Three Hours

I went with Judi back to the studio today and spent about three hours carving eleven new stamps.
   

They're quirky, sure, and they need a little cleaning up, sure, but they're interesting enough.



I like the little jelly baby here. (I think they're more properly called jellyfish though, you know?)

I can't wait to bisque them and use them on some new work.

After Judi and I left the studio, I came home to find that our little freezing spell had been broken. (Someone in the studio today told me that recently it has been colder here in New Mexico than it has been in Alaska. Don't know how true that it, but it seems like the God's honest truth because, damn, it's been icy as hell here.) Yes, we had snow in the past couple of days, but today it was warm enough that I had the front door open for awhile so the cats could go out and sit on the patio in the sun.

Of course as soon as the sun started to go down, it started to get hellishly cold again, but that's life in the desert anyway. We're used to the temperature dropping 30+ degrees at night even in summer. I remember the unfamiliar feeling first time I visited a place that didn't have that day/night precipitous temperature drop. It was summer and the first hot, muggy night there I thought, ugh, no wonder people whinge about the heat here. It's relentless. Too much for a little desert dweller like me.

A couple of hours later, Dave came home and we went out to Thai Vegan for dinner. We shared an order of fried spring rolls, one of spicy noodles with tofu, and a dish called P.E.T. (pumpkin, eggplant, and tofu).  After that we went to Costco to stock up on wine and cheese and vegetables. We also bought a new salad spinner because ours has been limping along for a while now. (There's a first world problem right there: Our salad spinner was on its last legs.) Then we had to go by the Co-Op for a handful of groceries.

We came home and put everything away then I got into my pajamas and under the covers with the Tim Winton novel I've been reading and I promptly fell asleep at, like, eight o'clock. It was fine, I was tired because I haven't been sleeping well. Honestly, it's been a bit Nightmare on Elm Street around here recently. (For example, a few nights ago, I dreamed that I found a tiny dead baby who had been left in its car seat in a car overnight. I remember it so clearly, the sight of the baby in the car seat and my initial reluctance to admit the truth of what I was seeing. It was neither my baby nor my vehicle, but I had such an overwhelming sense of heart-crushing responsibility that I was flung out of the dream, left lying in bed gasping for air like a fish out of water.)

The other dreams I mostly don't remember or I remember them in such shredded versions that I don't know why at the time they seemed to cause me such distress.  And we all know what that means, I guess.