Right.

An Am I Drunk? checklist

[X] bought an olde english

[X] stopped working (pretext: taking a break)

[X] needed to stop drinking for nausea reasons

[X] texted ex boyfriend (omg he texted back we are besties!)

[X] drained a 7.5% 24oz beer

[X] checked percentage printed on can two times before typing that line

[X] wait, I just drooled on my blanket on purpose to remove excess saliva from my mouth.

[ ] typos

[ ] asking ex if he thinks we should totally get back together because I totally love him

[X] also I just realized this is not how a checklist works.

Detergent Shopping!

I have never bought detergent, nor been in the detergent aisle, until tonight. You see, I read on a mommy blog that you should halve the recommended amount and then use a bit less each time until you find an amount that doesn't clean your clothes, and then go back up one notch. I hardly need any, so the bottle I took from my parents lasted and lasted. Then a couple months ago it spilled all over my trunk. Today I was all set to launder without detergent but the Kresge laundry room was closed for Cesar Chavez Day, which I treated as a sign to buy some freaking detergent. But I quickly found an 8 dollar bottle that seemed practically immune to trunk disasters and stinking up my car. It says it can wash 25 loads, so I guess that will last 100 loads and I won't need to deal with the detergent aisle for two or three years, so I took a lot of pictures* to remember it.





*this is 1/4 of them.

Gray Days at the Beach

On days like this I like to pretend I am in Sweden.

It hasn't been cold lately, just gray.

Painting Recap

So anyway, I bombed intermediate oil painting this term. I immediately didn't like (or dislike) my professor, and after the first 4 weeks I stopped trying to like her. I was hip deep in theory in my other two classes, and couldn't come close to any sort of theory for my paintings. No one was holding my loved ones hostage to keep me from thinking of concepts and then painting them, but I also wasn't supported the amount that I apparently need. I had a very hard time talking to my professor the few times that I tried. She understandably mistook the things I detachedly produced for things I was interested in, and guided me by referring me to still life painters of centuries past.

Open studios was yesterday, so anything I produce now is for me and not for display or critique, and suddenly it matters to me to take advantage of the huge heated room- with a sink i am allowed to use for oil paint runoff, an easel and good light- that is open all day and night. When I unlocked the room I was pleased to see that everything was the way we had it set up for Open Studios. It meant my classmates had not produced anything for 30 hours, because they were working for a grade or recognition rather than working in a futile attempt to satiate their all- consuming need to paint. Or maybe they were still sleeping/recovering from the all nighters prior to Open Studios. Or maybe they have studios at home so they can paint all! the! time!



Anyway I painted. And it was pretty good. I covered my first painting, a unicorn, with a swedish horse. It is for my mom to put on her wall. I asked her what she wanted a painting of, and she said "trees". I liked learning that swedish horses are the color that cadmium red light is right out of the tube (the photo hides it though). I liked covering that ugly unicorn. Once I covered the 24x36 canvas with the first layer I was super annoyed that I had to wait for it to dry. So I set the heater to run for five hours. I immediately recanted, but the dial only goes one way. And since I left all my stuff everywhere, if anyone comes in before it turns off it will be obvious that I am a waster.

My individual critique is next Wednesday I believe. I intend to produce as much work between now and then as I did otherwise this term.

these are my paintings for intermediate oil painting. It's kind of an ongoing question of what is or isn't art, and I was surprised to find as I walked into the studio with my artist statement that none of my pieces were art; that is, none come from a spark, provide a means to explore a concept, or satisfied me creatively. That is probably why this process was so draining. the problems I solve along the way when I sculpt are really interesting to me. There are questions of weight balance, scale, viewer engagement. And the materials! trying to get clay and feathers, or water and glass, or cloth and metal to integrate is fantastic because the trial runs suggest new ideas and options.

okay, everyone I know who likes my art likes my paintings. It's frustrating, because for one thing I don!
't like paintings in general or in particular so I don't understand what they are liking. And more than that, I know what goes on in my head while I paint ("how long has it been? am I done? my neck hurts. is light blue like white? yes. how long has it been? does this look like the picture? yes.") and what goes on in my head when I sculpt (oh my god oh my god oh my god, how am I doing this? oh my god I will eat 10 pounds of grapes and not come out of my cocoon until I am done. no, bacon is better. and I will call it baconalia. okay, I won't tell anyone the title. webcam? liveblog. time component? ) and I am taken aback that my closest friends can't see the difference between work produced in those two states of mind, or that they would prefer the slogging kind.

Sea Cave

I love all the caves I have been to. The limestone ones, the wet one on campus, the touristy ones in idaho... but while most caves are like damp mausolea, sea caves are alive and noisy. There is a sea cave that I love at the beach near my house, that is only accessible by walking on sand every few months. Usually at low tide it has been completely filled in by sand. I know, because I have looked for it every day this year. But yesterday I took a chance (barely) by swimming through the chest-deep, gentle waves to the cave.
The thing I was concerned about is that even small waves crash around a lot in that inlet, so if bigger waves started up they would trap me. But there are handholds in the rocks, so if I could make my way slowly out of the inlet I would be fine. I am not even close to strong enough to make headway against big waves.
I have loved this cave since I met it a year and a half ago with my friend Max, but this is the first time I heard it "sing". It was the same as the sound old boats make in movies, which I have not heard in person. But it's kind of creaky and howly.
There is plenty of dryish sand toward the back of the cave, which is how I managed pictures- I brought my cell phone in an elaborately wound garbage bag and lurked in the back of the cave untying it. I have always felt scared to use the entrance on the left, because the waves soak it and it is so dark and there might be glass or anything. Maybe I can find a pair of cheap watershoes, because half of what I'm scared of is stepping on dangerous things.

Days like yesterday and today (I touched a lot of sea anenomes and found a craggy blowhole and wandered in the surf for an hour) make me wonder how I lived away from the sea for so many years, and how I expect to move away from it after I graduate. It's not difficult to feel connected to nature that's so immediate and engaging. Anyway, today the waves were medium, and I didn't want to swim in them because I was at the beach alone, as usual, also it was overcast. I am sure when the weather warms up more of my friends will want to go. But honestly the (barely) cold water is worth it.

Resolution Check In

At New Year's I was very smug about resolutions, and when people told me they don't make them because it's not realistic to keep them all year, I said that mine were things that have immediate benefits so if I give them up early on I'm still better off than not making them. And when I heard people say they didn't need Jan 1 to make a goal and could set and work toward goals any time I was a bit galled. I mean, I set goals as the need arises but a fresh year has intoxicating potential. A year is long enough to do anything, whereas my regular goals are either "before I die" type things or things I can accomplish in one quarter of school. And starting a yearlong process on the first of January is so convenient. If you lapse in tracking the days you just have to look up what day of the year it is, plus the months are already numbered.

But here I am revising my behavior chart for March and trying to figure out who stuck to these goals for two whole months. It's too soon to tell but maybe using a notebook with enough blank pages to finish the year was practical and not just symbolic. I mean, I am not at all strict with myself so there isn't a single resolution I haven't broken, but I am still doing them. But ugh, I was really close on two of them. On January second I slept in past the morning (it's a pretty generous resolution but I have to actively manage my sleep to keep it correlated to day and night) and on February 9th I didn't go to the ocean.

One of my friends told me I have to think of a cute name for March because I always have cute names for months, and she is right. In Dressember I wore only dresses, in Tanuary I went swimming (or at least in the water) every day, in Fastuary I managed 6 and then 2 days on liquids, and now it is March and I stopped using money with slaveholders on it. I didn't think of a name for it yet, because March doesn't have a lot of syllables to swap out while staying recognizable, although it has got hominyms. So far the cutest thing I have thought of is March of Dimes And Anything With Lincoln On It. I am also working my way through an Algebra textbook, but I think I can work that into Apralgebra. Maybe I shouldn't call it that, because just the thought of Apralgebra is making my eyes well up with tears.

(I was in Algebra for a long time, like the decade from 2001 and 2007.)