So tomorrow begins an adventure! We are all getting on a plane to fly to Texas. Other than one overnight in Monterey, we’ve never gone anywhere with Claire. We’re all set!
I won’t have access very much to a computer until after December 1. I’ve created blog posts for the remaining days of Art Every Day Month, but those will automatically publish. I may log onto email a couple times if you want to contact me; just don’t anticipate a prompt reply.
Happy end of November, everyone!
Poor little peacock. This format was too small for him to have a full array of tail feathers.
I’m having an ego moment. Cruising the Internet, I find so many sites by people — especially women — who are creative and generating a living (or at least some income) from it. Friends are making and selling their art. Friends are designing clothing and selling the patterns, and knitting up gorgeous garments. A friend is starting fitness accessory business. Friends write books and hold retreats. Acquaintances are life coaches, writers, have award-winning blogs, make and sell jewelry, and so on.
And I’m here in my little corner of the world, dabbling away. I suspect I’ve always been a dilettante. I walked away from a fledgling career as a professional counselor with her own practice to move here with Husband. (To get licensed here would require almost going through the whole process again — at a cost in money and time that I just won’t spare.) Sometimes I think about setting up a life coaching practice, but what is that, anyway? Everyone seems to be doing it; Google produced 42 million hits for the term. Plus, I’ve been out of the work world long enough that I feel rough and rusty.
One reason I go through sporadic periods of creating is that once I’ve got something made, the question arises of what to do with it. I’ve got knitted stuff stored in my drawers. Art I’ve made sits in a portfolio. Space is limited, so I create less often, and it depresses me to create only to have it sit in the dark. Yes, I could knit for charity — and I do. But there is something satisfying in being compensated monetarily for one’s efforts, and it is validating and heartening to be recognized for one’s work.
I’m not complaining so much as I am musing aloud whether I could be doing more, if I am wasting precious skill and talent by not generating income in some way with all this creativity.
And I’m wondering where these women get the energy. Some of them, in addition to being mothers, work outside jobs, and yet still find a way to create, often at the expense of their sleep and perhaps health. Maybe they can actually function this way. I did it for years in my 20s and 30s, but I’ve found that I’m a crappy mother if I’m exhausted and sick, and I want to be a good mother. I don’t enjoy life when I’m barely able to move or think. There are no sick days available.
So I struggle a bit with… envy? Or maybe it’s worry… a fear that I have retreated into a passive state, almost infantile, in that I don’t generate income, especially from all the dabbling I do. I’m getting to play, while Husband is out there bringing home cash. I don’t have currency in a world where the question, “What do you do for a living?” is unanswerable because I don’t make an income. There was no place on the U.S. Census form that I filled out for our household for me to write that my current job is Homemaker and Mother and that no, I wasn’t laid off and seeking work. It — I — just didn’t count.
I know, wah wah wah. But I do wonder.
Making art every day has taken a lot of my energy, so much that I have virtually nothing to say otherwise. The days are full with Claire. We were all able to get seasonal flu shots last week, and I feel much relief as we are about to embark on our Big Trip next Monday. I realize other bugs might come up, but at least — I hope — not The Flu.
I am knitting. I’m still working my way through The Last Child in the Woods and am steadily reading Home, Marilynne Robinson’s second novel. I’m also gathering supplies needed for our trip. Despite the fact we aren’t lugging a lot of big items, thanks to my sister-in-law’s efforts, there still feels like a lot to remember.
Stayed up too late last night, and Claire woke at 5:30 a.m. today, so I’m headed to bed.
As Tigger would say, TTFN!
Here’s a craft we did tonight. After dinner Claire said, “I want to do a craft project,” and I happened to have the supplies handy. I love the site No Time For Flashcards; it offers great and simple ideas. Here is Claire’s Indian corn.
My sister-in-law and brother love Paris. Claire’s godparents (why isn’t there a better term for atheists? Our other phrase, Emergency Backup Parents, is kind of bulky) recently went and loved it. Another friend also visited Paris a couple years ago. And I? Well, I stayed in an unremarkable hotel on the outskirts of Paris overnight on my 15-countries-in-2-weeks tour back in 1999. I visited Marseilles; toured Fragonard parfumeur; waved at the Eiffel Tower; toured (by bus) the Boulevard de Clichy (past Le Moulin Rouge) and the Arc de Triomphe on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées; breezed past Le Jardin de Tuileries; toured (in person) the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur and Notre Dame; and ate an incredible meal at a forgotten restaurant before riding on through the countryside on the way to whatever country was next. Maybe someday I’ll go back there for a longer visit, with Claire when she is older. I need to update my passport, though.
AEDM is a journey that I take every November, and I am always amazed at what manifests from me. The office is pure chaos, but we can all handle this once a year. As long as everyone is fed and there are clean undies, we’re good.
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.
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. Claire 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 Claire.
This is my fifth year participating in the monthlong event. I’ve been ambivalent about it this year; every year I feel a butterfly rush in my gut, but this year I’ve waffled about doing it at all. What stymied me is my personal requirement that I create one complete piece every day. AEDM is not structured this way — Leah (the originator of AEDM) particularly encourages rule-breaking — but I don’t want to relinquish this one goal. However, with travel in late November, how will I create and upload daily? Well, I decided to break one rule. Since I will be gone the last 8 days of the month, I’ve spent the last 8 days of October making art for those dates. This way, I will have made art for 30 days and still have work to share for the month.
I decided to work in a very small format — 2.5 x 3.5 inches, also known as Artist Trading Cards or Art In Your Pocket. These mini canvases call for simplicity, and one would think they would be quick to make, but they aren’t for me. Just as writing a short, concise document requires careful thought and editing (and therefore time), working with space constraints presents challenges that take time to work on. As Leah said,
“A lot of people have mentioned being a little nervous, a little jittery. Me too. It happens every year. And I think it’s interesting, but also telling because I think those things that give us a bit of the jitters are also those things that are very important to us. So notice if you feel those jitters and know you’re on the right track. And then go create.”
Without further ado, here’s my first piece.
We went out and covered a few blocks. Claire had fun and got lots of comments about how cute she is. She was a little shy about saying “trick-or-treat” at first but soon got the hang of it. People were very generous! She became obsessed with a giant spider decoration. We had to walk back two blocks to see it a second time; she named it Mike.
I ended up carving a pumpkin after all. Claire named it Wendy because it is winking — Winkie Wendy. Claire 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.!)
Claire 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. Claire 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.)
I had intended forgo the large pumpkin this year, but when Claire 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. Claire can have a classic taste of fall.
While I love getting the paints out for Claire, sometimes the paint cups are more ambitious than I want to tackle. They are spill-proof, but they are big and messy, and I am constantly moving them around so she can reach them. The other day we took a preschool field trip to a pumpkin patch where she got to paint a mini pumpkin; they used small plastic boxes with dividers in them to hold paint. The boxes held many colors and yet contained most of the mess. So we went to Michaels yesterday in search of something similar. I looked at the bead storage boxes, and most of them had moveable dividers, which meant the paint would seep into the other spaces. But I did find one that had 12 little containers, each with its own screw top, all of which can be nestled into a box. I filled them this morning and look forward to using them frequently.
