Our Juicy Life

Missing our little lady "Daisy"

                              

Today was a very sad day.  We had to put our little lady, Daisy down.  6 years ago I was searching through Petfinders.com and came across this scrappy 4 year old Boston Terrier.  She was located about 2 hours from us and there was just something about her...I knew I was meant to rescue her.  So, we packed up the car along with Hemet & Augie (Hemet was our first Boston Terrier, we had to put him down 2 years ago).  We drove into this dusty little town and down a dirt road to his old house.  The woman was very nice and went to get this little girl I saw on the internet.  She came trotting into the run, chest out and immediately went up to Augie grabbed his neck and pinned him to the ground.  Basically letting him know that she was boss.  She didn't do that to Hemet though, because he was the Alpha dog.  After she did that, she was fine with Augie, but Augie never forgot that and basically ignored her, up until recently.  She was a brindle boston and we think about 4 years old.  The woman told us that she was part of a puppy mill and they think had had at least 2 litters of pups.  She wasn't allowed in the house, lived in a kennel and her owners dropped her off at the vet and never came to get her.  That just broke my heart...I had to take her home and give her a wonderful life. 

Well, it was obvious that she had never lived in a house, because she wasn't house trained.  She wasn't grass trained either and would only go to the bathroom on the cement patio in the back.  She was also a dumpster digger, she'd break into the trash and get anything that she could (plastic, aluminum foil, paper towels, etc...).  She was very sweet but not affectionate and very alouf, almost like a cat.  I don't think she knew how to trust anyone.  We finally house-trained her and she became part of the pack.  A couple months after we got her she started to get sick with diarrhea, we found out she had giardia and nasty parasite.  This is when the trouble began.  Over the past 6 years she was diagnosed with Irritable bowel disease, colitis, 2 more bouts with giardia and most recently lymphangiectasia, which is a horrible disease where the lymph system doesn't absorb protein or fats, so the dog wastes away. She always had horrible diarrhea and would loose weight and then gain some back and then loose again.  She was just diagnosed with lymphangastasia in March of this year and she started going downhill, fast.

We found this wonderful vet who is known as the guru of the GI Tract, he's known worldwide and he happened to be here in Los Angeles.  So I called him first and then emailed him (attaching a picture of her).  His assistant called me back to inform me that he doesn't take patients anymore, he only does conferences and teaches at universities...BUT something about the picture and story grabbed his heart too and he agreed to take her case!  How cool is that.  He tried things no other vet tried or even spoke to us about but her body couldn't tolerate a few of them them and 2 weeks ago her white count went to 200 (normal for a dog is 10,000) and she got a horrible infection and had to be in the hospital for 2 days.  After antibiotics her white count went back up, but then her liver enzymes came back off the charts and her protein levels were super low.  Not good.  We tried so many things over the years, so many medicines so many different foods,  you name it, we tried it.   Our new wonderful doctor couldn't even help her.  Her disease was just too far along and her little body just couldn't fight anymore.  We looked at her this morning and she wasn't the dog we knew and her eyes told me it was time.  We wanted someone to come to the house to put her down, but couldn't get an appointment until tomorrow, we knew we couldn't wait that long, it just wasn't fair to her.  So we took her over to the vets, wrapped in her favorite blanket and I held her and kissed her until she took her last breath.  Although with that last breath, I did feel a sigh of relief from her.  She was tired, tired of fighting and tired of feeling bad, she was ready to go and we were ready to let her go.  We've cried all day.  I know it was the  most humane, unselfish thing we could do for her, but it's also the hardest. 

I would show you more pictures of her but I don't have any good ones.  She never wanted her picture taken and if a camera would come out she would either turn away or get up and walk away.  This picture was taken by me at a vacation house in Palm Springs last September, she loved that house (we stayed for 2 weeks) and she loved laying in the sun by the pool.  I had to lay on the kitchen floor and sneak the camera around the corner to get the shot.  It's the most beautiful picture of her.  She did finally learn to trust us and would wag her little paint brush of a tail all the time, she finally gave us a kiss after being with us for 2 years, what a great moment.  She had a wonderful life with us, she slept on the bed, had all the food she wanted, had great vacations, went to the dog park everyday, and got so much love.

It's quiet around here without her.  The whole pack misses her right now.  We will always miss her.

Fresh out of the kiln

I've been handbuiding lately...haven't thrown in about a month.  I'm really enjoying handbuilding and love the results.  I don't have molds so my works is "organic"...which I like much better.  I also play with the glazes so no two pieces are the same.  I've been making platters and serving dishes - all sizes and shapes.  They sell really well. 

Here's a bunch of bisqued work, sitting and waiting patiently to be glazed and fired.  Sometimes it's hard for me to get out and glaze, especially after working at the studio all day.  For those of you who might not know, my husband and I own a children's art studio called Art-Works Studio.  We have drawing & painting classes for kids ages 5-17.  We also have summer, holiday & spring fine art camps.  It's our bread & butter and we've had the business for almost 8 years.  It's great, we only work 20 hours a week and we do art with kids, but it's draining. So these poor things sat in the garage for about a week.

 

Glazing is fun, but time consuming.  First I have to clean the bisqued pieces to make sure they are dust free, if there is dust or anything on the bisque the glaze won't stick to it.  Then I have to wax the bottom of all the pieces, so they won't stick to the furniture in the kiln.  Then I glaze them with a solid color and let that dry.  Then I take the squeeze bottles, which are full of "thick" glaze and decorate the inside.  I can't predict what it's going to look like after it's fired, so much is out of my control.  But I love when I open the kiln and see such beautiful results.  The photo above shows pieces all glazed and ready to be fired and the photo below are the same pieces after they have been glazed.  See what I mean that you can't predict what they will look like!

It was the first time Bruce and I worked together in "our" studio too....it was fun.  I really enjoyed having someone out there with me, sometimes it can be a bit lonely.  I still have 1 maybe 2 more loads to do, the platters take up a lot of space so I can only fire about 15 at a time.  These are all for sale and I'll be updating my website The Juicy Pear over the next couple days, so come and have a look around.  All of the platters/serving dishes are under my one-of-a-kind section. I love being a potter, but am finding it hard running a business and also trying to pursue my pottery business.  There are not enough hours in the day to do both.  So hopefully when our dreams come true and we move to France I'll be able to pursue it full time.

The Tour de France

Before we started cycling, I never watched the Tour de France.  I had heard about it, but mostly because of Lance Armstrong, but I really never understood it.  Now that we are serious cyclists (average 100-120 miles per week on the bike), I love the Tour and now it's on television, LIVE on the Versus channel Tour de France.  We get up early so we can watch in the am (since France is 8 hours ahead of us) and then we watch it again in the evening.  Slightly obsessed.  It's a brutal race, I think the hardest sport ever.  I love all the colors of the jerseys, so beautiful.

It's not as exciting as it was when Lance Armstrong was riding.  I wasn't a huge Lance fan, but he sure was amazing and always brought excitement to the Tour.  Now with all the doping allegations it's a different sport.  This is/was my favorite rider, Ivan Basso...he was just banned for 2 years for doping allegations!  He won the Giro (in Italy) last year, didn't ride in last years Tour because of doping allegations, got picked up by the Discovery team this year, saw him ride in the Tour of California in April (damn handsome), but then doping allegations came back to the surface and he quit the Discovery team and was banned from the sport for 2 years.  I think most every pro rider dopes, or at least did, hopefully with all the new tests and the fines and being banned from the spot everyone will stop it.  Times will be much slower though!

So, if you read my last post you know that I had a long night (for me) on Saturday but rallied and got up and went on a 40 mile ride.  Not like the Tour (110 miles in one day) but it was a hard ride, loads of hills.  I usually end up riding alone, because I ride with Bruce and our friend Steve came along.  They are fast and as much as I try, I just can't keep up.  I'm a pretty fast rider, but I'm a woman and over 40 and well, need I say more.  I have a great time, whether I ride with a pack or alone, sometimes I enjoy riding alone...clears my head.  It was a great ride and we were beat.  Today we did a short 15 mile ride, just to recover from yesterday.  I was a gymnast for 8 years when I was young and then was a runner and then did triathlons and now I can't run so I cycle and I must say that I'm in the best shape ever.  Cycling tones so much of your body, doesn't build bulky muscles, it gives you long and lean muscles.  I'm on my 3rd bike, no 4th.  My tri-bike was my first serious bike, then I got a Lightspeed and then a Cervello...they were great bikes but they didn't really fit me 100%.  2 years ago I got hit by a car on my bike...crazy lady turned left right in front of me as I was crossing over an intersection.  I had the green and I was in a designed bike lane - she was nuts!  I got a great settlement so I bought a new bike.  I have a Lemond Versailles bike, it's carbon fiber and it fits me like a glove..I love it. 

I'll never be a pro cyclist...it's a hard life, all you do is wake up, eat, train, sleep, eat, train, sleep, train and you travel all the time.  But I love to cycle and love to see the world on my bike.  We took our bikes to France last year and will take our bikes again this year.  There is nothing better than being on your bike.  You don't have to be fast, your don't have to have an expensive bike...just get out there and bike you will see your city in a whole different way. 

A Lovely Evening

We are pretty much homebodies.  I think it's because of our business, spending all our days with kids, talking to them, talking to the parents, always being "on".  When we are finished with work on or the weekend we love to be at home, just hanging out, just the two of us.    But when we were invited to dinner at a friends house (with another couple) we were excited and immediately accepted.  I guess it's because of the couples...they are great people.  We arrived at Kevin & Erica's lovely spanish style home at 4:30.  Their house is so beautiful, up in the hills, beautiful artwork and inviting pool.  The wine started immediately.  As you know Bruce and I are big French wine drinkers, K is a huge wine connoisseur of California wines, so it was a real treat.  Peter & Elizabeth our other friends arrived a bit after us.  They have 3 boys (6,8 and 10) so being exactly on-time just isn't in the cards.  Peter is probably the funniest man I have ever met, in my life.  He always makes me laugh.  We knew we were going to have a wonderful time.

Erica made this wonderful baked brie, it might not look pretty right now, but it was when it was first served...it was so rich and gooey and delicious.

The green olives were right in front of me, bad news...I ate so many.  I can never get enough green olives. 

It's so great when you have friends you are totally comfortable with.  We haven't know Kevin & Erica and Peter & Elizabeth for very long, we met them through our studio, their kids come to art classes and Bruce also teaches a "private" adult class and Erica and Elizabeth are both in the class.  In fact Erica was the one to "create" the class.  Like I said, we are homebodies and really don't do a lot of socializing, but, we always have a wonderful time and laugh a lot when we see Kevin & Erica and Peter & Elizabeth... we can't wait to do it again.

Elizabeth brought the salad and I brought dessert.  Of course I forgot to take a picture of it...but it was so rich, a double chocolate cake with ganache.  If you really love a dense chocolate cake, here is the recipe Double Chocolate Cake, it was pretty darn good.  Kevin did veal chops and roasted potatoes (on the grill), the roasted potatoes were super good, here's the recipe for them Grilled potatoes.  We also had many many glasses of excellent wine.  The night went too fast, the next thing we knew it was 11:00 pm.  Very late for us...we are usually in bed at 9:00 and asleep by 10:00 pm (and we don't have kids). 

We spent most of the evening outside by the pool.  We live by the ocean, so evenings are pretty cool (with the marine layer), so it's nice to be a bit more inland so that the evenings are really nice.  We had such a great time.  The hardest part was waking up Sunday morning at 7:00 am when our friend Steve called about our planned 40 mile bike ride.  We met him at 8:00 am, blurry eyed and tired.

Summer Camp

I didn't go to camp during the summer when I was a kid.  I just spent my days riding my bike and playing around the neighborhood.  Times were different back then.  Now kids are booked all summer, at least out here in Los Angeles they are.  That's good for us, since we own a children's art studio.  We are booked all year with after-school art classes and booked all summer for our 1/2 day fine art camps (camps were full by May).  Each camp runs 4 days (Tuesday-Friday) from 9:00 - 1:00 pm.  We only take 12 kids, we like to keep it small and give them tons of attention.  It's a great gig.  We are done at 1:00 and have Saturday-Monday off.  This is the first time in 8 years of having the business that we are not having afternoon classes.  It's just too draining...working with kids is exhausting.  So we decided that this year we'd only have camps and it's working our great.

We are on our 5th week.  We can't believe how fast the summer is going.  We only have 7 more to go.  Our camps are very project oriented, we do some painting and drawing projects, but we also do a lot of mixed media projects like clay, paper mache, plaster, wire, printmaking, and other super cool projects.  I can honestly say that the projects we do are awesome.  Yesterday we did plaster frescos.  The kids had to mix their own plaster and put it on a piece of burlap.  Then they had to sketch out a design (something very simple always works best) and draw it onto the dried plaster.  Then they painted it with acrylics.  Once that was dry they did 2 layers of brown (watered down) acrylic on top of their piece to make it look a bit old and once that was dry they cracked it and covered it with white glue.  We then mounted them on black matboard.  They were so beautiful.

Today we did clay.  Kids love clay.  We try to make our projects fun and interesting and also allow the kids to be creative and expressive.  We don't tell them what to make, we want everyone to go home with a unique piece.  Bruce is such a wonderful teacher...so wonderful that when we tried to bring in another teacher to help with classes people complained and moved out of the class with the new teacher.  He is so enthusiastic and patient with the kids, it really makes kids love coming to the studio.  Today we did clay relief tiles - they were 6x6 and the kids could make anything on the tile that they wanted to, they just had to build it up (instead of carving into it).  They'll paint them on Friday.  Here is Bruce demonstrating the process (rolling coils, making things, scoring, adding water to make a slip so things don't fall off, which is a bummer, etc...)

The kids did some super cool tiles.  They are all so creative.  It's really great because the kids that come to us LOVE art.  We have some kids that return each year just for camp.

After clay, we set up 2 still-lifes and did a drawing project.  The kids chose a color of chalk pastel and first toned their paper.  Then with charcoal they had to draw what object was in front of them, then they added shadow and then white conte for highlight.  These pieces turned out great! 

Stella came with us today, we road our bikes so she was in the carrier.  I counted the smiles on the way to and from the studio - total 16.   

We are really enjoying our summer, although we are counting down the weeks until we go back to France.  We'll have 144 kids pass through the studio this summer, all of them making amazing art.  Life's good.

Reservations have been made

                                       

We just finalized our September vacation, we are going back to France for 3 weeks.  This is our 3rd year in a row going to this lovely country and we love everything about it.  The people, the food, the wine, the croissants, did I say the wine, the countryside, the love of cycling, the tour de france, the history, I could go on forever.  We have been taking French for 2 years now.  It's so hard to learn a language when your brain is so old.  After our first trip we decided that we wanted to move there.  We both love it and life is too short.  So that's the plan, that's our goal, to move to France.  We like to teach children art, paint and do pottery in our our old Mas (farmhouse).  Our first trip we went to Paris.  Our friend in the states let us stay in her apartment (it was her mothers), it was 2 blocks from the Eiffel Tower in the 7th.  A beautiful arrondisment.  We didn't speak the language back then but everyone was very friendly to us.  We both fell in love with Paris but I knew that I didn't want to live in a big city, I wanted to live in the country.

Last year we went to Provence and the Dordogne.  The first week we spent our time in a beautiful farmhouse in Lourmain (where Peter Mayle wrote "A year in Provence").  We stayed in Les Olivettes. A beautiful restored farmhouse.  We then drove West to 1 hour outside of Bordeaux in the Dordogne region.  We stayed in a 100 year Old Bread Oven.  We were in the countryside and this bread oven fed the workers 100 years ago.  The British couple who bought the farm house (Mas) restored the bread oven into a 1 bedroom "gite".  It was perfect.  We took our bikes and road all over.  What a great way to see a country.   We had 1 year of French under our belts, so we were a bit better at speaking.  Although, our first night in Lourmarin Bruce decided to tell the waiter that he'd like him to make the choice for dinner.  What?  Not me....I'm going for the Poulet (chicken).  So, the food came...mine looked like chicken but what was on Bruce's plate?  It looked like a bunch of mushrooms.  Very meaty.  He took a bite and looked at me with a "what was I thinking"...then we saw the cook look out of the kitchen...he wondered who ordered the "vue de rognes".  I tasted it....not good.  Very strange taste, yuck!  There were some people next to us that were speaking french, so Bruce asked them what he ordered.  Oh, "kidney of calf".  Huh?  Kidney of calf.  2 of them loved it and the other 2 didn't.  I didn't and Bruce didn't, but he didn't want to insult the chef, so he ate a little bit.  He NEVER asked the waiter to choose for him again.  Silly American.  We had a fantastic time.  Provence is beautiful, but very touristy.  The Dordogne is a gem.  Rolling hills, wild boars, beautiful villages.  We fell in love with this region.  But, two things were a problem, the first is the weather...it gets very cold in the winter and being from Southern California that just doesn't fly with me.  The second is the area.  It's so remote that we are not sure there would be a town near us that would have the kids who might want to come for art classes.

So, this year we decided to see the Southwest, down by the Spanish border.  We'll fly into Barcelona and drive up to the village of Maury, which is 1 hour from the village of Perpignan.  We'll stay in a beautiful village house called Maison Voltaire.  We'll stay there for 1 week.  Then we'll go North 1 hour to just outside of Toulouse and stay in a restored barn called Le Roucan.  We'll stay there for 1 week.  Then we'll head to Girona Spain and stay in a beautiful place called Raco de Madremanya. We are really looking forward to seeing this area of France.  The weather is nice all year round and Toulouse is a big enough city to have the clientele for us.  We are going to look at some homes while we are there.  We would like to move in 2 years.  The plan is to hire someone to take over our studio and possibly sell it if things go well, that is if we can make it work in France.  If we can, we'll sell the business and if we can't we'll come home and go from there.  Follow your dreams, take a risk...life is too short

Sharing my space

My husband is a painter - a great artist. He has painted since she was in high school. He has sold many pieces and is very passionate about his art. His studio has been at our business (an amazing space), which was both good and bad. He's a bit of a mess and he would have to clean up every time he was done painting (hard for a painter to do) because our classes are held there and it needed to be clean and organized. It was a bit frustrating for him and he hasn't been enthused to paint.; So,then we moved him into one of our bedrooms - the back bedroom that opens to our deck. It WAS working great for him up until about 2 years ago when we really got into cycling (we have 5 bikes - I have 2 and he has 3) and now they hang from the ceiling in his studio. As you can see from the easel in the picture above, he works on large canvas and he did not have much room left. SO...I suggested that he come out to the garage and share my space with me. Could be fun I thought, to create art together. So, we cleaned out the studio and it's now back to a bedroom - well, not really...it doesn't have a bed and there are still 5 bikes hanging from the ceiling. But at least it's clean. I laid out my Persian rug on the floor (which has been stored away for 3 years). The dogs love laying the rug, so I guess someone is enjoying the room.

I have a little more than 1/2 the garage for my kiln, wheel, work tables, storing shelves, slab roller and glazing area.

He has a little less than 1/2 for his work table and easel.There above his easel are our surfboards - which he shaped himself (another passion)...don't get me started on the mess that made! We decided to leave space in the inside studio/bedroom for him to store and dry his work, since my clay can be a bit messy. We haven't been out there together yet, but are looking forward to creating some beautiful art together.

Should I stay or should I go?

That's the question.  I'm not sure.  I started this blog 14 days ago on a "trial" with typepad.  I wasn't sure what to expect, wasn't sure if I would like it....but I do!  Problem is...I don't think anyone is reading my blog.  Now, who wants to spend $ each month to talk to herself...I do that already and don't have to pay anything.  I'd love any comments, good or bad...just let me know if you are out there and if you think I should stay with my blog and pay the yearly fee.  It's in your hands!