heed your own warnings

Okay, I admit it - I did not talk to my doctor, I just threw the rest of the pills away. He will be fine with this, probably. I'll tell him eventually. Like when he's staring at me over my next checkup results in October.

In the meantime, I have been feeling a bit more alive, and managed to do a sewing project with Zenny, glazed some pottery, scrubbed the floors, baked bread, and painted another side of the house over the holiday weekend. The painting counted as a functional workout, because I'm tired of fitness cult videos. I put my watch on "yoga" (because it does not have a setting for "house painting"), and got to work going up and down the ladder with a roller. Every time the kids came out to pretend to help, I warned them, "Paint tray! Watch out, don't step in it," and they did a good job of not kicking the thing over. I was feeling pretty good about how smoothly everything was going. And then, about an hour into it, I climbed down the ladder, hopped off the last rung, landed on the edge of the paint tray, and splashed it up onto the back of my legs. Spent the next 10 minutes rescuing every worm that came panicking up through the paint-soaked dirt, rinsing them off and putting them in the flower beds.

 

Don't tell the EPA. 

Happy start-of-summer, folks.

(I will leave a message for my doctor.)

it's not a rebrand if you don't have a brand

I paint slowly and post very little of it. I'm okay with this. After crying over wiring paintings in the parking lot of the Ho'omaluhia show, I decided to take a break. No gallery shows or sales this year, I said to myself. Just paint for pleasure and focus on travel and health.

And then I got an email about the big annual statewide art exhibition in the fall, with a $10,000 prize for Best in Show. It’s eating my brain. Okay, I think, so you walk into a gallery, there are paintings of flowers and fish and palm trees, and then you turn a corner and there it is - the Best in Show… WHAT IS IT? I don’t know. It’s big, whatever it is. I went to 7-11 and bought a bunch of local junk food and dumped it on my studio table, and I’ve been painting it for the last month (from photos at this point, because shrimp shumai don't make good still life models). A person with half a mind for marketing and self promotion would be taking videos along the way and making reels for Instagram, but I just don’t want to.

I also don’t want to paint landscapes. This seems to be a realization I need to come to over and over again. I can’t compete with nature. I don’t even like landscape paintings in my own fiddly “paint what you see” style, I like tonal minimalist landscapes with weird trees or giant robots in the mist. Give me eldritch landscapes or give me travel photographs.

So I'm just going to post my reference pictures instead of trying to paint them. If people only followed me on Instagram for paintings they were out of luck anyway, because I never post anything. My self esteem is still in the toilet, but I've started going for walks with my camera on my lunch breaks to see what I can see, and it's been a nice change of pace.

Maybe the Best in Show piece is a photo, who knows? I have decided to stop thinking about it, I'll submit something if I feel like it.

 

We were short-staffed, slammed with delivery, and then someone gave me a dying pigeon covered in mud and shit. I cleaned it off, warmed it up, gave it a soft dry bed, and watched it die in a box under my desk. Sometimes that is how it goes. Sometimes all you can do is give someone comfort, safety, and company while they pass on. And then bury them under a bush behind a taco truck. 

I smelled like dead bird, so I changed into a spare shirt that had been in my car for a few weeks. Realized I forgot my lunch again. My boss turned on the vacuum just as the phone rang, and I forced a smile, picked it up, and yelled, "Hello! [library name], can you help me?" 

FFS.

I realized what I said, corrected myself, "Oh, dear. I mean, can I help YOU?" And then, into the awkward pause, I explained, "Someone turned on a vacuum." 

Yes, that clears things right up.

It is going to be that kind of week.

Trying

Good news: I have not been run over by the construction mob.

That said, I’m kind of in a slump.

The past 6 months of hospitals, surgery, and medication have been rough on my body image. I feel disfigured in a really intimate way - I don't know how bad the scarring is, and I don't want to find out. I've been making a point to cuddle my kids, but otherwise I don't like being touched at all, I freeze up. The weight gain has been hard to stop, and slow to come off. I'm giving it another 2 weeks to see if I keep making progress, then I'm talking to my doctor about quitting the meds. I just want to feel like myself again.

Summer plans have been finalized, and I’m trying to get excited about it. Mike is doing certification testing at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, so we’ve rented a campus apartment for a few weeks at the end of July. Due to work obligations, I’ll be leaving a few days after the family, traveling alone, and meeting them there. I don’t mind solo traveling, I just hope I can make the trip fun and memorable for the kids, not knowing anything about where I am or how to do anything.

Going to do the damn thing, though, and give it my best.

opera

Leif spent a week in Texas with his robotics team for the World Championships (they placed 15th out of 623). His review of Texas was, "It was Texas." He did like Trader Joe's and In-n-Out Burger, though.

When he got home we went to the opera, because my mother bought tickets and wouldn't take "I almost got killed last time and I don't want to die" as an excuse for me to skip it. Leif enjoyed the orchestra, and I did not get in the middle of a high speed chase while driving home this time, so she wins.

 My college kid comes home in one week.