House progress

After a month of rain, the sun came out long enough for us to run outside and slap some paint on the house. Didn’t even finish one side, let alone touch the trim or put in new screens, but at least the new wood won’t rot.

Took a break from horses to paint my kid.

And then back to horses.

I’ve just about filled up both my sketchbooks with paintings of these things, so I bought a new moleskine sketchbook for 2023, and now I’m afraid to touch it. Every new sketchbook has the potential to be perfect. The one you fill up with lovely little studies that you’d be proud for your great-grandchildren to discover in an attic someday. And then you fill it with mangled sketches and torn-out pages and sloppy paint and want to bury it in the yard. The first painting in my new sketchbook has to not suck. This is going to be a challenge, since I’ve been painting Tik Toks lately when nobody is looking, and right now my photo album is full of screen shots of the Cock Whisperer. 

Sorry, great grandkids.

Wow more horses

This guy looks like a person who was turned into a horse 5 min before posing for his portrait. Blue-eyed horses are scary.

Tape on, tape off

Last week I painted a very long horse, because I thought it was funny, but it really just looks like I don’t know how to draw a horse. I don’t care, it made my kids laugh, anyway.

And then they started singing, “Let me do it for youuuu”

Lent is coming up again. This year I’m going pescatarian, in an effort to boost my fish intake and cut back on animal fats while I work through this weight program (increased dumbbells this week, so I’m making some kind of progress!). Zenny is going with “breaking a bad habit I don’t want to tell you about”, which I assume is something like licking Nutella out of the jar when we’re not looking, and not something like embezzlement or catfishing. Leif is going with “showering more”, because he’s 14. Attainable goals.

But before Lent is Fat Tuesday (and Fat Monday, because why not), so I made a king cake. I didn’t have a plastic baby to jam into it, so I rolled a nice fat dried cherry into the dough before it baked. (The recommended alternative to the baby was a pinto bean, but I’m giving up emergency dentist appointments for Lent, too.)

And then I burned it. I do not know how this happened, it was only in for 25 minutes. It was the opposite of a holiday miracle.

Oh well.

edit: it was perfect in the middle, actually, the crust was just too dark. Bread is very forgiving.

Sunset cruise

The boat ride was everything you could ask for from an aging cruise ship next to an abandoned Hooters. 

 

Aloha Tower used to be a trendy shopping destination full of VR rides, shops, restaurants, tropical bars, and the maritime museum. Now it's rented by a private university and a Scientology church.When we arrived 20 minutes early, we were surprised to see one bar was still open, with a large chalkboard sign pointed at the cruise ship waiting area: 4 FOR 20 ANY BEER. Challenge accepted. We sat next to a giant fiberglass shark and drank Guinness and Maui Brewing Co, watching the pre-boarding hula from outdoor bar stools.

 

The buffet was mostly macaroni salad and dry teri chicken. The drinks were mostly pineapple juice, with just the barest whiff of alcohol. Probably they did not need 200 tourists getting drunk and concussing themselves or falling overboard every time the ship rocked. Someone face-planted on the way to the dessert table, anyway.

I saw a whale's nose-holes as it surfaced nearby, and two dolphin dorsal fins. Everyone applauded. 

At sunset we went to the top deck to watch the city lights come on. It was really pretty. I was surprised more people weren't up there; most of the tourists opted to stay close to the bar, insinuating teaspoonfuls of alcohol out of $10 frozen drinks.

When it was dark, the floor show started. The servers changed outfits and performed rapid-fire one-minute hula routines, sprinted into the hallway, tore into a new costume, and sprinted back for their next set. Coconut bras in one set became clapping instruments in the next set, zippers were half undone, it was choreographed chaos. There were only two men, so they had to run between 3 decks to do their bits.

RUN, YOU CAN DO IT

When all of them were close to collapsing, the ukulele player turned on YMCA so they could stop and catch their breath for a bit. You guys. People still jump up and do this thing with all the gusto they can muster. Why have we not developed another uncoordinated drunk-person sing-along anthem in the past 45 years? There have been attempts, but none have stuck like this one. It is a mystery of nature.

YMCfml

 

It was flawlessly tacky. The dancers did a good job with a tough gig. It's hard getting a job performing hula in any meaningful context, but it's so important to keep it alive and well represented, even if all you get is a 2-hour budget cruise.

 

Overall, would recommend, but not repeat. Except the part at the bar with the fiberglass shark, that was aces.

adventuring for wet blankets

Well, Mike was polite about my plans to make landscape paintings of a homeless encampment and then drink beer out of plastic cups at the pizzeria next to Walgreens, and then he booked a sunset cruise with a "Pacific rim cuisine" buffet and mai tais, instead. Fine.

Luckily, I just got a new dress, which I copied directly from my friend after she posted a bathroom selfie wearing the same thing and I DM'd her for the link.

Link here 

Which brings me to FITNESS CULT.

To recap: partly to support/annoy my husband by encroaching on his hobbies, I started working out with Centr last summer. Spent 4 months getting fit, had a medical emergency, found out I was developing cancer, had to start medication to stop my uterus from exploding, started gaining weight because of the medication, had surgery for the cancer, and haven't been allowed to lift anything for 2 months while in recovery.

This week I finished a gentle 6-week program for weenies, which at least halted the weight gain, and now it is BACK ON. Last night I started Day 1 of a higher-intensity 6-week weight program. We will see if my organs try to eject themselves again.

Horse Weekly

I’m still not tired of painting these things. Hooves are still inexplicably difficult. They’re just wedges. I don’t understand. But I buried them in grass because I got mad at them — I’ll do some hoof homework later. 

Got another book deal this week. Editor cut royalties by 3 percent, but I’ll do it anyway, why not.

My very exciting plans for anniversary celebration next weekend: spend a couple hours plein air painting at the murder lake, and then try out the new tap house/pizza restaurant next to Walgreens.

(We have a lot of unfortunate people pulled out of Lake Wilson. It should be safe during the day, though.)

Getting wild over here.

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.