I Nearly Melted

This morning I got my hair cut.  It felt great.  FL commented that my hair had grown an inch in the six weeks since my last cut but that my bangs hardly grew at all.  I was planning to run my hands through my hair once I left the salon to get a lot of the hair schnipples out but I forgot.  By the end of the afternoon they'd worked their way down into my clothes and were itching like crazy.  Makes me glad that the Catholic church gave up giving people hair shirts for penance after Confession.

I hurried home to grab a quick lunch and then went down to The Attic to write until my friend M from the caregivers & grief support groups arrived after her meeting.  I got about 500 words of a new "key" scene written before she got there.  We talked about writing and grief and losing your beloved person and how we're coping.  It was hot in the cafe, hotter than it should have been, and when M went up for more ice in her iced coffee the barista told her that one of their air conditioners wasn't working.  No $hit, Sherlock.  It was hotter than hades in there with only one a/c unit wheezing away.  We finally got hot enough that we fled.  I was glad to get into my car even though it felt like an oven because I turned it on and aimed all of the vents my way.  Ahhh.

Did you know that you can order stamps online on the USPS website?  I discovered that when all of the local post offices were sold out of the Mister Rogers stamps last year but they were still available online.  My stamp stockpile is dwindling so I went on the site a few days ago and stocked up.  I got Sesame Street, Chinese Year of the Boar, Dragons, and Frogs.  Cool, huh?  I like stamps, I think they're like little works of art.  I try to match the stamp to the person I'm sending things too, not bills, I do bills online, but cards and notes and stuff like that.  I hope the recipients notice.


When I mowed last night I saw this little weed down by the curb had bloomed.  The bright yellow flower looked like a cross between a snapdragon and a ladyslipper--until I mowed it, that is.  Now it's just a memory.  So sad.  I looked up how long until I can mow the baby grass and the internet site said eight weeks.  Ugh.  That means I've got five more weeks to go.  Which also means I've got to work out how to get the mower into the back and move the hoses to mow the edges that aren't reseeded.  It's already too tall for the mower to be happy about it.  I'll hope for a bit less humidity tomorrow after my session with the trainer and get that stuff mowed.  Ooh, I just checked my local weather app and it's only supposed to be 78 tomorrow with much lower humidity.  Hooray!

Tonight I finished knitting the first afterthought heel.  I texted DD for some advice and she asked if I couldn't try it on to see if it fit.  D'oh. *head, slap* Of course I could, so I did, and it was almost perfect.  I just had to knit a few even rounds to make the heel cover my heel, then Kitchener it together. (Kitchener is a special technique for grafting live stitches so that it looks like they're seamlessly knitted, named for some British general who invented it in some long-ago war so that his men didn't get bad blisters from the lumpy socks in their boots.)  Ta-da!  I (finally) figured out how to make notes on the pattern pages on the iPad knitting pattern app (Knit Companion) so next time I can incorporate my tweaks more seamlessly into the heel rounds.  Now that I think about it the pattern will probably tell me to do the same on the toes too.

10 July--Barbara Malcolm, Horizon. 

January

I walked into the Museum feeling the return of a fear I thought I'd finally outgrown.  I wished I were back in the craft store with my friends.  My footsteps made a cold and lonely sound echoing in the entrance hall, making me regret I'd signed up for this class.

            I'd never been in the Museum this late in the day.  There weren't many people there, just a few stray figures in the distance silently surveying the exhibits.  I looked around for a security guard or someone to ask directions from and found no one.  But I heard the hum of voices off to my right and followed it, hoping it led in the right direction.  The corridor seemed claustrophobic after the soaring spaces of the exhibit hall.  Feeling like Alice in the maze of dim hallways, I finally popped through a door into a well-lit studio scattered with easels around the edges, and five people setting out their supplies at tables in the center of the room.

No one seemed to be in charge, no teacher stood near the front of the room.  I drew a shaky breath and stepped into the light.

“Is this the watercolor class?” I asked the woman nearest me; a stupid question since I could see everyone removing tubes and cakes of paint and brushes from their carrying cases.

“Yes, it is,” she said, looking up from a battered wooden box covered in paint smudges.  “Are you Gail?”

“Yes, I am.  How did you know?”

“I'm Renee,” she said extending a hand.  “Vi took a class from me last year.  She told me you'd be here.”

“Oh, man, now I’m really nervous.  You’re a painting teacher and you’re taking this class?  What am I doing here?”

“Don't be nervous,” Renee said.  “I try to take one class every year.  Keeps me sharp and I can always steal other peoples ideas for my own classes.”

“Have you ever taken a class from this guy?”

           “Nope, never.  I hear he's a bit of a prima donna, but he's a dynamite artist and I intend to suck every piece of knowledge out of him I can.  How about you?”

           While Renee was talking I'd started setting out my things at the table beside hers.  As her words washed over me, my knees started to shake and I was sure she could hear my heart pounding.

“I've only taken one class at the craft store.  I'm afraid I've let my friends talk me into something I'm not ready for tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I think all of them telling me how good I was, hearing it for so many weeks, led me to believe it.  And if you're an art teacher and you're nervous about this guy, I don't have any business being here.”

           “Don't be silly.”  Renee laid her hand on my shoulder.  “Think of it this way, if this guy is as good as they say he is, you won't have too many bad habits to unlearn.  I've been painting with watercolors for years and still don't feel like I have much control over them.

“Control, huh,” I muttered as I dug out my favorite brushes, “I think I have too much control.  I'm still strangling my brush and...”

           At that moment a tall, thin man swept into the room from a door at the opposite end.  Swept was the right word.  He was wearing a floor-length black cape, an oversized purple velvet beret, and a silver lamé shirt.  He wore a black pencil-thin mustache on his upper lip and flourished a long cigarette holder in a hand gaudy with rings.  He pranced, there's just no other word for it, he pranced to the center of the room and struck a pose.  Six indrawn breaths ended in a crescendo of silence as we beheld the vision of our new teacher.

A cold, affected voice rang out: "I yam Jacques Tunis.  I weel be your mhuse.  Thees ees wataircolor clahs.  I am praying you are not all stupeed."  He spat the last word.

Stunned silence greeted his announcement.  As we watched, the caped shoulders began to shake and he swept off his beret saying, “Man, I hate pretentious artists.” in a normal, Midwestern voice.  He peeled off his mustache, “that really itches,” and swirled out of the cape to reveal paint-stained jeans, rolled up the sleeves of the lamé shirt, and rubbed his hands together

"Now that that's over, we can get down to business.  Call me Jake," he said.

           Relieved laughter relaxed shoulders among the students as Jake made his way around the room, introducing himself and getting to know each of us a bit.  We spent that first evening going over the basics, the basics by Jake, that is.  He was enough of a prima donna to want us to use his methods rather than the ones we'd learned in previous classes.  His declared goal for the next twelve weeks was, "To teach you the right way, MY way, to paint."  And he went on to assure us that he would teach us easier, more effective ways to put the paint on the paper, and to make the paint do what we wanted it to do.

A few of the faces, Renee's included, showed relief rather than rebellion, which surprised me.  During the break I asked Renee why she looked relieved.

"Well, I've been in a slump lately and have wasted so much paper and paint that anything this guy can teach me to help get beyond it, I'm all for.”  She grimaced and added a second packet of sugar to her vending machine coffee.  “I told you being so new to painting would be good for you.  You won't have to unlearn too much.  The rest of us will be having a much harder time, you mark my words."

Renee’s confidence that my status as a rank beginner would be an advantage made me feel a little better.

Tomorrow evening is the weekly concert at the Botanical Gardens.  LC, OJ, and their entourage go and I got a membership so I can go too.  They get food from Panera but I think I'll put a Cobb-ish salad together.  Should be fun plus I'll get to try out the new jellyroll-race picnic cloth.  It's not even supposed to rain.  Good times.
--Barbara