The Time I Almost Went to Art School (Except I Had No Talent)

When my brother and I were children, my parents believed in nurturing our talents and helping us become whatever we wanted to be. Kindergarteners have a very small skill set, but they get to paint a lot, and so one September day I brought home a roll of manila paper. It was heavy with paint, damp and creased from where my fingers clutched it on the walk.

Jackson Pollock No. 9 - It really does look like that long-ago painting, manila paper and all.

Prepared to gush over any bit of artwork, no matter how rudimentary, Mom and Dad watched me unfurl the paper and thrust it their way. Stunned, they stared at the masterpiece I’d so casually brought into the house. It was like something out of Jackson Pollock – The Kindergarten Years. Bright splashes of color dotted the paper, flirting and frolicking in an arrangement that dazzled the eye. Abstract and playful, it was the work of a confident painter, one much older than five.

The next day they quietly began saving for a fancy art school. I would be the first artiste in the family, and they wanted to make sure I had an opportunity to mix more media than crayons and fingerpaints.

Excited to show off their daughter’s talent, they had the picture framed and hung in a place of prominence over the dining room table, where we could admire it.

And then one night during dinner, as my brother kicked me under the table so my parents couldn’t see, my mom turned to me and asked, “What made you decide to put that dab of blue right there?”

“What?” I asked, more worried about Mom catching me kicking my brother back than about answering her.

She repeated her question.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Well, what about the red, right there in the corner? What inspired that?”

“I don’t know.” Thinking the chat finished, I surreptitiously fed another pea to our golden retriever, who hovered hopefully beneath my heavy wooden chair.

“And the yellow?” she tried again, waving one hand at a few blobs.

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “It’s not mine. I didn’t paint it.”

Silence, as my parents’ forks froze over their plates. When my mom could form a coherent thought, she asked, “You didn’t?”

I shook my head, oblivious to their tension and, not understanding that my entire future as an artist hung on my next word, said, “No.” Then I went back to shoveling stuffed peppers in my mouth because, really, they were delicious.

“So, uh, who did?” my mom asked gently, as if hoping my answer had been a mistake.

I looked up, mid-bite. Seriously, were we still talking about this? “I don’t know.”

“But why do you have it, then?”

A close approximation of my kindergarten artwork, circa 2011.

“Teacher told us to take a painting home. I liked that one.” After all, even if I had no talent in the visual arts arena, I could still recognize a pretty picture when I saw it.

Silence. My parents’ eyes flicked to the picture. To me. To the picture – the one I hadn’t done with my own skinny little fingers and globby kindergarten paint.

They stopped saving for art school but, just in case, asked me to bring home a few paintings of my own instead of leaving them for my teacher to discard – an easy request since I created a new masterpiece every afternoon. And each day it was the same: a house with curtains in the windows, a slanting stick figure family of four, sun in the upper corner. Tulips. Grass. Our pets made an occasional cameo appearance. Sometimes there was a rainbow.

To this day my drawings look as if I did them with my left hand while crossing my eyes, but that’s okay because I never had art school aspirations anyway. I wanted to be something much more practical: a writer.

The Trouble with Audiobooks

Warning: Moderately explicit imagery ahead. If you are young and impressionable, easily shocked, or my parents, feel free to move along.

This morning I kicked off my list of errands with a stop at the fitness center, where I pounded out a 55-minute suffer fest on their diabolical machines. I find that ignoring exercise is the easiest way to get through it, so I queued up an old audiobook that I bought last year based on an inexplicable number of five-star reviews and never could finish.

Almost immediately, the two main characters jumped into bed together (and by bed, I mean the shower). Since I’m not one for the, uh, more intimate scenes, I set the player to double speed and hoped the hero and heroine found quick gratification.

They did not. Their staying power was impressive, their stamina improbable. And the author described everything in such detail that even the most die-hard love scene fans would find it tedious. It went on. And on. And on. Annoyed, I finally gave up, stopping the book well before the big finish (if their recent performance was any indication).

Over the next hour Sunshine and I drove all over town, ticking through my to-do list. Just before lunchtime, when my exercise session and the accompanying book were a distant and unpleasant memory, we hit our final stop.

My iPod dock recently died – it could play music, but it couldn’t charge any devices. Since it was less than a month old, I took it back to Radio Shack to see what they could do. I explained the issue and handed it to the guy at the counter, a skinny kid in his early twenties. Just to be helpful, I also passed over my iPod so he could diagnose the problem. Because I’d already gone through a few rounds of testing on my own, the dock’s volume was up. When the guy clicked my iPod into place and pressed the play button, it positively blared my audiobook, the narrator picking up mid-sentence with the lascivious, “…circling lazily around her nipple.”

Horrified, I leapt forward and yanked the iPod out of the dock, but it was too late. The store was utterly silent, every customer frozen in place. A million explanations came to mind, but I was a second too late for a convincing, “Oh, my. I wonder how that got on there?”

The awkwardness hung in the air until, flustered, the salesclerk thrust a new dock at me and wished me a good afternoon. He couldn’t quite meet my eyes, which was fine since I couldn’t look at him either. Through force of will I lifted my chin, flashed a cursory smile in his general direction, thanked him, and fled. Sunshine, oblivious, waved a cheerful goodbye to everyone on our way out the door.

Although I’ll have to let the incident ripen a bit before I know for certain, I believe this morning’s debacle just nudged aside number three on my list of Most Embarrassing Moments (yes, there are two that are worse than this). Want to make me feel better? Feel free to share one of yours below, or put it up on your blog and give me a link in the comments so I can go check it out.

Carrot Cubes, Green Pea Puree and Other Baby Food Misadventures

These cherries now languish - crushed, mutilated, and wholly untouched - in our freezer.

Somewhere between buying thirty-six cloth diapers for Sunshine and committing to what our local Target calls ‘natural feeding’ (because some people consider ‘breast’ a terrible word) I heard about the wonders of making your own baby food. The magazine article claimed it was Easy! Wholesome! Cheap! Fun! And Totally Not Messy At All! Since I’m into cheap fun, I went for it.

It was not the first time I’ve been lied to by a magazine.

There were hints from the start that life would be easier if I simply opened up a jar of Gerber and shoveled it into Sunshine’s mouth. For one thing, Gerber doesn’t require a blender. But I’m a stay-at-home-mom now, so I feel an obligation to get my inner housewife on. Most of the time that means I toss laundry into the washer a few times a week, make dinner when I feel like it, and sweep the floor on a semi-regular basis. Otherwise, it’s all Sunshine, all the time. Still, girlie and I were lurking about the house anyway, so why not?

The peas came first. I lovingly cut open the bag (because, no, I was not going to hand-shell three hundred sugar snaps, no matter how much I love my daughter), dumped the frozen contents into our electric steamer, and set the timer. Now all I had to do was grind them into baby-safe mush. Easy. I poured a mountain of veggies into the blender, tapped the puree button, and waited for the magic. The engine whirred ineffectually, a burning smell tinged the air, and smoke curled out from under the base. Okay. Fine. Next button. More power. Still, those blades would not move. Hot pea juice fogged up the inside. Sunshine fussed. The Mother of the Year acceptance speech I’d been composing in my head dissolved.

A quick consultation with my father – who’d never made baby food in his life, but does have a knack for dealing with mean machinery – solved the problem. A little water, a little stirring, a little more water…a lot more water. With a groan, the blender finally complied, grinding the peas into an unappetizing neon sludge.

Giddy with accomplishment, I slid Sunshine into her high chair and served up a big old glop of the stuff. Which, of course, she refused to eat. (Because, you know, who wouldn’t love warm pea mush for lunch?) Undeterred, I spooned the rest into three ice cub trays and froze them in baby-sized portions, as per the instructions in the magazine article, two cook books, and seven websites I had, by now, read on the subject.

Carrots came next, chopped and steamed and blended with a bucket of water, then chilled into little orange cubes. I dished up a mound of the sticky slop. Ick face ensued.

I was desperate for a victory, so when she ate the yams I sent a silent “Take that!” to Gerber and planned my next feat. Luckily, the end-of-summer trees were heavy with fruit. I peeled, sliced, and simmered apples. I halved and roasted hand-picked peaches and apricots, then slipped off the skins. I removed the seeds from so many grape-sized plums that my thumbs hurt for days. And every bit went into our now-compliant blender.

On occasion I trot out one of the cubes, let it melt, and dish it up. Sunshine still likes her peas round and her carrots chopped, but she’ll take a taste if I pretend I don’t care. As for the rest? Wholesome, cheap, and, if you’re fourteen months old, rather tasty.

Dieting, Step-by-Step

The Five Phases of a Successful Diet:
1. The Vow
2. The Plan
3. The Drunken Optimism
4. The Sacrifice
5. The Happy Scale

The Five Phases of an Unsuccessful Diet:
1. The Vow
2. The Plan
3. The Drunken Optimism
4. The Sacrifice
5. The Consolation Chocolate

A Field Guide to Insomnia – For Reals This Time

Well, that was embarrassing. A couple of days ago as I was typing up my bedside notes, I accidentally published a blog entry I’d written in the middle of the night. Then Sir Google the Vigilant picked up the post before I could erase it. And now it’s out there forever, half-formed thoughts and clumsy midnight sentences and all, the draftiest possible first draft. It’s the perfectionistic writer’s equivalent of looking down to discover you’ve been walking around the mall in nothing more than torn underpants and a saggy bra. And then finding out someone put the security footage on YouTube and mailed links to all your friends and coworkers.

At any rate, it’s as fixed as it’s going to get. So without further ado or so much as a segue, and at the risk of sounding sleep-obsessed, I now present the new and improved version of my field guide to insomnia.

Mix and match as you see fit.

Aha! - Yay! Yay! I’m finally falling asleep! I’m…Oh. Never mind.

Alarmatory Anticipation – What’s the point? Alarm’s about to go off. Or the baby will wake up. Or, well, something.

Bing! – And like that, you’re awake. Really awake.

The Brain Spins – 3 a.m. may not be the ideal time to craft the perfect comeback (six hours too late), plot your novel, or list your to-dos, but good luck convincing your busy brain of that.

Comfort Void – Pillow by Acme Brick. Mattress by Stay Puft.

Fear & Trepidation – Shh! Did you hear that? (See also: Horror Novels, Late Night Reading of)

Prophetic Insomnolescence – I expect it, therefore I have it.

Sound Barrier - Too much noise – or, heck, too little – and sleep’s as elusive as a ghost.

Whee! – Anticipation and excitement are electric coursing through your body. Tomorrow (i.e. Christmas morning, your birthday, the first day of vacation) will be terrific. Tonight? Not so much.

Did I leave any out? Which ones get you?

Shh! Baby’s Sleeping.

I am sitting in our family room in the dark, listening to my baby cry in her nursery, just as I have for the last hour. At ten months we are finally, supposedly, teaching her to fall asleep on her own, and apparently it involves tears. Her torment is incessant, a tide of misery building into giant, shuddering sobbing fits and then subsiding, only to rise again. It is impossible to listen to, and unthinkable not to.

At regular intervals I slump into her darkened room to check on her. Each time she is standing at the foot of her crib, bawling, loudly waiting for my return. I am sweet but firm, a difficult combination with all this guilt clawing at me, urging me to end her sadness, to try this process again another night. Instead I murmur to her, brush her hair from her wet face, lay her down, and rub her shuddering back until she quiets. And then, as advised, I back out of the room to let her figure out how to sleep without me. Her howls follow me down the hall.

I feel cruel and selfish and desperately tired. I swore I would never leave Sunshine to cry it out, but those were pre-parent vows, the promises of someone on the other side of all of these sleepless nights. I am doing the right thing. I am. I know I am.

On my web browser, ten tabs open to articles about sleep. The words are different, but they almost all say the same thing: let her cry. Let her cry, and she will fall asleep. It’s not mean. She has to learn. It’s only a few nights. It’s time. I read through them again for affirmation. Still, I nearly rise and go to her a dozen times before the clock says I may.

Finally, her cries slow to an intermittent whine, a tired drizzle. And then…nothing. I blink into the silence, torn between relief and worry. I can go back to bed! Yay! But is she okay? Did she just fall asleep? Did it actually work? I can’t check now, risk repeating all this drama tonight. Tomorrow will be soon enough. And, yes, we will have another round of this tomorrow night. And the following. And, all those websites assure me, a few nights after that. But we can do this. For now, baby’s sleeping. And soon, I hope, so will I.

Table for One

“Just…one?” The hostess eyes me, a long sweeping look, as if trying to figure out what’s wrong with me that I have to eat out alone.

I used to answer, “Yep!” with a smile, all peppy and bright and for God’s sake don’t look at me like that, I have lots of friends, I’m fine, I’m great. Or I’d hold up my notebook or stack of papers, maybe even a pen, and explain self-consciously, “I have stuff to get done. Had to get out of the house. You know how it is.” All the while, I would cringe at my urge to lower my eyes, to explain, to make jolly and nice.

Over the last year, though, I have decided that it is Not Their Business if I decide to take myself out to lunch. Not the hostess who tacks on “just” and a judgmental pause before the “one”. Not the waiter who snootily asks me if I’ll need another water glass and menu, or if it’s just (there’s that word again, as if I’m not enough) me. Not the couple in the corner, who eyed me and whispered when I took my booth alone.

It may be immunity born of necessity – the more there is to do at home, the stronger my need to go elsewhere in order to be loose and creative and writerly. Or perhaps this confidence comes from motherhood. When you’ve had too little sleep, and you’ve changed and laundered hundreds of diapers, and you’ve contorted your face into this many silly poses just to make an infant laugh, well, eating alone isn’t such a big deal. Or it could be the realization that it’s just food. It’s eating. You do it three times a day, and often alone in your kitchen or dining room or in front of your TV or at your desk at work. A restaurant is just another place to do it. No different from going to the library or the bank alone, only, you know, with food.

Mostly, though, there’s the comfort of my writing. It is so nice to work on it again, and if it means I have to put up with an occasional smirk or up-and-down glance in order to enjoy a little quality time with a notebook and a bowl of pasta, well, so be it. I’m not alone, anyway. I have my imagination and the characters I’ve created. Together we make a whole crowd.

Not Entirely Metaphor-Free

Extended metaphors make me itch. This means I could never write straight nonfiction, because the extended metaphor is the nonfictionist’s crack. Just look at early parenting books, and you’ll break out in red hot hives, too. Not since those two-in-the-morning if-you-were-a-shrub-what-type-would-you-be college discussions have I heard human beings so frequently compared to plant life. Babies, apparently, can be roses, sunflowers, even soybeans, based on a few cringingly flimsy criteria. And these metaphors do not last just a paragraph, but flourish and build for four hundred pages, twining from chapter to chapter, mixing freely with wholly unrelated metaphors, breeding at will. I could go on, but I see myself slipping from simple metaphor to extended, and I cannot let that happen, if only because of those hives.

That said, let me make just one (moderately) quick and almost metaphor-free comparison to something I haven’t even brought up yet. During my high school years I had a room of my own. ‘Had’ is an inadequate verb, really. I lived in my room, loved it, haunted it, possessed it. I made it mine. I misspent many math classes rearranging furniture in my mind, re-appropriating graph paper so I could sketch out a visual representation, then hurrying home after school to shove around my bed and night stand and bookshelves according to my not-to-scale scribbles. Then re-taping all my posters. Then rearranging my knickknacks.

Then doing it all again three weeks later.

Until my room had been subjected to intense interior redecoration, I could not do a single homework assignment. It was urgent and glaring, and never more necessary than when I had a big project due. I believe I told myself it helped me think.

I’ve outgrown a lot of my younger tendencies. I feel no need to draw comparisons between humans and horticulture, for example, and I never use graph paper. Graduation took care of most of the rest, including all the homework I once pushed heavy furniture around to avoid. But one thing prevailed: the urge to redecorate. Hence my new website. And this blog entry. Nothing like a good template switch-up to inspire a new post.

Well. You didn’t really think I could do a massive site redesign and not write about it, did you?

Introducing The Schnooks

It’s nearly our baby’s 12th weekaversary, and I’m back on the blog. I’d have been here earlier, but I’m too lazy to type one-handed, and since I have our little one in my other hand most of the time (when I’m not at work, that is) that’s my only option these days. And so in lieu of my own hobbies, I’ve been catering to The Schnooks’s. She’s developed an extensive collection in her three months outside the womb, including:

1) Filthifying fresh diapers

2) Conversing with her mobile

3) Using the promise of smiles to coerce adults into making silly faces and ridiculous sound effects

4) Ignoring the cats

5) Getting kicky to music

6) Ogling books^[1]

7) Eating^[2]

Mainly, though, we are her hobby. Whatever we do, she must do it with us, and she must have our undivided attention the entire time. And so we read her piles of silly books full of rhymes and colorful pictures. And we sing rock songs, unplugged and with questionable skill (but plenty of enthusiasm). And, of course, there’s the usual daily maintenance.

But those details can wait. First, a FAQ. After all, I had one when announcing her impending birth, so why not a reprise?

1) You couldn’t possibly have named her The Schnooks, right? Right.

2) You do know that schnooks is unflattering – ‘pitiable and gullible little simpleton’, I believe it means? *Sigh* Yes. Now we know. But we didn’t have a clue when hubby made up the nickname^[3] two days after her birth. We just thought it was a miniature version of schnookums. Which actually isn’t a word, according to my spell check.

3) Stats, please! Here goes: 7 pounds, 8.5 ounces at birth. 20 inches long. 15 hours of labor. Loads of brown hair that defies gravity without the help of gel. And most definitely a girl. At three months she’s in the 50th percentile for weight, 75th for length, 90th for head size, and a whopping 99th for hair circumference. If they measured hair circumference.

4) How’s she sleeping? Maybe I should have put this one first since that seems to be everyone’s number one question these days. The truth is, I’m scared to say, since I don’t want to jinx things. The last time I posted a bragatory status update on Facebook she didn’t sleep for two nights. So I’ll just say…plenty. She’s sleeping plenty. Thank you so much to the gods in charge of sleep cycles, firm mattresses, and alarm clocks, amen.

5) If she’s keeping you so busy, how are you able to blog right now? It’s my new strategy: I wrote most of this long-hand with my writing group, and am pushing my WPM skills to the limit entering this while she takes her (very short^[4]) morning nap.

Anything else?

1. yay! [↩]
2. sumo wrestlers would envy her physique [↩]
3. or so we thought… [↩]
4. usually half an hour if we’re lucky. In fact – no kidding – she slept for 33 minutes and is now stretching and eating her hands and staring at me expectantly. Which means that I’m back on baby duty. Why, yes, it is before 9:00 on a Saturday morning and we’ve already been awake long enough for her to play, then get tired, then take her first nap. Before The Schnooks I rarely saw the world beyond my eyelids by this time of day. [↩]

I Am Unstoppable Now…Well, Once I Figure Out These Directions

When I was six, I thought grownuppery would happen at nine. At nine, I thought thirteen was the age of adulthood. At thirteen, I knew I was at the pinnacle of wisdom and maturity – if only my teachers and parents would acknowledge that I was their equal. Once I got over that assumption, I always aimed a few years ahead for the exact moment when I would become an adult, or at least behave like one. Now, at 33 and expecting a baby of my own, I pretty much feel like a kid most of the time. Except for one thing: I now read the directions that come with my toys. Which is how I found the following misdirections this morning in the packaging for my camera’s battery charger. This multi-folded bit of paper assures me that I am not yet an adult – after all, adults should be able to process even complex directions such as this:

When the charging is complete, the LED light will turn orange. As(sic) this point, the battery can be removed for use. It is recommended, however, that you leave the battery connected to the charger for another 30 minutes to ensure a full, or “topped off”, charge. It is best to remove the battery after charging but it is ok to leave the batery(sic) in the charger for a short time because the micro processor controller will reduce voltage loss.

Um, wha–? Take the “batery” out when? After the light turns orange, or a half hour after that, or after it’s finished charging, which is when, exactly? And if it’s supposed to come out a while after the light turns orange and there’s no buzzer or beep or bloop to tell me when that happens, how do I know? Do I time it? Do I watch the battery charge? That’s guaranteed to be a fun time.

And that is why I read the directions: They make me feel young. And they amuse me severely.