I am a Farmer.

Call me Farmer Jane.  I have a new job, I work with Holstein Cattle babies.  I mix their milk in a bucket, change their bedding, give them water, grain, and love.  It was raining cats and dogs when I came in to work my first shift at 5:30 am...I didn't mind, I loved it.  The best part is I can eat as much as I want now because I working with cattle is like working with a medicine ball, I'm sore as hell and want to consume a banana.

In other news, I'm still arting.  I've beaded two skulls (coyote and sheep), cleaned and put together a skunk skull I found, and have begun a new painting featuring all the pond creatures I've become so fond of over the past several months.

I also found a neat store with a creepy owner on Main street in Ottumwa. They skulls, antlers, coins, fossils, silver, and have pornography in the bathroom...should I call someone about this? I'm afraid there are cameras in the toilet.  Should I blow the whistle, I'm afraid for the children that need to go to the bathroom after they buy buffalo nickels.

American Gothic.

Today was a big day for ol' Jane, I saw the American Gothic house that resides in my new town, Eldon.

Eldon, Iowa is a small town. It's quaint and a little delapidated...but not too bad overall. There are brown road signs through out the town that lead you all the way to the house that Grant Wood painted all those years ago.

Seeing as "American Gothic" could concievably be the most recognizable American painting in the world I thought it would be larger then life. Huge, well-lit, and just incredible. I don't know why I thought this...but I did.

We pulled into the parking lot and far off in the distance I saw a little white house with people posing in overalls in the front yard. Was this humble home really it? And it was.

I would liken seeing the American Gothic House to seeing the Mona Lisa for the first time.

"Isn't it supposed to be bigger?"

I wasn't dissappointed by the experience, I was enthralled by it. Seeing that window at the top of the house and recognizing it from Wood's painting was great. But I suppose that the beauty of the midwest is found in its simple, corn covered landscape...and Grant was able to capture that simple, down home, charactoristic in his painting.