clickmom

8

Well ..... today I handed in the very last revision of my thesis. 

Cue the chorus of heavenly angels it is as good as it is ever going to get!! It's good enough.  I compared the length of it to a classmates thesis and am concerned that it might be a bit on the long side.  Kind of shocked since the advisor told me he thought I was a little light on references.  I had discussed that with the thesis advisor who (was shocked at the comments my advisor made regarding my thesis) said she thought I had been more thorough than most with my justifications, so being on the low end of quantity wise would be all right.  I wish they had gotten together to discuss this earlier.  I think there is a bias against me.  I know how paranoid it sounds, but I do.

In other news, we hung our show today!  So happy to see my work on the gallery wall.  A visiting teacher came through and exclaimed "Dang!  Dang!" in a very flattering way while standing in front of my work.  Yay!!  I could have jumped up and down like they had just called my name on the price is right. 

In weather related news, I had to forgo blowdrying my hair for a second day in a row.  Today I was sure I'd pass out if there was any more heat in the room.  The good news is that some thunder storms rolled through early this evening and now the temperature outside is down to a balmy 75.  That means it is probably 85 in our sleeping quarters here at the seminary (aka: the filthy dustbowl) but I will take 85 over last night's temperatures which made me think about how much I loved to lie in the sauna with my anorexic friend back in stepford.  

There is a new cook here at the seminary.  I asked him if the noodles they were serving with the stir fry two nights ago were rice noodles because I couldn't eat wheat and he said "Aren't wheat and rice the same thing?"  Yup, they let him operate kitchen equipment.  Scary right?  Tonight I went out to eat with my last remaining MFA friend.  

It's strange to be here when all but one of my friends left the program.  The young men in the program have been the same young jerks they always are to me.  But the good thing is that they don't really try to help me and then they don't want me anywhere near their work either.  Well, my work is all hung up (Dang! Dang!) and they are in the gallery right now trying to figure theirs out.  I'm going to have another nice cold shower and get a good sweaty night's sleep.  Who needs them?  Not me!  

9

SINGLE DIGITS!!!!!!!

Tried to do the very last thesis improvement tonight, it's gonna have to wait for tomorrow.  It's heat wave here in purgatory and where we sleep is approximately (judging by my arms waving out the window) 10 degrees hotter inside than outside.  

Have I mentioned my intention to never ever ever take air conditioning for granted again?  Also, the females are on the top floor during this heat wave.  Double sucks.

Nothing can ruin my happiness.  This is such an awesome way to feel.  Might go back to utopia tomorrow just to sleep in A/C.  Depends on how late I end up staying at the gallery to hang my photos.  Looks like I will have two triptychs and two black and white images in the show.  I'm down with that. At this point my main focus is dancing off this campus with a diploma in my hand.  Nothing else matters.  Except maybe A/C.   

It's a cold shower and bed for me.  Fingers crossed that I can sleep enough to function tomorrow.  There might not be enough coffee in the world if I don't sleep hard tonight.

 

11

The good news is that the program director said one of my triptychs was "a very strong image."  That is a compliment and I will take it!  The bad news is that the advisors had some suggestions about improving my thesis and now I am in the unfortunate situation of working on my thesis again.  I am reminding myself that it is easier to this work now instead of wetting my pants next week when I have to stand up and actually defend my thesis in front of the people who are trying very hard to poke holes into it and make me cry!!  

The truth is that I am SUPER psyched about my work.  I am proud, and in the end, having work I can be proud of is priceless.  My classmates had a positive reaction to both my book and my gallery prints.  I am even happier with my book than I was before showing up to this last session.  I see that printing it myself was a fabulous idea, because my prints look better than the books of the people who had their books machine made.  Worth the effort?  I'd say yes, but as the other guy who made his own book said today it took so many hours to make the books that it is not even possible to put a price on them.  I mean, I can figure out how much the materials cost, but in terms of time?  Probably close to 10 hours each book for just the printing cutting,  assembling, etc....  Does this mean I am finished with hand made books?  Hell NO!  I am already planning my next book! 

This is awesome!! 

There is no air conditioning where we are staying and naturally summer weather finally rolled in.  I am never taking a nice cool bedroom for granted again!  

13 !!

So, I am not even graduated yet (leave tomorrow for the last session!!) and all I can think about is what I want to do for my next project.  I am actually thinking of a very conceptual type book working on the premise that each of my triptychs  (or diptychs or four-photo-tychs) can be seen both as a whole and individually.  My brain is in fast motion forward with all of the work I have made in the past year.  I made SO MUCH FRIGGING WORK!!!  

Also, there are some new projects I want to get up to speed on.  Right at the end of the last project I got into this tree mode that the NY editor loved and said she didn't even think it looked like it was taken by the same photographer.  I'd like to explore, also revisit the series I did on the husband, and there is a family tree thing I was thinking about, and I have to go to Italy to spread my dear dead friend Bob's ashes, and also, there is this nagging pull of a book that has been rolling around in my brain.  Once I read Stephen King's book On Writing and the one thing that stuck with me was he asks himself "what if....?" and now I have a whole book series rolling around in my head based on the WHAT IF thing and it is not at all biographical because it totally didn't happen but in my imaginary twisted world I am the main character and I decided who is going to play me!  It's Amy (not spelled correctly for googling purposes) shoe-mer!!  She would be the perfect late 30's me, and I figure that by the time I write the book and get famous and someone decides to make a movie of it shoe will be 37-39 and it's destiny.  Oh Amy, I hope you play me.  I adore you.

I picked Josh up at camp today, can't believe I have to ditch him for school tomorrow.  He wants to be a CIT next summer, and that is fine with me, except they expect CITs to stay the entire summer and I am not sure he is cut out for 8 weeks of camp.  But, if he does go to 8 weeks of camp, and Evan finds something to do for the summer (like stay in Colorado because he has become a huge pot head over his freshman year), I am thinking that summer would be a golden spreading ashes time.  Just saying.  Especially if we sell utopia and I don't have any awesome place to go.  It's really funny because there are some people who go to new town for the summer.  I just haven't found my niche there yet.  Not sure I will.  Not sure I want to.

Without utopia as my long range plan I feel a bit lost in space, like I am floating in no where and I have no place to land.  I don't let myself think about it too much though, because I am trying to look forward to good things coming (like my long awaited photo career!)  and not dwell on what I am about to lose.

15

Getting so close!  I leave for the final session in 2.5 days.  Josh returns from camp in 1.5 days.  I'll have about 24 hours with him before I have to pack it up.  

Finally getting somewhere on my oral presentation.  I broke down and paid for microsoft office 365 so I could get powerpoint.  If only I had done this two weeks ago!  Made it so much easier to figure out what I am doing.  Now hopefully I will be able to figure out how to save the file and get it to school! Other than my little bag of photoshop skills, computers are not my thing.

Peanut showed me that my phone keeps track of how many steps I take a day.  Now I am getting kind of obsessed with making that magical 10,000 number.  Todays? 10, 242.  One day I did over 15K and now everything else looks like I wimped out on the graph of progress,  I guess I need to get off my butt and walk more.

I think that walking would actually be a good thing to do at school and without my chilean buddy to buddy around with I think I might just head over to the campus super early every morning and take a walk around before classes start.  Maybe I will take an after dinner walk every day too.  Anything not to hang out with people who don't want to hang out with me.  I'm feeling all bummed because only one of my friend group remains! Three left the program.  Dammit.  My friend who made it out last year reminded me that it could be worse. She didn't have anyone to relate to for her entire two years. Yikes.

Today sweet pea played with another dog and it was so good.  Just know that she has been lonely for other dogs since we have been in utopia.  What has been her normal is seeing other dogs just about every day of the week, but up here in utopia there is no incredible dog park to bring her to like there is in new town.  Interesting enough the dog she played with was a white dog with her same name and the other woman started calling them white sweet pea and black sweet pea and even though it wasn't racist at all it sounded so bad.  Also, the other woman is named Gay and I have met her before, and when we were trying to figure out why we looked familiar to each other I said "Wait, Are you Gay?" and I recognized how wrong that might sound if anyone who didn't know her name was within ear shot too.  The whole meeting was at once fabulous because the dogs were a perfect match for each other and at the same time embarrassingly awkward because everything we said just sounded like a reason for someone to wave a protest sign at us.

17

I really feel like screaming 17 and cranking up the 80's dance music and swinging from the rafters.  The lower the number, the happier I get.  Surprisingly, I am not nervous even though I am still plugging away at that freaking oral presentation. I did have a text exchange with another student today who informed me that he had not even begun his.  W-O-W  That's all I can say.  I also found a brand spanking new 1 hour video of an interview this artist did and feel so much better to hear that some of what people attribute to her work never even occurred to her until the critics started to offer it up.  Makes me feel so much better about my whole reservation to assign my own private meaning to things that I don't care how it affects you as long as it does.

Also, I read some seriously bad reviews of her work which made me laugh!  Because I do believe that sometimes a person becomes trendy and the crowds get swept away in the madness of all the celebration of the artist for a while.  But, should that happen to me, I intend on totally embracing and riding that wave as long as I can!  I'm not holding it against the artist, I'm laughing at how crazy the art world is.  No one can deny that.

I am officially giving up on the idea of wearing a tiara to graduation.  I ordered two off of the internet and when they arrived ..... errrrr... let's just say they put the ACK! in Tacky. If I could find Josh's classmate with her perfect understated tiara I'd borrow it for the evening. (Understated tiara!  I love myself!) Maybe I'll just go home and bring out some bling for the day instead.  Sounds like a better idea.  I think Josh would be very happy to see me wearing some bling he picked out for me for mother's day two years ago.  I'm going that route instead.

Anyways. I had my thesis printed up on nice paper today.  Then the guy who didn't start his oral presentation yet told me he thought the program director might be making some last minute suggestions for us.  I thought, dammit.  I am trying to be a get it done in advance and not a last minute girl!! So, what ever, I didn't have my thesis bound, I will just stick it in some folders and hope that I am not ordered to change anything.  Maybe I will print up a nice photo-cover.

17! 17! 17!

Gets better every day.

18

So, Evan is on his way home from his job as a camp counselor.  He wasn't cut out for that kind of work.  At first he wrote to me and told me how incredibly hard it was (I thought welcome to my life!) and then he started to say that perhaps he would leave half way through under the theory that there were never many kids enrolled in the second session of camp.  I suggested he ask the camp director if he was unnecessary- and that Evan not leave them in  lurch.  Evan did ask, and the camp said they were indeed overstaffed for the second half and it would not be a problem if Evan left.  But Evan was supposed to leave next Sunday and not today.  From what I can tell they suggested that Evan do some maintenance work around the camp if he wanted to stay or maybe just leave now and Evan chose to leave.  I had the husband call the camp because I was not going to remain neutral no matter what they said and pretty much it boiled down to them recognizing that Evan is exhausted, functioning on a less than optimal level, and not a natural with kids, and truly being overstaffed as well.  Evan did say something about his personal philosophy not jiving with the camp's.  It also seems that the camp may have a taken a turn towards the super liberal in the past two years of Evan's absence.

This is an interesting development.

Because Josh comes home Saturday and I leave for school on Sunday and I have crafted a carefully care plan for Josh which includes the husband doing Josh duty IN UTOPIA the first week I am away and a friend doing care duty IN UTOPIA the second week I am away, while the husband is in LA on business and now Evan will be floating around who knows where, but I assume new town, doing who knows what with his friends, who are not the innocent, clean cut angels I would prefer them to be.

This could have worked out better.

Except, that Matt will be flying in for my class gallery reception and graduation in 18 days and now I know who is going to be picking him up from the airport! At least that problem is solved.  

The problem that is not solved is that damned oral presentation I am dragging my butt on.  I have to get it done!!! 

20

20 until graduation, 8 until I have to show up on campus.

Which means 8 days left to finish this oral presentation I am dragging myself on because I just don't feel it!  BUT, I am determined to finish strong and preferably, in advance so as soon as I hit publish on this post it is nose to the grindstone. 

Peanut came up and spent a few days with me.  It was great.  We just relaxed, took long walks, and hung out.  The weather got nice for her visit so that was a huge plus.  She left yesterday and today I woke up to dark skies with impending thunderstorms for this afternoon.  Which was what the weather was like before she came, so I am wondering if maybe she brought the sun.  I took advantage, since operation tan 2015 is underway and did get myself a nice little base tan. (enough that someone spoke to me in Spanish yesterday- cross my heart this is true!-to be completely transparent the pasty white guy next to me was speaking Spanish, so it could have been a not-tan-related mistake) 

Walking sweet pea this morning without peanut was a completely lonely experience.  I was thinking about how much I like being surrounded by trees and nature, but how I am not really a solitary person, and what to do?  I want both kinds of life at one time.  This is confusing.  

Jul 12, 2015

We met with a realtor today to talk about putting Utopia for sale. Every plan that I had made for myself revolved around ending up in Utopia. Even when I realized we had bitten off more than we could chew I still thought I could have a brief period of time here before I had to say goodbye. I'm grief stricken.

28

All if a sudden 28 sounds like plenty of time (28 till graduation, 16 until the last session starts) because I am in great shape over here. My thesis is complete.  My two writing assignments are in the bag.  My book!  My books is 99% complete and the only thing I have left to do is prepare the 40 minute oral presentation for a class we are taking.  By the way, I want to get paid for "teaching" a class which is comprised completely of student's giving 40 minute oral presentations while I sit in the back of the room.  WTF?  I mean, seriously?  

Interesting enough one of the writing assignments I wrote was a teaching philosophy and it was difficult not to just write "Anyone heard about how it goes down in my MFA program? Yeah, my philosophy is the opposite." I wrote about the importance of having a class where everyone respects each other.  I wrote about being accessible to the students. (Did I mention that when we left our last session (uniformly stressed and depressed) the program director told us we better ask any questions right away because he would not be available, nor would the other advisors, for the month of June?) And I mentioned my other Master's degree and my previous experiences with teaching.  I asked the thesis advisor to have a look at that one too.  I didn't plan on teaching, but should I decide to, this might come in handy. It seems that it is part of an application these days. Which is totally strange to me since anyone with web access can make the effort to bullshit their way through something written.  If I were hiring I would never trust a written statement, I'd want a psychological evaluation!  

Two days ago I was so immersed in working that I did not notice that sweet pea had disappeared.  My phone buzzed and it was a text from someone who had found her wandering down our street.  I jumped into my car before they could even tell me their house number and it turns out that sweet pea was captured by 4 very sweet young men who are renting the property right next to the end of our driveway.  They said she had come down the street from the opposite direction, so not having any clue how long she was gone for (though the boys said they had had her for 20 minutes) I am going to assume that I was so negligent that she was gone for a long time and she actually took herself for a walk and was on her way back when she was stopped by the boys.  That is the direction in which I take her for walks. I bought them some beer to thank them.  And now I keep the door closed when I ignore sweet pea to work.

I put sweet pea in a canoe last night and took her for a little paddle.  She was pretty good, despite being terrified of a neighbor's buoys and trying to jump into my lap when we passed them.  I think I might take her for a long paddle this afternoon if I get enough work accomplished today.  I've got this working momentum going on here and I feel like if I stop it would just be too hard to get going again. In truth, I have never been this motivated to get work done in advance of a project before and it is kind of fascinating to pull away and try to observe myself.  More typically, I am frantic at the last minute deciding that what I have is "good enough" even if I could have done better with more time.

I have not been preparing meals, instead living off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ice pops and canned soup.  I do miss fresh fruit and vegetables, so I think I will get some. Tonight the husband is coming up for the weekend so now I feel required to prepare meals.  I don't want to though.  I am so completely over cooking.  I'm all cooked out.  I got nothing left to give.