The Art Project Part Two and my Whiny Week

 

My lunch today consisted of a double serving of mashed potatoes and gravy from Kentucky Fried Chicken and it felt decadent to indulge in a classic comfort food. Don't judge. I deserved it after the week I've had since my last post. I got rid of all the pain in my arm and hand and replaced it with a nasty head cold and a hacking cough that makes my insides feel so sore that I've considered the possibility I broke a rib with all the non-stop coughing I've been doing to bring up green, chunky mucus and phlegm. Too my information? That's what someone told me here at my continuum care complex. And I didn't even say it during a meal time. I live with a bunch of wimps! 

I got a haircut today and my hairdresser says they're calling it the 100 day cough and, god, I hope it doesn't last that long. I've managed to avoid getting sick all winter long and with 72 residents plus staff all around me passing the flu, colds and Covid back and forth it hasn't been easy. I'm really careful not to touch elevator buttons with my finger tips (I use my knocks) and I wash my hands the minute I enter my apartment. I keep my fingers out of my eyes and mouth and use the hand sanitizer stations whenever I walk by them. I also don't eat food offered off other people's plates which bothers me all the time but grosses me out during cold and flu season! But when my bone doctor put me on the 20 mg of prednisone as part of his diagnostic process it must have lower my immunity system (as the package insert warns can happen) because I finally got the crud with side serving of a UTI. Thankfully, the UTI got resolved with a $24 E-Visit at the doctor's website and a three day round of magic pills. 

Still, it was a successful week in terms of the art project---the Artist Handmade Book I finished it up today, on the last day of class. One person was missing because she had a "cold." Oops! and I really felt bad because she probably got it from me but she's always trading food off other people's plates so who really knows for sure? So far she's the only one I had close contact with who has gotten sick. This week I did eat my meals as take-outs or just soup in my room and didn't go to a couple of lectures but I can't keep that up for 100 days so I'll official join the choir of "cougher" who walk around with a pocket full of cough drops and X-Kleenex. Ya, I would avoid sitting next to me too. Logic might tell you that I'm past the contagious stage but the eyes sometimes overrule what logic has to say about whatever.

Art project: Since I moved to this continuum care complex I've written a bunch of poems about life here and I've been wanting to put them in a book form. But I had no idea that a class advertised as "learn to experiment with different materials" would turn in a serendipitous marriage of art and writing. A couple of my sick days were spent playing around with fonts sizes and fonts styles, then printing all my poems out on good paper. As I explained in another post, we started with a large sheet of rag paper and acted like kindergartners slopping watercolors every which way, then turning it over and doing the same thing on the back side. Our next class we be learned how to cut and fold the sheet of paper to form a book that opens up accordion-style. I made a little sampler since then just so I'd remember how to do the folding and cutting because it's so simple, its complicated and if you don't cut in the right place the accordion doesn't work. 

Between the second and the third class I cheated and went ahead and cut my poems up and pasted them on the pages and fell in love with the stupid little five by six inch book that came together. The professor liked it enough that she asked me if I'd make her a photocopy of the book so she can share it in her European workshops this summer. I don't know how I feel about having a random photocopy floating around when I'm still trying to figure out how to make it into a real book. I know, I'm a control freak. But is it so wrong to want to be the one who decides where and who gets to see my poems? And I choose you guys for this bird's eye preview. ©

 

Showing how the book opens

 

A couple of my poems:

 

The Side Table 

 

It’s a billboard screaming

an old person lives here ---

nail clippers, a forgotten mug,

a big button remote

with a crossword puzzle

next to a magnifying glass,

a shoe horn, eye drops and

and a potato chip

that lost its bag a week ago.

Cluttered chair-side tables

talk and tell stories

to our La-Z-Boys

who don’t care if they’re

partners in this classic

display of old people gear.  © JR

 

 

At Eighty

 

In the so-called Golden Years

It takes a long time to stay alive

with all the specialists to see

and pills to count.

Then there’s the memories

that want to escape

while we’re still trying

to build new ones with

classes and books

and friends old and new.

 

In the so-called Golden Years

we try not to linger on the losses

and there are many---

careers

good friends and family,

skill sets and bodily functions.

We laugh, we cry and compare

old people thrills and chills

while counting

each day we wake up as a bonus. © JR

 

The Bacon Edition and More Newbies on Campus

When I sit down to write a new post I quite often do a search of my blog to make sure I won’t be repeating myself. This blog goes back to 2012 and my life experiences aren’t that broad that I’ve still got a lot of untold stories left---even less than when I started because I’m old and my memories are fading. Today I used the search term ‘bacon’ and I’ll explain why later on. 

One of the first posts I found was written in 2014 titled The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and it started out, “I’m having a hard time deciding if I have anything left to say that hasn’t been said in a million different ways about the topics I usually write about.” Do you see a pattern here? And I went on: “I need a new life! Either that or I need to start making stuff up…like fictitious trips to the Amazon---the river not the online store. I’ve been to Amazon.com more times than I care to admit and while I enjoy shopping there no one cares where I get my books and finger puppets. Note to my heirs: those plush little puppets would make great places to hide things. Be sure to check the panda’s butt when I die.” It might contain the password you’ve been looking for.

My search of posts where I mentioned ‘bacon’ was surprisingly long and I quit counting at fifteen. I skim-read through a few looking for what I hoped I wouldn’t find (and didn’t). Those I read ranged in topic from different things to put on peanut butter sandwiches to snacks my dog loved to freezing bacon. Since it’s been awhile I’ll repeat that handy little freezing tip: The idea of rolling your bacon one piece at a time (see photo above) came from a Food Network Magazine article. You freeze them not touching each other, then put them in a covered container so you can defrost one or two pieces at a time which takes about 6-7 minutes. I have a microwave bacon baking dish which is the only way I’ll cook it. And that leads into why I was searching to see if I’ve ever written about my fear of frying bacon in preticular and frying foods in general.

After the anniversary party that I wrote about in my last post a woman who is well known around here for being a prolific and great cook (and a ride-or-die Trump supporter) asked me to come to her apartment because she had some party leftovers to give to me. While I was there she wanted to know my background, how I got through life without much experience in the culinary field. I blamed it on my mother, of course, and told her about the day she left me unsupervised while trying to fry bacon when I was 12 or 13 and how I got splatter burned on my face, eyeball and neck. After that I refused to fry ANYTHING until I turned 75 and I happened on an issue of the Food Network that was entirely devoted to cooking bacon. (See why my mom called me stubborn?) I read that issue cover to cover and challenged myself to get over my fear of cooking bacon. I followed the directions faithfully and made a perfect batch of bacon then I decided never to do it again. 1) I’d conquered my fear, 2) I didn’t like the cleanup for just one person, and 3) I proved what I used to tell my mom when she’d nagged me about not learning my way around the kitchen. I’d tell her, “If you can read you learn to cook and when I need to learn, I will...” That probably worried her even more because she knew I was a poor reader.  

“How are you ever going to get a husband if you can’t cook?” my mom would ask and I’d reply, “I’ll find one who can afford to go to restaurants or who likes to cook like Jerry (my brother) does.” My brother enjoyed the lessons meant for me---if I’d been paying attention---and to this day he claims I would have starved to death if he hadn’t made the dinners after school when my mom went back to work. To the woman who gave me the leftovers I also explained that before my husband and I were married we lived two miles apart with a dozen or so restaurants in between. He worked nights and I worked days so we’d meet in the middle for lunch. Occasionally on the weekends I'd grill steaks and I could make a good pot roast. And without having kids to feed it just worked for us.

Change of topic: I’ve got six new residents on campus and two of them overlook my deck, a couple and their large poodle named Willie. I don’t know them enough to give them nicknames yet but already I like them for two reasons: 1) I like people who give their pets human names and 2) news on the grape vine is they turned their den in an art studio for the wife. I met her briefly and have seen her twice. She likes to draw mostly and both times I saw her picking up mail she was wearing a painter’s smock and hat like the French painters in the 20^th century. She looked so cute and all she needs is to carry a paint brush around to really look authentic. The royal blue silk blouse I wore to the recent anniversary party was fashioned after those painter’s smocks which is why I bought for the opening of the student art show I was in. 

Something tells me the next time we have a Paint and Sip party around here my painting will have some stiff competition. Great! I’ve always worked best in classes with people who I can learn from and try to compete with. It's like if you were to run a race against people who are 10-15 years older than you, you'd probably win every time but if you run with people who are younger than you, you probably wouldn't win but your time would be faster. That's me in art classes. I run better, so to speak, when I'm trying to keep up rather than 'teach by example' to those around me who've never held a paint brush.

Speaking of creativity, our Creative Writing Group is still a small but tightly net group of four and the round-robin story we’ve been writing is turning it to something we’re all proud of. We’re talking about doing a reading of it some evening by the fireplace, after the holidays with each of us reading the parts we wrote. Nights by the fireplace are things the residents---not our Enrichment Director---put together and they are usually music related stuff that draw 15 or 20 people. But one resident's family did do a poetry slam once. It would be scary to stand up and read our round robin but as Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “Do something that scares you every day” and she wasn’t talking about watching scary movies or doing dare-devil stunts. She was talking about going outside of your comfort zone. 

I have zero experience talking in front of groups since college in the '60s when I was a second stringer on a debate team. Two others in my group do public speaking with their church work and the third member of our group was a high school teacher/librarian and she doesn't fear public speaking. She and the only guy are brand new to creative writing, though, so it will be scary for them to reveal their wordsmithing in public. We all have tried our hand at poetry so we’re debating between doing this reading and doing a poetry slam that we can invite others to join in with original poems of their own. Decisions. Decisions!

Until next Wednesday. ©

* Photo credits: Bacon taken by me. The portrait photo was napped off Roseberys Art Auction site and was listed as '20th Century French School.'

Fangirling a Fellow Resident

 

You’re probably wondering how come I’m posting when it’s not a Wednesday or Saturday. Or maybe you’re not and you just think I’m getting forgetful or confused as to what day it is. I’m not and I didn’t. I’m throwing in an extra post this week because I have too many posts in my scheduler and they’ll get too “dated” to be relevant, say, if one about a holiday party gets published mid-January. I’ve had to discard unpublished posts before and if you knew how much I like to write, you’d understand how much it bugs me to do that. This post will be short. I promise.  

Back when we had the resident’s art show here at the continuum care complex I’ve been stalking a woman who was rumored to be a retired college professor in the arts department of a local university. Her entries into the show were definitely at a professional level, far above any of the pieces the rest of us entered. I knew where her apartment was by the pedestal outside her door with a metal bust sitting on top---one she’d entered in the show. A few times I’ve walked down her hall hoping I’d get lucky and she’d pop out the door on her way to who knows where. 

Last night I was sitting and laughing in the cafe` with three other ladies and it came out that one of the ladies was the retired art professor. Ohmygod, I totally fangirled her. “I’ve been stalking you for weeks!” I said practically bouncing in my seat. “I’ve been wanting to meet you and here you are! Right next to me!” She laughed. We were all laughing, having a totally silly conversation for over an hour before she got around to asking why I wanted to meet her and I admitted I hoped she taught drawing or painting so I could pick her brain but, she didn’t. She spent her whole career teaching sculpture, jewelry design and other 3 dimensional arts. 

When we parted she wanted to know my name and I answered, Jean.  “There are five Jeans here,” she said, “how will I know which one your are?” “I’m the fat one,” I replied. She looked at me like I was Duffy-Duck so I confirmed what I said, “Well I am.” “What is your name?” she asked again and for a minute I felt like I was in that Abbott and Costello skit “whose on first.” My old brain cells weren’t working and she had to come right out and ask what my last name is. I felt a connection with the woman or maybe it was the fact that I’d been fangirling the heck out of her that made me feel so giddy---and obviously brain farts were involved. I was in grade school again and I wanted to skip on home to tell my mom I’d made a new friend. She probably went home thinking she’d met the dumb or dense Jean. Since it took two and a half months for our paths to finally cross who knows how long it will take for that to happen again. Meeting her made my happy. Checked that goal off my list.

In other headline news from my tiny world, I am finally prescription eye drop free and I don’t have to go back to the doctor again for six months. I do have to give my left eye a test once a week and call the office if a bunch of lines on a grid start breaking up or fall off the chart, which would indicate a change in my macular pucker. I left the complex after ordering five hundred dollars worth of eye glasses---two pair---happy as a meadowlark on a sunny day. I probably should have shopped around but I wanted this whole saga behind me. It’s been over two months since the surgery and the promise of being able to see street signs sharper was just too good to put off another day. Once I get them I'll be braver about exploring the area I moved into.

So there you have it. I was bubbling over to share my fangirl stalking incident and the fact that no one got hurt in the process. Between here and the new year we have so many parties and events on the calendar round here and I signed up for all of them and knew this post would get bumped if it had to wait too long to get published.  Life is good. ©

The Apocalypse, Books and Selling my House

I have stripped my house of so much stuff over the past year it looks naked. And I can’t believe I’m about to say that I kind of like the look. My library, though, still has eleven feet of totally empty bookshelves in it and my crafting and guest room just has an area rug, a small keyhole desk and two running board picnic baskets (circa 1910), one sitting on top of the other. Both of these rooms are actually bedrooms so the openness should help buyers visualize them that way. The open shelves in my guest bathroom that once housed a large collection of seashells now has neatly folded towels and covered baskets. The living room without the roll top desk, without eight pieces of art including three sculptures and without my husband’s collection of vintage western memorabilia it looks a lot less Old West. But because I still have six large prints on the walls---three of contemporary Native Americans and three of contemporary cowboys---the living and dinning rooms now look more New American West. A staging company would take them all down and put up a nondescript cityscape or an over-sized sunburst made of gold gilded plastic. I’m sorry, but if people are so dumb that they can’t look past my artwork to see their own stuff on the walls, then they’re too dumb to live here. (And yes, a staging company who gave me a quote last year raved about what the sunburst could do for my room, a sunburst I've seen a dozen times on HGTV and I disliked that lady from the minute she stepping into my house.)

In my dinning room, though, I still have all my keeper books that tells a story of who lives here---a no-no according to staging companies. Screw the staging companies! It’s a seller’s market. Besides, it’s not like I have a collection of military manuals for Navy SEALS or Delta Forces on Fifty Ways to Kill a Person or books on how to dissect and dispose of bodies from Psycho Press. No prepper books on how to live through an apocalypse either. Although I just finished reading a series of seven books by Kyla Stone that has me thinking I need a few. 

Ohmygod, those books were the perfect thing to keep me distracted from obsessing about my own life. The series is based on the premise that a high altitude nuclear bomb detonation caused an electromagnetic pulse that destroyed all the power grids and fried anything with computer chips in them---cars, planes, communications, media  and medical devices; sewer, power and water treatment plants, gas station and food distribution hubs. Even modern generators. All of it rendered useless across America and beyond.

 I’ve read a few dystrophy books in the past year but these books were set in my home state, all over the state, and featured a nasty-ass militia group not unlike our real-life militia group that tried to kidnap our governor because the candy-asses didn't want to wear masks during the pandemic. The books were action packed and full of villains and good guys and instructions for how to do things like build a solar powered oven, make hand-warmers and convert a mop pail and a swimming pool noodle into a toilet.

Threaded through the first five books a girl who’d been held in a basement prison for five years by a psychopath escaped when the power grid went out. It was in the dead of winter in the middle of the national forest and she was eight months pregnant. Yup, the psychopath was tracking her when her path crossed with an x-Delta Force guy armed to the teeth who was trying to get to his cabin in the middle of no where to ride out the chaos. It was just a little light, bedtime reading that made me forget to worry about how much my life is about to chance.

It’s a good thing so much of my reading fare is on my Kindle because I do wonder what kind of impression I’d make if someone were to see the titles of the books I’ve been reading since the pandemic started. Looking at my shelves of "real" books sitting in plain sight of the herd of Lookie-Loos who will invade my house in a few days, I’ve combed over the titles for anything that might turn off a perspective buyers. The staging companies turn all your titles to the back so no on can read them. Joanna Gaines on HGTV does that too when she does a remodel reveal. Drives me crazy. If the home owner doesn’t read, don’t use books for props, Joanna! I only turned one title to the wall, a book about back alley abortions that was written before Roe vs Wade and helped push the issue up to the Supreme Court.

It crossed my mind to dust that book with baby powder like I used to do with my diary when I was a teenager so I could tell if my brother touched it. The joke was on me because my brother was smart enough to know where my mom kept the baby powder. But a snoopy person wondering what I’m hiding with the title not showing probably wouldn’t notice that my Nancy Drew detective trick was in play. Just to be clear, I’m kidding. I’m not going to set up a trap. If a Right-to-Lifer finds that book she/he will steal it to destroy it like they do with pro-choice library books in my part of the county. That's the reason why I didn't donate to the library with my other women's history books. 

 Over the years my husband and I had looked at a dozen or two houses for sale and only once did a person’s art and reading influenced us enough to seriously consider putting in an offer. The guy was elderly and had drawn and written over every square inch of his walls in the style of William Blake. Mythical little creatures and poetry, so mind-blowingly strange and beautiful we wouldn’t have wanted to paint over it or to live with. We thought about cutting the walls out and selling sections as art. We researched him, hoping he was famous enough that his "walls" could end up paying for the mortgage. No such luck. His walls were also not sheet rock but rather the old style plaster lath and they would have fallen apart if you tried to preserve sections of it.

Over the years we’d often wondered what happened to the art inside. I used to tell my husband that when I got to be his age I was going to throw convention to the winds and do the same thing with my walls. He’d scowl at me, trying to gauge if I was serious. I never told him that if I had half the talent that old guy had I would have done it in heart beat and not wait until I'm the age I am now, but I’m not so the walls in my new place are safe. ©

 "Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life." 

William Blake 

 

William Blake, an artist and poet who was often labeled insane, genius and prophet all rolled into one.