#inktober52, "Yellow"

I had to stop working on my ditch because I wrecked the upper right quadrant of my body with too enthusiastic ditch digging.  Apparently, going from winter sloth to sustained hard labor is a bad idea?  Even worse, I spent my convalescence watching too much news and making face masks.  I'd rather dig ditches than sew.  I'm pretty sure the mask shortage is a Republican plot to domesticate me.  Okay, I'll do it, but that doesn't mean I have to do it with grace -- though I got better at it and was happy to give the masks to some friends.

I finally felt better enough to attack the ditch again and started stalking out to the back 80 when I was stopped in my tracks by a varmint who hissed at me with all 50 of his needle sharp teeth exposed.  A mole?  A shrew?  Hit it with the hoe!  Except I never actually kill varmints.  I just vociferously complain about them.  I looked closer.  'Possum baby.  Aw, he went from kind of ugly varmint to absolutely adorable in a second.  Don't question the logic of this.  It just is.

The grass gives you an idea of size but I actually measured for the vet.
This guy's body (not counting tail) is about 4" long.

When you find wild babies, the first rule is to leave them alone so they can reunite with their mothers.  I went to my ditch and tried to use some restraint in my digging.  I stopped myself from overdoing it and checked on the baby.  Still in the same place.  No longer snarling or hissing.  I made calls to find an animal rescue that's still open during our Covid lockdown.  Finally, someone reluctantly answered.  She ordered me to leave the baby alone.  I went back to my ditch.  I took a break and googled opossum orphans.  I tried to get the baby to lap water from an eye dropper.  He was not happy.  I reassured him that one way or another he just had to stick it out for the day.  I'd bring him inside that evening if all else failed, etc.  He seemed content enough.

The temperature dropped and it started to sprinkle.  My reluctant advisor called and told me to check on my baby.  It was gone.  I looked around and exclaimed, "It's a murder scene!"  Mama opossum and 3 of her babies were dead in the midst of trampling deer tracks, but mama's belly was wiggling with baby feet sticking out.  You see, Australia isn't the only place with marsupials.  Opossums are America's kangaroos.  Sort of.  They have a pouch like kangaroos at any rate and the babies crawled in there to suck at the soured milk and warm each other up.  Reluctant Advisor advised me to pull them out and put them in a box.  Ew.  I got latex gloves and did my duty, but the babies held on with their clever little hands with opposable thumbs.  I found a couple more babies hanging onto Mama by her neck.  They looked pretty cold and weak, but still living.

My advisor told me how to care for my babies and my heart fell when I learned I had to feed them every 2 hours.  I went through that with a puppy once.  It's miserable, but I resigned myself to the task when at the last moment a rehabbing vet agreed to foster my babies.  Halleluiah!  She even seemed happy when I asked her to give them back once they're big enough to survive in the wild.  You can see her Facebook page with cute baby animals here.  So, I'm hoping my babies survive and am looking forward to a summer with opossums.  They're nocturnal though so I'm not sure I'll ever see them again once they're back in the wild.

4 babies really glad to be in a warm box.

My apologies for infrequent, inconsistent posts.  The state of the world has me turned upside down and inside out.  I'm hoping everyone is well and finding creative things to do while the plague blows over us.  I made the art above for Inktober's "red" with the best intentions of posting.  It's my take on the corona virus.  I liked it better in red but decided to make it yellow and pretend I'm in sync with everyone else.

"Repeat"

I got out my high school year book because my classmates decided to have a reunion tomorrow.  I decided to go since a friend I haven't seen since then is in town and I got out the book to study and remember people.  I bet whoever planned this outing remembers everyone without studying, but I'll be the first to say that I wasn't all that invested in high school. 

Apparently my school had a lot of activities: theater, sports, Glee Club... whole chunks of my yearbook are devoted to these things.  I thought we had football so we could kiss boys from other schools under the bleachers, but I guess there were people with "team spirit" who cared that "we" won the regionals.

I brazenly cut out whenever possible.  It was boring to keep coming up with ways out of class so I took a teacher's pad of passes and filled them out to explain my presence in halls during class.  That even got tedious so I started writing myself out of classes for the entire school year, then I decided to give myself permission to be on the grounds too (to take photos) which made it easier to leave school property.  Whole absences weren't a problem because I had my parents' signatures down pat.  Mom didn't like being bothered with absence notes anyway.

Imagine my surprise when the assistant principal blocked my way out when a school assembly was called.  I mean really, who would willingly go to an assembly?  But I was marched to the gym where I chatted with my pals in the far off seats where kids without "Glee" hung out.  People said my name was called, but I laughed until more people insisted I had to join the activity in the middle of the gym.  I didn't even know what the topic was, and sure didn't want to embarrass myself by being in the middle of it.

National Honor Society.  You Have Got To Be Kidding Me.  A photo was taken of me ready to bolt.  That moment still makes one of my friends bust out laughing.  Okay, I admit I didn't want to be in school, but I did the bare requirements to get A's.  So totally uncool, but all those A's let me get away with all my bogus hall passes.  I swear karma caught up to me for all this when I became a substitute teacher.

I was further surprised when my classmates voted me "Most Artistic".  Since I cut out of class so much, I didn't even know my classmates were aware of my existence.  For those of you who remember Greg, he definitely didn't see that paint roller coming :)

I painted that on the wall

All this seems a million years ago and mostly reminds me I'd like my younger body back and fewer wrinkles.  Alas.  Oh well, I assume some of my classmates have gotten fatter or balder or something.  I'll choose to remember them as they were uh, um, some time ago before they started having class reunions every 5 years instead of 10.

I finished my painting and the varnish is drying.  Maybe it will be in its new home next week and I'll be able to show you what I've been working on.  I think I'll start something new.

Forgot to explain the "repeat" in this, but reunions make me feel like "Groundhog's Day".  Same people, same friendships, over and over.  I wrote something a lot less irreverent about reunions giving us the opportunity to get in touch with ourselves, but looking through the yearbook sent me in a different direction.

"Pattern"

I used to look at my bedroom ceiling and mentally measure the uneven spaces between the dark wood beams that slanted upwards to 15' on one side.  I'd contemplate the texture of the wood grain in each beam and the diseased white paint between each.  It was a humid disaster in the Glen, so Dad covered the paint with acoustic ceiling tiles.  Then I contemplated the textures of the ceiling tiles instead.

I was bed-ridden more than once as a kid, and we didn't have TV when I was really young.  That didn't leave much more to do than study ceiling tiles and beams.  I listened to my heart beat and my breath go in and out, then decided to see how few breaths and heart beats I really needed.  Thdump, thdump became baa... dumm.  Baa... dumm.  In ever widening spaces between each.  I think I accidentally discovered Yogic methods of meditation and healing.

Mom likes to say that boredom is good for kids.  It forces them to amuse themselves, even to the exquisite boredom of slowing down heartbeats.  I counted the dimples in the ceiling tiles and learned to count even through my dreams, waking up and finding the time on the clock with radioactive numbers was exactly what I expected it to be.

Sometimes I miss that kind of boredom.  Not in a way of actually wanting to be that bored again, but missing the control I had over myself.  It's harder for me now to pay attention to the times when I need to slow down the pattern of my breathing, and I can't slow my heart like I did back then.  As we get older, it seems more and more like life happens to us instead of creating it as we go along.

When we learn something for the first time, we don't know that we learned to do something hard or impossible.  When we're older, someone has already told us that you can't do that kind of thing so we probably won't try, or we give up too easily because we don't expect it to work anyway.  Or we have already figured out that there's absolutely no value in counting dimples in ceiling tiles.

Sometimes I think art is the same kind of thing.  Exquisite boredom and focus in a world of possibilities and mysteries.  For me, the joy of art is the process, and sometimes I'm happy to have something pleasant to hang on a wall afterwards.  People who buy art are buying an experience.

I often make patterns when I'm stressed.  It's more useful than examining ceilings, plus I end up with patterns to put in the backgrounds of other things.  I had a job that actually paid me for doing that kind of thing too.  Some of my old clients still carry my designs.  I swear I should've gotten royalties for this stuff.  I'm  only taking credit for the good designs on this site, and I still bemoan this company's product shots.

If you're interested in the production side of things, I created the page of patterns for Williams & Bennett to show how the patterns of a 5-high tower of gift boxes would look in either red or green backgrounds and with metallic gold ink.

"Remedy"

We often hang onto things that aren’t good for us. It can be a physical thing like Grandma’s broken figurine, but the really damaging things are the thoughts and feelings we keep in our mental basement. It’s like keeping asbestos. It’s not good for us, will eventually kill us, but we’re so used to having it we don’t bother to throw it away – or maybe we’re even afraid to throw it away without a HazMat suit? I dreamt of sending this garbage down the river in paper boats, one paper boat per person or situation, and the boats bobbed on the water in a long line, disappearing around a bend in the river. Seemed like an excellent “remedy” to put into reality.

First, I had to remember how to make a paper boat...

#1 Get an 8 ½” x 11” piece of paper.
#2 Fold it in half. Ooh! A different pattern on the back side! I’m thinking darkness one side, letting in the sun on the other.
#3 Fold the corners down to the middle.
#4 Fold up the leftovers on both sides. Now you have a paper hat.
#5 Stick your fingers inside and squash your paper hat into a diamond.
#6 Fold up the point on both sides.
#7 Put your fingers inside again and squash it into a diamond again.
#8 Pull the tips apart, and presto! You have a paper boat.

Next, I had to identify how many boats I needed. I wondered, could I put Monica, Mark, and Sylvia on one boat, or did I need a separate boat for each of them? Could I make one boat for each repeat offender, or did I need a boat for each situation? It seems like an awful lot of boats to make, and just the idea of it makes me feel too tired to start folding, but it also seems like labor is a meditative thing in itself and worth doing. I’ll try not to think about littering up the river with a ream of paper.

I spent my morning fooling around with this concept, and it dawned on me to make boats like I did when I was a kid. Mom doled out paper like it was a precious commodity, so I made do with bark and leaves and other things I found along the side of the river, saving my paper for important stuff like drawing. I put flowers and bugs on my boats and sent them off with my best wishes to Lake Erie.

Mom will howl about how paper is expensive when she reads this, and say she was virtuously thrifty, probably with a side rant about my niece wasting paper after one line when she doesn’t like that line. Let’s make a boat for that too. We don’t have to remind Mom that I like making boats or point out I’m the one who bought my niece paper so she wouldn’t have to justify her creative pursuit of excellence.

All this garbage clutters my mind. It can be little stuff like Mom’s rants about waste, or it can be big things like getting stabbed in the back, or stabbed in the front for that matter. It’s all drifting down the river, around the bend, and out of sight.

Where Go the Boats?
By Robert Louis Stevenson

Dark brown is the river.
Golden is the sand.
It flows along for ever,
With trees on either hand.

Green leaves a-floating,
Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating –
Where will all come home?

On goes the river
And out past the mill,
Away down the valley,
Away down the hill.

Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore

"Breakfast"

I spent most of my childhood looking forward to August. The first 2 weeks were Girl Scout camp, and the last 2 weeks were Grandma's. Good breakfasts all the way around, but the best were at Grandma's.

She was round, jolly, and straight out of Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Want". In fact, everything about her was a demonstration of freedom of want. The candy jar was always filled, the table was heavy with dinners, and breakfasts were made to order whenever my sisters and I woke up in the mornings -- until 10:00. I overslept once and was informed the kitchen was closed. I had to eat cereal with sour currents on top with Grandpa. I never overslept again.

The best breakfast was when I was about 8. Grandma was smiling in the kitchen when I came down the stairs. She asked for my order, and I put some thought into it. I didn't get these kinds of luxuries at home. Grandma was so willing, so loving, I put her to the test.

1 poached egg
Blueberry waffles
Bacon
Fresh squeezed orange juice, with pulp

Grandma looked at me with shock. I'm sure she never considered that I would stretch her morning amiability so far. I offered to revise my order, but she said it was okay, and heaved herself under the cupboards for the waffle iron and mixing bowls. I hopped around and gathered the ingredients while popping fresh blueberries in my mouth in my excitement.

It was fun to cook with Grandma, and when other people in the house realized what we were making, we had an audience and welcome takers for the waffles. Nothing had ever tasted so good. Fresh maple syrup from Amish country and a light dusting of confectioners' sugar sifted over top, on the dishes my great grandpa had made when he worked at Hall Pottery.

I already loved Grandma, and I loved her even more for that breakfast, but I never tested her again. I ate poached eggs or cereal the rest of that visit to show her my appreciation. Best Grandma. No wonder I longed for August all year.

It's funny about memories like this. The obvious illustration should be Grandma and me in her glossy turquoise kitchen with sparkling white cabinets, and windows that looked out to Grandpa's apple tree -- but I don't want to touch this memory with something less than perfection, and that kind of perfection just isn't going to happen this week.

In case you ready last week's posting, my plumbing issues have been disastrous. I had to call the insurance company and have had very hot, very noisy machines in my house all week trying to dry things out. I still have 2 of the machines, and I'm just not going to try people illustrations with that kind of disruption going on. I'm not even sure I'd like to do a picture of Grandma. She's perfect in my memories.