ingrid

My darling Clementine finally tracked me down this evening and as we were catching up she asked what I’d been up to lately.  I took a big breath and…. well, I don’t really know.  I’ve been really busy with something.  I’ve been doing something, right?  I feel all stressed and crazy, but it is hard for me to quite grasp why that might be.

One of the big things that is taking up a lot of time is my new “volunteer of the year” teaching plan.  I don’t know who developed this one… it wasn’t necessarily good.  The thing is that our little school finally got a kiln.  I am somewhat responsible for that happening and I am proud of that.  Sometime around January I sent out an email to all the teachers saying that I would come into their classes and lead ceramics projects in the hopes that everyone would start to utilize this tool.  I didn’t hear much from them back then, but now that it is nearly the end of the year, everyone wants me and guess what?  It is a lot of work.  The classes themselves are not too time-consuming.  They usually take about an hour and a half.  It is the prep and the clean up that is the killer though.  Each class requires that I wedge the clay that is about to be used—- that’s 30 balls of clay.  I wedge fairly quickly, but that is still a good 45 minutes of work.  Hauling things hither and yon is time consuming too.  I have some supplies at school, some things in the art room or the kiln room, and those two places are nowhere near each other.  When the class finishes its work, there are 30 pieces of art to find room to store.  That sounds simple, but it is no small feat.  And then when the work is done there is loading and firing and checking on the kiln.  All these little things add up to a lot.

Okay, big segue here–

I did finish Brian Doyle’s Mink River lately.  Great book about a fictional town in Oregon that by my read of the local landscape is just about where Neskowin or maybe Neahkanie would be.  The town is almost right, although Brian Doyle not being from those parts tends to make it sound much prettier than it could possibly be.  No story about those rural parts of Oregon is complete without a lot of single-wide trailers.  And ugly houses barely hanging on with tons of cars and scrap metal in the yard.  And mean dogs.  And signs that say “Rabbets for sale: pet or meet”.  And the town had a “pub” which is wrong, wrong, wrong.  It would be a dark, windowless “tavern” and we all know it.  Why in Willamina, the tavern is called “Dillon’s”.  Poor guy can’t even spell his own name; he certainly wouldn’t work in something as European sounding as a “pub”.

Anyway, I loved the book and am very proud of Brian Doyle, Portland author made good.  Doyle likes lists… a lot.  So in order to organize my reflections of my business, I shall list what I’ve done this week.

Monday- run, shower, yell at kids, pack lunches, move ceramics around, haul 50 pounds of clay (on my bike!), drink coffee with neighbors, meet the assessor, oh-it’s-hot-out, go to school, fire the kiln, grab Francis, lunch with Inez and Francis, doctor’s appointments, shots-shots-shots, run to the library, pick up Zephyr, pick up clay for home, drink a beer with neighbor, help Francis make dinner, meet Anne, make art, put kids to bed.

Tuesday- why is my arm all hot and swelling up to twice its size, stupid bee sting from Sunday, put toothpaste on it, put lotion on it, put alcohol on it, put Queen Helene mint masque on it, what time is it anyway? (3am), go back to sleep, wake up, try to get kids off to school, nope—no bike train leader, okay, be the bike train leader, ride kids to school, ride them to “Safe Routes to Schools” event ’cause we heard there were donuts, eat donuts, yell at kids, now ride them to school, check kiln, still too hot, go home, haul rocks, work in yard, mow lawn, paint bat house with Inez, nap Inez, laundry, laundry, laundry, hang laundry, pick up Zephyr and Francis, play outside, harass Zephyr about violin, keep kids from dying on bikes in road, yell at kids, visit with neighbors, cook salmon, release chicken from raccoon trap, mess with broken shed door, move tools around, try to convince Zephyr to quit crying, try to convince Zephyr that he DOES NOT have a dance recital that night, try to comfort Zephyr, threaten to put Zephyr to bed instantly if he does not quit howling, talk to neighbors (“he didn’t have a dance recital, right?”—he didn’t), OH THANK GOD ALMIGHTY BRAD HAS RETURNED FROM HIS BUSINESS TRIP!  Take a benedryl for my arm which makes me so high that I can’t hold my eyes open.  Asleep by 9pm.

Wednesday- what is that racket?  Cat in raccoon trap ripping apart the thing, make breakfast, make coffee, late opening means kids are home 2 more hours, work outside, sweep walk, hose down walk, finally pick up bat house painting supplies, fill washtub with dirt, plant snap peas with kids, plant cucumbers, water, water, water, try to take kids to school–whoops too early, take kids to school, walk to cafe, meet Kendall, drink coffee and relax, walk home, babysit neighbor kid, plan curriculum for volunteer class at church, read disconnected story in The Sun magazine, look at neighbor’s photo albums, pick up kids, lose kids while talking too long to a teacher, talk to another teacher, talk to another teacher, plan ceramics classes for tomorrow, open kiln, distribute work, get impatient with crying children, walk home, finally make peanut butter sandwich for “lunch”, turn around for violin lesson, learn about wrist angles, come home irritated and exhausted, contemplate weird food in refrigerator, what can I do with celeriac cheese and beer?, babysitter shows up early (yes!), leave her with problem of dinner, go out to dinner with Brad, go to gospel choir….

I am tired of my lists.  I am going to bed.

3 Comments | In: Current musings, General bitchin', Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers, Reading | | #

Inez has been slightly sleep disrupted lately.  The nice, regular naps of her babyhood have given way to the herby-jerky starts and stops of late toddlerhood.  She needs a nap, she doesn’t want a nap, when she finally gets the nap, she messes around at night until 9:30pm.  It is trouble.  As an imperfect parent, I don’t know whether to cut the naps out and aim for a decent bedtime or hold the line and not worry about when she nods off at night.  Ahhh….year three.  How you torture me.

Knowing that whatever I think of doing will mostly likely be wrong, I have decided to take each day as it comes.  Some days we are going so hard that we just cruise on through nap time.  Some days I think we won’t take a nap and then find this when I sit down to read a book on the couch at 10:30am—

And then there are days when she does get the sleep she needs and then at night we can hear her tiptoe all over the upstairs bedroom long after her brother has fallen asleep (that’s about 2 minutes by my count).  She messes around, she pulls out all the books, and as we still have the crib there, she moves from bed to bed looking for a more comfortable spot like the princess and the pea.  Invariably though, she finds the place she is most comfortable; asleep in front of the door on a bed of tiny board books, looking much like a murder victim.

2 Comments | In: Defies Categorization, My super freakin' cute kids | | #

1 Comment | In: How strange | | #

Sometimes I meet a kindred spirit.  Here is how I recognize them— they stand in my kitchen holding a coffee cup, contemplating what is in their hand.  Then they say seriously, “I really love this mug.”

I love mugs too!  Really I do!  I’m not sure if it is my love of ceramics or my love of coffee and tea that translate to a general affinity for a good coffee mug.  It has to be smallish, (although I have one HUGE one), sturdy and smooth.  The glaze has to feel good in the hand.  The handle has to be the proper proportion to my hand, which is on the small side.  The mug can’t be tacky or commercial or crass, after all I am going to be spending a great deal of time with it in my life.

Above are some of my favorites.

Little Blue came from a thrift store.  It was 25 cents and worth every cent.  I like how round it is.  It fits perfectly in my palm.  It is also a favorite of my friend Juan (definitely a kindred spirit).

Green and Gold was purchased at a Saturday Market (I think in Eugene).  It also has a nice round butt on it.  I like the glaze and how the midpoint between the top and the bottom has a oxidized shine.

Peaches was given to me for Christmas by the director of staff at Covenant House Toronto while I was volunteering with homeless kids after college.  It was so meaningful to be given a mug when I was so far away from everything familiar and owned nothing of my own.  I was really thrilled with this gift and so happy to be appreciated by this upper management businesswoman.  I think she knew that it was hard to be away from home for Christmas.  I think of Covenant House whenever I use this mug.

Allann Bros cafe in Eugene was a big part of my life, both in college and after.  I wrote many a last minute paper there at 5:30 in the morning before racing to the computer lab to type it out.  (Ha!  See that?  Back then we actually got through college without computers of our own!).  My sister Kirstin gave me this mug when I went to Canada.  16 years later it is still looking good and I still love it.  Allann Bros still sells mugs in their cafes, but they changed their designs and style of mugs and they are not nearly as cool.

I got the Peacock Polish mug to match the gorgeous tea pot that Brad gave me for Mother’s Day one year.  This design is still really appealing to me.  It is simple but elegant.  The cup is bell shaped and holds a lot of coffee!

The next two mugs are by the same potter and using a similar glaze scheme but with different colors.  I found the first mug (with the burgundy bottom) at Mossy Creek Pottery at the coast about 12 years ago.  I think I just bought it because I liked it, which is weird for me as back then I had little money and less reason to go buy myself nice things.  The second one I found last summer in a gallery in Ashland.  This potter really gets his work around!  I respect that he is still doing the same design.  It is a good one–reminiscent of mountains and sea and sky.  The second cup is truly massive.  I don’t often drink coffee in it.  It is too big for that.  But it does fit a lot of beer and serves as a sort of classy stein!

Kindred spirits, come and have coffee or tea with me.  I have the perfect mug.

2 Comments | In: Current musings | | #

I know I haven’t posted for awhile.  I had a problem with uploading pictures which I thought was all my fault because I was stupid OR maybe all iphoto’s fault because it hates me for putting 9000 photos in it.  Turns out there was an actual problem which is now fixed.  To offer you just a little something while I collect my thoughts, here is a recent pic of the fam (minus Brad who was probably doing something useful like working).

On our way to Cousin Kai’s Pirate party

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Things always happen serendipitously around here.  I was just telling running partners about my glory days in college performing in a “band” (well, it was kind of a band…).  My band mates were a sweet hippy drummer boy and a very talented and still-working artist Dawn Dineen.  We entered the Willamette Valley Folk Festival in 1992.  I think we got second prize in a song writing contest.  The following year, I was asked to sing back up for another woman who was sort of in Dawn’s social group.  She entered her song, and she (or we I guess) took first!  I really enjoyed working with her—she was very focused and our voices sounded really tight together.  It’s not often that I find people who I blend with as well as my own flesh and blood, but her voice is definitely of that ilk.  She contacted me this week, not even a whole week after I was relating this tale in the wee small hours of the morning (while huffing up a massive hill).  Joelle sent along this audio, which I will post for your listening pleasure here.  Prepare to take yourself back to the 90s—

Johnny Will You Wait is Joelle’s song (and she is playing guitar on it as well).  Mystic Suitcase is something that Dawn and I played around with but never performed.  This recording is Joelle and my interpretation of that song:

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3 Comments | In: The Arts | | #

Francis asked for a Little Red Riding Hood this last Christmas.  Being the generous, always ready to give mother that I am, I sighed deeply.  The kid wants EVERYTHING.  Really.  If I wasn’t so exhausted with her requests, I would admire her pure desire (and imagination too really).  Like most things she asks for, I started sort of “hell no!” and worked towards, “hmmmmm….”.  Hmmmm won out obviously.

Back in high school, my friends and I made capes to wear around, because we were just those kind of dorks.  One of my fondest memories was of wearing our capes down to the beach one night and stripping off all our clothes to go jump in the ocean.  It was dark, the beach was empty except for us, and it was probably cold too as we’re talking about the Oregon Coast where the water reaches a balmy 40 degrees.  We were 18 and preparing to go off to college, so jump in the ocean naked, right?  Totally logical.  Many of my friends were quite conservative young ladies, so when I saw their bare little butts go bolting down the beach, I fell on my face in the sand laughing.  I don’t even remember jumping in the water myself (although I certainly did).  I just remember eating a lot of sand.

Anyway, the point of this digression is that I have made a cape or two before, so I figured I could whip one out again.  All the same, I thought I would buy a pattern just to be sure.

Too bad that my resolve to make things does not match my ability to read a pattern.  Sigh.  Directions.  What a drag that there are people out there who know how to do things and think that they can TELL me how to do it!  It is like my brain refuses to learn.  It is like I enjoy being ignorant or something, because truly I sit down to figure out a pattern and find myself skimming the written instructions.  I find myself daydreaming.  I need to talk sternly to myself to focus.  FOCUS, Ingrid.  You stupid, stupid girl.  You NEED this.  Now think!

I actually find that I am able to better follow directions if I sort of act them out.  If I read slowly and make hand gestures for things like “RIGHT SIDE OF FABRIC” then the words more readily permeate my dura matter.  ”Seam allowance” needs a hand gesture too.

All the same, I, of course, bought the wrong amount of fabric because I didn’t understand the numbers on the back.  Turns out those numbers were referring to how large the bolt of fabric is…like the size of the roll.  I couldn’t figure out why the pattern that to my mind was for a taller person needed LESS fabric.  Of course these things are all clear when you sit down to cut things out and can’t get the pieces out of your chunk of fabric.  Ohhhhhh.  In my defense, would it have killed them to write “size bolt” under the numbers?  No, not really, but these pattern people think they are dealing with the able-brained public.

Ennnnyway, I made the capes.  They look great, and I am pretty proud of them when the kids get compliments.  (I do need to teach them to beam beatifically and say, “My wonderful MOTHER made it for me!”).  I didn’t realize that I would get such an onslaught of requests from strangers for making capes when we go out in public.  I am numbering about request number 20, so if I ever need to go into business, I know where I will turn (but surely someone is doing this on ETSY right now?).  I really can’t imagine being motivated to sew a million and one capes.  It was not that exciting truthfully, and required far too much ironing for this girl who never wields an iron even for her own clothes.

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I am in week 2 of teaching Ceramics at the kids’ school.  It is such a total joy to be back at it.  Kids love clay, and I love clay and we together are a perfect pair.  We are actually 8 pairs as I have 16 2nd-5th graders in there.  It is one of the largest classes that I have taught in a long time, but it feels much more manageable as I no longer have unwieldy and malfunctioning sewing machines to wrestle with.

The first day I thought I would let the kids touch and mess around to their hearts’ content.  It is sort of  hard for me to turn over control when I only have 10 weeks of instruction, but it seemed wise to let them mess around now before we launch into real building.  I gave them the assignment of making a magical place to go on vacation to.  They needed high places and low places.

This is a cliff with snake holes (complete with snakes!).

Here is an arch with vines and a tree.  Zephyr was in class that day, although he won’t be for the rest of the term.  The kid is only 5 and can’t handle that we will be smashing some projects.  I’m moving him to theater!

This is a savanna scene.  Obviously, none of this would hold up well if fired, but experimentation was the goal here, not end product.

The students really enjoyed playing without much guidance.  The room became relatively mellow, with most of the conversation just expressions of excitement for each other’s inventiveness and desire to show off their ideas to me.  I know the days will come when there are tears of frustration and heartbreak at the limitations of clay, but for now, it is all good times.

Really, I do have students in there besides my kids, but until I get formal permission to picture them, I am cropping those babies out!

Best thing about the new class?  I get to work in the art room.  The teacher gave me two whole shelves!  Imagine that!  She totally needs every inch of storage she can get, but she generously gave me two whole shelves!  There is a sink there.  Yeah, really, I know!  Don’t I sound like a public school teacher, rapturous about a sink?  And I hate to admit it, but the teacher there is messier than me, so I don’t have to worry too much about annoying her too much.  Anything I do in her room is seriously making it cleaner, not messier.

Worse thing?  Ummmm… see that clay there?  I got two huge bags of it for free a few years ago.  I knew that it was some fancy clay from Georgies, but I didn’t do my research before having the kids do an actual project with it during week 2.  I thought I was saving money, being prudent.  Turns out that : “The coarsest of all our sculpture clays, this body contains two types of coarse sand plus nylon fiber. The character of this clay comes from the basalt sand that bleeds out when it fires.”  That is code for “this clay will spit out chunks of melty stuff that will stick all over your kiln shelves when you fire it”.  It requires a process called “wadding” which I have never done and am not really sure how to do.  Well, crap.  I’m so glad I got it for “free”.  Now I need to hop off to the store and buy kiln wash and wadding material which sounds like a chemistry experiment.

All the same, clay is awesome.

No Comments | In: Awesome!, Current musings, Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers | | #

I had meant to update y’all on my braces thing.  I am sure that my international readers (2) will be very interested in the wheres and whys and hows.  First of all, I will be very forthright in saying that it is all my cousin Carla’s fault.  My cousin Carla is so lovely—always been lovely, always will be lovely.  Round about last year though, she got braces.  Her teeth (I think) were sort of crooked like mine.  You never really know in what way a person’s teeth might be crooked, because mostly you don’t notice it unless it is strikingly distracting or you are one of those terrible people wandering through the world picking on the physical flaws of others.  Or maybe you have teeth issues.  Anyway, I had noticed when she got braces, but didn’t think much of it until she sent out a photo postcard as a “save the date” wedding announcement.  When I opened it in my kitchen, my “Oh MY GOD!” was not about her getting married in the summer; it was about her teeth!  Perfect, gorgeous, straight teeth.  Right then and there I decided— I’m getting braces.

Most things that I decide take me about 2 years to put into action.  I am now running regularly (which I resolved to do 2 years ago).  I should start meditating/praying more regularly (but I have another year to go on that one).  I am a couple years late to start those guitar lessons, (any minute now though!).  Normally I would put this one off for as long as possible.  I don’t like pain much and I like looking stupid even less.  My husband pointed out though that if I was intending to return to teaching soon, I might want to do it AFTER I had the braces, not during.  It’s painful enough to deal with teenagers.  They will all have braces.  You don’t want braces too.  Good point.

I have had some sort of interesting comments since getting braces.  A few people have said, “Your teeth weren’t even crooked”, which I know is their way of being kind.  They are trying to say that they didn’t sit across from me and obsess about my crooked teeth.  But I don’t want to hear that at all.  The whole braces thing is sort of bothersome and I feel like a stupid teenager, so of course I want to BELIEVE that it is all worthwhile.  The comments I have most appreciated have been from my friend who said, “Yeah, I always wondered if you were ever going to do anything about your teeth.”  And my husband said, “Yeah, they are sort of crooked.  You’re totally cute, but if you want to do something, you should do something now.”  Thank you.  No, really.  Thank you.  I want to hear that I look like a crooked, crooked squirrel-mouth.  My teeth were sort of crazy looking but are getting less so every day.

A lot of people didn’t realize that my teeth had problems because I had a tooth physically on top of another one.  Yup.  Two teeth in the same spot, one in front and one behind in case the one in front ever got knocked out in a tavern brawl.

The little tiny tooth behind never saw the light of day, and the tooth on top was up so high in my jaw that it never ever would wear down.  It is about twice as large as the canine on the other side of my mouth.  It doesn’t show up much in any of these pictures because I think I subconsciously turn my head to the side to catch the more normal looking side of my face.

And my ortho person says that I have what is called an over jet, which is like an overbite but faster.

(No, I guess it shoots out the front of your mouth at a not-so-great angle.)

I got the braces in mid November and have until summer to wear them.  Already there is tons of change in my little old mouth.  The shy toothling has popped out into the light of day!  The bottom teeth are falling in line too.  I don’t have any close up pictures because I always seem to be the person wielding the camera in this family, but here is one of me one month after getting braces:

They aren’t too noticeable really.  I’ll get a better picture up soon where you can really see all the crazy shit in my mouth.

But it does hurt.  And I can’t eat anything crunchy (which is all I seem to want).  Thank God it is the winter and there aren’t a lot of good vegetables available anyway, because it is a serious senior citizen diet for me.  Come see me and we’ll eat applesauce together.

5 Comments | In: Current musings | | #

Yes I have gotten older, yet again.  Here I am on the cusp of 40, and I figured it was time to throw a big shin dig.  Usually I do just about nothing for my birthday, and who knows if I will feel like doing a big 40 bash, so I made a plan to have a big old 39th karaoke birthday party at a club in town.  And you know what?  It was about the best birthday I have ever had.

I don’t know what it is about singing—maybe just a bunch of oxygen gets into your brain and lights up those foggy areas—but I know it makes me really, really happy.  And I don’t just mean that I enjoy it and feel basically good, I mean that it ignites all the pleasure cortexes in my brain and makes me ELATED.  Really.  I go to gospel choir once a week sort of tired and down, but the minute I start singing I feel full of energy and life.  I went to a karaoke party for a friend a few months ago and suddenly it was 2am.  I had a huge smile plastered on my face that didn’t fade for days.  Happy.  And my birthday party?  Well I am still sort of high off it.  I love to sing.

I don’t think I am alone in this either.  Some people just gotta sing.

Singing in our culture is sort of hard sometimes.  We tend to lump it into a whole host of things that you are either “good” at or not good at, and if you are not good at it, we surely don’t want to hear you…. I don’t care if you are only 7 years old.  I’m not sure what makes a person a good singer.  Is it genetic?  Is it exposure?  A combination of both?  And what about those people who have really nice voices that are just sort of boring?  If their noses were a bit longer or their larynx a touch shorter, would they have awesome voices?  It is sort of sad to me that we Americans don’t let everyone just experience the joy of singing without worrying about being “good”.  It seems clear that we are only focused on the performance aspects of singing, not on the communal aspects or the mental health aspects or just the spiritual aspects.  There is a lot of singing to be done in the world; very little of it for an audience’s entertainment!

Check out my braces!

What would I do if I couldn’t sing?  Something else I guess… but I can not imagine not singing.

At the beginning of the party, only my immediate family was there, exactly on time, which was sort of funny. We are a prompt bunch.

Here’s to another year!   (And here’s to Brad’s grandparents Elsie and Elmer Werth who gave me money for my birthday which I used to throw myself the BEST BIRTHDAY EVAAAAAAH!)

No Comments | In: Awesome!, family | | #