Monday musings...

Horsemen often refer to the look in a horse's eye to describe the sort of mount and companion that horse is likely to make. Generally speaking "a quiet eye" or " a kind eye" are the ones to look for. Here are the kind eyes (and ears) of two of my horses, soft, calm, but ever alert.

The chestnut is Dixie, and don't let that soft eye delude you. She's the alpha mare and total tyrant of chow time. She never shows any white, rolls her eye or lets on - until she whirls, teeth bared, hooves flying to run off any equine in her peripheral vision.

Perhaps that's why Babygirl (the bay) is looking just a little apprehensive... Actually, it was the whirr and beep of my camera that put Babygirl off.

I just liked these close-ups and wanted to share a little horse lore with all the wanna-be horse whisperers out there.












The shy one with the teary eye is Rita the red roan.







I have all kinds of collections of things - bones, twigs, plastic lizards, buttons, glass perfume bottle stoppers, cicada shells, telephone wire, turtle shells, and, um, Kewpie dolls. Actually, I never purposely collected these little guys; I just keep finding them as I unpack boxes marked "miscellaneous dec."



Apparently they have hidden themselves amongst the odds 'n ends I put away until my house is "finished" (yeah, like that's ever going to happen...) waiting for me to liberate them. It was only when I came upon #4 that I realized I had an entire Kewpie family. They guard my DVD/VHS players from bad karma and power surges and the like... Who'd have ever thought Kewpie doll hair would make a fashion statement?



Before I got sick, I was thrifting - one of my most favorite pastimes. I found the bobble bird that day and I also found this wonderful little (21 x 8) painting of mushrooms. They're not the morels I wrote of a while back, but aren't they delightfully rendered? There's no date, but it's signed "Ralph Cooper" and it's painted on a fragment of one of those canvasboard panels. On the back there's a small printed cartoonish figure wearing a hat that says something like: _URG DAN or DAI in very tiny print. The artwork style of the figure would date it from the forties to the late fifties.

I paid $3.00 for it.

I wonder what future thrifters will pay for my works...

And finally:

I missed Valentine's day as I was in a bit of a viral stupor. It's not the day itself I regret missing, as it's generally been a disappointment, romantically speaking... sigh. But I wanted to post something cool - like my fellow bloggers did for the most part.

So here he is... My Valentine Kewpie, wishing everyone love and hugs for the rest of the year.

Addendum: Roy just informed me that my Kewpies are just plain trolls... Oh my. As soon as I saw his comment, I knew he was right. I'd forgotten they were called trolls. Perhaps they now lurk around blogging sites rather than bridges. Thanks Roy!