Tumbling my way through Life

     I've started tumbling rocks again, after a very long hiatus. I'm glad I did, it's an interesting way to mark the passage of time.

     I used to marvel at how fast the weeks and months went by in terms of my work. I was the Activity Director at a nursing home, so my life revolved around the calendar, the holidays and seasons, religious practices, and everyday events. The point is, the weeks flew by.        Since I've been out of work, the weeks still fly by, but the time is dragging at the same time. If it wasn't for all the TV I've been watching, it would be hard to tell what day it is. On Saturday and Sunday it seems like a novelty because different shows are on. And now we have football on Sundays. 

      Getting back to my rock tumbler, it seems like a month is a long time to work on any project. But the first week is already done (I think it was actually six days, to be honest. I will have to go back and check.)

     There is a timer on the tumbler, and this next round is supposed to be 7 to 8 days on medium speed. So at 4:00 next Saturday I will examine the rocks again, and if they need more time, I can put them back for another day. If anything, it seems like they might need less time. As you will see in the photos, A lot happened in the first week!

Because of the metal grit and the ground stone in the water, you can't just dump the water in the sink. I had to bring the tumbler barrel outside, and I had a container of water and poured rocks into the provided strainer. Slurry goes into the container for safe disposal.

There is still a lot of sludge on the rocks.

I was very pleased by how nicely they are coming along-all the rough edges are gone. When they were wet, I was convinced they didn't need any more tumbling! I was wrong, of course. Once they dried, it was clear that they need a little more fine tumbling and polishing, of course.

You can probably tell these are a few "ordinary" rocks I had collected from home, and from our new back yard to make sure there was enough in the tumbler. The barrel is supposed to be half to 2/3 full of rocks and water. These rocks were smaller than the "good" stones, so I did not include them in the second round. If I did, they would grind down to pebbles! To make up the difference I put plastic beads in the tumbler, which it told to do in the instructions. You can also use ceramic pellets. I don't have those yet.

Back in the tumbler they go for another week!

When all this is done, it will be well into October. That's a sobering thought. If you know me, you know how I feel about losing my daylight! But somehow I always manage to survive it. Hopefully, this little hobby will make it a little more fun.

Rediscovering my Hobbies

Everybody has things they did a long time ago, that got lost in the shuffle. In my case, it's drawing. I was always pretty good at drawing, at least everybody always told me I was. 

The main thing is, I enjoyed doing it, and like most kids, I drew my share of pictures over the years. In high school I continued with art classes. I probably should have made a portfolio and gone to art school, but I wasn't that serious about it. I was more serious about writing. 

Through the ensuing years, I've done ceramics, worked with clay, painted with acrylics-mainly on those little cardboard boxes they sell at the craft store. I used to make magnets out of postage stamps and other little pictures. Those were really cute and useful. I still have them somewhere. 

There are dozens of other types of crafts I enjoy doing or would like to learn. But this week, I went back to my roots and rediscovered how much fun it is to draw. Just on a whim, I drew a picture of Jimmy, my cat. It came out OK considering it was done without really trying that hard. The outline was ball point pen and I used colored pencils to color him in. 

His head is a little misshapen, and his paw on the right side is too skinny. I wanted to keep his whiskers white, so I had to use paint, and so his whiskers are too fat. But I still think its a pretty good likeness of him.

Later that night, I used a nice picture of Lily to draw her portrait, and I was surprised that it came out so well considering how out of practice I am. I always draw freehand. 

I managed to capture her personality, but if you look at the photograph, you can see a lot of differences.

There are devices you can buy to project images onto the paper to help you out, but that might be considered cheating, at least it seems like it to me. After I was done with Lily, I decided to try a scenic picture. I went on the porch and tried to copy what I saw across the street: the two big pine trees, and the street itself. I have to admit, I have a real problem with perspective. Even though I was drawing what I saw, it sure wasn't in the proper proportion. I was attempting to show the other street in the distance, and other houses and trees. When it didn't work, I just went with artistic license, and turned it into another scene that also didn't come out right. I made the street a dirt road, but it kind of went up and stopped into a dead end. I tried to fix it by putting a stone wall up. It looks pretty, but it definitely doesn't make sense if you are paying attention.

This is what I was trying to draw. You can't see the other large pine tree in this photo.

I decided to make the house red. 

Just for fun, I took pictures as I went along.  At this point, I was undecided about what to do on the left. I was just going to cut the page and leave it out, but I was having so much fun coloring I decided to try and fix it, and I could still cut it if it didn't come out OK.

Here is the finished picture. Do you think it looks OK? 

If you have a hobby you forgot about, it's never too late to go back and start up again. You might just be surprised at how well you do, and how much fun you have! 

Staying Busy Doing Nothing

     My title is a little but cynical and a little bit play on words.  The meaning here is that I'm trying to stay busy while I'm not working for a paycheck. It's starting to take it's toll.  It's hard to stay in good habits after all that time. I try to get up early every day even though I have no place to go, or much motivation to face the day when I feel like I have no purpose sometimes.

     Even if I know it's not really like that, I've been struggling to maximize all this free time with things that are meaningful, fun, fulfilling, or practical. Naturally, I spend part of the day doing housework, laundry, and cooking meals.  But that still leaves way too many hours to fill. 

     You can only watch so much TV,  scroll so much Facebook. So what else have I been doing to fill the time the last couple of weeks?

1. Online education: I got a package deal on about 70 various online entrepreneurial classes, e-books, videos, etc. Some of them teach you how to sell your creations on Etsy, and how to make things in Canva. There are courses to help you write your memoirs, get over procrastination, set up a blog, marketing on social media, and lots more. I didn't access the things I knew I wouldn't use, but I got tons of information that would have cost thousands full price. So now after registering and downloading all the good ones, it's a little overwhelming. It's information overload.  So far I've watched a bunch of videos, read some articles about how to Eat for productivity, how to be confident, how to change your negative inner voice to a positive one. I started a course on how to "Build your digital Etsy Empire" and "nifty notebook creation". Wish me luck! 

2. Making Time Lapse Movies: I have a new app on my Kindle that allows you to make Time Lapse Movies! It's pretty simple, just put the camera where you want to film, make sure it's facing the right way, hit record. So far I've had mixed results. You need about at least a half hour of running time to make about 45 seconds of finished film. That's with a shot every two seconds. So far I have made one that was a view of the back yard with barely noticeable wind blowing leaves,  Clouds rolling over blue sky, a better one of back yard woods with big puffy clouds, and last but not least a view from upstairs window of cars going by the house. This was the most visually appealing. with cars appearing and disappearing! I also did a sunset that wasn't colorful enough and a sunrise that didn't happen on camera because the camera was facing the wrong way, even though it seemed like it was right. I wish I could post one here, but I'm not able to transfer the files as of yet.

3.  Organizing my photos:  I do have to pat myself on the back for how nice my albums are coming along. Since the advent of digital photography, people are less apt to print out hard copies of pictures, and that's a shame. I love high definition slide shows of my pictures on the computer, and I have dabbled in having my cell phone pictures made into miniature photo books. But there's something to be said for good old fashioned photos that you can pick up, and arrange in a photo album. It's something you can save for posterity and leave to your ancestors after you're long gone from this planet. Just be sure to include information about who is in the pictures and where the places are! It's a little astounding just how many photos I have in envelopes, just the ones I took. I have a separate project going on with older pictures, but I'll save the details for another time.

The small one that says "memories" on the binding has a spot to write about the photos. I will have to make an index for the other ones.

4. Yard work: we inherited nice tall hedges at our new house. Presumably because the house next to us is fairly close, and the hedge is a privacy screen. And the view of the side of a gray house isn't that appealing. I'm sure the neighbors aren't thrilled about the side of our beige house. Even so, the hedges needed to be pruned, if for no other reason then because they were looking shabby, overgrown, yet the leaves looked dead. So I got a new pair of pruning shears, that are quite excellent considering they aren't very big. I had made the mistake of ordering an electric hedge clipper that had an extension that was adjustable. I envisioned an easy job with it. Boy was I wrong! It was so heavy I could barely get it out of the box, much less lift it. I knew it would be dangerous to even try using it. So I had to bring it back for a refund.  I'm about 75 % done with the trimming, and I have a lot of branch disposal to deal with! I need barrels and more paper lawn waste bags.  Yard work isn't as easy as it used to be, but I still enjoy it. I was going to hire a landscaper to do it, but I decided I'd at least try to do it myself first, and the $400 I saved I could use for lawn furniture or garden supplies. Here is a before and after!

You can see the parts I was having trouble with look a little silly. But the hedge will look better when it grows back, I hope! 

5. Crafts: I've been working on little fun painting projects. Nothing profound. I painted some old wooden things I had on hand, and pieces of cardboard that would normally get tossed. Then I decorate and gloss. It's fun and relaxing. I've also started working on glass jars and tin cans. It's amazing what a little paint can do to transform a piece of recycling into a useful pencil holder! 

                     I think they came out pretty good. Wait until I get all my supplies and get serious!

Well, I guess I'll close this for now, and catch up on some of my other hobbies. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend!