Luna's Baublebilities

Let's face it.  I'm depressed.  It's January.  It has been freakin' cold and a lot of the supplies I had stored in my South Studio (enamel paints for filigree, acrylics, specialized glues for jewelry and textiiles)  froze and are ruined because we had to seal off that section of the house in order to make headway in the battle against Winter.

My North Side Studio looks like this.

It is the only warm spot in the house some days and this is where everyone wants to huddle.  My dye table is covered with other people's junk and stuff from other projects that I would rather do in the South Side studio but can't.  Because it is cold.






See the plastic?  Some days it billows out like there is some enormous, liquid animal trying to push it's way through into the rest of the house. 










The kids have been hacking and snotting and puking for over a week.  I've had a low level of ongoing physical malaise for most of the month.  I've been mentally incompetent and my work ethic is just gone.  Completely.

 The other day I took some time to thumb through some old journals because I wanted to revisit some favorite doodles.  And because I was too lazy to get up and do any actual work.  I discovered a few things;

First,  I was a much more interesting person before I became Maxx's Mommy.  I think that I might become more interesting again in the future - I remember feeling pretty burdened and lame when MB was small, too.  (So - if you have a friend who used to be lots of fun, deeply intellectual, insightful, creative and generally good to talk to and she now has kids and is a total bore - be nice to her, O.K?  It sort of sucks sometimes to have that part of yourself forced to the back burner or into total hibernation so that you can manage your kids and house and etc...)


Second, I found a great doodle I made during a talk by Pres. Monson during the April 2006 general conference.  Isn't he adorable?  Don't you feel bad for him?

Third, I found a good prose poem that applies pretty well to my state of mind this month.  I scribbled it sometime between 8/2000 and 5/2001 - certainly it is a winter poem and was written before we had to put our old Springer, Roxanne, down.  I miss her.

I know that what I need is to get the house clean, get some exercise and banish everything but fabric and dye from my North Studio & give myself permission to drag some beads and findings from the frozen tundra to the livingroom.  Emmeth encourages this.  He would like to help build a necklace.  Or take one apart. 



Anyway - here's the poem.  Careful.  It's ugly.








Welcome to my BioRythmic Trench

a trench = a ditch; a place to channel unpleasant/unwanted stuff from one place to its disposal; a place for smelly men with guns to lie in while they reload and to crouch in while they fire at the enemy; a long hole in the dirt; a place where people piss;

an entrenchment = a thing that soldiers dig and build to keep people out - to keep the enemy on the other side.

Who's the enemy??? 
Surely it is this old dog.

Blind, deaf, lazy, fat, stubborn, inconvenient.

I could just kick her.
But I don't
I know how she feels.

Still contemplating my course.  Still fighting off this cold.

Here's Doodle #2














Inspired by Chris Neri's photo of a Red Tailed Hawk over on Night Flight Images.

Go take a look at the rest of their photos  - really beautiful work.  Chris & Nova have some of their gorgeous prints at the SLC Arts Council gallery in Potsdam.  Nova is a North Country Native with connections to St. Lawrence Nurseries.  The best place to get edible landscaping in Upstate NY!

Why Molly and Bryan and Maxx were so down and out last week.

Sore throat.  Headache.  And worst of all - an internal not feverishness but shakiness, imbalance, a palsy of the bones or something of that sort.  Weariness and incapacity. 

Not to mention the deep cold that wants to sink into the rooms of the house.  I must fight it off with wood and coals all day.

Ginger & lemongrass tea and a nap maybe?  There's oh, so much to do...

January is proving to be a challenge this year. 

The news from Tuscon makes my heart sick.

You can read about house progress (or lack-thereof) over at the Beorningstead but my difficulties go a bit deeper than just the construction project.

Molly is struggling with some very unexpected back to school problems.  It's not really anything I want to get into publicly but it has thrown into high relief my fears and frustrations with the drama and social stupidity of public school - even though this particular drama isn't restricted to school nor is school the root cause, it has  proven to be a very effective catalyst.  Add this to my growing frustration with her academic work and I am very, very tempted to bring her back to Home-school.  Her Global Studies book covers all of world history up to the modern era in fewer pages than the supplementary text we used for the Renaissance in the second half of 7th grade, is written at a lower level than anything we used after 6th grade (when we weaned ourselves of from public school texts) and is full of HUGE pictures and many bullet points.  Honors English is reading A Tale of Two Cities right now, which is review for Molly and they aren't covering half of the information that we covered in home school.  Her teacher didn't know what Cruncher is complaining about when he accuses his wife of "floppin'" against him until Molly explained it in class.  (HONORS ENGLISH!!  Sigh.)  I'm appalled at how sub-standard her education is turning out to be in High School. 

She's still in public school this week because:  (1)  her voice teacher is Awesome and is really stretching Molly's vocal skills.  I can't do that at home.  (2)  She is making friends, slowly, with kids she hasn't been going to Church with all her life.   And (3)  she's got a great Math teacher this year and is actually doing fairly well with math. 

I'm also overwhelmed with paperwork - for the house, for the taxes, for my business.  I've spent the last two weeks trying to convince myself to go into the freezing cold closet which used to be a shower, dig out all of the paperwork and start putting all of the pieces together.  I really don't want to.  But I will have to start Monday.  I also have to pull my business into some semblance of order online - actually building a site (or at least a landing and launching pad) on GoblinsMarket.org, sorting out my supplies from my finished work, revamping my shops, etc...

But there are some bright spots.  For the next couple of weeks I'm taking a class on Tarot symbolism from my friend, Rich Tenace, and I'm really enjoying the class.  Don't worry, LDS friends, Rich and I are not going all Occult and Satanic on you.  The main goal of the class is to explore symbols and learn how meditating on symbols can clue us into things that we already know in within our intuitive selves or sub-conscious mind.  It has been useful for me as I try to navigate (and help Molly navigate) the difficult social rapids we have encountered this week as some of the symbols have helped me remember and call upon skills and insights I learned during and as a result of my own difficult teen years.

I'm trying to spend more time and energy creating and doodling as I contemplate where I want my creative path to lead me and how I want that path to merge (or not merge) with my business.  I am starting a Doodle of the Week feature - On weeks that I'm not completely overwhelmed, I will be posting a weekly doodle on Fridays (?)   Here's the first one. 

The days get longer.  This is a good thing.














. . . .

I got a last minute Holiday Commission to make a hand beaded, hand dyed velvet scarf in sage green with rose accents. 

I wasn't really sure how it would come out, I don't usually work in "subdued", you know. 

But, Wow.  I hated to send it away so fast. 




















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