bodner045

Well rats. First I write about doing to little and then I am doing so much I don't have time to write. Cannot blame my family, everyone is out of town except Ian and I don't see him a lot. Planting a garden, finishing special orders, going to "art" meetings, rearranging the titanic. Why do I have to go away to think and write? I watch Home and Garden a little between house cleaning and see these 24 year old sex bombs saying how easy it is to press and stick new flooring in the kitchen if you start from the middle and I go to my kitchen look down and say, "Damn, what about those weirdly shaped outside edges?" And she announces that any light fixture over 8 years old is out of date. Hey! Those are my new ones! They talk about making the house marketable and I realize I have probably made every mistake. They smile, giggle and swing a hammer and poof! The job is complete for only pennies or maybe a few thousand dollars. Meanwhile the home owner is shown w...

While I was in Costa Rica I had a chance to clear my brain and write more about my philosophy of pottery and life. It is difficult for me to think clearly in my home environment. So, I was looking over my blog and the doing nothing chapter of my book caught my eye again. Here is an exert that made me think. Zen, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf and Satchel Paige keep me in good company. A writer named Jill Badonsky thinks in a similar way and had these significant quotes on her site: “Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.” — Zen Proverb quotes “It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. ” — Gertrude Stein “Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth comes to the top.” — Virginia Woolf “By slowing down, taking a break, releasing the process, and diverting our attention, we fill our souls, body and mind with the nutrients for the next step in the crea...

Plates. I do believe this could be a good week for making plates and bowls. My daughter needs plates for her new apartment, my Mother needs plates and I need to check on plates for a coffee shop in Broken Arrow called Stonewood. I made their mugs and plates and I heard they are running low. And sculpture and special orders need to be completed. I also will make several sculptures during the next few weeks. Janet Duval and I are collaborating on a fun idea. I am making a pot and she will include it in a painting and we will show this in her friends furniture store along with several more pieces. She does wonderful colored pencil drawings and paintings. Our styles are similar and we have fun together so it should be interesting to see how it turns out. I will try and photograph this as it happens and post it on this blog. And if that is not enough ideas to be working on I will also be making sculpture and bird-women for a Route 66 show and gallery in Sapulpa. I also plan to post...

As you can tell if you read my blog regularly I am about obsessed with food and cooking as much as about making pottery. And sometimes I think pottery is mostly about making vessels to deliver the food in the most beautiful way. And that is more about sensual pleasure. And of course there is also a lot of sensual pleasure in making sculpture. Today on NPR I heard the Diane Rehm show as she spoke to a significant soul about why we think about food and eating like we do. I know losing weight is much more complicated than any of us really understand but this book has research done by someone who knows how and understands the real struggle and that it is also about business and learned habits. This book explains maybe why all those crispy creme donut shops showed up on every corner and why corn syrup is in almost everything. Have you ever tried to go to the grocery and not put any corn syrup in your basket? I have and it is not easy. It is in everything whether it needs it or not. H...

OK. Finally after 4 weeks of counting points I lost 5 little pounds at weight watchers. I guess that is not too bad since my exercise has been limited by crappy weather. I don't know what excuse I will use when it stops raining, storming and threatening to storm all the time. So another one of those early morning thoughts. How about I don't get in a car until next Monday's weight watcher meetings. When I go to Mexico I lose weight because I walk and don't have a car while I drink beer and eat tacos and mushroom soup. Hmm. Maybe I can "play" little Mexico in my neighborhood all week. I am afraid to promise in case it is really storming tomorrow or I have to go to an interview or something special but so far so good. I need to be a little more active and get some more of these persistent pounds to fear my exercise and jump off. And, as I said before I love to ride my bike so why not? I am such a perfectionist in a way, I cannot promise I can do this a...

What year is it? I woke up this morning, Mother's Day, trying to decide how to celebrate. I think about what gift I might select for the day. I learned from some savvy friends how to get what you want for Mother's Day. You buy it for yourself and declare it your gift. Yes, that is a selfish move but it works. I don't buy much so it is a good way to rationalize buying something I have been thinking about. If my Mother were close by I would make her a wonderful lunch. Instead, I gave her a rain check until I see her again. I have an empty nest, finally. I waited a long time to have my children and I really enjoyed helping raise both of them. And, I am really enjoying the empty nest as well. I do love to see them and enjoy watching them teetering on the edge of our nest as they spread their wings and fly into the world. I want them to feel independent and to explore the world and then come home and tell me about their experiences. Now that the nest is empty, I find my...

No one knows more about dieting than those of us who live on diets most of the time. It is not how to diet it is just staying on it forever. Lord knows I try, mostly. I love to cook. After my terrific experiences in Costa Rica and watching Tom and Susan cook with calphalon I found myself lusting after new cookware. I planned to buy it one piece at a time on sale for the next 100 years. I lucked out and got 40% off a brand new set. I love it. It makes a difference and it is incredibly high quality. It really is fine non-stick and I use almost no olive oil. After Costa Rica I have new knives and new cookware. Now about that diet or as they love to say, "life style" change. Well. And of course, the exercise. Well. I am really trying to make delicious and healthy food and not eat too much of it. The cookware helps. And chopping everything helps. A little more inner strength would also help. I hate keeping a journal of every bite I eat but it does make me accounta...

All my friends wear rose colored glasses and smile. What? In my body maintenance class today they quoted someone (like who, I want to know) from a "recent study" saying kids laugh 116 times a day and adults only laugh 4 times a day. Where on earth did they get that info? I did not lose any weight this week and I know I laughed at least 25 times before I left the building. I thought the expression fat and happy was based on something. Oh well. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

One of most wonderful places to visit is Mexico and I apologize to the Mexican people. They are friendly and the land is beautiful and the food is better than ours. So why all the prejudice? Who else would get on a really hot roof for a small income to mail home to the family? Who else would bend in a field all day in miles and miles of romaine lettuce so I could have a good salad. I am so sorry the world is in a panic over the swine flu. I heard about the Mexican man who was arrested in Hong Kong because he left the country, came back and had not even reentered Mexico. How do you spell prejudice? It really upsets me because I have enjoyed the hospitality of Mexico many times. No, I don't like the border towns much and I don't do the tourist areas often. I love real Mexico. It always reminds me of going back in time about 50 or more years before our processed foods and homogenized culture took over this country. I could see my Grandmother, child on her hip, standing i...

Diets suck. I have been doing weight watchers and this week I gained .2 pounds. I spent way to many hours being hungry for this to be possible. But I was not perfect. I thought maybe I could fool or play the system but it did not work out evidently. I did the "points tracking" most of the time. Not perfect. Eventually I made the little point book a little to difficult to get to and made a few good homemade foods and I could not figure out the points value. I tried to figure it out on the computer but it did its quirky little no info available thing. Imperfect. Next? I made some cookies a friend revamped into a very healthy recipe. How could it not help cure my chocolate urge in an ever so healthy way? Well. I did not know how to calculate the points again and could not keep my needy hand out of the plastic container realizing how many oats, egg beaters and whole wheat flour saved them from being unhealthy. Guess again. Portion control. And, once again, imperfect....