Foovay’s Cauldron

Archive for March, 2009

Squaw Lake is a BLM recreation area outside of Yuma, AZ – although the lake is actually in California (barely). Wow, what a really beautiful place. Parts of the lake were roped off for swimming. The wild burros come down into the campgrounds at night to drink at the lake. They were strolling right around our tent in the middle of the night. We were so thrilled. I also saw a Canadian Loon for the first time – a bird I’ve wanted to see all my life. In fact, he swam right around me while I was in the lake. Amazing. We stayed for several days, but couldn’t get any day labor in Yuma. That weekend the lake was “invaded” by a bunch of whooping hollering fishermen for some sort of fishing contest. We sat and had a long talk. It was starting to get quite cold at night by this time – mid October, so we were starting to think we might want to just find someplace to hole up for the winter. We listed the places we had liked the most, and it was abundantly clear that we had fallen in love with New Mexico.

We packed up and headed back…

A pencil drawing of the cliffs in Catalina State Park outside of Tucson, Arizona. Don’t they look like castle walls? The caption reads:

The Gods built this place for the Apache to defend their own for all time.
Even the green things throw themselves at it’s walls and break like waves.

Tucson was quite an experience. One of the few “cities” we spent any time in, we worked a few days at Day Labor. It is eternally famous as the place where we went out to do “yard work” and ended up digging a 12 foot by 12 foot horse stall full of mud down two feet to rebed it in sand. Yard work? We laughed like crazy, and still do.

The woman at the Day Labor place was a really great person and we would have probably stayed and worked a while, but all of the “campgrounds” in the area were for RVs only – no tents. We slept a couple nights in the car at a truck stop. The restaurant had good food though!

When we finally found the state park, it was quite a distance from town – over 20 miles I think. It was a smallish place, although not bad. It was where I started saying everything in Arizona has thorns. There was also a family staying there that had a constantly wailing baby. I’m afraid that woman with all those kids was just as “homeless” or more so than we were. I really felt bad for her.

So – we headed further west…

Summer Fey Foovay

If I pass the drug test and background check (and I can’t imagine why I would not pass either one) I have a new J-O-B. Just Over Broke that is. However, I just have to face the truth. Ten years now of attempting to make a living sharing my talents on the Internet has never come close to making a living. At most I made $300 some months, but on average working my ass off I earned about $100 or less per month. With the hubby now making half his former income, even with our expenses as low as they are now, we just cannot go on like this.

I don’t think it is that my work sucks so badly so much as I am awful at networking. I really just don’t like people, and I just don’t play well with others. I don’t know the rules for interpersonal games and I have to admit, I don’t want to. It is on me – no one and nothing else.

The fact that I also have standards about not cheating, not lying, not browbeating or tricking people into making purchases they might not ought to also hurts me. But I’m not giving those up either.

Perhaps the world just needs me more as a maid and a cart pusher, than as an artist, writer and webdesigner.

Here is the tentative plans.

The adult empire will be allowed to slowly expire itself away, as well the majority of what is left of my mainstream work.

Since I can do Squidoo lenses in spare moments during commercials and they are reaching a point of earning me $2 or so a month with no expenses and no need for intensive upkeep such as a blog, I will likely keep those up and add one now and then.

I will continue to draw coloring pages and keep Color-Your-Own.com going. It is back up to about $20 a month in income so it does at least cover it’s own hosting, and I also feel that given some of the wonderful emails I have received from users, it creates some positive good in the world. I enjoy doing the art, too.

Yesterday I was going through my endless WorkInProgress writing folder. I have some works I’ve forgotten all about, and others I am still fond of and hope to finish someday. I am going to continue to write, and to seek an agent to help sell my novels for print publication. No more of these crappy nobody publishers. Either I am good enough for the big time or I’m going to quit wasting my time.

Since nobody reads this blog anyway, I’ll probably quit posting here. MySpace will be relegated to just what it should be – a place to list new Squidoo lenses and coloring pages I want Google to pick up on. My friends can follow me at my LiveJournal – which I just might start keeping up a bit better. If you don’t have that link, you can email and ask and I might share it (it is a personal diary, not a public blog), or you can follow me at Twitter or Tagfoot (I am foovay on both). I kind of enjoy both of those so I’ll probably continue with them. I won’t be online ten hours a day any more, but the time I am online will be far more for my own edification and pleasure, so who knows, I might even start playing some games and so forth again. Keep in mind though – that I will be working full time, possibly more, and I’ll still have my ranch duties. In addition, someday the weather will get nice enough for kayaking, hiking, camping, bird watching and otherwise having an outdoor life. And I’ll be able to afford it. Gosh, I might even buy a couple of cute outfits and go out now and then. Shocking – eh?

And I just might put some Bella Sara cards up for sale on eBay, if I can’t find any way to trade them otherwise.

Blessedbe

Summer

The one really serious pencil drawing I did of what was probably my favorite rock – it is that one continuous line design again, with the adjacent rock and the little view in the upper right is what is on the back side of the big rock. One of these days I’m going back and spending a couple more weeks up there. Maybe after I get better at painting – although I think the black and white pencil drawing captures the mystery and drama of these carvings.

I’ll probably clean up some scans of this one and sell a few prints if anyone is interested.

Summer Fey Foovay

More petroglyphs from Three Rivers BLM area. The geometric one was fascinating to draw. It is actually all one continuous line. The real one is far more correct than my sketch – that is even, with 90 degree corners. Can you imagine carving that into a rock with primitive tools – and getting it perfect? Fascinating.

The view from our campsite at Lake Brantley State Park in New Mexico. I liked the way the corner posts of the roof framed the scene, the sky, etc. Drawn September 14, 2006. This was such a nice, quiet, peaceful place.

Summer Fey Foovay