I often like what results when I sit down without intention or agenda and play.
Art Every Day Month – Day 24
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Category Archives: Nature
Art Every Day Month – Day 21
This one is for my Mom and Dad, especially because winter approaches. Long, dark Syracuse winters require a reminder of the future.
Art Every Day Month – Day 14
I played here with paint and image transfer. I’m not so keen with the green dots, because they have more blue in them than I’d like, while the painting has more yellow. By the time I realized this, though (I made it in my dimly lit office at night), it was too late to remove them without ruining the piece. I really enjoy image transfers, but they are a challenge to get the paper off (even after a long soak in warm water) while keeping the image intact.
Art Every Day Month – Day 12
I decided to play with paint for a change. I have a postcard of Joseph Mallord William Turner’s painting, The ‘Fighting Téméraire’; I love the colors. What’s interesting is that there are many images of this painting on the web that render the color in vastly different ways: some are paler, some darker and more foreboding. This one most closely resembles my postcard. My rendition certainly doesn’t hold a candle to the original classic, but it was fun to do, and I’m mostly pleased with the result.
Art Every Day Month – Day 11
Some days — heck, most days — all my child wants to do is be read to, all day. I think in part it’s because it’s cozy and close, and she’s avid to understand the world. When we are around other kids, she likes to play with them. But her main favorite activity is to take little adventures through the worlds between two covers.
Art Every Day Month – Day 8
I started this ATC on a bright green background and used tissue paper to collage. I got stuck along the way, feeling uninspired. I was thinking of fall colors in New York state, and also of how incredibly green and rural it is, and how easily lost one can get in some of these places. Where I live now is dense, urban, and covers a valley floor mostly with concrete. So this ended up being a piece reflecting my own uncertainty in the creative process and my longing for sparsely populated places.
Art Every Day Month – Day 7
Remembering this, living this — is my meditation practice.
Art Every Day Month – Day 6
As winter approaches, this is what’s left of autumn.
Art Every Day Month – Day 4
My very first cat ever was a butterscotch (or marmalade) cat named Kiki. She loved to watch outdoors. We lived on a busy street, so for many years we let her go outside in the back yard during the day on a light chain under a huge pine tree, stocked with food and water, an experience she loved and hated. We also took her camping with us. In her later years, we trusted her to have good sense and stay close, so we began to let her out back unfettered. She loved to sit under the garden ferns, watching and sometimes catching birds. She was a good cat, and she put me on the path to being a cat lover since.
Art Every Day Month – Day 3
A few weeks ago I experimented with dying card stock with shaving cream and food coloring. It was a thoroughly fun and messy experience. I put a piece of it to use in this drawing.
Mmmmm, Meyer Lemons
When we moved here five years ago, I bought a little Meyer lemon tree and put it in a container. Meyer lemons are thought to be a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange, and they are sweeter and lighter tasting than regular lemons. The tree yielded meagerly until this year. Yesterday I picked two dozen lemons off the tree, and more are coming. Mind you, this tree only stands four feed high!
What to do with all these luscious lemons? I zested and squeezed them, and put it in the freezer. I have a total of three cups of lemon juice, which I am freezing in ice cube trays. There’s a cup of zest. This is all great for baking and cooking. The next task (probably tomorrow), is to roast the little pie pumpkins we bought and puree them. Bean still loves to eat plain pureed pumpkin, and it will be great for pumpkin bread and pie. And again, I freeze it in ice cube trays to make just-right serving sizes for Bean.
Art Every Day Month – Day 2
I was playing with stencils in this one. I wanted to keep things clean and simple. I was in the mood for green, because I am still waiting for the mountains to turn into that gorgeous winter emerald color, if the rains ever come consistently. The word “listen” came to mind, because there is so much to hear in the natural world. I’m try to bring Bean to as many natural spaces as I can, and give her the chance to move and get messy and hear what the world has to say.
Happy Halloween
I ended up carving a pumpkin after all. Bean named it Wendy because it is winking — Winkie Wendy. Bean is doing much, much better. Her fever broke yesterday. She’s still tired and has a cough, but she is well enough to say she wants to go trick-or-treating, even though I suspect she really doesn’t know what that means. I’m not sure we will go, but if we do, it will be for a very brief outing. She doesn’t really want to wear a costume. Perhaps we’ll don her in one of my blouses (long enough to be a dress) and costume jewelry, and she can go as a “lady.”
She has been waking at 5 and 5:30 a.m., so we’ll see how early she gets up tomorrow after we fall back an hour on the clock! (Please please please sleep; don’t wake up at 4 a.m.!)
Oink
Based on her symptoms, Bean’s doctor thinks she has H1N1 (swine) flu. Her temp at 12:30 p.m. was 103.6; an hour ago it was 102.5.
I’m doing my job, being the Mommy bed. I hope Husband and I don’t get sick (at least not at once).
We’d have gotten a flu shot if the damn thing was made available. It turns out that although Santa Clara county is the sixth largest county in California (1.85 million people), we’ve only gotten 14,100 doses. Other smaller counties have gotten twice and triple that much. There are no seasonal flu shots either.
There actually were 79 H1N1 swine flu cases for every lab-confirmed case and about three pandemic flu-related hospitalizations for every reported hospitalization through July 23, according to the new estimates from CDC epidemiologists Carrie Reed, PhD; Lyn Finelli, DrPH; and colleagues.
After July 23, the burgeoning number of flu cases made it necessary to stop counting lab-confirmed cases — which the CDC always warned was ” just the tip of the iceberg” — and to start using mathematical models to track the pandemic.
An All-Pajama Day
Bean was better last weekend and on Monday. Then on Tuesday, she screamed and resisted going to music class, which is unusual because she adores going. But she said, “Please no music class,” and I honored that. We went out for a walk around the block but otherwise didn’t go anywhere. Yesterday I kept her home from preschool; she had a cough again, and generally had no energy and was clingy. We stayed inside all day. She got to watch more t.v. than usual. I called the doctor, who suggested that if she’d gotten well for any period of days and now has symptoms, that it’s probably a whole new entity (and not another secondary infection). I’m following the usual protocol. Bean woke at 2 a.m. with a fever of 102, and it’s not varied much. I’m not bothering to change out of my pajamas. We won’t be going anywhere. I feel sad for her when she’s sick.
I harbor a hope that Husband will get home early enough for me to get out to the local yarn store to hang with my friends and knit. I’ll need it. And now, here’s a rare photo. (This child never sleeps anywhere but her own crib, and in nearly all photos I take of her she is moving.)
Rough Night
I went to bed on the late side, but then, Bean had trouble falling asleep last night and intermittently cried until 10. I went in multiple times to comfort, give medicine, and rock her. Then she woke at midnight, thirsty. And she woke at 6:30 without enough sleep. One of the first things she said was, “I have a fever in my mouth.”
And now she is cranky, cranky, cranky. No fever. She’s just not herself. She’s had some kind of illness (cold, ear infection, cough) for 20 days now. She finished the antibiotic last week, but she now has a dry cough.
It’s been a difficult month for us. It’s had some wonderful times too, and she’s made incredible leaps in her language and comprehension. I’m tired today. I need some energy to get through.
A Toddler’s Perspective
Bean and her Dad took a walk to the mailbox tonight. On the way they saw the moon. And then Bean noticed the stars. She raised her arms and said she was feeding the stars.
“What do they eat?” asked her Dad.
She replied, “Peanut butter. And they open their mouths up wide like hippopotamuses.”
Daily she comes up with some creative and startling associations and narratives!
The Big Pumpkin
I had intended forgo the large pumpkin this year, but when Bean and I were at the grocery this one caught my eye. It was so round and such an appealing shade of orange. So it came home with us. I still doubt I will carve it for Halloween (famous last words!), but we decorated it with stickers (mostly I peeled and she stuck). I plan to cut the top open and scoop out the seeds to roast. Bean can have a classic taste of fall.
Open The Heavens
I’m excited. The rains are coming.
Now, you have to live in California to appreciate my enthusiasm. The weather is subtle here. When I speak of rains, I don’t mean the hair-raising, eardrum-splitting drama of a Texas thunderstorm. (Oh, how I miss those!) Even my hometown, Syracuse, is capable of stormy antics. No, the rains here are often mists or light drizzles, though it has been known to pour heavily and steadily here (spring of 2006 was an example). Rare is the thunderstorm here. About a month ago there was a thunderstorm in the middle of the night, the first in perhaps a year — nothing to write about, but still one that woke me — and it generated many comments on among my Facebook and Twitter companions. It was kind of pathetic, and therefore funny.
Here the earth receives no precipitation of substance for about six months each year during the hottest season. The ground shrivels and shrinks up like an O-cello sponge that escaped its packaging. Bean would not nap today, not even in my arms, so I took a long country ramble. As I drove through the hills, I noticed the boar-bristle landscape, the grass stiff and scratchy and looking as though it ached for rain. The stoic trees clutched their leaves, desperate for the the cleansing shower of drops. The air was a gauze curtain of dust and smog. We are parched and poised. And on Tuesday, the meteorologists say, we will be drenched and quenched.
From Weather Underground:
Heavy rain and potentially high winds expected to accompany a significant storm expected to hit late Monday into early Wednesday of next week…
A potent storm system… especially for October… will move into central and northern California beginning late Monday and continuing through Wednesday morning. This will be a very dramatic change from the typical late Summer pattern the area has been experiencing. The origins of this storm Stem from a western Pacific typhoon named Melor that hit Japan a few days ago.
Rain and increasing wind will begin in the North Bay Monday afternoon… spreading south Monday night. Tuesday and Tuesday night should see the heaviest rainfall and the strongest winds. Rainfall amounts could reach 1 to 3 inches along the coast and in the valleys. In the hills… rainfall amounts will range from 2 to 4 inches in the North Bay… with 3 to 6 inches in the Santa Cruz and northern Santa Lucia Range near Big Sur. Local amounts up to 8 to 10 inches are possible in the Santa Cruz and Santa Lucia Range. Winds Tuesday and Tuesday night will increase to 20 to 40 mph along the coast and in the hills. Gusts to 60 mph are possible in these areas. Strong southerly winds may develop in the northern Salinas valley and southern Santa Clara valleys with this storm.
Potential impacts from this storm system include:
- possible mud and debris flows from burn scars from last Summer and this Summer. Persons living near these areas should pay close attention to updated forecasts.
- Urban and Small Stream flooding and ponding on roadways and underpasses.
- High winds that can down trees and thus power lines producing power outages.
- Hazardous driving conditions due to very slippery Road conditions from a buildup of oil over the Summer and debris such as leaves accumulating on the roads.
If you want me, you’ll find me inside with my face pressed up against the window, tracking the raindrops as they wander down the window and watching the trees dance. If Bean is over her cold, you’ll probably find us outside in rain gear pouncing on puddles. The crumpled hills will soon turn emerald green. W00t!!
Intense
OMG, life with Bean has been intense the past week. It’s as though we’ve gone into overdrive. Right after her aunt left, she began clinging to me more, wanting just to hug and be held. After preschool (she loves it) one day we experienced a tantrum that shook the rafters. She had not eaten much snack because she didn’t like it, and in the car she refused her standard travel snack, so by the time we got home she was so hungry she was over the edge. To make her lunch required having her stand next to me screaming to be held and hugged (and I was hungry too!). It got to the point where she rolled on the floor kicking. In the end, she ended up clutching me with her head on my shoulder and fed herself from her plate at the dining table. She says, “Mommy hugging Bean.”
At the same time, she is openly defying rules. She puts something in her mouth that she knows she shouldn’t. I remind her gently. She takes it out, puts it back in, looking at me. I warn her that if she can’t keep the item out of her mouth I’ll take it away. She takes it out of her mouth, only to put it back in a few moments later — she’s either forgotten or is resisting. So I then take it away, and she cries. She says, “You took it awaaaaaaaaay!!!!!” And I tell her yes, I did, and she can have it back later when she can keep it out of her mouth. Then she says, “Hug! I need a hug!” and throws herself in my arms.
She is also asking, “What is the [fill in the blank] doing?” She will ask this question about the same item over and over, e.g., “What is the sandwich doing?” (I answer with several variations that it’s sitting on the counter thinking how delicious it is, wishing for Bean to eat it.) She also asks, “What is a [fill in the blank]?” “What is a duck?” (A bird that goes quack and swims in water.) “What is a baby duck?” (A Mommy duck’s baby that goes quack.) “What is a helicopter?” (A machine that flies with blades that spin on top and its tail.) “What is a cat?” (A furry animal that has four legs and says meow.) The questions are endless. And if there are two things, the larger one is the Mommy: Mommy stick and baby stick, Mommy fork and baby fork, etc. Multiple items are usually Mommy, Daddy, baby, and Grandma/Grandpa/Aunt/Uncle/sister (no brother, go figure).
She woke an hour into nap yesterday crying for me at the top of her lungs. I went in and scooped her up. Her diaper had leaked urine onto the bed and the diaper was soaked, but she was glued to me. So I held and rocked with her for 45 minutes. She would look around the room at the decorations on her wall, and then she would look at me, staring in my eyes. I sense a new level of consciousness in her. I talked quietly to her, stroked her head, told her she was my Hugabug and that I love her, until she said, “Let’s go downstairs.” And yes, I had pee-pee pants. But the cuddle was worth it.
So what is happening, I sense, is that she is in turmoil. She wants to do things on her own and is testing where the limits are, and at the same time she’s terrified and needs/wants me for security. I understand this, but boy, living it hour after hour, day after day, can be draining. And her nap has moved to 2:00-4:00 p.m., which makes the mornings very long. By the end of the day (bedtime at 8:30), I feel completely used up — a mere shell of myself. I find myself going to bed at 9:30 or 10:00, and the to-do list (of things I want to do and things that need doing) grows longer; the rate at which things get crossed off is slower than the rate of addition.
And we are approaching the season of increasing darkness, a time that pulls me not toward depression but toward hibernation mode. I’m glad that there are several upcoming holidays to focus energies toward.
