This morning started early due to “Demon Dog” Moby jumping on the bed. 70 lbs of leaping dog is something you can’t miss, especially when it’s on your sided. Nudging, pushing, standing over the top of me staring, stepping all over my legs, the Beast was making his point loud and clear. Hungry! Food please?! He was actually quite kind in waiting until 5:15 before starting in. Fast forward to 8:30 am: I’m walking out of the bedroom and an foreign object caught my eye and made me jump! The Beast had brought in a 20″ snake friend. Holy cow! Having a slight snake issue, it’s a sight I really don’t appreciate viewing in my home. Don’t get me wrong, I love them dearly for all the good they do in the world, consuming mice, rats, slugs and various other critters. I used to have to clean snake cages and sell them during my years at Pirate’s Cove. I’m always glad to witness them in our yard and make sure to keep them out of harms way when lawn mowing. Sometimes it doesn’t work and EEEW! What an awful experience. Anyway, our visitor on the carpet ended up being rather limp. Not a good sign.
Yesterday morning was rather bad. I woke around 1:30am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Spent some time working on projects, read some Mark Twain, and finally drifted off around 7am. Dave tried his darnedest to let me sleep. He fed & medicated the dogs, tried to keep them calm while he got ready for work. Then the barking started when he was about ready to leave. Not good! Basically all three dogs were full of vigor and drove me from bed. This tends to make for a very grumpy person even after some big mugs of coffee.
I did manage to drag my tired ass to Salem. Why Salem? Well, it happens to be the closest location of a good paper store. We used to have the best paper store located right in Corvallis, but the owners (friends Shannon & Ed) decided to retire. C’est la vie! So Maggie & I took a quick trip north, found the replacement paper (the Beast ate the original purchase) needed for a consignment box project, plastic sleeves for the new cards and an excellent cardboard shipping tube perfect for building wire armature branches around! At least something went well yesterday!
Below are the images of the completed & bagged cards. Remind me next time to take photos before bagging. Glare from the bags is too much!
card back
Sticks, Stones, and Paper Stew Blog 
Can’t wait to see them on Etsy. (smile)
I spent some time this morning checking pricing for screen printed cards. Most folks were in the $4 range, but their cardstock seemed pretty light weight. I’ve actually cut & mounted my images onto 140# watercolor cards. Feels really nice when writing! Think I need to investigate more card options and keep the good 140# stock for etchings or hand water colored block prints. 🙂
Whew!
That’s about right!
And to think we used to have a “normal” household 3 months ago. At least the cats only brought in furry friends.