I haven’t posted in the longest time. I had been busying myself with commitments to Scout units, and then there was the pandemic. My family did the best we could to continue Scouting with precautions, but the opportunities presented to us were severely limited.
In the mean time, I managed to do some chores around the house that previous obligations had kept me from, and to set up a little space to start pumping out miniatures on a regular basis (although I have yet to be successful at marketing them).
I also managed to dedicate some of my time off to get out of town and assist my father in preparing his property for sale, and got my youngest a fair amount of time to get to know his Grandma as her health deteriorated.
One of the kitebuilders that I admire, blasted out a message about an art project that was looking for kitemakers to step up to finish painted sails into kites.
I made contact with the folks at Art4Water and the fun began.
But not quickly.
It took weeks to get the sail, and since I was on call when it arrived, I didn’t jump straight into setting up to finish the sail (my workspace isn’t currently set up for large kite projects).
That’s when I get a call of desperation from my dad. He’s accepted an offer on his property, and opted for a short close, so he needs to be out of his 3 bedroom farm house stuffed to the gills with his life from the last decade, as well as the warehouse, workshop, and storage sheds that have been the business location for kite production and online sales, and the storage for the equipment to manage the property, and the realtor wants him out yesterday.
So after 10 days of running until we fell down, while I’m nearly unable to communicate with my own family (much less with anyone else) we managed to get most (but not all) of Dad’s life off the property and 5 hours away to the spot where he’s landing temporarily, so that I could rush back to my life with my employer antsy to have me back on the job. Fortunately I had a week until I was on call again, but it took that week and the two being on call for me to recover to where I could work on that kite that I waited for, just to have it wait for me.
In the mean time communication is still a challenge (my phone was all jacked up, and I didn’t have the time to shop for a replacement, much less adjust to it; and the folks from Art4Water are getting anxious.
They were trying to be understanding (I can see there text messages, NOW), and asking me to fire the sail off to someone else for completion, but my phone was being wonky, so I was putting all of my creative energy into the project (not being able to take any more time from work limited that energy though).
So with about a week before they begin hanging the display I finally dropped the piece (I never got it to fly, so I won’t call it a kite) off to Texas.
When will I learn that just because I think a project sounds cool, doesn’t mean that I need to stick my hand up? Not yet, apparently.
I’ve got instructions for assembly with some detail pictures on a page that I’ll leave up for the organization, and for anyone that may wind up acquiring the piece.