Reflection Swipe Triptych

 2-3 years ago, I painted my first acrylic reflection swipe triptych.  Trish liked it, asked me to do one for our summer digs in NE WA state.  "Okay", said I.  They're fun to do, quick and easy - except for selecting the best color combinations, spent a couple hours doing that.

Decided to go with all-metallic backgrounds this time: gold, silver, copper.

The copper is my fave, love the look of copper!

Rub a Dub Dub

 Rub-a-dub-dub,

Three men in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,
And all of them out to sea.

There weren't 3 men in our tub.  At that time, circa 1950, it was just 2 small boys, my brother Gerry and me.  We were too young to know any trades, and definitely too young to be out to sea.

It was a fold-up rubber tub, like the one below except black.

This was before we had running water and electricity. 

Water was hand-pumped out of the cistern.

Then, heated on the kitchen wood stove.

We got baths on Saturdays, had to be clean for church on Sundays, you know.  Later, older, laboring on the farm, too tired to bathe Saturday night, no time to bathe Sunday morning.  

Then, came the en route to church spit-bath, our mom spitting on a tissue, wiping our faces, saying, "You could grow potatoes behind your ears!"  Oh yeah, those were the days! 

Are any of you readers old enough to have had a similar experience?

Fish Sticks

 A couple decades back, while living in Columbia City, OR, I made a couple of wooden objets d'art for charity silent auctions.  A woman who lived nearby held annual benefits for a good cause, damned if I can remember what it was now.  

The event included a catered gourmet meal, live music, silent and voice auctions.  The first year, I made a bent wood trellis out of small, green sapling branches.  The second year, I made the thing below, called it Fish Sticks.  I named a few of the fish, including the one second from the bottom.  Can you guess the name*?

I had fun with the project, so I made another 'school' of fish for myself.  They now reside on the pot shelf in our kitchen.  For sure, you can name one of them.  

*Cardshark.  The dorsal fin is a hand of cards, kinda hard to see in the small picture.

RV Recap

It started in 2009 when I bought an A-Frame travel trailer like the one below.  No bathroom, but otherwise surprisingly comfortable for 2 people.  The top triangular part folded down for road travel, could be expanded to full size in 2 minutes.  It was a trial balloon to see if I liked RVing.  I most definitely did - and still do.  Trish and I got together shortly after I got the rig.  She already had RV experience, having lived in a fifth wheel for several months.

Next up was a 21' EDGE travel trailer, purchased in 2010.  We towed that puppy all over, including Alaska and Nova Scotia.  It had all the basics but some irritating design flaws.  The bathroom door opened in, which was asinine, took up most of the floor space, had to sidle around it to get in and out.  It should have opened outward; or been a slider.  And, the light above the lavatory wasn't above the lavatory; it was in the middle of the ceiling.  I shave my face, not the back of my head.  Hold a flashlight in my teeth so I don't cut myself to ribbons?

We upgraded to a 30' Cougar fifth wheel in 2013.  Cougars are low-end rigs with all the basics but few amenities - so we added several: plumbing and lighting fixtures, light-filtering and blackout shades, several more.  We would have gladly kept the rig for many more years, had I not bought a new truck in 2017; it's side rails were too high to fit under the trailer overhang.  Oops!

  So, off we went to Vegas to buy a new 5W, the Reflection, which we still have.  It's a high-end rig, which doesn't mean much: quality control was definitely lacking.  We've had to replace numerous parts at numerous places around the country.  Pain in the butt.

Park Model

 A Park Model (PM) is a tiny home, no more than 400 SF, a tad larger than our RV with slides extended.  It's similar to a mobile home in that it comes with wheels, but once placed on a site, it's seldom if ever moved.  The one below is a stock photo; the decking and steps are add-ons, not part of the basic unit.

Here are 2 more stock photos, showing typical interiors.

And here is the floor plan of the unit we're buying to place on our RV Resort lot near Usk, WA. Website: http://skookumrendezvous.com/

PMs have several advantages over RVs.  Household appliances are a biggie: RV appliances take a lot of abuse on bumpy roads and there's no lack of bumpy roads.  Some RV appliances are also dual/triple-powered to run on AC, DC and/or propane, meaning many more things to go haywire. 

Furnishing a PM is like furnishing any house.  You select your own stuff and place it wherever you want.  You can - and I have - modified and upgraded our RVs over the years but only a few things can be modified.

RVs have holding tanks for fresh water, gray water and black water, with fill-level gauges that never work.  Both the gray and the black can stink to high heaven if not carefully treated and monitored.  PMs have no holding tanks: everything goes down the sewer, so no stink. 

Home Sweet Home, Part 2

The pictures in my previous 2 blog posts did not include 'the big picture' - meaning no view of the entire lot, no perspective.  This post takes care of that oversight.

                                           Above and below, views from the rear of the lot.

                                            Below: 2 views from the street side.

                                                          My work here is done.

Home Sweet Home

Yup, our home away from home - from mid-May to mid-September - is pretty sweet now.  Trish has her She Shed (STUDIO, she insists on calling it) all finished and furnished.  I wish.  I know darn well she'll get more stuff to assemble and install.

And, I have my Man Cave - which, as befits such a manly enclosure is unfinished, rough and crude - much like myself.  The STUDIO is 10' x 20'.  The Man Cave is 18" by 36".  

The LHC pickleball gang lobbied the Resort board to build 2 pickleball courts - and donated $20K for the construction thereof.  The courts are finished and they're a 5-minute walk from our lot.