Wednesday, December 31, 2008

LA to Ashland Lift Off, 3 days and counting


I've been stressing about my stuff. I've purged a lot, but so very much remains. I understand that clearing the old space for the new, but I don't desire everything to be new! Yes, great changes are underway, but some of the old is wonderful and perfect and not to be lost!

The stress comes in with not knowing which of the old is sacred and which is just noise. I feel a bit like a failed psychic - I can't choose the correct card behind the screen so I simply choose all the cards - it must be one of them!

I just found one of my old and walking sticks in the back corner of the garage. It looks sacred, but is it more sacred than the little orange plastic footstool I bought while on residency in Banff? Or the bamboo poles we used in our wedding canopy? Every object is talking to me! Why have I never learned the code to decipher these mumblings!

I guess all I can do is pack it all up and revive my spiritual radar and sort it out in So. Oregon.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

LA to Ashland Lift Off, 4 days and counting


As of 12:39 pm we still have no Oregon destination! We're still waiting to hear about our first choice, and have put in a call to our third choice (the retirement house). Our second choice (a slightly dumpy Ashland house) has already been rented and our fourth choice (the Rogue River Retreat) is out due to lack of internet (!?!?!).

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5:40 PM. Still no house. I think today's theme is "Oops, I forgot I'm a princess" (as in, "Why don't these people just give me what I've asked for - what is wrong with them!?"). When I suffer a moment of rationality, I don't think this move is anymore stressful than anyone else's move. It's just that I've been so good at eliminating stress from my life that to find myself under such hideous pressure is truly shocking and unwelcome.

On the up side: We've had days to pack with no rain in sight! Thank you sunny Southern California! :-) I will miss you!

Monday, December 29, 2008

LA to Ashland Lift Off, 5 days and counting






















Yesterday was a whirlwind of final inspections and packing. One problem solved, next one to conquer: the rental house.

At the last minute the rental management company asked me if the dog is a deal breaker - wha' the foo???? I couldn't have been more clear about having a dog, and the girl who showed me the house said there would be no problem. I wonder how many times they've been sworn at for asking how dispensable a client's baby is.

Other than this, I have no recollection of the events that transpired today. There are boxes everywhere - I have no idea where they came from or what's in them. LOL! But who cares, since we have no idea where to move them to!

Sunday, December 28, 2008

LA to Ashland Lift Off, 6 days and counting


























Because I have a thick mane, and my finger is still recuperating from surgery, It's been too hard to wash my hair and it was getting pretty funky. My knight in shining shampoo (aka dear husband) finally relieved my misery and I now bask in cleanliness and the tingle of my peppermint conditioner. :-)

I read "The Golden Compass" last week on my trip to Ashland, then quickly devoured the movie, too. I've latched onto the fantastical theme of having your soul live outside your body, in the book it's in the form of an animal called your "daemon". I'm likening it to my notion of parts of my soul residing outside my body in my art, which includes a myriad of material objects including my house.

In "The Golden Compass" the deepest form of torture would be separation from your daemon (soul) - it would leave you as a ghost, irredeemably alone in the world in every sense. In this world and in my life, I get to separate from my daemons, yet remain vital, in fact, probably more vital instead.

As I lay in the bath tonight, I memorized my jungle green bathroom ceiling - that I installed, as well as the pine molding, the handpainted glass tiles, the heavy beam painted nude, the wood trim and the lights, that I also installed. I've started to pack my functional and decorative doodads, which is already leaving the house a little alien looking. My extrication from this house, this production, this daemon, is exquisitely self-conscious.

LA to Ashland Lift Off, 7 days and counting

Yesterday was simply another ho-hum chaotic day in escrow. It was "install a wall heater that nobody wants, but FHA insists upon" day. The buyer showed up with a "bargain heater" purchased on Craigslist ... you know the problems started there! The contractors spent the first part of the day fixing the bargain heater. Installation ran from 8am to 5 pm which meant dust, noise and interruptions.

Luckily we really liked the contractors who were upright fellows who know their shit and kept the work impact to a minimum for us. However, the heater is in and works about 1/3 as well as the existing space heaters and is loud and ugly like a motel heater. It blows all the heat under the living room couch, and the heat gets trapped there because of the 6 inch foam padding of the couch seat. I bow to great silliness.

Alex and Ben scrambled to pack up some hand-me-downs, to send back to Georgia Tech. My stepson built a linux server box out of one of his dad's old computers, and is now the proud owner of my old turntable from 1981 and the best of my eclectic record collection. :-)

Al's also getting our sturdy and dependable Revere cookware set - I bought it for $70 at Sears in about 1990. I was always proud of that set as a marker of my growing savvy. When I moved to LA in 1986, I had no idea how to go about securing a piece of cookware. I blew some exorbitant amount, something like $30, on a crappy pan at a supermarket. I didn't actually know how to use cookware, so I probably made short work of ruining that pan. However, 4 years later and 4 years smarter, I bought a full regiment of cookware (including bonus stainless steel bowls with lids!) for a mere $70. Seeing as my early years in LA had much to do with unfolding the sleeping giant of wisdom within me, it was a significant marker indeed.

In fact, much of this moving business keeps putting my grown-upness square in my sights. What's funny is that it surprises me - I hadn't really thought of myself as grown up at all, but the evidence is incontrovertible. And it seems as though I'm leaving my growing-up nest, and moving onto the arena of my mature happenings. Hmmmm. Interesting.

Anyhow, as of today, we have a moving truck coming in 6 days, but no confirmed place to move it into. :-0 The property rental company has been closed since 3 pm Christmas eve day, and has archaic practices for collecting applications and fees: my dad is kind enough to drive over there tomorrow morning to drop off cash when they open at 9 am, hopefully beating anyone else to it, as the first application with cash received gets first crack at the rental. (erm ... no cc payments or wire transfers?! Wha's up wit dat?) The tedious application sent Ben and I scrambling to find social security cards, even. Blech.

It's no wonder people simply stay put - transition is hard. Even the cable company conspires to make our move difficult (we have to hand deliver the cable box to an office in Hollywood on the day of our move, and the new residents can't begin the week long wait for their service until we turn our equipment in - that is retarded, I say!)

Looking forward:
Our new hometown is organizing to gain status as a "Transitions Town", signaling a commitment to sustainability in energy, food, water, finance and other areas.

Friday, December 26, 2008

House Ritual

My brilliant stepson Alex had the idea to make a gingerbread house, so he and I took a little time out from the madness for architectural baking fun. You know what I've been busy doing; Alex has been burning the midnight oil kicking the ass off a network programming project (I don't get the technical parts, but his dad is utterly impressed!). A fun diversion from projects, this is our first house, and plans for modernist improvements are already underway for next years architectural fantasy!

Eugene saw this picture, and with his characteristically keen insight, relished in the symbolic connections between our constructing and devouring a house during this time :-). Hello Kali !

Who will stop by to help us nibble away the delicious phoenix? ;-)

Life in Escrow Hell - Day 36

Today is the first day I have awoken with a sense of doing rather than a sense of waiting to hurry up. Today, all I have to do is hurry up - so simple, I love it! Rather than wondering where we, our dog, and our 5 tons of stuff (according to the movers estimate) will be in a week, I finally have certainty that we'll be on wheels, headed up to a warm house in the darling town of Ashland, Oregon.

The last 35 mornings of escrow had greeted us, consistently, with chaos, new problems, and dramas created by an aggressive and inexperienced buyer's agent who complicated this process beyond measure. The likelihood of the sale going through waxed and waned throughout each day: part of the day I'd look for moving companies, while the next part I'd begin to prepare to go back on the market, and by evening I'd be scouring "freecycle" for moving boxes again.

I had hired a lawyer to help with the tough stuff, but he turned out to be an obstacle in negotiation ... at $300 per hour.

Why such chaos?
* This house is eccentric (diametrically opposed to tight-ass FHA requirements for the buyer's loan)
* Our real estate agents can't talk to each other
* The buyer's wife is a hormonally excited pregnant woman who NEEDS many things NOW
* It's a crappy market! On one hand we feel lucky to be selling the house, on the other hand it's harder to sell a house right now because all "professional" parties in the real estate/financial industries are in sheer terror and behaving erratically.
* I'm stubborn and refused to sell this house with out clearing enough money to pay off all my debt, and have plenty left over to finance a new business and make a down payment on our next house. When I leave this madness I'll have a car fully paid for, no debt and enough "fuck you money" that I never again have to be a cog in an institutional wheel! :-) So, as I complain about this escrow process, I also muse, "poor me, I'm the girl who got everything she wanted."

The good news: We met with the buyers of our house yesterday to sort out a last minute heating installation that must be accomplished for them to get their FHA backed loan. Their agent had turned it into a hostile battle, but since we and the buyers are simply nice people who want to complete this transaction, we were able to ditch our agents and create an elegant solution. PHEW!

Now we can finally sign the moving contract, put a deposit down on a rental house, and pack up what remains after having sorted through 20 years of material residue from my art and life in Los Angeles.

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Some of today's topics:
I'm moving into a house with no garage - where will I put my sledgehammer and table saw? Am I really going to need a sawzall and or a 25# table vice again? Should I leave my 8' ladder behind?

Because my psyche embeds itself in my material surroundings, questions about my building/studio tools and supplies become deep questions about my current mutation: who will I be??? Am I trading in my construction apparatus for the the home sewing kit? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN????!!!!! :-) It also makes me wonder who I really was. I spent so much time creating nomadic artworks, but in reality I am the most materially laden person I know! (except maybe for Eugene!)

Stucco, cement and tile tools ... among the mass of stuff I didn't sell at our yard sale last week.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Dog House Hunting

Amidst the insanity of the escrow from hell, and 3 days after surgery on my right hand, I took a two day sojourn to the Ashland, Oregon area to find Ixa's next great dog house. This one'll be a rental, so we can try out the area. It's been so long since I filled out a rental application, what a strange feeling.

There are a few ways to go:

Ashland:
* rent in Ashland, live the vibe, be there now

Living Room:


Family Room - aka Kahty's studio ;-):


View from 2nd story:



Rogue River
* rest and recuperate 40 minutes out in the woods next to the glorious Rogue River - oh, did I mention it has a pool? ($1500/month)
Front Yard:


Ben's office view:


Master Bedroom View:


Out in the country:

* become pot farmers in a brokedown house with 20 acres fenced acres for Ixa and a pond - the young, stoner couple who used to live here have several kids and have moved to Ashland because their vegan donut business took off! :-)


Medford:
* live like the retired, with the retired, in a subdivision for the retired, in a large manicured, carpeted home with a japanese garden, hot tub, and 3 car (yes, that's 3 car) garage:



We've put in an application for the 1st one, the house in Ashland, but are still considering the Rogue River Rest and Recoup Ranch.

Stay tuned for details on why escrow is a living hell.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

New Finds in Art (for me)













For Matthew Barney fans :-)

And this guy is just ... gorgeous!

Friday, November 14, 2008

The Guest Tent!

A functional sculpture, 2006-2008

Once dubbed "Almost Legal", by an art writer, the guest tent was inspired by both my love for the safari tent and my interest in "sewing my own house." "Almost Legal" refers to the tent being non-permitted. Tune in for more details on this project.

My father and step-daughter have both enjoyed their stays in the guest tent!






Thursday, June 5, 2008

Day 8, 9, and 10 is back in LA

We stayed in yet another ratty "dog friendly" hotel ... gah! This one freaked Ixa out. The manager had a macaw (or some kind of large sqwalking bird) that scared the poop out of the big bad cow herder! She was so unnerved by it that she didn't relieve herself for 20 hours!

We bought lots of gorgeous fresh fruit on the drive home, then were greeted by the majestic San Gabriel Mountains while driving back into LA.

This morning Ixa made her first kill :-(



Day 5, 6, 7 - Ashland, Or

Ashland is gorgeous! Ixa loved it so much ... she ran through the woods, rolled heartily in clover, and took note of every sheep and cow along the way. She also made life hard for the resident cat at my dad's house.

And yet she was much loved,

Day 4 - Weeeeeed!

Weed is a little town near the majestic Mount Shasta.


Stewart Mineral Springs is one of my favorite places! It's near weed. They run a fabulous woodsy get away with mineral hot baths, a beautiful sauna, occasional sweat lodge, a great veg restaurant, and a variety of lodgings from teepees to a beautiful A-frame house on the creek. http://www.stewartmineralsprings.com/

At the little cabin where we slept, we enjoyed the babbling chorus from the creek and heat from the wood stove (oooiks, that was way different from lighting a campfire!).




Ixa's fish breakfast sitting, ignored, while she takes in the richness of the forest ... doggie heaven!




























Ixa's future ranch

Monday, June 2, 2008

Day 3 - Mendocino/Humbolt

Stumbled upon this Buddhist University outside of Ukiah. It was the only thing that interested me in the region.


Peacocks from the University capture the attention of Ixa (on leash!), and they were just as curious about her!




























Mendocino County bugs! After an accidental romp through some poison oak, in flip flops, I pulled about 4 ticks of of Ixa.


Mmmm, the grandeur of the redwoods!
























































The drive through Humbolt County was monotonous! Windy roads and pine trees ... shees, I'd smoke a lot of pot, too!

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Day 2 - Sonoma

Morning walk in Salinas ... no cows here, phew!




























Sonoma Princess, cow hunting




























The Napa/Sonoma/Calistoga area captured my heart ... love at first sight! Too much to consider photographing ... perhaps on the way back south.

Traveling with Princess


The cooler contains her frozen duck and mackerels, as well as her steamed veggies (and a few diet colas, string cheeses, and fruits for me, hehe!)

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Round 'em up!

Ixa took herself off for a little herding session, courtesy of my bad call on an off-leash moment. She drove the cattle from the far left of the image, uphill through a pasture, through a couple of gates, along a fence, then gathered them under a tree. When I ran up breathlessly (fearing her injury from an angry bull or the muzzle of a rancher's gun), she checked her group then sat gloating at her accomplishment ... I wish I had a picture of that!


The 5 minute drive route:


Ixa's herd


Yeah, cattledog all the way.

Go North Young Dog!

Day one, road trip north to find our next home town!

First stop for a run on the beach in Ventura


Picnic at Lake Cachuma
















On the road agaaaaaain!

holy mackerel!