Monthly Archives: March 2021

Projects.

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I’m up to 6 hours of painting. With design, set up, and take down tack on 4 or 5 hours. I have been leaving the design time out of my tracking so far and I don’t want to. I spent over an hour of practice drawings.

I will decide whether I am doing more ceiling (over the stairwell) just to use up the colors of paint I have in smaller containers or whether I am doing walls and doors when I see how I feel on Wednesday of next week. I don’t have a lot more small containers so I’m a little worried about how I’m going to manage having a bit of every major paint color out in a small container. Maybe we need to get some more takeout… This decision also requires me finishing the ceiling above the landing on Monday. That’s a maybe, of course. I’m adding white to show the light hitting the clouds. It’s going to be fussy and fiddly and take a while. I may have to add more yellow and/or more blue.

I anticipate each door taking 4 hours. There are 4 left on the landing. I’m hoping I can do the smallish bits in between in only 6 hours. That would have the landing done in the 30 hours I guesstimated on the first day. Second day? It’s starting to blend together already. Thus I’m writing it down now.

The stairwell piece is going to be an utter nightmare. That ceiling will probably take 10-12 hours because going up and down the ladder will wear me out. The three walls are probably going to take 10-20 hours each. I already know what I want for 2 of the walls: above the downstairs hall I am going to have a rocky outcrop and a lake; the big wall that started out with the mirrors I am going to use the GIANT oak stencil I bought because I want something that is really structured to balance out how much of my stuff is freehand. I like my freehand work but I also really like having some stuff that is more strictly crafted in the middle. The stencils are fussy and difficult and I will swear a lot while I’m using it. I hope I can get that fucking stencil done in only 3 days. That’s a hope, a dream, an aspiration. The third wall above the lounge/trees? I have no idea yet. Hopefully it will come to me. I need a way to bridge the two pieces I already have in mind. Then there’s the hand rail which will probably want another 10-20 hours because I want to do a lot of detail work. Which may be a bit stupid and/or masochistic because that’s a high traffic piece of wood and it will chip. Hrm.

Then I get to downstairs!

I’m trying to pace myself and only work when I have a babysitter here so that I’m not giving up sleep so I currently have 6 hours a week to devote to this project. Thus I’m looking at this work carrying through for another 16-24 weeks. Cheers. Only half a year. No biggie. Or I could increase her hours a tiny bit and have 9 or 12 hours in a week. That would still be fairly reasonable pacing for body strain (it’s divided into 3 days) and it would let me finish the upper part of the hallway in 8-12 more weeks for a total of 10-14 weeks for this project. That’s not terrible. I could argue that it is quite sane and kind to my body with a straight face.

Then there’s the downstairs hallway, the lounge, and the dining room left to be painted. The only reason I’m pushing myself at this point is because the paint really is thick as mud and apparently is going to get less and less usable over time. Joy.

If I can get through the paint I may just not give a fuck about bathrooms or the laundry room or my bedroom any year soon. Please oh please let me finish up the paint before I feel the need to do any of those rooms. And the youngest kid will have to be old enough to express strong opinions before I paint her room.

Oh hey, and I was going to do a whole bunch of gardening this year. Sure… my body can handle this….

I’m sleeping! This is totally a healthy workload… right? I’m getting a pretty good step count. I’m eating SO MANY VEGETABLES. This qualifies as self care while working, right? Don’t answer that. You aren’t the boss of me.

That’s what I mean

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I used to ask my mom strange questions. I remember that I had a few in particular that I’d ask over and over and she’d kind of freak out. One was: “What would be the most important thing for you to keep if we become homeless and we lose our car?” That question really bothered her and I asked it over and over and over all through my youth.

My oldest asks me what I would do if she died. I don’t think she is suicidal–it’s not that sort of question.

When I’m doing work I often like to have a show I have basically memorized in the background. I haven’t ripped the DVDs yet so West Wing hasn’t been my show of choice since I left the US. Here it is Call the Midwife. There’s an episode where a one-show character is introduced. Mrs. Jenkins is an old woman who spent 30 years in a workhouse and all of her children died there. This character exists in the show to show the rich and privileged main character, Jenny Lee, what it is like for people who have really suffered in poverty. Mrs. Jenkins cries loudly “The workhouse howl” as she keens her grief when she is alone.

That episode came on last time when I was painting and my oldest was sitting close to me working on her drawing while I painted. I said, “That’s what I mean. You always ask what I would do if you died. I tell you I would go on living but I would never be ok again. That’s what I mean.”

She looked utterly shattered.

Life is painful. Sometimes there are people you cry over forever. The smallest, stupidest reference to my mother can lead to me crying. That grief is so close to the surface that if a gentle wind blows away the leaves covering it then it goes off like a bomb. Am I still alive? Of course? Am I ok? In a manner of speaking. I smile. I project happiness. But I ache every day because there is a piece of me missing. A piece that I tried so hard to replace with friendships only it never worked out.

I’m almost 40. When will I stop crying over my mother? I’ll let you know if it ever happens.It is absolutely terrifying to consider how much it would break me if I lost a child. Some days I feel like I am held together with paperclips and string. How could I replace that much loss?

I need them to out live me. So eat your fucking vegetables and get regular exercise, damnit.

Chasing happiness

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Recently some dude I don’t really know was talking in a chatroom about how it wasn’t fair that he doesn’t get to be happy. He didn’t get to (insert hobbies/relationship structures) and that means he is doomed to be unhappy. Instead he has traveled to so many countries I can’t name them all and he’s done (long list of interesting things) but none of that counts.

Man. I feel you. I have attained most of the goals I set for myself. At this point… I don’t seek happiness. Happiness is elusive. Happiness is a myth. Happiness is an illusion. I seek connection. (Fuck you pandemic.) I seek the ability to control my brain enough that I don’t wreck relationships with being an asshole. Happiness is a bar too high to even grasp with my fingertips, let alone pull myself up and over.

Last night I dreamed about seeing an acupuncturist. I was desperate to deal with some of the pain in my body and I’m well aware that acupuncture is helpful. I went in to a clinic. It was hard to find to start with and when I got in and got in front of the clinician she told me I could have exactly one needle because she wanted to go on her lunch break and she didn’t have time to fuss with a lot of needles/help. I picked a thing in my neck/shoulder because it is causing intense headaches and limiting my movement for painting. She left it in for 10 minutes (which isn’t a long time in that sort of treatment) and then told me to hurry out. At the payment desk with the receptionist we had trouble figuring out what currency I should pay in. They kept switching back and forth between various currencies I have used and yelling at me for not having a full wallet of all of them. Why didn’t I have baht handy. Where are my pesos? What kind of stupid bitch doesn’t have her yen with her? Where the fuck were my ringgits? I left crying. Even my dreams are painful.

I’ve been looking at photographs of an autumn afternoon in Scotland. This is going to be tricky as fuck. I need to layer blue and yellow and orange and gold. If I try to do that while the colors are wet I’ll end up with green. This is going to take days of adding layer upon layer upon layer until I figure out the correct proportions. It’s not like the clouds in the dining room where I could just slap on blues and whites and greys until I liked it. And the ladder I am going to need to use to paint a lot of the high stuff in the hall is already scaring the shit out of me and I haven’t even gotten it out of the shed yet. Oh boy. This’ll be risking life and limb.

Why do I need to do this? Why is this important? Is it going to make me happy?

Does anything make me happy?

I learned how to paint from doing sets. From creating backdrops that taught you about the characters without them ever having to say a word. I miss therapy. I miss being able to explore who I am and figure out why I am feeling a way and what meaning it has in my story. Now I don’t talk about myself that much. But I can paint.

I am starting a new stage in my life where I am going to be presenting myself to a whole new bunch of people. Sobonfu told me I had to make my own community. I am trying to create the backdrop against which this is going to happen. The people who are drawn to me and want to be part of the story going forward will be influenced unconsciously by the setting I create. Life is like that. People are like that. We influence each other. We change each other. We connect with each other and become something different now that we are more than our separate pieces we are a new whole together.

It is a kind of magic.

Will it bring happiness? Fleeting moments, of course. Will it bring pain? Talk to my neck that cannot stop grinding as I move it. I need to see a chiropractor. Ugh. We only get to live one life. We only get one run at this gauntlet of opportunities. If I do not share what is in my soul because it is too hard, because there is not enough moment by moment reward then I have lost The Game. My children talk a lot about how they want to keep this house forever and go to and fro with this house as the place they are centered. They are children and all children have fuzzy grasps of the future. But some people do that. Some people have a home base and it is important forever. They could be people like that.

I asked my oldest if she wanted to help me paint the hallway. She said she didn’t want to. She wants to see what I create because she likes the way I paint better than how she paints. Sometimes I wonder if she limits her artistic mediums away from the ones I use because she is afraid of comparing herself to me. I’m not actually that great, my love. You will be better than me across the board by the time you are an adult and even your youthful scratchings seem pretty rad to me. She is sticking to graphite and digital arts for now. That’s fine. Your journey is your own.

She is horrified that I don’t mind her reading smut. Oh my darling. If only you understood how very very very softcore your smut is you would understand why I just grin. I am glad you don’t understand. I am glad you haven’t already been reading hardcore for years. I’m glad you understand that your sexual blossoming is still entirely future tense and you still thrill at the idea that someday you will get a real kiss.

That right there is the satisfaction of a lifetime goal. What is happiness next to the surge of power and righteousness I feel when I think I have kept them safe. That’s not a given in this life. And there is no true shame when other parents don’t attain the same goal. Life is so very hard and unfair and terrible. But I broke the cycle in my family for my children. If I had failed it wouldn’t be fully my fault because it would be the fault of the perpetrator. I have sat like a fire breathing dragon over the cache of gold that is my children. I have kept them safe.

This feeling is better than happiness.

My hands hurt and my neck hurts and my back hurts and I feel sad and I feel lonely and I feel frustrated and irritable and like I want to be nasty to everyone and everything. I really need to start bleeding already. This phase of the cycle is brutal.

What I will do is try as hard as I can to speak gently to the children and I will paint as much as I can this morning. I have a three hour window. If I waste it then I only have myself to blame.

It may not lead to happiness in this moment. That’s ok. Happiness on a moment by moment basis isn’t really the goal. I am building for future me. I am creating because I believe there will be an After Pandemic Time when things are different and I will get to build the community I want so badly to have. I will bring people here, to my lair. I will throw open the doors of my soul and hope that all of the breaking open leads to more love in the world. I will try as hard as I can to tell other people that they should do the things that they feel moved to do. They should embrace the identities that are already true for them. They should yearn and aspire and go do the things that they dream about.

We only get one shot running through this gauntlet.

Go.

I do like to do things in contrary fashion.

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In the fall I painted spring. Now that it is spring I am painting autumn. I like to buck trends and all that. I have started on the upstairs hall. The upstairs will be sunset and the downstairs will be early dawn–I want to keep a lot of the soft pink that is currently downstairs.

Recently I was doing a video chat with an old friend and he said, “Why do you have a besom on your wall?” Because I am a witch, naturally. I think of my art as being part of how I try to change the world. It is how I try to change people’s perceptions and emotions. I am drawn to witchcraft because I believe that people have power and they should use it. Power manifests in different people in various ways and you need to figure out what your way is. I am blessed with having many ways that I influence people and I take that seriously.

For now: it’s in a hallway. I am going to do this mural with more limits for the sake of my body. I’m trying to respect the fact that I’m growing old. I got in two hours to start with so far. This one is going to take months because I am getting ollllld. I can’t upload pictures without wordpress being bitchy so I guess I won’t post the pictures here.

The only opinions that matter

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I used to be incredibly insecure about my parenting. I put a lot of effort into documenting what I said and how I said it and I looked to my friends as the arbiters of whether I was good enough or not. But over time and with the demise of most of my close relationships that has shifted.

The longer I parent the more I understand that a lot of the people I chose to be my judges were people who had deep trauma based on the parenting they experienced. Like often feels comfortable with like and in my pre-parenting life I mostly attracted other people who had traumatic backgrounds like my own. We could validate one another and commiserate. It was what I needed as a childless person.

I don’t think I can point at a moment or year when I stopped wanting to know the opinions of other people when it comes to my parenting. But that switch flipped somewhere. Your opinion is your opinion and it isn’t a fact and it isn’t going to influence my behavior so you should go ahead and keep it to yourself. I have noticed this recently when I had an initial impulse to maybe write about an interaction then I felt a pause in my thinking and I instead talked to the kids.

I love having older children. I love the conversations and the intense interactions we have. I love that they feel entitled to have opinions about things that happen to them. I love that they are willing and able to negotiate for changes when they need them. I love that they reflect upon their experiences and can talk about which parts feel ok and which parts need to be adjusted. They think deeply and they express their evaluations with nuance and determination.

They feel confident and self assured when it comes to asking for change and support. I mean, sometimes they frame it as diffidence or insecurity “There is something I want to tell you but I’m afraid you’ll get upset”. To which I reply, “Enh you know that I don’t yell at you about personal stuff I yell about stupid things like chores.” “Hm. You are right. Well here it goes…” Then we have a nice chat.

I am still obnoxious about chore stuff. I go in cycles. When I am overwhelmed by life because of a multitude of factors I yell about chores not getting done on a timeline I would prefer. It is not my best trait. It is basically the last shitty pressure relief valve I have. It’s not great and it isn’t ideal. It’s not constant and it doesn’t overwhelm our life so I am not losing sleep over feeling shameful about it.

I’ve been rereading (or first time reading) books on coping with executive function difficulties. We are a house full of people who struggle. I spoke with a dear old friend recently and he commented that when his son was diagnosed with ADHD he had a “hmmm” moment because he was never diagnosed and he isn’t going to bother in his late 50’s he almost certainly could have been diagnosed if it had been as much of a thing 40-50 years ago. The ways we recognize ourselves through our children is so striking and dramatic. Having children forces you to deal with the traits that you struggle with through a whole new lens. Your children aren’t you and they don’t have your experiences but they have a mix of your traits and your partners traits. Many of us pick partners who have similar enough struggles that we can understand each other.

My children are not me and they are not Noah. They do, however, function as semi-distorted mirrors that reflect back parts of ourselves that are mixed. They are highly capable. They are intense people. They struggle with figuring out how to use their time with deliberate planning so they can get through their list of tasks. They can occasionally really struggle with emotional regulation though these failure modes go in different directions for each of the kids. It’s neat watching their similarities and differences.

It’s almost like watching my personality traits and Noah’s personality traits get turned into the sweets that stuff a piñata and giving birth whacked the piñata open and now the kids are each picking up random bits. Sorry for the pieces that are overly chewy and get stuck in your teeth, kids.

I love them so much and I admire them so much. I feel such tremendous validation that they like me as much as they do. The older kids are definitely getting to the point where they crave peer friendships with great intensity but they want to come back and tell me all about it and share it in retrospect. They want my help understanding dynamics. They want me to help them process their feelings and thoughts. I feel deeply respected and admired.

It’s fucking awesome I have to say.

It is hard for them to go out and make new friendships with the pandemic. This is a rough time for them and all of their peers. But they are finding ways to reach out. They are finding bridges into the community. I’m having mixed feelings about their increased internet participation in life but I suppose it was coming. Oldest is counting the days until she can have a youtube channel of her own and she’s making videos about as fast as she can. The big kids are on Discord. I’m networking with homeschoolers in the area. I have found some families that are around MC’s age and I have found a couple of families close to YC’s age. I think things will be ok once we can get going again.

Now we wait for safety. Something that feels hilariously elusive.