Friends

Love: It’s Not About Personal Dignity

Posted on November 13, 2008 by Debora

Last Friday the kids and some friends and I got together up in Idyllwild for a rousing evening of karaoke. I hadn’t done the karaoke thing in about ten years, so I wasn’t sure what my voice was going to sound like, but I was feeling the need to introduce my kids to this great American pastime.

As it turned out, yes my singing voice was a bit rusty, and no that didn’t infringe upon my merrymaking one bit. It was a slow night, so everyone in our group who wanted to got to sing six or seven songs each. Luke got up and belted out “Day-O” with me, and it was horrible and awesome and everyone clapped and cheered at top volume when it was over.

“I’m surprised no one laughed at me because of all the mistakes I made,” Luke confided to me later.

“Oh, baby, that’s the fun of karaoke,” I assured him. “Nobody cares about the mistakes, they just love that you got up and sang.”

Elizabeth declined to join in; somewhere in the past year she has become very self-conscious and unwilling to just be goofy. That makes me sad. It is now one of my goals in life to get Elizabeth hooked on the “screw personal dignity” adrenaline rush of karaoke.

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There was no school on Veteran’s Day. Around here November 11th is also the occasion of Gericault’s and Brodie’s birthday, so it’s EXTRA-special for us. Here they are as babies…

…and big strapping three-year-olds:

I chose that particular photo because today is Love Thursday and it suits the theme better than all those other photos where they’re literally trying to rip each other’s throats out. Let’s just say that Gericault and Brodie have a sibling rivalry sort of love/hate thing going on.

So there we were on Tuesday, all home from school and overflowing with leisure time, and…we just weren’t having a good day. Elizabeth was cranky in a way that I can only describe as hormonal, and Luke was whiny and complainy, and by 10am I was ready to sell both of them to the gypsies.

But alas, there were no gypsies to be found, so instead I announced that we were Going For A Walk. Originally this was just going to be a stroll around some backroads to clear everyone’s heads, but then we decided to go to a nearby sandwash where there are rocks to climb and a culvert to crawl through.

The dogs enjoyed their birthday outing , and climbed rocks with full enthusiasm.

By the time we got home, everyone was in a much better mood.

Which lasted until the next morning, when I discovered that my credit union had pulled a Big Chunk Of Money out of my savings account because Steve is behind on his truck payments.

This is a new savings account that I’d opened after the separation, and only my name is on it. But it’s with the same credit union (although a different branch) as Steve’s truck loan. Which I am listed on as the primary lendee, because I am the one with pristine credit. Because I, you know, PAY MY BILLS ON TIME.

What makes this all the more ridiculous is that the money Steve makes is measured in BUCKETFULS. On a good DAY he can make more than twice the amount he pays in child support per WEEK, and that’s my sole income these days. And he lives with his PARENTS, who FEED HIM and DON’T CHARGE RENT. And which one of us has a (slowly) growing savings account rather than mounting debt? Why, that would be me.

I called Steve and he said that he would repay my money and see about getting my name off of the truck loan. Since the only way to do this is for him to refinance the truck in his own name, we need to do it QUICKLY before he destroys his credit and no longer qualifies. Our CU is very very picky about who they will offer loans to, and I don’t think that’s gotten any less true of late.

I’m trying to think of a way to tie that last part of today’s post into the whole Love Thursday theme, but I don’t think it can be done.

So I’ll close with some good news: the chickens have all been running around loose for a few days now, and so far no fatalities.

AND we had our first frost Sunday night and a really hard frost Monday night, and somehow my bell peppers and tomatoes just shrugged it off…

…and then the weather turned warmish again, so the garden’s probably safe for a while yet. I LOVE tomatoes and bell peppers and lean heavily on them in all my cooking for as long as they last, so I’m very happy about this.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone. Here’s to…stuff not dying, and imperfect-but-joyful public singing. And rocks!

Categories: Animals, Birthdays, Dogs, Family, Friends, kids, Life, Love Thursday, NaBloPoMo | 2 Comments

Odds And Ends

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Debora

These are pictures that don’t quite fit into any particular category. Most of them were just for my own amusement, not for any book or project.

I drew this during one of my annual visits with Dani; I think she was living in Texas at the time:

Tyleet was one of my favorite characters from the comic book series “Elfquest:”

A whimsical “self-portrait,” just for fun:

My horse Stormy, my half-wolf Lakota, and my iguana Khismet all made it into the scene.

I did this one just a few weeks before I met Steve for the first time. Foreshadowing?

This next one was a paid job…sorta. One of Steve’s friends opened a bar (of course) in Anza called “The Wild Rose Saloon.” It had kareoke and a dance floor and sometimes a band, and that was our hangout on the weekends, for the several months that it stayed open. Steve’s friend’s bar did a hopping business, but he was a little fuzzy on that whole paying-his-bills-and-rent issue. Anyway. Right after it opened I was asked to design a logo, and I came up with this one:

By way of payment Steve and I each got a free tee-shirt with the logo on it. I still have mine.

Here’s one that I did for a friend of my sister who was into gargoyles:

And one of the very few projects I did after Elizabeth was born:

And I think that’s about everything blogworthy from the “Miscellaneous” file.

Wordless Wednesday and Love Thursday are coming up, so I’ll probably get back to the retrospective on Friday.

I wonder how much it would cost to install a skylight in my bedroom and make a little art studio area in there. It’s like one more part of my brain just woke up. That’s been happening quite a lot since the separation.

Categories: Animals, Artwork, Dragons, Friends, Horses, Life, NaBloPoMo | Leave a comment

Greetings

Posted on November 9, 2008 by Debora

I was digging through my old artwork looking for those horse portraits, and I realized that there’s some other stuff I want to post first.

So today we have greeting cards. I started making homemade birthday cards for close friends, and then got into mass-printing my Christmas cards. I still have a few copies of designs in various stages of completion; I’ve posted them here in chronological order:

This was a card I made for Steve, of course:

And here’s the first horse portrait I ever did:

Duchess was the horse Steve was riding at the time, before he got Sam. I gave him the original painting for Christmas that year, and printed some smaller copies onto Christmas cards for him and his family.

This card has a special place in my heart:

It was the first commissioned-and-paid-for picture I’d done since I’d moved to Anza. A couple I occasionally house-sat for wanted their pets immortalized in pen and ink. I felt like my True Calling was finally getting back on track!

More Christmas card designs:

I have one more batch of miscellaneous artwork to post tomorrow, before I get to the horses.

Also I’m suddenly feeling the urge to go out and buy art supplies.

Curse you, NaBloPoMo!

Categories: Animals, Artwork, Birthdays, Christmas, Friends, Horses, Life | 4 Comments

A Menagerie Of Beasties

Posted on November 4, 2008 by Debora

I’d been living in Anza for about two years when my friend Dani wrote and asked me if I’d do some illustrations of creatures for the rpg gaming system she was putting together.

This is where the “coloring book” style I’d developed came in handy, because I could send her copies of pen-and-ink sketches until we’d hammered out exactly what a particular beast was supposed to look like…

…and then do the same with color copies (from Kinkos; a color copier in every home was still a distant dream back then) until we reached a final product:

That project kept us busy until Dani discovered the sweet addiction of BBSing (computer Bulletin Board Systems, for the youngsters in the audience: basically it was the social networking forerunner of the World Wide Web). She moved to Memphis, and I saved up my pennies for a year and flew out to visit her there, where I was quickly assimilated into the BBS collective as well. When I returned home she sent me one of her old computers so that I could keep up with the groups, and it was like a drug to me. I lived for the discussions and debates in those forums. My little 2400-baud modem connected me to people I could have actual conversations with (albeit slow ones; I would log on in the evenings and 30 to 45 minutes later I would have a complete download of everyone’s latest contributions to the discussion forums), and it was pure heaven.

You know, relatively speaking.

Categories: Animals, Artwork, Friends, Life | 4 Comments

Memory Lane

Posted on November 1, 2008 by Debora

My sister left this comment in response to my request for NaBloPoMo fodder:

I think seeing samples of your different artwork spanning the last 20 years would be cool. From the elfy forest scenes to the horse portraits, etc. Favorite recipes, too.

Well, then.

20 years ago I was 19, and when I tried to remember what my artwork looked like back then I drew a total blank on the whole time period. I was all, “Let’s see…that was after Missouri…was I living on the Saddlebred farm? No, that was later; I was living…in that camper shell at the lumberyard? No, no, I remember now, we were all still in that little trailer in old man Egbert’s front yard.”

None of those residences seemed particularly bizarre to me at the time, but now I shake my head bemusedly as I type them.

When I was 19 I was working at the Saddlebred farm but not yet living there; my payment was feed and board for the wild-eyed yearling Arab filly I’d just been given by a nice couple who were going through a divorce and had to sell off all their horses. Stormy was too crazy unmanageable for anyone to want to buy, so they let me have her for free. This is what she looked like the day she arrived at the stables:

As you can see no one could get close enough to groom her; she looked much better after she’d had a bath and some TLC. Which didn’t happen right away, because did I mention the crazy unmanageable part?

For actual money I was working as a soda jerk in one of those 50’s-style diners that were all the rage in 1988. When business was slow I would amuse myself with the hula-hoops:

I can’t decide what I like most about that picture, my hat, my red suspenders or my little black bow tie.

Here’s another picture of me at 19, which I want to share because CHECK OUT THOSE BANGS. I think they had their own zip code.

So, artwork. I don’t think I was doing much of that at 19, or 20, because I was ALL wrapped up in my new horsie. Here she is at age 2…

…and at age 3:

I cringe every time I look at my hair in those old pics. Yikes. Gotta love that big-socks-pulled-up-over-my-jeans look too.

When I was 21 I was living with my friend Dani and her husband, working as a live-in nanny for her young son; I think he was three or four at the time. We and two other friends were heavily into rpg’s, and my artwork was mostly elaborately-drawn character sheet images. I don’t have any of those; they were lost in a tragic postal incident. Long story.

I do have this sketch from that year:

I like the study in conformational differences between the two horses.

When I was 22 I moved up to Anza and back in with my mother and siblings to help provide financial assistance. I stayed with them for about four years, and it was completely horrific. Fortunately for this blog, my abject misery found an outlet in some rather interesting art. I’ll be posting samples of that throughout the month, in chronological order.

Stay tuned!

Categories: Animals, Artwork, Family, Friends, Horses, Life, NaBloPoMo | 3 Comments