I’ve spent the evening sketching bones.

Tiny bones. Mostly phalanges, some carpals, but also the pelvic girdle & sacrum. It reminds me of the days once spent drawing maps. You look at a photo and you redraw the lines. There was a time when my maps looked like whatever the map put in front of me was, so I’m hoping to be able to recreate those skills of illustration.

Today someone tweeted a phrase that set off an explosion in my brain that made me IMMEDIATELY go over to Blick and buy some spray adhesive.

My sketching skills are greater than my painting skills. It’s easier for me to manipulate a line from a pencil than a line from paint – not just because the pencil marks can be erased, either. One piece I’ve been trying to make for a long time seems to be something that can’t be just painted, which probably makes it “mixed-media”, but as long as it comes out the way it looks in my head then it doesn’t really matter what medium it is.

Anyway, my night was spent researching paint wash techniques and sketching out small human bones. A canvas is primed, prepped and waiting. Should be fun.

New Chapter

It’s my first day back to work after regular weekend + 1 day PTO for being ill. Both of my physical inboxes and my email inbox are completely full, and the upcoming July 4th holiday weekend definitely has a lot on my plate work-wise as well. This is all good, because it’s better to be busy than bored. The only tough thing is trying to tackle everything in a major DayQuil haze, but I’m just working through one piece of paper at a time.

Taking a little break from that mountain to talk about something else… my book. Oh man, you guys. I’ve started books before, but this is the first one that ever has felt like something that wasn’t an overwhelming project. There’s a lot of work and research involved, to be sure, but at least this one feels like something that isn’t impossible to complete. I looked into getting Scrivener but don’t have the funds to buy a license right now, so GoogleDocs it is (for the moment). My thing has been just to pop open an email or blank Word doc and start writing whenever something pops into my brain, paste it into the file I have (online) and figure out the mess later. There will be research and revisions, sure, but overall it feels pretty solid. I even have a couple extra books that are brewing – like sequels, but also like additions to the collection. It feels good.

So cross your fingers and hopefully this works out.

Back to the regular grind, have a good one!

What Day Is It Again?

Tuesday, I think.

Maybe Monday.

It’s definitely still “weekend”, as I’ve been sick since early Sunday morning. It crept up: all last week I was fine, up to and including Saturday night when J & I went to Sabbat for the first time in months. On the way to the club my back was hurting, kind of like a lactic acid buildup but there wasn’t enough pain to make it be more than a minor annoyance. Drank a rum&coke (okay, a cola-flavored glass of rum) and a Newcastle, but definitely didn’t overindulge. Home around 1 and awoke around 830 Sunday morning with a full-fledged cold that was morphing into something worse.

Met up with some friends for breakfast at Alchemy and tried to ignore it. By noon my plans of heading to Balboa Park for some quality painting time had evaporated into a case of “what in the hell is wrong with me”, and I shivered on the couch, bunched up under my Snuggie and watching the Travel Channel.

Of course the weather was lovely.

It was lovely yesterday and today as well, of course, so I’ve opened up a lot of drapes and windows to try and get things aired out in here. I’m a full believer in the power of fresh air and can’t stand to be relegated to one spot on the couch or in bed, surrounded by Kleenex and despair.

That’s right, I said it.

Kleenex and despair.

Yes, I felt kind of like that.

Anyway, only in the past few hours have I been able to regain some knowledge of what it feels like to be human. Even eating something more than a piece of fruit sounds possible. The house is kind of a wreck but cleaning up is happening slowly, because standing for more than a few minutes at a time is a challenge.

One of the few (only?) good things about being really and truly sick is that you learn to appreciate the little things. Like consciousness. Or being able to do the dishes. Or walking to your car without feeling like the sun is out to hurt you. Also, you learn that your body really doesn’t need a metric ton of food to survive, it’s cool to be minimalist, but whatever you put in there needs to be high quality and natural. Yes, the Little Debby Peanut Butter Snacky Crunch bars are DELICIOUS (she says, as she opens another pack), but if you’ve been ill your body is going to tolerate some fresh fruit way more than the #5 from McD’s.

Anyway, there’s not much I can do except come to terms with the fact that my body needs the rest. It doesn’t have to be moving all the time. It needs to heal up and when that happens, I will move forward from there. I will take it slowly. I look forward to remembering how good real food can actually be. I look forward to some mental clarity that will help me focus on some art & book projects, but more importantly my finances. I look forward to getting back on my yoga mat and back on the treadmill. I started up to the gym again (at least three times last week), and since J is out of town until Friday the plan was to get myself situated into going at least two hours after work. That is NOT happening right now, but maybe my sinuses will give me a break long enough to do a couple rounds of sun salutations.

Besides: there’s always savasana.

This Makes Me Sad

As I read it, I thought of all the times I’ve heard coworkers talk WAAAAAAAAAAY too much about their personal lives, who they’re dating, what they’re doing with those people they’re dating, the “OMG lemme tell you what happened this weekend” etc. All the stuff I’ve heard in breakrooms, smoke breaks, parking lots. The drama, the craziness.

I’ve thought of all the times I’ve gone to a Starbucks – or any fast food / coffee house / retail shop – and heard stuff that the employees are discussing. When my goal is just to get my drink, my cup of ice cream, my new set of pants, my #3 with no cheese, I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR WEEKEND DRAMA or that bullshit customer you just had to deal with on the phone or your friend’s kids daycare issues. Clearly I am not the only one in line, and am willing to bet that the others in line also don’t care.

This isn’t me touting my perfection, either. Many – sometimes too many – are the times where I’ve crossed the line and shared stuff with other employees that they didn’t need to know, or became Bar Buddies with them, and you all know that when you’re at the bar you’re not just sitting quietly, enjoying your beverage. Lots of my coworkers (past and present) are definitely in the “friend range”, and that’s just how it is for me. The majority of us know that we are still supposed to keep it professional, and any time there’s drama, you figure it out behind emails and closed doors. You are still an employee of whatever company you work for, so you still put that face on.

But this is the first time I’ve heard of a “manager” just pulling something like this out in public in front of everyone. I can’t even imagine how awful that guy feels. Yes, maybe he was one of those people who was always a little too loud when it came to personal conversations, or maybe he was always on his phone, or whatever, but I can’t say that for sure because I wasn’t there. You probably weren’t there either, so all we have to go on is the fact that this “manager” humiliated him in front of customers and THEN went on to talk about him (in front of customers) when he was off the floor.

And that’s crap.

http://lilfamilyblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/i-know-starbucks-is-not-an-anti-gay-homophobic-company-by-policy-but/