going to be mostly about… Levi. It isn’t that I favor him over the girls, but that his drawings are just so darn funny!

This one doesn’t really fit under “my kid’s art’ but it was mixed in the box with everything else. A girl named Debbie drew this portrait of my sister in 1973 or 1974. It’s too large to scan & the camera does it no justice. I should have given it to my sister ages ago but *I* kept it selfishly. I am glad I did because I no longer have my sister to give it to me and I think Chrystal should inherit this.

I do not have any art work of Chrystal’s to post because she wasn’t around when the older kids were in elementary school and her memorabilia got packed into a box appropriately labeled “Chrystal’s Stuff” as opposed to a box of my sketches and junk.

(How’s that for a run-on sentence?)

This isn’t artwork by one of my children, either. The little neighbor girl, KayLynn, drew it. She loved my little Appaloosa mare, Whisper. When KayLynn moved away, she gave me this drawing and a ceramic horse she loved as a token of her appreciation for allowing her to pet Whisper once in awhile. I think we maybe even let her ride bareback a little.

A little sentimental value.

Levi, 2nd Grade. Part of the PTA series “Dare to Discover”, this is titled “Dare to Discover the Yukon”. He drew his inspiration from my long-running correspondence with a pen-pal who has lived in the Yukon for a number of decades.

Arwen’s entry was “Dare to Discover Kiger Gorge” no doubt inspired by our many, many camping trips into the Steens Mountain Country. She always was a meticulous artist.

Another serious piece from Arwen: “Dogwoods at Sunset”. I’m guessing 6th grade?

Levi, 2nd Grade: “My grandpa is special because he takes me squirrel shooting.”

Oy vey. Not even politically correct! That’s a rifle in the foreground and a couple hapless squirrels out in the sagebrush. At least he spared us the blood and death.

I attribute this to Levi but it could have been an Arwen doodle on the computer. But I think it was a Levi work of art:

‘Starter Castle for ambitious princely couple. 10′ deep moat surrounding 6’ thick fortress. Small house w/garden and stable w/three stalls. Private garden with rare rose bushes from England. Small tower on each corner. two large towers in center of the grounds. Working drawbridge-type door. bridge over moat. Asking price $2,500,000. Located between large public forest and lake in northern Germany. Beautiful view. Contact King Ferdinando Chavez of Armorica at (11)034-784×7849

Castles of the World Realty

87207 S Houcester Ln

Leicester, Leicestershire County

England, United Kingdom UK-16402″

(I’m glad there’s a bridge over the moat, I was worried about that detail)

Last, there was this:

Levi, First Grade: an innocent- looking coloring book page with a story. I’m sure the assignment was *not* what Levi wrote about.

“The Penguins worst day ever.

On day three penguins were out sleding when an anvil fell right on top of them (next page) then another penguin came sleding and he fell in the hole and when he gout out. He pulled the anvil out of the hole and pulled out three flat penguins then slowley they became there  normal size again. Later on when they were sleding down the mountain they ran into a stump and flew one mile away. Then when they were sleding in town they ran into on hundred houses in a row. Later on they ran into a bank then the bank thought they were steling so they whent to jail. Later on they let them out and they sleded into a sewer hole. then on chrismas they got one billion presents that pushed them out of the house. The end.”

Those poor penguins!

I miss my kids. 🙂

The past two weeks of glorious sunshine were good for my spirit and soul as well as my body. Face it, I’m a reptile and I need heat to come alive. More than that, I need sunshine to activate the serotonin levels in my body (or whatever chemical imbalance I have).

But we went from 98 degrees (high) to 70-something. Today, we didn’t even reach 70 degrees. We went from blue skies and unchallenged Vitamin D & K and far-reaching solar flares to overcast and grey all miserable day long. My general attitude soared with the sunshine and plummeted with the grey.

It took me a couple days to figure out why my mood shifted so suddenly. No sun. DUH! I need more than two weeks of summer sun to recharge my emotional batteries before the onset of our annual nine months of rain and clouds.

In an effort to cheer myself up, I decided to put some things away in my new-to-me dresser. You know, things like old sketches & drawings that I’ve had in cardboard boxes where silverfish and spiders are the only visitors. (Sort of a silverfish art museum, I suppose. Sorry silverfish: museum moved!)

Unfortunately, that only spawned some nostalgic sighing. I have all my kids’ PTA drawings (the ones with blue and purple ribbons on them because ALL children win ribbons at a PTA art show) and some of Levi’s funnier ones boxed in with my old sketches. I’ll have to do a blog post on Levi’s funnier art work tomorrow (only because I didn’t think of it tonight).

But MY artwork. I have sketches from 7th grade in my boxes.

I remember this assignment. Mr. Little, 7th & 8th Grade art teacher, wanted us to just put color down on paper to see how it flowed. *I* had to make a drawing out of it and a statement. Black dog kills brown dog. Mr. Little actually liked it. That’s the only reason I think I’ve kept it all these years.

This was hanging inside my locker in high school. Four years it hung inside whichever locker I had. I didn’t even draw it: CW Anderson did. I merely copied it out of a Billy & Blaze story book and altered it to suit my taste. I loved Billy & Blaze, by the way. Blaze was every bit as smart as that dog, Lassie. Or that other horse, Fury.

And I loved CW Anderson’s artwork.

High school, still. But this is original. In high school, I liked the fanciful Arabian horse heads and often carried them to an extreme when I was drawing. So much for being influenced by CW Anderson who leaned heavily toward Quarterhorses.

I had two babies when I did this colored pencil drawing of a bridge. I was in my late twenties.

Much more recent: an oil sketch of the old mill at Austin, Oregon.

ball point ink on a scrap of typing paper. My little Appy mare curled up in the sun, with a little artistic license (she didn’t have a black mane or tail and she did have spots on her rump). But only I know that. Whisper shows the influence artists like CW Anderson had on my pen.  I actually really like this sketch which is why I’ve kept it all these years (I haven’t owned Whisper since 2001).

Just looking at those sketches is melancholy but looking at the one of Whisper…

Darn. I think I need sunshine.

Or I need to blog about Levi’s childhood memorabilia. Wait until you see some of his artwork. You’ll forgive me for the Black dog kills brown dog piece of artwork.

I promise.

I spent part of this weekend trying to get one step ahead of Harvey.

It isn’t that he’s all that smart.

It is that he dreams of greener pastures and he is always trying his boundaries.

His first 10 months with us consisted of staying on the long lead while Murphy ran circles around him. Harvey dreamed of having the freedom that Murphy enjoyed in the backyard. And sometime after my dad died, we started allowing Harvey to roam the backyard untethered.

And then we started allowing him to be alone in the backyard for 15-20 minute increments.

He seemed to be content with peering under the boards for neighborhood cats.

Don noticed Harvey was chewing on the boards and pulling at them. He moved in some concrete blocks and screwed some old boards to the damaged ones.

I suggested we not leave Harvey alone for more than 20 minutes, but of course we would forget he was out and he would have time to plot another possible escape route.

He hasn’t done much damage to the backyard because we have managed to catch him at every turn. He tore out a board on the back fence this weekend and was halfway through the hole when I caught him. That hole led into the backyard where two Labs live (one is named Daisy but I don’t know if Daisy is the Yellow Lab or the Black Lab. I only know they have a Yellow Lab and a Black Lab and their fence is falling over into our yard in increments).

I stapled chicken wire and buried it in the dirt. weighing it down with more concrete blocks. Murphy noticed. I don’t think the people with the Labs have noticed. Harvey just moved on.

He pulled back my bamboo screen. I happened to look out a window to see him jumping up and down in the corner, trying to figure out how to scale the four foot chainlink in the corner.

On the opposite side of my little prayer garden, he pulled the bamboo screen and escaped to… our yard! Silly dog! I was merely blocking the dogs from making a traffic area behind the garden shed.

I have stapled the bamboo back up in the corner, purchased some wire fencing to stake along the base to discourage digging, and I’ve painted it all with some foul-tasting mixture called “bitter apple”. I gave up on the other corner and opened it to dog traffic, all the while chuckling about how Harvey finally managed to “escape”.

Today he saw a cat in the yard to the south. I purchased more little wire fencing and put it in the ground to discourage digging and chewing his way out. I put more wire fencing in the ground along all the cat trails through the back yard.

The cats come through when the dogs are kenneled and tease them. I’m sure of that now.

Then there’s the garden gate.

The wood shrinks when the summer heats up and the latch no longer reaches. And Harvey figured this out. And Harvey has been in the forbidden garden, hunting invisible cats.

The chair isn’t a deterrent. It merely slows him down. he gets his nose in there and begins to inch forward when no one is paying attention. Inch by inch that garden gate gives.

And Harvey thinks he is free because he is in a different section of the yard.

He’s been tied up a few times this week. But I think I am ahead of him for now. The rains are not far off and he will simply have to be tied up during the rainy season: we can find him to bring him in. Next summer we may just have to bury chicken wire along all the possible escape routes. <sigh>

The good news is that he doesn’t try very hard. Either he isn’t that bright or he’s not that motivated to escape, but his attempts have all be easily foiled. When I first brought him home, he made an easy job of scaling the front fence. I caught him teetering on the top edge of the fence. But he was a frightened dog in a strange place then. Now he loves it here. His only motivation to escape are the many cats that make our front yard their “home” away from home.

I am hoping my little fences are enough deterrent that we can still allow Harvey to be a dog loose in a fenced back yard for at least 20 minute increments of time. He’s a good dog.

And you didn’t hear it here, but they both are good dogs.

I have not posted as much here as I would like to: life sometimes gets busy or you think you don’t have anything to say. Of course, middle child that I am, I always think I have something to say – I am just not always certain everyone wants to hear what I have to say! HAHA.

My dear sister-in-law Julie spent the night last night and I tried to get her to go yard-saling with me this morning. But she had a horrendous headache and places to be, so had to turn me down. Darn. Next time, Julie! But rest assured: it was a lousy day to go yard-saling.

I thought it would be a good day being the last weekend of “the summer” (so to speak as school begins on Monday in Oregon and it being a 3-day weekend for most folks). Don even thought it would be a great day to go so he volunteered to go with me.

We went high and low but the yard sales were… dry. And few. A lot of Christmas stuff at almost every one we stopped at. I have enough Christmas stuff. Don just rolls his eyes. Unless it is really something unusual, I’m not buying Christmas stuff at yard sales anymore.

Darn, anyway. I’m glad Julie didn’t feel up to going now: it would have been wasted time.

I’m glad Julie spent the night, however. I didn’t get any photos but she spent the night with her son, Austin, and his girlfriend, Kaycee. Arwen brought the boys over to meet Aunt Julie (and Eli won everyone over, including Austin). It was fun to have the 3 little boys with my sister-in-law and her son: all these generations together!! Life is good!

Despite himself, Austin liked the little boys. And he loved the big dogs. The big dogs loved Austin. In fact, the two big dogs were beside themselves having company over. I worry about that sometimes: because we don’t have a lot of outside company, how are our dogs going to behave when we do have company? Are they going to threaten guests? Are they going to jump on people? Are they going to annoy guests (yes)?

Harvey and Murphy were so well behaved as dogs go. They wanted to be petted and they begged Austin to go play, but they didn’t growl or bark or jump on anyone. They were thrilled to have house-guests.

Murphy didn’t even steal anything.

Anyway, back to those elusive yard sales. It was a bad weekend for yard sales. Darn.

The only thing I scored were a pair of plastic butterflies in coppertone. I figured I could hang them on the shed next to the square of copper I bought last summer at some yard sale.

Cost: $0.50.

Last of the big spenders, I know. But they do look nice??

Bet you can’t guess what it is!

OK, it’s a good thing I didn’t bet you any money because you probably just won the bet.

Grandsons.

It would be Grandchildren but since there is no estrogen in the mix, it is Grandsons.

I had THREE of them all by myself tonight. THREE. As my son-in-law left them, he thanked me. And I said, “My own kids didn’t get to spend that much one-on-one with their grandparents…” It was mostly due to distance so I am thrilled to be the Grandma within 20 minutes who can take little boys on when she wants to.

I’m a terrible grandma and Javan went home without any clean clothes despite the several pairs of pants his mom packed. We just didn’t get the pull-ups on in time to save them all.(HAHAHA – I have no compunction against getting little kids filthy dirty wet muddy – and Javan’s mom should KNOW to pack way more clothes…) 😉

(She tried to warn me…)

Harvey seemed to understand why he was in the kennel – that was pretty nice of him considering he loves the grandboys. They’re just dubious of the Big Dog that towers over them and barks Loudly. OK, Javan cries.

Zephaniah is 3.5 years old now and has a vivid imagination. He’s very focused and is becoming a “Bert” personality (as in: “don’t mess with my paper clip collection!”).

“Do you want to drive?”

“No, I want to ride.”

“OK, I will drive.”

Zephan went through several such conversations with the little people toys. He hardly moved from this one spot as he played. It was so funny to listen to him make different voices for different characters.

And, yes, he is wearing a sweatshirt in August at 4:30 in the afternoon. Don’t ask.

This kid is mechanically inclined. At age 2, he’s figured out which direction to turn the faucet to get water or to turn it off. Previously, he figured out how to pull apart his plastic yard “tools”.  It comes natural to him.

He was watering my lawn – one wheelbarrow at a time.

And this guy… His personality is just emerging. He’s more like his oldest brother at this stage than he is like Javan. I don’t recall Javes ever playing with the antique insulators on the fence but Z was always fascinated by them. Eli heads straight for them.

We played in the water, rolled balls down the handicap ramp, ate mac and cheese, drove trucks and played in the water, and watched Netflix together. Thankfully, they did not request “Stuart Little: Call of the Wild” one more time. Netflix needs to get some better kids’ programming in.

I just want to say this: I am thankful that I can say “Yes, I will babysit” once in awhile. I think of how much my own children lost by not being close (geographically) to their own grandparents. I want my grandbabies to remember me with exquisite fondness.

Love Gamma.