Recently I decided to visit my daughter in Florida and stay for a couple of months. This was a first for me as I have never visited for more than a week to ten days at a time. Believe me, it wouldn’t have happened except for the fact that the previous winter had been a disaster for me. I was invited because my family felt I should not be in an icy, snowy city during the winter because the previous winter I fell and spent a month in the hospital.

Florida for two months is not a bad thing. In fact, it turned out to be quite wonderful. Despite my

aprehension at being a guest in my daughter’s home, it turned out to be a good thing for all of us. I enjoyed having company and being in a beautiful small town and she and her family seemed to like having me around. I’d say the fact that I helped with the cooking and shopping was an important contribution, plus the fact that my skills as an artist came in handy when they needed help in some work designing a poster for an upcoming event.

Nevertheless, living with another family was very different and enlightening. I had to learn to keep my mouth shut and not inject my opinion during family squabbles. Also, I had to get used to other ways of doing things. I thought everyone ought to do projects and live according to my personal rules, but that was not the case.

I got inspired to come home and continue working on my flower paintings.

I’ve been going back and forth between abstraction and the flowers but I need to finish 100 paintings before I can allow myself to explore another idea.

Each time I visit the museum I am just as excited by the space and beauty of this new museum as when I fist saw it in May when it opened. Everywhere you look there is light and space. The art is showcased perfectly. Different paintings have been placed carefully on walls adjacent to other works in such a way that they enhance each. Yves Klein’s Blue painting is across from Mark Rothko’s Orange and Yellow painting. You can look at both of them and the juxtaposition makes each color stand out even more dramatically. All the familiar paintings I’ve seen during my many years visiting the museum, starting from childhood when I was a student at the Saturday school, now look fresh and new to me.

Let me say right now that a trip to Chicago just to see the new museum and visit Millennium Park is worth it no matter what the cost. Of course, it is only 15 minutes away from my house, so it’s easy to say that. But, I mean it.

I found myself in the kitchen, unsure of what to have for lunch. Peeking into the fridge, I saw the bunch of celery I bought early in the week which had been disappointingly bitter. I thought cooking it up could only help its situation. I also noted onion and green pepper standing out on the somewhat empty shelf. I started by chopping the onion, celery, and pepper and mixing them together in a pan drizzled with oil. The different shades of green sizzled nicely together. Then I remembered a lonely can of sliced organic tomatoes, I would have to add that, for what is a goulash without a saucy tomato? Sea salt and paprika complimented the vegetables. Lastly, I discovered half a zucchini waiting patiently to become a part of the lunch festivities, which I quickly sliced and added to the pan.

After all is said and eaten, I can attest to the fact that it was a success in every way.

I have not had a chance to write anything for a long time. The past four months have been a blur, but I am now back to work drawing and painting. Flowers are still the subject but I am getting ready to expand and get these images on canvas but I also have some new images to upload to my products store on Zazzle at Award Winning Fine Art

My winter was spent recovering from two falls that landed me (literally) in the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago for four weeks. After that the time was spent at home trying to get more rehabilitated.

I have started to draw again and it feels good.

When it arrived via FedEx on August 5th. I carefully unpacked it and plugged it in. It didn’t work. Not only did it not work, it made a very loud hissing sound and a bell kept bonging while the light flashed on and off. It was an alarming display of non-performance.

The Second Mistake

When I discovered that the machine did not work I immediately repacked it and my grandson and I carried it to FedEx Kinko’s at 1315 E. 57th Street to have it shipped back to the seller. I sent the seller an email telling him about the problem and told him that the machine was being returned.

When we got to FedEx Kinko’s I asked the clerk what to do about sending it back to the shipper. I pointed out that the shipper was located in Tennessee. She was very accommodating and said she would take care of sending it back to the shipper.

The next day, August 6th FedEx returned to my house and delivered the computer again. I told the driver that it was a mistake and should have been sent to the shipper in Tennessee. He said he would return it to the terminal and ask the dispatcher to send it back to the shipper. Unfortunately, the machine was not assigned a new tracking number and this action set in motion a series of events that resulted in the package going missing.

Since FedEx had given it the same tracking number again––044696510351554–– the package did not know where it was going and it got lost. Really lost. I learned that the computer had the same tracking number twice when I tried to track it. I began to call FedEx –– 800-463-3339––every day from then on, some times two or more times a day, to inquire about the missing package. Each time I called I repeated the story of the mistake made by the Kinko’s clerk that resulted in the computer being delivered to me twice which required me to refuse it the second time.

The FedEx customer service people were very patient and listened to my story each time. They began to keep a file on the search for the missing package but each time I spoke to another customer service person so I had to tell the story over and over again.

One time I talked to the personnel at the terminal in the Chicago area and talked to someone named Nancy. She talked to the driver who said he had returned the package to his dispatcher and that the dispatcher had placed a new label on the package and sent it back. Another time I talked to the personnel at the terminal and they said they needed an address to send it to so I provided the address of the seller in Tennessee.

Finally I was assigned to a representative of the Customer Advocate Team by the name of Gail Evans in Atlanta. Ms. Evans began her file about the problem and she assured me that she would try and resolve it. I then began to call her every day.

Gail informed me that the package had been shipped from a company that had a contract with FedEx called Postal Connections and the return needed to go to them instead of the seller. Because this company had sent the package, they needed to file a claim with FedEx for the loss, which they did.

I was told by Gail’s office that FedEx needed to determine the value of the package before the claim could be settled. She asked me to send a fax to Mr. William Cobb of the Claims Department listing the value of the computer according to the Ebay purchase price I paid. I now had a reference number #0815823205.

In the meantime, I filed a claim and asked for a refund via PayPal and was communicating with the seller about the situation. The seller said that he would definitely not give me a refund because the package had not arrived and he had no evidence that I had returned the computer to FedEx. He also said Fedex told him that they NEVER would have assigned the same tracking number twice and that he was told the driver in question no longer worked for FedEx.

I assured him that I had the receipt from Kinko’s but that is all I had and it referred to the original tracking number that caused the problem in the first place. I also told him that I had seen the driver on August 27th because he delivered a package to me on that day and I asked the driver about the lost computer. He told me he had sent it back to the original shipper.

Gail Evans is still “looking into” the situation but nothing is happening there. I have contacted the people at Postal Connections and they, too, are looking into it. At this moment my only recourse seems to be to rant about it in my blog. So that is exactly what this is all about.

I’d feel really happy if Fedex would either find the package or honor the claim made by Postal Connections because Fedex lost or misplaced this computer because of a mistake made by one of their affiliate companies and there is every reason why the claim should be paid.

If anyone has any ideas about what I can do next to solve this problem, I would love to know about it.

Giving someone a surprise party reminded me of the one and only time I tried to give such a party. It was for my husband’s 65th birthday. I had arranged for my three daughters to come to Chicago and be here for the surprise. They arrived several days before his birthday and he knew they had come just to celebrate with our immediate family. What he didn’t know was that I had invited a lot of other people to come, too. For some reason I didn’t think that he would wonder why I was baking a large quantity of pastries and cooking a very large amount of food for our little group.

On the day before his birthday I had asked a friend of his to invite him to listen to music at his home. It happened that this friend picked him up and would also have to bring him home because our house was about a half hour drive away. While they were listening to music all of the invited guests came to our house and waited for his return so they could shout “surprise” when he entered the house. All went according to plan except for one thing. When the surprise occurred, my husband was not really surprised because he had figured out that there would be no reason for me to cook as much food as I did unless I had some other plan in mind. Of course, he didn’t mention the fact that he was not surprised until afterwards.

So, this leads me to wonder how many people who are given surprise parties really know ahead of time what’s going on.

I had a perfect model of how to work at home when my husband set up his own public relations business in 1982. This was a time when it wasn’t fashionable to be telecommuting, but in our case, it was the consequence of necessity. Because of various circumstances in the business world, my husband found himself unemployed after more than thirty years as a public relations consultant with a large firm. Rather than becoming involved in a battle about age discrimination, we opened Phil Richman Associates in the downstairs study of our house.

Neither of us knew how to use a computer. Nevertheless, we bought an early portable computer manufactured by the Osbourn Company and my husband proceeded to learn how to use it. The computer made it possible for him to start the business without an office or a secretary. All he needed was a phone line, a fax machine, the computer, and a very disciplined work ethic.

He began with one client who believed in his talent and ability to do a good job of getting publicity for products and people. He decided that the business would not move out of our house because he enjoyed working at home. Our study was designated “the office” and it was no longer used for any other function besides the business. Not having to get dressed up in a suit and tie every day was a real benefit to this new arrangement. Occasionally there might be a need for an office downtown in order to meet potential new clients. One of his friends who had office space allowed him to use it for meetings in return for public relations counsel. It worked to both of their advantage.

Although he didn’t leave the house for his job, my husband made a clear separation between his working hours and his home hours. He established a firm rule of getting dressed every day, eating breakfast, and then going into his office to work. He would take a lunch break, and then spend the rest of the afternoon continuing his work until I came home from my studio. There was an advantage to being at home in that he could take off work early whenever he wished. And, he didn’t have to work nights and weekends unless something pressing was going on. The most important thing he did was to take his business seriously and use his time productively in order to do the best possible job for his clients. He was able to continue this business until he died sixteen years later.

My studio was not in our house. It was important for me to separate my art working space from our living space because the work I was doing required solvents that are not advisable for home use. I needed space to work and display my paintings.

After my husband died I moved into several rooms in my house and these became my studio. It was a huge change for me. The space is a lot smaller and it is broken up. The most important change was learning to create the separation between being at home, and going to work. My husband did it so easily, but I find it hard to follow his good example.

I am often tempted to paint in my bathrobe. There are times when I think of some thing I need to do to a painting just before going to bed and then I may be up working until quite late at night. If I impulsively begin to paint while wearing good clothes, they become spotted with paint. Once in a while I may have plans to watch a TV program at a certain time and I miss it because I’ve stopped to work a bit before the program begins. Or, I am about to go to a concert and I stop for a minute to take a look at what I have done, and I forget and start working. Then I have to race out of the house in order to get there on time.

It is hard for me to eat breakfast and go to work the way he did. Phone calls from friends are more interesting than trying to work on a painting, especially when I am at a beginning stage or one that is giving me problems. There are household chores that need to be done so I do that in stead of going to work. Being in my house is also very lonely. Previously, in my studio I had access to other artists who also had studios in the building. Now I have to make an effort to meet friends for lunch or coffee. I’m not as involved in the art community as I had been.

In order to get myself into the frame of mind that makes me use my studio productively, I have to remind myself that this is my studio and my work comes before doing the laundry. I invented some routines that help make the separation between home and studio possible. For one thing, every morning I make a bag lunch for myself, as I had done when I had a studio away from home. I don’t take any coffee breaks because once I begin working I want to continue without interruptions.

I moved my computer into one of my studio rooms so I could quickly scan images into it and use that information for the paintings I am working on. I also need the computer because I have several web sites that I manage. The most difficult problem I run into is allocating time for the two different kinds of work. And I try to have regular working hours and leave the household stuff for the weekend. I realize now that the benefits of working at home far outweigh those of having a separate studio. It has taken me quite a while to adjust, but now that I am used to this arrangement, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.