Life as Art Before a Flat Tire and Freezer Fire

On a recent late night drive home from a day spent at my parents house, I was trying to keep Brandon awake while he was driving by showing him the photos I had taken during the day.  Normally, when he is looking groggy at the wheel,  I just pick a recent political hot topic issue and start a debate - we get home before he knows what happened.  It's probably not the best thing for his blood pressure, but at least he's alert to drive.  This time I was trying to entertain him by forcing him to say nice things about the photos I had taken during the day.  What could be more stimulating to a man than quick glances at cell phone pictures of flowers and kittens, right? 

Mom and I were quite pleased with an arrangement we made using peonies, wild flowers, and sage blossoms.  Brandon is always a good sport and was darting glances at my phone as I bragged about our flower arrangement.  He said it reminded him of a Glen Brown painting. 

Really!?  Our flowers make you think of famous art?  I'm not surprised.  Of course, I didn't know this artist, but being excited that my flowers were reminding him of famous paintings I googled Glen Brown and started a game of "is it this one" while Brandon took quick looks at my phone.  Finally I found the one he was thinking of, above.  I was impressed, and just found a new game to play with my phone while in the car. 

 

So, next he took a glance of the photo I took of Curly and Beardy, two of the chicks that I hatched in the incubator, which now live at moms house.  What artwork does this bring to mind, Brandon?  

He said a it made him think of a Marc Chagall painting of a blue chicken.  Well, it didn't take long to find that image either.  I like that the subject matter is the same, and both images use blue, but it's transposed from the background in the photo to the subject in the painting.  They both have a sort of sad vibe too. 

Mom's kittens are so much fun to watch.  They cuddle together for naps, and spend so much energy chasing their mother's tail.  

For some reason the photos of the cats made Brandon think of a Modigliani painting of a woman on a couch.  When I look at the photos with the painting, I can see a relationship with the white of the woman's dress and the white of the momma cat.  They are both images that seem relaxed, and the colors of the calico kitten are similar to the couch in the painting. 

Mom has a silly chicken that likes to roost in a tree instead of the coop.  I worry that this chicken may not make it long, considering all the predators that live in the surrounding woods.  A coyote recently got mom's good rooster, and raccoons have taken a few chickens in the past.  Foxes, possums, and skunks are also there, and they can all eat chickens.  

When I flashed the chicken in a tree photo at Brandon he immediately said a painting of plants and leaves by Lucien Freud.  At first I kept asking him if he was sure because I expected another painting with a chicken, but he said it was the first thing that came to mind when he looked at the photo.  I guess the chicken in the photo is sort of hidden, and the green of the tree is more prominent, especially when viewed from a cell phone while driving at seventy-five miles per hour. 

 

My game was cut short when the trailer we were hauling, which was loaded with swimming pool parts, blew a tire.  The tire disintegrated and we spewed sparks from the rim until we could get off the highway.  And, as is expected, we had no jack, tire iron, or spare tire.  And it's the middle of the night.  So, we left the trailer in a Cracker Barrel parking lot while we found a twenty four hour Wall-mart.  I was afraid someone would pull up to the trailer and drag away my pool, which would have been tragic, but Brandon wouldn't leave me there to guard it.  He doubted my ability to defend the pool, but I really want this pool so anyone intent on stealing it would have been sorry they tried.  

Fortunately, you can buy anything at any hour at a wall-mart, but unfortunately we bought a jack that was too small and had to borrow landscaping stones from shrubs around the Cracker Barrel to make it tall enough to get the tire on.  The tire is also a little bit smaller than the other, so I was sure we were going to crash before we could get home.  

Then, just because the universe was trying to punish us, when we got home, after one o'clock in the morning, I noticed a weird sizzling and snapping sound from the refrigerator and saw an orange glow in the bottom of the freezer.  I said "Brandon, the freezer is on fire."  He just kept repeating this phrase while I frantically tried to pull out the drawers and figure out what to do.  I flipped the breaker and, as exhausted as we were, we dragged out the coolers and emptied the refrigerator and freezer while we griped about how much a new one would cost.  The next day, after some inter-web research, I found that the freezer was not on fire, but was actually in the midst of a defrost function, that obviously we have never witnessed in the eleven years we have owned this refrigerator.  Numerous people online had the same fear and response that we did.  One person, after getting a response on a chat forum that informed her of the defrost function of this model, after she had unplugged hers in the middle of the night, said "I feel stupid."  Yeah, I understand the feeling.