end of an era

For the past 15 years, I have had a preschooler in the house. Today the last baby aged out. REJOICE, FOR THERE ARE NO MORE TUITION PAYMENTS. Until they all go into college, one after the other.

And somehow, in all these years, we had managed to avoid the ceremony that has become some kind of cultural standard since the days when they just chucked us out to the curb in our little moon boots: the preschool graduation. Have noticed that the 100th Day of Kindergarten is picking up steam on the pinterest-activity-turned-mandatory-function horizon, but we will trample that when we get to it.

So we didn't actually know what we were doing with this thing. Bring a potluck item! the email said. Great, there are what, maybe 10 preschoolers graduating? I cooked up a bowl of mini wieners, dropped it off, and we sat on a bench waiting for the event to start. Parents began to swarm in. And then aunts, and cousins, and neighbors - all of them carrying massive aluminum trays of fried chicken, pancit noodles, chow mein, kimchi rice. A herd of cheesecakes and cupcakes and full goddamn Costco sheet cakes stampeded by. I realized that I had massively underestimated the volume of weenies this event necessitated.

"Shit shit shit. There are a hundred people here. That guy has an entire industrial crock pot. I am going to break into the kitchen, steal my sad weenies, and run for it," I said.
"Nobody is going to notice," the man said.
"EVERYONE IS GOING TO NOTICE."

Nobody noticed. Someone else brought a huge tray of cocktail weenies and they just sprinkled mine on top of them and then mercifully hid the bowl. We never found it. After the leis and cake, we did an Irish goodbye and wished the tupperware good fortune. Embarrassing.

and also adorable

In the afternoon, the newly-minted kindergartener asked for a pie. THIS is a thing I can do. She and I made enough dough for a fat apple pie and three miniatures; apple, blueberry, and chocolate walnut. Zenny made the leaves to decorate the tops.

Having some feelings about this whole growing-up business.

flailing at the news

Here is a rant about the news:

It is buried in lava. You guys.

1. The Big Island is an active volcano. It has been erupting for more than 30 years. You know what will happen if lava eats the geothermal power plant? It will shoot steam up in the air where the wells are. It will not cause a nuclear explosion. Just keep us posted on damages and closures, we don't need 11 articles a day.

2. Lost in the pile of lava articles, seems there was a shooting at the beach near my library last week. And nobody was caught. And it probably involved a couple of my library patrons. Which ones? WHO KNOWS. Have some lava.

3. Oh look, there was a murder near my house, too. Found the article buried at the bottom of the page because HEY LOOK MORE LAVA.

I do read non-local news, but I'm spending my energy on being mad about this today. Making good decisions.

the kind of sport I am being: the poor kind

I am throwing 'therapy' into my personal quackery compost bin, right on top of alkaline water, Nicholas Sparks, and veganism. You cannot improve upon nature. If we were meant to survive on vegetables, we would not have canines and razor-sharp talons and the ability to run 60mph. If we were meant to heal faster by tearing open old injuries, we would not have invented stitches and the poking of wounds with hot metal rods.

My feelings are not supposed to be spare parts for other people's recovery. I have them for a reason, and they get hurt.

I spent the day after the feelings-reaping shopping online for paint, plane tickets, and one-room cabins in the woods (which I did not have 50k on hand for - YET). Then went home and baked some bread.

 "Look," I told the man, "The future can't be fixed. The past is no good. What we have is right now. And right now can have bread."

So.

Do art, build furniture, raise chickens, brew beer, sharpen talons, make secret plots. Find that brain-calming space and be in it. Japanese milk bread is a good place to start.



**This is not to say that therapy and psychoanalysis (or veganism, or Nicholas Sparks) are bad or useless. They are just not for me.

*** Ok it is to say that about Nick Sparks. FIGHT ME.

strangling hands appeased

In this last week before summer break, normalcy visited briefly and I had Monday to myself again. Put a loaf of bread on to rise, spread out my paints, and worked on my backlog of moleskine drawings.

The legs got away from me, but the fluff was a lot of fun to paint. 

Leif is a hard character to catch a good likeness of, but I think I finally got him.

In other news:

* took a couple of eggs that our hen laid in the basement and stuck them in the fridge. We had run out of room in the egg carton, so I carefully put them in an open box of beer. Yelled to family, "CAREFUL WHEN YOU OPEN THE FRIDGE, THERE ARE DOS EGGIES IN THE DOS EQUIS." Felt great sense of accomplishment.

* spent Mother's Day with my mother. This was fun, except for her latest home improvement. Of all the rich cultural and technological innovations of Japan, the thing that most entertained her was the bidet in every toilet. So she came straight home and ordered an installation kit. Now her toilet shoots terrifying jets of cold water right up the unsuspecting undercarriage, and she laughs at the screams.

* the kids found an Easter egg in the board game cupboard. A hard-boiled one. It smelled like rotting butt. We laughed very hard and then put it in the trash can, where it will sit until one of us forgets about it and smashes some garbage down on top of it until it breaks. Then we will have to burn the house down.

* to delete later: therapy is happening. Not sure what the end goal of this thing is, but I am being a sport and coming along. So far I have cried about being sad that maybe I'll never feel deep love and connection with another person ever again - that I'll just hold onto this want and then die. She said she thinks I will feel feelings again. I asked how a person goes about doing that. She said she didn't know. So that is going well.

* amazing bread recipe has been unlocked, which I will share in next post. Everyone must make it immediately.

expert expertise

A second opinion revealed that the head gasket was not blown on the truck. Instead, the problems were coming from the old cracked hoses that were just kind of... taped into place. With tape. Tape which the guys who were de-greasing my entire engine while fixing the oil pan just somehow failed to notice. I am going to assume that major hoses covered in cracks and tape are a thing that any seasoned mechanic might easily miss - perhaps due to their protective casings, camouflage patterns, or armored defense systems. And easy to mistake for a head gasket. I guess.

standard 2002 Nissan Frontier head gasket

Anyway, the truck is fixed. And the man has been using it for his commute because, I suspect, he does not want to admit that the motorcycle is buried under a ton of shredded roofing material and he can't actually find it.

It has been 3 weeks since I've been able to paint, and I am having some feelings about this. Decided to return to Whidbey Island this fall for another workshop because goddamn it all. Instead of art-ing, I have been keeping my strangling hands busy learning cup games. This falls under "professional development" because I will be forcing 120 middle-schoolers to do it with me.

Without the reindeer jammies and cat. Probably.

ready, set...

FWOOSH SO FAST 

VERY IMPRESSIVE

inevitable outcome

It is important to continue developing your professional skill set even after mastering melodious quacking and woof-woof noises.

Medias

(Note to people who have been texting me - it was the Big Island that exploded, not Oahu. We might get some vog, but otherwise we're cool. Thank you, though.)

Thanks to a fumble while trying to quit Pandora, I accidentally subscribed to an upgrade. Then it ignored my cancellation. Now my phone plays entire streams based on algorithms I don't have the patience to learn, and it helpfully removed the skip button because PREMIUM, so I've basically just been listening to these two on repeat.

Am still reading the Expanse books, two pages at a time before falling asleep at 9pm. One book to go.

Watched the new Lost in a Space with the kids, A+ family trash-talking entertainment. Everyone is very sad that the dad survived.

The roof is still mangled. 

In which I have not been invited back up onto the roof

Well I thought we were having a moment.

The gift of not being able to find anything

My mother and aunt have run away to Japan for the weekend (Scoot airlines had a $275 round-trip  deal, wtf) so I am housesitting while the man rips our roof apart with his crew of large friends. My mother thinks I use these house-minding overnights to throw all her stuff away, and she is CORRECT. Looking into renting a flamethrower for her mail pile. She is not a pack rat, particularly, but gets overwhelmed by the places where clutter accumulates; recycling, papers, the shoe pile, art supplies. I am hauling everything away and blaming it on her cats. Whatever it was that’s gone missing, the cats peed on it. The old lids to lost plastic containers? Yeah, I don’t know how the cats got into the drawer, it’s amazing. The Guinness that was in the mini fridge? Fuckin cats these days, I tell you.

A body needs someone to toss the detritus and do a hard scrub once in a while. Probably, you’d want them to warn you first, but OH WELL. She’s not old enough to have a cane to hit me with, so that is just poor planning on her part.

Edit: I found a cane! Should probably either hide it better, or plan preemptive strike.

shut up, self

I don't write about day-to-day life anymore, I thought. Everything is so routine and easy and boring.

And then I looked over my shoulder anxiously, realizing what I had done.

TOO LATE.



cracked a tooth, resulting in two root canals on single molar

roof leaked, damaged ceiling

man went into attic to find leak and found hammer-shaped hole in roof with an old aluminum baking pan under it

kids flunked dental exam; one is mysteriously missing two entire teeth

teen went on $2000 trip to robotics world championships

Stupid Fancy Preschool* chipperly informed me that they were cancelling after-school care for the entire last week of school

truck blew head gasket

* fun dinnertime conversations have included "Jesus is a ghost made of blood and he watches you all the time" and "NO MOM MILK DOESN'T COME FROM COWS MILK COMES FROM JESUS". Counting down the days to public school.

Painting leather and getting mad at noses

A few weeks ago, I started painting husbandface. Somewhere in the process, I screwed up my lower proportions, and I think the only thing for it is to run the damn board through a circular saw and trim it down to a smaller head & shoulders portrait.

(The board was slightly tilted between these two shots, but you can see yesterday's progress on the jacket.)

Heartily, I say MEH.

Sat down with my moleskine and painted the teenager.

Picked up a "habits of painters who know more than you" book and realized that I am guilty of highlight-down-the-noseness, which is a newbie mistake. Even if you see it, it doesn't improve the painting to put it in. Highlights are fickle, ignore them.

So now I've got a pile of noses to paint over. Or ignore. Ignore, probably. I'm already drawing out the next painting, and it isn't anything on the list of paintings people have asked me to make. Have also been willfully neglecting the "draw me a tattoo" queue. Sorry, friends. I have to focus on painting the stuff that blows my skirt up right now.