Dog Days
Holy moly, it’s been hot.
Like equator hot.
Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration…but it’s just because I hate (read: hate, hate, HATE) the heat. This time of year the average daily temp should be in the high 70’s - but it has been about 20 degrees hotter than that which is making us all a little crazy.
Even though the thought of turning on a torch has been mildly painful, four new rings landed in the shop today - and for that, I’m feeling quite proud. The first set of three I’m calling the Sunbeam rings.
Along with all of this hot weather, we’ve had some gloriously beautiful afternoon thunderstorms. My favorite part, the bit that I always look forward to, is seeing rays of sunshine shooting through the dark clouds as the storm blows east and away. I had these rutilated quartz sitting out on my bench after seeing one such storm, and the streaks of gold immediately inspired me to put together these rings.
Making the fourth ring was a test in patience even though the design isn’t particularly crazy! That’s just the way of it, I suppose - some days everything that can go wrong, does.
I wanted to make a saddle style version of my Piñon ring design and chose this lovely honey calcedony as the centerpiece (to me, it looks like low stratus clouds on the horizon at dawn - so gorgeous!). Things were going great - until they weren’t. The silver didn’t want to solder evenly. I had a torch tip die. The bezel slid to the side when soldering giving the whole ring a lopsided appearance. Basically I just sighed all of the big sighs and kept at it. The mistakes were remedied and somehow it came together - worth the effort, indeed.
All four rings are ready and waiting for new hands and new adventures - check them out in the shop!
I also decided to give myself a new little challenge - filling a page in my sketchbook every day drawings. I have always loved drawing but the past few years it’s not something that I’ve made space for and so it continues to fall by the wayside. When I feel the creative pull towards 2D mediums, I don’t often allow myself to pursue it because I “need to spend that time working.” But I’d like to remedy that attitude and thought this might be a way to do so.
My goal is 30 consecutive days of drawing, but we’ll see how that works out. I suppose 30 non-consecutive days would be ok to! I’m on day 3 now, which is usually about when I quit these sorts of things - so we’ll see if I can stick with it this time. Wish me luck!
On the puppy front, things have been going…about 98% awesome. Ponderosa is such a sweet little dog and we are smitten with her joyful self. But the past few days we were hung up on house training - specifically that we picked a spot in the yard to be her “bathroom” and she refused to use it.
When I say she refused, I mean she WOULD NOT GO. She’ll happily pee in other parts of the yard. And in her crate or on the floor. But not in the tidy little corner next to the shed. Puppies her age should only be able to wait for a couple of hours between bathroom breaks, but the sheer WILLPOWER of this little dog is on a whole other level - and she can wait a hell of a lot longer than that, as I now know! Over the past few days, I spent hours alternating between waiting with her to do her business and carrying her back inside so we could cool off. And the whole time she just looked at me like, “Are we done yet?”
If she did pee in the designated corner, it was only a drop or two. Which meant more waiting after all of the waiting we’d already done. And if I set her down ANYWHERE that wasn’t her bathroom, she would let loose the waterworks in seconds. Big sigh, again.
Eric and I decided this afternoon, after another long day spent waiting in the heat, that if she is that determined and will make herself that uncomfortable just so she doesn’t have to pee in the pretty corner I prepared for her, then we have to honor that. It’s so hard for me - with the cats, Cirrus, now Ponderosa - not to get into a battle of wills. To say that I must WIN or else I am the loser. Because “winning” that way never passes the gut test. That is, there’s no satisfaction in in it and I end up left with a sick sort of feeling in my stomach. And there’s no space for that in my life anymore - really, there never was.
So, we picked a sacrificial patch of lawn where we know Ponderosa likes to pee and we’ll see if we can convince her that that’s the fun place for a puppy to do her business. There, she will find all of the treats and much celebration - and I guess I’ll just pick some extra pretty plants to fill up the corner by the shed.
