meandering

Robert and I had a rare weekend off together this past weekend.  We explored Weston, MO where we did some coffee shop flopping (I sewed and Robert click-clacked on his laptop), wandered around their tiny and adorable Main Street (they had a Polish Pottery Festival happening, which included a polka band), and ended the day with some bug-free, zero humidity hiking (probably the last perfect weather for a few months).  On Sunday we did a short walk with my niece, Izzy, and her bunny (Margo and Josie know these creatures as bun buns).  Margo and Josie did not eat the bunny and were only vaguely aware it existed.  Izzy is doing well - same job and relationship for quite some time.  She is content with both.  And well, she has a happy bun bun, so that says something too.

And always there's tennis, which is really just an opportunity for Margo to read the newspaper of whatever park we're at (though I have yet to see, hear, or smell these newspapers due to my human limitations).

letting go one envelope strip at a time

I just wrapped up my spring class - Organization of Information, which felt like an unnecessarily complicated deluge of well, information.  I also feel like I need to plant a tree after printing the hundreds of pages of required readings for the class.  

This is some of it:

It didn't help that Robert said he took a similar course for his MBA and he almost failed it.  I am hoping to get a 'B' in this class, but I will be happy with not failing.  I have made straight A's up until this point, so it's a bit of a boo hoo moment.  I didn't make straight A's in my undergrad classes, so I will likely survive this disappointment.

I have also made another collage, because that's just what I do.  I eat, breathe, and sleep art and poetry (when I'm not eating, sleeping, or breathing dog fur or the library or you know, information and how it's so rudely organized).

A library friend, Bet, gave me a whole pile of beautiful security envelopes.  I collect a lot of paper trash, but strangely I've never thought to keep envelopes for their insides.  Beauty is everywhere!  This piece of art came to me like a flash behind my eyelids before disappearing.  I scrambled to get it out, and by scrambled, what I mean is I spent several months playing "puzzle time" with the envelope strips.  It turns out that's what I needed out of this piece.  To carefully put the pieces of something together that held the pieces together no matter what else was going on in my life.  I will expand more on this smidgen of drama in a later post as it's still very much happening, and I don't know how to positively talk about it at the moment.

I used three tea boxes for the hand, tea bags and a very special tea box for the envelope, which represents something entirely separate from the piece (it wants you to know it is its own thing), and tea tags for the letters.   

The sides are covered too!

This next image shows a couple of lovely things.  First, look how well this envelope stuff seals!  You could eat spaghetti off the top of this and it wouldn't show.  And hey, if that's what you need to do with art, I totally respect that.  Second, look how my Elephant and Piggie bookends glow.  For those of us who are readers, I bet we all find ourselves periodically looking at our bookshelves and thinking, "it's really about the material things you know?"