Friday, July 30, 2004

Oh Where Oh Where Has My Sanity Gone....

My house is upside down with electrical work going on, and my dining room art space is a cluttered mess. But the good news is, we've been talking about wiring my studio (the garage) so I can use my kilns for, oh, five years now, and by this fall, it will actually be a reality! (It's a two step process, involving upgrading the electric service, a concrete floor getting poured in the middle, and then the final electric hookups, but it has begun! Hurray!) I'm so excited. I've been cut off from doing my sculptural stuff for so long because I had no way to fire things, and was tired of creating pieces too delicate to store indefinitely and then watching them get broken. Pretty soon I'll be able to play in 3D again! Woo hoo!

Things are hectic and cluttered and messy, and my mental state matches.

Mikro is starting to get back on track with sleeping (maybe).

Here's a recent shot of Danger Boy in action, probably about a minute before he clocked me with the hammer...



And another: Warning: crazy twiddling nursing toddler .

And the latest WITW exercise: a collage:

Saturday, July 24, 2004

Happy Blogiversary to Me

It has been a whole year.  I can hardly believe it.  A good, but exhausting year.  My son is a toddler now.  It seems like only yesterday that he was a funny looking little newborn, and this was a brand new blog.  Tempus sure does fugit!

Today I am nursing a painfully scratched eye, which seems to be highly sensitive to light, courtesy of Mikro's attempt to claw it out.  Ouch.

My husband is moving furniture frantically because tomorow we are having electrical work done here, and there needs to be room to work...

The only good thing about the upheaval is that he has located a bunch of my art supplies that had long been lost in the clutter. 

Uh oh.  Poopy diaper alert.

Friday, July 23, 2004

The Incredible Non-Sleeping Boy

Just checking in. It's been a hard week, because Mikro's routine has been disturbed, and his sleep is completely erratic at the moment, which means we are both exhausted and crabby!

He had his 15 month Well Baby Care visit, and he's now 31 inches tall, has a 17 and 7/8 inch head circumference, and weighs 21.5 pounds.  Poor guy got four shots and had a blood test.  He was screaming hysterically until I took him outside and laid him on a blanket in a shady spot on the doctor's lawn and nursed him.  That made him happy again.  Happy enough to head up to Home Depot and spend another $2K on fencing material to keep his danger loving little butt confined in the backyard.    The Boy loves cars and thinks nothing of running for the street to go say hello to one.  Hence our obsession with fencing.

Re Walking In This World:  For some (unknown) reason, I've been more resistant to doing the morning pages (MPs) this week, though I did get them done (but in the afternoon a couple times). They are pretty whiney about sleep deprivation... I have done all the tasks, and I'm going to count going shopping for plants and art supplies as my artists date (AD). I bought two gorgeous orchids that I hope I'll soon have the time and energy to paint. Unfortunately, the only art making I've done is a quick sketch of the boy when he finally fell asleep. I still have to do my walk, which I hope to do once the thunder and lightning is done for the day.

Last week it was easier to keep up my momentum.  My AD was great- I watched Le Mysterie Picasso, which made me want to go play with paint.  And it was terrific to see him rework things and to watch how a paintng evolved.  Very cool!

 

Thursday, July 15, 2004

Mood Absorption

I think I am a toxic mood absorption sponge. When I am around someone who is depressed or pissed or miserable, it feels like I get infected with their bad mood. Kev is in a lousy mood, and it has rubbed off on me. Things are not real happiness, rainbows and fluffy bunnies here at the moment. Sigh. My tendency is to just withdraw and then into a depressed lump on the couch, but I'm trying to fight that. Not real successful so far, but I'm trying.

And so far I'm doing my morning pages, which seem to be a bitch and moan fest... Still have to do my artist's date for the week. Not in the mood.

Saturday, July 10, 2004

Where I've Been and Where I'm Going

It seems like its been a really long time since I updated. Let's see if I can fill in the blanks.

Mostly, I've been painting and sketching, and dealing with cranky teething boy.

On Saturday July 3rd, we went to Home Depot and made them considerably richer, ordering a four ton load of landscaping materials. We just stayed home on the Fourth, because we didn't think Mikro would do well at the late evening fireworks party we were invited to.

Kevin built a temporary enclosure in the backyard to keep Mikro out of his work zone, and give the boy a safe place to really run around. He had a blast! He also tried his big plastic ride-in car for the first time, and laughed hysterically while Daddy pushed him around. He even figured out how to propel it with his feet, but only in reverse.

On Monday, Kevin spent hours in the high humidity heat blowing up one of those inflatable bouncer things. It is six feet in diameter and about three feet high. I can't believe he stuck with it and got the thing blown up. We put Mikro in it, and he liked it for about thirty seconds, then started howling because he couldn't figure out that only the door area was big enough to exit through, but the windows were not. We rescued him and amused him with the car.

Kevin went to work on Tuesday, then was off Wednesday to take delivery of the landscaping tonnage, and Thursday was supposed to be get started day. Well, they didn't have the gravel in stock, and it wouldn't come till Friday, so nothing could be built before the weekend. Turned out it took Kev all day with a wheelbarrow to relocate the stones to the work area from the driveway.

Next day we ran errands.

Friday he went to work, and then to his Mom's to fix her heating system, which decided to turn itself on in July. He got home late, after the kid was literally screaming inconsolably for an hour, and we proceeded to have A Major Argument.

So, its a tense weekend. He was outside all day moving a ton of gravel and then starting to dig out the hillside where the Great (Retaining) Wall of Croton is going to be built. After we get the retaining wall done, we get to pay a contractor to chain link the backyard for Mikro's safety.

I just signed up to do a Walking in This World group on Wet Canvas, an artists board that I frequent. WiTW is the follow-on to Julia Cameron's original Artists Way program. It looks like an interesting journey. I'm hoping that doing it with a group will get me to stick it out through the entire 12 week program. I generally fizzle out in about week four of the Artists Way when I do it solo (and it is not a coincidence that week 4 is Reading Deprivation Week, something I have yet to successfully endure!) So, I will be busy with that, and my pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding series of paintings (which you can see on my live journal if interested), and Mikro, of course, for rest of the summer.

Thursday, July 01, 2004

Painting again. Yay!

It's just an underpainting, done with no pencil sketch, all brushwork, but at least it's something. You can see it on my live journal.

Speaking of photos, thought I would post a couple of Mikro with the grandparents.

Here's Grampa:


And here is Nutty Gramma (yes, we call her that, and it was HER idea!), when she was behaving herself:



Now if blogger behaves and actually displays them without forcing them to the bottom of my blogroll and leaving a ridiculous amount of blank space, I will do the Snoopy Dance of Joy.