Painting and Doing the Speed Limit

The Website and the Road Trip

 Here's a confession that might surprise you - I am not a multi tasking wizard who can effortlessly juggle and accomplish 137 jobs and activities at one time. It boggles my mind and amazes me when I meet someone whose daily routine consists of juggling hundreds of projects and difficult chores.

For example, a person, who will remain nameless, can tackle such things as - making Halloween costumes for the 3 kids and the dog, respond to 29 business inquiries and emails, grocery shop for a elderly neighbour, can a few dozen jars of peaches, build a fence, shampoo the rugs, change the oil filter in the car and go for a run, all before making Sunday brunch. For some strange reason, these over achieving multi-taskers never seem to reveal any visible signs of mental fatigue, or obvious over use of stimulants or declaring "happy hour starts at 9:30 am everyday."

In order to prove to myself that I can juggle 2 things really well, I thought before our scheduled summer holiday this past August, I would just throw together a beautiful new website! I don't want to brag here but before you read my story, I want you to know, I have actually taken on and I am at the moment, multi tasking 3 things - writing this blog and making a "to do" list for tomorrow and thinking about making nachos. I know I have to remain humble here and won't go on and on about my proud moment.

The Website

 Days 1 through 13

After watching numerous on line Create Your  Easy Website in 5 Minutes tutorials and setting up our new domain, hosting site and Wordpress theme, I was feeling really peppy and excited about creating my new website.

Being the pack rat person I am, I have saved a huge archive of all the newspaper clippings, magazines articles and audio and visual copies of the TV and radio shows we have appeared on in the last 25 years. Stored in one large filing cabinet and several box's in the basement, are hundreds of photos, biographies and slides of my art from the last few decades. In preparation to create my site, I was soon searching through all my Cd's and my archived image files and reviewing for days on end, all my digital and non digital photographs of my artworks that may be useful in my site.  

By day 14, things were getting a bit more intense. I laugh now but I had created far too many image and text file folders in my computer, I would often forget within the hour, where I stashed "the best re sized images 03" and the best of the re-edited text July 21". By day 17 of the project, I was asking myself why my neck and shoulders were seizing but mainly, why was I having restless nights and reoccurring nightmares about going blind? Was it from the organizational stress and overexposure to a computer monitor radiation?

By day 22, I was looking for on line help and reading forums by hundreds of whining people, just like me, who were suffering from unexplained problems in the WP theme's functionality. The trial and error factor was slowing me down and some of the defective plug-in galleries I tried, was making the site look, well, odd and very quirky. Every now and then during a battle with a glitch, I would start sobbing and babbling about computer text code, mega data, widget, dashboard, footer and header stuff. After every outburst, Vic would comfort me and say,
 "It will be all right, Barb, this website is going to look beautiful and will take a bit more time than expected."

After three weeks of being glued to the computer, I began a quick downward spiral into website madness. I knew that the challenges of my website project and the guilt of neglecting all household duties was the direct cause of my ongoing hair loss and irrational fears. Horrific tumble weed size dust bunnies started to appeared in the bathroom and then in the living room and soon they were floating through the house like giant furry ghosts. As they tumbled and rolled through my deserted painting studio and down the hall towards me, their evil dust bunny murmurs chanted... "live in fear human, live in fear, we are here to consume you and without mercy, smother your cat. ...... Oh, BTW, we don't have a cat.

Oprah always talked about these AH HA Moments

 Having not reached my unrealistic goal of creating a beautiful website in just one easy hour, I remembered that I am not one of those wizards. If asked to fill out a questionnaire, I would say the creative side of me, is a Type B, non-multitasking-semi-sort of-perfectionist-personality. Even under perfect circumstances, I am not a hurry, hurry, slam, bam, slap together a website, designer type of artist.

 I also figured out that my craziness was due to all of the weird technical stuff I was dealing with. And above all, I truly missed working in my painting studio, where my friendly paints and friendly brushes live. I missed my normal and natural way of life - mixing paint, getting messy and thinking and working on one thing only - my painting.

After all the anguish and turmoil, our holiday time had arrived.  Would a nice long road trip away from the computer with lots of painting by a lake cure my blues?  YES!

Vic and I packed our bags and my paints and warned our numerous friends and family that we were getting out of town and heading their way.

Sometimes road trips can be

 trips from heaven

 or trips from hell

Our road trip's

 priceless moments*

  stress filled incidents**

 

 FOR EXAMPLE

  * spending 5 glorious days reminiscing with my cousins and brothers about our fabulous childhoods and visits to the family cabin at Jumping Pound Creek. Watching charming and historic films that my grandpa Weaver made in the 1940's and 50's. Seeing for the first time, film footage of my grandmother, Myrtle Weaver, painting in the Rocky Mountains near Banff. Grandma Weaver, died before my brothers and I were born. Myrtle was a dedicated watercolour painter and we cherish her paintings that are still in the family collections. All of us Weaver's, are grateful Myrtle shared her artistic genes with us.

* eating 1 of the 14 fresh Dungeness Crab caught by brother Ron and his son Tim.

* painting on the dock at Sointula and at Bere Point.

** suffering from Ferry anxiety. Having booked our next stop in the Vancouver area, our hotel "deal" was a no cancellation situation, so we were bound and determined to the get to the mainland that night. The holiday long weekend ferry traffic to the mainland would be unbearable and there were no reservations available.. so..... the worrisome night before our departure from Sointula, I barely managed two hours sleep. At 5 am, I am staggering and rushing around to load the car and get us to the Sointula ferry for our 7:30 am departure. As the happy little B.C. ferry welcomes us on board and chugs along and delivers us in 20 minutes to Port McNeill, I squeal out of the terminal parking lot and drive like a bat out of hell (at the legal speed limit) to catch the Nanaimo Duke Point ferry to the mainland. After 4 hours of driving, I am a bit stressed after reading the B.C. Ferries highway sign declaring that our 3:15 ferry is 86 % FULL. Knowing that there are 3 billion people like ourselves, rushing to catch the same 3:15 pm ferry, Vic and I encourage the Volvo to do warp speed. Seeing the terminal ahead, we slowed and skidded into the terminal to line up to deal with the harsh reality of possible ferry waits to the mainland. How do you spell relief?  Y-I-P-P-I-E, W-E  M-A-D-E  T-H-E  3:15!

** while driving our very sporty 4 cylinder, luxury 1988 Volvo 740 GLE station wagon, we always observe the posted highway speeds. As we were cruising along the highway near Lake Louise, we noticed on the roadside, an RCMP officer who was deep in conversation with the driver of a red Camero. Thinking nothing of it and maintaining the legal speed limit, the same RCMP soon pulls up close to us on our left. Suddenly the RCMP speeds up and swerves and jerks right across our path and screeches to a stop by the ditch. I see our lives flash before my eyes and do my best to recover quickly from this dangerous near miss.Vic checked the mirrors and he saw the officer quickly get out of his truck and open the passenger door.

 But this gets better folks .... 10 minutes later, the same RCMP who is driving a 1/2 ton truck, ( I will call him A), passes us once again on the left. This time, he is travelling at an extra fast clip. Several minutes farther down the road, we witnessed what they say in reality TV,  the big reveal! Parked on the dividing median, RCMP A, had met up with a new RCMP cruiser B. A rather bewildered prisoner was handcuffed and was being transferred from A to cruiser B. As we analysed the whole series of events, I figured out, that the police vehicle that earlier cut directly into our pathway, must have had the unruly Camero driver on board in the front seat and that the RCMP officer had to act fast and pull over to the ditch to "quickly subdue" Mr. Camero... and the rest is history.

**experiencing variable gas prices that ranged from $1.51 per litre in Sointula to $1.11 per litre in Calgary. Our sporty Volvo wagon uses only ultra premium, high octane gas 94, which boosts the price of our gas another 16 cents a litre but again, who's counting.

*drinking wine and relaxing on David and Yvette's garden patio and reminiscing about art school days and the Mr. Camero incident

* seeing my brother Doug and his wife Sherry while attending their daughter's "wedding of the year" plus watching an amazing fireworks display as Jess and Greg's "into the night" wedding reception raged on.

** going through gallons of window wiper fluid (paint stripper strength) to remove the billions of Kamikaze suicidal Alberta bugs who decorated our headlights and windshield.

** driving behind 40 foot motor homes and breathing the tasty semi truck and trailers exhaust fumes. (which I now know these fumes have been scientifically proven to create hallucinations and insatiable desire to eat endless bags of potato chips).

*being tortured for 5 days by friends Marcie and Ron who forced us to enjoy their air conditioned Summerland retreat, art gallery and studio. We were also forced to eat other foods besides potato chips, drink far too much wine and talk for hours on end about, you guessed it, ART. Marcia and Ron never let up, as they forced us to wander down to the lake and find a shady spot for a day of plein air painting.



Happy Barb painting lakeside in Summerland
Painting on the left by Marcia Stacy and my painting on the right 

**  regretting that we left Summerland so late in the day, we drove westward and homeward bound directly into the blinding sun. Luckily we managed to see through the sun's glare and spotted the sign for the turn off to the ferries. While doing "speed limit" and out racing all the other cars heading for the ferry, we caught the last ferry to Victoria and were soon home safe and sound.

*******************************************************

I am back to work and my new website(s) is moving along nicely. In my next post, I will be adding a new chapter to my step by step guide HOW TO BECOME A DAM GOOD ARTIST IN 39 EASY YEARS if you missed the first installment, you may find it if you keep scrolling or visit my June blog post.

Victor Bosson's News

Wonderful News!

 The Fox's Kettle iBook is now available in the iTunes Store

Illustrator Victor Bosson and author Laura Langston’s award winning classic story of The Fox’s Kettle, is now available as a gorgeously illustrated iBook for children.

The Fox’s Kettle iBook is enriched with music and sound. It is perfect for children to learn and read along with the narration by author Laura Langston.  Ages 4 to 9.


The Fox’s Kettle is easy to purchase through the iTunes Store with your Apple iTunes account ttps://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-foxs-kettle/id681320325?ls=1


Please note This iBook is designed especially for iPads, iPhones, iPod Touch  iOS devices.

WATCH HOW IT WORKS e-book publisher Stephen McCallum is interviewed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFmz9BKnGjA


To read more about Victor Bosson and A Boy and His Computer,
visit my new website http://www.weaver-bossonart.com/artnews/