There are Some Cherries Left. Part 3

June Calendar Pick, Donna's Meadow, McKenzie,12x16 Pastel

In which the continuing saga of the stolen backpacks takes a twist. A dumbfounding email is received. A friend pitches in and the unthinkable happens in Mexico.

A week home, Spring seemed to have lost her way North. Chris was scrolling through his emails and handed my phone to me to view an email. (Remember his phone and computer are lost and yet to be replaced.)
An email with a photo of his backpack and his computer with the question in Spanish, "Is this your backpack? There is also a passport?"

WHAT?!??

Where's the ransom note?

No, it looks official, from another grocery store in Tulum, not where we lost our packs, from Constantine and the lost and found of the Chedraui grocery (the Price Chopper of Yucatan) with the common disclaimer on the bottom of the email, "If you recieved this email… "

How did they get my email?

The Homer Simpson moment: The itinerary folder was in the pack! What else, who, how, what, huh?
It took 24 hours to respond. Too weird.

Chris forwarded the email to Roberto, our friend in near Tulum. He offered to get the pack as long as it was at Chedraui. Anywhere else and he brings the police.

Roberto is a Mexican Angel. Communications for two weeks. Roberto gets the pack and sends the contents sans the passport which has stayed behind in a folder in a drawer waiting for the next time we are there and the pack too which would not fit in the ship box.

Six weeks after the rebado-robbery, the remaining contents: the travel journal covering 11 years of trips to Peru and Mexico, the computer, the itinerary, really old books and a Patagonia rain slicker, were home.

Like "The Impossible Journey", the story of pets who returned home after a year lost, the contents can tell no story of what happened. They are just back.

Aside from a claim with home owners insurance and replacing lost items, the saga of the returned pack is over.

Time to get back to work.

Artliveslong, D

Escape from Mud Season but… Bowl of Pits? Part 2

April Calendar "Cows Aglow" 11x14 Pastel Plein Air

2018 was not finished handing out discouragement. 

We headed to the Yucatan, our annual get away from cold and mud season. I was viewing this time as an opportunity to renew my head and hand in my craft. Warm up my body and my creative juices, get ready for spring and painting outdoors plein air. I packed my backpack accordingly with paper, pencils, pastels, sketchbook, power cords, and etc’s - everything ready for action.

Sounds like a plan. Right?

The first four days of travel went as predicted, a car, the road, a favorite place to stay in Valladolid, sunshine, good food, beginning a new sketchbook. Traveling back to the coast, we stopped in Tulum at a grocery we have stocked up at for years.

The hubris of familiarity was the downfall.

We returned to the car to discover we had been robbed - our backpacks were gone. Just the packs, which contained the core of our travel accoutrements: Chris’s passport, camera, computer, Kindle, wallet, id, journal, sandals, itinerary. Me, that pack full of new start art supplies and of course, cash.

No one is ever ready for that.

We went through the stages of grief, rip off, denial, recognition, now what, communications, police report, decision making, action- more or less in that order.

Don’t ever forget this is Mexico. Ever. There are bad angels and good angels - efficiency and lack of.

We looked at our pluses and minus’s. Because I chose to squirrel away things in different bags, the pluses were I had my passport, wallet, cellphone, iPad and not to be thought of right away - The keys to the car back in Montreal.

All really good things - and - no one got hurt.

Another plus we had the police report in hand which has come in handy several times. The US consulate was only 40 miles away from where we were staying. A temporary passport was issued in 24, two days after that Wednesday.

 

Did I mention it happened on Chris’s birthday? No wonder we avoid celebrating birthdays.

***
One angel back home - an Adirondack Stage Rat, sent Chris the replacement script of
Kimberly Akimbo  in a pdf. You know those crazy emails from friends hacked emails? "We are traveling in Mexico and got robbed. Would you send Chris the script?" Not money. Too ironic.

My hope still is that bag of art materials isn’t lying on the jungle floor crawling with bugs and slithery things - that the “perps” gave all that stuff to a neice or nephew and it saves the kids life. That is where I have kept the backpack in my mind - in a kids hands being used. Denial right?

I did not make any sketches. I read. I rode a bike, swam, and walked, all really good things for that recovering hip.

We had pesos enough for the duration.We tallied pluses and minuses, thankful for the huge help from our gracious friend Roberto, the manager of the place we stayed. We made a friend on the beach who made us laugh at our situation: “Hey you’ll never qualify for the Pro Leisure Tour if you aren’t drinking a beer by now.”

Our mantra when in Mexico is when something goes awry, like finding oneself rescuing one of the kids via internet; the bus has a grievous oil leak miles away from the destination; or one receives news of a relative becoming very ill, has been:

 

It sucks, but it sucks in Mexico. 

 

It may be cavalier to some but it has got us through some predicaments while traveling.

***
… Then we went home. It snowed feather comforter flakes that returning Sunday. Eight inches. April 22 Earth Day.

***
Life - the reason for reduced or no postings on SM. Why there is a block in creativity can be as huge as the loss of a loved one, an illness or accident or just plain fatigue with the game of getting work out there.

Stuff happens.

To be continued…

Artliveslong, Diane

Life is a Bowl Full of Cherries Part 1

January Calendar. Life is a Bowl Full of Chrries Pastel 2017 atf 6x8 Sold

Maybe yes, maybe no. January 28, I crashed into my hip on my own ice rink drive way. If I coulda bargained for a different bone I would have.

Not dwelling on on it.

Time incapacitated is sometimes a gift. Sketch books, drawings, thumbnail sketches are the order of the day. Make it work. Look at art books. Read up on technique. Sharpen up conceptual ideas that have been in the back of my head.

****

That was written sometime before I accepted I just wasn't gonna be in the studio or have independent mobility to anywhere - for a while.

Here's the rest of the story:

June 2018

I have wondered what has happened to current artists when I stop seeing their postings on the internet. Did they give up on social media? Was their work consuming them or was it family? Or was it the ever changing algorithm disguised as an enabler of communication redesigned by well meaning but greedy computer geeks?

I found out a couple of reasons this winter.

I was in a hurry to get to my studio to show a commissioned painting to its new owners. I failed to put on my Yax Trax. I slipped and crashed on the ice in my own driveway. I let out a yell - expletive deleted—and honest - four things immediately came to mind. Hospitals, old ladies, broken hips, pneumonia - a death knell.

Being full of p and vinegar is a trait I have yet to live down and after the immediate crash calmed a bit I managed to raise myself back up - on the ice - and painfully shuffle back into the house to inform Chris. I could move.
Chris said, "Maybe you have just bruised it.”
I said “I don’t know that.” I was really coming to grips that I did know - that it was broken.

Further proof of my p and vinegar - I proceeded to go to the studio - in the car - up five steps - arranged things for the meeting - went up 14 more steps to arrange the art in to be viewed in a larger space - went down the stairs and thought, “That is the last time I go up those stairs.” and called Chris to come and escort my patrons upstairs to the painting when they arrived.

Shortly after their departure we went to ER where ex rays revealed what I knew - a broken hip. I was knocked out of commission for two months to heal and work physical therapy.

That is how this painter receded from SM this winter.

***
Stay tuned. There is more.

Artliveslong, D