Biding my time

It  has been a few days since I reinjured my back and I'm getting seriously cranky about it.  I had to call my neighbor/plumber yesterday for an exploding irrigation line, and we both walked around the yard with our hand on our back, comparing symptoms, physician advice and medication recipes.  Ridiculous.  And neither one of us is even 50 yet!  About all I managed to do was watch television, almost nap (I can't sleep during daylight, but I can remain still and useless for a long stretch at a time), watch basketball (GO LAKERS!) and fold laundry.  Oh joy.  Oh, and I did manage to take an enormous number of photos of birds, in addition to the baby skunk that has begun visiting us every evening.  What in the world I will do with the photos, I don't know.  Discovering the use of many of my camera's features was good, so it wasn't time completely wasted.  My feet have a lovely tan, too.  OK, so it wasn't all so bad waiting to get better.

Today I'm going to work on an art project, even if done from a prone position.  I have a couple of new ideas for art dolls and even for wonky paper dolls.  I'm eager to see what my friend Debbie has in store for online sharing and learning (still trying to get over my fear on that!), and am determined to do something worthwhile as I sip coffee and wait for the return of the plumber.  He's the funniest guy in the world, so I actually look forward to burst pipes.  :-)

What kind of art can I do on a heating pad?

Oh ugh, what a day!  I have struggled for a few years now with a back that is just wearing out.  For eight years, I worked in a spine center with the most wonderful spine surgeons and pain management doctors.  My boss would tease me that I was "bad marketing" when I injured my back and was hobbling around bent over and just miserable.  I insisted I was GREAT marketing because our patients knew that I could really relate to their pain!  I've got two discs in my lower spine that are just not behaving.  Sometimes the bulges are worse and putting more pressure on nerves than other days.   Some days I just get one big, fat muscle spasm that feels like someone kicked me in the back with wicked cowboy boots.  Today is one of those days, started with a breakfast of coffee, toast and meds to try to release that wicked spasm.  Oh, yum.

So here I lay, surrounded by the laptop, sketchpad, pen and pencil, remote control for the tv (I need voices other than my own talking to the cats), phone, a novel and a heating pad.  The manufacturer clearly expected this heating pad could double as a roaster, even on low.  Ouch!  So I keep having to turn it off and on so that I don't turn my caboose into a well-done hunk of moo.

I'm so very excited to begin a new art adventure with my cyber-mentor and friend Debbie.  I'm terrified at the same time to open that door.  This causes me to think about my younger sister Victoria who passed away a year ago just before her 47th birthday.  I was convinced that she didn't try anything (a job, finishing high school, etc.) because she was afraid to fail.  If she never tried, she couldn't fail.  That's what I'm afraid about with art.  I am terrified that if I try, I'll be discovered to be a big fat fraud.  But I just can't let my fear of failure stop me from trying and learning.  I keep telling myself that the worst that can happen is that I realize how much work I need to do to improve.  If I make art out of a love of creating something and just expressing myself, I can't fail.  It's not a test.  That will be my mantra.  Art is not a test.  Art is not a test.

I'm still a scared big baby.  But I'll face my fear and move ahead.  I may cover my eyes now and then, but I'll still move ahead.

AADD - Artist's Attention Deficit Disorder

I'm one of those distractable persons that will start on a mission like going through the contents of my old cedar chest to thin out, toss and organize the contents.  Then I find myself digging, wondering...where did I stuff those autographs from Bucky Dent and Jonathan Cain?  Where is that magazine with my photo when I was 16? Oh, here it is!  I'd better scan it before it turns any more yellow.  Ooh, then I'll put it on Facebook to share with friends with whom I used to attend these goofy events...then I'll yap with my friends on Facebook for a while.  Now the room is a mess, the contents of the cedar chest are scattered and as I try to put it all back (later, much later) less stuff seems to take up more space.  How did that happen?

A similar thing happens when I go into the studio to work.  My husband loves Picasso and, of course, we can't afford to buy one (and I just don't go for posters since his grad school days), so I decide I'm going to paint one.  I get the Picasso book out, let him pick one and figure out how to enlarge it to fit on a canvas that is NOT the same size or shape.  I go to get my paints, and I see the canvases from the art co-op project along with my sketch book of ideas.  Then I see my Mac.  I turn on the Mac...I'll just check email real quick and jot down more ideas for the co-op project.  Then I see magazines and books I didn't put away, so I start to shelve them, then see the one on dollhouses....oooooohh!  Not actual doll houses, but more like collages-in-a-box that add up to a house.  Hmmmm.  Ideas.

I started on the painting, I didn't get all the magazines put away (I had to drop them and run before I read them all) and remain distracted by other projects that I want to try.  I'm still thinking about that sort of family tree of paper dolls idea that I've been knocking around, and the quilt for which I've bought the fabric, but haven't started. 

Is it just me?  How do I stop my mind from going a million different directions on a million different art projects and actually get focused?  Today, I'm going to try to focus on the painting.  It's supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow (someone didn't tell the weather dude that this is Southern California and the business was supposed to be wrapped up in February!) so I've got a day to myself.  I need to put parts of the brain on pause, figure out how to center my attention and just get something done.

On that note, I'm going to have coffee and then paint.  We'll see how many times I'm distracted and my attention wanders.  Focus, focus, focus!!!

Caught without makeup!

I knew someone would be coming to the door sometime today.  As I scrubbed off the last vestiges of yesterday's mascara (it's waterproof and TAKES two days to get it all off), I was chanting in the bathroom, "I just know this is when she's coming, I just know she won't call first as promised."  And voila, the doorbell rang.  You have never seen a woman slather on foundation to cover up those dalmatian spots so fast in all your life!  I had no choice about answering the door.  This was the designer picking up our living room chair for re-upholstery, coming on her day off from quite a distance.  She'd forgotten our phone number back at the office and couldn't warn me she was coming.  Harrumph.  I told her that I was trying to play along with the folks from the Today Show that a week or so ago decided to do a day of broadcasting with no makeup for anyone.  I was just a little late.   I figured I'd get distracted and just forget after awhile and relax.  Nope.  I look very much like my husband with no makeup.  Haha.


In Studios magazine, I saw something about whether or not artists dolled up to work in their studio, or just staggered in wearing pajamas and crazy hair.  The responses were quite varied.  I always figured that if I went totally natural, I'd scare the bajeebers out of anyone that came to the door.  Blech.  The transformation that occurs with a little mascara and blush for me is significant.  I refuse to give it up!  OK, unless on a tropical vacation.  Then it's just sunblock and more waterproof mascara ;-)

Today I have shockingly little housework to do, so I'm going back into the studio to try to rebuild (or at least just start again) the clay face that I had to chuck when my son embedded the entire clay surface with the black embossing powder.  Oh, and the savage little friends also stopped in to visit the studio (uninvited and unescorted) that week and draped a damp towel from their swimming excursion over the same sculpture and my sketch book!  Teens have been banished from the room!  I know they like coming in and checking it out, but what little beasts to be so careless.  It will be an "Artists Only" zone for now. 

Have I Said This Before?

I decided to take another "be brave!" step and post a photo (the same old one) of a piece of artwork to the web site of the magazine Cloth Paper Scissors.  Well, actually I posted two - the photo of the pendant I created for the magazine's swap, and the photo of the art doll that I last made and love the most.  As I cruise through other folks' work, I am reminded of images or items I want to avoid in my own so that my work doesn't start to look like that of so many other craftspersons and artists:

No birds
No bird cages
No bugs
No wings
No feathers (at least not on hats or as wings)
No party hats
No fairy anything
No crowns

There's nothing wrong with artists using these images, of course.  It's just so hard for me to find my own style (other than my art dolls - that's easy to be unique there) that if I allow myself to use any of these things, I fear there won't be much unique to the work. 

Today I'm struggling with having had a couple of rough days with my kids.  Sometimes "home" feels more like just "house" or "address."  It hasn't been a happy few days.  How do I make art when I'm grumpy?  Instead, I'm sitting at the computer at nearly 10:30 in the morning wearing a political t-shirt, my hair looking like a starched football helmet and yesterday's waterproof mascara the only thing keeping my face from looking like my husband's.  I can't quite reach to kick myself in the behind and get moving.  Perhaps I should just give myself a makeshift kick and back up into the wall real fast, THEN hose myself off, put on a decent shirt, fresh makeup, ignore the mess in the kitchen and just go make something.

I think I shall.

Saying the wrong thing

I'm really very distracted today.  Two people that I love very much are having serious life challenges.  It's hard to know what to say when we talk.  With one, we have been so close for so many years that I try to just listen, offer a little advice and just be present.  With the other, I feel that absolutely every single word out of my mouth makes it worse.  I am not as good a listener as I should be, always tempted to share a story or say something that I hope will help put things in perspective so as not to seem so desperately sad or stressful.  I have failed miserably.  It's pretty much impossible for me to watch someone so close to me struggling and not want desperately to help fix it.  But I can't fix it.  If just listening helped, I think I'd be better at just listening, but this is the kind of stuff that doesn't get better by just listening.  How hard it is to accept that I can't fix it!  I have advised that if I start blabbing and making it worse, to just tell me that I'm making it worse and I'll just shut up.  That will be hard.  I don't shut up well.  I should, but I don't.  Something to work on.

It's hard to heave a big sigh on a blog.  Read this as one big, long, loud and sad sigh.

Life then death then life goes on while we're lucky

My husband has zipped off to Arizona for the funeral of an old friend of ours.  Ed worked for him as the Chief of Campus Safety at Whittier College many years ago.  He was our friend and a wonderful guy.  He was too young - only 65 - and just two years older than my mother when she passed away.  I was thinking about Ed this week, recalling the times he lived nearby and would come to our home for dinner, laden with nasty, stanky (and I do mean STANG-ky, not stinky - stanky is much worse) cigars for the "boys" to smoke down by the pool.  I pointed out to them the remarkable NON-coincidence that each and every time they lit up one of those wet-bags-of-garbage-on-fire-sticks that our friendly neighborhood skunk would "le pew."  Does one need a less subtle sign that the stink sticks are just that?  Stink sticks!  Good grief, they were foul!!

When our daughter was in elementary school (I believe it was 4th grade), all of the students in her year were given the same writing assignment, to write a report about whatever native American Indian tribe they selected.  In his youth, Ed's parents divorced and, while living with his mother in Colorado, he was befriended by a gentleman in their apartment building that was a native of this country and assumed the role of father figure for Ed.  This gentleman took Ed under his wing and brought him up in his tribe's tradition.  Learning of Erica's school project, Ed volunteered to make a presentation to all of the 4th graders, followed by a special presentation in her class alone.  It was at this event that Ed adorned me with a necklace, inviting the children to guess the material of which the necklace was crafted.  Much to my disgust and the utter delight of the kids, Ed announced that the necklace was comprised of horse teeth.  He was now the hero of all of the 4th graders.  Gross!!!!!!!!  The kids loved it.

So today we appreciate life.  We are reminded that it is ever so short and we should enjoy the dopey little things like picking out all of the orange jelly beans from the bag of assorted Jelly Belly jelly beans, or cranking up the iTunes SOOOO loud and trying to dance with our teenage son until he runs laughing outside.  Today we rejoice in Ed's life and the wonderful (though sometimes STANKY) memories of times we shared.  We remind ourselves that "life is short!" and "stop and smell the roses" aren't just cliches, but good things to remember.

Sniff those roses!  Crank up the music, do a silly dance and wear hot shoes that give you blisters just because they're hot and make us look FAAAAAbulous.  OK, just for a few minutes.