Comely, for someone from Überwald

June 30, 2014tempestpilot

Have been experiencing some sort of health thing which has resulted in a minor range of inconvenient issues, the most recent of which appears to be a corporeal manifestation of my imaginary beard.

“I have a beard,” I said last night.

“No, you don’t. You look fine.”

“I am not complaining so that you can tell me I’m cute, I am just making note of it. My peach fuzz seems fuller and more luxuriant, in a beardy-type shape.”

“Oh. Well, that’s no good.”

“And my lip is still puffy.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“The Internet says it’s harmless and temporary. So it’s probably a tumor.”

“Probably.”

“They’ll have to remove my lips.”

“Well, at least you’ll still have your beard.”

Well, that’s nice.

gestures

June 23, 2014tempestpilot

Kids are napping – draw naked people!

I have started running

June 17, 2014tempestpilot

Which is to say, I have started walking up to the tiny park, running in erratic circles, stopping to watch the rain drag in curtains over the mountains, and then going to hang off playground equipment and pretend it is exercise. I go out at the evening dog-walking hour, and have noticed that all the walkers do quick turn-abouts or trot across the street to avoid nodding hello. I am probably very intimidating. Or I look like something their dog might lunge at, like a woman with a biscuit for a face.

Am thinking about getting a fitbit. First I will find out what one is, and then I will add it to my trotting-in-circleness. Am determined to break this damn plateau, ever since I discovered a line of bruises down the side of my leg where the seam of my jeans had squeezed my thigh too tightly while I was crouching by the shelves at work. This seriously displeased me. If they’re going to try that shit, I am going to be so burly that my thighs burst out of the pants completely, shuddering with muscle in slow-motion.

It’s a plan in action.

june in the backyard

June 16, 2014tempestpilot

OMG YOU BETTER NOT POST THAT

Red the Second, offspring of beggar cardinals who have been coming for free nuts for the past 12 years.

I tried pruning back all the bushes and trees growing out back, but I have no damn idea what to do with the aloe, which is trying to grow legs and take over the patio.

I also took pictures of beeeeeer, which the man has up here (click the first beer picture to see the post about the Belgian Blonde).

If it’s not Baroque

June 14, 2014tempestpilot

Leafing through a book about the Louvre, I discovered evidence that Simon Vouet started the Drunk Baby meme in 1640.

Ok, I am very bad at memes.

So lazy. Much hot.

June 3, 2014tempestpilot

I spent all week with my knees bouncing around, anticipating a day off to visit the art store and buy half pans for my new paint set (because John Muir Laws subscribes to CMYK color theory, which I am down with as a failed animator), but then Monday came, and the kids were off for summer break, and we were like, meeeeeh. Beach.

I swim by proxy nowadays.

Bought a new swimsuit, and swore I would get it wet this time, but once again I really needed to be more specific, because hereabouts babies don’t wear swimsuits, and I got peed on.

So now it’s back to work, and without a magical palette, because I couldn’t be arsed. It’s just as well; if I have a bunch of paints and charcoals and fancy papers I will go into paralysis and do nothing, but if I just have a pen and a postcard I will probably make something. I read an article recently about brain connections and the growth of intelligence, and it all had to do with deciding to give a damn and then practicing your whatever-it-is daily, so I’ve been trying to do this and trick myself into growing a massive brain. At lunch, though, I couldn’t muster the give-a-damns to draw any of the objects on my desk, so I took my sandwich outside and looked for inspiration. I found a flat dried-up toad, a dirty marble, some garbage, and a mysterious trap door to the underworld.

When I pried up one of the boards, the hole went down into darkness, and a giant shiny black lizard looked up at me from atop a snail the size of a football. I don’t know why I took a picture of the boards instead of the giant mystical lizard and snail. Instead, I apologized to them and put the board back down.

Still empty-handed, I tried to look for a flower to pick, but the only things growing in the dirt lot around the mysterious trap door were a bunch of bougainvillaea bushes, and I have an irrational prejudice against bougainvillea. They’re basically just colored leaves pretending to be flowers, with face-stabbing thorns and no fragrance except for your own blood.

Just look at these ugly flowers.

I picked one anyway, and then tried to draw it, but it came out looking like a carved ham. I ripped it out and wadded it up – except watercolor paper is really hard to wad, so I just folded it sternly – and threw it away.

RAWR. BOUGAINVILLEA.

Why did I not just do a lizard on a snail? Or dead leaves?

I need a nap.

Flaaaames

June 3, 2014tempestpilot

Ha!

plants, shoes, and mermaids

June 12, 2014tempestpilot

The largest child went off to the mainland with his grandmother for a month, from coast to coast. My happiness for him was tinged with mild jealousy until the Northwest lit up with wild fires and shootings, so now I am eating my kale salad and shuttening up on the matter. Have accepted that I will not be vacationing this summer, and have taken up other pursuits:

Decided to do some gardening, in the smallest and laziest way possible; got some soil and let the kids poke seeds into a pot. Then the cat used the pot as a litter box. And then the garbage men chucked a bin lid into the pot. Am a terrible gardener. But I will win in this matter, because I need to be smarter than dirt and cat poo.

It wasn’t a new pot. I took an old one off the porch, yanked the dirt and roots and weeds out, and lobbed the clump over the fence into the woods. That is gardening, I think.

Bought new shoes, which took 3 weeks to arrive in the mail. This is probably because the distributors knew they felt like wooden clogs and that the tread actually made them moreslippery, and they calculated (correctly) that I would be too discouraged by the waiting time to return them. Have wadded my feet into the shoes and can feel tiny bones crackling when I walk. But they’re cute, damn it.

My Tardis shoes are smaller on the inside.

The man’s cousin moved here last week with his family, and they met us at the library. I ran up to the cousin, hugged him hello for the first time in 7 years, and then made him carry a mermaid who had forgotten her wheelchair.

MERMAID.

I have often told the man that I only love him for his arms. On weekends, that is practically his name, as I struggle to reach/lift things: “ARMS!” And now there are twice as many of those things! POWER OF THE SEEEECRET.

Coming soon: fun with power washers/ER visits.

Salad portraiture

June 1, 2014tempestpilot

My family wouldn’t let me paint flames in the background because I would ruin it (WHAT). So I just named it General Kale, instead.

These people do not understand the profundity of my art. Just because it’s a salad leaf.

I got tired of waiting for my watercolor set, so I used acrylics, and it was just fine. Probably wasted money on the watercolors, but I HAD to. It was such a deal.