Time keeps on slippin’

When was I here last? A week ago? Oh, December 9th. Five days. Seems longer. Maybe because in that entire five days I have not had one second during which I could go into a quiet room and type. The girls are back in school today. They will stay for the pathetic snack-based lunch I packed for them, until collected around 12:45. I have 2.5 hours before then. Vacuuming must be done, and hummus must be made. Those are the two things I cannot do with the girls in the house. TOO LOUD! they say. So, when they tell me they don’t want to go to ‘cool in the morning, I tell them that I will be doing all the loud things while they are out, and it somehow makes getting them there easier.

This is what I have learned after two and a half months of preschool:

1. Make sure you have some kind of pop-tart thingy in your house for quick morning brekky bribery food tool.
2. Orchestrate things so that they are already wearing most of next-day’s outfit when they go to bed, making the possibility for a morning fight over clothing almost impossible.
3. Really, really give yourself more than a half-hour between waking up and getting out door. Forty-five minutes is better than thirty.
4. Do you have coffee in the house when you return from dropping them off? If not, pick something up on the way home. Even better if some kind of muffin or bagel accompanies it. With butter.
5. They are gonna get sick. Come to terms with this and do your best not to get sick also. And if you do feel like you’re getting sick, take zinc and go to bed very early. Sleep seems to the be the best defense against illness.
6. Try not to get stressed out in the morning, because they do pick up on your stress and will use it against you.

My brain is flat. I managed to paint for one hour yesterday, which was all the time in the past week I’ve had to do so. Sad sad sad. At least I have work to look to with a ray of hope. I never in my life thought I’d think, much less utter those words. But I do love my small, 10ish or less hours of work I have to focus on each week. I love my co-workers, if you can call them that, working only 1oish hours. In reality they are my adult, non-friend or co-parent friend contacts. They speak to me in terms of websites, links, forms, content management systems. Documents to decipher, web architecture to build from. Their emotional involvement in dealing with me is pleasant and respectful, quiet, well-dressed. They go to the bathroom without my help and if they are thirsty or hungry, I wouldn’t know about it, since they don’t alert me to such things. Which is nice. Truthfully, I’m so happy to come home after being in an office for one day, seeing Mimi and Beenie’s gorgeous faces and seeing them healthfully whirl around the house like the wild animals they are. But those few hours being purely cerebral and computery are golden. For now. I’m sure I’ll curse it all when I’m back to working full-time, in the next six months, year or whatever, but for now, I am loving this escape called work.

Was in a pissy mood when I walked into the painting studio yesterday morning, but things lightened up when I saw my old pals, the big flower painting, the puddle painting and the neglected octopus painting. Haven’t worked on the octopus since the hellishly hot and muggy days of summer, so when I managed to do a little work with Sap Green on those tentacles yesterday, it really warmed my cold, black heart. The big flower painting got some of that Sap Green action, too, but more so with Cobalt Violet, all over the big flower bloom in the center of the canvas. In a way, it is perfect to only work on this big piece for an hour or two per week, because there needs to be a good deal of drying between layers, and a week is a good amount of time for most pigments to settle onto the canvas. In another way, if I had, say, forty or fifty hours per week to spend on painting, I’d be able to produce a cohesive body of work, not just one piece here and there, which I’d prefer. I know it is not realistic, and I know it does not fit into my current reality of supporting two extra people in our house. So what.

I made a vegan/gluten-free banana cream pie yesterday, which is sitting in the fridge, still not solid, but warbly. I’m not sure I want to eat it. I may have to stick to making fruit pies and pumpkin-type pies. This one involved a double boiler, which I can tell you right now is WAAAAAY out of my pie-making element. But you gotta try new pies, right? Maybe I learned something from this experience. Not sure what. Perhaps not to make cream pies again… Oh dairy, why havest thou forsaken me?!

The Charlie Brown xmas tree sits on our counter, looking cute and full of cut-out cardboard paper chains and ornaments. Still haven’t fixed/finished the tin foil star on top, but it is coming together. Maybe it will be finished by Christmas.

The second cup of coffee is being made. I am going to make like the cute, organized, satisfied, efficient little housewife that I am not and try to get some of the cat hair and crumbs off the rugs on the first floor, perhaps making it up to the second floor rugs, too. But more likely, not. Wish me luck, or not.