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thanateI don't actually remember what I was going to write up last friday, but as I still semi-regularly have delusions of typing heartfelt essay posts and then, well, don't... in that particular case because grauwulf was having a particularly bad brain day, but there are any number of reasons. The local art center started doing handbuilding clay classes again, so I've been taking those since the end of summer and spending at least a few extra hours a week in open studio time since the Megatherium went back to school, playing with pressing oak leaves into slabs of clay & painting underglazes on with stencils. And then staring at my time usage & the skads of tiny clay bowls & beads I'm creating (most of which are presently in a box on the living room floor) and the fact that I haven't written any actual fiction in almost 2 years now and Questioning my Choices.
Painting on clay is not at all the same creative brain space as not just creating but beautifully communicating worlds, and I have actually done some of the world-building & background work for the thing I left off working on after the schools went virtual, but I feel increasingly hypocritical describing myself as "writer, crafter, naturalist," when actually the writer part usually comes last. And as always, there's the underlying ADD uncertainty of whether this is something I *could* just push through if I tried hard enough. (I'm fairly sure trying "hard enough" at the moment would break several other things, but I haven't done it, have I?)
At any rate, despite never having signed up to do anything, I'm still going to worldcon next week (eep!) and after a week of brain-Drama on my part, they even changed the COVID policy so that the Megatherium's Dec 2 second vaccine shot will allow her to attend for the weekend. (There was originally a hard cut-off of Dec 1, rather than 2 weeks before you show up.) So in theory I will be heading down next week, and grauwulf & the Megatherium will be joining me for the weekend, and we will all stare at art & probably buy too many things in the Dealers' room, and possibly even talk to other humans and go to panels and whatever else one does at conventions. And if we can't stand it, the zoo is a mile away.
The Megatherium is slowly regaining the ability to write by hand voluntarily, but I will be very surprised if her handwriting ever recovers. (the school not only doesn't grade on handwriting, they never actually taught letter formation at all.) Her 5s are consistently backwards. The night after her 2nd covid shot, she got up at 2:30 am to go downstairs & watch ridiculous videos on kids' youtube. (I got my booster on monday evening, and was feeling ok-but-sore until I tried to eat breakfast yesterday morning, at which point I had to go lie down so I wouldn't faint in my oatmeal.) But on the whole she is probably doing better than the rest of us, despite my evilly insisting that she do things like practice her violin.
We tossed over the turkey feast of Thanksgiving, since my mother has been up in NJ taking care of her youngest sister who's dealing with health issues. Instead I made hand pies for a portable feast and we went off to search for fossils along the bay near Calvert Cliffs. I found a "snaggletooth shark" tooth, some skate mouthparts, and a whole bunch of other interesting things where I don't know for sure which ones are fossils and which aren't; the Megatherium found a nice large bit of conglomerate with fossil shell imprints, and grauwulf says he probably accidentally tossed a shark tooth back into the water, but he wasn't looking quite as hard as we were. And then my mother brought back a box of various rocks & things she found in her parents' dresser drawer, so we are Well Supplied with interesting geology we have no good places to put. I have begun culling the giant stacks of aspirational reading in hopes of taking some of them to release at Worldcon, tho, so perhaps it balances out a little?
Painting on clay is not at all the same creative brain space as not just creating but beautifully communicating worlds, and I have actually done some of the world-building & background work for the thing I left off working on after the schools went virtual, but I feel increasingly hypocritical describing myself as "writer, crafter, naturalist," when actually the writer part usually comes last. And as always, there's the underlying ADD uncertainty of whether this is something I *could* just push through if I tried hard enough. (I'm fairly sure trying "hard enough" at the moment would break several other things, but I haven't done it, have I?)
At any rate, despite never having signed up to do anything, I'm still going to worldcon next week (eep!) and after a week of brain-Drama on my part, they even changed the COVID policy so that the Megatherium's Dec 2 second vaccine shot will allow her to attend for the weekend. (There was originally a hard cut-off of Dec 1, rather than 2 weeks before you show up.) So in theory I will be heading down next week, and grauwulf & the Megatherium will be joining me for the weekend, and we will all stare at art & probably buy too many things in the Dealers' room, and possibly even talk to other humans and go to panels and whatever else one does at conventions. And if we can't stand it, the zoo is a mile away.
The Megatherium is slowly regaining the ability to write by hand voluntarily, but I will be very surprised if her handwriting ever recovers. (the school not only doesn't grade on handwriting, they never actually taught letter formation at all.) Her 5s are consistently backwards. The night after her 2nd covid shot, she got up at 2:30 am to go downstairs & watch ridiculous videos on kids' youtube. (I got my booster on monday evening, and was feeling ok-but-sore until I tried to eat breakfast yesterday morning, at which point I had to go lie down so I wouldn't faint in my oatmeal.) But on the whole she is probably doing better than the rest of us, despite my evilly insisting that she do things like practice her violin.
We tossed over the turkey feast of Thanksgiving, since my mother has been up in NJ taking care of her youngest sister who's dealing with health issues. Instead I made hand pies for a portable feast and we went off to search for fossils along the bay near Calvert Cliffs. I found a "snaggletooth shark" tooth, some skate mouthparts, and a whole bunch of other interesting things where I don't know for sure which ones are fossils and which aren't; the Megatherium found a nice large bit of conglomerate with fossil shell imprints, and grauwulf says he probably accidentally tossed a shark tooth back into the water, but he wasn't looking quite as hard as we were. And then my mother brought back a box of various rocks & things she found in her parents' dresser drawer, so we are Well Supplied with interesting geology we have no good places to put. I have begun culling the giant stacks of aspirational reading in hopes of taking some of them to release at Worldcon, tho, so perhaps it balances out a little?