Up early again, surprises this time, as the boys are all dressed and coffeed and moving all of my stuff.
I don't have much stuff, I'm a bit of a minimalist actually but I hoard art supplies like you wouldn't believe. I have eleven sketchbooks waiting to be used. Never enough fine liners and I think there are seven dozen tubes of paint here between two easels just because art is a religion too.
So they put all of my art supplies in the stables, because it's a clean building with tons of light, locking doors and heat. It's fully wired in, protected by an alarm and a perfect place to set up because I complained that my little nook in the corner upstairs has tons of light but no actual space and more than once I leaned in to the left side of the canvas to work on detail and somehow manage to clutch my palette to my chest in the process, coming away with a lovingly mixed water-soluble oil rainbow on the front of my shirt.
(Lochlan says my palette is too big and awkward for me anyway and wants to buy me the beautiful Amish one at the art supply store but I've resisted so far. I asked him to cut mine down slightly but he won't. It's a standoff.)
All I have to do is turn away from my easel now and I can see across the orchard and right out to sea.
The reasoning behind this appropriation is that now, with my newly installed garden studio, Caleb will have no argument to try and push horses on me. I actually want the horses, but no one else does. They say they're too much work and they're right. It's one thing to board them elsewhere and drive out regularly, it's another thing to have them right here. No way would Caleb demand that a perfect space to work in be dismantle once he sees how truly perfect it is.
There's even a radio. And a thermostat. And windows everywhere. Also a bathroom. I may get someone to move my bed later too and then I can live out there. But It's temporary until the day one of the kids claims it as their apartment (they're fighting already about who gets the loft above the garage and who gets the gatehouse (because we told them not to call it a stable, it's a little too nice for that honestly) but for right now it's all mine.
