Month: July 2014

I thought it was some kind of plein air poison oak, but apparently, I'm so allergic to biting flies my ankle has blown up like a balloon. A swollen, blistered, festering balloon.

Since we arrived, the house has been doing nothing but creating its own to-do list: hey guys! trim trees, replace railings, install bear-proof box for garbage, remove mismatched track lighting, which does have matching long cords stringing their way to various outlets, install clothesline since it's 85 degrees everyday. Then my mom came to visit. But months ago I had signed up for this outdoor painting workshop with Northern California artist Phillys Schafer. So the timing was perfect to be away, all day, everyday, while crucial decisions were to be made like: which limbs on the trees should be loped off and a bear box that is brown or green?

In spite of the bad timing, the painting workshop has been a refreshing mental swim in the lake. Phyllis spouts excellent advice constantly and demonstrates her amazing technique. She somehow juggles students with advanced degrees in art or architecture or have been painting for years, to students who have never painted before day one of the workshop. Her teaching agility almost surpasses her painting ability, but she's a rockin' painter, so not really.

She whipped this out on Tuesday during one session.

We've painted up on Mount Rose at 8000 feet, along a creek–where I had to make little paper ankle protectors to keep the flies off–and at Star Harbor on the Nevada side of the lake. My little easel has taken me places away from the demanding house that I never would have visited if not for the class.

Tomorrow I will be "finding the edges" and "not getting too noodle-y" –some of Phillis' words to live by–near the creek. Then we go back to our location where I lost my mountaineering sunglasses that Stefan hates, and then two days later found them in the grass where I'd painted a pine tree's portrait.

"If it gets too much to deal with where you are, go somewhere else for a while," says Phillis about details in painting, but also my life.

Starting Saturday I'll devote myself to visitors and home-improvement. And I'll have six paintings and fly bite scars to remind myself of a week when I went away for a while.

The last three houses we've lived in: Niamey, Niger, Moscow and Bucharest, we saw photos before we moved in, but didn't actually see the houses. We are in the foreign service, man! We have never been to the city in which we agree to live for three years, let alone choose the house. Shopping for a house on the internet didn't scare me; so what if we can't actually visit it before we buy it? At least we, not the post's housing board, get to choose which one it is.

I've been looking at properties in Tahoe since all there were were glossy property magazines. Since I splashed into the water from a slide in Meek's Bay and sat at a card table playing Aggrevation with my brother-in-law (and I think that was on he and my sister's honeymoon–which my parents and I totally crashed!) this place smells like home to me. 

Peter and I honeymooned here as well, my newly-wedding-ringed hand holding down the crossword puzzle in a cafe by the lake.

Pine needles, rocks, stars, the moon through the sugar pines, crazy crows answering Stefan's "Ca-caw!" Freezing cold, clear water, an altitude head-ache, a bright blue sky.

My somehow inner family is here, in the horse shoe pit next to the house and the chipmunks scrambling around and around the cedar trunks. My sister and neices visited first, my sister's cabin is just a few miles down the road.

We aren't even going to the lake it's so much fun to play house! Peter removed 100 screws from the walls, painted and did things with a hand saw. Turns out all those lego kits were actually putting-together-Ikea-furniture-training for Stefan. We are making Camille's room pretty.

Stefan plays harmonica by the fire, a bat flew into the house at sunset, and Peter and I came home to a place we'd never been before.