Shiny New Toy and Realizations

I finally did it.  I finally made myself go get an easel.  I hate spending money on things that I don't have a 100% NEED for, at least expensive things.  I'll bleed my bank account dry on books and tea, but other stuff?  Yeah...  like blood from a stone some days.  Yesterday, though, I made myself suck it up and go get an easel.  I've had this giant sketchbook for months that I don't DO anything with, simply because it's too big to fit on the table or my lap, and I can't draw on the floor.  So if I was ever going to use the paper, I needed an easel.

It's been duly christened in the manner of my people, of course.  With foxen.

Not one of my better ones, but not too shabby considering the last time I worked on large scale was in my high school art class mphffrgle years ago.

This morning I had A Realization.   As I stood in the kitchen and poured myself a nice cup of coffee, a cool autumn-like breeze blew in the window, a hint of the season to come.  Since I was working the Day Job remotely, I didn't need to worry about getting out the door at any particular time, and so had a bit of time before I needed to do anything.  I decided to write some Morning Pages (which I haven't had the time/brain to do in a long time), while I could.  My mind wandered off in that direction for a minute, daydreaming in that half-asleep Way You Do when it's only been minutes since you crawled out of sleep, and when I came back I thought about the dreaming wander.

I realized that my mind has played the same scenario a hundred, thousand times over my life, mornings like these.  The visual details change slightly, but the essence is the same...  I take my morning coffee and breakfast, and I go sit on my porch/in my living room/studio and I write a few Morning Pages to ease myself into the day.  I get dressed.  I check email, and then I Go To Work...in the dreams case, I go to my studio and pull out my beads/sketchbooks/notebook/bath & body supplies and I work.

I always go back to this scenario, and I have for as long as I can remember.  This, then, is what I need to do.

What I also need to do is stop looking at Art As The Thing I Do For Side Money While I Do Something Else Stable, and start looking at it AS the primary.  I keep looking around at other things to do for stable work, while I do some art on the side, until I can get the art going enough to be the "stable" work.  (Or as stable as art ever is, anyway.)  This MUST change, or it will never happen.

Things to work on...

Introducing Fester, the Zombie Bunny.

Some people, when they attempt to knit cute things end up with, in fact, cute things.

Pattern from Living Crafts magazine

I, apparently, end up with zombie bunnies.

Everyone, I would like to introduce Fester...

Fester, being a young and hungry zombie bunny, tried to eat his way into the wasabi peas.  Turns out that he's got a serious thing for them.

To keep Fester out of trouble (and my peas), I decided to take him for a ride.  He was very excited. He wanted to drive, but sadly couldn't see over the dashboard.

After a bit of grumping (and the promise of wasabi peas if he'd behave...really, I don't know what his fascination is with them, but hey, if it works...) I convinced him to ride on the dash for the time being.

Sadly for poor Fester, his first Big Adventure Outside didn't go well.  It started to rain before we got anywhere interesting, and he's afraid of rain.  This also meant that we had to go home*, 'cause going on Big Adventures Outside aren't all that fun when it's wet.

He was a verra sad zombie bunny.  There was pouting and pathos on the dashboard.

I promised him extra peas and a Real Adventure soon, when the weathermen weren't lying to us.  He cheered up a little, and we went home for peas (for him) and hot tea and an english muffin with butter and a friend's homemade strawberry jam for me.  Next time, we'll have better adventures.

*He did try to get me to stop in Fitchburg 'cause it looked like someplace he might like, but well, it's Fitchburg, and I wasn't pulling over for anything.  Lovecraft was right about some places out that way, and not much has changed in the intervening years...

A Brief Moment of Clarity

I would like to state, for the record, that I hate craft fairs. Or, more accurately I suppose, I hate the kind of craft fairs that I have been to. I would also like to take a moment to both bless and curse Rima Staines for letting me see that there are other kinds of craft fairs than the abominations that we have here in New England.

This is what my options have been:

What a lovely, monotonous row you have.

This is what she gets in England:

Please note the lovely green vardo cover on the left

See the difference?

I'm jealous. That fair? I would love to do, and my eclectic collection of things would fit in. Unlike here where half the time the craft fairs are more "I needed to have a yard sale and thought I could sell more this way". There's an awful lot of confusion between art/craft sales and flea markets. If I wanted to compete with the folks trying to clear out their storage rooms, I'd just set up at the end of the driveway and be done with it.

Also, a lot of ours tend to be Grandma selling cross-stitch-teddy-bears-in-plastic-frames-from-the-dollar-store-with-the-pattern-she-got-from-a-book or some woman selling at prices just high enough to pay for the table and pay for her beads, which is NOT what I'm trying to do. I can't compete with that, and it's really not a good fit at all.

Annoyingly, the best format for me to sell what I do is the craft fair type idea. Especially since the travelling gypsy artist is so SCREAMINGLY perfect for the River's Daughter, I can't even stand it.

I just want to do something less like this

and more like this.

(Yes, I know we have "non-standard" craft fairs around here. Unfortunately most of them are genre-specific. Much of my stuff is not SCA/Steampunk/Faery/etc appropriate, and so I'd either have to leave half my stuff at home, and really what's the point, or be That person who's out of place and not well thought of because it breaks the paradigm. Neither of these are things I want to do.)

I need to look around and see if we DO have anything that I would fit in at around here, 'cause really? How AWESOME would it be to be, in truth, the travelling gyspy artist???


*also, seriously check out Rima Staines' work...she's an amazing artist and I adore her work. She gets to live the coolest life!

A Bouquet of Flowers On A Summer's Day

I went for a walk on my lunch break today to the little "scenic overlook" near the house.  Since there are a bunch of little flowers over there, I brought my camera along.

Mr. Teeny BugFace Watches Me Watch Him.

 (No really, he's there.  I promise.  He hides very well.  See?  Close-up!)

Confession Time

So, after my comment the other day about the spoons, I had a couple of folks email me directly and ask about it.  (I knew them, so I don't mind.)  After giving them the Cliff Notes version, it occurred to me that just getting it out in the open may actually help explain to folks one of the primary reasons I'm so driven to be self-employed and also why I am very....weird... about a few things.

Several years ago, I worked in Hell.  Or close, at any rate.  It was physically demanding, the hours were horrible, and my bosses (all 8 of them) were frequently problematic.  On top of it, I was in a heavily male-dominated, good ole' boy, what do you think you're doing thinking you can work with the guys little missy sort of environment.  This didn't go well, and because I'm dumb and have a lack of self-preservation when it comes to my work ethic, I ended up having a nervous breakdown.  I was completely incapable of picking out my own clothes, and barely able to go out of the house, without having several major anxiety attacks.  I had a stomach ulcer, heart palpitations, and had lost a lot of weight very rapidly.

There are several stages of stress, and I was teetering on the edge of the one that includes physical collapse with a high chance of death.

I managed to get myself out of there and pull my head back together, but it left some pretty nasty scars.  The best analogy I can come up with is a broken cup.  Even if you glue it all back together perfectly, there are still chips and weak spots.  Many things that most people consider routine are terrifying to me.  Prolonged aggravation causes hours of exhaustion and pain in my joints and muscles, because my body's receptors were damaged.  In short, I can no longer easily handle a lot of what most people consider normal day-to-day life.  I grew up in theater, so I pretend really well, but that's all it is... an act.  It's not that I don't want to do things, it's that I physically CAN'T do them.  Pushing myself too far triggers panic attacks and pain, and some days that's things as "simple" as answering the telephone if I don't recognize the number.  Unlike most people, I know exactly where my boundaries are and the consequences of pushing too far past them.

Needless to say, working in the "normal" working world? Not something I'm going to be capable of doing long-term unless I get really lucky and manage to find something low-stress that I'm suited for.

So yeah.  There it is.  The reason why I have a limited set of spoons to work with, why I don't do a lot of things that people tell me I should do, and why I want out of the "normal" work environments.  Terribly exciting, huh?

Now that that's out of the way, here... have a cute (slightly disgruntled) cat to look at...  ;)

Singing the Bones, Part III

My River, My Heart, My Home

I have come to realize that I absolutely need to find a way to make myself, and by extension my attempt to become self-employed (or as I prefer to think of it, gainfully unemployed, which just sounds more fun), a bit more solid and cohesive.  Wandering aimlessly is all well and good, but it's not really productive - at least not from a financial standpoint.

Today's task is to work on creating a more coherent form for myself.  To work on making the River's Daughter more of a real person, and less of a limnal will-o-wisp in the fog of my mind.  To create her vardo and bring her stories, art, photography, jewelry, and random bits of body care things into an easily transported mode.

It's been dancing in my head a lot lately, usually first thing in the mornings before going off to the Day Job.  Sadly, the Day Job has become such a not-insignificant drain on my mental and emotional resources that by the time I get home at night I have completely run out of spoons* for the day and can do little more than sit and stare numbly at the computer monitor until bedtime.

Today, though, I have a well-stocked silverware drawer and I plan on taking full advantage of it.

To the drawing board with me!

*Yes, there are reasons that this is an extremely good description for me, that some day I'll go into here, but not today.  I'm feeling too good about the day.

Through Forests Dark and Golden-Lit...

Two things occurred to me this afternoon, as I wandered my way down hidden roads and forest paths.  The first, is that I have a strange pull to the north and west.  No matter what direction I begin my journey facing, I invariably turn until I am moving northwest.  It's an oddity.

The other is this...  for as long as I can remember, I've searched for something.  I've looked in boxes, closets, random shops on the sides of the road, always looking, always searching, for what I have never had an idea.  It occurs to me, that very often the need to get in the car and go, is very much akin to the old...obsession.  I need to get out on the open roads, and go until I find whatever it is I'm looking for.

Some days, I find some random pretty flower, decrepit old building, forgotten forest path, and I am satisfied.  It may take hours of driving, but suddenly I see this thing; I touch it, smell it, sit and look at it for several minutes, and then, as quickly as the need hit, it's gone, and I am free to go home.  Some days I drive for hours, frustrated, hot, tired, and there is nothing, except the need to seek that unknown thing pushing me onward.

I've never really known why I do this.  I don't know if it's a sign I'm not quite all there, or if that is what makes me an artist (and why my mediums are, well, diverse).  I may never know.

What I do know, is that today was a good day.  I found this...

An early morning poll...

If you were going to buy one of the below three, which would you be most likely to get?

A.) Sugar scrub.
B.) Bath bomb.
C.) Body/Whatever spritzer.

Into Every Life, A Little Silliness Must Fall...

So, I own a Squishable.  I also follow them on Facebook, 'cause, well...  they're sort of awesome.  Unlike a lot of companies, they seem to have a pretty solid grasp on the fact that silliness and whimsy are essential to humans and sanity.

Today, they held the 3rd Annual "Take Your Squishy To Work" Day.  Needing a bit of silliness in my life, I had to participate.  It was, after all, for charity.  Keeping up on the FB event page has been AWESOME.  It's so neat to see all the different people from all different walks of life, from cashiers, to cooks, to librarians, to office workers in major corporations, male, female, old, young, all taking part in something so epically...silly!  I think I will need to do this more often.

Of course, I brought my foxen in!

Foxen, totally judging my messy desk.  And sitting one of my laptops.

New friends (co-worker brought in his mini-foxen).  We fear their filing.

Heppin'!

All in all, OMG SO MUCH FUN!  :D  Definitely need to do this again.

A Moment of Surreal...

In retrospect, the high, mosquito-like whine of the motor scooter zipping by should have been a sign that things were not quite as they appeared, as I walked across the bridge that summer afternoon.  I may have noticed it then, but I had just run into an old manager, and so was a little bit off-kilter as a result...

The man, tall and well-built paddling down the river would have been ordinary, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was standing on top of his electric blue kayak, poling along for all the world as if he steered a boat through the watery streets of Venice, with a broom.

This should have been my second sign.  It wasn’t until I saw the lady in the flower-print sundress walking with her husband that I finally noticed.  She was using a lovely hot pink umbrella to shade her from the hot sun, while beside her, her husband (dressed in long pants , dark shirt, hat, and sunglasses) pushed the small Jack Russell terrier along in the ‘70’s era stroller.

Really, it was hard to not realize something was up.  I carefully closed up my notebook and made my way back to the relative safety of my office, creeping cautiously past the scooter again, this time noting that it was very much leopard print, and that the gentleman riding it wore boat shoes.

It had gone from being a very stressful day, to being a very weird one, and I wasn’t quite sure where it was going next.  I did, however, know that I desperately hoped there would be no clowns...

Over The River, and Through The Woods...

Yesterday, I went to visit a couple of friends for the day (and was smart and brought my camera).  Plans for the second half of the day fell through due to communication issues, so instead I took the long, winding, and very scenic route home... 

I may have decided to play with the colors a bit on those last two.  

Early Morning Walks...

I got to the Day Job early yesterday morning, and since it was such a gorgeous day, I decided to take my camera and go for a walk along the Charles River...

A Belated Happy 4th!

Hope everyone had a lovely July 4th!  Me, there was barbecue and good company. Lots of grilled things, lots of cider, lots of laughing.  I attempted to see how the camera did with fireworks (clearly, I need to read the manual...it actually does tell you how to photograph fireworks, but that involves reading the instructions.  ;) )  Despite a very large amount of "Nope, that sucked." and "What the hell was I doing there?" and "Delete that quick, and pretend it never happened!", and the fact that they are, well, simply awful, I'm kind of intrigued with how these two came out:

Also, gratuitous chickens...

"Noms?"

The Mummy's Curse, Feline Edition?

From the pages of "My Life Is A Little....Off...Sometimes" comes...

The Mummy's Curse: Bastet's Revenge.

Or something.

Warning:  This Post Contains Well...Mummies.  If you're easily squicked, I'd suggest skipping this post.

So, I live in a friend's house.  It's been in a rather limnal state of half-deconstructed since before I moved in.  Once in a while The Housemate gets the urge to start fixing things, maybe puts up part of a door-frame, maybe paints a segment of wall.  This week he installed a ceiling fan in the kitchen and started to rip out the rotting wood siding on one of the many side porches the place has (it's a large house).

This afternoon, after succumbing to a severe headache (probably stress-induced, as it cleared up a bit after I logged off of work), I was lounging on the couch - full-on Victorian fainting couch style - when he wanders upstairs and asks "Want to see a cat skeleton?"

Having been grumpy that my mother threw out my entire animal skull collection as a child (something about girls don't collect old bones), and being a HUGE skeletal anatomy geek, of course I had to extricate myself from under the pile of cats I'd had attached to me to go see.

There, under the walled up porch, was one of the most perfectly mummified skeletons I've ever seen, which, given the general dampness of the yard (seriously, we've got a moss problem.  On the SOUTH side of the house.) is nothing short of amazing.  I'll spare folks the description, but lets just say that the priests of Old Egypt would be impressed.  After a few minutes of admiring it, we discussed how to remove it and what one should do with it.  I suggested rubber gloves and a decent burial, all things considered.  He agreed.  I figured it was a done deal, and wandered off back to my fainting couch, living cats, and laptop.

Hours later, he left for whatever Tuesday Night Thing he does.  Boy came home from work and announces that Kit-en-ho-tep is looking lovely under the porch.

Dude.

This is so totally going to come out and bite us, I know it.  Bast is gonna be pissed, there's probably some feline version of the Mummy's Curse been scratched into the woodwork, and now we've gone and left it exposed to the air and let it out to roam free.

Did I mention that I'm necrophobic? (Yeah, I know, weird as hell given my zombie fascination and skeletal fondnesses.  No one ever said phobias were rational, alright?)  Or that there MAY be several statues of Bast around, and I'm a very devoted kitty-mom?  (Infer what you will there) And there's a LONG-DEAD AND MUMMIFIED CAT UNDER MY PORCH?

Seriously.  Mummy's Curse: Revenge of Bastet.  I'm going to wake up in the night, and there's going be ghost cats and ghost mice surrounding my bed, and weird incense, and it's just going to end horribly.

If Kit-en-ho-tep gets me, my cat gets my stuff.