Softening the Blow

This is the nearly finished art project. It's made from a wall mounted medicine cabinet. One of the two sliding doors remains. I removed a lot of the silvering from the mirror so it shows a vague image under the right light conditions. That doesn't seem to have shown up in these photographs, but oh well. This is the lady. It's a papier mache mask, finished off with layers of dark pink and apricot tissue paper, then finally covered with glittery white tissue paper. I was trying to get the mask color to compliment the hat. I'm pleased with the result.

Her "pearls" are flailing wildly.

I don't know about this exposure. She looks not-so-good.

Here you can see the cloisonne bird pin she wears on or about her left breast, sort of.
And she has a couple of bottles of eau de toilette there in her cabinet.
I'm wearing that plaid skirt that's not fit to wear in public. That's my left foot, one of my finer qualities.
On the other side of the cabinet are seven narrow drawers that pivot out on a central dowel. My right foot, the other finer quality, shows up in the mirror.

There are assorted trinkets and knick-knacks in each drawer. I think I will paint the inside of the drawers before next week. The project was due Thursday and I am all but finished with it. I still want to paint inside the drawers and attach a narrow skirt to the bottom of the cabinet. You can see the proto-skirt poorly attached in the previous photo.
This is how it looks with the drawers all closed. The skirt is more obvious in this shot, too. It has fat bun feet which I want to show, but the blocks that hold the feet need to be covered.
I did not photograph the back. It's covered in the fabric from which I made the skirt, and has a leg that hinges off the center near the top, giving it a tri-pod, easel effect. It's made to sit on a table, at about table height anyway. It could also hang on a wall, but that would make the feet seem superfluous. Eh, whatevs.

The final critique of this project will occur at the first class period after spring break, which started for me yesterday.

Yes, I am on spring break. I had an exam in Death and Dying on Thursday, and though I waited later than I should have, I studied to what I hope is good effect. I feel pretty good about the test. I had an exam in that bogus Fitness and Wellness class on Monday. Made a damned B on it. I was supposed to know that HDL is the good cholesterol, but I thought the LDL was the more favorable. That, and prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men. I guessed lung cancer. Lung cancer is the most deadly cancer for women and men, but the most common is prostate for men, breast for women. Now I know. It was a high B and I basically don't give a shit. I've got two other tests in that class, and I can pull the grade up to an A if I give it half an effort.

I would have had two exams on Thursday, but I DROPPED THAT MADE-UP-BULL-SHIT CLASS!!!! Can you tell I'm excited about that? Nevertheless, my week was very busy, which is why I haven't posted since Wednesday, and that was perfunctory.

There's more, but none of it relates to this topic so I'll save it for another post, hopefully to be seen in this location very soon. Stay tuned.

Quote of the day

"I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense."

-- Harold S. Kushner

A better day today

This is what I've been working on for my art class. I took this picture yesterday, and have since put a couple more layers on the front of this face. She looks a bit less wrinkled now, I think. I hope. This mask is one component of the cabinet I'm decorating. That's not a good way to describe what I'm doing, but it's the best I can come up with at the moment. I feel better, happier, more satisfied having worked on the mask this evening.

It's been Monday all day. That's not unusual for this time of the week.

I took the midterm exam in my Wellness class. It was simplistic. Simplistic is on the annoying end of the spectrum. It's better than frustratingly inaccessible, though.

And speaking of inaccessible, I dropped the Social Psychology class today. Yay! Sing and dance for joy, everyone! That course offers nothing that is in any way significantly useful to my life. That's one less midterm exam I have this week, too.

Today has been better than yesterday. Diva and I were not in the same house together for more than perhaps a couple of hours, and then we were in different rooms. She's asleep now.

I have an annoying headache. I'm trying to think it away. So far it's not working.

And I need to study for my Death and Dying midterm. First of all I have to read two chapters in the book. It gets more complicated after that. I take that test on Thursday.

Oh, do you remember last week, was it Monday? I had an exam in my Behavioral Stats class. Guess what I made on that test. Go ahead. Guess. Oh, I can't stand the suspense. I made a 97 on that puppy!! Yes, I feel good.

Off to study now. Think happy thoughts. Clap for Tinkerbell. Et cetera.

Look what I found!

I finally downloaded the Christmas pictures from my camera. Hey, I did it before Easter, and that's pretty good for me. I like this first one, fuzzy with lights shining in the semi-dark. The second one here shows a somewhat better view of how this "tree" is constructed. I designed and Superman made this tree a couple of years ago. It's simple. It stores well. It's a series of rings cut from a sheet of thin luan plywood, then suspended from each other by a small chain. It looks really cool when it spins because of the way the rings are canted, but when we plug in the lights the cord prevents it from spinning. It's all for the best, as this way the ornaments don't fling off and crash into the walls. It's important to think about these things.

What else do we have? Ah, a few closer detail shots. Most of the ornaments on the "tree" this year were of the non-breakable variety. We've got an odd assortment of bangles, none of which I particularly like.

With the exception of the angels. I like the angels.

There seems to be only this one picture of an angel, though there was another angel on the tree. It wears a dark red dress (?) and you can see it at the bottom of the tree in the previous picture.
Then there's this pig thing. I don't know where it came from, why we have it, or why it hung on the tree. I didn't decorate the tree. I rarely do. We put it up for the kids.
Honestly, if it weren't for the kids I think we would have eliminated our Christmas celebration this year. I no longer believe in Christmas as I used to. The stress and bother is more trouble than any benefit I gain from the whole thing.

I like buying gifts for my kids. That can be fun. I worry about making sure everyone gets a fairly equivalent bundle of gifts, which matters most for the younger ones. I almost never get Superman anything these days. He would much rather I not spend the money. I don't feel comfortable receiving gifts, for the most part. How much longer do we have to play this game? The youngsters are 12 years old now, in the 6th grade. Presumably they'll be in 7th grade next year. That's probably too young to eliminate Christmas. These days I let Light and Twitch and Superman take care of the decorating and baking, mostly. Like I do on most other occasions, I usually hide in my room. I do that a lot. Hell, I'm doing it now.

I'm too depressed to talk about it anymore. Go out and have a lovely day.

Jumble

It's one thing or another, but it is all crap.

We caught Diva in a lie again. It seems she stole her brother's birthday card and the check that Superman's parents sent. She just "found" the card, but it had no check in it. She claims she found it that way, already opened without the check. We know from my in-laws that they sent it here with a check in it. I hate the bullsh!t.

I have little or no drive. No get-up-and-go. I don't care about school right now. It might just be a bad day, a bad hormone surge, not enough sleep... I don't know. I don't care. I just don't care.

I have decided to drop that social psychology class. It is stupid and useless and makes no sense for anything that is important to me.

Dizzy. Head hurts. Stomach upset. Angry at Diva. Angry at the world. Trying hard to give a shit about anything. Tired. Want to go hide somewhere.

This Just In: Diva slipped the "missing" check under my office door. She "miraculously" found it. The lying, cheating, little snit. Get this - she had stuck it in her Bible. If I were God (thankfully I'm not) I'd smite her with a bolt of lightning. I have no hope for this girl. None. I have little hope for anything right now, actually. My stomach hurts.

The self-loathing is palpable. I want to ask questions, but I know there are no answers so the questions do no good. My brain hurts.

I am angry. Very very very very angry. Must. Stay. Away. From. Diva. Will hurt her if I can reach her. Have an urge to beat the shit out of her with a long stick.

Noise. Too much input, no place to put it. Hurt. Confused.

But wait, there's more! She just brought me a digital camera, a nice Vivitar 8.1 mega pixel red thing that I've never seen before. Says it belongs to a friend of hers. Riiiiiight. She went on an outing with the church group yesterday. I'm sure she stole this from one of the girls on the trip. This child has serious problems. I have serious problems with this child.

This post is depressing me. I can't imagine it's doing you any good either. You should ignore it and go on to the next blog.

There is a cat on my study notes and other rants and ramblings

There is not enough art in my life dammit. Not enough beauty. (I can tell when I have hit the crux of the matter when tears form in my eyes.) I was going to say something about visual arts, music, and other performance art, but I realize that it boils down to a lack of beauty.

I've been hovering near the edge of tears for a few days now. Don't know why. I know why I don't know why, though. I'm not giving myself time to sit and contemplate. I need time alone to mull things over. Even when I'm in my room by myself I can feel the influence of others in the house. Would I feel this way in, for instance, an apartment with thin walls and noisy neighbors? I don't know. At home I know that others could come in the room. I'm available in an emergency, and others' concept of "emergency" is much broader than mine.

Earplugs help. I like to think earplugs would help in noisy-neighbor-apartment conditions, too, but I don't really know. Anyone want to weigh in on the question? Operators are standing by. Plus, if you call in the next ten minutes, you will receive a bonus package of a dozen replacement widgets.

I have an exam in my Behavioral Stats class today. I was studying, but Samhain (the sleek black cat) settled himself on the paper I was making notes on. He's very content. I've studied pretty well for this one, I think. I'm going over some definitions now (or was) and am fairly confident about most of those. Needs a bit more work. Other stuff I think I've got. We shall see.

This is what I mean by art and beauty. Well, some of what I mean. There's more. I'll know it when I see it, but can't really express it now.

Miss Perky, my fitness and wellness instructor, lectured about cardiovascular disease today. She's five foot nuthin', blonde, and fit as a fiddle. Of course. And perky. Gawd, how annoying. Probably even more annoying at 8:00. Thankfully I don't see her until after 10:00. She's a nice lady, though. I don't like the class, I don't like how she teaches it, but from what I've gathered about her as a person, I like her. Mostly. Except she emphasizes exercise so much it grates on my nerves. [*]

*Translation: I react poorly to her enthusiasm. I get nervous and uncomfortable when confronted with all this blatant truth about my lack of personal fitness. (Here come the tears again. They're a good indicator.) My lack of personal fitness in pretty much every broad area of my life (and I am very broad) indicates impending death. I'm 48 years old. I'm at least twice as heavy as I should be. I get very little exercise. I make unhealthy food choices. There is a lot of unresolved stress in my life. There's a history of heart disease (and mental illness) on my father's side of the family. There's a history of obesity on my mother's side of the family.

And I'm taking a course on death and dying. I've discussed this before. It's an odd, uncomfortable confluence (I love that word) of intellectual input about mortality. (That's a big sentence full of big words.) (I am parenthetically trying to divert the topic away from Me being Dead.)

I like truth, mostly. Truth can be painful. Lies can hurt, in the "damage" sense. As part of my advancing wisdom, I try to be truthful to myself about myself. This blog fits into that scheme, which means you get to read all this raw ugly truth. Or not. The next happy thing is just a click away. You are under no obligation to keep reading this maudlin pile of crap.

How would I react if I had a mild heart attack? Would it wake me up and inspire me to get fit? Or would I give up and surrender to impending death? I really can't know unless and until it happens to me. I've wondered about how I'd react to a diagnosis of cancer. My sedentary lifestyle and other bad habits put me at greater risk for cancer. They say one in three people in North America will get cancer in their lifetime. I'm a big walking welcome sign for it. I don't particularly want to get cancer, but I expect to get it eventually. Would I try to fight it? Depends on what kind of cancer it is, how treatable it is, etc. If the prognosis is bad, I think I'd rather not spend a buttload of money on treatment, but rather receive palliative care. Again, I can't know how I'd react without the real thing actually happening.

There are a few people who love and depend on me. I'm supposed to keep myself alive for their sakes. It'll do in a pinch, but it seems like an inadequate reason for living. It's probably what has kept me alive this long.

On that depressing note, I'll leave you all and go study for this test. I want to do well on this test. Today that is motivating me to stay alive. I will return and post more later. Don't know when "later" is, exactly, but I'll be back.

Update: I set some serious whupage on that test. :)

We need a new post, so here it is

Brain jostling around in the skull tonight. Hang on, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Got our taxes did. We don't do them ourselves, a friend of ours is a tax preparer and we take them to her. After the time that the IRS corrected our return to give us a couple thousand dollars that Superman missed in deductions, we've had them professionally done. Superman is a super man, very smart and good at many things, but he's not anything like an accountant. I'm smart, but my brain doesn't work along those lines, either. Ironic, really, because my mother has made a nice living for the past 30 years as an accountant. But that's not what I came to tell you. Did you know that for the 2009 tax year there is a deduction for college expenses? I don't know the nature of it; that's why my friend does our taxes. For those of you keeping score at home, remember that there are three members of our family who are now in college. Our refund. Wow. We've never gotten a five figure refund before. (Small values of five figures, but five figures nevertheless.) Superman is excited about getting a lot of bills paid off.

Did I tell you about my social psychology class? Did I tell you that social psychology is fine in theory, but a bunch of bunk in practice? I mean no offense to any practicing social psychologists among you. I have friends who are social psychologists. I'd even allow them to use my bathroom. However, this class is driving me crazy. I have been encouraged by people I respect to drop the course. After today's class, I'm more strongly considering it. There's a group project due on Thursday, so if I withdraw from the class, it won't be until after Thursday. I don't want to leave my group hangin'.

Took Diva to her therapy session this afternoon. I think I mentioned that she's starting with a new therapist now. This group is part of the state system of behavioral health care, and they have a psychiatrist on staff, both of which the last place lacked. I liked the previous therapist much much much much better. She wouldn't let Diva get away with bullshit. The lady she's seeing now, though a sweet woman, doesn't give the impression of being savvy to the special kind of fuck-up-ed-ness that Diva displays. I had a private discussion with the gal after she talked to Diva. I told her that the girl's condition is much worse than it outwardly appears. Here's the thing: she's a liar and a thief. She has spurned every one of my attempts to develop a loving parental relationship with her, but not at first. She plays along with me until I begin to think we're really getting somewhere. Once I have some hope and confidence about our relationship, she does something deliberately, overtly damaging to me or something that is important to me. She has built me up only to smash me down so many, many times that I am no longer capable of trying to relate to her. I provide for her physical needs, and make small meaningless overtures to pretend like I'm a "good mother," but I cannot be emotionally available to her. I told that to the therapist, though I wish I'd told is as well as I just wrote it. C'est la vie.

In Death and Dying class today the prof had us write our deathbed scene, as if for a movie. How old am I? Where am I? Who is with me? How do I feel, both physically and emotionally? What is causing my death? That sort of thing. I wrote for a while. In my story I'm between 70 and 90, in my own bed at home, and Superman has died within the past year. My children are with me, but only if they can get along and not fuss. There is more detail, but nothing important. What I came to tell you is this exercise really upset me, more than I thought it would. I am not afraid of death. Hell, a lot of days I'm eager for it. I'm not even sure what exactly upset me.

I must go make cookies. I promised to provide cookies for the psychology club bake sale at school tomorrow. Not sure what I'm going to make. Probably oatmeal. They're a good sturdy cookie.

TTFN

Request for technical assistance

Cats are amazingly savvy with computers. I've had the cat step on my keyboard and open up applications I didn't know my computer had. Scheherazade stepped on Superman's keyboard earlier this evening and managed to turn his screen display sideways. Does anyone know how to turn it right? He has searched for a solution online with no success. He's pushed every key combination he thinks might help, to no avail. Help!

Update: Thanks to Lewis' timely direction and useful links, the problem is solved. Lewis is Superman's Hero of the Day.

General updateyness

I have been meaning to get to the office supply store for a few weeks, but hadn't actually gone until last night. Woohoo! Did I score a deal! I've had my eye on a 2 drawer lateral file cabinet. Last time I was in the store and looked at 'em, the ones I want were priced between $300 and $400. Last night I wandered back to the file cabinets just for fun and lo and behold, there was a nice one on clearance sale for $198! I got some assistance from a couple of the sales folks, who verified the price and looked up the availability. That display model was the last in stock, and it has a couple of scuff marks on it here and there, so the one guy said he'd knock 10% off the price. Way cool. Even cooler is that I had a coupon for $10 off of my purchase of $50 or more. That certainly qualified.

I also got 5 reams of copy paper, two different pads of graph paper (engineer's computation paper and buff-colored quad paper) and my favorite brand of mechanical pencils (Paper Mate Clear Point, 0.5mm.). Oh, and more ink for my printer. Ink is expensive! I spent over $50 on ink alone.

~~~

I'm mad at rice. You see, I never really liked rice very much until a couple of years ago when I discovered Jasmine rice. That stuff actually tastes good! So recently I've been enjoying Jasmine rice. Silly me, I assumed rice had something going for it, like nutrients and stuff. I know it's a starch, but I thought it had a bit of protein, maybe some vitamins and/or minerals. I looked it up. Nuthin'. Not even dietary fiber! Just carbohydrate calories. Well shit!

I have also reduced my meat consumption. I now try to steer clear of mammals. Poultry, fish, eggs and dairy are still part of the diet. Along with chocolate, sugar, grains, etc. It would be nice if I actually liked vegetables. There are a few veggies I'll eat, but I really need to figure out how to eat more vegetables, and in a more healthy form than the carrots in that carrot cake I had for my birthday a couple of weeks ago.

~~~

Sproing comes home on a weekend pass this weekend. I'll drive up to get him in a few hours. We take him back and have a family session with his therapist at 1:00 Sunday afternoon. He is doing very well. He'll probably come home to stay maybe next month or the month after.

~~~

Diva had her first session with a new therapist Monday. We switched her to a new office, one that is part of the state mental health system. This will make it easier to coordinate her treatment. But what I came to tell you is that she and Superman met the therapist. Diva told the therapist that sometimes Herman tells her what to do. Sometimes Herman tells her to do things that she knows aren't right, but she does them because Herman says they are fun. She also said that not everyone can see Herman.

Superman was surprised. This is the first he's heard of Herman. I heard her refer to Herman a couple of weeks ago, but assumed he's some kind of imaginary friend. Which he probably is. I mentioned it to my therapist and she said the child is jerking everyone's chain. Whatever, and good for her. If this new therapist thinks the child has visual and auditory hallucinations, that will speed the process of placing her in an alternative environment. The child, though not schizophrenic, is crazy.

~~~

I'm supposed to go to my Friday class in an hour, but I'm staying home. It's rainy, cold, and nasty out there. The class is supposed to hear reports from a few of its members about the places where they are volunteering. It's a "field placement" class, and I'm supposed to be spending 2-3 hours a week volunteering in some service organization. I haven't started yet. Though I talked to my therapist yesterday and she suggested a place that would be perfect for me. She's supposed to call there with a recommendation or something. I need to follow up on that, 'cause time's a wastin'.

~~~

Took the first test in Death and Dying yesterday. I feel very good about it. I actually studied! Studied like I didn't for the Social Psych exam from last week. Oh, my therapist says I should drop the Social Psych class because Social Psychology is a bunch of made-up bullshit. I have challenged myself to bring up the grade, though. And the rest of the book looks more interesting than the first two chapters (intro and history), so maybe I can actually do this shit.

~~~

My new lateral file cabinet is sitting in the middle of the foyer waiting for me to make room for it in my office. I have been meaning to rearrange this office for a couple of months, but now that I have the new file cabinet (and it locks!) I'm very motivated to do that. Which is why I'm ending this missive here, so I can do that very thing.

"This was inevitable" (perhaps NSFW)

While surfing the web for pictures for a class assignment, I came across a website called The SnuggySutra. "You have a Snuggie. You have sex. This was inevitable."

Here are a couple of examples.

The Cuddle Puppy

The man wears the Snuggie on his front and covers her. She feels warm and cozy like Grandma’s house, but still knows who her daddy is.

The Chaps

The woman wears the Snuggie on her back and covers her partner with the rest. She won’t miss a minute of Sex In The City and he won’t miss the tattoo of her ex’s name on her ass.

I will not be using any images from this website for my class assignment. It's not that kind of class.