clickmom

dentist ... as usual... but with validation

So, I went to the dentist today to get two crowns put in.  As usual the crowns were an odd shape and looked like random white pebbles had been placed in my mouth, so as usual, it's a redo.  Since I have been chatting and chatting about being in a Master's program for the past two years, I tucked my book under my arm and brought it with me to show the dentist and her assistant.  The dentist wants to buy two copies.  One for herself and one for the surgeon who takes out my rotted teeth.  On my way out of the door the secretary asked to see the book.  She opened it slowly, like she was taking in the experience of the cover and began to slowly browse through the photos.  Sometimes she would reach out and caress a photo or say something out loud, "Look at the red berries!"  or comment on some detail "The tree is shiny!" Then she looked up at me and said "I feel like I can just walk right into these scenes." It was fabulous, she was experiencing the book in a way I had hoped people would.  

Aaaaah validation.

My goal for the day is to contact a printer to see if they can mass produce my book.

short thoughts

My baby started high school today.  As in..MY BABY started high school today. All 6 feet of him.  Evan was preparing him for the football coach to stalk him down the hallways.  Right before he hopped out of the car this morning he told me he would be late coming home because there was an after school meeting for the theater club.  At that moment I knew Josh was going to be fine.  He is taking initiative!  He will find his people.

A huge deer family moved into our backyard while we were in utopia this summer.  There are three babies and a whole lot of adults.  I never see them all at the same time so it's hard to tell how many there are.  I know they are not all present because one has a nice set of antlers and that one is not always around.  I think the one's I see most are the mom deer hanging out with their baby club, kind of like when I used to take the kids to the Y for toddler music classes and go out to lunch with the other moms afterwards.  The dad deer must be off smoking cigars somewhere.  Normally, I wouldn't mind (total lie!  They are pooping machines, and do not get me started on the ticks!  Also, my fantasy about having an all hosta garden) but sweet pea is going out of her mins every time she sees them.  She can't even seem to rest just knowing they might be out there.  I see her prowling by the windows, searching all day long.  There are no deer on our property in utopia, as if it wasn't heavenly enough already.  Also, I have hostas there.  Lot's of them and I have spent the last few weeks trying to figure out some way to bring clippings back in pots that I can protect until I end up somewhere more permanent.  

My whole childhood I spent living in an apartment that my folks were always thinking we would move out of.  Every time (every two or three years) they resigned a lease it was going to be the last time, and I always knew about it.  I don't think I really gave that much conscious thought until I was in high school when I recall telling my mother I would sleep on my grandmothers floor to finish off my high school days at my high school.  I'm wondering if maybe that kind of lack of security had an effect on me because I have such difficulty changing plans, letting go, and not knowing what is around the corner.  I just want to plant myself in a place that I believe will be forever. 

The other effect of living in an apartment that when we got a new lease every couple of years is that there is a option to repaint with every lease signing and my mom loved to get the place painted, so I really like a fresh coat of paint way more than I should.  I can't believe how long home owners go without painting! 

I think I had a lot more to say when I first sat down, but now the husband has seated himself two feet from me and is initiating discussion with Matt.  I can't think.

Last morning?

This is the view from my pillow in utopia. Every morning I wake up, roll over and look to see if looks like it's going to a colorful sunrise. If it looks promising, I'll pop out of bed to witness it in person.

This might be my last chance.

talking myself out of The Blues

Every summer around this time (the week school starts) I get The Blues.  It actually makes me smile to think The Blues because that is a phrase grandma used to use, except she had them just about every day.  I get them from time to time.  I am feeling so incredibly sorry for myself these days.  Having to put utopia on the market, sacrificing two glorious utopian summer weeks for the last three summers in order to get my MFA, and now this?  It's hard to swallow.  Even if utopia doesn't sell we will probably have to rent it out next summer to make ends meet.  All of this on top of school starting feels like a lot to handle right now.  I feel like I can type this because the kids would rather be re-circumcized than read their mother's blog, but I FREAKING HATE SCHOOL.  I hate that it starts at dawn in the dead of winter, and I hate the copious amounts of homework the kids are forced to do, and I HATE the uber competitiveness between the parents.  I hate getting up every morning and forcing my kids to go.  AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON PACKING LUNCHES!!! I am the softy parent.  I'd like to wrap them in blankets until they wake up on their own teenager schedule (and then secretly resent them for not caring that they wasted the day away by sleeping until noon) and let them homeschool themselves on the web.  Hahaha.  They'd all live in my basement like roaches for eternity.

In some itty bitty way I do like the routine of school, but itty bitty is the key here.  I guess since I am too much of a marshmallow to force them into educating themselves, the public school system can go ahead and do it, but I wish there were a much better solution.  It isn't private school because lord knows they are full of people who are even more fanatical than the public school parents.  I just want a less stressful life for my kids.  I want them to really love learning and be successful, and also get to be their unique selves, and not get beaten down by the system.  

Also, if school starts this week then Back To School Night can not be far behind and wandering the school hallways with thousands of parents I don't know (because I never bothered to get to know them when I moved to new town knowing I was applying for grad school but not knowing that I'd be in a low residency program) dressed in their daughter's clothes, with too much makeup and high heels, tacky purses, and those awful overly loud long island accents, makes me weak just imagining it. It's the longest three hours of my entire fall and I am in deep psychic pain the entire time.  Interestingly enough, my own high school experience was completely benign.  I had a blast and didn't believe things like bullies and peer pressure really existed because I never saw any of it.  Damn, it is nice in my little bubble.  I hate being forced out. 

Since I should be spending the whole day packing up my stuff, preparing the house to be seen, cleaning and getting ready to transition back to the sucky world, I had a great 2 hour long hike with sweet pea this morning.  I brought my camera, and after breezing through the results quickly I am tickled.  I think I got a bunch of good shots - I'll have to comb through again with a fine tooth comb, but I am all smiles thinking about what I quickly peeked at while downloading them onto the computer. Some days everything just falls into place. Photographically, that is.   Today looks like one of those days.  Glad I could get one more under my belt.

I also spent a some time laughing my head off watching Jimmy Fallon video clips on youtube.  I watched some from his hashtag series, when he suggests a topic and people tweet about it.  I'll have to go back there the next time I need some giggles.

It's time, to shut down the computer and clean out this work station I set up for making my book this summer. I worked so freaking hard on that book!  And I did an awesome job.  I'm so proud of myself!

always planning

I hate these times when I want to be outside walking sweet pea but it looks like rain and I do not want to get caught in the rain.  It's pretty dark out there.  There is a small chance for rain around 3 this afternoon, and none right now according to my incredibly inaccurate weather app.  I call it inaccurate because it never really knows,  one day last week I heard thunder in the distance, checked the weather app, no chance of rain, we got torrential rains on and off for the next 90 minutes or so along with an impressive thunder and lightning storm and weather app was clueless.  Same thing on Friday when it predicted a rainy afternoon.  The skies cleared and it turned out to be a glorious sunny warm dry afternoon.  I don't even know why I look at it.  The temperature is usually in the ballpark.

My neighbors around here are all kind of bumming about stuff lately.  One couple sold their cabin because the wife has been having health issues.  The sentry's place is for sale, as is another friend's and a third is scheduled to go up for sale by the end of the summer.  The gruff guy on the hill always bitches about something town related.  And even worse hateful graffiti has been popping up around town.  Swastikas, white supremacist stuff, and also anti gay (I think, I don't even know what these idiots are talking about) stuff.  It totally bums me out! This sad little town is getting sadder and angrier every day.  Don't these people know that hatred is not the way out of the half century funk this place has been in?  Seriously! 

At the same time I am dealing with my own issues over here.  The husband's decline in health, the impending doom I am expecting as far as he goes.  I am planning how I am going to pick up the pieces for the kids and he won't even be real about how ill he has become.  So I am angry at him all of the time.  I hate being angry!!!  I am cycling through my own series of loss and grieving for utopia, I had such dreams of living happily ever after here!  It goes on the market next week.  I can't even ....  

I feel like I will be homeless.  As far as new town is concerned, it may as well be a hotel.  I feel nothing but frustration in that house.  It's like I am a square peg in a round hole in that house.  It's crazy how disjointed I feel there.  I guess I could always size down once Evan is out of the house, but the thought of moving again brings me to my knees.  At least if I have to give up utopia and Josh is happy in the public high school in new town I will have 4 years to simplify my life (aka: give away all the junk I do not need)  in preparation of moving out as soon as Josh graduates and goes off to college.

I feel like the whole world is an option once the kids leave the nest.  It depends on who wins the next presidential election.  Just kidding!  I probably couldn't even leave the northeast, even though I am totally over winter after last winter, and also my yearly slips on the ice.  There are predictions that this winter might be worse than last year!  Good lord, give me strength!!  I think about going south, but then I know I would end up talking with a southern accent, and that would be too strange. I think about going west, but that just feels like going farther and farther from "home" even though I am pretty sure that I could never move back to city.  In the past few years it has felt less and less like "home" every time I go in for a visit.  I can cross any place with serious earth quake potential off the list, which is unfortunate because I was willing to check out Seattle.  I'm concerned about droughts in the desert, so maybe not Arizona or New Mexico....  Mild weather appeals to me.  But not living underwater (florida) getting swallowed up by a sink hole (florida) or bitten by alligators (florida and some places north of florida).

The other thing I need to consider is what happens if I establish a career for myself.  I might want to move around for photography sake.  Maybe I can live in a big old mobile home for a while and travel around the states deciding where the best place to live might be!  That would actually be a completely hilarious situation.  Not sure I am good enough on my own for that lifestyle, but an option I might consider for the short term.  At least it is fun to sit around and fantasize about it.

 

Aug 22, 2015

Sweet pea found a bone in the woods today. First thing I thought: "I hope it's not human." Utopia (or at least the town utopia is in) is getting to be a somewhat scary place. Just like all over the states people are getting extreme. It makes me sad.

heh heh heh

Two summers ago I bought a 2,000 piece puzzle of the Sistine Chapel.  Remember?  I was kind of crazy with it.  Last summer I bought some other puzzles, which were disappointingly easy.  This summer I decided to go all puzzle-of-a-painting again because I suspected that the part where it was a painting is what made it a challenge.  Well, I have been challenged.

Not sure this level of frustration is what the doctor ordered right now.  Also, it is amazing how much less fun it is to put a puzzle together stone cold sober and with out my friend Kirk who tops the awesome charts because he totally understands my puzzle piece sorting methods and magically takes the exact same approach to painting-puzzles that I do.  Also, we high five when we discover trickier pieces.  I own my dorkiness and I am proud.

This new puzzle is so subtle I have to lurk under a photo lamp to see the shade changes and get a chance of placing the pieces.  I think the lamp might be giving me a tan. In the very least it is creating some serious heat.  Too bad it's not winter.

I think I am still coming down off of school insanity.  I went nap free for two days but then today I just had to snooze.  I took a short one.  My last remaining school friend called yesterday and reminded me that we had survived utter insanity.  I feel like comparing our sessions to either being locked up in an insane asylum or being taken prisoner by some kind of weird cult religious organization is not being extreme.  Anyone else notice that in this short paragraph I used some version of the work insane three times?  yup yup yup  It's so hard to describe the last two years and still sound like I have all my marbles.  Take my word for it. 

It's always kind of annoying on the weekends when the normally quiet and peaceful lake turns into a raging stadium of maniacal jet skiers and boat drivers with screaming families of wake boarders and grandchildren on tubes.  I think I'm going to put my bathing suit on and go swim in the shallow weedy water where there are not 3 foot wakes crashing into my head, but only because there are some really shallow rocky areas on that side and no one with a brain would dare to zip through and risk destroying their propellors.  Some brainless idiots do, but not too often.  Those of us who get to witness the joyous sound of metal on rock when some brainless boat owner takes a turn too wide really get our evil jollies off at those times.  I can't always be nice.  heh heh heh.

awake the entire day!

I didn't realize how utterly exhausted I was after (not) sleeping in the (dirty/creepy/hot) seminary on and off for two long weeks. Yesterday it only took me two naps to get through the day. Same deal on Tuesday, and I probably would have slept all day Monday too except I had to drive Matt to the airport and then one of my classmates was here until about three.  Strange right? Strange because he totally invited himself, along with his mom and girlfriend over.  I really liked his mom, he could have left her here and I would have totally bonded with her and become her forever friend.

Today I was determined to get back on a normal schedule and thanks to some shockingly strong french roast, I made through nap free.  The truth is that I kind of hate napping.  In my head napping means I am sick.  Also, I like being bone tired when I plop into bed at night.  Most nights I am out like a light.

I did go to see the utopian chiropractor twice this week.  You might recall that he is actually the best buddy from chiropractor school with my stepford chiro.  Small world, right?  He does not have the magic touch like the stepford chiro, however, occasionally there is some kind of something (usually shoulder related for some strange reason) that the stepford chiro can not resolve, that this utopian chiro attacks like a frenzied pitt bull (no kidding, I shed tears during his treatment) but then magically, my shoulder relents back to it's normal level of tolerable annoying pain (as opposed to the more recent elevated level of lameness, stiffness and pain) and I am good to go!  Woot woot! My mom had troubles with her right shoulder too.  She was always quick to point out that she had arthritis in that shoulder and I don't want to know if I have arthritis (I know I do have it, they told me after the MRI when I fell down the steps) because if I know I have arthritis then I will feel arthritis and I have other things to worry about.  (It must be parenthesis day.) So, let's pretend! 

Things to worry about: Like packing up things from utopia and bringing them back to the house I hate in new town.  It's a problem how much I hate that house!  It's an energy suck, and I have to stop.  Thinking that utopia would be my forever house I had been slowly bringing some of my more special-er bric-a-brac to utopia and now I have to pack it up and bring it back.  I don't even have a place to put it in new town because in stepford we had all these built in shelves and also book cases that the world's most miserable house buyers got us to leave for them because they matched the house so well.  I have such bad feelings about those house buyers. I so wanted to sell our house to lovely people that I could be happy were living in my house and not to miserable selfish people that are so strange that my neighbor friend's husband came home from an interaction with the buyer husband and suggested his wife never even speak to the buyer wife. 

Damn.

As soon as Josh is out of high school I am buying a house that I can be happy in.  I've got 4 more years of irritating house.  I think I am going to start spending more and more time in the basement.  I made it into a workspace and I have my printing press down there.  Now that I am done with school I want to revisit making solar plates out of my photos.  I miss that process! 

Here are two views of my corner of the gallery, which may have been referred to by some as "the hallway", but I prefer to think of it as "Fantasy Island."  If I could have hired Herve to stand there in a white suit you know I would have!  I had two triptychs and two black-and-white images on the wall.  As you can see, the two triptychs are on a long wall and the single black-and-white images are on narrow walls.

 

Oh, and incase you're wondering about the photographs, I totally stole them from a classmate who documented the show for us. 

I'll tell you what I'm gonna do ....

But even more importantly, I will tell you what I'm not gonna do, and that is I AM NOT GONNA COUNT UP.  Tempting as it is.  There are so many ways to keep track of a life. Parents will you that knowing if an event occurred pre-child or post child is a big indicator.  Once the children start arriving keeping track of events by knowing your child's age at the time is huge.  Josh was 6 months old on 9/11.  Not that I am trying to be a Debbie Downer here, but holding his sweet chubby little life filled body while standing in front of my family room television watching the horror unfold will be forever etched into my memory.  I'll probably be chatting about that say and the baby in my arms until I am in the nursing home and forget which planet I am on.  (Please let it be earth, space exploration is NOT my thing) 

The only pre- and post graduate school counting I plan on doing is racking up my success as a fine art photographer, which will all start happening now, as someone who lived to tell about it!  But I won't tell you how many days past graduation I am, that seems like a really weird thing do, as opposed to how great it felt to count down to graduation.  My next big effort is going to be two fold.  1. I am going to review all of my work from this past year and print up some work prints of the stronger work and 2. I am going to see if the NY editor can spend some time with me, helping me see if I do indeed have more than book completed or what I need to do to to polish off what I have already started.  (Even though there is a part of my brain wondering if I will ever be "finished")  I am currently thinking of the rest of my life as one super long nature project with some not nature stuff thrown in.

I didn't get to be alone in my house until yesterday afternoon and now I am just wiped out.  One of the boys from school came and spent the night with his mom and girlfriend.  Only knowing him from critiques, it was interesting to see him in another light.  I have to admit he was so sweet and charming to me, being helpful with cooking and clean up and also nice to his mom (scoring big points!) and girlfriend (score again!) that I feel like I know an entirely different person.  When we are in school we are so self absorbed because we are being forced to dig around in the depths of our own emotional septic tanks that it is easy to forget that there is a lot to us that has nothing to do with being an artist.  I should have invited everyone over with their families before school started just to understand them all better.

One young man's mother suggested I watch a Jennifer Lawrence movie because it would inform my work.  I think the movie she was thinking about was Winter's Bone.  I watched it today.  Wish I could tell the mom I took her advice.  She said it would inform my work.  Other than the pallette of the entire movie I have no idea what she was talking about.  I suspect it was more than that.  This is why sometimes I did feel like the most superficial student in the group.  My advisor must have picked up on this since he used the word superficial 6 times when commenting on my thesis.  except, the committee seemed to have love fest with me, so I will focus on that rather than some tough guy finding my tender spot and hammering on it.

In the end I will just keep plugging away and making more good work and hopefully find an audience for that work.  One of the visiting photographers in my age group said we all get dismissed around now and then become interesting again once we reach 70.  Good thing I never use use sunscreen and will not be dying the gray out of my hair!  I'm going to start saying things like "back in my day....." and when I was young in the dark ages ...."

 

It's actually the second

When I woke up this morning I thought for the first hour that it was my first day as a post graduate MFA student, but really it's the first day I woke up AT HOME as a post grad student.  Yesterday was pretty crazy.  After graduating Saturday evening, we woke up in the awful dirty incredibly HOT seminary and had to take our thesis exhibit off of the gallery walls.  Naturally, as this is my disposition and I was not rocking a severe hang over like some, I woke at the crack of dawn, sung my way through the shower and danced into my clothes, tossed my belongings in some bags and skipped down the hall to get back to my normal life as soon as possible.  But only one person was with me on that.  So my last remaining MFA friend and I went out to breakfast to hash over some of the finer points of graduation night then we took the quick drive to the university gallery, took down and wrapped our stuff, and eventually she took off for her family while I waited.  And waited and waited,  For 2 hours until the rest of the graduates began trickling in. The program manager told me she would be there by noon so I could leave (did I mention how I foolishly volunteered to be the key holder for the gallery thinking I was going to paint my wall and need off hours access to the gallery?  No one else was allowed to get the key or return the key to security) I spent a torturous hour from noon until one praying she would finally arrive, and then Matt who was supposed to fly back to his girlfriend in Indiana called to say he had fainted in the airport and the airline didn't want him to fly?!?!?!?!  Panic filled me. The EMTs told my baby his blood pressure and heart rate were low. I told him to get in an ambulance and go the hospital.  

And that is where my life as a prime example of Murphy's law may have taken a turn yesterday- The time it would have taken me from utopia to the hospital- 1 hour.  From the campus gallery- 10 minutes.

So, everything is fine and Matt will never take Dramamine in anticipation of a nauseating flight again, as it has the side effect of low pressure and fainting.  As soon as it wore off my baby was fine again and I got to bring him for the night, so that was great.  Also great that one of my classmates came over with  his mom and girlfriend and they are Russian so Matt got to shine with his crazy amazing Russian speaking skills.  The mom said Matt sounded like he was raised in Russia and maybe moved away so was just a tad rusty.  All I heard was native speaker! 

Before the excitement of yesterday happened I was going to post about actually wearing the tiara for graduation, its in all the pictures, and how glad I am that I did wear it.  A few people told me they thought it was fabulous and I actually bequeathed it to someone who will be graduating next year with the command to continually pass it on.  

The other thing I wanted to share is that yesterday while packing my seminary room I put my hand up to touch the necklace I had chosen to wear for the last session.  It was my mom's necklace, and with the memory of her sending me pennies to know I wasn't alone during that really stressful period this spring I figured maybe she would help me through the last session too.  I looked up at the sky and said out loud "I did it Mom!"  Then I walked down to the hall to toss my bed sheets into the wash bin and on my way back to my room what do I find but a brand new shiny penny on the hallway rug right outside my room.  This is taking coincidence to a whole new level.  I know I wasn't alone this session.