Month: July 2018

3 New Canvases

I will start with my two favorites, the ones with texture. I like the third one too, the one where I use the Golden Fluid acrylics, but I’m really loving texture right now.

All the paint is dry.

3D painting

The one in the middle reminds me of a bacterial colony. The one at the bottom I call Rage. The one at the top I think I’m going to call Alone Time.

These are my latest adventures in painting, although I already have the canvases primed over again with gesso. Once the gesso dries and the base layers paint, I’ll get started again on something new. I think I’m going to start using hair combs to spread the paint around. And maybe an extra hairbrush if I can find one.

 

More Canvases

My attempts at painting are continuing. I have three little canvas boards that I have been working on over and over again, photographing them at different stages. I’m playing with different applicators to get the paint on the canvas. Right now I’m using a metal Brillo pad. I’ve also got some toothbrushes to use with my paints. Haven’t used those yet though.

I have used all three kinds of acrylics that I have. I can’t wait to get more colors, but for now I will work with what I got. I’ve been flicking paint and layering paint and scratching paint away and using molding paste to make my paint stand up into sharp little points. I can’t wait to get some photographs of those. Hopefully I can capture the effect.  I don’t know if anyone else will like them, but I’m having fun! I like texture and 3 dimensionality.

These are some images I painted earlier in the week. I wasn’t really trying to do anything fancy with them, but I think they turned out interesting. The first one, as you might be able to guess, it’s called Aquarium. The second one is called Night Out. I made the black underlayer extremely glossy, and used metallic paint for the gold flecks

Christian Bookstore, Diet, Domain Name

Angelica has been going to Vacation Bible School this week. She seems to be having fun and they do nice activities. Today she got a little picture frame to take home with Legos around the border. So far though when we talked to her it doesn’t seem like she’s actually learned anything. Maybe the messages will sink in later. But we ask her what she learned about God and she’ll say well we played. Then we’ll say, what did you learn about Jesus? And she’ll say we danced.

Craig has been home for the past few days because it is the time in his rotation where he gets a few days off. So we have been spending the mornings together running errands or just enjoying some quality time before we pick up Angelica. We love the Christian bookstore we went to. So many good books! And there are a lot of homeschool supplies too.

My diet is going well, knock on wood. I think I need to cut back a little more but I am still losing weight. I am so grateful for that.

I’m trying to pick a domain name for this site. I have done a little bit of remodeling on the page, and I would like to go ahead and buy a domain and make everything complete. Plus, if I buy hosting I get more memory. And I’m running low on memory. I’m considering several options for names, but I’m open to suggestions.

I am probably overthinking it, but this is my special little space on the web and I want it to have a good name. I’m torn between something functional, like the Veiled Housewife, and something creative/poetic like October Glow. More people will find the first one, and as I write about head covering and submission sometimes it might make sense. Plus, I like reading blogs by other stay at home women, so it might be nice to be listed as one. At the same time I really like the idea of something super creative and poetic, even if it will never show up in a search engine and some people might not understand why it has the name it has.

Some ideas:

Filigree Moon

November Snow

Sapphire Sea

Pelerine Journal

Red Telephone

Glitter Ghost

 

Invention

Insolvent, insolent, innocent invention,
An open blister where money
And sleep sink,
Tucked in their skin.
He invented the blister,
The pit of pity.
His cash split,
Leaving him with hunger
And insubstantiality.

And yet, like a name,
The blistering invention is as
Unconscious as it is unwholesome

He needed a place for his
Incomplete necessities,
And he crafted one of dark matter,
Negative space.

Unfilled Fields

A glass spy spinning
World wide webs of fashionable metal.
Who sees you as well as
Your habits do?
In the habitual plunder
Of unfilled fields,
No one asks the neuron if she
Is tired as she stretches her
Tongue over the ungrateful pink plane.
Underneath the skilled chrome varnish,
Vermin and viciousness.

Kindle Books

Okay, so I absolutely love books. As should be apparent to Anyone who reads my blog. But the other day I did what was rather on thinkable, and the truth is it’s not the first time in the past month. I downloaded a Kindle book to read on my phone. Actually, three of them. I still ordered two normal books with wonderful scented pages and crisp covers. But the three out of five that could be purchased in an ebook format I purchased that way.

I will miss not having a hard copy of the books, but I ordered ebooks for a couple of reasons. Number one, my library is absolutely overflowing. I have over 20 books that need to be resolved and I have no idea how I’m going to fit them. We are going to have to get at least one new bookshelf if not to over the coming months and after that there’s simply no room for any more bookshelves. So something’s got to give. Some of the books I read cannot be accessed as ebooks. Like the other two that I bought. So for those kinds of books I’m just going to have to find some way to make the house work. But for any book that I can get as an ebook I probably should. We simply do not have the space to keep up with the rapid rate at which we read.

The second reason is that some of them are cheaper as electronic books. It’s not that I’m not willing to spend good money to have hard paper copy, but when you order as many books as I have been ordering recently if you can save 2 or 7 Bucks here or there it can really add up.

The third reason is that I like being able to read on the go. I do like to bring books with me when I go out sometimes, but you never know when you’re going to get stuck waiting at the car dealership or at the airport or get to the movie theater early or anything. And I just don’t always think ahead of time that I might need a book with me. By having these Kindle books on my phone I can read anywhere I am, since I always have my phone on me because it’s smaller and easier to lug.

I can’t wait to write about what I have read.

Mood Instability

For the past couple of weeks I have been on edge. High anxiety, stress, feeling over stimulated, overreacting to things, mood fluctuations. I am tired and hyped up and short tempered and withdrawn all at once. I have had a couple of days, and sometimes a few hours a day, where I feel fine. The rest of the time not so much.

I hope I bounce back on this medication. I hope it still works. I was doing great until that horribly stressful end of my trip back to Virginia. Since then, I have been unsettled.

Tomorrow I have to take Angelica to Vacation Bible School by myself and pick her up by myself. Same thing on Friday. Craig is starting his rotation again and will be on day shift. Bringing her to Vacation Bible School really shouldn’t be a big deal, but I dread the noise and the throngs and all the kids running around and the music playing. I wish I could take a Klonopin before we go, but I can’t drive like that obviously.

Lately I have been so frazzled that I crawl into bed at around 8 and I just kind of shut down. Some days I do better than others. I have been able to go to the grocery store, although I got uncomfortable, and I have been able to hang out with a friend. I have also been homeschooling Angelica. So I have had enough stability to get some stuff done and have a little bit of fun too. So this is definitely not the worst I’ve ever been . But periodically I just crack. All of a sudden I take a dive into depression or I get really irritated for no reason  or I get so over-stimulated I start shutting down.

I’m trying to make the most of the time when I am doing well to do housework or to paint. Painting makes me feel better, and of course house work is necessary. And truthfully housework can even make me feel better when I am able to do some. I don’t do as much as I should, but what I do makes me feel accomplished.

I am trying to keep learning, cleaning, reading, writing, homeschooling, and painting. I’m trying to make sure that life goes on and that I am accomplishing something. But underneath things are not so good.

1st Week of Homeschooling

Our curriculum arrived in the mail at the end of last week, and we have worked diligently on one lesson a day since then. We are using the Christian Light Education curriculum. Specifically, the one with workbooks. It’s nice and easy because everything that you need to do in one day is laid out in one lesson in the workbook. So we get math and language-arts covered. I know where to start and I know when to stop. As a first-time homeschooling mom that is absolutely great. And the curriculum seems pretty good too. At least so far. As students go through the workbooks they frequently have to review and reuse information they have learned in previous lessons.

I decided to start Angelica with the kindergarten 2 curriculum. Kindergarten 1 seemed a little bit to basic for her age. The first grade curriculum is much more comprehensive with social studies and science, but I think the language arts and math would have been right over her head at this point. So I ordered the curriculum for the second half of kindergarten and so far we are just going along. There have been some difficulties though, and we are wondering if it has something to do with her language comprehension – or something else. Hopefully it is nothing. The first week of school can have some bumps for every kid, whether homeschooled or in public school. But between her speech issue, her problems with directions, and her difficulty playing with age-appropriate board games we are going to just check up on Angelica with a developmental pediatrician.

English is definitely Angelica’s strong suit so far. She has trouble with the math. A lot of trouble with the math. She’s having a hard time remembering how to count, although we have worked on this for a very long time – well before we started officially homeschooling. And sometimes she will get the counting right and then the next time she goes to count she will have it completely out of order. We are trying different methods to teach her, from singing to using manipulatives and toys. We will just have to see what works.

We are still using supplemental materials as well. We are using a Pre-K science book and soon we might start a geography book. I’ve been saving these books since she was two. And then of course we have flashcards of the letters and their sounds. We are using those and in a few months might start with sight word flashcards. And pretty much daily we use her dry erase letter and number tracing book. That’s really what’s teaching her how to write. She’s practicing her writing in her workbook, and she’s making some improvements each day, but it’s the dry erase book that lets her practice over and over again and gives her bigger letters to trace. Angelica makes some really beautiful letters in her dry erase book. She seems to have more fun with it too. It is so colorful.

I can’t wait until she knows how to read and I can start getting her science books to study, and books to really get into history. I suppose I could try to get some supplemental materials for those subjects now, but they’re kind of hard to find for her age group and honestly I think she’s got enough on her plate with the language arts and math. That’s a lot of learning to do each day.

I’m trying to be careful not to burn Angelica out. So far she seems to do school willingly, and even look forward to it. I want to keep it that way. Of course, school requires some level of discipline. You can’t just do school when you feel like it. Even if she gets up one morning and doesn’t want to do it we still need to work our way through the lesson, but I choose times to use the supplemental materials very carefully. So far though she has been eager.

 

Changing Dreams

I have always wanted to have books of my poetry published. I wanted to be a professor as well, although publishing was always the priority dream. But I wanted to teach at the college level, and I wanted to have books published and to travel the world and do residencies and win grants. I wanted to get my MFA and get a doctorate.

A lot has changed over the past 10 years. My mental issues have frequently been intense. They have left me a bit too tired to pursue a stressful life. But I think impacting my dreams as well is my happy marriage and my wonderful child and my beautiful home. The truth is that really ambitious people are hungry for it, and at this point in my life I’m just not hungry for it. I’m not saying I’m not writing poetry. I write poetry all the time, by hand and on my phone. And I like to revise it, and to do projects where I use Google Translate to create new editions of the poems and edit those. It is just that I have submitted to one magazine this year (and got accepted!) Poetry is my passion. I am blooming creatively, producing more than ever, since I stopped submitting.  But I have felt less of a drive to do the endless book publishing competitions and to send my work out to magazines. I may still try to get a chapbook published because I have another one waiting in the wings and I tend to enjoy chapbook publishers the most. I like the format and I like the creativity that goes into them.

I just like enjoying my home life and focusing on creating. I want to focus on writing, not submitting. I like to pick up additional creative outlets like blogging, painting, bookstagraming, and editing photos too. I like to spend my time reading. Any time spent searching through thousands of literary magazine or book publishing competitions takes away from doing what I really love – writing.

Once upon a time this wouldn’t have mattered to me. I was so ambitious and so determined, that I would do any amount of drudgery to get published and to achieve what the world would consider to be a measure of success. I wanted to get my voice out there to a reasonably large audience. But now I’m not so sure. I’m comfortable with my life and I’m happy with how much time I get to spend creating, and I don’t want to cut into that time. Maybe when I’m an empty-nester and I’ve reached a new phase of life I will feel differently and try to get published more. Maybe even in a year I will feel differently and go back to submitting my work.  I do understand that without doing the work of submission I will not  be successful,  at least not by the common definition of success. But for now I’m happy with the chapbook I have published and the few magazines that I have been in. It was an honor to be accepted by those publishers and I cherish that.

I guess I’m so busy living a happy life that I don’t really care if other people think I’m successful. I know that I have a good life, which is more than what some of even the most successful people can say. I have a family I adore and I spend all day doing what I love. Maybe it is enough for me to publish my creative work on my blog and just be happy with the readers I have. I appreciate the readers I have. I love to blog. I don’t love submitting my work to magazines

Maybe I am just not an ambitious and type A person anymore. I am much more relaxed and softer. Or maybe my ambitions have just changed. I literally have my ideal life. Happy family, a beautiful home, an amazing collection of books to read, and tons of time to write and do all sorts of other creating. As the years go by I may decide to go back to publishing and I may develop professional ambition again. But for now I like just putting my work out there on my blog and spending time doing things that I love. I am perfectly happy to put my poems out in front of a few people and just enjoy the process of writing more than anything else. This makes me a very different person than who I once was. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but I will tell you I’m a happier person than I was.

Maybe a joyous life with the family you love and days spent doing what you are passionate about is the best ambition to have, and I have met my goals. Besides, as I write I am building a greater and greater volume of poetry to submit to magazines so that when I decide I’m ready again, I will have a lot to work with. And I will be much more practiced at the craft because of all the reading I have been doing and all the hours I have been putting into writing. So hopefully I will come out of this period of reclusion a better writer.

It is time though for me to acknowledge that I am at a different point mentally and emotionally. I have only submitted to one magazine this year. My work has been accepted, which is very exciting. This magazine  is one I really believe in. At this point though, I need to reconsider what my values are and where I am in my life, and what I really care about. Because I make time for the things I really what to do, and I have not been making time to submit. I think I just needed a break. The question is how long the break will be. Right now I feel like my life is a beautiful creative retreat, and I want to focus on that rather than the business end of things.