Pellucid panes

Pellucid: admitting the maximum amount of light; transparent, translucent

It’s been HOT and sunny here for several days. The sun has been rare in the Pacific Northwest in recent months, so I hadn’t noticed how filthy my windows were.

I was blind, but now I see. Sort of. Pellucid they ain’t.

Feng shui doesn’t like dirty windows.

“Somebody has GOT to wash those windows,” I said to my staff, standing very close by.

“Yes, boss,” I replied, saluting smartly. “As soon as you pay me for fifty years of back wages.”

Pruning: poodle department

I love to prune. To clip away the extraneous in order to reveal the essence. It’s my favorite part of gardening - partly because you don’t have to do it on your knees as when you remove weeds… but mostly because done well it’s an art form. More about that in another post.

Once a month I practice my pruning skills on my standard poodle Molly. Again, my pleasure is partly due to my natural state of parsimony (the quality of being careful with money or resources, AKA thrifty, stingy), but more to the opportunity to spend quality time, face to face with my dog.

She does not like being pruned. Especially her feet. You would think that after fourteen years (her birthday was two days ago) she would be used to it, but no.

She knows when the pruning is coming because it’s the only time I use my shower (I’m a bath person but the shower has a moveable nozzle, which is perfect for washing doggies). She slinks into the bathroom - drawn by the prospect of the warm water and physical attention, but repelled by the clipping that will follow.

I use the standard Oster clippers which make a loud buzzing sound. She tolerates her face being shaved, but she goes nuts when I work on her feet. Perhaps the buzz and vibration tickles? Because of her age, she has a few skin bumps that I have to be careful not to trim off…

Here she is: lovely face revealed again…

Of course, MY idea of dog pruning and the dog show idea of dog pruning are like night and day. This is a miniature (mid-sized) guy named Minimoto - a winner in his category at Westminster. Holy moly - that is some serious hair-styling!

Paint! Power from the Palette

When I first moved into my home as a newly single woman I painted my bedroom a soothing sage green. It was soothing, womb-like, peaceful. The green pictures below are before I put up any art.

But after ruffling a lot of ch’i last week in a fit of feng shui madness, I woke up one morning and realized my bedroom was more than womb-like. It was DARK at the sleeping end despite the French doors.

Feng shui say: flesh tones very good in bedroom - peach, pink, apricot, sand, brown, etc. Hmm. Peachy sounded good. But you have to be very careful with these tones not to get into candy pink. Too much white and not enough brown.

My eye for nuance in color has gotten increasingly sharp over the years and I picked a color I thought would work from my paint deck(a fan of about 10,000 colors) and went down to my paint store and bought a sample quart.

I painted a one foot square on each of the four walls to see how the color looked with the different light exposures. I checked them in daylight and by light bulb at night. I put the art pieces I intended to use over the swatches to see if they would be enhanced or killed by the new color.

Bingo! Where it used to take me about 3 adjustments or additional quarts to get a color right, this time I nailed it on the first try.

I’d like to say that I am a DIYer, but I am a shitty painter and it would have taken me all week to do a bad job. Besides, I had two writing jobs due and my good plants are SCREAMING at me to free them from the jungle of weeds that now surround them.

I’m not a great photographer of interiors, nor a good bedmaker, but I love the new warmer look and feel.

It’s a feng shui no-no to have a work area in the bedroom, but my desk is at the other end of the room and is just for writing personal stuff and reading - as you can see I have a lot of books, mostly fun and inspirational here. Upstairs I have a real office where I write for pay, pay my bills, and keep the Serious Books.