#Inktober52, #Inktober, "Praying Mantis"

I was about 8 or 10 the first time I saw a praying mantis.  Who could've thought bugs could get so big?!  I ran inside to confer with Dad and showed him the insect monstrosity in the entomology book.  I was disappointed Dad already knew all about them.  We moved the mantis to a place it wouldn't be run over by the lawn mower and that was pretty much it.  I don't have a good story for this week's prompt.  I don't even have a good drawing.  I did this little sketch, thought to myself it looks like an alien, and decided that's good enough.  I have another project I want to work on.

Sometimes life is like that.  In the past, I often spent more time on what other people might want me to do instead of what I wanted to do.  I'm pretty sure nobody really cares if I spend a day creating a better mantis.  The painting I'm working on will make me happier and will have a much longer shelf life.

I've been fighting with myself about living life in balance lately.  I listen to too much news, get upset about politicians' stupid decisions, and don't focus on my own priorities while all this social distancing is providing plenty of opportunity to paint and think about better things.  Hence, I'm going to paint today.  I hope you find something to do that makes you happy today too.

Volunteering at the food giveaway makes me happy, and it gives me insight into people's attitudes towards Covid-19.  I'm less happy about the current attitudes.  Everyone wore a face mask in April.  This week, very few had on masks.  People apparently believe the worst is behind us and we don't have to worry about the disease since the state is opening up businesses even though the numbers in Ohio are going up.  We're less safe now than we were in April.  Wear your mask.  Social distance.  Be smart, stay safe, stay healthy.

In ditch digging news, I went out to the back 80 last Sunday and hit the ceiling when I saw the landscapers who take care of the property behind me dumped a huge pile of weeds and dirt in my ditch, effectively blocking the water flow.  I had already sent a nice letter to the owner of that property to get the landscaper under control.  I didn't receive a response.  I chastised the guy driving the lawn mower around.  I talked to the owner on the phone this week and am pretty sure this recurring landscaper problem may finally be addressed.

I walked back there to check my drainage process another day and felt stunned.  There was no water at all in the ditch.  Wet mud.  It took me a while to actually comprehend I had succeeded in ditch digging.  I felt waves of joy surrounding me.  I'm pretty sure Lake Erie is flooding Canada from all the water I've drained into it.  In more realistic terms, the ditch was about 2 feet of water in it when I started, with plenty of standing water in the yards.  I'll continue to demolish ditch obstacles through the summer, but all that is window dressing.  My ditch works!

My next project is cleaning up my neighbor's yard.  He's old and can't do it and the younger guy who helps out is stretched too thin.  I don't want to come off as all holy or anything about this.  I'll be happier to see the yard cleaned up but mostly I've been happy with my ditch digging exercise.  I'm not disciplined about regular exercise but I can be very diligent with projects.  It's a win/win for everybody :)

#inktober52, "Train"

I used to go to a meditation group once a week.  Our leader turned down the lights and in her soothing voice told us to imagine a beautiful field of wildflowers.  I internally griped, "Why is it always a meadow?", but I complied.  I imagined pretty flowers.  Eventually, we progressed out of the meadow and my grouchy thoughts of sunburn and I found a calm in myself.  I suppose my grouchiness and fears of sunburn were a metaphor for the crap I carried in my head most days.  I got a lot of positives from meditating and our group became good friends.

The place we met was right next to train tracks.  We all giggled the first time a train went by during our meditation and rattled the windows.  Our patient leader gently suggested we could put all our problems on the train and listen to those problems being carried away.  This happened many times.  I dutifully put my cares on the trains.  I can't see or hear a train anymore without smiling and feeling my blood pressure drop.

Meditation comes in many forms.  What I've described above is a guided meditation.  Sometimes I sit at the river and watch the water go by until I find inner peace.  Art and ditch digging can be meditations.  Sometimes I just pay attention to my breathing (which is probably healthy for everyone in Covid-19 days).  Some people focus on thinking of nothing (something I find absolutely impossible).  Some people do yoga or walk.  Whatever works.  I don't think there's one right way to go about it.

For myself, I start out by checking in with myself.  How stressed am I in the moment?  I give myself a numerical grade.  A good day is a 10 or less.  Often, my score is 5,000.  I start counting backwards, sometimes jumping down 100 points at a time until I can feel the stress leaving my body and my breath evening out.  I notice places where I'm sore or tight and concentrate on relaxing those areas.

I often think of meditation as an awake dream.  I get myself relaxed enough to see where my brain will go.  Like a night dream, answers to issues can be seen through a different light.  Sometimes the answers are so obvious I wonder why I didn't see them in the first place, but I doubt I'm the only one who tells myself what I'm feeling instead of actually feeling my feelings.

For example, I go about my day and think about the things I'm doing.  Everything's fine, so why do I feel so stressed?  After calming myself I can see that I'm worried about the state of the world and individuals I care about.  In my regular thoughts, I tell myself I can't do anything about those things so quit thinking about them.  In my meditative mind, I honor these feelings.  It isn't an issue of fixing situations, it's finding my place in them.  Maybe I can't help someone with health issues or a drug problem, but I can go to my food giveaway and feed other drug addicts and elderly people.  I feel good to do that.  Those are people who want the help.  I feel more peaceful which is better for everybody because being wound like a spring about problems I can't solve just makes me testy to be around.

Yes, I have shown you this train before, but having had to paint it twice for this painting it only seems fair to post it twice.  You can see the whole painting here.  I've done more Barbie paintings but haven't seen any appropriate words to show them off yet.

I can hear trains at my house.  They're carrying away my problems.  How do you meditate?

#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.

Ditch Digging

This is just a small part of a willow tree.

Illustrationfriday seems to have been hijacked for someone's personal self promotion so I don't have weekly words anymore.  The Covid 19 pandemic has upset me beyond the forced imprisonment at home.  I had decided to get a dog.  All the shelters are closed.  World events and political idiocy gets me down.  Sympathy for all the people who are or will be suffering is a bigger issue than I can fix. With all this going on I just haven't had the heart for blogging lately.  I've attacked my yard instead.  And my neighbors' yards.

The main duck pond with the tributary ditches I've dug.

I call this the upper duck pond.  If left alone,
I'm pretty sure it would join the other pond.

You see, several years ago Mr. Next Door Neighbor (NDN1) had a dead willow tree on his property.  The city made him cut it down.  Mr. NDN1 had a bad attitude about this and dropped the giant tree into the drainage ditch.  Water has been backing up in all the yards as a result, and the pond of stagnant water that formed in his yard invited ducks and swarms of malarial mosquitoes.  I can't even scream at this jerk because he died.  As I've complained previously, Mrs. NDN1 never does yard work.  The neighbor 2 doors down (2DD) and I have been cutting her grass for years without a thank you or a contribution for gas.  She's certainly not motivated to fix the ditch.

2DD and I discussed burning the willow tree but we agreed the city would probably have an issue with our plan.  I also suggested dynamite.  2DD is aging and can't do ditch digging.  The neighbor on my other side (NDN2) is old and housebound.  He can't do ditch digging either.  I decided to take my housebound frustrations out on hydro-engineering and manual labor.  I've been at this for weeks, ever since Ohio decided I need to shelter in place.

I've been whittling away at this tree root with a hatchet and hammer. 
It may be a life-long project.

The willow tree is no longer the problem.  The current issue is all the other trees and their roots which have grown in the ditch since the jerk started this mess.  I got water to run in the ditch again and dirt and debris blocked it up again.  I dug it out again.  It got clogged again.  3 weeks of this and the ditch is still getting clogged up.  As the water level drops, more roots are exposed which block the water.  Water from uphill poured down.   It rained.  It rained again.  It kept F-ing raining.  I found it hard to offer sympathy to a friend who is living through a drought.

This is how I've been managing my sequestration.  Part of me moans about my sore muscles and many minor injuries and the other part of me is thankful I have a yard unlike people stuck in city apartments.  I look at my birds, threaten my groundhog with my hoe, and toss things in the deer's nest.  I'm determined to have a mosquito-free summer if I'm going to be stuck at home this year. 

Here's some photos of my efforts.  This doesn't even show the whole length of the ditches!

Looking North

Looking South

Looking East -- and yes, that is a lot of directions!

What have you been doing?  Stay well!

"Dice 2"

My mom insists you catch cold if you go outside in winter with wet hair.  This isn't how viruses work but she's immovable on this.  Maybe Mom caught a cold as a child, or maybe Grandma said it.  It doesn't matter.  If Mom wants to dry her hair she can dry it.  It doesn't hurt anybody.  Drinking bleach to kill Covid-19 can hurt someone though.  Don't do it.  Let's severely punish the person who started that rumor.  Damned crazy people.

I went to the store and watched the Asian woman in front of me pile a large quantity and  variety of disinfectants and bleach on the conveyor belt.  I wondered if she's paranoid or if her Asian relatives told her something I don't know.  I went home, put away the groceries, and washed my hands.  That seemed sufficient to me?

I don't know how paranoid I should feel about the corona virus.  I'm pretty dismissive of mass panic and media scares.  It's like weather people who always predict blizzards and catastrophes.  They cry wolf too often, but once in a while it snows when they say it will.  Maybe Covid-19 is a disaster?  But mostly I think predicted blizzards will be an 1" of snow.  You might skid and get in an accident, but it's more likely you won't.  You might catch the virus and feel crappy for a few days and go about your life.  You might die.  We all might be put under house arrest until the whole business dies down.  It could be the apocalypse.  How are we supposed to know?

That said, we're going to have a national and global emergency.  They're closing all the bars and restaurants in Ohio.  Young people are going to starve to death because they don't know how to cook.  Restaurants will go out of business and their workers are going to be in a bad financial situation.  Workers and businesses won't be paying taxes.  Farmers won't be able to sell their food.  Truckers won't be driving all that stuff around.  Multiply by all the other businesses effected.  The stock market goes up and down because nobody knows what's going to happen.  The government spends more to help people, but with fewer taxes the national debt will go up.  People's retirement savings will be wiped out.  More government help, more debt.  Keep multiplying.  It's a mess.

Something I don't hear anyone talking about though is how this all fits in with climate change.  Animals are moving because of the warming weather.  This animal talks to that one and they share their diseases in new and frightening ways.  People eat the animals and catch their diseases then hand them off to others who travel and spread the diseases all over the world.  Antibiotics aren't working on everything, partly because of their overuse and the oversanitation of everything.  We're going to have more pandemics.

Let's be sensible.  Us regular people can't solve all those problems.  We can considerately cover our mouths when we cough or sneeze.  We can avoid going to high-risk places and stay home when sick.  Eat right and exercise.  Smear lamb's blood on the door so the angel of death passes us by.  I'm obviously kidding on that last point.  Lamb blood probably contains Covid-20.

How do you feel about this pandemic?  Have you changed what you're doing or how you're doing it?  Do you know anyone who has gotten it?

I said last week my only other "dice" idea was chopping up celery.  Since everyone will be spending more time at home, and maybe getting sick, let me recommend making chicken soup.  Here's how to dice celery.  You can freeze it in a freezer baggie for later.  Squish out any air in the bag and freeze flat for easier use...

Remove bad spots and trim off dried ends

Slice lengthwise.  I like to keep one end intact for easier handling

Slice across stalks to dice.  Keep the tops.  They're tender and taste good.

"Dice"

I had to take "Color Concept" in college.  This was a mandatory, multi-year course on color theory designed by the college president.  It was incomprehensible.  To this day I have no idea what I was supposed to be learning other than humility since my roommate got consistent As in the course and even went back to the college to teach it.  I also learned Color-Aid sheets of color were persnickety sources of obscenities since they chipped easily when I cut them into 1" squares and they were permanently marred by rubber cement.  At least I didn't set myself on fire doing Color Concept homework like one of my classmates when her propane heater set her messy hands alight.  She survived, but I bet her pain made her hate the course even more than I did.  At least she got out of doing Color Concept homework while her injured paws healed after a midnight trip to the hospital.

I complained about all this to other classmates as we took a break from our never-ending homework.  My pals waxed enthusiastic about Color Concept.  One even brought out a color theory book he'd been studying in his own time.  The conversation devolved from there, definitely not helped by drinking heavily while they talked about stuff I couldn't wrap my mind around.  Yeah, I learned humility, but it still seems to me some people try to mystify others with their brilliance by spreading an impenetrable order on things.  Or maybe I just have a blind spot on the science of the subject?

That said, there are certain usual rules about color I do understand.  Red and green are opposites on the color wheel and stands for Christmas.  Two adjacent colors are often contrasted with their opposing color.  On and on and on.  If you paint a purple iris with green leaves, well, nature naturally gives us nice combinations.  Yellow and black wasps scream a warning about their stingers.  I think we all intuitively get the obvious rules.

Novice artists are often afraid of color (though some embrace it from the start).  Many doodle and sketch in pencil or pen to develop skills.  When they start dabbling in color they often dislike the messiness of it all.  They're timid in their approach.  They can make some unpleasant choices.  Push on!  Keep trying!  It will eventually start coming together, whether or not you take expensive and incomprehensible college courses on color theory.

Computers make a lot of this kind of thing so much easier these days.  Create something, change your mind, try different combinations.  Roll the dice and see what happens.  Yeah, that's a stretch for "dice", but contemplating dice made me think of color charts.  Hey, don't stifle my creativity!  It was this or chopping celery :)

"Princess"

I've been playing with Barbies lately.  I know, it doesn't seem like me.  Maybe it's time to get in touch with my inner child and move past my disdain for dolls?  Well, I'm not actually playing with dolls.  I'm just painting 2-D Barbies, and the more I paint them, the more ideas I have for them.  Maybe this is the point of play?

I recently started a painting (not this one), knowing that most of an object I labored over creating was going to eventually be painted over with something else.  This was an irritating decision, but I decided it's unavoidable.  Enjoy the process.  Experiment.  Be curious.  See where things go.  If it turns out badly, paint over it.  Talk to Barbie.

You can't learn anything new if you insist you already know everything or if you're afraid to try.  If every painting is a masterpiece, it devalues the path to your actual achievements.  Be willing to fail.  Learn.  Grow.

Barbie is a lot like fairy tale princesses.  Pretty and special with her handsome Ken.  She has an endless happily ever after where nobody gets sick or old.  Being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be if Meghan Markle is any indication though.  Good for her for deciding what she wants her life to be, and good for her to pick a husband who supports her choices.  Live long and prosper.

I think a lot of us are invested in the princess fantasy.  Having a foot small enough for a glass slipper can get you out of scrubbing floors forever.  Who wouldn't want that?  Sounds great.  I hate washing floors.  It's too bad I have average sized feet and I've never met a handsome prince who wants to measure them.

Fantasy is a plus and a minus.  Creativity leads to many wonderful things.  If we can dream of something, we can work towards making it a reality.  If we get mired in our dreams without doing anything, we live in poverty with dirty floors.  We marry the guy who turns into a beast instead of turning into Prince Charming.  We whine it's unfair we weren't born princesses.

Play is important.  Kids have to play to learn.  The more fun the learning, the more they learn.  Who decides when a kid is too old for that kind of thing?  Probably somebody who wants the kid to be quiet or live out the aspirations of the person banning the playing.  Evil step-mothers who envy youth and beauty aren't the only ones who squash the joy in kids.  Sometimes even the best intentioned people take away others' joy because that's the way they think it has to be.  Give those people Barbies.

I've been keeping my thoughts to myself lately because I've been bouncing between outrage and depression as I watch the destruction of democracy in the US amidst others' apathy and misinformation.  It didn't seem very useful to spread those kinds of feeling around.  I've been reading in Robin Hobbs' books instead, in other words, escaping into fantasy.  Kings, queens, princes, and princesses -- they're all great if they're fictional in a fictional world and all the blood is red paint.  Maybe I should paint a Farseer assassin Barbie?