Christmas 2017

This was the year of the Most Triumphant Roast. It was also the year of the barf bucket.


Christmas Eve

By 5am, Zenny was hurling into a mixing bowl for the 8th time in as many hours, and I decided this was a perfect morning to take up coffee again. I usually tipple from the office coffee pot and just stick to tea on the weekends, so I had to hunt around to find the coffee maker. I finally found it outside. The man had, some months earlier, decided that the best way to get the roaches out of my coffee pot was to put it on the patio and hope that they would go away. Instead of going away, they had hung up photos and arranged furniture and invited the family to stay. The roaches stopped mid-conversation and stared up at me when I opened the lid to peek in, so I carefully closed it back up, put it back on the porch, and opted for pour-over coffee, instead. Pour-over coffee is more fashionable, anyway, I told myself. Maybe for people who are not standing in barf pajamas and using a folded-up paper towel as a filter, myself replied.

The reports coming from my aunt and mother's households were the same. But plague or no, the feast was happening. Leif and I watched Little Women; the roasts roasting and veggies glazing and Yorkshire pudding puffing. In the afternoon, family arrived, drinks were distributed, and music played. When the food finally went out to the table I surprised myself by absolutely nailing it. There is no way to humble-brag around this one. I cooked like I was hosting a BBC holiday special. Paul Fecking Hollywood himself would have shaken my hand and stuffed lamb in his pockets for later, I am sure of it.

Zenny slept through it all. Oh, well.


Christmas Day

With the excitement and illness of the previous day, I was pretty sure we might get to sleep in until nearly dawn for a change, but at the stroke of 5am, Gavin popped his head in and yelled everyone awake. Leif vaulted off the bunk bed and Zenny climbed over my face with her barf bucket. I made my way back to the coffee dripper.

The toy of the year was the BB-8. The runner-up was the drone I panic-purchased three days earlier  when I realized I had accidentally given Gavin all his presents on his birthday. I am not a fan of drones, but that was what was left in the store, and I knew for sure nobody else had gotten him one because I had grinchily stomped my foot down on the notion. I shouldn't have worried; he immediately got it stuck up a tree. And then himself up the tree, after it. I took pictures, helpfully. Leif, meanwhile, was busy with the pile of rocks I gave him to bash with a hammer. A bag of geodes is the way to go with Viking-minded children.

Christmas morning: kids, cat, and barf bucket

For my part, I told the kids I wanted "things I can paint pictures of", so they bought me a necklace that will probably drive me to madness and blindness. I will give it my best effort. Look at this thing, it is amazing.

sperkle sperkle

In the afternoon we followed my mother back to her house, and I tried to empty out her Guinness drawer while putting together the Christmas meat pie. This year we cheated and used puff pastry for the crust, and YOU GUYS. This is the only civilized way to make a meat pie. Do this immediately.

When the sun went down and the lights came on, we set fire to the figgy pudding. This year Leif surprised us all by scarfing an entire booze-soaked piece of it instead of discreetly spitting it into a napkin like all the other kids. This is the child I will train up to assume the mantle of pie-and-puddingness in my old age. He can fight me for the last Guinness and I'll hit him with my cane, it will be very hygge.

It was a really good year, even in all its barfingness.

PICTURES. Conserving space with collages this year.

Z sleeping through every meal

My mother outdid us all with that perfect dress (bottom-middle: cuddles with baby bird)

me and husbandface

Children holidaying

And the sun comes up for another year

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Ce n'est pas un post

(I can't upload photos to Ravelry threads because I am too cheap to pay for the privileges, and I am documenting/complaining about a VERY IMPORTANT sock feud, so I need the url to link to.)

Arguing about socks is the new holiday tradition.

That's an S, not a C. 

Unrelated to socks

I have started a new painting on grey gessoboard. A long way to go on this thing, but it feels great to get it started.

AHA, the 38 pictures

I am so visibly uncomfortable in all these pictures, haha. Next time I'll use auto-timer and props. I put a full suit of armor on my Christmas wishlist, but people don't believe I'll wear it. THEY ARE WRONG.

The annual questionnaire - too many gifs edition

It is that time again! Time to answer the questions that nobody is asking. Early as usual - inviting disaster. 

1. What did you do in 2017 that you’d never done before? I painted. I became consumed by painting. I buried myself in painting books and websites and articles and history and materials and demos, and I'm not coming back.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions? This year's theme was "whatever it takes". I started shaking my fists about this being the year I would finally learn to oil paint, and ended up remodeling half the basement and my ENTIRE LIFE in pursuit of this endeavor. The world has changed its shape and color - I notice light, chroma, the drape of fabric and the brush-flicks of embroidery or bead-work. I see the arcs of movement in people's arms and hair while they talk, I am struck by moments of symmetry and arching eyebrows. Time has changed - the hours are marked by how far they are from my next underdrawing, the weeks rotate around my Mondays painting in the studio. I'm feeling things again. I hope I never get used to it.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?  One of my old friend-couples went analog and had a baby while nobody was looking. Had to find out when an in-law tagged them in a photo, so THEY DON'T COUNT. 

4. Did anyone close to you die? My cousin's rabbit died. She's in our yard now. Also I accidentally murdered a dove, and I still feel really bad about it. And I tried to save a cat that had been hit by a car, but he was too badly injured (I want to thank again the friends and anonymous persons who helped pay his final expenses, it meant a lot). This is a really bad question to have on a fluffy quiz.

5. What places did you visit? I went to Whidbey Island for painting and rabbit-chasing, and Maui for serendipity and Sarah-chasing. Also I guess I should count the trip to Hana, but I don't want to.

6. What would you like to have in 2018 that you lacked in 2017?  A respectable garden fence that doesn't make us look like we've got a shitty grow operation in the basement. Also I want studio lighting that is so bright it makes us look like we've got a shitty grow operation going on in the basement.

7. What dates from 2017 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Running behind Sarah down an alley in Paia. Walking in the Langley rain at night with the Zanzinger painting. Holding Paul's head after he was run over by a car. I spent a month solo-parenting, weeks solo-traveling, days solo-painting. This year has been a bit of an awakening.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Besides the painting (shut up about the painting), over the summer I got a job doing character design for a film company in New Zealand that pays real money and might end up on Netflix. And I illustrated another book, which was released in November. This was a good year, career-goals-wise.

9. What was your biggest failure? *elephant of marital neglect glowers at me over laptop* I am going to go with the bird murder. And letting my chickens eat radioactive paint.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Knowing it was stupid to lift weights without anyone at home to pull the barbell off my neck when I got stuck, I thought I would be very sneaky and just lift them a little bit, and nobody would be the wiser. And it would have worked, if I hadn't gotten up, turned around, tripped on a dumbbell, and clocked myself right in the face with the end of the barbell. Almost knocked myself out cold. Told everyone I was growing a horn to explain the huge goose egg in the middle of my forehead. 

11. What was the best thing you bought? Plane tickets! I flew away and came back a more grounded person. GET IT. GROUNDED.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? My mother lost 30lbs and caused us all to jump into our exercise pants and scramble to keep up with her. 

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Mine, always, because I am the common denominator. If my kid is being a brat, that is my parenting. If my spouse drops the ball, I'm the one who tossed it. If my pets are peeing on the bed, I am the one not making them into fur hats. Once the problem is yours, you can work on it or shrug it off. 

14. Where did most of your money go?  I'm going to willfully overlook bills & preschool tuition and go with PAINT. Surprise.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Not saying paint. (It was paint.)

16. What song will always remind you of 2017? 

For driving/walking:

For painting/drawing:

The most lovely song sung by a possibly drunk guy who doesn't understand English that I have ever heard

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder?  Holy shit, I am a blazing pillar of purpose and inspiration and general goodwill toward mankind, it is really weird.
b) thinner or fatter?  Very slightly more buff.
c) richer or poorer? Kind of richer, allowing for a bit of travel. Turns out working 2 jobs means more money, who knew? 

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Lifting weights. I want big punching arms. Mostly because I'm my only womanly-type art model and my skin is a bit baggy, so I figured I could fill it out with muuuuscles. If that doesn't work, I'll just haul it up off the top of my head and tie it with a ribbon.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Waiting. Waiting for Mondays, waiting for the truth after a confrontation when I already know it, waiting for an email I don't need. Just get on with things, self. Getting the hang of this.

20. What is the general state of your heart this year? I think I have turned a corner, to which I attribute - YEP, PAINTING. Nobody likes to read about feelings or dreams, so I will use dreams about feelings as a way to illustrate this thing: 10 years ago, I had recurring nightmares about pounding on a window and crying out without anyone being able to hear me, watching them walk away. A few years later, the dreams would be about wandering into a place I didn't recognize, realizing suddenly that I was inside someone else's house, and running into the person who lived there - who of course thought I was stalking them and told me to fuck off. Over time, the recurrences became infrequent and passive; just spotting someone from a distance and waving across a field or schoolyard, feeling glad or nervous. A few weeks ago, I dreamed a flood rose up in front of me and I couldn't get home. Someone walked up beside me, looked out at the storm and realized they were stuck, too, so we just sat and waited next to each other, not talking, not feeling anxious. This is good, right? I am finding my chill.

Day to day, I am working on things by not working on them - just carrying on doing art and planning travel and trusting that my love life will sort itself out eventually. Or never, and that's ok, too.

21. What was your favorite TV program? The first half of this season's Outlander kicked my guts out. So much for my chill.

However, the second half of season 3 needs to go sit in the corner and think about what it did wrong.

Runners up: the Expanse, Handmaid's Tale, Stranger Things 2, and American Gods.

22. What was the best book you read? I have been sucked into the Expanse series by James S. A. Corey. Also re-read the Handmaid's Tale and went hollow-eyed. Have been reading Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman and loving that quite a bit, too.

23. What did you want and get?  A fancy $60 ergonomic palette that I am too scared to paint on!

24. What did you want and NOT get? A historical reenactment ball gown to paint an unnecessary portrait of myself in. Might have to pull out the sewing machine and figure out how to bone a bodice (leave it).

GIVE IT TO ME

       24 B. What did you NOT want and get? Cockroaches that ate the wiring out of my instant pot like monsters living inside the inner hull of a space ship.

26. What was your favorite film of this year? THOOOOR. When the Immigrant Song started playing, I screamed. 

Also, I was a bit late to the game with What We Do In Shadows, and it is fantastic. 


27. Did you make some new friends this year? Adam Rex followed me on the twitters. 

So, no. No, I didn't. 

28. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Those friends I didn't make. Day-to-day friends that you can go out and have coffee with. I tightened my perimeter and avoided making connections after I burned out and moved back to Oahu 5 years ago, but I think I'm just about ready. "Don't worry about making friends," Sarah said. "Do what you do, and fucking shine, and like-minded people will see you." I like that, as a life philosophy. So that's the way I'm going to go, and if nobody shows up, that's ok, because I'll still be busy doing things.

29. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2017? Lady who sat on her palette.

30. What kept you sane? You'll never guess.

31. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Gael Garcia Bernal is really funny and sweet, and Taika Waititi is probably the very best human, but I guess I have a thing for hangdog sarcastic assholes, because Miller from the Expanse made me clutch my hands to my chin in adoration.

Yes.

More yes.

MOST YES.

32. What political issue stirred you the most?  Here is how I do politics, as a librarian: I scroll through the artists and authors on my twitter feed, and if everyone seems upset about something, I open up press reader. Press reader shows the physical print versions of newspapers from around the world, and I spread the big ones out on my screen, scan the headlines, consider the political slants from paper to paper and pluck out the common kernel of information, and then go find the primary source; an uncut video of the speech, the official transcript of the interview, the verified legal document, etc. I don't read opinion articles or engage in internet threads. So while I do get annoyed, disgusted, exasperated, or incredulous about various issues, I don't tend to get ragey or terrified. The issues I pay most attention to are nuclear tensions, intellectual freedom, Native Americans/National Parks, and policies or events that impact my patrons/schools/libraries. I am SUPER BORING - kind of deliberately. But I think I've got a firm and educated grasp on things. (Rule #1: don't believe everything you think.)

33. Who did you miss? Oh, this question. 

34. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2017. Chickens have the radioactive cockroaches beat, post-apocalyptic-survival-wise, because they will just fucking EAT THEM.

still life with poisoned chickens

There was toast in my still life. Buttered toast. And yet my chickens broke into the studio while I was eating lunch, walked right past the toast, and chose instead to eat all the paint off my palette. Particularly worrisome: a big blob of titanium white, which I am pretty sure is not their natural prey. Also there were some smears of cadmium on there, and that shit is radioactive. I chased them out of the studio and called the vet, wanting to know if I should pump their stomachs or feed them bread or stuff them with charcoal or what. The vet assistant laughed at me and asked for pictures. Very helpful. In the end (after looking at the pictures, because of course I sent them pictures), the vet said they'd probably have to eat way more paint if they wanted to do themselves in properly. She's either saying my chickens are low achievers, or she's impressed by their garbage-digesting skills. Both, probably. They didn't fall out of the tree, dead, so I guess titanium really is their natural prey after all. I am withholding their pancakes and cookies until they apologize.

So my last hour of painting was consumed by veterinary freak-outs, and as a result my toast looks a little lower-contrast than I'd like, but I can fix that later. Along with the wonky rim. Round things are hard. But I like the tea bag.

Tea and toast, 6x6, oil on board

Detail:

Jaywalking and UFOs - a trip to Maui

For nearly 10 years, sarahapple and I have been talking through comments and emails - plunging along with each other through library adventure, mishaps, wild coincidences, artistic endeavors, child-raising, and medical emergencies. Finally, this week, we found ourselves running with arms flung out and hair flying into our faces, colliding into a hug on an airport curb in Kahului.

I am going to keep most of this trip in my pocket just for myself. We packed 10 years of words and stories into three days, it was so good.

But we went out and found adventure, too. The good kind, not the kind with flat tires and emergency rooms. For three days, we ate and laughed and sat on beaches and drank way too much kombucha. I chased Sarah down an alleyway to a tattoo shop, and walked with her around a massive prayer bell, and ran away from a strangely deserted temple-spa with COLON CLEANSING painted on the wall.

While sucking on green smoothies in Haiku, we watched a wiry old shirtless man in two pairs of pants stretch his loins on a hitching post and then suddenly begin bending himself into impossible, beautiful poses. We went phwoar loud enough that the smoothie lady looked over and said, "Oh, yeah, he was a ballet teacher before the car accident." He hopped on a little scooter-bicycle thing and went whizzing away with his feet up off the ground. "WHERE DID YOU GET THAT, DID YOU STEAL IT?" a man yelled after him. "I ordered it on AMAZON, MOTHERFUCKER," the ballet man called back cheerfully. He was amazing.

Wait no

And everywhere - coincidences. The tattoo guy told us about an artist he liked who drew alien abduction scenes into practically every tattoo he made. Skull and roses? Beam that shit up in an abduction. Mermaid? Put her on a UFO. Snakes and knives? Stab them into an alien. For the next two days, we ran into alien abduction scenes everywhere. In our instagram feeds. On facebook. On shirts in the stores. On the radio. At night, the airbnb hosts lit up their Christmas lasers and spangled my bedroom with green stars. After this week, there will be no way to ever settle on a tattoo without the subject getting sucked up into a tractor beam. It will all be celestial chickens and celtic-knotted UFOs, folks.

SARAH, YOUR PANTS!

We drove up to 'Iao Valley, where I was almost swept away by a flash flood when I was 16, and  snuck over the railing to climb down to the river. "This is your corrective experience!" Sarah said, paddling her feet in the water. "Rewrite those brain connections!"  

I let her rewrite the connections for me, mostly, but it worked anyway

And we exchanged cultural conventions. Sarah learned how to pronounce "humuhumunukunukuapua'a," and I learned how to pronounce "toque". Sarah learned that Americans use crosswalks, and I learned that Canadians just charge out into traffic. "THIS IS HOW WE DO IT IN ONTARIO," she yelled as I chased her, meeping like Beaker. Eventually I got into the spirit of the thing, and forevermore I will be howling "ONTARIOOOO" as I dash out in front of cars. Put it on my headstone.

Also we raided Target and bought matching shirts, which is almost the same thing as tattoos

Too soon, we flew away to our own corners of the world. I watched the islands pass by underneath the plane, listening to David Bowie sing about space travel.

For heeeere am I sitting in a tin can

Diamondhead waved hello. 

I'm getting the hang of making gifs, I think

Checked the news and learned that California had burned down. Got to work and found out that one of our storytime moms was horrifically murdered. Fucking hell.

Life is brutal in its speed and violence. It is shocking in its beauty and serendipity. We can just be the thing that we are with all we've got, and see other people for the things that they are, and try to be the shining thing instead of the sucking black hole.

VICTORY - and immediate defeat

(warning: language)

Someone had been dumping coffee in the book drop. Our suspicions pointed to the homeless lady who slept in the bushes outside the library. She used to come inside and cruise online dating sites for distinguished older gentlemen with "yachts and food", but had eventually tipped over the ledge and fallen into the valley of the paranoid, standing just outside the library and screaming through the doors about everyone being RUDE FUCKING CUNTS. Then she'd run for it. This went on for a while, with the ranting and the vandalism, but she was very deft at avoiding a formal trespass. The rules for issuing a formal trespass are these:

1. The person needs to be on the property
2. A police officer needs to be present

So of course, the moment you phone the police, they hoof it out of there.

Then last week, the lady got into an argument with an invisible guy named Paul (who was a "disgrace to the white race"), and came into the library to scream about what an asshole he was, adding, "YOU LOCALS ARE ALL FILTH AND N---ERS". I told her to get out*. She screamed a bit more, ran outside, and said if Paul came near her she'd "FUCKING KILL A N---ER KID." I already had the police on the phone. Again. And again, she squirreled off the property before we could catch her. And then she dumped more coffee into the book drop during the night.

Reports filed. Calls made. Weary officers enduring her screaming at them from just off the property. And then yesterday, FINALLY, she sat down to eat in the rear driveway, probably feeling pretty sure we wouldn't catch her hanging out back there. And maybe we wouldn't have, but she got into an argument with Invisible Paul and started screaming her head off again. We peeked outside at the noise and realized - ah ha! - this was our opportunity. My boss was at a meeting and I was in charge, so I went hoppity-skip to the phone and got the paperwork ready. As I was waiting out front for the police to arrive, my co-worker came running out to tell me that the officer had pulled in behind the library and was making the lady leave. NOOOO. We needed to give her the official trespass notice to legally ban her! I went sprinting around the building and flapped up to the cruiser just before the lady got her bags off the property, and Officer Quick Action whipped the paper out of my hand and served them up to her before she could step off the grounds. HA. And then I remembered that I was not supposed to be running and flapping up to people with service weapons, after that time Officer Angel pulled his gun on me when I came bounding up to greet him from behind a tinted window. He had to have a good hyperventilation between his knees before shaking off the adrenaline by doing a pantomime of me as a charging gorilla. Let us agree not to tell him that I did it again.

So I was feeling pretty pleased with myself for this very minor and probably soon-to-backfire act of sort-of-crime-solving. I am such an effective administrator! I am TOP LIBRARIAN! She's probably going to throw poop in the book drop tonight, I thought, flexing in the media cupboard mirror.

The thrill of victory lasted about 45 minutes. As we were shooing the last patrons out at the end of the day and trotting to the gates to lock up, my student helper came wheeling around the corner, cringing. "I just saw porn on that lady's phone - the one who stays in the back aisle all day. I think she's taking pictures of her... you know. In the library." Oh, ffs.

And then my phone dinged with an alert from the high school. "Caucasian male in his mid-30s with a handlebar mustache and a tear-drop tattoo has been approaching young females around the high school, be on the alert." When we pulled up his photo, everyone recognized him as a local creeper. You know where local creepers go when they have to pee or use the internet? YEP - the library.

So now I am on the prowl for someone taking crotch shots, and watching out for a child-snatching creep with a bad mustache.

That is called job security, folks.



*'told' being a word which here means 'communicated with a force and volume which could be heard over a person cussing at the top of their lungs'