Some people have dreams of flying.

I have three recurring dream themes that are kind of pseudo-nightmarish. They are, in order of most to least frequently experienced: zombies, my mother, and unexpected discovery of neglected/dying pets. I had the latter last night--in my dream I went into the basement (which itself was sort of a hybrid of the basement in Nashville and the basement in Brookfield) and there were these goldfish in a mason jar with barely any water left, clearly gasping, sickly, and when I tried to fill the jar with fresh water, it overflowed before I could stop it and the fish slipped out of the container, swimming along a narrow, water-filled crack in the cement floor, clearly doomed.

Still, that was much better than the dream I had with the half-starved puppies, or the rabbits that were so hungry they started eating each other.

I have to say, though, on balance, I wish I had dreams of flying or falling or going to school naked.

...and it was with those thoughts in mind that I drew this picture.


It's not half bad in terms of proportion and general shape considering that I was just making it up as I went along. Plus, you know, crayons.

Tired. Default. Thing.

Grarrrgh. Sleep. In under wire. 11 more days.

continuing the series of bad self-portraits

Maybe I would do better at this if I worked from a picture rather than looking in a mirror.


Actually, though, I think this one is on the good side of average for this effort.

blurry photographs brought to you by pictures in the dark

I am happy to report that I made more progress on that crocheted scarf thing that I posted a picture of yesterday:



Still not finished, but hey, at least it is floofy and majestic. Actually, I think I am going to need to incorporate a second skein of the obnoxious gold accent yarn that I am using, because I seem to be close to using up the current skein. Good thing I bought so many of them when they were $1 a skein at my local Michael's.

I also drew a heart on my belly in a fit of pique. Don't know whether this counts toward thingaday, except it was sort of art-motivated; I was thinking about how to deal with a tattoo that I have that needs covering, and then thinking about the concept of the beauty mark, and thinking about the philosophy of beauty, and after a while in my head discovered that I had absentmindedly obtained a pen and started doodling on myself:

I suppose I am just lucky that it is in ballpoint and not sharpie.

Channeling my inner fourth grader

All right, so there was no post yesterday (although that does not reflect a dearth of craft; I crocheted for an hour in the airport:

and then made 350 desserts with the adoxograph [no photos of that, sorry]. It just turns out that Kathy's job is hard work, and getting up at 5AM on a Sunday to go to the airport is hard work, and in the absence of the scarf being done and photographic evidence of the desserts, it was kinda hard to get motivated to write something).

However!

Today is a new day, and so I drew/colored a hand turkey. Hand turkeys were a great favorite of mine in my youth, and, I must admit, it was nice, from a nostalgia perspective, to revisit that particular form of self-expression. (Hopefully it will be nice from a punctuation perspective to use fewer commas in the rest of the sentences in this post. Yeesh.)

Here's Tom:

The fat cat looks displeased.

I can't remember whether I was a color inside the lines person as a child now that I am old, but if my current performance is any indication, I may have been a get distracted by other things person. Seriously, can I not even color for twenty minutes without stopping to watch a TED talk?

Is nostalgia always for simpler times?

As I was thinking about what to write today, I found myself reminiscing about the January/February a few years back when I sent the love of my life a postcard every single day over the course of the month leading up to Valentine's Day. Don't get me wrong, it's not a holiday that I am a big fan of, but I was (and remain) a hopeless romantic. There's no helping it. So I find myself wondering--is it the sheer force of Februaryness that makes me willing to commit to doing something every day?

And then, even more than that, contemplating the general concept of commitment. What do you have to have in your heart to be willing to make a promise that you intend to keep. And, perhaps even more noteworthy, what do you have to have in your guts in order to do the work to keep it?

Then, of course, there is the concept of overcommitment--it's all well and good to promise something and mean it, but at some point you may find that you have made so many promises that it is impossible to keep them all, and the best you can hope for involves everyone feeling shorted in one way or another.

Regardless of that philosophical tangent, it was another self-portrait day, wedged between meetings and errands. I'd hoped to make cupcakes (the coworkers love cupcakes), and if I can't sleep tonight, perhaps I still will, but in the meantime there is this:


Strangely enough, I am actually kind of proud of this one, more for this picture than for the drawing itself.

As you can see, I gave myself an out by not including my entire head.

An exercise in frustration

More self portraits today. This first was just an effort to capture general body position, and I feel okay about it, especially the knee in the foreground:


The second one was a genuine face drawing effort. Again, it kinda sucks:


However, I do feel like I did a better job on the nose. For comparison:

Okay, yeah, I am really weird looking.

Now? BED.

happy Crappy Week week

This has just been one of those weeks when everything has pretty much sucked. Monday? Sucked. Tuesday? Tuesday really sucked. Wednesday? I had a ton of meetings, and also it sucked. Yesterday? Started out like it was going to be okay, but then descended into suck. Today? Exhausting, erratic, more fun than the previous days (everyone at work apparently got the "inappropriate for work Friday" notice, which at least made the day interesting), but still pretty well punctuated with suck. To make it even more fun, the majority of my local buddies were also experiencing Crappy Week week, so I couldn't even wallow in misery.

Please don't even ask about Tuesday, though.

However, today was different, because today was February, and, like my sister, I have embarked upon a perhaps misguided effort to make something every day this month. This meant two things: a trip to Michael's for some supplies (which was facilitated by the fact that I sat on the edge of my tub this morning creating a list of completely random stuff I could make over the course of the month), and the incredibly painful act of making my first thing.

I decided on a self portrait. Well, more like 2.5 self portraits. Here are some of the things that make these particular self portraits particularly excellent:

1. I don't actually look like any of them.
2. Looking at yourself that closely for that long really draws attention to all seven signs of aging that they mention in those skin care product advertisements. Note how this is particularly clear from my depictions of the dark circles under my eyes. Did I mention that this week sucked?
3. I used to be pretty good at this.

Top this off with the fact that I couldn't find the cable that makes my camera talk to my computer (I have a sneaking suspicion that it may have been an unfortunate victim of the great Division of the Goods), and, well, it kinda sucks.

So yes. It's a rather inauspicious beginning to a month of craftiness, but that's okay. I have...ideas. And I do believe rather sincerely that if I can execute successfully on even one or two of those ideas, I will be most satisfied with the outcome of the month. There are a couple in particular that I am pretty excited about. Conveniently, the exhibitionist element of blogging means that you all get to watch as I spiral downward into a dark place where arts and crafts dare not show their faces.

I also feel compelled to mention that I've just discovered that my roasted acorn squash has gone bad.

Awesome.