There’s an open door before you
Shed last year’s skin before you go
A gift, upon the hearth below

Postcards, from a swap that Christina organized.

This is not the itsy bitsy spider, but a dead baby desert tarantula in the bottom of an empty bowl (left outside by the front door). Let’s bring it inside for examination! Here, under the bright sunlight in the kitchen:

…oops! don’t panic, it’s not dead, I guess!
Let’s take it back outside:

…oops! Shit! Back up, kids!

This is not the itsy bitsy spider, but a dead baby desert tarantula in the bottom of an empty bowl (left outside by the front door). Let’s bring it inside for examination! Here, under the bright sunlight in the kitchen:

…oops! don’t panic, it’s not dead, I guess!
Let’s take it back outside:

…oops! Shit! Back up, kids!

This is not the itsy bitsy spider, but a dead baby desert tarantula in the bottom of an empty bowl (left outside by the front door). Let’s bring it inside for examination! Here, under the bright sunlight in the kitchen:

…oops! don’t panic, it’s not dead, I guess!
Let’s take it back outside:

…oops! Shit! Back up, kids!

Here’s Ford anxious to staqrt adding his special touch, always a collaborator:

having user-end issues with scanner, grumble grumble. this will have to work for now, the kids need more of my attention.
more illustration friday

Brushing my teeth before the window, I noticed how hazy the horizon looked. Yesterday was so clear and sunny! And today, it looks as if we are covered in a thin veil of smoke. I had to stop brushing so I could look more closely. Squinting beyong the Live oaks, a patch of smoke caught my eye, lifting up between our lot and the one next door.
I spit into the sink and wipe my face.
“Damon, is this smoke?!”

He came into the room for a peek out the window, his toothpaste-breath blowing over the top of my head.
“Well, it looks like it. Wait…”

And we both realized what it was simultaneously: clouds of juniper pollen releasing into the wind.

I guess this means it’s Spring already?

Somewhere between the dishwasher’s rinse cycle downstairs and the moment I usually fall asleep is a quiet time of night where I listen to nothing after a day’s fabric of noise. In the middle of this spell, the silence is usually broken by a pair of great horned owls. One has a perch near the deck, the other a block or so down, and they rally back and forth for several minutes over this and that. It always makes me smile. I enjoy this time. Sleep follows soon thereafter.

A few months ago, a little toy truck of Ford’s awoke me in the middle of the night (in my BEDROOM!) with a shorted battery going BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP chuggachuggachugga and, without opening an eye, I lurched for the toy and chucked it out the window. I didn’t care that Ford loved this truck so much that he took it into the bathtub with him (explaining the short). I didn’t ponder how he’d feel about it’s sudden disappearance.

Well, he didn’t ask for it after the toy disappeared. But I felt the bad karma might return to me. And it has, with the BEEP BEEP BEEP sound of a reversing toy truck rattling from the forest floor below my window. It’s a little elfin hardhat area hammering away at my nerves.

See? This is why I am getting rid of all the plastic, battery-op crap. What’s a Waldorf doll going to do to me? STARE me to death with two beady little embroidered eyeballs?

Ford had my camera and was taking potshots at the clutter. Behold: Trains.

Take a peek at some other people’s corners.

Last week, I mentioned that I manage to sketch whenever I can during the day, right alongside the boys. We do this indoors and out. I prefer outdoors.

A good workhorse for outdoor drawing is a long masonite slab. Ours holds three sheets of drawing paper in a row: One for me, one for Chas, one for Ford. Ford oftentimes abandons the art for something else: playing cars with drawing/ painting tool “x”, playing spaceships with drawing/ painting tool “x”, playing Harry Potter with drawing/ painting tool “x”. Chas imitates Ford until he sees that I am drawing, at which point he picks up drawing/ painting tool “x” and begins to assist me on the page. We work together for another two to three minutes, and then I stand back and watch.

And here we are: I’m now standing behind the glass, watching the two of them devour the carcass of a clean work station. More performance art than painting, red and black paint are beginning to slosh beyond the edges of the masonite and onto the floor. Within minutes, there will be little red footprints peppering the deck and two naked boys running around the yard like bloody red Banshees. Later, I will be rinsing curly pink hair in the bathtub and scraping petechia-red gunk out from underneath longish nails as they watch *tv.

But wait! There are more studios to see here.

* tv is handy for: trimming nails, cutting hair, brushing teeth, taking measurements, but not much else.

It’s hard finding morning time for morning pages. I resolved to do them at night, after the boys went to bed. This made sense because that is when my personal day begins. They were tedious to write in their entirety; I found myself consistently checking my watch at twenty minutes. Maybe twenty minutes would be a more ideal measure of time for me? When I have a 3 hour workday, I’m anxious to get work done, so I have to remind myself that morning pages are indirect work. And the pages, they worked to an extent, but this week has been emotionally-charged and turbulent. Both boys have been sick and Damon pulled a muscle in his back on Friday. Added deadlines and housework have commandeered my time and attention.

I was surprised to find myself writing repeatedly about feeling the need to take the family out of the house for a year. I have strong wanderlust, and I always have, but it feels particularly strong right now. Still, it won’t happen anytime soon, it’s too expensive and I’d prefer living on a boat, which we can’t do (even if it were affordable) until Chas is out of diapers. Imagine that! (Although I know it’s possible –there’s a link out there somewhere I saw once, a photograph of fifteen-odd cloth diapers hung to dry on the mast of a docked sailboat. So inspiring!)

I did the artists date several times this week, a total drug in itself. I have a new travel set of watercolors that fits nicely between diapers and toys in my bag. And a new moleskine notebook, this one with graph paper, that I may begin doing morning collages. In the evening.

What suprised me most this week? Realizing just how important it is to PLAY. Something I thought just might make a little difference apparently makes a BIG difference. I have been trying to remember what I enjoyed doing most as a child:

1. going exploring through the neighborhood, catching reptiles and bugs.
2. drawing. a lot.
3. interviewing my stuffed animals, recording the interview on a portable tape recorder.
4. collecting rocks.
5. watching horses, trying to be with them
6. gardening.
7. taking care of wounded animals.
8. roaming the vet school stalls at TAMU after kindergarten.
9. drawing. a lot.
10. reading. a lot.
11. hanging out in my room

It gave me hints. I realized why I enjoyed being a student in dental school (being bookish, being in a santitized building, feeling important to other people). Why I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was little (and being reprimanded by my grandparents, since it didn’t afford the salary of a medical doctor), why I will always want to be around horses and livestock, and farm, and garden. Read. Explore. I enjoyed reconnecting with my young self through this exercise. It gave me direction for the future (I’m on the right track for now, I think).

I want to read how the rest of the AW bloggers are doing but, oh well, there’s no reading this week. I’m being forced into ignorance. Can’t say it’s my fault this time.