The Wayfaring Wordhack

 My girl just celebrated her 16th birthday today.  What a wonderful, sweet, smart, talented, passionate, head-on-her-shoulders person she is.  I am so blessed to be her mom and have a strong relationship with her that I never would have dreamed possible given the mother-daughter relationships (heck, all the dynamics) of my childhood and family.  

I can't believe it has already been a week since I did my last update.  It is true that we had our visit, and then I lost 2.5-3 days to feeling a bit like a zombie.  For some reason, I was completely exhausted and had to nap each day (something I don't do--can't do--unless I am sick or pushed to my limits).  It felt a lot like what I have come to understand is the onset of a shingles flare-up.  I think by giving myself grace and resting when needed, I was able to stop it before it started.  

I have done a bit of painting but even more blind contour drawing. I just love doing blind contours.  I am going to work on merging blind contours with painting, something I did in my last plein air painting that I shared in the wrap-up.

We have finally gotten some constant rain, and let's just say, Pearl is not enamored of it.  She is going to have some serious adjusting to do in French Guyana. 😜

It looks like we will likely be moving at year's end, with 1 Jan as starting date for J, because administratively speaking it is easier and that way the kids get to have Christmas in France.  For Sprout at least, that will move us up in her good graces.  😀

J is going to do an 8-day mission in Basque country beginning Sunday.  The kids and I will drive him to Brive, which is right beside a village I told J I wanted to visit. (We drive by it every time we go south to see his family); so I will get to visit Donzenac much sooner than I expected!  I will share a blind contour drawing I did on the road, featuring St-Martin's gothic bell tower.

 Wow, last week I wrote about autumn, and autumn is really here.  It is amazing how the trees have changed and the light.  Last night, it rained and today is foggy, perfect snuggling weather.  However, we are going to the south to see my husband's family for a couple of days, so we will be driving instead of being cozy on couches.

Yesterday marked the end of my month-long plein air challenge.  I did 23 paintings (a bit more, but didn't count them all), so I met my goal of 5 per week.  My output was all over the place. I don't have the time now, but I want to do a collage of all the paintings in order to see at a glance what I did.  It is going to be, as I said, all over the place.

My knee is back to hurting me--I limp for the first few steps whenever I go from sitting to standing--so I really need to get a PT appointment.

 It isn't easy to figure out my own rhythms when there always seems to be Something Going On.™️*

But this past week, when I started feeling hormonal and low on energy, et al., I had the presence of mind to tell myself, "This shall pass," and give myself grace if I didn't want to do art or couldn't.

I have been creating, but I went through a lot of angst.  I will just share my latest painting, which I am happy with, because I was able to do things that are very hard for me: lean into abstraction and allow myself to use color intuitively.


I felt pretty chuffed afterwards and hoped to paint more, but with a visit with friends, trying to stop a middle-ear infection from taking hold, and dealing with house, administrative worries/hassles, and move stuff, the art has been on the back burner for a few days.  Hopefully I can get another painting or two--or some pottery--in soon.

How has your week been?

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*I know I already mentioned the friend who made me question if I am just overly melodramatic or what...

 J got a phone call saying he passed his security clearance, which should mean the deal is as done as it is going to get. While we still don't have a date, J started looking into flights yesterday, so I will share with you that we are going to French Guyana (that's the way I stubbornly prefer to spell it because it's "Guyane" in French, but lots of places have it spelled "Guiana").

In case you need help situating it:

As I said before, there is a likelihood that J will start Nov 1, so it is back to packing, sorting, and planning for us.  It seems a ways off, but we all know it will be here rather soon.

Child-me dreamed of running away one day to the Amazon, and here, finally, I shall go and live there and actually be able to speak the language of the place I shall inhabit.  My own children are in turns excited and nervous and decidedly unthrilled with the idea of going, the "unthrilled" bit being due to a) leaving this place which they love, and b) the climate of French Guyana.  I myself, now knowing what a tropical climate is like am not particularly looking forward to that part of it.  J is going to be involved in a service that is new to him and much more interesting than what he is currently doing, so that is a plus.

 I have been painting a lot and if I wait every time until Thursday for a check-in, that post is going to be too image heavy.  So, here is a collage of my three latest paintings, done yesterday at our neighbor's pond.  The first one, the rock, is small, probably 12 cm by 16 or so.  The largest is the twilight painting of the pond, which I am happy to say only took me 21 minutes.  Speed is not my goal, but confidence and good basics (colors, values, brushstrokes) are.  I found a secret weapon this time to use that made it go so much faster and save me a lot of paint to boot: covering the canvas (in the case of these three, all were recycled) super quickly and well with minimal paint.




We had a nice picnic. Ti'Loup swam, Farmer Boy and J fished a bit, and Sprout did some art, too.  They all biked to the pond, but I took the pickup to carry all my supplies.  They headed home at dusk, and I stayed behind to quickly paint my last one.

Went down to the river to paint today.  It was relaxing, except for the bit where I really hated it and thought I had lost it.  I think I did OK in bringing it back and came home with something I am overall happy with.  I will have to go back and paint another one there again, though.  Now that I have had practice sketching it and painting it once, I should--I hope--be able to do even better next time.  Might try with oils; this is acrylics on a piece of recycled watercolor paper.

 

 You know how, when you are traversing lots of back-to-back, momentous or stressful situations, there comes a time that you just relax into the tossing and tumult?  You are not settled, you still have to look forward for a time of reprieve, but you find an odd kind of rhythm in the uncertainty or, perhaps, a bubble of normalcy that miraculously shields you with its oh-so-thin-and-pop-able walls from the brunt of the chaos...

Things are still up in the air with our future, but we are in the bubble of our home, and I have spent the week trying to hold on to the beauty and normalcy of that.  I just wish it was a clean and well-organized bubble. LOL.   I guess it wouldn't be "normal" then.  Oh why can't I be a neat freak?

Things of note this week:

On Sunday, we saw a car that was casing our village.  It drove up out of our neighbor's driveway--no one had seen it go down--then it passed in front of our place and down to our other neighbors'.  We live in a cul-de-sac, and they had to come back, something they probably did much sooner than they wanted to because they doubtless saw us watching them head down.  My husband photographed their car and license plate (there is a certain type of car used by a certain population who commits these kinds of actions, and they are NOT cars that are regularly seen in our neck of the woods; my husband is well-versed in these matters because of his work).  He called the neighbors; no one answered.  He reported the sighting to the local authorities.  Later that day, seeing that the neighbors did not get the call, I checked in with them again.  They were celebrating their eldest grand-daughter's birthday and hadn't been around all day.  After my call, they came back and their other daughter, E, went to her home, a few kilometers away. Our neighbor's place was fine, but E's house had been broken into.  :(  Several sightings of the same type of car (actually same car, different plates:  a commonly-used strategy) were made in another village where there was an attempted break-in.  The authorities contacted my husband to see if he had other info, but sadly we could help no more.  I really hope they catch them.

I painted a picture. And hated it.  It is a pretty, sweet picture of a lovely, peaceful place, which sounds like it should be a good thing.  However, I feel frustrated and mad about it because it is ...what?  Boring, traditional, staid, too realistic and on the nose?  I dunno.  All of that probably.  I want to fix it somehow, but ==TMI ALERT== I have my period and know that my hormones are probably making me harsher than I need to be (but likely not).  I have to hold off on messing with until I have some clarity and weigh the benefits of "fixing" it with the chance of really ruining it. To keep it and learn from it--looking back on it at a future date to see how far I have come--is not something I really relish doing.  It is already a cover-up itself as I painted it over a truly awful picture I painted about 23 or so years ago when J and I would go to the Contemporary Arts Fair (not its real name) in Paris and I was inspired by the plethora of "poppy" paintings.  Can't let a canvas go to waste.

We received our pottery wheel, and since J is away at his week-long terra sigalata training, I have not been depriving myself of the use of it.  Our order came with a free 10-kg bag of clay, so I have thrown two tumblers and two pasta bowls.  Since I don't have tools yet--they are coming in the shipping--I don't even know if my pieces are worth keeping.  I made myself a rib out of a piece of old wood but only after I had thrown my first tumbler, and bowls especially benefit from cleaning out slip with a metal rib.  I don't even have a sponge, seeing as how I didn't have any unused ones lying around the house and I am stuck at home since J has the car.

I say "stuck,"  but I did drive my old car to get my fresh milk from my friend's farm this afternoon.  I had to tape up the passenger mirror first and say my prayers that I wouldn't get pulled over driving a car whose road worthiness test expired two months ago.... 

On Monday, J will have an interview that will get us one step closer to knowing whether or not he will get the post we have been anticipating.  In any case, there is NO WAY he can start new job on the original starting date of Sept 1, so he will return to work at his old job on Sept 2.

And our belongings were sent from Rotterdam to Le Havre. Got a message from Le Havre saying, For 600 euro more, we can send your stuff straight to you instead of down to Marseille and then back up to you.  :/.   J wrote back and tried to get it sorted without the extra fees.  Turns out they are going to send it from Le Havre, but I don't know the final fall out with the finances.  It should be delivered next week.  Before J goes back to work. Hooray.

That week whooshed by despite the infernal bouts of insomnia I suffered.  I guess feeling like a zombie throughout the day can make things a blur.  

On Friday, we caught up with some friends at a lake.  The kids had a great time playing in the water or on the shore.  J took out the kayak a couple of times, either with the kids or alone, but I couldn't go with him because I have to avoid the sun with this virus.  I stayed on the grass beneath the birches and chatted with A and B, and then went for a stroll with A along the shaded road.  

We went to church on Sunday, but because I had been awake since 1:30 a.m. we didn't stay long to catch up with people.  I napped a bit and felt well enough to do a (very leisurely) 1-hr walk with the family that evening.  My physical therapist told me to walk up to 15 minutes at a time, so I felt pretty proud of myself.  However, when I wrote and told him, and asked if I could do a 1.8 km hike with the family, he said I shouldn't be pushing it too much.  He did allow me to go on the hike, though.  More on that in a bit.  

On Monday, J took the kids to get their French ID cards.  Both their US and French passports are expired.  Since our next possible location is French, we decided to get the ID cards instead in hopes that they would be issued faster.  We can always get passports later, and since they are only valid 5 years for children, it is better to put it off until they need them.

On Tuesday, we went for our hike in La Vallée de Chaudefour, which is a place we went for Ti'Loup's fifth birthday. Yep, already five years ago.  The plan was for me to stop at a spot by the river while the others went on to see a waterfall.  We planned to bivouac by the river and head home early the next day. However, a park ranger saw us with our packs (mine wasn't heavy as per dr's orders!) and let us know camping was not allowed.  Now, J had gotten contradicting info from a guy who works in mountain rescue, hence our plans.  Park ranger made it clear that she and her colleagues were the ones to consult rather than any other service.  Lesson learned.  The others put down their bigger packs and we did the hike anyhow.  The only problem is that I was cleared to do 1.8km that day with the understanding I would do the return hike after a night's rest.  Well, I did rest a bit while the others walked on, but it was tough for me to finish.  I was obviously able to do it, but my body was not happy.

Despite the clouds and drizzle (we were mostly under trees and didn't get wet), the walk was quite nice.  We were almost alone in the vast reserve, having arrived late in order to camp.



We should have bivouacked here:


I took my art supplies but didn't feel like drawing anything.  I just wanted to soak it in.  Sprout stayed with me and worked on a map for a fantasy world she is creating. She said the landscape was exactly like what she imagined for her world, and she decided that she must have been subconsciously channeling this place where she had been five years before.

Yesty, I was a bit stiff* upon waking after my double-dose of kilometers, but it passed after I got moving.  My virus itchiness is kicking up a notch, though. 

Today, J took the kids south to see his family. My knee and Miss Pearl kept me here.  Following the admonition of my husband to take it easy, I decided to paint today.  First time in a couple of months, but I think it went OK for someone "out of practice," who was painting in hot weather with fast drying paints.  


I set up this still life under the linden tree and painted until a thunderstorm said I should stop.  I made the teapot and cups, but the pitcher is one we bought when we lived in Egypt.  It sadly cracked very soon after we bought it, so now I just use it to hold dried flowers.

I have aspirations of making next week's check-in less of a blow by blow, but I shall do as I shall do and count myself lucky to have done something.  And speaking of writing, I also got around 1k words on my MG fantasy, but fatigue and busyness has meant that I haven't spent as much time as I would have liked on it.  I just found out that some overnight guests we were expecting next week are not coming, so maybe I will find some time to write.  However, I still have to clean because A) it needs to be done; B) my sanity; C) we have friends who will stop by.  J will be away for a pottery training, so I shall have to man the fort and get the kids to help me man the brooms and dusters, etc. etc. etc.

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* I corrected my typo from "stuff" to "stiff" but it made me laugh because I could have left it and said I was channeling Johnny Frish Fush. 😂

First thing is that Pearl totally approves of her new home in France.  She was comfortable and at ease from the very first.  My working hypothesis is that A) the house smells like us, making it full of the familiar.  It also smells like the exciting little critters that make themselves at home here😜; and B) after spending months here and then traveling back to Lebanon, our luggage and effects probably had a bit of "House/France" smell on them, too, allowing her to familiarize herself with its aroma.  I dunno, but the truth remains, she is one zen cat for what she underwent; and none of our other cats ever had that level of comfort with our moves.

And she is sooooooo excited to be allowed in the yard.  It is chock full of adventure for her.



So many enticing noises in the grass:



I think she would refuse if we tried to take her back to Lebanon.



"You go back if you want; I'm staying here."  

I am not sure she will loooooove the next possible location so much.

Second piece of good news:
We got a car today!  Woot.  That is such a load off our minds since our old one is no longer road safe or insured.