Dear A,
I don’t know what you heard me say.
I don’t know what you told them.
I don’t know what you’d told them before.
I don’t know what motivations you might have for telling them things that aren’t true.
I don’t know if things inside you are broken.
Dear Mr. Z.,
You are a shit.
I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about you recently, but every time I have I’ve come back to a place of wonderment that I never said so, to your face. I probably would have been punished: teenagers don’t say things like that to authority figures. But it should have been said, and I wish like hell I’d said it.
I know my parents were over-involved and pushy. I know I was obnoxious and thought I was a special snowflake. But when I found out I was a National Merit Scholar, that should have been a pretty special moment to feel snowflakey about.
Instead, you came to me in the cafeteria and asked me to stand so you could talk to me about something. You didn’t lead me out of the room; you started speaking right there, in what was a surprisingly loud voice for something you’d implied was confidential. And you said, “I just need to talk to you about… are you using birth control? Are you being careful?”
I don’t remember how I replied: if I gasped, or made choking noises, or even laughed. My jaw may literally have dropped open. I remember that I noticed how quiet it had gotten in the area immediately around us, how many people were listening. I remember that I felt naked, like it was that dream where you’re naked in class, only it was real and it was an adult, a teacher, who had stripped me bare.
When you threw your head back and laughed and clapped me on the shoulder and said “Just kidding! You’re a National Merit Scholar! Congratulations!” I’m sure I laughed too. I don’t remember that. I remember the adrenaline buzzing through my limbs, the sick relief in the pit of my stomach. I remember sitting back down and going through the rest of my day in a vague sort of shock, not sure if it was the shock of a pleasant success or a profound trauma. I didn’t have the words for what I was feeling, let alone to articulate what was wrong with what had happened.
I have the words now, though. And they are: You are a shit.
I don’t care why you didn’t like me. It doesn’t matter. That little stunt was inappropriate. You were the adult, I was the kid, and even if there hadn’t been a power differential you would have been out of line.
As I’ve gone through the years since, I’ve learned there are a lot of shits like you, guys who hide the misogyny and bullying in humor. Some of them end up having thriving careers as stand-up comedians or sitcom writers. Some of them run for Congress. None of them are really funny, and we need to practice saying so. If we can’t do it in the moment we need to forgive ourselves, but we need to circle back and say it later. Out loud, in public.
So here you go. You’re not funny, Mr. Z. I hope that somewhere down the line in your career someone managed to say that to your face. I hope that you learned to use your words when you were unhappy with someone. I suspect you didn’t. But rest assured that I learned, and that when I think of Men Who Are Shits, you feature among them. And I’m getting much better at not giggling.
Love,
Alden
It’s been a couple days since the finale of How I Met Your Mother, and the finale hasn’t grown on me. And yes, let’s go ahead and stipulate that no show finale is ever universally popular, and that in many cases you can love the show and not love the finale and be fine. But I keep trying to figure out why I don’t think that could be the case for me with this show — why the finale is going to leave reruns tasting bitter. And a week later, it’s still bothering me.
So I could write this rant including words like patriarchy and misogyny and mentioning that we don’t live in a vacuum. I could anticipate responses and comments and head off a conversation about being humorless. But I don’t want to do those things. I’m too drained to do those things today. And I don’t think I need to do them.
It occurred to me this morning that some of the most troubling issues about the finale (and now the show in general) can be summed up simply by comparing where each of the six major characters was in terms of a personal story arc at the end of the penultimate episode and where they were at the end of the finale. A ridiculous amount changed between those two points in time, but that was the writers’ choice, so it’s fair game to compare the two.
PENULTIMATE EPISODE
Ted: Perhaps a little sadder, but moving off to be a grownup without his Lily- and Marshall-crutches; generally optimistic about the future.
Robin: Facing her issues with family and self in a relationship with a man who didn’t expect her to overcome them and who embraced (and mirrored!) her eccentricities.
Barney: Realizing that growing up isn’t the end of everything and that there can be sweetness in maturity, honesty, and openness.
Lily: Having a career opportunity as well as a second child, supported in her process of self-actualization by someone she loves.
Marshall: Making a sacrifice for the woman he loves, who is pregnant with his second child — but a sacrifice with a theoretical endpoint that won’t ruin his life, and he gets the wife and kids he wants to boot.
The Mother: Desired, waited for, and welcomed by every member of this ready-made family (including the audience!).
So there’s sadness here, and the difficulties of growing up, but real character development. And hope and opportunity for each and every one of the six.
Now take a look at the finale.
FINALE
Ted: Victorious as a man, landing the woman of his dreams without betraying bro code or being disloyal to The Mother. Cake had and eaten.
Robin: Yes, she has a career, but more importantly she’s realized that she really did want that traditional relationship after all, so thank goodness she gets it and is finally complete.
Barney: Dude got his balls back, amirite? Thank goodness. And then he got even BIGGER balls when he realized he was now responsible for the training and protection (read: shaming and indoctrination) of a little girl. Maturity AND he still gets to be a horndog! Cake had and eaten.
Lily: Pregnant. Do we know anything else about where she is? She appears fulfilled by being Marshall’s wife, the mother of his children, and… whatever else it is she’s doing that isn’t important enough to mention.
Marshall: Okay, he had to go through some years of emasculation, but now his wife is pregnant with his third manifestation of virility and his professional peers recognize his prowess. Cake had and eaten.
The Mother: Dead.
I’m just saying. Here we have three men and three women. In the first ending, all six have bittersweet but hopeful futures. In the second, there’s a pattern. And the worst part is, I seriously doubt the writers thought about any of this explicitly. The penultimate episode felt unfinished, to us and to them, because it’s not how we’re used to stories being finished — and that’s what would have made it great. The final episode wrapped it up nicely in the way sitcoms “should” wrap up — including the latent misogyny with which we’re so thoroughly comfortable — and that’s why I won’t be able to watch episodes in syndication.
It could have been legendary. Unfortunately, in its final minutes, HIMYM proved that it was completely forgettable.
Dear Mrs. K,
I am sorry I was late coming back inside after lunch. I set myself a goal today, you see: I was going to climb all the way around the snow piles. The big, beautiful ones that get made when they clear off the ice rink. I was pretending I was an explorer in Antarctica. I started at a clear spot with my back to the school and I walked to the left.
But you know how hard it can be to walk in snow, especially when you are little and the snow is deep. The wind has made a crust on the deep snow too. When I stepped on it, it crunched open and my boot sank deep into the soft snow underneath. Sometimes the snow got into my boot, and when it melted it hurt my skin. But I kept going! I have read about brave Antarctic explorers and how cold and dangerous their trips can be. So the least I can do is keep climbing when there is cold snow down my leg. One crunchy step after another.
When I got to the far corner of the ice rink, I stopped to take a break. I know explorers in Antarctica have to be careful to maintain their strength. I didn’t have a snack, but I did have the Tree Friend you assigned me last fall. Do you remember that my tree was near the rink? I named her Avon, and I still visit her sometimes, even though that unit is over. Avon is just a little off the edge of the rink, but they were even deeper, crunchier steps. When I was sitting under her I could take a deep breath and listen to the very, very quiet. The smell of snow burned my nose, but it is a good smell. I felt very alone but in a good way, like a brave explorer.
I don’t think I stayed very long with Avon, but when I got back to the Antarctic mountains I noticed it was very quiet by the rink too. That’s because I was the only one outside. Sometimes when you call us and I want to do one more thing, I miss lining up, and then I have to run to catch the end of the line. I know this makes you mad. But today, I didn’t even see the line. And today, I didn’t hear you call. I promise, I was listening to the quiet. But I didn’t hear you.
So I ran, Mrs. K. It was hard to run, because of how my boots crunched down every time, and the snow got in my legs. I got all sweaty inside my warm coat and under my hat. And I was scared. I know you like for me to pay attention, and I was worried you would think I ignored you on purpose. I thought you might be mad, and maybe even call my parents. They would be mad at me too. So I ran, and I got sweaty, and then when I came inside I pulled off all my outside clothes really fast. I thought about maybe telling a little lie, like I wasn’t feeling well, or Mrs. B called me down to the office. For a minute, I thought about really going to the office, so it wouldn’t be as much of a lie. I didn’t mean to do anything bad, so lying about it wouldn’t be as bad as when you hide something you did on purpose.
But when I came into the classroom, you didn’t say anything to me. I know you saw me, and you must have realized I’d just come inside. I was so late that nobody else in class had pink cheeks or was out of breath like me. I waited for you to write my name on the board and tell me I was going to miss the movie tomorrow. Or to tell me to go sit out in the hall and think about how I could make better choices next time. I hate having to think about that, because a lot of times I don’t understand what choice I made that was bad. But I knew I was probably going to have to do that today.
I don’t know why you didn’t write my name down, Mrs. K. I don’t know if you decided I looked sick or if you guessed I must have been at the principal’s office. Maybe through the window you saw me running and knew how hard I’d tried to come back in fast. Maybe you’re finally changing your mind and deciding I’m a good kid, and that when I’m late or forgetful, it isn’t because I don’t respect you.
I don’t know why my name isn’t on that board, Mrs. K. But thank you. I promise to try to sit still during the movie tomorrow.
Me
Well, it’s done! And I think this thing is really cool! I don’t have that feeling all the time about my art projects, so this is nice.
We left off with a couple of layers of paint on the box and picture frame that I’d picked out to house my Dia de los Muertos miniatures from California.
In that last picture I posted, you can just see one of the embellishments I bought from Etsy to see if it would work. It’s a cool paint-your-own skull with wings.
Once it arrived, it occurred to me that it would look really good if painted by a miniature master. Fortunately, I happen to be married to one of those. So I handed it over and he got out his teeny-tiny brushes and got started.
While he was working on that, I put several more layers of the metalic gold paint on the picture frame, and then a couple of layers of gold glitter paint.
I lined the back only of the box with a sheet of glitter-covered foam from the dollar store. Then I started attaching some confetti spangles to the inside of the box, and to one of the smaller box lids, which I planned to use as a stage/step area to raise the figures up a little.
But then I had a brainwave. I remembered a random tin heart I’d received as a freebie when I bought some fabulous earrings from a friend-of-a-friend, Artista Muerta (who has an Etsy shop if you’re interested!). I didn’t have any real plans for the tin heart but it was perfect for this project. So in it went, and I spangled the whole floor instead of the step. I was a little worried that the Mod Podge would flatten or dull the sparkly spangles, but it didn’t.
The next step was to shimmy the box into the picture frame and stick them together so the box edge didn’t gap away from the frame. I used Loctite paste for this, because I have coordination problems that lead to unfortunate situations with liquid SuperGlue. If I had a nickel for every time I glued my fingers together… One time a few years ago I tried something rated for metal-on-metal adhesion and I was worried I was going to have to go to the hospital for a skin graft if I ever wanted to use my thumb in its opposable capacity again. No joke. So I learn these things about myself, and I work around them. As I said: adhesive paste. Also painter’s tape, so I didn’t have to stand there like an idiot for an hour.
I gave Husband’s precious skull 24 full hours to dry (again, because I learn lessons, including the one when my stencils ran on the Little Free Library!) and then I gave it a serious bath in clear spray-on sealant. If I may digress for a minute, here is a picture of the pizza box after the sealant dried. I am in love with the way this looks and I feel another art project coming on!
Once the sealant was dry, I attached the winged skull and ten jumbo-sized aluminum roses (also inspired by Artista Muerta’s jewelry and similar stuff I saw in LA), also using Loctite paste. It’s only been a day but so far that stuff seems pretty serious, as adhesives go. AND I have ten independently usable fingers today! I call that a win.
So here it is, in all its glory:
So I’ve had these two pumpkins sitting on my kitchen counter since the third week of October. Fortunately, pumpkins are kind of self-contained and long-lasting, if you don’t carve them. I finally got around to doing anything with them this weekend. And by “anything” I mean, of course, “the best thing.”
First, I discovered something that is in retrospect self-evident but was very exciting. I put on a yucky old t-shirt and got ready for slimy upper arms and then I realized that since the time for jack-o-lanterns is long over, I didn’t have to stick my arm in the pumpkin! I could just whack that puppy in half and scoop it out like a civilized person!
I washed the seeds to get rid of most of the yucky stuff…
Then I sprinkled them liberally with salt and left them to dry overnight.
After browsing recipes online for forever, I decided to ditch them all and try my own. This is about creativity, right? So I decided I wanted to start with gochujang as my central ingredient, because I have been on a kick with this stuff in the last couple of months. It’s this fabulous spicy pepper paste used in a lot of Korean dishes, and I buy it at H-Mart. You can put it on anything and everything is improved by it. Seriously, get some. (And note: it also comes in squeezy bottles!)
But I knew applying gochujang directly to seeds was going to make them very painful to eat, if it didn’t start an outright fire in my oven. So I scrounged around in my fridge and came up with some dumpling sauce (which is NOT soy sauce, but a bit more complex and more oily). I also added garlic powder because more garlic is always okay.
I greased the bottom of a glass pan, using sesame oil to keep the flavors sort of in the same Asian family.
Then I baked at 300° for about 40 minutes, stirring every 10. I should say that the recipes I was looking at called for a full hour of baking, but at 40 minutes these guys already looked seriously done. Not burned, but almost.
I also just realized I forgot to take a picture of them when they came out of the oven, because I was too busy eating them. So here is a picture of a small portion on my desk at lunch today.
To be honest, most of the spiciness seems to have baked away, and they mostly taste salted. But they do have a really pleasant, very mild afterburn. All things considered I’m pleased, although next year I might triple the amount of spicy paste!
So a couple of things have happened since I last posted!
These three things combine to give us the perfect creative storm. Because Dia de los Muertos is one of those things that gives me major cultural envy, and boy is it colorful and inspirational. And so I am beginning not one, but two projects about which I will blog.
The first involves a couple little souvenirs I picked up:
The one on the right is my husband, see? Because he’s in a suit and holding a bag of money? And the one on the left is me because… I am also a lady! Although I very rarely wear pretty ladyclothes like this lady, but whatever. Imagination, people.
Here is a better look at the shrine table:
IT HAS BANANAS. How cute is that, people??
So I really wanted to buy one of the full-scale wall-hanging shadowbox shrine things, but there just wasn’t one with the right sort of “people” going on in it. Lots of mariachi bands and newlyweds but I wanted this one to be a commemoration of the new business. So I figured I’d just have to put these guys on a shelf or something.
Then I happened to be at a store full of crafty things, because I have an addiction (but don’t worry, not Hobby Lobby!), and I saw these:
Perfectly-sized boxes! And not just pressed cardboard… they’re papier mâché!*
My imagination began to run wild and I bought a whole lot of other things, most of which sparkled. I have way too many supplies for this project, so we’ll see if that trickles down!
One of the other things I had to have and will definitely use is this picture frame, which was exactly the right size.
I am also using this project to practice patience. I have been doing one (or, okay, two) coats of paint a night and no more. The box helps remind me because it actually starts to bubble if it gets too wet.
So as of last night, this is where we are.
Be excited, folks. Be very excited.
———————–
*Dude, yes, I’m going to be pretentious about this phrase, because I don’t get to use it nearly often enough. Now go about your day hearing a gavel bang down and the voice of a distinguished gentleman saying “665, ladies and gentlemen: a papier-mache musical box, in the shape of a barrel-organ. Attached, the figure of a monkey in Persian robes playing the cymbals. This item, discovered in the vaults of the theatre, still in working order…”
I started a new job in May. A few weeks after I started, a nice gentleman from the properties department stopped by and gave me a nameplate featuring my first name and my husband’s last name. And I kind of wigged out. It didn’t feel entirely reasonable; all my paperwork for the hiring and payroll etc. had featured exactly that name. And it is my legal name, if you’re going by first and last (I have three more in the middle). They didn’t do anything wrong.
It’s even more complicated, and comes up more often, in this particular work environment. My workplace is managed by a university, and I happen to have been a student at that university once upon a time — and long before my name change. So I have a record here, and a preexisting email address and login and payroll code etc., and all those things were just reactivated when I was hired. So in some places I’m my premarital self, and in others I’m my postmarital self.
What I’m not, in any of those situations, is what I have chosen to call myself.
I don’t make decisions easily, and changing my name wasn’t an exception. I grew up in the era of hyphenation, when many of my friends had last names too long to fit on standardized test forms. It was also an era in which divorce became normalized, so when someone’s mother had a different last name you never really knew if that was a feminist choice or a divorce thing. It seemed like an issue. It was a complication. And at the time of my marriage, we were still very undecided about having kids. But I knew that if I were to have children, I’d like to have the same last name they had. And I know that in our culture that’s nearly always the father’s name.
When we got married, my husband exhibited what I think is a very common lack of concern about this issue. As an American male, he grew up thinking of his name as a permanent thing. I think it’s a huge psychological difference, growing up wondering if you’ll change your name or never considering that an option, and that’s where the feminism comes in. I had that worry; he didn’t. He also had absolutely no need for me to change my name. He didn’t care. It wasn’t an issue on his radar.
And in fact, that was what bothered me the most: it seemed like this should be a family issue. I wanted our name to be a family name, something we both had, something that indicated our new tribe together. Something our kids, should they occur, would have too. I really felt most drawn to the very unusual idea of picking a new name for both of us. But my husband wasn’t interested. Again, he’d grown up never considering the flexibility of his name. It just wasn’t a thing. While he was willing to have some conversations, he wasn’t going to be doing anything too crazy.
So we ended up at the Social Security office, minutes away from the formal name-change meeting, and I still didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. My parents had gifted me with four names to begin with. Which one(s) did I want to eliminate? The patriarchal marker given to me by my father? The one preceding it, which was the patriarchal marker of my mother’s father? Or one of the two given names my parents had chosen for me with love? Whose name was least important? How could I make that decision? I was pretty close to a meltdown.
Finally I decided to make no decision. I just slapped one more name on the list. Four names is annoying; how much more annoying could five be? The Social Security guy kind of rolled his eyes at me, but he gave me a new card with five names on it.
You can’t go through the real world with five names, though. Try it. Every form you encounter ever has a blank for a “middle initial,” meaning that every form ever is for me an opportunity for a huge OMG MUST PICK ONE NAME panic attack. I worry sometimes about the legal issues that might be generated by my various combination of names. I’ve had DMV employees tell me it’s illegal to have more than three, so my driver’s license has one combination. The pharmacist chose to hyphenate my old name and my new one, so the name on my bottles of pills is yet another name. I was turned down for a credit card twice last year because they were doing a credit check using my maiden and married names mashed together as a single word (I have no idea why they did this). It’s a mess.
So I made a decision. In the grand tradition of the woman whose failed presidential campaign introduced me to the feminist blogosphere (a subject for another post another day), I decided to do a Hillary Rodham Clinton. I changed my name, but I am not losing who I was. And I’m choosing to ask you to use all three, which is where the choice and identity come in. I’m not going to make a fuss with credit card companies, etc. I’ll pick my battles. But where I can, this is what I’ve chosen.
And that’s where I was when my new employers handed me a desk plate assigning me two names.
I didn’t hesitate too long to complain. In point of fact I’d imagine there are all sorts of reasons why they shouldn’t order name plates before consulting their employees. I might prefer to be called by a middle name or a nickname. The plate is there so people strolling by know what to call me; I ought to have some input into that. So I asked, and they were very apologetic and ordered me a new plate quickly, and it was all very pleasant.
But it made me think about it all again.
There’s another part to the story about the Social Security office. After I decided in a panic to keep all my names and the gentleman behind the desk rolled his eyes, my husband pushed his name-change form across the desk. He’s a traditionalist, yes, but one of my arguments had spoken to him, and he agreed that to some extent our names indicated our new tribe. So he wanted to take my maiden name as a second middle name. It’s a small change; as I noted above, having four names is more annoying than not and you always have to pick one middle initial — and he picks the one his parents gave him. But my name is there, lurking on his legal documents, and has even been included on his most recent academic diplomas. It was an important gesture to me and I deeply appreciated it.
And the Social Security guy laughed.
He said, “Seriously?” and he laughed.
Fundamentally, there is this truth: the fact that I — and hundreds of other women — have written angsty essays about what we chose and why we chose it and why we are happy or unhappy with our decision indicates that there is still a problem. Because you don’t see hundreds of men having this crisis. The allies who choose to change their names are awesome and their point is appreciated, but even they didn’t have this crisis. This crisis is still squarely on the shoulders of women, and as such, it is still very much a feminist issue.
I just don’t know what the answer is.
So in the meantime, I’m going with straddling the fence, and hoping it generates some conversation.
Okay, where were we?
Right… I was itching to do more work and being foiled by the humidity and the rain.
I did my best to be patient, but: I am not patient. I finished the quote one night under plastic.
I also used the rainy days to pull apart the lock mechanism. I wanted a spring and I thought it would be kind of cool to use the vending machine’s own bits as much as possible to keep the project kind of organic (so to speak). A before-and-after:
But then I really had to wait, because in addition to rain I also had Life Things to do. So I stayed itchy — literally and figuratively, thanks to the mosquitoes — for a few more days.
Then came Saturday. After a full day elsewhere I found myself with a few precious hours of sunlight and got back to work. I glued on the official Little Free Library sign I received and I tried out the shelves my husband had kindly made for me. Good thing, too, because the door wouldn’t actually close with the lower shelf in place, so modifications were required.
Then I invited my sister and her family over to add a bit of a personal touch to the project. We all traced our hands around the top.
While the tracing was going on, I had this conversation with my niece.
MG: What’s that?
Me: It’s a stencil. I use it to make the shapes look prettier. Want to try one?
MG: Yes. I want to try a PINK one.
Me: Well, the color of the stencil doesn’t matter as much as the color of the paint. Here, let’s use this blue stencil and do a flower.
MG: Okay, but I want to do a PINK flower.
Anybody want to guess what color MG’s handprint is?
Her mother did a fantastic job decorating her own handprint (blue) and my nephew’s. Incidentally, having his hand traced was apparently the scariest thing that has ever happened to my nephew, and involved a lot of screaming. So that was fun for everybody!
I finally managed to tear myself away Saturday night only because I knew I had nothing to do yesterday and could spend the day working on FINALLY FINISHING. So I got up bright and early and got to work blacklining. I caulked the random holes all over the inside (they were obviously deliberate, so I don’t know: maybe newspapers need air?). I also played around with a bunch of options to make the coin-return button ring a bell. This is why I wanted the spring.
Unfortunately, I just couldn’t make it work right. I tried a variety of ways to extend the bells away from the wall of the box, but I think it needs more engineering than I wanted to spend on it yesterday. That shall be Project Part 2. (And if I have any readers at this point and any of them are engineers and can think of a simple fix, I’d be super-grateful!)
After caulking, outlining, plexiglassing, and shelving, I sprayed the whole thing with clear sealant. I should mention that I’m new to spray painting and I seem to overdo it. The clear is, obviously, invisible, so it’s even harder to see what you’re doing, and… some colors ran. I frantically tried to clean up the streaky parts and it just got worse. It was a rough hour or two.
In the end, I reminded myself that this is an exercise in creativity and having fun, not a competition. So I took a deep breath and declared the thing Done. (For now.)
Oh, also, I decided at the last minute to add the English translation of my quote on the inside. So you have to open the box to see it.
Next came the very funnest part! This puppy hasn’t moved since I dragged it to its current position on Memorial Day. Nobody was looking forward to moving it. But this is where my need for immediate gratification comes in handy. While others might have brainstormed and planned the best way to move 300+ lbs of metal and concrete around a house and down an embankment, I just grabbed the dolly and the husband and we JUST DID IT.
Husband also kindly provided balloons.
Yes, we came DOWN that slope, because it was going to be literally, physically impossible to lift this thing the two feet required if we’d tried going UP. I’m not kidding, y’all: it’s really heavy! I was a little worried that we would drop it and whoever was on the downhill side would be crushed to death. Fortunately, no death-crushage occurred.
Oh yes… a closeup of the tentacle. It’s glued to the plexiglass I used to close up that coin-return opening. It’s just the tiniest bit of randomness and I love it. 🙂
Now I am going to have to control my urge to check outside six times a day to see if anybody’s come and left books!!
I know it’s just yellow paint and stencils and this isn’t really the most creative thing you’ll ever see. But I’ve been interested to observe my own emotional interaction with this stupid mailbox. I’m OBSESSED with it.
It’s been too rainy or I’ve been out too late to do much work on it. Well, except for the one night I decided to cram in a little lettering right after work, but because I was in my work clothes I skipped the bug spray. Let me please whine for a second that that was a baaaaaaad idea. I’ve been itchy all week. (The upside is that I’ve had some thoughts about another piece for my Jordan blog, but that’s a small upside when you itch so much!)
But I did finish the quote!
Also, my official plaque arrived yesterday in the mail, so I’m going to Gorilla Glue that puppy on there tonight in all likelihood. And tomorrow evening and Sunday are going to be all about the library.
And I’m excited. That’s the fun thing! I don’t think of myself as a very artistic person. Partially that’s because I have a sibling who is a flat-out artist, and partially it’s because… I’m just not very artistic. I’m very self-critical. I like doing arty things: unopened paints or virgin sketchpads delight me. But as soon as I start doing anything I start wishing I’d done it better, and that’s really hard to turn off.
I know this box has mistakes. There are smudges and there are places where you can see I freaked out and deleted something with yellow spray paint. Some of the oil paints are on too thickly because I didn’t like the coloration and redid it. The quote looks totally hand-lettered. There’s stuff that bugs me. And I’m actively, deliberately not caring. It’s supposed to look fun and grab your attention, and I think it does that. Everything else is (possibly lumpy) gravy.
But I hadn’t really thought about how much I was going to enjoy doing this, and looking forward to working on it in the evening. I’m going to MISS this project when it’s done. And I keep thinking that it’s materially different, somehow, from my usual artsy projects (knitting and embroidery). I like knitting and embroidery and I’m not putting my needles down forever or anything. But a tiny part of my brain has suddenly wondered how one goes about taking welding classes. I think learning to weld things would be awesome. Anybody want to teach me?
