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. 

Christmas 2022

Christmas Eve went off without a hitch. My mother brought up an electric fireplace to add coziness, and the cats sat around it as if it were the real thing. Christmas Eve dinner is the deconstructed version of Christmas dinner: all the makings of a huge meat pie. Roast beef, roast lamb, tiny potatoes, piles of carrots, loads of gravy. It’s simple to cook, delicious to eat, and easy to chop up and throw together under puff pastry the next day, when you’re exhausted and full of chocolate and booze. Hands down, my favorite meal of the year.

I still have not managed to finish watching It’s a Wonderful Life in one sitting, but we did watch the Christmas episode of The Twilight Zone (“Night of the Meek”, season 2, episode 11). It’s a good one.

Christmas Day

At the stoke of 5am, the cats started rampaging, the rooster started crowing, and Zenny started shaking us awake. I put on a sad pot of decaf, popped two chocolate covered coffee beans like energy pills, and we did the Christmas morning thing.

The “seal of disapproval” pillow was a winner

Santa did not get credit for the bike. Santa brings small blinky toys and Japanese candies and scary exfoliating foot creams and dumb underwear. Parents bring the good stuff. 

The cats were very patient with me when I opened up a new lens and started following them around with the camera like an instagrammer’s boyfriend.

#wokeuplikethis #nofilter #blessed

In the afternoon, when everyone was worn out and laying on the floor, we bagged up the mess, packed the food, and drove to my mother’s house for Christmas dinner with my aunt and cousins. I brought a magic flan cake for kids who don’t like rum-soaked figgy pudding, and it was a hit. No leftovers, I win. Sorry, figgy pud.

Nothing caught on fire. No arguments broke out. No illnesses, crying, or injuries. And while I did not catch a moment where I felt the magic — it gets harder and harder to do as an adult — the kids were feeling it, and that’s where it counts. It was a good one.

xoxo

Christmas Eve Eve

The day before Christmas Eve is a day for cookies, bread, and, evidently, knife throwing. I kept expecting every thwack to be followed by a yelp that meant it was time to go the ER for some holiday stitches, but they managed to keep their skins intact.

If this is a skill they ever use in real life, I hope it gets caught on video

We had a lot of rain and now the hibiscus are popping off

This guy showed up right before Christmas. Baby Jesus??

Crackle-tops 

Better results than usual this year

My miniature lime tree is working hard this year 

Chorizo flowers

Leif vs cookie

Anti-gravity cat

Really digging having all my kids home

results

MORE COOKIES

The suburban leash-cat

Zenny is so excited by everything, she’s adorable 

Billy is feeling it, too 

Cracking my knuckles and getting ready to hit the kitchen. Christmas Eve is my sports event.