Another day at horse school

This week I painted a Lucitano, which is a breed recognizable by its cost of $100,000. I added a nice pastoral scene to the background, in the manner of ye olde horsey painters, only I've decided to make them natural disasters because they're more fun to draw.

I posted this thing on IG, walked away, came back later, and did a double-take at the hind legs. 

Did I…?

Yes, I crossed the hooves. Horse looks like it needs to use the toilet.

Quickly mangled the hoof backwards a bit. GOOD ENOUGH.

 

Hoofs, why are you even?

Still learning how horses work over here.

Also it turns out that having sympathetic feelings for someone who is suffering does not actually make you a better party planner. I am still not interested in planning a romantic date, so now I have until next weekend to figure out how to make this a high-five kind of event, instead.

 

Maura 2007-2023

 I make a point of not talking about my marriage, but I am going to here, for the sake of context.

Mike and I met as teenagers, had a son and got married at 22, and then divorced at 26 when I found out he had been hiding some pretty serious things. I moved to California to start over, and he followed. During the years leading up to the split I had fallen in love with someone else, but now that person was gone, too, and I felt like one of those burned out cars you see on the side of the highway.

We dated other people, but we still felt most comfortable just hanging around with each other. Eventually we reconciled, moved back to Hawaii, and had another son. We lived on Maui for 5 years, until he did it again and I threw him out. He moved to Oahu. I started seeing someone else, but that still wasn't what I wanted. I hung on to a small hope that the person I had loved might come back someday. Mike tried to make things right every time we saw each other for the kids. When I found out I was pregnant, I decided to leave Maui and move back to Oahu to be closer to my family. Mike came to help me pack up my life and leave in the night like a thief. I was very tired. We remarried before I gave birth, coincidentally on the same weekend we married the first time.

Now we're looking at the 20-year anniversary of our first marriage and the 10-year anniversary of our second marriage. He's been trying to think of something big to do to celebrate, but celebration is not on my mind. We have a solid friendship and good companionship, but I hold him at arm's length, romantically. I'm not interested in that kind of love anymore. Most of the time I feel like we're on the same team, and I can see going all the way to the end of the line. Sometimes I feel like we're working out a child-rearing contract, and that once the kids are all in college we'll be done, and can go our separate ways. There are days when I wonder what my life could have been if things had been different.

I was having one of those kind of days this week, after getting my feelings hurt about something minor. I spent the afternoon sitting at my desk and scrolling through houses in Maine, Alaska, Washington, Prince Edward Island. Mike texted me an apology, and I ignored it for a bit, browsing puppies at the animal shelter because he had put his foot down about getting a dog and I was feeling petty. 

When I got home that evening, Maura was laying in the middle of the floor, gasping. 

Maura is Mike's cat. Back in California in 2007, when he was alone and depressed in his new apartment, we found a tiny kitten under a dumpster. He loved her immediately. She tried to eat my face, gnawed the nipples off her baby bottles, and wanted to murder my cat, Po, but he thought she was perfect. She helped him through a tough time. When we moved back to Hawaii she had to spend months in quarantine, and he made sure either he or my mother was visiting with her almost daily. She had adventures for 5 years on Maui, catching rats and chasing mongooses, before he packed her up and took her to Oahu. In our new house, she claimed one of the lawn chairs and spent her days laying in the yard, slapping anyone who wasn't Mike. When cancer claimed her tail, she exceeded everyone's expectations by living another 3 years, becoming an indoor cat and sitting on Mike's lap while he worked from home during the pandemic. 

This week she stopped eating. The cancer had finally spread to her lungs. I had been gently encouraging Mike to think about plans to help her pass on, but he couldn't do it. He would lay on the floor for hours, coaxing her to eat bits of food, but she was wasting away. Finally, when I saw her struggling to breathe, I took the driver's seat. When Mike got home I told him it was time, and he let me sit him down, lay her on his lap, and put a glass of scotch in his hand while I called the vet. I felt like a monster, having the kids kiss her goodbye and leaving them crying while I guided him out to the car with her. I drove, and he cried, holding her. It took a long time for him to walk from the car to the front door of the clinic. Inside, we took our time saying goodbye, and the act itself was very gentle. I hugged him while it happened. Afterwards I sat on the vet's couch, blowing my nose into a tissue and watching him cry very hard over her body. Even his toes were clenched, the knuckles white. I do love him. I was sorry for thinking about what my life could have been, and for being annoyed about something stupid. I was sorry for making him say goodbye to his cat, who has loved him and only him for the past 15 years. I will try harder to help celebrate our anniversaries, because they do matter. 

 

I'm so sorry, Maura, you were our best angry girl, and your life was important.

He lives!

The doctors were dragging their feet, suggesting it might be “unethical” to perform surgery on an old man with aneurysms that might burst, and that it might be better to just let him remain broken and bedridden for the rest of his life. 

Luckily, we have a PhD nurse and a surgeon in the family.  Aunt Chrissie flew to Phoenix, Janey Sue called in, and those two bad bitches consulted the hell out of those doctors, successfully getting him into surgery.

Which he survived! His heart was solid as a rock, and he’s been making jokes about the quacks putting him back together with duck tape. Looks like he’ll be walking again soon. 

Dead impressed by the level of competency and advocacy those two provided. 

Meanwhile, I’m over here drawing horsies. Clerp clerp.

Sorry, Donkey Town, you’ll have to wait a while longer. Braffets are hard to kill.

(Knock on wood)

Sinking horse

Hey, guess what?

 

I did not gesso this guy correctly, and there are sunken spots where the oil is absorbing into the paper. 

Dead zone right smack in the middle of the torso

For the purposes of horse school, I have been looking up reference photos to paint from on fancy horse-sales websites (art studies in sketchbooks are fair use). And then browsing less fancy horse-sales websites. And then learning about free horses rescued from dog food factories. And then shopping for properties with stables in upstate New York and making hypothetical plans to start a horse rehab farm and become James Herriot. 

This is to distract from my grandfather's surgery today, and the high likelihood of flying out to Arizona if things go badly. Having some kind of feelings about it all.

Another horse

It’s been four hours and I’ve painted another horse. And sketched a third one to paint tomorrow. Oh no. 

I was a horse girl as a child in Arizona, and all my old brain synapses are suddenly lighting up like firecrackers. It’s a weird (and good) feeling. 

Here’s a song I’ve been painting to.

Btw, my phone won’t let me post comments on my own posts, so re: the comment about donkeys - I laughed, because I had JUST been thinking about my trip to donkey town and wondering where I stored those pictures. There is a somber possibility that I may get another chance to visit with the mayor of Oatman soon, because my grandfather took a tumble and is in the hospital. Here’s hoping he makes it through surgery this week, and the donkeys will have to wait another year. 

Getting weird about horses

I was going through pictures of Zenny’s horseback riding lesson and started thinking about the whole horse community up here on the North Shore. People pay $20,000 a year to be in the polo club. It costs $10,000 as a down payment to get married at the stables. $180,000 to breed your horse with a hot stud. Funerals for horses cost more than some people pay to bury their grandparents. Maybe these kinds of people will also want oil paintings of their horses?

Can I even paint horses? Horses are harder to draw than hands.

I started filling up my Pinterest board with 19th century paintings of horses, and drawing horses in my sketchbook, and ordering library books about fancy horse breeds. 

Maybe?

Get looser. Go bigger. More paint. Better underdrawings.

Doing lots of horse homework over here.

A trip to the tattoo shop

Zenny announced last week that she wanted to get her ears pierced. "I'm turning 10, and I've already had surgery and blood draws and IVs, so I should be able to handle getting my ears pierced, no problem." Okay, then.

We decided to get the job done by piercing professionals, rather than a teenager with a plastic piercing gun at the mall, and called around the local tattoo shops until we found one who was willing to poke holes in a 9 year-old. Tattoo shops respect bodily autonomy, and won't put their hands on a crying little kid being dragged in by their parents, which is a stance I appreciate. The young man at Aloha Tattoo was very kind and gentle with her, made sure she was making the decision for herself, and led us through the shop to a little room overlooking the river. He breathed with her three times, she squeezed my hand, he pushed the needle through with the earring loaded in the end of it, and it was over in a second. She didn't make a peep, there was hardly any blood, and her ears stopped aching after an hour or two, with no redness or swelling. 100% better experience than mall piercings (which is how all of mine were done), and worth every extra dollar. The girl is so proud, and they are so cute.

As we drove home, she said, "And now the next time a soldier goes in for a tattoo and makes a fuss, he can say, I just had a 9 year-old in here who was braver than you!"

Right on, kid.

Goat content

I am sitting in my car outside the locked high school gates at night, wearing polar bear jim-jams and waiting for my kid to finish robotics while I listen to pop music from the 90s, trying to calculate how much of my public education was replaced by lyrics to songs I haven’t heard in 25 years. So far: I can’t remember any of the state capitals, but I know the words to “Here Comes the Hotstepper”. Thanks for that, years in the swim team van. The cops have cruised by twice to decide if I’m a prowler, and turned around when they heard what is happening in my car.

Here are some pictures from the North Shore Stables this weekend:

resolve

Tested for lead. Scraped up flaking old paint. Hooked up the palm sander. Sanded the house for hours, until my entire body was buzzing and my arms could barely move. It looks like an abandoned shack, but we are one step closer to painting this thing. 

not done sanding yet; all those mismatched horizontal boards at the bottom are getting replaced, and the cupboard will get some knobs. Larry the Mason was big on installing cupboards everywhere.

everything around the window is getting replaced, door refinished, and gutters installed

 

Progress:

 

 

Excited to have a house that does not look like it has been attacked by a bear.

While that was all happening, the gallery show ended, and I didn't sell a thing this time. We drove down to Honolulu to pick up the paintings, and then walked a couple blocks through Chinatown to the Pig and the Lady for lunch. My friend Philip loved this place, and I've been meaning to try it ever since he died. Even at lunch on a Tuesday it was packed, every table reserved, and we had to sit in a corner of the bar next to a happy wooden pig.

It was amazing. The best thing I have eaten since that stupid delicious $20 potato. The brisket was wow. The bread was whoa. We will be back to try the dinner menu someday soon. 

 

Thank you, Philip.

And there is contemplation happening. A trip to Scotland. A tattoo, maybe. Zenny is thinking she wants her ears pieced. Gavin is deciding which tech company to intern with next semester, with the understanding that wherever he interns might be where he lives after graduation, and he's narrowed it down to Washington or Oregon, which will make it a lot easier to visit him. Leif is about to start the build season with his robotics team, which means travel for competitions. We're ready for big (non-surgical) things this year, let's do it.

NYE 2022

I have still not figured out how to enjoy New Year’s Eve. My plans are always “hunker down and endure”. We made a nice dinner, watched a movie, soaked our feet in Korean exfoliating slime booties, and when we couldn’t hear anything over the noise we went outside to watch the aerials and hope the chickens didn’t drop dead of heart attacks out of the tree. One of the fireworks blew up too low and an arm of sparkling red fire shot through the yard and almost got Zenny, who had decided that fireworks were not safe and turned to run back onto the porch just in time. It grazed past her butt and hit the house in a shower of sparkles. I kept standing like a goose wrapped in a couch blanket in the middle of the yard, resigned to whatever was happening. Maybe I would find joy. Maybe I would receive a merciful death. Result: neither, because that is adulthood for you. 

Fun fact: fireworks are illegal in Hawaii. I don’t actually have a problem with all the aerials, I have a problem with drunk people banging them off at random intervals every night for 4 months leading up to New Year

Directly over the chickens, sorry girls

Neighbors testing the flammability of all our roofs

But that’s done now. The neighbors finally turned their music off and went to sleep at 8am. I think maybe today might be a good day to learn to play the bagpipes.