I Smell A Bath Coming On (or What I Love About Having A Dog Part 593)

"Why can't I come inside? I brought home something special to share!" 

So today my dog rolled in Something.  Even though I don’t technically know what it was, I still feel like, given the … nature… of it, the capitol letter is appropriate.  This wasn’t the ordinary variety of random substance that country dogs are going to find to roll in.  This was oily, and chunky, and SMELLY. 

I had let the dogs out when I when I got home from pole.  Since it was dark I had put their special light-up collars on them.  These are more so the dogs think I can see them than anything. The Border Collie is smart enough to know that, once the collar is on, she isn’t getting away with anything and mostly sulks around the lighted area of the yard.  The Labrador, however, tends to bound away into the darkness, blissfully thinking “I’m a black dog.  It’s night.  I’m innnnviiiiiisible!”  Never mind the blinking red beacon around her neck. 

When I called the dogs to come in, the Border Collie sulked right over.  The Labrador stood at the edge of the field staring at me.  Or at least I think she was staring at me.  Her collar floated in the blackness at the edge of the field, not moving.  Trying to decide if I could see her or not.  “HANNAH! COME!”  The collar began to move, picking up speed as it neared the porch, obviously thinking “Oh crap.  She saw me.  I wonder how she always sees me.  I’m invisible.  She must be magic.”

Opening the door, I reached down to take the collars off the dogs.  My hand brushed the top of the Labrador’s back as I fumbled with the plastic clasp.  “OH! ISH!”  My hand was now covered with something oily and brown.  And really, really smelly.  The Labrador looked up at me with a very pleased expression on her face. She obviously brought this back to share.  There was a long smear all the way down her back of…Something.  “OUT! OUTSIDE NOW!”  I slammed the door behind her.  Awesome.  Now I had a dog that needed a bath.  At night. In October.   

Luckily, all of my waterproof duck hunting gear was already out for the season, and it seemed the only reasonable way to keep myself even mildly dry during the experience. The Labrador is not a fan of baths even at the best of times.   She loves water.  She loves getting petted.  But, you add soap to the mix and suddenly she feels the only reasonable course of action is to shake violently and attempt to run away. Which causes the person washing her to alternately try to push her away, then grab her, usually getting a bath themselves in the process.  It’s…fun. 

Because it’s mid fall in northern Minnesota, all the outside water is shut off to keep spigots and lines from freezing and bursting and all the hoses are coiled nicely and put away.  Which meant I was left with either carrying water outside or trying to bring the dog inside to the shower.  There was no way she was coming in the house like that, so I decided to try option one first. 

After my third attempt at hanging on to a partially soapy, very slippery Labrador while trying to pour an ice cream pail of water over her back, I realized that getting her rinsed like this was going to take approximately 856 pails of water – each of which required going into the house, taking off my boots, going over to the sink, filling the pail, putting my boots back on and going back outside- and, therefore, the rest of the evening. So, on to option two.   

Now Hannah, while occasionally a little slow on the uptake, has learned that if I try to get her into the bathroom and close the door it’s probably not going to be fun.  So, when she realized where we were heading, she went into full reverse thrust with all four paws.  Anyone who uses the phrase “It’s like herding cats”  has obviously never tried to herd a soapy, smelly, slippery Labrador into somewhere she doesn’t want to go without letting her touch anything.  After this cats would be a piece of cake.

But just getting her into the bathroom wasn’t enough – I also had to get her into the tub.  Which was like engaging in a wrestling match with a small but powerful midget who had been alternately dipped in oil and stink bait.  And in a room that was inherently slippery and only becoming more so.  Except the tub.  The sides of the tub are apparently quite grippy, because Hannah managed to get all four paws wedged against them, cartoon style, and no amount of pushing or shoving from me was going to change that.  So all I could do was play my last card.  “Hannah! Sit!”  She looked at me indignantly but she lowered her butt toward the floor of the tub, where it remained, hovering an inch over the water, until we were done with the bath. 

Thanks to having a showerhead on a flexible hose finishing the bath was a relatively easy task.  Getting the shower curtain closed before she shook was not.  At least I was still wearing my duck hunting gear. 

Now I was faced with the problem of having a clean, but soaking wet Labrador.  I couldn’t put her outside until she dried – it was already below freezing and only getting colder.  And having her inside until she dried would mean keeping an eagle eye on her for hours, since much of our house that she is accustomed to laying on is carpeted, cushioned, pillowed or otherwise very water absorbent.  So I tried drying her with a towel, which she seemed to think was ok, but wasn’t very effective at actually getting her dry. 

This is when I hit on what I thought was a brilliant idea.  The hair dryer works on my hair – why wouldn’t it work on Labrador fur?  Hannah did not think this was a brilliant idea.  In fact, she wasn’t sure she wanted anything to do with it.  She thought that walking rapidly away from the noisy contraption that her crazy owner had was probably the best bet.  But the bathroom is small. There’s really nowhere to go.  And did I mention it was slippery?  I’m fairly certain that a small girl in full duck hunting camo following a Labrador in skittery circles around the bathroom with a blow dryer is not in the “What to Expect When You Get A Puppy” books anywhere.

But it worked.  I now had a reasonably dry Labrador that smelled heavily of lemon dish soap.  And a bathroom heavily in need of cleaning.  And I’m doubting I’ll be going into the pet grooming business any time soon. 

Decomposing Buffalo to Beautiful Swan in 15 Steps - An Adventure in Upholstery

            I recently recovered our sectional couch.  Because it was such an enlightening experience, I thought I would give you a step by step breakdown of how I did it. WARNING: This is not an actual tutorial. If you can re-upholster a couch correctly after reading this, congratulations. You're doing better than I am.   

1:  Determine, approximately 15 minutes after carrying our old, extremely awkward, exceedingly heavy couch all the way around the house to find a door it would fit through and then wrestling it around a tricky corner into the living room that it absolutely will not work in our new house.  Explain calmly to my husband (who was on the heavy end of the couch) why we need a new, larger, heavier one.  Determine a budget.  Realize that everything nice is waaaaaaay outside our budget.  Actually anything even semi-nice is outside our budget. Finally find one. Granted, it sort of resembles a decomposing buffalo crouching in the corner of the thrift store, but it's really comfortable and… reasonably intact. And, at $75, it’s only a little over budget.  

 

The decomposing buffalo crouching in the corner of the living room.  I mean, our very attractive new couch.

2:  Decide, based on previous couch re-covering experience, that this one shouldn't be a big deal to re-cover.   However, I never paid actual money for a couch before, so they were all ugly and decrepit enough when I got them that anything would be an improvement.  And, all of them were re-covered haphazardly in one afternoon with material from the super-extra-discounted-just-take-this-please bin. But I’m paying real money for this couch. I’m going to do it right. Read some books, research it on the web, talk to a friend who has done a little upholstery.  Really, how much harder could this one be?

3. Get couch home and begin actual research on re-upholstering a sectional couch.  Turns out there are a LOT more steps in this upholstery thing than what I had previously done.  Safety pins and duct tape aren't mentioned anywhere.  And holy crap is upholstery fabric expensive! What do they weave this stuff out of? Gold and unicorn tears? My sewing machine took one look at the project we were up against and started projectile vomiting random parts.

4. Determine that, between the cost of the fabric, the cost of replacing the terminally ill sewing machine, and the unlikelihood of getting this one done in an afternoon, it is better relegated to the list of perpetually put off projects.  Keep couch on this list for almost two years.  Anytime it comes up in conversation respond vaguely with the implication that I’ll get around to it as soon as I finish doing research.

5. While bandaging up slightly cranky husband after his second time disentangling a pissed off, struggling cat from rapidly disintegrating couch upholstery promise to make recovering the couch a higher priority.  Go into emergency research mode. 

6.  Buy replacement for now deceased sewing machine.  Realize there is no money left in the budget for upholstery fabric.  Ask friend with some upholstery experience her thoughts on using drop cloths as upholstery fabric.  Realize later that, if upon hearing about the project, your friend with upholstery experience starts sending you craigslist ads for other sectional sofas that’s Northern Minnesotan for “Are you $%^*ing crazy?”

7.  Go to major home improvement warehouse and buy all available drop cloths in the size I need.  Return home.  Pull out section of the couch. Walk around couch. Walk around couch the other way. Try to decide where to begin.  Unfortunately, all the upholstery information talks about recovering couches that they WANT to recover, not ones that really NEED recovering. On this couch, there is no “Take apart the old cushion covers and use them as patterns to make new ones.”  The cushion covers are already “apart” (see disentangling pissed off, struggling cat from upholstery) and, over time couch geology has taken its toll, reshaping the cushions into mountain ranges and deserts of stuffing.

8. Rip off old covers and pin fabric around cushion to create new cushion cover.  Attempt to remove new cover from cushion in order to sew it. Nothing happens.  Realize I have accidentally pinned new cover to cushion.  Re-pin.  Attempt to remove cover.  Nothing happens. Yank harder.  Realize, as pins pop out of the fabric and spray about the room like shrapnel, that I pinned the fabric too tight. Collect pins.  Re-pin more loosely.  Gingerly remove cover.  Start to sew.  Realize there is an optimum direction for placing pins in fabric for ease of removal while sewing - and mine are backwards.  Swear loudly enough that dogs retreat to basement. 

9. Finally finish sewing. Turn cover right side out and wrestle onto cushion (use chin for additional leverage).  Hey, that doesn't look too bad!  Only…12 more to go.  And none of them are the same shape, so I don’t have to worry about anything I learned on this one applying to any of the others!  That’s handy. 

10. Finish up all 6 cushions on first half of couch.  Decide to move on to re-upholstering couch frame because the idea of making another cushion cover right now makes me twitch.  Remove ugly skirt from couch.  That wasn't so bad – pop a few staples and it pulls right off.  Start to remove staples from main body of couch using a flat head screwdriver and a pair of needle nose pliers.  *Note: Flat head screwdrivers are not really “flat”.  They are pointy.  Very pointy.  This is now a two Band-Aid project.

11. Realize that there are approximately 876 billion staples in this couch.  There are staples on top of other staples.  There are staples that don’t appear to actually be holding anything to the couch - as though the person with the staple gun was attempting to create their own little work of art.  There are places where the fabric was stapled down, folded over and stapled down, folded over again and stapled down again creating a clever little nesting doll of staples that will explode outward with a spray of metal and profanity when I pry on it.  Dogs retreat to basement again.

12.  Finally get couch denuded.  Am excited to see that couch is made entirely of real wood.  Attempt to raise spirits by congratulating myself on what a steal this couch was.  Pretend to believe self.  Pin fabric around arm of the couch. Remove fabric. Congratulate self for not pinning fabric to couch. Sew. Turn fabric right side out and realize that it’s now a mirror image of couch arm. Swear quietly.  Attempt to solve this problem by pinning fabric around arm on other half of couch, which faces opposite direction. Sew. Turn fabric right side out and realize that, while it now faces the right way, due to continental stuffing drift, the couch arms are not actually the same shape any more.  Spend rest of evening going back and forth from couch to sewing machine to make fabric fit on couch arms. 

13.   Finally finish one half of couch.  Breath sigh of relief.  Then realize that means I get to start making cushion covers again.  Go back to swearing quietly.  Increase volume of swearing in proportion to how rapidly I’m going through drop cloths.  Apparently the cushions on this half of the couch are mostly larger than the ones on the other half.  Start cutting material for final cushion.  Realize I’m ONE side of ONE cushion short.  Spend 20 minutes turning fabric in all directions as though that will make it magically grow six inches and I can finish this *$%&ing cushion. 

14. Return to major home improvement warehouse for more drop cloths.  Buy two so I’ll be sure to have enough.  Finish final cushion.  YAY! Just one more half of the frame to upholster and I’m done! Now I get to start removing staples again. Crap. 

15. Three more band-aids and 965 gazillion staples later finally finish removing fabric from couch frame.  Come to the conclusion that this side of the couch is considerably larger than I thought.  I may not have enough drop cloths for this….   Solve dilemma by not recovering back of couch and shoving it up against wall.  Couch is DONE! …(ish) 

 

The "finished" couch. Now a beautiful swan.  Don't look at the back.

Garden Plans



Just a portion of our new yard with the "vegtable garden" in the foreground



            In theory I live where there are four seasons –spring, summer, fall and winter. In actuality I live where there are two – when I can spend lots of time outside and when I really like the idea of spending time outside but it’s just too bloody cold to actually do it.  Sure, I can go cross country skiing when it’s nice (and in northern Minnesota in February, “nice” means you can go outside without being afraid of your eyes freezing shut every time you blink), or I can go ice fishing when it’s not (but then I’m not really outside).  But after a while you get tired of putting on every piece of clothing you own just to survive walking across the yard.

            So every year about this time I start getting what people up here refer to as “cabin fever” because it sounds nicer than “a vaguely homicidal hatred of snow”. This is only enhanced by the gardening companies who thoughtfully send me large glossy catalogs full of summer. Or at least all of the possibilities for what summer could be –presuming I had a million dollars to spend and nothing else to do with my time.  

            Our new home is in Zone 3 – which professional gardeners refer to as the “zone of despair”.  The 3 indicates that the growing season here is about three weeks too short. Doesn’t matter what the plant is, it would have been “really great” in another three weeks. In addition to really cold winters, Zone 3 also features really hot, humid summers. Not only do plants need to be “cold hardy” they also have to be “heat resistant”.  If I want vegetables or fruit, they can’t be bothered by “early frost” or “late frost” or “why the @$&# did it just frost in July” frost.  So finding plants can be a little frustrating.

             This isn’t good because I’m going to need a LOT of plants. The new house currently has somewhere between 2 and 3 acres of yard - not counting any of the already established gardens, of which there are only a few. There’s the ubiquitous northern Minnesotan “randomly shaped front island bed full of overgrown irises and quack grass” garden, the “we planted stuff around the foundation but it turns out that large solid objects like houses create a lot of shade so daylilies are the only thing left” garden and the several thousand square feet of vegetable garden that has some strawberries and herbs of questionable parentage. 

              On one hand this is awesome. I basically have a blank slate. On the other hand it’s a really big blank slate. So there are a lot of options. I know there are a lot of options because I’ve taken my usual route when I don’t know how to do something which is, read everything I can get my hands on about a topic until I’m so frustrated by conflicting information and a lack of real advice that I say “screw it” and do things my own way.

I was really just trying to get some ideas for designing a largish garden on a budget. To anyone who reads gardening magazines and books, no, that last statement wasn’t meant to be a joke.  I was unaware that neither the concept “large garden” nor “budget” were discussed in garden literature. Every article seemed to be obsessed with how to spend as much money as possible to cram as much stuff as possible in the smallest space possible.  Near as I can tell, the ultimate garden design would be to spend three skillion dollars putting eight hundred plants, four fountains, two Adirondack chairs and a patio onto a lot the size of a standard newspaper.  

            I was also unaware that I was going to have to learn a whole new language to read these books.  Well, not a new language, they are technically written in English. It’s more like a whole new set of definitions for the current language. For example, when garden writers talk about “elegant” what they really mean is “expensive” and when they say that something is “solid” they mean “heavy”.   Garden furniture that is “aged” or “charmingly rustic” is really “rotting”. And when a plant is “enduring” or “care free” it actually means “you’d better like it because it’s going spread like crazy and take fourteen burly men with jackhammers to remove it”.

            And then there’s the garden’s “style”. Do you favor English Country Gardens, or Cottage Gardens? What about Zen Gardens? And have you tested the soil’s pH? Is it well drained? Did you mulch? What kind of fertilizer are you using? How about….AAaaaaah! Screw it!

            This summer I think I’m going to experiment with something completely different.  Mostly because I think it will be fun. But, partly because if you try something in a way that no one else has – there isn’t anyone to tell you that you’re doing it wrong.

Drywall is an acceptable Christmas present - right?

When we looked at our house for the first time we made a deal that, if we bought the house, my husband could turn the full basement into a game room complete with pool table, dart board and bar.  

            The pool table showed up less than two months after we moved in and the dart board wasn’t far behind. Now we were spending a lot of time in a space that featured pink fiberglass insulation as a major decorating element. Every time someone missed the dart board they had to dig the dart out of the “wall”. The basement needed finishing and, since we were hosting a New Year’s party in three weeks, that was his goal and this was going to be his project.



What the basement looked like when we started. This is about half of what needed done.



Before we go any further, I should let you know that the one house project above all others that my husband hates is drywall. I’m not talking about the normal distaste for tedious projects either; this is the “would sell several major organs and perhaps even some reasonably profitable minor ones to not have to do this” kind of hate. 

Enter: one of my Great Ideas.

My husband had to be gone for four days (leaving Sunday night and getting back Thursday evening) and I would drywall the basement for him, during that time, as a surprise.  The studs and insulation were already in; it was just sixteen or seventeen sheets of drywall and the trim.  I helped with a little of the drywall in our last house.  It’d be fine.

            In case you were wondering, my compensating for a lack of comprehension for the enormity of a project with a completely disproportionate sense of my ability to tackle it will probably become a re-occurring theme in this blog.

I had the whole thing planned out. I would go to the home improvement warehouse and get half the drywall (that’s all the weight my little truck will hold) when my husband left Sunday night. That would give me all day Monday to install it. Then I could go Monday evening and get the rest of the drywall and install that Tuesday. I would do the first coat of mud Tuesday night, and the second on Wednesday. While the mud was drying I would stain the trim. Painting and trim installation would happen Thursday before he got home. Piece of cake.

So, for anyone else with the ability to underestimate a project and overestimate their ability to do it at the same time, here’s what I learned.

If you tell a good friend about a project and their eyes get big and they say something like “Wow. That’s going to be a…challenge” because they’re the kind of person who’s too nice to say “Are you @#$&ing crazy?!?”,  you may want to reconsider the project.

For major home improvement warehouse cashiers: When a 5’3” girl is buying 9 sheets of drywall, drywall tape, and a 5 gallon bucket of drywall mud by herself  do not tell her to “Have a nice day.” A nice day is not in the cards. Especially when it involves getting 9 sheets of drywall into a basement that can only be accessed by a set of stairs with a 90 degree turn in them. When she returns the next day for more drywall, do not ask her what she did with the last batch. “I built a bonfire in the front yard. Turns out this stuff doesn’t burn worth a crap so I had to come back for more.” Really? What do you think I did with it?

It is possible to miss a 2 inch stud eight times with the same screw. Mark stud locations on the cement floor with chalk. This won’t make it any easier to hit the studs on the first try – but it will make you feel smarter.

There is no good way to determine the location of an outlet box until you get a hole cut for it. Oh, sure, some people have a theory about measuring, but that will only get you close. Your best bet is to cut the hole, lift the drywall and stagger forward with it while attempting to look down and determine if the hole is even close to the box. Assuming it is, push the drywall in place and gently tap the area around the outlet box until enough drywall breaks off to let the box slip through the hole.  The hole may now be slightly larger than planned. Mud will fix this.

Drywall looks flat. Walls look flat - until you’re trying to get two sheets of drywall to line up on them. Then you may realize that individual studs can be out of “alignment” by several inches and your house still won’t fall over. While this is comforting to know, it doesn’t make mudding the drywall any easier. You may have to build up several coats of mud to hide the discrepancy. Or you may want to put a really tall, really permanent piece of furniture there. I’d recommend the furniture.

Hanging a 12’ ceiling trim board alone isn’t impossible. Drive a screw partway into the wall about a foot from the where the end of the board will go and high enough that it will eventually be covered by the board. Set one end of the board on the screw and attempt to get the other end of the board attached where it belongs before the screw falls out of the wall. Realize that you set the screw too low and now there’s a hole in the wall below the trim. Fill this hole with paint until you can’t see it.



And, most importantly, it turns out that drywall is a completely acceptable Christmas present. At least, it is when your husband returns after a week away to find the basement that he had been dreading the entire time he was gone more or less drywalled, painted, and trimmed.

The basement as my husband found it when he got home.

It Has Potential

When my husband and I bought our new (to us) house one of our criteria was “It should need almost no work.” Not needing any work wasn’t in our price range.  We had just finished three years of fixing up a hundred year old log home that we bought because it “could be amazing.” We were done with sanding, scraping, sealing, plumbing, wiring, trimming, flooring, and replacing pretty much every structural and non-structural part of a house. We wanted a place that, when people walked in, their first comment wasn’t “Well….. it has potential, I guess.” Our new house should have completely recognized its potential and settled comfortably into its mediocrity.

We found the perfect house. Only 20 years old, it had a new roof, new septic, nice kitchen, great floors, and all the key systems seemed to be in working order. I mean, some of the rooms needed painting – but you’re going to have that with any house, right? Overall, we could just settle in and enjoy.

So, it’s probably not a surprise that within a month I realized that we needed to rebuild the front porch. Not just replace some boards, but rebuild the whole thing. Actually, NEED is probably a strong word. The existing system of getting from the ground to the door worked fine, it just didn’t make any sense. There was a whole lot of wasted space that wasn’t used for much of anything except keeping weeds dry. 

The front porch as we bought it

My husband was…less than thrilled to hear this. Apparently, to him, buying a house because it needed very little work meant that we wouldn’t actually be working on it.  What it really ended up meaning was that he wouldn’t be working on it. We came to this conclusion based on one of the key principles of our marriage, “Who Cares More”.  Any time there’s a strong difference of opinion about something, we determine who cares more about the outcome and it becomes that person’s problem or project. This was obviously going to be my project.

I did manage to talk my husband into helping me hang the ledger boards, but after that point he fled the property for the rest of the day. By the time he and some friends showed up that evening, I had almost all the decking installed. I probably would have had it all in place but, it turns out that 2x8’s that were salvaged from another deck and stored outside in a pile for 10 years may have warped a little. It took all four of us, and several pry bars, to wedge the last of the boards into place.  
But, once we were sitting on the new porch enjoying a well earned refreshing beverage, even my husband agreed that this design made way more sense, and that these “done in a day” projects weren’t so bad. But we weren’t doing any major projects – right?

Ummmmm….yeah…..right.

First Things First

This is probably not going to be your typical "artist's blog."  This is your warning.

Things you will not find in this blog

Long stories about the “inspiration” behind a particular piece of artwork

Honestly, I don’t know. It just came to me. Usually in the form of “Hey, I think I’ll do a frog out of stone.” And then I do a frog. It looks the way it looks because that’s how I draw frogs. It’s inlayed into a chalkboard because I like to find ways to make my art useful. If you’re looking for the kind of crap I made up in college to pass art classes (“The frog speaks to my desire to leap beyond the current situation, and the fly he’s catching demonstrates that I feel trapped.”), you’re not going to find that. I graduated—I don’t have to do that with a straight face anymore.

Handy hints and helpful ideas

It’s not that I don’t want to be handy or helpful. Hopefully, I will write something that gives you a cool idea or helps you figure out how to do a project. Just don’t expect posts like “10,001 Things You Can Do With Leftover Tile” or “Sixteen Bazillion Ways to Use Rocks.”

Lengthy technical descriptions of exactly how I create my art

I draw a picture. I transfer each piece to a stone that has been selected for its color and texture. I cut out the pieces. I reassemble them in whatever I’m using for a frame. I grout. That’s it. Every time.

Things you will find in this blog

General stuff about me and my life

I don’t feel like being an artist defines who I am. For me, it’s more “This is who I am and I’m an artist because of it.” So if you don’t want to read about my hunting trips or gardening exploits—that’s too bad. But those things are as much a part of why I create my art as “I like getting paid to play with power tools” is.

Descriptions of my house projects

Most of the original ideas for my artwork came from having to solve problems while working on my house. I either wanted something that I couldn’t find commercially (this is how the stone tile thing got started) or that I couldn’t afford so I figured out how to make it myself.

Occasional random rants on widely varied topics

I see the world as a collection of absurdities that we need to accept as normal in order to avoid going completely crazy. If I think too long about pretty much anything, it will start to strike me as absurd—and you’re probably going to hear about it.

Sarcasm

If you hadn’t figured that out by reading this far…

Things that make you laugh, or think, or give you an idea or, hopefully, make you want to come back and see what crazy thing I’ll come up with next.