A funny thing happened on the way home

To quote The Universe from my inbox this morning, "Time and space, The Ultimate Adventure".    Some days it really does feel like that.  I had a few moments this week when my inner core was an ant's eyelash away from going postal and I thought, "wow, this is what it feels like to go postal".  Being such a spiritually evolved human being (*snort*), I observed the feelings, then poured myself another vermut and stepped up to My Most Recent Ultimate Adventure.  Which was digesting this snippet from the timeline of history posted in my son's classroom.

Perhaps it is just semantics over the verb "prendre" (tr.: to take) and the negative connotation that overwhelms me to read it in this context.  Perhaps History could be deemed to be a subjective subject after all, couldn't it?

All this makes it so easy to segue into My Most Recent Observation of the Brazilian treehopper (photo originally linked by Marie EVB Gibbons) and how it was most likely separated at birth from this:

the hair from my rogue, hormonally driven follicle pulled from my chin this morning, the recurring hair that I pull about once a month. I have already written about this rogue here but looking back I see that it has grown coarser and more weapon-like over the last few years.

If I could sum up this Past Most Adventurous Week it would include my 12 year old Palm Pilot (the one holding all the telephone numbers and addresses that I consult from time to time but which was still the sacred cow of my recorded contacts)  upped and reset itself, erasing the entire memory.  All that displays on the current "Address" screen are the two 1-800 numbers for technical support which, judging from the age of this puppy, are no longer in service.

Dear Past, I hereby let go of you.  Maybe a little under protest and in a state of confusion, but I acknowledge that it is indeed time to look ahead.  Namaste.

Now, there's nothing like company coming to inspire an over due clean up.  Other than my chin getting plucked, I can thank the Queen of Arts for inspiring me to clean my toilet and for restocking my stock of her art/rocks.

This favourite person of mine 

and I are all set for our summer shenanigans now.

But wait! Before you go, I forgot to show you the astonishing rainbow from two weeks ago

and much about my Thelma-and-Louise Arizona retreat like the 79 cent Big Slurp (32 ounce) unsweetened iced tea  

the Mustang car rented, in true Thelma and Louise fashion, of course

the magic found in the garden

a dog named Belinda we spent two days with

 beetles making more beetles

and a culture very different from my own.

I confess I am a little bit on overwhelm lately with big changes hanging over the future.  Living the concept of constantly being in choice conflicts with the concept of not being able to control my situation which then induces panic attacks, usually in the middle of the night.  It is kind of like taking responsibility and yet feeling as if I am flapping in the breeze.  This life is not for the faint of heart.

Thanks Ted!

If you have ever had the feeling that Big Brother is closer than you would like him to be, I invite you to watch this Ted Talks

Deviation

I am deviating from my regular Friday Haiku because I really didn't think I could sculpt one out of this segment. I am reading about how many of my blogging friends are in full spring mode. Today (being a pedagogical day, like any self-respecting Friday is with our school board), Riley and I paid a visit to our local ice cream parlour - Wild Willy's. Oh, Wild Willy's has now opened for another season and we were one of the first customers!

Since they didn't yet have their lemon granita, Riley settled for plasticine-play doh

while I had my traditional Moocaccino.

We have that je ne sais quoi, eating ice cream in our winter outerwear.

We left a rock behind, something we hadn't done in quite some time.

On the way home I stopped to take some photos of what are considered to be "optional" stop signs. I can't tell you how many near-misses I've had on these corners, how many times I've been yelled at, cussed, flipped the bird and so on. Today I wanted to take photos just to be sure the stop signs are actually there, in my mind, if they turned up in the photo, they are concrete. Riley kept reassuring me that he saw them too but I'm still having my doubts even though I can see them here (lurking behind a big pile of ice)

and here (yup, it's trash day)

and here.

To everyone else they are invisible.

Pet Peeve of the Week

I almost hate to do this, what with the snow melting at a good clip and seeing my first batch of geese flying north today. I mean, everything is coming up roses at the moment. I have an insane two hours all to myself starting RIGHT NOW, spring is definitely inching closer, Riley's pox have peaked and are on their way out. But I have been thinking lately about this little detail of life that burns my butt. It goes like this: I don't mind bringing my own bags to stores instead of getting un-green plastic ones. But when I then have to PACK my own bags, well that kind of steams me. IMHO, part of the cashier's "job" involves service and just because I brought the bag doesn't mean he or she can't fill it. So while I'm standing there, juggling mittens and hats and wallet and change and receipt, the cashier just stares back at me, waiting for me to get organized enough to pack my purchases. This is happening more and more to me and I guess is a product of the generation working cashes in places that don't provide bags. Is there anything burning your butt this week?

Can't Wait

I can't wait for wordless Wednesday for this, I put gas in my tank today, but I couldn't afford to fill it.

Pet Peeve of the Day

My pet peeve of the day is people who over enunciate after I've said, "pardon me?" Do they really have to do that?

Having a little fun

Is it just me, or is the comb-forward look, well...a little ridiculous. It's things like this that make me feel old, out of sync and moving backwards. Of course, it's just an illusion. So we decided to try to be hip and cool. May I introduce, Baby Bieber

and Bodhi Bieber

complete with our best rockstar sneers. Yup, it's our real hair.

International Lego Day

Betcha didn't know that it's International Lego Day.

See? It says right here on our calendar.

This day was planned awhile back and the boys are having so much fun, we've decided to declare another one next March. The rugs have been rolled up and they are only stopping for lunch.

Before the whole thing kicked off, Riley and I took a walk by the lake, something we haven't done in quite some time. This guy was completely oblivious to the fact that he shouldn't just be hanging around, he should be getting out his legos.

And while you're at it, when you're dreaming, why not dream BIG?

Right now I am dreaming of finding one measly plastic orange duo-tang with crimps and inside pockets. One like this.

Yes, I have one but I need two. Actually I need two each in the colors of red, black, light blue, dark blue, yellow, green and orange. Finding the school supplies this year has been like going on a treasure hunt. I ended up emptying and cleaning up the folders from last year. They are a little beat up but they are plastic and have both crimps and inside pockets. But it seems only one orange duo-tang came home at the end of June instead of two. What would be dandy is if the schools would liaise with the stores and see if they can't order up what parents need to buy. An even better idea is a school committee to prepare packages of the needed supplies at a fee, goodness knows I would still save a bundle between the cost of gas and my own time. Or how about this: I supply the kid and the enthusiasm to learn and the school supplies the rest. Dreaming? Maybe.

I'm just saying

Am I the only one who thinks people walking around talking with their bluetooth(s) make them look like escapees from the loony bin? I saw an awesome one today, a tall man wearing a hoodie, walking his chocolate lab and it took me a minute to realize that he wasn't an escapee. He was talking markets and options and the like. I have seen women power walking in their power suits looking totally maniacal. Just saying...

An idea whose time has come

My idea of a perfect day includes everyone, big and small, remembering to flush.

Is It Just Me?

Am I the only one who finds this math problem that was a part of Riley's homework tonight a wee bit, oh shall we say - morbid for grade one?

Translation: There were 7 fish in the bowl. 6 of them died. How many were left?

And don't get me started on the book these little wankers have to read, "Mon Chien Balou". A cheery little story about a boy's dog who gets hit by a car and dies.

I swear I don't have to make this stuff up.

P.S. I think there is also a grammatical error in the math question.

What Constitutes the Double Roll?

I think it's a marketing scam. These double rolls don't look like double rolls to me. Maybe I'm now so used to seeing the double roll that my experience has been narrowed. Remember when there were no double rolls? I also remember paying 99 cents for a four-pack back in my first apartment days. That's when I wasn't stealing from my parents' stock on the weekly visits. When I first started buying the double rolls they wouldn't fit on most of the holders in my house but now they slide on and spin with no problems. So what's the deal? What does make up a double roll? Is it the number of squares (which can be manipulated by sizing the squares smaller) or is it over-all length (which can become irrelevant by making the layer thinner). Are you a double-roller or a single? Inquiring minds want to know.

The *F* Word

I was in an elevator yesterday, going up to the 16th floor with a gaggle of other female office workers, all of us "of a certain age". One lively woman was giving her opinion of her company's recent choices in promotions, which she didn't agree with. Her words were peppered with *f*-ing this and *f*-ing that and very disparaging comments about the intelligence of the promotees. It was clear to see why she has been overlooked for advancement. I find it very inelegant when any adult swears profusely in public. For some reason I'm quicker to forgive it in teenagers or very young adults, although I still find it distasteful. What I do know is the energy in that elevator was the kind that would eat and eat away at me for the rest of the day. It's already tomorrow and I'm still thinking about it. I've been known to let fly with my own profanity and frequently. I just do it in a more private setting. Is that really any better though? Is there a time and a place for blue talk? I think Mark Twain put it best when he said, "In certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer".

Rambling weather rant

OK, OK, it's been an easy winter. We have had little snow the last 6 weeks. Very little snow. My backyard was starting to look, well - revolting. And I walk my dogs, a lot. Twice a day, three times a day when I'm not working downtown. But there is always the pee that happens after chasing a squirrel through the yard and up the tree. Or the midnight pee, or the 3:00 a.m. pee. Then there's the territorial pee and the oh-what-the-heck-pee and the I-forgot-to-go-while-on-the-one-hour-walk-so-I'll-just-do-it-now-before-I-go-in-the-house-and-sleep-for-the-next-four-hours-pee. But this plunged me over the edge: a note came home from school yesterday advising parents to check their children's snow suits. Apparently, with almost no new snow to speak of, and with irresponsible pet owners walking their dogs through the school yard, the halls and the lockers in the school building have been smelling like dog excrement. Beauty. Riley did have a pair of mittens last week that were stinky. I thought it was just a case of them not drying out fully before they got wet again. They were washed as soon as I caught the whiff. Now I know what it was and I'm disgusted.

This morning I woke to about 6 inches of fresh stuff and it's still coming down. I should be grateful because it kind of takes care of the yellow snow matter. *sigh* Instead I'm wishing for sunnier climes.

Fighting the Good Fight or, On Aging - Part 482

I have been fighting the good fight for any number of years. I'm talking dry skin. The summer months are fading to just memory when my good fight consisted of sloughing the cracked and scale-like skin off my heels. These days, the only time I see my heels are on the yoga mat and in the shower. My focus has now shifted to my hands. With the exception of a woman's neck, little more tells her age than the skin on her hands. I have two problem areas, the side of the index finger on my right hand and the knuckle of my left pinkie. Don't ask me why, but these two spots are inconsolable. And now with hand washing season in full swing, I am not only fighting the good fight, I am in full battle. It's me against the lizard who seems poised to take over my hands. I have tried all kinds of cremes, lotions and milks. I stop short of sleeping with Vaseline under gloves and I feel like I'm losing. The Body Shop's hemp hand protector is good but no match for those two hot spots of mine. Any suggestions out there?

Opus

In my town the powers that be are intending to do away with the lowly strip of bus and commuter train tickets. Billions of dollars were spent on study after study for a few years and the result was the Opus Card. A credit card size piece of plastic with a little chip in it that allows you to load it with certain numbers of tickets. The price of this environment saving genius is $7.00 (before tickets are bought and added on) but for a limited time they are offering it at $3.75. I bought one a while ago and was astonished to find that I couldn't load both bus tickets and commuter train tickets on the same card. Lo! Those billions of dollars spent on studies did not go to waste, they figured they would recoup some of that by making us (the ignorant public) buy two or more cards for different services. These cards have been proven to be extremely fragile and have been fraught with problems since their release amongst the unsuspecting masses. And if they aren't already, they should be a sore spot for those who designed and produced them. My own experience has not been limited to realizing I need two separate cards to get to work as last week (the day after I had just loaded it with twelve new bus/metro tickets), it failed to perform when I boarded my bus. It squawked and made a series of red "alert' lights flash on the machine that is to read it. I tried and re-tried and then tried again. Luckily, the bus driver did not throw me off and instead told me to sort it out once we arrived at the metro. In this circus-like state of a city I live in, it stands to reason that our transportation cards would be named after a herring-eating, tuba-playing, white-brief-clad paranoid penguin from bloom county. Berke Breathed would be proud.

Book(s)

I am about half way through "The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women" (Gail McMeekin) after seeing reference to it on a number of other blogs I read. It's inspiring, but I think I have to admit that I just can't do it all. So much of it rings true but, I personally can't see how single-parenting can leave me enough time for "becoming" or even "being" much of anything. There is a chapter on Committing to Self-Focus which talks about making your own needs and dreams enough of a priority. Sounds great in theory but....I want to be there these early years of my son's life, these years that he still wants to hang out with me, wants me to help him with things, explain things and answer his questions. I want to spend the time to hear what he thinks, what his day was like, who bugged him or helped him out at school. And you can't get all that in one little bundle of allotted time. It comes out little by little, prompted by other things that are going on, this is information that can't be forced or made to share simply because it's convenient for me right now to listen to it instead of when it's convenient for him to tell me. Honestly, it has left me feeling inadequate as an artist.

A quote, "The problem is the simple reality that the act of writing a poem or a novel, of painting a picture, of sculpting a form, of choreographing a dance, of composing an etude is not a simple or time-bound activity. Rather, it requires a total commitment of energies and attention, and an ability to suspend time and space - eureka, the heart of the problem for creative women, whose total attention would be shifted away from their home and children to their art!" then, "Because of our societal script to care for others, this decision to engross ourselves totally in our creative work, even in time-limited segments, generates more conflicts for most women than it does men." So true. Why is it, if while I'm doing all the other things in my life, a part of my head and heart are in my studio, working away, filing away images and experience and urges, why, when I have those small blocks of time does it take so long to get things down on paper or canvas or completed or at the very least moving along at a clip enough to satisfy?

A little while back I finished Anita Diamant's, "The Red Tent". I had it sitting in my pile for about two years and had hesitated to read it because I wasn't in the mood for something with an old fashioned style of writing. But reading it I felt grateful that as women, we've come a long way since the time of Rachel and Leah. Or have we? Do we have a raw deal now, expected to do even more than before?

Maybe I shouldn't write these kinds of posts when I'm coming down from a stressful time. But what other time is there? Or is it all perception? Rhetorical questions.

Surprised

I am sometimes surprised at the level of anger that surges out of me and the quickness with which it rises. Those days it seems that I have been holding, quelling, dissipating, reasoning away this emotion for so long and then the fuse just burns out. I am immediately able to check myself, rein it all in but it's always a shock to realize that all "that" was just under the surface, invisible to my soul's eye. Scary stuff.

Of Polar Fleece and Generosity

Apparently, my winning streak isn't over. I found this today - more than three times what I found yesterday, today it was at a mini-putt place, a birthday party for a friend of Riley's. Riley asked me to hang around and I liked nothing more than following a motley crew of 20 five and six-year olds wielding iron putters around 18 holes:


Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for (literally) every penny I find but I can't help but think there is some kind of message in this change.

On a totally different subject, I love polar fleece. I also love my dogs, but the two just don't co-exist happily together. I was wondering if companies such as LLBean or Land's End wouldn't make a fortune if they marketed some fleece clothing or blankets in colors more appealing to pet owners. Instead of moss green, lemon creme or ink black, how about chocolate lab, golden retriever or shepherd/collie mix? I have a fabulous black fleece jacket but after a year and a half, I don't dare to wear it outside of the house. I've tried all kinds of things to remove the hair - I buy those sticky rollers at Costco by the flat for goodness sake, but there is only so much hair that will come off. It's held up well to washing and I've really gotten my money's worth as far as the wearing of it goes but there is still an awful lot of life left in it. And I'm willing to spend only so much time rollering myself before I go out the door. Any miracle cures for de-hairing fleece out there?

Focus

If we get the weather they are predicting these next few days, I think I will be able to bring out some lawn chairs, unwrap the patio table. Of course if I do that I really should start raking the lawns and cleaning out the perennial beds. All kinds of things are coming up now. Mind you, they are all still green but I expect I will have tulips in another 3 weeks. Now there's a healthy dose of optimism for you.

I haven't been feeling very optimistic this week. I've tried to keep my focus on the things that are good in my life, the things that are working. Sometimes it all just falls apart, though. Luckily this week I have the full moon to blame. Things with Riley have been kind of tense too. I'm not sure why, if it's the moon again or maybe he's just annoyed with me. But he's not been himself. I hope the side I've been seeing of him is not the self he is growing into because if it is, then there is big trouble ahead. I think he's testing boundaries, you know - seeing if some things still piss me off. Yup, they do. Or to see if he can get away with being a disrespectful jerk. Nope, he can't.

I did get quite a bit of studio time today and it felt good. I've got three more tags to show for it. The first one, a question I've been cogitating for quite awhile, "What was the last brave thing you did?" I started with a red background to symbolize courage, and stamped some lion's heads on it. The second one, "Name 5 films that inspire you creatively", was a tough one because it's been so long since I've really watched films that aren't geared toward a much, much younger audience. I did see "Frida" fairly recently and then when I was a university student I was obsessed with Wim Wenders films, go figure. Another film that has always stuck with me was, "Being There", then lastly I listed the Lina Wertmuller version (and far superior version) of, "Swept Away", because of the incredible colors. It's been decades since I watched it but in my mind's eye I can still see it so clearly. The last one was easy, "What keeps you up at night?" because this week was largely sleepless. And I liked putting down in words the things that make me toss and turn, it makes me so much more conscious of them and hopefully able to work some of them out.


Another thing I worked on today came from Collage Diva's site. She suggests making your own paint pages for collage so using some of her techniques, I worked on about four different papers. This was the most successful one, done on bristol board. It begins with free form, stream of consciousness journaling over the whole page, then covering that with an acrylic wash, followed by stamping with gesso, then covering again with a darker acrylic wash. I finished it off by stamping with one of my new Tim Holz stamps. It turned out quite nice. Here's a shot of the whole sheet and a detail.


The other samples need some more work before I would dare to share. But this one is quite nice. I tried all kinds of paper, some inkjet that I use for printing collage sheets that is archival and acid-free, another type that is 100% cotton made for printing CVs and matte presentation paper. They all revealed different weaknesses but it was a marvelous learning experience and I'm glad I did it.