a patch won't save you now

The Algorithm started laying offerings of perimenopausal content all over my feed, and it made me wonder if the emotional upheaval of the past year might actually be due in part to hormonal changes, so my doctor ran a full blood panel to check my levels. Results: NOPE. I am still in full blossom of childbearing-aged womanhood, and none of this is to blame on the development of crone superpowers. I am still the basic model of human having basic reactions to basic problems.

Interviews are all done. Trying not to think too much about whatever word salad came out of me. It's over, it's out of my hands, I can relax and just see what happens. It is scary to think of leaving really soon. It is scary to think of not being able to leave until next summer. It is scary to think about nothing happening at all. It is ALL SCARY, so I am just going to keep working on my atelier homework and focus on the upcoming gallery show.

For class this week, I scrambled to finish my value and color studies for the new set-up, expecting my sloppy mitten studies to get torn apart. SURPRISE, he likes both compositions, didn't want me to quit the mittens, and also is interested to see the gun finished, so now I am working on two paintings concurrently. Good job simplifying things, self.

A nod to the Dark Tower series 

How do you simplify a tiny checkerboard pattern? 

Answer: you make a mess and get mad and paint a gun instead.

I have ordered business cards and updated my website, so if I don't have anything else to do in the next few months I can try to scoop up some commissions at the gallery show and grant presentation. Now watch me bag a 10k commission and then have to move suddenly. 

Wrong kind of adventure

You know what takes your mind off all the stupid things you said/should have said in a job interview? Getting a call that your husband was hit by a car on his motorcycle. The person behind him failed to brake when traffic backed up on the off-ramp, rear-ended him, and smashed him into the car ahead of him. A chunk of his bike flew under the car and popped their tire, but at least it wasn’t his head. He’s okay, except for a sprained wrist, a burn on his leg from his muffler, and some minor whiplash that gave him a headache (helmets are heavy).  Luckily, he wasn’t pitched into oncoming traffic; he was wearing full safety gear; and he got it all on the bike's cameras. 

Three other bikers came into the ER while we were there (it was raining lightly, everyone forgets how to drive), and the ones without leather and helmets were in rough shape. Wear your gear, folks.

In other news:

* 2 out of 3 interviews done. #2 seemed pretty good. Fingers crossed.

* Emailed my painting instructor my value studies, but couldn't make it to class (due to Mike trying to get pancaked between two sedans) to explain why it was such a disaster, and that lead to an embarrassing video critique in my absence where the poor guy couldn't understand where I went so wrong and had to scrutinize the pictures for clues like a detective. (He figured it out correctly, btw, which was almost worse to listen to on the recording. I wanted to crawl inside my own shirt to hide.) Decided to scrap the fair-isle mittens and go with something simpler. Now I just have to set up a new still life, start over from the beginning, and catch up with my value studies before next class.

* My therapy homework was to do pro & con lists for moving/staying/changing careers, etc. Every single list I made had more cons than pros. 

I might as well just call a psychic hotline or get a tarot reading at this point. One of my professors once said, "You are going to make errors, so err on the side of the dynamic." He was talking about drawing naked people, but it works as a general guideline, too, I think.

Hit the ground running

When I came home from the workshop last month it felt like I had pulled apart a steel trap just enough to get some relief and then let it snap back in place. This time it felt like the trap broke, and I came home feeling pretty good. The man is making half-hearted efforts toward separation to show that he's listening, but he hasn't actually gone anywhere. I don't care anymore. (I will NEVER tell you what I do.) The only person you can control is yourself, and I have things to get done:

* Atelier class every Monday until Christmas

* two THREE job interviews in the next two weeks (!!)

* Quiet internal freak-out about the possibility of actually getting a job offer and having to move out

* Dropping off a painting for a juried gallery show

* Downsizing my stuff

* Presenting my Scotland art project to the grant committee - and about a hundred spectators at a formal banquet, yikes

It's enough to keep me busy for a while.

For my atelier class, we are working on tromp l'oeil (a painting that gives the illusion of a real object popping off your wall). I went with a Newfoundland trigger mitten, some dried leaves from Bowring Park, and a playing card of maritime folklore figures. I nailed some boards together to look like the siding of the brightly painted jellybean houses for the background.

This week's homework was to do a value study. I know how to do value studies, but maybe not with something that has a pattern made up of a MILLION TINY KNITTED STITCHES. It's supposed to be loosely blocked in with broad blotches of value - how do you even do that with a knitted pattern?! I tried it in brown, got mad, painted over it it in grey, got mad again, and started over today. I have 3 days to get this thing done correctly. 

NOPE

made two in case I mess one up again

It's going great so far.

I'll keep at it. And level up my skills. And take notes on how to conduct a class. And then break into the Canadian art scene and build an ART EMPIRE. 

In Corner Brook. 

Painting mittens.

St. John’s

Our last day was simple and nice. We walked the downtown, browsed shops, chatted with the woman running the art galley, ate fish and chips, saw a hundred high school students bunching into the grocery store for lunch break (Zenny eyeballed the teen cliques and wondered which one was hers, finally deciding that she wouldn’t want to wait in line for her whole lunch break, so her group was probably laying around on the grass somewhere on campus), and we hunted out a lobster. The couple at the table next to us were teachers/kayak-rental owners from Ontario. They said they were relocating, but maybe not to St John’s, because it was too busy, like a small Toronto. That was amazing to us; our one small island has twice as many people crammed onto it as the entire province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Yikes. The couple gave Zenny a fresh oyster, and the table on the other side stopped to watch her try it for the first time, cheering when she liked it.

This has been a really good trip, and we’re so sad it’s over already. 

Heading to the airport. Back into the pressure cooker.

Gen Alpha goblin face

Styrofoam under sprayed concrete! Architecture of lies! This is why you don’t hire the lowest bidder.

Cape Spear

It was warm and sunny, so I let the girl sleep in while I walked up to the store for breakfast stuff and took a detour around the neighborhood to look at some houses for sale. A couple of them looked pretty good.

Midmorning we rode out to Cape Spear, the farthest Eastern point of North America, with a lighthouse, walking trails, and WWII bunker. Zenny hated it. She didn’t complain, but trudged like a prisoner up the endless stairs, stopping to sit and refusing to budge every time I paused to look at the view. That’s okay; the entire reason I even wanted to go to Cape Spear is because I remember hating the stairs so much as a kid. I took her to the mall afterwards, where she perked up over a bowl of poutine and we bought some fancy chocolates to bring home.

The girl needed some down time, so we stayed in and ordered noodle delivery while watching our K-drama. The power went out for an hour and plunged her into darkness while she was in the shower, which she thought was a great adventure.

With one day left, the stress is creeping back in. Zenny is behind on a fall break assignment that could only be completed at home, and I have storytime in a few days. This morning I woke myself up crying from a nightmare about being back. In my dream I begged the man to tell me what he’d done, and he said, I will NEVER tell you what I do. And I realized that’s all the truth I actually need.

We are going to try to enjoy this last day, taking our time to browse the shops downtown. We are on the hunt for a whole lobster.

Bowring Park

In the spirit of “revisit childhood” and also “pretend we live here”, I took the girl to the park today. That’s it. It’s a big park, though. 

It was cool and sunny, and she played like a little kid for hours, stuffing my purse with pretty autumn leaves and climbing all the playground equipment that has been banned in the US, making friends with a little girl from Scotland. There are still a million ducks in the ponds, and they swarmed anyone who stood too close to the water, hoping for treats. We walked through the woods along the river, and Zenny found a circle of fairy houses hidden in a grotto. 

It was pretty perfect.

Duck yoga

When the shadows started getting long, we went home and had tea to warm up. The characters on our Korean rom-com finally kissed, and Zenny was skipping and happy when we went down to the as-seen-on-food-network Italian restaurant for (really nice and affordable) homemade pasta.

The best kind of easy, simple day. I had a moment of delight when we saw a squirrel, and a moment of joy when a thousand pigeons flew in a huge circle overhead and then dove down to fly past so close that their wings blew my hair. I feel really happy.

The Rooms w/Laurie

It was colder on Sunday. We bundled up and walked down to a coffee shop for chai and a bagel before heading to the museum to meet Laurie, my childhood best friend. My mom worked as a cook at her parents’ restaurant and traded childcare while attending university, so we spent most weekends and school breaks together. I had a feral summer living with my grandparents when I was 9 (my mom sent me home from Arizona while she took summer courses) and Laurie’s mom made sure I stayed fed. We were as close as two kids could be - especially in the 80s when that meant roaming wild and getting in fights with the neighborhood boys until the street lights came on. We are a generation of alley cats.

I ran up and gave her a long hug when I saw her, and we started talking nonstop for the next few hours, barely looking at the museum displays. Zenny and Lydia stared at each other and didn’t say anything, which is pretty much how Laurie and I met the first time, too. They’ll get used to each other if we stay for longer.

Laurie’s husband drove us over to my old house. We maybe worried the current homeowners a bit, yelling and pointing at things and posing for pictures in front of the driveway, but nobody came out to investigate. Everything was so small. Looking across at the huge field I used to trudge across in the snow to get to school every morning, I saw that it was so close we could jog it in about 30 seconds. The far-away fence that never seemed to get any closer as we hiked toward it was actually only about 50 feet from the road. Having legs the size of baguettes while wading through 3-foot snow is a whole other world.

We stopped by Laurie’s house, where her parents live in the basement apartment, and her mom came out to give me a long hard hug, squished to her bosom like I was a kid again. I teared up a little bit, I was so happy to see her. Laurie’s dad came out and looked confused, saying he remembered my mother (and her Black Forest cake)  but didn’t really remember me. “He was after being drunk whenevers we were there,” Laurie teased. Can’t blame him for that, we were very loud and acted out violent make-believe with her Lady Lovely Locks and Rainbow Brite dolls.

Laurie supports us moving back, but knows a body need to see what they’re getting into, so she bought us supper at Mary Browns (Newfie KFC with vinegar taters) and explained the underfunded Provincial medical system, yearlong waits for surgeries, and scarcity of decent fresh produce - being that nothing grows locally except potatoes and turnips, and Newfoundland is the last destination for food trucks from Mexico. I noticed my accent starting to creep back in while we were talking, which I took as a good sign.

No matter which way this next year goes, it can’t be another 35 years before we see each other again.

The Rooms (museum):

View from upstairs 

We didn’t see any bald eagles in the nesting grounds by Quidi Vidi, so I am counting this as a sighting.

There are very few 19th/early 20th century landscape paintings of Newfoundland - it would be cool to bring back tonalism and academic realism for a new generation of painters.

My old street (our house on the right, next to the white one)

It wasn’t like getting transported back in time, it was more like watching an old movie you loved as a kid and realizing you can see all the strings on the special effects. It’s not a bad thing, just weird.

Zenny is still enjoying it here, even after a taste of the cold gloominess and fried foods that would be more typical of daily life than being on vacation mode. It helps that we’re staying in a row house that feels like a home, as well. As a trial run, it’s going okay so far.

Signal Hill

One thing a day. Unfortunately for Zenny, that one thing was a 6 mile hike up Signal Hill and down to Quidi Vidi. I packed her with eggs Benedict first.

The 30 min walk up the hill trail turned into a 60 minute walk with all the stops to pet cats, sit on rocks, and try out every bench. I gave up taking scenic photos and just took pictures of her sitting on things.

 

Don’t worry, she took a picture of me, too. 

We climbed up the tower, bought a shirt in the gift shop, walked down to Quidi Vidi - she scooted down the wooden stairs like they were each individual  benches - then I took pity on her and called an Uber for the ride back. We had a lunch of crumpets and tea and aero bars in front of K-dramas for a bit before I dragged her back outside to shop downtown and find dinner. A protest for Gaza marched down Water Street with drums and shouting, and a woman pressed a flyer into my hand, saying her niece is on the aid flotilla. We waved to them all and laughed at the Ferrari stuck impatiently behind them while they blocked traffic.

Dinner was scallops and crab legs at the Fish Exchange, with a slice of cake for the girl. Zenny was cold and happy when we got back to the flat, sprinkled with rain, and I was picking shells out from under my thumbnails because I gave her the tiny crab fork. We watched King the Land until bedtime. Really good day.

 

Tomorrow: meeting up with my childhood best friend and her tween daughter, so the girls can go do... something, while we catch up on three decades of living. Also I am going to grill her about the job market and costs of utilities.