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The creative process: Halloween edition

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I don’t consider myself to be cheap. I don’t even consider myself to be thrifty. (I just heard my husband yell “Amen!” in my head.) However, I’m not one to buy things that I consider to be ridiculously overpriced, especially in these uncertain economic times.

Enter Halloween costume shopping for my 11-year old daughter and 15-year old son.

My daughter wanted to be a whoopie cushion. If you knew her as I do, you would understand just how well this costumes suits her. And at $29.99, I was willing to buy it off the shelf at the local costume store and be done with it.

As for my son’s costume? He wanted to be Captain America. He’s 15–a few years past the trick or treating age. But since they’re both going to Halloween parties, I agreed to get him a costume. That is, until I started adding up the cost of said costume. Basic Captain America suit: $79.99

And while the shield is pictured, it is not included in the price. What self respecting Captain America would be caught without his shield? Which, incidentally is $24.99

At $105 plus tax, the chances of my son being Captain America for Halloween were quickly waining. But then I saw this tee for $9.99 and the creative juices started to flow:

I could buy the $10 shirt, probably pick up a pair of blue sweats for less than $20. For $30, the costume is halfway complete. But what about the shield and the mask?

I’ll be honest. I walked around Party City with that shield for a long time, but I just couldn’t justify paying $25 for something that would be used once. Then I happened down the catering supply aisle and found this plastic sandwich tray for $5.99:

The first thing I noticed was that it was the same size as the overpriced shield I was holding in my hand. Next, I noticed that the circle in the middle of the tray was about the same size as the as the circled star in the middle of the shield. Exit shield, enter plastic sandwich tray and craft paint.

That left the mask. I almost bought this for $19.99:

But it’s not really a mask. It’s a winter hat. Besides, I think it’s sort of stupid looking with those long braidy things on the sides. I left Party City with an incomplete costume plan but determined to get started on the shield.

The plan:

Paint the underside of the plate beginning with the silver star in the center and layering the paint outward, then go over the painted portion with silver duct tape to keep the paint from chipping off when the shield is flung forcefully at someone. My son’s a 15 year old Avengers’ fan. You know that’s gonna happen. Worry about attaching a handle to the underside later.

The process:

The beginning of the process went smoothly. I found a star shape in Microsoft Word, sized it to fit inside the circle. Print, trace, step one complete. Step 2 was even easier: paint the rest of the circle blue. It was only when I contemplated the painting of the red and white stripes that I ran into trouble. Because the stripes needed to be evenly spaced and evenly sized. And the steps required to accomplish that goal came dangerously close to involving math–my arch nemesis. (Yes, I know I’ve said the grocery store is my arch nemesis, but for the purposes of this story, it’s math.)

I began to measure and calculate. And check email, Twitter and Facebook. Because when the going gets tough, the ADD afflicted procrastinate and avoid. Then it happened. As I stood typing on my computer which sits on the bar which looks into my kitchen, I spied the solution to my creative block. A way to create evenly spaced stripes without using math. The chicken plate:

Brilliant, no?

No?

Let me explain. Wait, let me show you a picture–often worth a thousand words, but in this case probably more like 120:

Do you see those red stripes? Do you see how they’re relatively even? What’s that UNDER those stripes?

Chicken plate, BABY!

The rest of the project was easy peasy. Couple coats of red paint, couple coats of white. Duct tape, epoxy and a belt my daughter no longer wears, and Presto!

Wait…that’s not that impressive. Ahem…

Presto!

Random trips to the mall and the grocery store later that day netted sweat pants for $15 and a mask for $9.99:

The Results:

Voila! Complete Captain America Costume for $41.00:

All done without math! Well, except just now when I added up all the stuff I bought.

And just between you and me?

I used the calculator app on my iPhone…

Happy Halloween!

Leftovers: Wherein I share my secret shame

I’ve been painting my little heart out the past week or so, and I’m far from being finished with what I hope will be a delightful undersea mural for a children’s room in a chiropractic office. I need to give this gal some non-zombie eyes so as not to freak out the children:

Mwha ha ha!

I love to paint, but it has cut into my writing time, so I hope you don’t mind if I share some leftovers with you today…

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If the Hokey Pokey really was what it was all about, I would be in serious trouble…

I may have mentioned this in passing before, but today I make an all out confession:

I suffer from Left-Right Confusion,

Which in layman’s terms means I often can’t tell my left from my right without pretending to eat.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

It’s more embarrassing than anything else. I’ve called people moments after giving them directions to my house and asked them to repeat them to make sure I didn’t say turn left when they should turn right.

Joey, I feel your pain...

I don’t know if the two are related, but I also have a horrible sense of direction.

I’ve mostly come to terms to my condition and have given up my dreams of ever becoming an air traffic controller. But sometimes situations arise which remind me just how different I am. And not necessarily in a good way.

Such was the case Wednesday night.

I have this amazing book called The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher. I’m sort of at a loss for words as to how to describe it, so I’ll let Amazon do it for me: “Alan Fletcher’s The Art of Looking Sideways is an absolutely extraordinary and inexhaustible “guide to visual awareness,” a virtually indescribable concoction of anecdotes, quotes, images, and bizarre facts that offers a wonderfully twisted vision of the chaos of modern life.” It is the big book of awesome, and I mean that literally: it weighs 5 pounds.

Anyhoo, I was looking through the book last night (there’s no beginning or end–you could start anywhere), when I came across an exercise which tests whether you were left or right eyed dominant.

Before I continue, I need to give you a little back story. When I was a young tot first picking up a crayon, my natural inclination was to lead with my left hand. My older sisters, apparently fearing being left-handed would make me more of a freak than I already was, forced me to write with my right hand. I’m convinced I should have been left-handed. I credit them for me being amberdextrous ambidexterous able to do things with both hands. I also blame them for my left-right confusion and the delayed discovery of my creativity. (It’s okay–they don’t read my blog. Feel free to heap burning coals upon their heads.)

Now, about the test. It started with a picture:

If you're right-eyed dominant, you probably see the above figure as a rabbit. If you're left-eyed dominant, you probably see a bird.

I was really hoping to discover that I was left-eyed dominant, which would confirm that I am truly left-handed and right-brained. This is my logic. Just nod and follow along, please. Well that was not at all helpful. I see both, and not really one more than the other.

But wait…there was more! Here’s the other test:

Stretch out an arm, either will do, and point with a finger to a distant corner of the room–keep both eyes open.

Staying in this position, close one eye, then the other. In one case your eye will match whatever you’re pointing at in the corner, in the other your finger will be pointing way off the mark.

If you’re on target, that’s your leading eye.

I took the test.

When I closed my right eye, my left eye stayed on target.

Yes!

I really am left-eyed dominant.

Redemption.

Until…

“Um…what are you doing?”, asks my husband.

“I took a test to see if I’m left or right-eyed dominant. I’m left-eyed dominant, by the way.”

I proceed to read him the instructions I followed to the letter. Then I repeated the test again.

“Which eye stays on target?”

“MY LEFT EYE! See?” (repeats test)

“Kat?”

“What?”

“That’s your right eye.”

DRATS!!!

What about you? Have any secret shames you hide from the world?

This is a safe place.

Talk to me, freaks!

Masterpiece in the Mess

I suppose every storyteller–whether their tools be pen and paper or the gift of gab and a captive audience–have their own way of getting to the end of a story. The processes are probably as varied as the storytellers going through them. As I began painting a mural today, it occurred to me that mural painting isn’t too much different than my writing process.

I begin with an overall theme or idea and a blank space.

The theme is an ocean and this particular blank space is a room at a chiropractic office designated specifically for children. There are certain “must haves” requested by the client: dolphin, sea turtle and mermaid, but everything else has been left up to me. (These are my favorite kind of clients, by the way.)

But the blank spaces are rarely ever truly blank.

There are cabinets, electrical outlets and light switches to consider, not to mention the furniture that will be in the space once the painting has been completed. When we share our stories, we bring our past experiences with us, good and bad. In either case, we can work around them or choose to incorporate them into the picture.

When painting and when creating a story, it’s good to remember that things often get messy. Lines are blurred and smeared. You have to work towards the picture in your mind and rest assured that you have the talent and the tools to get you there in the end.

And speaking of tools, you’ve got to work with what you have in your tool bag.

This brush has seen better days. The tiny nails that fasten the brush head to the handle have worked themselves loose over several uses, which makes it necessary to grasp the brush at the base of the handle rather than the handle itself. There are bristles in the brush that are permanently stuck together which cause the paint to streak on the wall. I’ve got better brushes at home. I’m not sure why I grabbed this one. But you know what? A better brush wouldn’t have created the perfect, water-like streaks when I pulled the glaze and paint across the wall. Imperfection can help create unexpected beauty. Old and well-worn doesn’t necessarily mean useless, quite the contrary.

I’ve lost count of how many walls and ceilings I’ve cut in with this brush. It’s hardly a thing of beauty, but when I put it in my hand, I know exactly how close I can get to a ceiling or a baseboard without getting paint where it doesn’t belong. I trust it to do what I need it to do. I can’t say that about a new brush, which is why I rarely buy them. I do my best to take care of the parts that matter–the bristles–and accept the ugliness of the parts that don’t.

I’ve only just begun this mural. Many elements and layers still need to be added before it looks anything resembling an underwater seascape. But I know what I’m doing. I’ve done it before.



I’m confident that when I’m packing up my paint and brushes on that final day, it will mimic finished room I have in my head.

I can be confident of a good outcome despite the messiness I now see. Me–a person who has never taken an art class, someone who has just figured things out through trial, error and experience–how much more confident can we be that the Creator of the Universe, the One who knew your story before you took your first breath, can see the masterpiece He created in you.

His masterpiece in the mess.

This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Much, hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. To read more posts on this topic, please visit him at PeterPollock.com

Myth Busters: Home Edition

Social media is not for everyone. John Mayer left Twitter after very publicly declaring in a USA Today interview:

“It occurred to me that since the invocation of Twitter, nobody who has participated in it has created any lasting art. And yes! Yours truly is included in that roundup as well.”

He goes on to say:

“Those who decide to remain offline will make better work than those online. Why? Because great ideas have to gather. They have to pass the test of withstanding thirteen different moods, four different months and sixty different edits. Anything less is day trading. You can either get a bunch of mentions now or change someone’s life next year.”

What Mayer fails to mention in this interview is that it was his own narcissistic need for constant attention via Twitter and lack of self-discipline to simply disconnect from the virtual world that most likely caused his work to suffer. Also, he’s sort of a tool. A very talented one, but a tool none the less.

I disagree with Mayer’s assertion that nobody who has participated in Twitter has created lasting art. Not only do I think one can still create lasting art and participate in social media, I would also say that oftentimes art begets art on the twitter. Why, just this week an idea for a book came to me whilst I was gazing at my tweetdeck:

And while the idea for this book of myths was still fresh in my head, I began sharing some household misconceptions with the twitter:

Then a great thing happened. Others started joining in with their own myths:

Note: That should read The food pantry is filled during the night by the food fairie.

So there you have it. The birth of what promises to be a best selling coffee table book. Lasting art created and contributed to right on the twitter.

Since I know many publishers, agents and PR people follow me on the twitter (many of them secretly), this is an open invitation to make me an offer for representation or multiple book deal via Direct Message. I will consider any and all offers, but don’t insult me by low balling. It should also be noted that while the Household Myth book is completely up for grabs, I have promised my upcoming Young Adult Amish Vampire Romance Novel to Rachelle Gardner, and I would hate to disappoint her unless it was for an obscene amount of money.

Your turn, friends. Have any household myths to share?

Sweet dreams are made of this (or not)

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Who among you is old enough to remember the Euryththmics? I sure do. Back in the day when they actually played music videos on MTV and VH1. Ah, good times. I loved that band immediately. Not so much because of Annie Lennox’s voice–which I think is great–but because they were freaks. Unapologetic freaks at that. Finally, some role models!

I’ve always been told I have a vivid imagination. Okay, not really. When I was a kid, the most common descriptive of me was “That girl is weird”. And perhaps to give strength to that assessment, when people told me I was weird, I always took it as a compliment. Now I’m all grown up, married to a man who is decidedly not weird, and have two children of my own.

Since my creativity wasn’t really nurtured or encouraged as a child (I’m not bitter about this, my family just didn’t know what to make of me), it gives me a huge sense of pride when I see creativity in my own kids. My son is an avid reader, and while he doesn’t write often, when he does it’s usually well written. He’s also a great golfer and a pretty decent French horn player. (In my unbiased, motherly opinion, of course.)

My daughter, while she definitely has her own distinct personality, has a tendency to think like me; to take seemingly unrelated objects and put them together to form something completely new. Sometimes the results are whimsical or even incredible functional. Other times…

Well, other times they’re just downright scary. To me, anyway. Take her latest creation:

This is a decorative dressmaker's stand. I bought it for her thinking it would be a good place hang purses, scarves or even play dress up with.

And she did use it for dress-up. This is a little ballet dress from a performance a few years ago. So far, so good.

Okay, this is where we take a little leap outside the box:

Stick horse inserted through the neck of the dressmaker's stand. Things are getting a little creepy.

Not creepy? Okay, maybe it’s just me:

How about now?

Perhaps I’ve seen The Godfather too many times. Or perhaps I’ve read too many Stephen King novels. Specifically, The Dark Tower series. Here’s an illustration from The Dark Tower:

I don’t worry about my daughter having nightmares. I don’t think she thinks there’s anything at all scary or creepy about her…whatever that thing is.

It’s MY nightmares I’m concerned about:

Sweet dreams, people! Mwha ha ha!

An elementary guide to the creative process

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“Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be–and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway…A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.” – Steven Pressfield, Do the Work

At the elementary school my son attended and my daughter currently attends, one of the major projects the 4th grade kids participate in revolves around the American presidents. Each child chooses a president to research and present. It’s a pretty big deal. My son chose Dwight D. Eisenhower, my daughter chose James Madison.

Each student will present, in full costume, facts about their president. Since girls are given the option of dressing as the first lady, my daughter will be Dolley Madison. They are also required to create a visual representation of their president through some type of artistic medium. My son chose a poster. He’s easy like that.

My daughter decided she would make James Madison out of clay. She’s creative like that. I tried to talk her out of it, telling her that while I could help her paint a picture of him, I have zero knowledge of working with clay, and with the exception of a couple of rudimentary clay projects in art class, neither did she. So, yeah. She opted to make James Madison out of clay. She’s stubborn like that. (She must take after her father.)

What I came to realize while helping her with the project is that the creative process is very similar regardless of the medium.

It's often messy

It's sometimes very messy

Sometimes what's in your head doesn't translate well...

and you have to start anew from scratch.

There comes a point in the process where you must give up the pursuit of perfection and trust your vision of the end result. No matter how ugly the work in progress appears to be.

Perfection should not be the goal of the creative process. Rather, the goal is to convey a concept, and interpretation or representation from the artist to her audience.

I think this process varies from person to person. What is your process? Do you have one, or does it just sort of happen?

P. S. -- Does that James Madison bust remind you of anyone? Just a little? "

“James Madison loves Harry Potter!” – Jeff Hogan

My secret shame

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If the Hokey Pokey really was what it was all about, I would be in serious trouble…

I may have mentioned this in passing before, but today I make an all out confession:

I suffer from Left-Right Confusion,

Which in layman’s terms means I often can’t tell my left from my right without pretending to eat.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

It’s more embarrassing than anything else. I’ve called people moments after giving them directions to my house and asked them to repeat them to make sure I didn’t say turn left when they should turn right.

Joey, I feel your pain...

I don’t know if the two are related, but I also have a horrible sense of direction.

I’ve mostly come to terms to my condition and have given up my dreams of ever becoming an air traffic controller. But sometimes situations arise which remind me just how different I am. And not necessarily in a good way.

Such was the case Wednesday night.

I have this amazing book called The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher. I’m sort of at a loss for words as to how to describe it, so I’ll let Amazon do it for me: “Alan Fletcher’s The Art of Looking Sideways is an absolutely extraordinary and inexhaustible “guide to visual awareness,” a virtually indescribable concoction of anecdotes, quotes, images, and bizarre facts that offers a wonderfully twisted vision of the chaos of modern life.” It is the big book of awesome, and I mean that literally: it weighs 5 pounds.

Anyhoo, I was looking through the book last night (there’s no beginning or end–you could start anywhere), when I came across an exercise which tests whether you were left or right eyed dominant.

Before I continue, I need to give you a little back story. When I was a young tot first picking up a crayon, my natural inclination was to lead with my left hand. My older sisters, apparently fearing being left-handed would make me more of a freak than I already was, forced me to write with my right hand. I’m convinced I should have been left-handed. I credit them for me being amberdextrous ambidexterous able to do things with both hands. I also blame them for my left-right confusion and the delayed discovery of my creativity. (It’s okay–they don’t read my blog. Feel free to heap burning coals upon their heads.)

Now, about the test. It started with a picture:

If you're right-eyed dominant, you probably see the above figure as a rabbit. If you're left-eyed dominant, you probably see a bird.

I was really hoping to discover that I was left-eyed dominant, which would confirm that I am truly left-handed and right-brained. This is my logic. Just nod and follow along, please. Well that was not at all helpful. I see both, and not really one more than the other.

But wait…there was more! Here’s the other test:

Stretch out an arm, either will do, and point with a finger to a distant corner of the room–keep both eyes open.

Staying in this position, close one eye, then the other. In one case your eye will match whatever you’re pointing at in the corner, in the other your finger will be pointing way off the mark.

If you’re on target, that’s your leading eye.

I took the test.

When I closed my right eye, my left eye stayed on target.

Yes!

I really am left-eyed dominant.

Redemption.

Until…

“Um…what are you doing?”, asks my husband.

“I took a test to see if I’m left or right-eyed dominant. I’m left-eyed dominant, by the way.”

I proceed to read him the instructions I followed to the letter. Then I repeated the test again.

“Which eye stays on target?”

“MY LEFT EYE! See?” (repeats test)

“Kat?”

“What?”

“That’s your right eye.”

DRATS!!!

What about you? Have any secret shames you hide from the world?

This is a safe place.

Talk to me, freaks!

The making of America

When my now 13 year old son was in the 2nd grade, I was asked to help design the set for the class musical, “Bugz”. It was my first introduction to set design on a large scale. Who knew you could do so much with giant rolls of paper? The set turned out well. So did the costumes. I decided two things after the experience. First, I decided that I would volunteer to make the sets for each of musicals my 2 kids were involved in, secondly I decided that I would never again volunteer to be in charge of the set AND the costumes. You would think figuring out how to make 300 pairs of bug wings out of panty hose and coat hangers (in 6 different colors, no less) would be a blast, but really not so much…

But the set design part? Love that. Mostly because the great music teachers have pretty much given me free reign to create whatever I think will best represent the overall theme of the show. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve helped design a set for bugs:

For boys and girls venturing west:

And for students ready for summer:

This year, I was asked to design the set for Lewis and Clark, and while there are plenty of willing volunteers whom I could have called upon to help me out, I choose to go it alone this time. My original plan was to make an elaborate mountain scene with the Pacific Ocean in the background. But after reading the script, I decided that this time, a simple map of the USA circa 1803 would suffice and lend better to the story. As a bonus, this also saved me about 2 weeks worth of work — win/win.

I’m a people person, but there are times when I truly enjoy being alone. Creating this set was one of those times.

It was one of those rare times in a creative endeavor of mine when I knew exactly what I wanted to do and the steps involved to get there.

The rolling out of the background paper,

the stapling and straightening and smoothing,

and re-stapling and re-straightening and re-smoothing,

the background for the map

until it was reasonably smooth and straight.

(This process is much easier said than done.)

I don’t know who invented the overhead projector, 

but God bless them! It makes things so much easier.

No peeking: Can you name the yellow, green and red areas?

How did you do?

The set is mostly done. Someone needs to staple the blue paper to the top of the wall. But after sliding off an extension ladder from the height of where the top of that paper is 2 years ago, that someone is not going to be me.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to lately.

I bet you thought this post was going to be about the election, huh?

Tunnel vision

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My Wednesday afternoons/evenings are typically pretty full. My son takes private horn lessons right after school. He gets home at 3:00, then we leave at 3:30 to get to his lessons at 4:00. Because we have to leave the house before my daughter gets home from her school, my friend Tamara (who works at said school) has graciously agreed to bring my daughter home with her, then either my husband or I pick her up, depending on which one of us gets home first. Once we’re all together as a family, it’s usually a quick dinner, homework, then I’m off to praise team practice by 7:00 pm. This is a typical Wednesday.

Yesterday was not a typical Wednesday. Early in the day, I got a call from Tamara’s husband Jeff, who also happens to be the pastor and worship leader of our church.

Me: How’s it going?

Jeff: Oh, not so good. Do you think I could come by and borrow your saw zall? It seems we have a leak in the main water line into the house and I need to cut through the wall to find the leak.

Me: Dang. I’m sorry. How suck is that? (Yeah, I talk to my pastor like that. I’m me 24/7.) Sure. I’ll be here.

Note: You may recall the infamous saw zall from my post The New Math. If not, this picture may refresh your memory

He also asked if we could move practice from their house to mine since their water would be turned off for the foreseeable future.

Of course I agreed. Not a problem. The only problem was that Tamara called later as I was headed to their house to pick up my daughter and asked if she and their girls could take showers at our house. Wait–that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that my daughter’s room and adjoining bathroom resembled war-torn Beruit, and this is where the girls would be showering and hanging out while we practiced.

I picked her up and proceeded to read her the riot act about how she needs to take responsibility for her things and that if she kept her room neat we wouldn’t need to rush around to get it straight when we had company, causing everyone undue stress in the process. Me in particular. (I said that last part to myself.)

After a very quick and nutrious dinner of $5 pizza and some further instruction from me about getting her room clean, off she went. After about 20 minutes, she emerged briefly to inform me that she had made her bed. To the untrained ear, this may have seemed like good news, but I have a 6th sense about these things. I knew it was not good news. Because I knew she had spent the past 20 minutes making her bed.

I made my way to her room. Indeed, she had made her bed. And quite elaborately. But while her bed looked like this:

Her floor? Well, I’m not even gonna go there. But it was bad–the last episode of Seinfeld bad, Disney Channel’s Suite Life on Deck bad, Jerry Springer on Dancing with the Stars bad. I think you get the visual picture. Bad, as in not good.

I told her how nice her bed looked with all 47 stuffed animals arranged so nicely but that she had exactly 30 minutes to get everything else picked up. Amazingly enough, she did. Her room was presentable by the time everyone showed up at the house. She really did want her room to look nice for her friends.

I considered giving her a lecture about the need to use her time wisely and not getting tunnel vision about a particular project, but I didn’t. Because I know she comes by that honestly. I do the same thing. I often find myself scurrying around at the last minute doing things I should have done because I’ve spent so much of my time doing the things that give me a sense of purpose, things I’m passionate about.

Maybe it’s part of the mindset of creative types–the ability to completely block everything else out and put all of ourselves into accomplishing the perfect vision in our minds. And while I know things would be much easier if she took a more systematic, ordered approach to life, I wonder if she would lose some of the creative spark and the “thinking outside the box” mentality that makes her so very special.

When creativity gets away from you


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Yesterday I posted several pictures here. For those of you who are still wondering, yes, all those projects were done by yours truly, and no, I have no formal training. Just sort of figured things out as I went along. I tend to throw myself head first into anything that fuels my creative spirit. There is an energy and a spark when you take an idea in your head and it transfers well to a final result. That goes for anything. Not just the creative arts.

Then there are times when my big plans and lack of planning get me into messes. Case in point. While turning what once was the kids playroom into a studio/office, I decided that the windowsills were cumbersome and were taking up too much space. (They protruded a whopping 2 inches.) Had my husband been in town, he would have talked me out of it. Temporarily, anyway. But when I get something in my head, I’m pretty determined to see it through. This can be very good. It can also be very bad. Here’s a post from last year. A cautionary tale:

The New Math:

Well, it’s Saturday and I am hard at work in my soon-to-be uber fantastical studio/escape from the world. I am taking a brief respite from the task at hand to give you a brief peek into the glamorous life of me. (Sure, don’t mention it.)

Here’s a new mathematical equation to ponder:

Impulsive, impatient Katdish

– methodical, practical husband

+high powered reciprocal saw

=Uh, oh…Sorry. My bad

Okee, dokey! Well, I gotta got figure out how I’m going to fix this before my DH gets home. Oh, wait…he reads my blog…DANG! So, how’s your day going?

For the record, I did fix the damage (all by myself thankyouverymuch) and the windowsills now only protrude one inch. So there…

This is also where I came up with the quote,
“The creative spirit cannot be enslaved by the oppressive chains of reason and logical thinking” when Texas Shawn asked me: “Um, what did you set out to do?”

Also the first and only time my husband commented on my blog:

“I guess I should look at the bright side and be grateful that I learned of your handy work via your blog and not a call from the hospital.Curious to learn what your a sculpting.”

So menfolk, the next time your wife complains about you leaving your dirty socks on the floor, look on the bright side, you could be married to me.

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