I didn't get into details about the storm the other day because I was feeling so yucky.  I'm still feeling pretty yucky, but better.  I'm not looking forward to sleeping tonight as last night I woke up in a nasty sweat.  Sleep came in brief snatches after that as I shivered, sweated, shivered some more, slept fitfully, and sweated even more.  I put on a long sleeve shirt and kept a towel on hand to mop up after myself.  I'd say it's an impending chrone thing, but I'm just a tad bit too young (not by too terribly much, but not within the standard age range for my family) and also I had someone ahead of me with the same illness go through the same thing.  He sweated for four nights.  Man, I hope it doesn't take four nights for me to get done with it.

Anyway, the storm:

Dove gray skies, distant sounds of thunder

Silver boiling into black

Flashes

Standing on the deck 

Eyes reflect jagged bolts that span miles

Funnel cloud orange skies to the west

Rain, light, then pouring, then dumping

It doesn't rain here like this

But it does

Then hail comes

A step back

Heavy hail, thunder hail

The storm is overhead

Trees sway, branches snap

Leaves shred

Dogs running, whining, howling, eyes wild

A rescue is launched into the storm

Prying up deck boards

A trapped white dog scrabbles to freedom

Dogs in the house, running, trembling

Wet animal hair and the scent of a fresh clearcut

Spruce, maple, shattered flowers

Hanging baskets sway, filled with white

No birds, no life, no sound but storm

Hail spills like river rock onto skin and bone

Salvage all we can, all we think to salvage

Fill a glass again and again with hail and whiskey

The thunder and hail pound music on the world

Until, softly

The rain comes again, softly

Thunder, long thunder

Rumbles into the night, a long goodbye

The black and gold caravan rolls into the distance and is gone.

I started to make a list and it got kinda poetic on me.  Please excuse the amateur.  

Time to settle down, I think.  I hope I don't sweat for hours again tonight.

Llama Trials

The doc said I'd get worse before I'd get better.  Man, he must be psychic.

My voice is still shot.  My temperature is going up, not down.  I'm getting a few little red rashy spots.  I'm the picture of yuckiness.  But, as bad as I feel, I'm still not as bad as I was with the dread flu when we came back from Victoria a couple of years back.  Anyway, I can still dance the dance of sickness superiority (I think) because my temp hasn't even gotten close to the temps the boy and the man got when they got sick, aaaaand I have a productive cough.

(Oooo!  Ahhh!)

Yes, it's true, the boy and the man can't seem to manage a productive cough, while the girl and I are practicing for the llama spitting trials later this year.

Well, I guess I'd better get back to full time suffering.  Be well out there!

The sickness spreads, and paint geekiness

It's official now.  The girl is sick too.  

I went to the doc yesterday and my lungs are clear (so far) and I don't appear to have secondary infections going on.  So, despite the fact that I'm ill, have an off again, on again fever and sound like I've traded my vocal chords for sandpaper, I can still declare:

My immune system is mighty.  Here me roar!

Actually, you can hear me roar later, after I'm done with the laryngitis thingy.  I'm supposed to rest my voice as much as possible.  Which, btw, for those of you not in the know, whispering is as hard if not harder on your voice than talking.  Don't whisper if you have laryngitis.  Write a note.  Point.  Shake your head no no and point again more firmly.  That.  That right there.  Yes!  No, not that, that.  Oh, I give up, I'll get it myself.

In painting news I plan to get some new paints.  I've been working with the same palette for a long time (well, about four years which is not that long I guess) and, although I'm sure there's much more to learn about these colors, I've learned to trust their properties, how they mix,and I know how they lay beside each other.  It's time for some new colors to shake things up.

My 'normal' palette is primarily composed of Schmincke aquarelles (watercolors) with some M. Grahams.  I use vanadium yellow, gamboge, vermillion, cadmium red, madder red dark, quinacridone violet, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue and viridian as my 'primary' colors and yellow ochre, raw sienna, raw umber, and Hooker's green as my 'earth' colors.  My earth palette is pathetically limited and I can't paint with it in a functional manner.  Although I don't have black or gray I haven't missed them.  I mix them.

Anyway, I went to Art's Desire to snoop around.  I was almost out of quincridone violet and viridian so I picked up a tube of each (all of these are in M. Grahams, a local company, which I'm moving over to away from Schmincke) and I got pthalocyanine green because it looked useful to me.  I'd also been thinking about how prussian blue would fit into my earth palette, and since it was right there ....  After some hemming and hawing I also picked up burnt umber, a nice, red-leaning brown.  

For 'normal' colors I'd like to add new gamboge because as a yellow it has more range and interest than regular gamboge.  I'm also picking up perylene green, which, I admit, may make me lazy about mixing my blacks.  I'm probably going to phase out Hunter's green.  Although Hunter's is an artist's standard, it hasn't been very useful to me with my current palette and when I dip into it as a straight color or for mixing I'm usually disappointed with how flat it is.  With the new additions I may change my mind.  I have until the end of the tube to decide.  For now, though, it's on the 'need not restock' list.  I also at some point picked up chrome yellow.  I never use the darned thing.  What was I thinking?  

But the colors I'm really excited about are the Daniel Smith Primateks.  These so-called mineral colors show a lot of promise.  This overview on Handprint discusses some of the strengths and weaknesses of these colors.  One negative for Handprint is a positive for me--I paint very dark, and so the dark nature of the mineral hues will serve to my advantage.  I'm also excited to see how the precipitation will work on yupo.  Will it do too much?  Behave itself?  Go wild?  Disappoint?  Can't wait to try.  My choices are blue apatite, sodalite, piemontite and bloodstone.  With these colors, I think my earth palette will become at least as fun to play with as my primary palette.  I can expand as an artist and play with some grown up colors.  

One thing is certain.  My normal palette (the actual palette rather than the colors I have) is too small.  Either that or I have to break down and get a second one, separating the earth from the primaries.  I can no longer foist my earth colors into mixing pockets.  I'll need all the mixing pockets now.  Interestingly enough, although I hadn't planned on it, I'll end up with ten primary colors (replacing gamboge with new gamboge) and twelve earth colors (if prussian blue works out in that palette--it may end up fitting better with the primaries.)  This will be the first time I'll have more colors in the earth palette than the primary.  I think it will work really well with the subject matter I choose, but I won't know until I get there.  

So today I'll paint some with what I have and see what happens.  First thing, got to do some paint swatches and see where I'm at, and then it's onward and forward from there.

Cleanup

Since I never have enough to do around here, I decided to help Andrea out by steam cleaning her carpet before her dad installed her brand new bed from IKEA (thanks to the generosity of grandma--yay grandma!) If only I'd known. Well, even if I'd known there would be mold growing on the actual furniture, the result would have been the same. It would have to go. But I wasn't prepared to toss out not just her bed, which we suspected was the source of unkempt smell (it wasn't, surprisingly) but her dresser as well. So off I go to the store, where I bought three each of three sizes of white rubbermaid drawers and a clear bin with a blue lid for her storage needs. I thought she'd be put off by the results when she came home, but she was delighted. Thank goodness, because I don't know how these things got moldy in the first place and plastic is not conducive to mold growth. It might have been a problem with the manufacturing, actually, since her bookshelves and computer desk were fine, but I'll never be sure.

It wasn't fun to spend the money but it was fun to get the storage stuff from Elvis, an old man that used to be a woman, a woman who used to be a man, Lucille Ball, a housewife in pjs and curlers, and other riff raff at the store.

Nano is starting in just over an hour. I was going to write today, but cleaning up around here took all the spunk out of me. I don't think I even have any spit or vinegar left. It isn't just bone-weariness. All that dust and mold cleanup done over the last two days left me snuffly and with a sore throat. The boy is snuffly too. Andrea, however, is blissfully asleep in her new bed, and I'm sure she's very happy that she doesn't have to sleep on the futon upstairs like she did last night. I'd love to be asleep too. Maybe I can arrange for that.