yippee skipee!

i'll cut to the chase...i had 6 pieces accepted into Delavan Gallery for a February show, and they want more! I'm very excited about this...more so than i thought i'd be, mostly because it's my wet felting work. i haven't shown it before and wondered if it was just a Mother's Love that made them beautiful. my angel-friend is coordinating a show scheduled for March that will include my new assemblage work, and THAT has me humming with anticipation. that show promises to be very good. and very very special to me....being included in the company of some incredible artists & writers that i admire ....well, shoot! it's like the 1st time the older kids let you play kickball with them. i feel pretty...oh so pretty...i feel witty and ...you know the rest - hopefully, cause my menopausal brain doesn't. that's another good thing about perimenopause...people can confide in you with abandon, knowing you'll forget what they said a few minutes later. in fact my fear is that i'll sit down at my desk tomorrow morning and totally forget my computer login. i've forgotten my timeclock code before. my boss met me at The Clock the next morning "you forgot to clock out." i replied that CLEARLY i had indeed left the previous night, or i wouldn't be, once again, walked frontwards through the door, i would instead be exiting at that moment. adding that although the work was compelling & facinating (i lied) staying the night to complete it just was more pleasure than i deserved, so i had indeed gone home, and The Clock must be broken. i left there soon after. my current Big Girl job installed A Clock a few months ago...this one a little creepier...you punch in your Secret Code, then have to put your index finger on a little scanner thing. you have no ides how many times that darn Clock "breaks." i mean, one little mistake - wrong code, wrong finger...oy vey...such a bother. luckily THIS boss realizes that her bad kharma has brought me to be her employee, so she just martyrs it down with some Tums and fixes it. when SHE first said "you forgot to Clock out," i replied that I didn't Clock Out because i had, indeed, spent the night there because the work was so compelling. And when the endless volume of screaming, swearing callers dropped off around 8pm, i had randomly dialed phone numbers that i made up ASKING people if they felt there was anything in their life that was pissing them off, and invited them to verbally hurl it at me - use me as an emotional pinata of sorts. just so i wouldn't feel like i'd cheated the company out of all those hours of pay. and since i'd worked my 8 hours OVERNIGHT (despite there not BEING an overnight shift) i was, at that time, going home. she just said "i'll fix it," and walked away shaking her head muttering about managing the unmanageable. she called my desk 10 mins later to ask if i really was going home. i love her. one of us won't last. i'm hoping i don't make her too crazy. she "gets" me. and she's artworthy - i loaned her one of my best hand-dyed dupioni wallhangings for her office. anyway, i go back tomorrow after having had the week off. my boss says it's been boring there without me. i have my own swerve to the whole corporate thing...i play it like i see it. having spent more time than was necessary working at 911 and trying to talk Bad people out of doing Bad things (put down the gun, AGAIN,Morris...) and trying to talk Good people out of doing Bad things, i've learned that there is no script for dealing with people. especially angry or desperate people. you have to be real, be compassionate, and give them dignity & respect. that's where the Company & i are...a bit different. i've actaully made friends with people who started out mistaking my name for an act of incest. even though the 2 words are in no way similar phonetically or on paper. that's the best part of my job. for the most part, the company just let's me go at it. and i'm now The Voice. my broadcast experience has raised it's sleeping head again, and i am now the voice you hear on the phone when you call trying to get a LIVE PERSON to yell at. *** new thought** have you ever noticed how different days of the week have a different feel to them? there's a distinct "saturday" feeling day. and a definate "sunday" feeling day. and a sunday night feel. that's the feeling you get when you know time is slipping away from your "real" life and soon it will be time for your "other" life. this has been a constant source of irritation and consternation between me, myself and my husband. To his defense, when we met, i was in an artistic slump and had all but locked my studio and thrown away the key. he had no idea what it was like to be involved with an artist. i welcomed the diversion of our relationship, because it beat the usual frustration & depression i'd feel when i was in an artistic slump. to my defense, your honor, i DID tell him that i was done trying to split my time between art & "real" job and had planned to quit my lucrative but toxic dayjob. i'm not sure he heard that or understood that i would, indeed, be working ONLY as an artist as of January of that year. my cute townhouse was paid for, my car was paid for, i sold my motorcycle to pay off some nagging back taxes and i was livin lean. perfect! not to mention that i already had a steady stream of commissions waiting on my sewing table. after "i do" came the endless stream of expenses....his kids needed braces, his kids needed blah blah blah. and having the martyr gene, i continued past my january deadline. fast forward 7 years....same argument, different "need." yes i know - i can heeaar you. and i've made the same argument myself. they are YOUR kids. with a perfectly good mother making buckets of money and well able to split the expenses with. so where is the line? to even try to explain the whole art=life equation to a man with little art appreciation is just too tiring. work=money ... more work=more money. that's the math he gets. and it isn't just him, to be fair. it's difficult to understand why someone would trade "things" for life as an artist. some people think we're lazy...so all you do is sit home and glue rusty things to wood? snort. or this is my favorite : why can't you just work on your hobby on the weekends like everyone else? not to bash hobbies, but this isn't a HOBBY. this is who i am. if i had said i am a doctor, people would say Oh that's great. or a secretary. or whatever. but "artist" has replaced "stay-at-home-mom" in the so-called slacker annals of wifery. to NOT be an artist (whatever that is) is to not be myself...to not allow myself life. (as a sidenote...why are people so casual about the term "starving artist?" would you ever say "starving salesman" or "starving podiatrist??") so it comes down to this every time: do i let my life be a performance piece entitled "the good wife" or do i just, once & for all, say enough. i gotta be what i gotta be, and not feel selfish about it. not feel guilty when the boat catalogs come in the mail and my husband reads them as avidly as a 16-year old with a Playboy. so here's a point to ponder....why do i feel like i wouldn't be able to match my meager Real Job salary if i worked as an artist? what if i supplemented sales with giving workshops? i LOVE giving workshops! why not do that? so did i marry a man who's expectations of how Things Should Be would allow me to be afraid to leap, but have someone else to blame on that fear? maybe. maybe not. my girlfriend Gail (who hasn't called in a while, so if you're reading this Gail.....)has a lab-created husband. i've mentioned this before. when he NOTICED (on his own) that her sewing room was bulging at the, well, seams, did he say "you need to get rid of some of that crap." nope...Lab Created Husband said "i will take my hammer and these nails and I will make you a place, a haven, for you to create and be happy. I will call this place Your New Studio and i will love you even more." or something like that. so now here's the part that will make everyone gnash their teeth with envy and awe at this Man Who Shall Be Honored....Your New Studio used to be called **gasp**drum roll** the GARAGE. yes folks - the Man Place, the Testosterone Temple of Tools. he actually, willingly, unselfishly made his garage into her studio. ahhh oohhh...women worship you Mr Gail's Husband! we will take turns brushing off your car in the winter in thanks for returning our faith in all men. or at least the possibility of men. yes, Gail works. She works harder than I could imagine working. and she's self employed, so if she calls in sick, she doesn't get to use a sick day to cover the fact that she's in the zone on a project and can't fathom the idea of breaking the spell. or actually sick. but the point here is that HE GETS IT, and by giving her the freedom to Be Gail, he gets the best Gail there is in exchange. And even a mediocre Gail is pretty damn good. so i guess that presents another set of questions: 1) what is my husband willing to give up in his personal life to achieve his goal of owning a boat? 2) is either of us satisfied with a mediocre ME, because without art, that's the best it gets. 3) why do i feel like i have to sacrifice in order for these dreams to happen? for the record, my Lake gives me life. to stand by the shore and commune with her is beyond what i can express. however, i don't swim in anything but a pool, where the creepiest thing you might find is a bug (a small bug) and sitting on a boat all weekend every weekend is beyond what i could tolerate. not to mention that we live in Central New York State where winter is 13 months long. so if we even got this boat, the use would be limited, and i would find myself alone in my studio on weekends feeling guilty, or sitting green-faced on this boat feeling put out, wishing i was home alone in my studio on terra firma. we went to St. Thomas on our honeymoon. i gamely tried to snorkel, much to the delight of the locals watching me freak out as i tried to back peddle my way OUT of the water after seeing a huge school of fish headed toward me. i was in 3-feet of water and only needed to stand up, but panic changes things. we then went on a snorkel/scuba excursion, where my husband saw a shark and after alerting the dive captain to it's presence, exclaimed "cool!" and began to chase it. i was on the boat with a very heavy asthmatic man, both of us deep in prayers & promises to God asking for relief. who knew you could get seasick by being IN the water? (the shopping was great though later on). i am a different person now, and when we go back in February, i'll probably try to snorkel again, but this time with no locals around chumming the waters with Milkbones to watch me freak. different goals. different dreams. easily compromised with the right people. which brings up yet another question: are we the right people for each other? that one's too scary to ponder (again) right now, so i'll just sit here envious of Gail-who-never-calls instead. Got that Sunday feeling...time for a bagel and the paper, then some rusty metal. life can be very good. L.