The Wayfaring Wordhack

I had a most amazing thing--a bright and happy thing--happen to me, and I think the world needs more trumpeting of news of that sort.  

My art course just wrapped up, and there is a paying community alumni can access once it is over.  I decided because of the financial and time burden, I would not be continuing.  I said my goodbyes and expressed my appreciation for the course and my fellow students...and woke up to a message from one of the other students saying she would like to offer me access to the community for a year.  She said she appreciated my contributions so much over the courses, all the time and effort that I put into helping others, that she didn't want to see my time with them end.  I was very touched but felt I couldn't accept. Yes, the money is one issue, but the time-involvement "required"* is even more of a hang up for me.

Before I could graciously formulate my refusal, she went ahead and paid it, telling me that she did not expect me to be there all the time, no obligations.

I was so honored and touched by her gesture and the outpouring of love when the others knew I would be continuing.

______
*There are no requirements, but I am not a half-measures person when I commit to something and I put a lot of time into something I am dedicated to seeing through.

 Last night, before heading to bed, J was having "twitchy legs," something that affects him from time to time.

In the wee hours this morning, I was startled awake by the bed trembling.  Groggy with sleep, I thought, "That was an earthquake!"  But then I talked myself down, remembering J complaining about his legs. The bed shook a bit more, but I couldn't really feel him moving.  Still, nothing else seemed to be moving in the dark (our room is pretty much empty), so I went back to sleep.

Then my WhatsApp was full this morning of friends talking about how scary the earthquake was, their messages timestamped 4:15 a.m., and I saw the news about Turkey and Syria being hit.  That group of friends lives down in Beirut proper, and many live in buildings that would never pass code, so it was a terrifying experience for them.  

J slept through it all like a babe...as did my kids, I suppose, since not even the massive clap of thunder that woke me again at 5:30, rattling the windows,  phased them.  Well, didn't phase the kids; that did wake J since it is his normal time to get up. 

_________________________________________
ETA:  The weather continued to be foul all day, and many people felt other aftershocks here in Lebanon,.  We did not notice anything.  I have half a mind to put a bag of stuff by the door in case, worst case scenario, the kids and I have to make a dash for it (J is working tonight).  I am not in a fearful place, just trying to think ahead and be as prepared as possible.  

A propos my subject line:  A friend told me that her husband thought SHE was shaking the bed, and another friend said she and her husband were awake because their 3-year-old had just climbed into bed with them.  When the bed starting shaking, both exclaimed, "C, are you shaking the bed!?"  They then felt immediately silly because it was obvious a child couldn't be doing such a thing.

I haven't heard about any damage in our environs (just belongings toppling), but we kept having electricity cuts.  Don't know if it was related...

I made a galette des rois yesterday.  And all the filling leaked out.  Ugh.  Since I had invited G over to eat it with us, I had to make another, pronto.  This one turned out much better and very tasty. 




Not my prettiest, but probably my puffiest. :D

With my leftover puff pastry (homemade, thank you very much), I made a much smaller version for J to take to work on Friday to share with his colleague.


And because I am on snack duty at church this Saturday, I think I will make a giant one, capable of serving many people.  In France whenever you attend a "fête des voeux" with a larger gathering, the galette is rectangular instead of the traditional round form, so that is what I will do...  There is a lot of butter in my future.

A little anecdote:  The link above goes to an entry about the second galettes I made, back when we lived in Egypt.  That means the first time I made a galette des rois was almost 10 years ago.  That is just crazy.  I have no sense--despite having kids that are a growing and constant witness to the passage of time--that that much has passed.  I have a better picture of the above pictured cake, but this one was taken out on our terrace, reminding me of photographing this one out on our teeny tiny balcony in our first Egyptian flat.  :P 

The frangipani icon is for  you, asakiyume , in reference to our long-long ago convo on the other post. :P

 I am too busy to post.

Instead, have a list:

- Back from Turkey* with a sick husband, followed by 
- sick kids;
- an offer on another flat and an opportunity to buy almost-new furnishings, which led to
- questioning Garden Flat and doing all kinds of math and mental  gymnastics and bargaining over possible new flat;
- a phone call from a lackey** saying our bill for a Christmas party would 15% higher than agreed upon over a week before, which led to
- a mad scramble to find a new venue;
- a Christmas party;
- continuing fatigue from dealing with sick kids;
- things advancing on the Garden Flat (HIP HIP HOORAY!);
- running all over Beirut and its environs in search of what furniture/appliance we can't buy from our acquaintances who are leaving the country;
- a bit of art because I really want to do art

There's more in there--because isn't there always more?--but that is the main gist of it.

Hope you have all been less busy and mentally drained.

__________________

* I still haven't uploaded our photos from our trip
**  Instead of the owner, whom I had finalized things with, calling me himself, he made an employee do it and then proceeded to whisper in his employee's ear.  Quel lâche.  ARGH.

- For lunch, J is making a tajine.  We don't have pre-made ras el hanout, so I mixed some myself from my well-stocked spice cabinet.  I could smell the spices as I crushed them in the mortar.  :D My sense of taste is also slowly coming back, and I hope I'll be able to enjoy the tajine in more than just an olfactory way.  Sprout and I made a cinnamon roll cake the other day, and all I could taste was the sugar, not a hint of cinnamon.  In other ick news, I am much better today, with only a stuffy head.

- I am once again faced with a problem with the cardigan regarding the size.  This time it involves the sleeve.  For my size, the pattern says I need to keep doing increases, making the top of the sleeve wider and wider.  I am fine with it being a bit roomier there so I can put it on over bulkier clothes, but it is getting--what seems to me to be--excessively large. Faced with the conundrum of following the pattern or making adjustments now only to find the join between sleeve and body is not nice, I have opted to lower the number of increases and risk ripping it out later if I have to.

- We are going to Turkey for Thanksgiving. :D  I didn't want to say anything certain until hotel and tickets were booked, but as of last night, that is taken care of.  Please don't laugh, but part of the reason we are going to Istanbul now is that we were invited to three different Thanksgiving meals and I didn't want two of the families to feel rejected.  :P So there you go.   It will be colder in Turkey than in Lebanon, and I hope we don't regret traveling in November.  

- I finished one of my chapters for TKB and so have completed part of my fiction goal.  Going to work on it some more now.

- I have been drawing from photos using the blind-contour technique, but I think I need to shift to more applied line-work to really nail down a character.  The days are ticking away until the character design workshop, and I am sure I am going to feel like a complete idjit at the beginning because of my lack of skills.  *deep breath*  That is OK.

Thank you, thank you, thank you asakiyume  for the awesome jaguar postcard and the beautifully evocative letter about your trip.  I felt like a part of me was there with you. <3

 These are some random things, in no particular order, that I want to jot down for myself

-- I learned that the "blue light" filter on my glasses falsifies paint colors, which can give an artist serious angst!  I kept insisting that the colors on my floor were not right, and everyone else said they were fine, not jarring, etc.  Finally, I took off my glasses and realized that my lenses had severely yellowed my tones. :-/  Good to know for the future.  Since I am going to get serious about this illustration thing, I think I need to get myself a very cheap pair of basic glasses to wear while doing art. 

-- I need to do a better job of focusing on what is the primary purpose/mission of a task.  As I pointed out in my post about the first day of the workshop, this was an illustration class!  No one ever heard or saw my story, not even Maya.  It was all about illustrating key scenes.  I did not need pretty sentences or flow.  I just needed an idea of what to show on the storyboard.  I wasted sooooo much time on non-essentials, which led to a loss of time and opportunity to do the needful things, not to mention it created unnecessary stress and fatigue by having to work at home, etc.

-- While it was an intensely fun experience creating with other artists, it can be tiring for a certain personality (mine) when surrounded by so many people who have doubts about their abilities/projects.  I like to serve people; I am a caretaker.  I am geared to encourage others, build them up, see to their needs, but it can be terribly draining doing it all the time for so many people.  NO ONE expected me to do anything for them, and often people probably didn't want my feedback, so I was quiet.  But at the same time, I was *feeling* it all.  It was interesting to learn this about myself in this context.

-- I have mentioned before that I don't visualize things like some other creatives seem to do (many people say they see a movie/scene in their head and then proceed to write or draw that movie/scene).  For me, the movie is never there in more than tiny snippets and those snippets only appear for me *after* I have pieced them together and polished them, *creating* the movie that I can then view.  This initial creation comes about after careful pondering, much research, and lots of trial-and-error.  Once I get an idea, I tend to stick with it.  This can be bad if the first thing that occurs to me is banal, stereotypical or cliché.  So it is important that iI feel my way forward and follow what resonates with me without boxing up the idea too soon.  Part of my fleshing-out process is asking myself questions.  Case in point from the workshop:  Why was the stranger willing to sell/trade his beans for Jack's cow?  What in the world was that man up to? What was he hoping to achieve?  I got really hung up on those questions and wanted to understand before I could write version my of Jack and the Beanstalk, which would serve for my storyboard.  The guy never made an appearance except as a character study and as an indistinct figure in my thumbnail sketches for the storyboard.  I don't know where I am going with this except to note that Maya looked at me like I was an alien when I tried to describe my process.  She contents herself with saying, This character is poor, this one is rich, and drawing accordingly.  This need to know more, I told her, is why I don't want to illustrate other people's works, only my own where I know *why* things are the way they are.  But seriously?  I need to loosen up just a tiny bit and draw what seems fun and interesting without sweating everything so much.  But even typing that makes me cringe a little...

-- The space in which you create has a big impact on how you feel.  Believe it or not.  Maya's studio is gorgeous and I *felt* like being artistic while there.  I need to remember this and work as hard as I can to create an inviting space for myself.  Maya would put on music whenever we had electricity (She pays to have electricity all day, but:  Welcome to Lebanon), and while I didn't always like it, it was nice to have on and even nicer to have the other ladies singing along to it. :D So, note to self, put on music you like while doing art.

Here, have some eye-candy:
I think there were more things I wanted to say, but as often happens, I have not been able to write all of this in one go and the lateness of the hour now make it too hard to think.  Because this is post for me, I will probably come back and add to it if I think of anything else rather than making a new post.

ETA:  
-- Don't under-estimate the power fatigue has to derail and demotivate you.  Be aware that this is always going to be a roller-coaster ride of emotions and self doubt. There will be no moment of, "I have this now and will never have to fear failure again!"

And something I said to myself in the shower before the workshop began:  Being precious never finished a project.  Don't be afraid of making a wrong line or putting down the wrong color.  That's what you need to do to find the right line and the right color, just like saying the wrong thing can help you define more clearly and truly what do do want to say.  So speak up, boldly put down the wrong line, and courageously apply that color.  If it is "wrong," take it as an opportunity to get closer to what "right" is.

As many of you know, we do a form of homeschooling with our children.*  This decision was considered fairly non-normative and odd in France, and even there, people did not "approve" and sometimes cited a nonexistent law saying school is obligatory.**  However, here in Lebanon, people are outright authoritative in their declaration that we must STOP harming our children and put them in school.  These are not school officials or people otherwise concerned with child welfare in a professional sense.  These are a random father we met at a sports class, the man who sold us our car, and a fellow shopper at the grocery store just to cite a few.

Our children are well-loved, well-cared for, presented phenomenal, diverse opportunities for learning and experiencing life.***  They look it and comport themselves in a congruent manner.  So what makes people think we need parenting instructions or to be shown the error of our ways?  

I can't imagine going up to a stranger on the street and telling them how to parent.  Is this a cultural thing?  It reminds me of when Sprout was a baby and I overheard men grumping about me carrying her.  At least *his* opinions weren't meant for my ears.  Seriously, you can think what you want about our choices--even question and discuss them with us****--and I respect that; but when you tell me I *must* do something, when you decree I have to change what I am doing because you disagree with it (without actually *knowing* anything about it), my response can only be: Where do you think you get off?


___________
* How and why we do what we do is not the point of this post, and neither is defending our beliefs, but suffice it to say, it is a considered decision, one we have put a lot of thought (and years of practice) into.  Our oldest is 11 and has never been to school; we were not phased by no school because of a health crisis or technological fails.  For us, what we do is about so much more than "education;" it is a philosophy of life.

** Your average Joe and Jane who never question or look into things themselves can't really be blamed because every year, at back-to-school time in France, newspapers, magazines, and tv reporters are always saying that school is obligatory and no one calls them on it.  Newsflash: It's not.  An *education* is obligatory.

*** This one gets my goat a bit when people say we are not preparing our children for life.  Our children are not waiting to live *someday, upon graduation*; they are living life now, and therefore "being prepared for" life right now by, you know, actually doing it.

**** We do this a lot with those who are curious

An OS update, which I thought I had installed weeks ago, put an end to my horrid keyboard lag problem, and I can now type freely. Color me happy.

I have other happy news:  My "baby" bee colony (started for and given to me by a kind and generous beekeeping neighbor) is growing splendidly, contrary to the fear that took hold of me when J told me he thought, due to the lack of visible activity,  the hive was dying.  I bought J a bee suit today--as well as two for the kids (I wish I had a pic of Farmer Boy in his, but it is on J's phone)--and we went to check the state of the hive. Thank the Lord, the bees are doing so well that I went ahead and added a super on top of the main hive body to give the bees room to stock honey so that the queen can continue laying...  I pray the workers can gather enough nectar to complete their honey stores for the winter. Since I am just starting out, I don't want to be faced with the moral dilemma of letting my bees starve or feed them sugar. :-/

We now have a duck sitting on a clutch of four Khaki Campbell eggs and eight Indian Runner eggs.  It seemed a pity to let the duck sit on only four eggs, so we went ahead and bought the IR eggs in hopes of getting a flock for slug patrol. 

Now for a bit of grimmer news, we only have one duckling left from the incubator clutch (and she* still doesn't look like a Khaki Campbell); however, the two goslings hatched well and are growing. We named the three after Narnia characters, so we have Lucy (duck), and Polly and Diggory (geese).

Today, we had to kill yet another sick hen. It is so heartbreaking to have to do that.  That was why I was really in a funk until we checked the bees and saw they were OK. It is hard raising life and harvesting death. 

Sometimes, when a series of bad things happen, you really forget to look up and take stock of all the progress you have made.  I have been reminding myself of late how much more my garden is approaching my ideal now than it was when we bought the place. If I can find them, I will post some Then and Now photos.

This year, barring an unforeseen disaster, we should have a very nice eggplant and pepper harvest, and my tomatoes are looking good. I might even get lots of carrots.  We have already pulled up some hefty early potatoes, and I had my first-ever successful garlic harvest.  We're eating cucumbers and have had zucchini since the last week of May.**  Last year it was too hot, and this year is on the cooler side, so other harvests are slow in coming.  I am not sure pumpkins and such will have time to ripen because my plants are barely setting fruit. :-/   The winter was so mild that the garden has a pretty hefty pest load ,and all my first sowings of beans were completely wiped out. My okra was so shocked and stunted--those that have survived the insects--probably aren't going to do anything at all either.  Such is the the growing year.... Better not to put all your eggs--or seeds--in one basket.
___________
*If Sprout's and my fledgling skills are anything to go by, after vent sexing the goslings, we have a goose and a gander.

**We've eaten plenty of other stuff, too, like peas, beets, salads, rocket and mustard, cabbage, etc. from the cooler days on...