Is This The Party To Whom I am Speaking?

When our new phone rings, its not always a wrong number. 
We have a new phone. One with a local area code. We found our old phone numbers with the California area code made locals not call us. Even local businesses didn't call us back after we had called for a service or purchase! So we capitulated and got a local number, retaining our cell numbers so that friends and family would not have to start remembering a string of new numbers.
How's the new number working you ask? Well if the gal who had had it originally would pay her bills, it would be just fine.
We get very early or late phone calls asking for "Mariette" (name changed to protect the guilty). I repeatedly and very distinctly stated time and again that Mariette no longer has this number. I can remember at 7:15 a.m. on a sleepy Saturday morning being very heated and not quite polite telling this person that we would pursue and prefer charges for harrassment. 

So when our phone rang on a Sunday evening, I was loaded for bear. But imagine my surprise when the president of the Black Range painters called to tell me that all three of my entries to the yearly show had won prizes! I had managed to steal away a first for a pastel "Afternoon at Holly's", 

Afternoon At Holly's
Pastel - Available

Teapot and Magnolias
Oil Glazes on Prepared Panel
Available

 a third for an experimental oil, "Teapot and Magnolias", 

and an honorable mention for another pastel, "Nectarines and Sunflowers".

Nectarines and Sunflowers
Pastel - Available

 Now that is the kind of call I don't mind getting. 

Today is the award ceremony in Deming at the Arts Council. I plan on going and taking a new friend with me who wants to join. She is a watercolorist. And a darned good one. So on my way back from Deming, I might detour and show her City of Rocks. Its a local state park featuring monoliths and a rock outcropping that suddenly pops up off the floor of the plains. I have yet to paint it and plan on going there, paints in pack, as soon as the weather cools a bit. 

I guess that phone owed me a pleasant call after I have fried the wires with my anger for so long.

Fav quote:

"You have to deal with fear and frustration, you have to be persistent.  This is what passion and persistence is all about, the willingness to bear the pain in order to achieve your goal."                      (Dan McCaw)