Funny how quickly things can change. Yesterday, I was distraught because we have reached the end of our short-term lease on the rental house, and haven't located a house we'd like to buy. Last night and this morning, I have been reading about several people who are living full-time in RV homes, having sold off their houses and most of their posessions. There are Mimi and Jonna (and their Bad Dogs), and Andy Baird, who as luck would have it are up in Cheyenne just 45 minutes away for a gigantic assembly of owners of the Lazy Daze motorhomes they live in.

This is sounding like an interesting idea about now.



Pat's work pays well, but it will do him in eventually from the stress and hassles. He is away a lot. I have no job, and wonder at this point what I would end up doing.

I have conficting feelings about wanting the security and comfort of a house, and the freedom of few posessions and no long-term commitment to the responsibilities of home ownership. Maybe since we are in such a state of limbo anyway, we could just try this out for six months or so, and decide after that what to do. We had been planning to rig a Dodge Sprinter van for some exploratory trips to Mexico, but this would be the whole enchilada, right from the beginning.

I'll be spending the entire day up in Cheyenne tomorrow, learning as much as I can, and getting some better impressions of what life is like in one of these things.

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Today I finally got to work again on the painting I started a couple of weeks ago. Starting around 11:30, I put in about six and a half hours. I think it's about 30% complete at this point. Very slow going, as I haven't yet figured out how to loosen up the style, which would speed things up considerably, and probably produce better results.



Compare this with the state before this morning...

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When the current weekend has passed, we will be faced with the need to sign a year's lease on this rental house.



Before we arrived, we negotiated a three to four month lease with the landlord, with an option to renew for one year if we did not give notice to be out by July 31st. That notice would be due next Friday, which means we would need to have located a house and be in escrow to close with enough time to get moved.

We haven't found that house.

While we have seen some very nice homes that came close to what we might like to own, here's what we have found too often, in the form of an aggregate realtor's listing note...

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Fabulous home decorated to perfection! Hideous wallpaper borders in every room accent garish and bizarre wall colors selected from the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey designer collection! Acres of practical pure white or soothing iridescent turquoise shag carpet in most rooms - unconvincing imitation wood laminate or fashionable linoleum in the rest! The exterior thoughtlessly neglected with peeling paint, rotting wood, missing shingles, and cracked pitted concrete! Noisy traffic-snarled street to drown out the screeching neighbor kids on their trampoline adjoining the back yard, where you will enjoy the parched afternoons in the absence of any trees or civilized landscaping while being observed from the numerous windows of the enormous neighboring homes which overlook your backyard on all sides! Relax in your ridiculous gazebo as you contemplate the intricate maintenance activities your back yard water feature offers!

Compact single-car garage plus ample space behind the delapitated fence for your decaying RV or boat! Bring your toys!

Spacious four-level layout guarantees that no small task can be accomplished without traversing small but annoying stairs in every direction repeatedly throughout your day! Enjoy boiling water, whipping up your macaroni and cheese or other gourmet delights in the all-electric kitchen, with a trailer-park-modern electric range to spin that meter into a blur! Included window coverings evoke the carefree elegance of an eastern European working-class whorehouse, while the basement rec-room wet bar encourages you and your friends and family to decompose what's left of your microbrew-sotted livers!

You'll be sure to appreciate the outside meticulously landscaped with dead and dying aspen trees, unsightly overgrown half-dead junipers, and acres of water-demanding high maintenance grassy lawn that will increase your water bill by four hundred percent! Imagine the joy of calling in the lawn-poison and sprinkler service experts year after expensive year - a veritable urban nature preserve to enjoy as your traipse back and forth and back and forth under the relentless Colorado sun spewing noise and hydrocarbons from your gas mower! Later, enjoy the evening under the watchful gaze of those friendly curious neighbors while steeping in the included moldy decrepit hot tub, as the sloughed off dead skin cells and aromatic secretions of the previous owners bubble up around you!

Hurry - don't let this one get away! A rare find in a fine neighborhood! This one won't last!

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Mona cleans and sorts some wild spinach on the front porch.

We went up to the ranch for a short visit Sunday, and saw my niece Serena and her fiancé Cole. Serena made a pork chili dish, I made elk chili with beans, and Mona made pozole, so it was the usual food overindulgance. Serena also made a cherry pie from scratch, and Mona made the family recipe Texas chocolate sheet cake to celebrate Pat and her husband Clark's birthdays this week.


Serena and Cole shuck peas from Mona's spring garden.


Bill From The Hill arrives just in time for dinner (no coincidence) riding Buddy.

We had a few neighbors over to share the food, and asked them to vote for their favorite dish. Serena had planned on showing off her dish at the Chugwater Chile Cook-off, but as Mona didn't really want to get caught up in that this year we had a friendly competition at the ranch instead. Serena won - I sure voted for her delicious sweet-smoky pork chili colorado. One neighbor arrived on horseback - he offered his horse Buddy up to anyone who wanted to ride him, but only Clark took him up on his offer.


Clark figures out Buddy while Buddy figures out Clark...


Mona and Serena shmooze over dinner as the sun sets.

On the way home from the ranch on Monday afternoon, we drove around Cheyenne a bit, trying to imagine what it might be like to live there. Before we left Cheyenne, I pulled up outside the gate to Warren Air Force Base, from which a bunch of nearby ICBM silos are manned and operated. They have a missile 'garden' there I always wanted to photograph as we saw them in passing from the freeway heading North and South. As I handed Pat the camera, a guard hurried up, and asked if I had photographed the gate near the missiles. I assured him I had not, and he made me play back images in the camera to demonstrate this. He said if I had or did photograph anything other than the missile display they would confiscate the camera. Meanwhile, a large ominous Ford sedan with civilian plates and little antennas sprouting from it pulled up a short distance away, and the big burly driver was speaking discretely into a hand microphone. Pat took my tourist shot, and we left.


R-L, an old Minuteman, a bigger newer Minuteman, and a (I'm not making this up) Peacekeeper. Yes, there must be many megatons of Peacekeeping tucked away under that little white bonnet....

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I took the M-dog on a walk around the block around the time sunset is the most interesting tonight. This is getting to be a regular routine, to enjoy the big sky from the park nearby on our walk circuit. Mummadog seems puzzled by my desire to sit for fifteen or twenty minutes, enjoying the changing illumination as the sun sinks below the horizon.



I started working this morning on a new 16X20 image of a Merida street scene. Below is the result of the first six hours or so - there is a lot that is just roughed in...



A lot of interesting mental stuff goes on while doing this kind of work. Is it a worthwhile use of time? Is there really any point in doing this? There are a lot problems that arise in how to represent things - what is the best approach for each? What if there is something that just can't be sorted out?

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The robins that nested on the back porch have raised their babies to the point where yesterday, one by one, they left the nest. They flew awkwardly to the ground, and ran about, flying for short distances and finding things to perch on. At one point, one of them flew back to the porch and perched on the back of a chair - he looked up at the nest for a while where he had spent every moment since hatching until this morning, then flew back to a corner of the yard.



The parent birds came to each of them with insects and worms, and continued to feed them. As I watched them, a hawk flew into a nearby tree, and I wasted no time joining the squawking adult robins in chasing it away before it made a meal of one of the babies.



By the end of the day the babies and parents were nowhere to be seen. Today, I thought I spotted the father in the front yard. I wonder if he will still come to drink out of the big plant saucer full of water I continue to keep on the porch rail, where I used to sit in the rocker four or five feet away while he calmly sat on the rim and observed me.

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In my own experience, the period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one's life. ...Through a difficult period, you can learn, you can develop inner strength, determination, and courage to face the problem. Who gives you this chance? Your enemy.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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I mentioned a week or so ago the worry that the nesting robins on the back porch had been scared off, leaving their three little blue eggs untended.

They did return, and two days ago I saw the first upturned mouth rise above the edge of the nest as one of the parents alighted with worm dangling from beak.


Papa bird arrives with part of a meal.

We are amused to see the shift changes that take place during the day, when one parent arrives and the other flies of, as food is shuttled continuously into the insatiable little mouths.


Mama bird takes her turn - note one little beak by her breast.

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