Falling

[Clematis]

It's been wonderful being in Maui. We had a last day stroll on the beach and said goodbye to the ocean and the flowers. It will be hard to get back to the grind and not having my dad to go home to...

[Clematis]

...so now I am home and back to the grind and only a month and a half to get a ton of stuff cleared out, replace the carpet, and move back into my own house. Everyone thinks I should paint the condo as well since the paint is 20 years old or more. It seems totally overwhelming. I had kind of a difficult trip back-headache that wouldn't go away, balance problems and all that.

It's good to be home in a way, but my dad is gone and there is this gargantuan project to work on, along with therapies and legal matters and whatnot related to having been in a car accident. I hope I can get through this!

The best part of coming home is definitely seeing Lena, my darling cat, who was equally happy to see me...

[kayc]

Don't worry about the paint and carpet right now, focus on sorting/moving and if there's time, hire someone to put in carpet and paint when you're done, easier to do when it's empty anyway.  The main reason I haven't replaced flooring here is I have no one to help me move the heavy stuff out and you have to do that for them to come install flooring.
You'll get through it, one day at a time.  I bet you were so glad to be back with Lena, and her with you.  Even though I still have Arlie and Kitty, I'm missing Miss Mocha so much.  Just last night I went to the patio door looking for her, I miss her so bad but it's four weeks tomorrow, I know she's not coming back, she's dead.

It's hard to believe your vacation is over already, seems like you just left!

[Clematis]

Hi Kay! I'm so sorry about Miss Mocha-that is really sad, and I think at four weeks your are probably right. I did once get a cat (Freya) back after 11 months, but that was rather freakily unusual. Also, we were moving the next day and so if she came home there would have been no one there. Also, she was a strong young cat who was a really good hunter. The cat I have now-well it's hard to believe that pussycat was ever a "stray" (which was her story at the Humane Society) because she can't get into an open package of cat food on the floor!

It's so hard to lose a pet and not know what happened to them. Freya disappeared after I got her back and I never saw her again. But after losing her for so long, it was hard to ever convince myself she was gone. I had dreams about finding her again 20 years later. I think that was partly about the lack of finality with Freya and partly because I had been forced to part with Mitten because of seriously worsening allergies/asthma. I didn't believe I would ever have a cat again and so was grieving that as well, but in my sad cat-less state, the one who always came back to me was Freya. But now I have Lena, who is the best cat I even had, and my allergies are dramatically better from living in a cleaner environment. So I think we're in the clear. I just have to not net any more pets. 

You are right-we had a joyful reunion, Lena and I, although it felt very strange to come "home" to my dad's house, and I've felt very sad to realize that his ashes are in an urn, but summer is quickly passing, and he can't help me figure out what to do because he's gone. 

The plan about my dad's house-and my house-is to keep emptying my house, get rid of the junk, store the things I'm keeping in the garage or with me at my dad's house, and then paint & replace the carpeting at my house once it's more or less empty. Then I will move back into my own house with the fresh paint and new carpet, bringing what I had brought to my dad's house and all of his nice furniture. Then whatever is left to be sorted will be at his house, where it can be gone through by me and/or whomever while I am back in my own house.

[Clematis]

I have had a dull headache that hasn't gone away for four days now. Sometimes it gets worse (and then goes back to where it was, but it never goes away. I hope the chiropractor has a clue-I see him tomorrow.

[kayc]

Did it get worse when the lady ran into you in Hawaii?

[Clematis]

Oh yeah, the lady at the produce stand! I hadn't even thought about it. Now that you mention it, I think that was when the headache arrived that didn't leave for days. Just this dull headache that was untouched by Ibuprofen or anything else. The chiropractor told me that I should ice it a little, which I forgot to do. I had a bag of frozen corn I was going to use, but I ate it instead. The chiro helped the headache, but it's still not gone altogether. That's funny, I was trying to remember what might have triggered the constant headache and wasn't coming up with anything. Before that, it was intermittent, and I could get it to go away with Ibuprofen and/or rest. But it did get worse after that. Well, hopefully the chiro can straighten it out. Meanwhile, I think I saw a bag of frozen peas in the freezer at the other house-I'll go pick it up when I go over there to water in the morning. 

Thanks, Kay! That was a good insight-I sure hadn't put that together, but you are right.

[Clematis]

I had something nice happen.

My cat is a therapy cat and she is very good at it. I've noticed that she will sit on anyone's lap that I put her on, and will stay there even if they don't have the most comfortable lap. For example, my dad had a rather bony lap, but I'd stick her there and she'd stay. But never on my lap. I'd pick her up on my lap and she'd get right off, unless I was giving her treats, and she would jump off as soon as the treats were gone.

When I was in Hawaii, my neighbor Georgie took care of Lena and they got along swimmingly. Georgie came over when I got back to give me the key back and Lena went running up to her and they were obviously very happy to see each other. Georgie had left me a note saying they had had a lot of "lap time" while I was gone, and she demonstrated this for me. She sat down, patted her lap and said, "Lap!", and to my astonishment Lena jumped on her lap. I, of course thought, why not me? I adore this cat and she won't do this for me...?

Turns out that wasn't true- all I had to do was ask Lena and she will do the same thing for me. I pat my lap and say "Lap!" and Lena will jump up on my lap, accept treats, petting, etc. and then lie down on my lap for a long snooze. Amazing!

[KATPILOT]

How cool is that?

[Clematis]

It is very cool that Lena has decided to be my lap cat...

Say- I forgot to tell you guys something about my Hawaii trip. On the Sunday we were in Maui, we went down to Lahaina Town and in the park where an enormous Banyan tree takes up an entire block. There was an arts and crafts fair going on and a Hawaiian band playing - guitar, bass, and naturally-a ukulele. A woman who was Hawaiian, but casually dressed up in shorts came out and did a hula dance. Then a little while later a Hawaiian man who was also casually dressed came out and danced hula to another song. I took hula classes about five years ago and vaguely remembered the first and easiest dance we did. I used to play the song on the ukulele and sing it.

So, I was walking around this park talking to the Hawaiian vendors to see if any of them could dance this hula dance (the band said they knew it). I thought maybe I could find someone who could dance it and kind of follow them, from what I could remember. They all said, "No no I don't know that one. You should just dance it yourself. It's easy-it's in English". Eventually I did. I got up on the stage and did this hula dance alone, with the band accompanying me and singing. Even more amazing, I had fun doing it. There was enthusiastic applause-I think mostly for my just getting up and doing it to join in the fun, even though it is obvious to anyone that I am not an accomplished hula dancer. I could feel the support from the audience, even as I was dancing. And a number of people said nice things to me afterwards. It was pretty exciting!

[KATPILOT]

I remember that tree Laura. Last September I went to Fleetwoods for dinner on my anniversary just down the street. I walked around that tree. Pretty impressive. I had a sense of age and wondered how so many people had walked under it and how it would grow out and plant new roots just to keep growing. It's neat  you have a lap cat now. I hope you are considering a flower piece for the show. How special it would be to have something you did in Maui.  People would eat it up.

[enna]

I agree with you, Stephen, a painting from Laura for the show would be great. I hope she can come down in October. I love the Banyan tree ~ impressive indeed. 

Anne

[Clematis]

I am thinking about the painting...it would be have to be something I would be willing to be part with. My painting is a journey and part of how I can tell where I am going is by where I have been, which is my paintings. I need to see my trail in order to see where I am going. The easiest thing to part with would be something that is not terribly recent. It might seem like I have so many and could just paint more, but it's not like that. It might be for a commercial painter because they are selling paintings for a living and that is their intention.

My painting is my life, and my paintings are parts of me, and looking at them is how I come to grips with myself and what I am living. My mother didn't sell her work and I don't either. I did in the beginning, and for ridiculously low prices, but at some point it became unbearable-like parting with a finger or a part of my soul that I couldn't get back. I probably do have pieces that I could part with, but I would have to think about it carefully and it wouldn't be the one of the best and most recent things I have done.

I know that there are people who love my work, but the problem is that they don't love it as much as I do. My mother told me that the best way to price your artwork is to price it at a point where you would rather have the money than the piece. When I left for Hawaii, I was really scared that I hadn't painted in so long that I had lost my chops, and since I am spending the summer working on my dad's estate while grappling with grief and a head injury, I wasn't sure when I would be able to paint again, or how far I would slide before I was able to get back to it. I can't even begin to tell you what it meant to me that I was able to produce those paintings. They are not quite at the level I was before, but I think they are pretty good. But more than that, they are like proof of my hope of a future and that I will be able to continue to be the person I have been, in spite of my losses.

I have flowers outside my door here at my dad's condo, and there are more flowers at my own condo, with more blooms every day at both houses. I look at them and soak in their loveliness, but I can't paint them because I am too busy or too drained. Day after day of lovely unpainted blossoms...I try to get what I can from them because I know I can't paint them, even though they are right outside my door. I don't know, maybe I should try harder to fit in a little painting time, but it doesn't even seem possible.

I don't know...I read what I've written and I must seem like an obsessed lunatic. I hope it makes some sense.

Nevertheless, what I do sell is at a site called RedBubble.com you go to that site and you can type "BossaRosa" into their search bar and you can buy all kinds of items with my images on them. None of the images from this year are on there. I had worked out this arrangement whereby my dad paid my sister to do commercial art for me, as in posting my work on RedBubble since she can do graphic art as well as fine art and she is a lot better and faster than I at PhotoShop stuff. I thought it was a genius idea; my sister had a few hours of guaranteed work at $40 an hour, I had a graphic artist at my bidding, and my dad got some satisfaction from knowing she was working for it. Now she isn't even talking to me and I'm going to have to figure out how to put my own stuff on there.

Anyway, you can get coffee cups, travel mugs, prints, tote bags, etc.-all kinds of stuff on RedBubble. Most of the money goes to RedBubble, but they make the item and ship it. It's a pretty good arrangement. I get a a few dollars, and get to hang onto my original. And if someone really loves my work, they can have it.

 

[Clematis]

I went to the place where I see the OT and the Speech Path, who recently did an evaluation with me. The OT explained the results of the testing to me this afternoon and why based on that and some other things they want me to see a neurologist for a post-concussion workup. Some of the scores on the test were at or below the 1st percentile, especially things that involve timing. That is terrible! They also told me that they think my plan of marching in the Fourth of July parade (playing the cello) was risky. Actually she said it was very risky, for me at this point, even though the 4th of July is all about freedom and independence. But I think it will be ok, and she said that before I demo'd what I meant with the intern and using some pieces of PVC pipe as the cello and bow.  I told her that we would have time to practice before Monday. Then I told her I would round up a spotter to walk next to me, looking out for obstacles and calling out chords to me so I don't have to struggle with remembering the chords while walking.  She thought that would improve the situation, but that I'm to bring Mister Cello with me to my OT appointment on Thursday, so she can check this out.

Bonita and I did this last year with the cello. Here is a picture of Bonita and I practicing parading Mister Cello around at band rehearsal last night. You can't really see the guy on the right, but he is the "spotter". I told the OT, well I certainly wouldn't want to injure Mister Cello by dropping him or something. She rolled her eyes and told me she was worried about my head-not Mister Cello. I think it will be ok...We did this last year...my dad got to see it. No one had ever seen a cello in a parade before, except Woody Allen, of course, in Take The Money and Run. although we do it with a lot more style...

 

 

[kayc]

Laura,

Have you considered having prints made of your paintings so they can be sold and you wouldn't have to part with your "journey"?  They don't sell for as much as an original but they do sell for a good amount, esp. when matted and framed.

And yes, I do know what you mean.  I've been making cards for over 30 years and I have lots of them in boxes...I like to go through them for ideas on techniques I may need reminded of.  I have a connection with most of them.  Some would be hard to let go of.  Like you, I've parted with some for ridiculously low prices.  Some I'd rather keep than let go of.  Some I've given away rather than sell.  It's hard to explain to someone who is not an artist.

[Clematis]

I have thought about it...but the best prints are expensive and you may not sell. That's how my sister convinced me to do the RedBubble thing, because the person who wants the art pays for only what they want. 

You are right- it's hard to explain to someone who is not an artist. I have a friend who is a skilled potter and he sells his stuff. He has given me a number of his pieces. Some of them he gave me because he couldn't sell them, but some of them he could have sold. He told me one time that he has given me pieces because my thrill at receiving them is worth more to him than the money he would have gotten out selling them. I have a bowl that he gave me because seven little black drops of someone else's glaze dripped onto this cream colored bowl in the kiln. He said he couldn't possibly sell it. I call it my dalmatian bowl and eat out of it at least once a day. When I remind him about this bowl, he shakes his head, rolls his eyes, and smiles...

[Clematis]

On June 28, 2016 at 5:51 AM, KATPILOT said:

How special it would be to have something you did in Maui.  People would eat it up.

 

Nothing from Maui...sorry, Stephen! But this is what I would like to contribute: The one on the right is a watercolor -of a poinsettia, and the other three are oils that I did a few years ago. I always thought I wanted to do oils like my mother did, but when I did this brief foray into oils a few years ago, I realized that while I wasn't looking or thinking about it, somehow I fell head over heels with watercolor and there was no toning back.

So, what do you think? Two will be very seasonal in October, getting close to Christmas, and the other two are very southwest. Would you like these?

Laura

[Clematis]

So I was painting poinsettias in oil and you can see the transition into watercolor. The watercolor isn't great but the subject is  much better addressed in watercolor, and so you can see this one tiny/huge step I made in just those two paintings. The watercolor is part of a little set of three, but I can live with having the other two as my "journal entry" or documentation of my realization that I was in love with watercolors. I may have fallen into that by accident, but it was my destiny.

Later that winter, the poinsettias lost their leaves-they don't last forever, and I fell into flowers so deeply I will probably never get out!

[KATPILOT]

Laura of course we would love them.  They are terrific! You give me what ever you want and I'll take it from there. The story of the evolution makes it that much more meaningful.

Thank you.

[Clematis]

I'm glad you like them. And this was an important step of me coming into my own as an artist, realizing who I was, and coming out from my mother's shadow, where I actually never was-I just thought I was there. There has been some satisfaction to me in accomplishing what I have in watercolor because my mother was afraid of watercolor. She didn't have the control that she had in oils.

It can be stressful to do watercolors, and you are always on the fence of balancing the timing of too soon (too wet) or too late (too dry), as well as balancing between having enough control but letting go so that the water can carry the paint and create the magical effects of watercolor. I came across a watercolor that my mother did in art school (she went to Moore College of Art after we all graduated from high school). It was on a full sheet of watercolor paper (I usually use a 1/4 sheet)-so that was bold, but the painting looked like she was afraid of really using the paint. It was interesting because it's the only watercolor I ever saw of hers. Had she had the choice, she probably would not have allowed me to see this one. I'm glad I got to see it.

[kayc]

My favorite is the one on the right.  They are beautiful, Laura!

[Clematis]

I had the most amazing revelation today- I can be such a clueless idiot it is amazing. I may have less self-awareness than the flowers I paint. I was going through tons of stuff at my own condo with the help of my friend, who is a tidy person. I know she wonders how my house became such a train wreck of a mess, and it is rather embarrassing and hard to explain.

I moved to Sedona in 2005 and sweated bullets through my first year as a school psychologist. My internship had inadequate direction and instruction, and I landed a job where I was the only school psych in the district and so there was no one to help me or answer questions. On top of that, I started off very behind for other reasons that weren't my fault. I also began this job a few months after my mother died and I was ill with a respiratory infection that lingered because I wasn't able to get the right antibiotic at the start and so it became very entrenched. I was unable to drink cold beverages, sing, or talk without horrible coughing for six months. I thought I would never get my voice back. Also at this time I was talking to my father every evening for at least an hour and sometimes two or three hours, trying to keep him alive after he lost his beloved wife. I thought if I just hung onto him tight enough I could keep him alive. I felt like I had him on some kind of a life support system. I also started trying to coax him into moving to AZ. After all that I learned to play the violin by sight reading dozens of songbooks-thousands of tunes. I bought a keyboard so that I could get a book from the library and play every song whether I knew it or not, by playing it on the keyboard first to get it in my ear. It wasn't that it was relaxing-more like that it was just stressful enough to take my mind off my struggle at work that I could get a break and eventually go to sleep.

The following spring (2006), my dad bought his condo in March but didn't move out to AZ until November. That summer I was out in his garage painting the entire thing, ceiling down, painting the floor a lovely blue grey and imbedding sand into it so that he would not slip on the floor of the home gym I had planned for him. As it turned out, he wasn't nearly strong enough to exercise alone, and I got him to join a gym with a personal trainer. The exercise equipment is still out there and the beautiful garage got stuffed with boxes & stuff. 

We got through a few years with me working and spending all the time I could with him. I wasn't doing as much for him as I was at the end, but I don't think anyone thought he would be doing ok without me. Then I lost my job in 2009 and this is where the big warp comes in. My recollection is that I brought home all the boxes of stuff from my office, dumped them on the garage floor at the far end, and proceeded to do very little but grieve the loss of my job and my independence. I remember playing the guitar, starting the cello, doing a little painting, and lying on the floor with Mister Cello, hoping that my cello I could stop breathing simultaneously and just die. My father carried me financially for several years because aside from a few paid gigs and a little home health care work as a social worker, I had very little income. I wasn't sure why he was willing to help me because I was doing almost nothing.  It was horribly demoralizing and hard to even think about those years once they were over. Then today It occurred to me what I was really doing, because we were sifting through the evidence and documentation of my "nothing-doingness".

When I lost my job I could hardly sleep from nightmares all night about losing my job, from which I would awaken with the truth that I really had lost my job. I went into hyperdrive. I applied to nursing school. I took the CNA course the summer after losing my job. I took all of the prerequisites for the nursing program in one year. One semester I had 21 credits of math and science. I had to get three overrides; one to take that many credit hours, one to start the math course late (I tried to CLEP out of it but missed by a few points), and the other override to miss the math class during half of the sessions because it conflicted with the chemistry lab. The no-nonsense math teacher told me she wasn't going to help me-I had to figure it out myself. She ended up not only giving me an A, but also giving me a math award for a term paper I chose to write instead of a book report (What is this, fourth grade I thought) about the derivation of the 12-tone scale in music. This teacher "never" gave math awards-the other teachers and students were stunned.

Also, during this I was getting up every morning at 4:30 so that I could practice the guitar for three hours before school. Then I got into the nursing program with scholarships to pay for my tuition and books. By that time I was playing gigs at art openings, restaurants, etc and had rehearsals with my duo partner as well as individual practice. And I was seeing clients as a social worker.  Eventually I decided that I really didn't want to be a nurse badly enough to get through the program, and I stayed in school but changed my major to art. I intensified my work on the guitar and cranked out enough paintings (22) for a one-woman-show in the studio where I took guitar lessons, and performed a solo guitar recital in the middle of my art show, with my paintings all around me. Unfortunately, by the time I actually played the recital I had found professional work (in the fall of 2011) and I had less time to practice the guitar. So I was disappointed in my performance, but the people who came thought it was good. 

And my memory was that I had spent about four years lying on the floor? For starters, it was only two years I didn't work, and I was a whirling dervish of goal-oriented activity! How could all of that just slip my mind???

[Clematis]

40 minutes ago, kayc said:

My favorite is the one on the right.  They are beautiful, Laura!

Thank you! I'm glad you like them.

[Clematis]

I ran across my old flip phone the other day - the one I used before I had an iPhone 4 and then the iPhone 5. It sure brought up a lot of stuff. My dad had one just like it...that's what he would do. If I got a new phone, he'd get one just like mine so that I could teach him how to use it and we'd be "on the same page". I charged it up so that i could erase the contact info and whatnot so as to donate it somewhere.

The calendar and alarms really got to me. This was from about five years ago. I had alarms to call and wake my dad up and alarms to call him and remind him to go to the gym and wherever else he was supposed to do. I was so used to burning the candle at both ends that I would fall asleep anywhere, and was always taking naps. In the car, in some parking lot, whatever, by setting a timer for ten minutes and conking out. So, I had a timer set for 10:00 every night to remind me to get ready and go to bed, or I would be even more sleep deprived than I was. I once fell asleep playing the ukulele onstage with my band at a contra dance. It didn't last long, and no one noticed. I kept playing...

I had totally forgotten all that. I was thinking that five years ago he was pretty much ok and he just wasn't ok - he was relying on me heavily all along, and I was so convince that if I just worked hard enough at it and did the right things, he would be ok. And live forever? People kept telling me I was in denial about his real condition, but I was determined to do everything humanly possible to keep him at home, which was his desire.

 I sit here in his house and I just can't believe that he's never coming back. It's been 5-1/2 months and I still can't get my mind around it. I think I am really not ready to be going through his things and making these changes. I am doing it anyway, because the alternative would have been to do very little until 1-1/2 years after his death and that would have really been too long. But it's becoming very clear to me that I'm having such a hard time because I'm not ready or even close to it. And that was before the car accident, which made it even worse.

I'm not ready...

 

 

[KATPILOT]

OOh a heavy trigger moment wasn't it Laura? Funny how you can just open a drawer sometimes and get hit.  I know it's hard when reminded that he's not there anymore. Would it not be okay to make small changes over a longer period of time?  In 1 1/2 years a lot have changes would then have been made.  I discovered that by taking years adapting and living with things and memories, they eventually morphed into my own life and things around me with little meaning were gone.

4 hours ago, Clematis said:

 

I'm not ready...

 

 

Says it all.