Where Is My Mind

My grandfather is dying, and the family has been called together to see him while there is still time (weeks, but not months). We lived with my grandparents until I was 8, while my mother went to university. He never tried to be my father, but he was the man I had as a role model, which is probably where I learned to accept a level of misuse in exchange for stability and homemade bread.

I spent hours comparing flight dates and times and prices, until the numbers on the screen stopped meaning anything. Closed it up and drove to work, chewing on everything and listening to music. Wondered if I was developing premature dementia. Lately I’ve been forgetting stuff and having momentary confusion about minor things.

Ffs, you're not getting senile. You've had a very compressed year of adult bullshit, and now your grandpa is dying and you're conflicted because you love an old man who punched your mother in front of you when you were a kid. That is stress, not dementia.

Just then, Pixies started playing.

 

haha synchronicity oh shit I’m dissociating because my grandpa is dying

So I did the damn thing and got the trip booked. A week from Monday, I'm hopping a plane and taking my mother to meet her sisters and say goodbye to her dad; a funny, smart, artistic, banjo-playing professor who was also kind of a bad father. I probably won't tell him I'm glad my mom kicked him flat that last time.

For over a century, our ancestors lived in the verdant hills of the Hudson Valley. After leaving a trail of arrest records for robbery and a couple of stabbings, the family decided to make their way out West to seek their fortunes as dirt farmers in the Mojave Desert (and spawning the "Anti-Braffet Alliance" in Utah along the way - see page 43). The cemetery in Kingman is full of our bones. Some of them planted by our own relatives, because we were also the grave diggers. And maybe the murderers. Our family still insists the boys were shooting rattlesnakes when cousin Jack got a bullet through the heart by "accident" back in the 70s. Grandpa got as far as Guam, Yap, and Newfoundland before finally getting rounded up and carted back to the scorched homeland in his old age.

It'll be about 115 degrees when we get there. I am not worried about flying into wildfire, because there is nothing living to burn. Except the residents. 

 

I love Arizona deeply, and our years on Black Mesa were among our best. Kingman itself may be a blast furnace filled with tumbleweeds and scoundrels, but I’m looking forward to bringing my living bones back for a visit. And if I die of heatstroke or the Anti-Braffet Alliance takes me out while I’m there, someone please come dig me up and stuff me in a duffel bag back to Hawaii, because fuck that place.

You are not supposed to actually throw the pottery

You would think, with a shelf full of drying mugs, that I would be getting the hang of this thing. 

You would be wrong. 

Half the time I can’t center the clay, it just bangs my arms around until I muster all my strength to wrestle it still, and then it torques and smears everywhere. 

Who is throwing who here, wheel?

When it does decide to center, the cups are whatever shape they want to be, I don’t have any control over it. Flat things are probably easy, I thought. I will make a plate.

I did not make a plate. I made a frisbee. It was not flat, but it flew anyway. 

Cleaned up my mess and painted the cat, racing the setting sun in 45 minutes because I was too lazy to go find a lamp. I’m working out all the problems before ruining the official contest panel.

 

 Problem 1: background needs to be dark enough to contrast the light on the nose. 

Problem 2: paint with A LAMP.

I wish I had one of those thin slinky dogs with a face like a horse that went through a playdoh extruder. Or a really handsome goat.

Better health through cake and cat modeling

The arm strengthening that comes with pottery inspired me to put on my stretchy pants and do some workout videos, and now I'm playing phone tag with the cardiologist again. 

 

Doubled up the vitamins and iron supplements I’ve been throwing back with my coffee. Made a banana pudding cake for Sunday dinner, reasoning that a protective shell of cholesterol might fortify those arterial valves. Internal armament through saturated fats, a thesis.

The annual Trekell pet portrait contest is on again, and this year Zenny wanted a shot at losing it along with me, so we ordered two panels and have started chasing the cats around to get a good pose. It is going as well as last year.

caterpillar eyes 

glamour shot setup

I guess I could paint some chickens. You know who wins these things? Dogs. Paintings of dogs, not dog painters - although a dog who could paint would probably sweep the awards, too. The only dog I know is the chick-snaffler across the street, and if I start hiding in the bushes with a telescopic lens trying to get pictures of their dog, the neighbors will think I’m doing a murder investigation and call the chicken police on me.

Cats it is.

coop attack, paintball, and tea cups

I have become the unwilling custodian of the rescued infant-massacre chicks. "I am not the chicken dumping ground!" I said. Except I am, because I have the chicken coop. One of my mother's co-workers with a yard backing the jungle will take them in a few weeks, when they're big enough not to be eaten by the wild pigs. So I have a chicken orphanage in my yard right now, which technically speaking we are not allowed to have. But they are temporary rehab birds, OKAY?

I don't feel like it's okay. They are nice little chickens, though.  

During the week, there was a smash and a frenzy of peeping, and the man ran outside in time to see the neighbor's dog dash out of the yard with a chick in its mouth and retreat back into its own yard through the open gate, then into the house through the dog door. Mr. Across the Road came trotting outside to close the gate while Mike was rounding up a terrorized chick that had escaped the attack, and then he hid. An hour later, when he thought the coast was clear, Mr. Across the Road came outside to finish putting away his tools, saw Mike heading across the road calling his name, pretended not to notice him, and hid around the side of the house. Mike waited for him at the gate. When he crept back out, Mr. Across the Road pretended to be surprised. "Hey, neighbor, didn't see you there! Oh man, did the dog get out? Naw, I didn't see any chicks. That's so weird." As if he didn't notice the dead bird chewed up in the living room.

Next time Mr. Across the Road misses the garbage truck on his side of the road and runs outside in his pajamas to roll his garbage bin next to ours, I will helpfully roll it straight back into his driveway. 

- - - 

Planning a pandemic graduation party is a checklist leading to misadventure: What can we do for fun with a group of teenagers that is outdoors, has lots of space, and includes face protection? We narrowed it down to snorkeling, ax-throwing, paintballs, and tiny race cars. Since teaming up to try to survive in a Hunger Games scenario is more sociable that paddling in circles with your face in the water, the teenagers opted for paintball. 

I opted for staying home with Zenny and making tea cups. 

As it happens, paintball is also the recreational activity of choice for off-duty marines. The kids were solid canvases of yellow paint and welts by the end of the day, and Leif has decided that being hunted for sport isn't his hobby of choice. I made fresh kaiser rolls and bbq pulled pork for dinner and we watched MASH. 

Knowing what you don't want is important. 

learning curve

 Very important content: my cat laying nude in the window. 

A moment later he yawned, fell off, landed on a graduation balloon, and exploded.

I’ve been throwing mugs every evening, partly because it takes at least an hour a day to get good at anything, and partly to stay out of my mother-in-law’s hair. The pottery is accumulating. Still a bit wobbly, but finally getting height. I have a much easier time pulling handles than the boys, which is shocking if you’ve seen how it’s done.

 (Not my hands, I’m a lot slower)

Probably because I don't find it counterintuitive to smash them flat afterwards.

Sitting downstairs in the studio, rinsing clay off my aching arms, taking a break in my comfy chair to paint a bit, I felt deeply satisfied. 

A rainbow of skill development

My first handles

Waiting to be trimmed and smoothed out

First block-in. Don't hold me to any of it.

I’d like a lifetime of hours like these.

Graduate

My mother-in-law is visiting for Gavin’s high school graduation. I got home from work on Friday to find takeout on the table and the boy in the shower after a day at rehearsal. We sat down to wait for him and chat a bit, and when Gavin walked in behind her, I did a double-take and burst out laughing, because apparently the school had decided to hold rehearsal out on the football field for four hours and give all the graduating seniors mask-shaped sunburns just in time for one of the biggest and most photographed events of their lives. I went into the worst kind of sudden hysterical laughter - doubled over, incoherent, banging the table -  before struggling to get my shit together and asking, through tears, “so... it was an overdose?” Mother-in-law had been in the middle of describing the circumstances of her friend’s daughter’s death.

And that is why she doesn’t like to talk with me.

But really 

It was a good ceremony, even though the pandemic protocols required us to drop off our senior at the gym and wait in our cars to be escorted to the field, so I wasn’t on hand to get in a fight with the principal when she tried to stop Gavin from walking because his jeans weren’t dark enough and his tie had tiny skulls on it. One of the security guards ran next door to his house and lent Gavin a pair of dress pants, which he pulled on right over his jeans because his legs are pool noodles. The principal had to yell at some girls about wearing white sneakers instead of white high-heeled sandals, so the tie slipped by.

SKULLS OH NOES

Having big feelings about this thing.

Trim

Trimming is hard. My bowl lost its grip, flew off the wheel, hit the wall of the basin at high speed like an overconfident 7 year old at a skating rink, and knocked out a chunk of its rim. I bent it back into shape, carved a matching chunk out of the other side of the rim, and now it’s a ramen bowl.

Still counts.

Wheeling

Absolutely outraged that I was not immediately fantastic at pottery throwing. FaceTimed my mother, completely covered in clay slop, and complained. “THIS IS ICE SKATING ALL OVER AGAIN.” On the fourth attempt at making a mug, I made something like a bowl, threw down my sponge, and called it a win. I am a natural at making lopsided bowls, like I am a natural at making a half-turn on ice skates so I slam into the wall with my body instead of my face.

It was a whole lot of fun, and we are going to have the best punching muscles once our arms figure out how to keep up.

Leif made a shot glass 

Such pottery, very wow

Gavin felt soggy after his second vaccination and just supervised 

Zenny made a cat dish

Annoyed about bowls not being mugs

Tomorrow is trimming, which is where you take your nearly-dry piece and carve away all the ugly bits. Or shave holes in your stupid bowl and call it a design feature. We will see.

Yikes

Guess who’s got fake tattoos and tickets to New York in August?

This lady. 

And also the college kid, since he’s the one getting delivered to his dorm.

It’s really weird having things happening again, after a year of standing at a door. But starting Monday, door duty is OVER, and the library is open to all riff-raff like usual, with no time limits or book quarantine or hourly cleaning. Masks and distancing are still in effect, so I’m going to be constantly screaming across the children’s section for people to cover their stupid noses, but that is one of my special skills, right under “barnyard noises”.

Pottery update: we tried making a wedging board, which is a slab of plaster that won’t adhere to the clay while you’re kneading the air bubbles out of it like bread dough, and accidentally made way too small of a box with way too tall walls, so you could kind of drop the clay into it and smush it with your fingers, if you were really determined. 

Damn it.

I’m going to make a lot more plaster and fill it to the top like a giant brick. Then next time I hear prowlers outside the studio, I can arm myself with a 20lb hunk of plaster instead of an empty beer mug. 

My Instagram stories got spoopy this week. 

Note: NOT MY CAT.

Belts arrive this week, then the pottery wheel will be wheeling again. And I’ll be on it.

Slightly later is the time

We put on our aprons, plugged in the wheel — and all the old belts broke. Another week before the fresh belts arrive. 

That’s okay, my tattoos are still in the mail anyway. 

Here are some flowers that are drying in the studio.