Elephant Town: pretend Tuesday is Monday again

I had one more long weekend out of town, so the finishing touches will go on Paul's next chapter tomorrow and you'll see them Tuesday!

Here's what I spent my weekend doing: 

• Waking up at 5:45 am Saturday morning (awakened by the town setting up cones in front of my house for the Homecoming parade)
• Groaning and staying in bed with my cats until my 6:00 alarm went off, THEN:

• Hit the road early to take the scenic route to Morgantown, West Virginia, for:
• Mo'town Studio Tour! LOOK:

^ my friend Nevada Tribble was one of the guest artists. She FREEHAND SEWS her artwork, sometimes on the back of a bike, powered by the pedals! I met her when she showed up to figure drawing at the college once, sewing machine in tow, and drew her studies with the machine.

• Crashed my friend Kris's birthday party for their 5-year-old son, ate a bunch of their food, and then:
• Continued hitting the last stops on the tour... which I failed to photograph. But here was my favorite artist to talk to: Atiya Jones. She loves traveling alone, like I do, and explained her practice of markmaking - which I shrugged off at first - and how it changed from tight and connected lines, to loose and close shapes, but never touching, because of the way having an immunocompromised mom during a pandemic affected her emotions, and... I was moved. I bought a sketchbook. I have too many empty sketchbooks but I had to have hers. I might explain that impulse later.

After I hit every stop on the tour, I:

• Headed to my parents' house nearby for the night,
• ate a turkey dinner prepared by my mom and her Eastern Star group for a fundraiser, 
• facetimed my friend Val so she could give us a tour of her new house, and:
• went to bed at 10:30. 

The next morning, I remembered where I was.

My parents have this insane view of Deep Creek Lake from their house. I didn't take any more photos of the sunrise because I knew they wouldn't do justice to the experience. I knew I'd just tell you to trust me that it was breathtaking.

Instead of leaving early to get home and finish the pages you'll see on Tuesday, I wondered what a real day off might feel like. I had breakfast with my parents. I went on a long walk with my father and their chaotic-evil King Charles Spaniel, Kingston. When they said they needed to drive their boat to the other side of the lake to have it picked up and towed in for the winter, I decided to go with them. 

After the boat was dropped off, we headed into Oakland to walk around. We were going to go for a hike in the woods, but I craved sunlight and requested an unshaded walk instead. Unbeknownst to us, there was a car show going on. My dad loves cars. I love the design of old cars, but don't understand anything under the hood.

I can't tell you what cars we marveled at, but I can tell you that we sat in two Citroens (one with a Maserati engine, if that impresses anyone here), and talked to their owners, a 93-year-old man and his son. 

That's half true; we listened to them. There was little talking on our end. We all listened for a whole hour. I needed to go.

^ neither a Citroen, nor a Maserati.

I ran out of gas halfway between there and home, but let's skip that part. I made it to Shepherdstown eventually. I immediately went to Luke's to check in (he had two teeth pulled last week), then home, and made soup while talking to my new housemate Mark, and slurped it while (on mute) on a scheduled Zoom call with the girls I spent my childhood Girl Scouting with, to catch up on everyone's lives and families.

And now I'm here. I'm exhausted. I'll finish up Paul's pages tomorrow and show you some other little things I've been working on. PS. I know Paul's a... difficult character, but... I think you're going to like this chapter. ;)

See you Tuesday. <3