Foovay’s Cauldron

I haven’t gotten a whole lot done this week it seems, other than coloring pages. Yesterday was spent in Las Cruces. We got a lot done, met the husbands surgeon, set up his surgery to install the fistula, started the process to apply for his disability and then took a nice, leisurely drive home up “the old highway” – taking photos all the way, of course.

This photo of the Organ Mountains was taken in Las Cruces. We have been chuckling for a few weeks over some directions we got from one office which stated “turn left, towards the Organ Mountains”. You would think that was a pretty safe landmark, but on the day we went to that place it was overcast and foggy, and you actually could NOT see the mountains. LOL.

Meanwhile, the signs of spring at the ranch are growing. This little fellow showed up Wednesday morning while we were out on the porch enjoying Mr. Sunbeam with our coffee.

The juvenile Sharp-Shinned Hawk has decided he is a member of the family and almost always joins us in the mornings now. Hubby snuck up for this pic:

I did get a lot of sewing done this week, and have just a bit more to do before I pack up the sewing machine for the warm months. Once it gets warm and the days are long I happily trade the sewing machine for the kayak in the storage space. My art supplies will stay out though, as I will start spending part of the day sitting outside to sketch. Now that my scanner is here and hooked up I may even share the sketches with you as they happen. We just might be without Internet for a few days towards the end of the month (can’t afford it – decided we would enjoy eating more than having Internet now that I have quit pretending I will ever make a living here) and I am thinking I may get together with a writing friend for a little marathon writing to finish Book Two of the Hunter series.

We have two whole weeks before we have to go out of town again – WHEEEE. We’re talking about perhaps doing a bit of exploring, checking out some nearby birding areas so hubby can take more photos, etc. Just depends on what he feels up to. One day at a time.

If you wanted one of my coloring books, the shop will be open about another ten days.

Sunny says “the end”

Blessedbe

Summer Fey Foovay

The things I think about…

Been a lot of activity on the Spring Coloring Pages lens for the last couple of weeks so I thought I ought to add some new coloring pages. So I asked on Twitter what people think of when they think of spring. Flowers, baby animals, rain, Easter, St. Patricks Day were some of the answers.

Here in the desert spring means the migrant birds passing though again on their way back south. The doves are cooing incessantly already for their mating season. The traditional spring bulbs don’t actually do very well here and most of the wildflowers bloom in the winter when there is water. The mesquite is the first plant to put out new leaves.

Here in America we never notice how our thinking of “how things are” or should be is influenced by the fact that the first Americans never made it past the Maxon Dixon line, and most of them are from kinder climates anyway. Places where spring is flowers and green grass and baby bunnies (which we probably won’t see here until May or June). People who move to the desert, and even many who were raised here complain about the differences as if the desert were just WRONG because spring here is not like spring in New England. My first husbands family – from New York and Pennsylvania – never stopped complaining that it never snowed in Oklahoma in the winter. Not like three feet deep stay on the ground for months snow. Look at any Christmas card – what do we think Christmas means? Winter snow on the evergreens and Cardinals in every tree, right? Not here.

But most people move to the southwest FOR the warmer, drier weather. Then complain when the seasons do not match those at home.

The desert is different. You love it, or you don’t. You accept it, or you don’t. (It doesn’t really care) But if you do open your heart and eyes to a different kind of beauty, the magic will transform you.

A roadrunner came from behind me, under the porch, and then ran out in front of me before he noticed me sitting on the porch with my coffee this morning. He stopped, turned, glared at me – then squatted and puffed up his feathers, holding his wings out beside his body to make himself about three times the bird he was a minute before. Just so I knew he was a pretty tough bird, ya know. He held that posture for a few minutes, then trotted casually off into the brush. Moments like this remind me why I love it here.

Spring means roadrunners are once again hunting their favorite foods – lizards and snakes. I’ve actually seen a lizard out running around on Christmas Day here.

You probably know that I started Color-Your-Own.com as a free line art site for players of the Orbis games. I still play, mostly at SandboxFarms where you can create animals to share with the world. Recently I created some new varieties of service dogs, including cadaver dogs, bomb sniffing dogs, arson and drug sniffing dogs, and search and rescue dogs. Long as I’m at it, I am creating coloring pages for them, too. I’ll be adding those all week so if you are interested, just check out the coloring pages blog.

I may have told you, but if not The Best Vegetarian Lasagna ever is hubbys first recipe to be shared online and on Squidoo. Check it out – it is delicious. Look forward to more as he gets out of that job and onto a new life.

Well, time to feed dinner outside. Hope you had a great Valentine’s Day and a good week ahead.

I just sat down at the computer to try and kill a few minutes before I go feed when I noticed this outside my window:

The bird on the right is a Eurasian Ring Necked Dove of which we have so many here that they are shoving the native White Winged Dove right out of their habitat. The bird on the left…well my guess is she is either a dilute color variation of the Eurasian Ring Necked Dove, or some sort of hybrid. Here’s a better look at her:

Sorry the pix are so bad – we have a storm rolling in and I was taking them through the back bedroom window at a weird angle to avoid the window frame, which included me standing on the desk. I keep getting knocked off line as I try to post this, too. Yeppers – storm coming in.

I got a great Squidoo payday today and was really excited until I discovered that everything I wanted to buy would not accept PayPal. I no longer allow PayPal to associate with my bank account – since the $300 fiasco over a $10 bill where they refused to use the PayPal balance but instead kept dunning my empty checking account until they cost me about $300 for a $10 payment, no matter how many times I called them OR the bank. So I’ve got money – yay – I just can’t touch it – LOL. Well, I could spend it shopping but I wanted to invest it in advertising (no one accepts PayPal) or go shopping at my adult toy store (PayPal closed their account since they don’t allow any adult businesses).

Speaking of being an adult, a twitter follower “threatened” me that if I did not watch what I said on Twitter she would HAVE to BLOCK me as she is a homeschooler. Well, I’m sorry, but I am an adult – and I am a Pagan – and I call it as I see it. I do not write for small children or sheltered children or children as a matter of fact, so block me and get over it.

Now I need to get out there and feed before it gets worse

Summer Fey Foovay

I happened to notice a few people doing #saturdaysketchbook on Twitter. If I can remember to do Follow Friday (and I usually do but some Fridays I am in town and away from the computer), and spend Music Monday at Blip.fm (I am trying to limit that since it seems to suck up our bandwidth here and then they shut us down to slower than dial up for the rest of the week – love you Wild Blue and your arcane BW limiting system that makes no sense to anyone including your operators) then I should be able to manage sketchbooksaturday. I can at least try. Easier for me right now than Daily Art, unless you count the fact that I am really trying to add about one coloring page per day (or do several in one day and sprinkle them out to you). Anyhow – here is what is in my sketchbook – see now and then I do something that would pass for fine art by hand.

Now, I am going to piddle with my widgets some and give you the RSS feeds to my short story and coloring page blogs which I have not done for some reason.

I am stripping every possible reference to the Anthony Morrison late night informercial AffilliatesSystem.us folks – they are scammers. Sorry. I got fucked out of my $20 investment, but at least I didn’t fall for their constant upsales. I’m sure they would say I failed because I did not pay someone $197 to sign me up for a Google Adsense account (I already have one, thanks), nor do I have a $5000 credit line to spend on ads that MIGHT make me $100 a month if I’m lucky. ROFLMAO. Thank goodness! The only person making money on this is Anthony Morrison and his cohorts.

Sigh. Live and learn. He’s got a GREAT scam. Instead of saying you will make bazillions on the Internet – which so many of us now know is not true – he says “well you might make a $100 or so, and wouldn’t that help if you are struggling to make the house payment?”. Sure it would – if I didn’t have to SPEND $500 to MAKE $100. ROFLMAO. That is assuming they even credit you with your sales (which they do not – or at least they skim them, something porn masters made into an artform).

Oh enjoy the artwork. I’m working on a little short story, then I’m going to go play SEO expert for a friend. I’ve got housework and some sewing on the menu, too. Taking Sunday off, I think, and Monday have a Dr.s appointment for hubby that will probably eat most of the day one way and another. So have a great weekend!

Summer Fey Foovay

Oh – I hereby release the artwork above into the public domain. I’d rather not mess with the karma of theives who steal whatever they like – if I give it away no one can steal it.

My buddy the Juvenile Sharp Shinned Hawk dropped by again this morning. He seems to feel I got enough close up pictures yesterday, instead he posed today with his back to me as we both enjoyed the view of the mountains and clouds out back.

I’m sitting here this morning having my coffee and doing my morning prayers (I am Pagan and I bet I do more and more regular prayers and blessings than most Xtians) and being just filled up with inspiration and brilliant ideas. My problem has always been that I have far more great ideas than time to bring them to consummation. All these groups and web pages and blogs and lenses and prompts to help you find great ideas and here I have them pouring out of my ears at any given time. I should just sell ideas. If I could get an idea of how to do it. LOL.

I forget now who said it but someone recently said online that 1.9 million Americans are out of work – boy that is a lot of new blogs. And here sits this old blog that has moved around here and there and changed up a few times to the newest thing but basically been around since about 2000. Yeah, I’ve pretty much been out of work that long – although largely by choice of late. I’d like to think I’ve learned a thing or two in that time.

One thing I have definatley learned is how to work your ass off 12 hour days 7 days a week to make about $100 a month on the Internet. Not that I want to discourage anyone, but during the last ten years I’ve seen a whole lot of people claiming to be making zillions on the Internet come and go in a matter of months. So it kinda makes me think either they weren’t telling the truth, or maybe they just made their zillion and quit to go lay on the beach for the rest of their lives. Maybe that 1.9 million unemployed Americans are all unemployed by choice – they are laying on the beach soaking up the sun and spending their zillion. Ya think?

Maybe not.

One of my brilliant ideas this morning – that immediately sprouted a dozen branches – is that I ought to start blogging a bit about my experiences and what I’ve learned. Right – I know – every blogger on line is telling you how to be an SEO expert, a social media maven, a blogging millionaire. So I’m not going to tell you that – I’m just going to tell you what I’ve learned over time.

I wish I could say that you’ll see an SEO entry every Thursday or something, but right now my life isn’t that neatly scheduled. I am at the mercy of the scheduling requirements of three doctors, two labs,  and counting upwards because of the hubby’s health situation. I may even have to go get a job, so he can quit, so we can get his disability. I guess if he wasn’t married they somehow expect him to live on air for a few months or years if he can’t work full time any more. He could work part time but his manager is too stupid to realize they could have their best cook part time for three or four more months – or full time for a couple more weeks before his health gives out. I love it – they know he has to have this and that day off for doctors to take care of his END STAGE renal disease and prepare for full time dialysis. So he calls in sick one day last week and they say “Why? What’s wrong with you?”

***LONG PAUSE***

Yes, I am keeping records for my wrongful death lawsuit when he finally passes out at work and falls into the fryer.

I thought about taking the usual route here on the Internet of making a lens or blog entry all about how sick my poor husband is and how financially fucked we are and oh please oh please buy a coloring book, just one coloring book, and save our ass. I know it would end up in the top 100 lenses at Squidoo and all that but – we really just aren’t that kind of people. Not that I am saying that’s bad, just it isn’t our way. We’ve been screwed since WorldCom turned out to be crooks – even before that really – and we have somehow managed to muddle along so far. And probably because of that sort of self sufficency, when we do beg for help, no one shows up to help. Fuck you – they seem to think – you made it this far. *shrug*

No sympathy for the devil

LOL

How did I get off on all that? I am not well focused today. I did mention that this was one problem I DO have – a lack of focus? LOL. Right. Regularly scheduled blogging on the Internet business – not going to happen. But some blogging on the Internet business – going to happen. More musing, I think you are going to be seeing more of the old musing about life in general on this blog again. More WRITING. Yeah, I’ll work on that.

And because like every other blogger on the Internet, I’d love to be making a living at it, probably you’ll be seeing ads on the blog again. Even if what I am saying in my article is most of this stuff being advertised is total bullshit. LOL. Except the pixie’s tickets. Those are real and you do get a good concert for them – if you live in England. And actually, I’ll probably stick on ads for my other websites. Even if you are here to learn how to make a trickle of cash on the Internet, maybe you’d like to spend some of that trickle on downloadable coloring books for older children and adults. Hah – got it in there!

But always – remember to stop and enjoy the view

As you can tell, this young Sharp Shinned hawk has gotten quite used to me being outside working. In fact, he’s gotten so casual about my presence that he has been less than 20 feet from me twice today as I worked on the fence repairs.

But this morning he astounded me with some behaviour I have never seen from a hawk.

I was doing the morning feed when I caught a bit of movement from the corner of my eye. I was just opening the chicken pen to feed them, so I eased the gate shut and turned my head. This young hawk had landed on the ground ten feet or so from a big brush pile where we pile the mesquite we cut down for this or that. Of course, the pile is always full of rabbits and birds and that’s just alright with us.

My first thought was perhaps I had flushed him off a fresh kill but I was wrong. He stood still a few minutes, then lowered his head so his body was in a straight line and took several very slow careful steps forward. When he got just a foot or two from the pile he pounced into it! Small birds burst out the top, twittering in panic with him right in the middle of the flock trying to catch all of them at once from the looks of it. The whole group went straight up in the air and then circled around behind the barn where I couldn’t see them with him right in the middle of them. I don’t think he caught him one as I’ve been seeing him around the house and barn all day – which is how I got these photos.

I have never seen a hawk stalk prey along the ground like that, let alone purposely flushing bird from a brush pile. Next thing you know he’ll be buying himself a springer spaniel puppy to train!

I haven’t gotten a whole lot done online this week, other than some new coloring pages requested for an adult. I’ve gotten a number of really wonderful coloring page requests this week. It really reminds me of why I really do line art and share it online. Yeah, I’d love to make a living – but no amount of money can make my heart feel warm like the email I’ve got this week from; a woman whose husband is ill but loves to color and finds it calming, a young man who teaches classes about animals in an orphanage, and a beekeeper who is creating a small book to hand out to local children about the importance of bees.

Between that and our little patch of desert with all it’s wonderful denizens, I am so blessed.

Hope you are having a great week.

Summer Fey Foovay