Sallyacious

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August 29, 2005

It Has Been a Good Day

Mind you, it started off with me waking up at 5:30am realizing that I had a physical scheduled for 9:30am and trying to remember whether I had stopped eating at 11:30 like I needed to. (Since I was in bed by 11 last night, I was okay.)

But I had a big conversation with my doctor about my current emotional state and my frustrations that are specific to being an actor in this little, tiny, isolated town. And she said 1) that I actually appeared to be pretty emotionally healthy and 2) that it sounded to her like I was experiencing a grief reaction.

Well, duh. Why didn't I figure that out myself? It makes so much sense. My life is changed completely from what it was this time last year. I've lost my student status, many of my friends have gone, and I'm mourning lost opportunities. So it's perfectly okay and even understandable for me to be feeling this way. What a relief.

And then she told my my blood pressure was 110/70, and that made life even better.

I had been thinking, as well, about something a woman who graduated from the program two years before I did told me last week. She said she had felt pretty adrift herself the first year out of school. This is just not a good town in which to be a professional theatre person. It's one of the reasons she started training for a marathon. To give herself something to do. (I'm writing a novel. Clearly, the instinct is a healthy one.) The other thing she did was to say yes to things that came along, even if they weren't her ideal.

Because that's been bouncing around in my head all week, I called the new Artistic Director of IRTY this morning when I got home and told him that I would indeed do the 1000 Cranes tour this fall, even though they could only pay $30/show. It's something to do.

And then I checked my email, and the teacher I assisted last spring in Intermediate Theatre had written to ask if I would sub for her for two classes she teaches at a college in Lewiston. I may actually get paid for this, like a guest instructor stipend, which would make it official. I said yes to her too.

Then I went to the University to turn in an overdue library book and to check and see whether they know the date for the OSF auditions yet. And when I walked into the theatre building, Dave's playwriting class was just getting out. When the instructor saw me, he said "I was just talking about you. Are you interested in this Native Voices project?"

Let me explain about the Native Voices project. It's a class (that I don't have to take) helping students from the Tribal School in Coeur d'Alene write one-act plays. We work with them for two weeks, and then a group of Native American film and theatre actors from L.A. comes up and rehearses with them (and us if we want to be involved in the performances) for a day and then there is an evening of staged readings of the works. The UI people basically act as mentors and readers during the development phase of the project, but we can also act, as I understand it.

I have wanted to be involved in this project since I first heard about it, but I'm no longer a student and I figured they'd want students to get first crack at it. Well, they don't have enough, and while the instructor was talking to Dave about the project, he suddenly asked if I might be interested. I said yes to him too.

And the new Artistic Director of IRT asked me a couple of weeks ago to stop by his office to chat. So, since I was in the building, I did. And I have a meeting with him later this week. I still have no earthly idea what he wants to chat about, but I will be taking a headshot and resume with me.

Then I went to One World and wrote another eight pages of The Great American Novel, which is the working title for my book. So far, for the number of days I've written, I'm way, way over the total number of words I need to achieve. And I haven't finished typing all the stuff I wrote today. Mind you, though it has some promising moments, it's very clearly a first novel being written at high speed. Uneven is an excellent term for what I have so far. But I'm fine with that, as it turns out. At least I'm getting words on paper.

So, as I said above, it has been a good day.

Posted by sally at 08:21 PM

August 28, 2005

Places I'm Glad I'm Not

Anywhere within spitting distance of this:

That's the infrared NOAA satellite picture of Hurricane Katrina taken at 10:45pm Central Daylight Time. Talk about your dark and stormy nights.

My thoughts and prayers are with all those whose homes, lives and loved ones are threatened by Katrina.

Posted by sally at 08:14 PM

Practical Sunday

Dave and I got up this morning and had an average breakfast at our second choice breakfast place in town.

When we got home, I sat down at my desk to work and realized that I needed to just bite the bullet and clean and organize it. One thing led to another, and I now have not only a clean desk, but two reorganized bookshelves which hold many, many more books than they did before. In fact, I now have a little extra book space. Pretty cool.

I just keep looking around this half of the room and sighing with pleasure at the order and beauty that now surrounds me. Of course, if I look at the other end of the room, there's a bunch of art supplies that need putting away, and if I were to glance over my right shoulder, I'd see the stacks of old student papers that need shredding. But my desk and the two bookcases are FABULOUS.

Which of course means I have far fewer excuses for not getting things done. I'm not sure I thought this through very well...

Posted by sally at 03:24 PM

August 26, 2005

Questions You've Never Thought to Ask

This afternoon, Dave and I drove downtown and climbed into a small, soundproofed booth in a silver trailer where I interviewed him for 40 minutes (he asked me some questions too). We did this as a part of StoryCorps, an oral, living history project sponsored by CPB, NPR and Saturn.

Americans from all over are getting the chance to tell their stories, to interview each other and create a lasting archive of audio history. And what makes this so wonderful, aside from the cd of your interview that you get to take home when you're done, is the fact that it's personal. In the end, the archive will be this wonderful patchwork that gives some idea of what it means to be an American in this place and time, a broad swath of color created by thousands of personal histories.

I really wanted to participate, so I booked the interview and then talked Dave into doing it. And I'm so glad I did. Not only did I learn that his family survived the Depression by making table tennis paddles (apparently the best available at the time), but through the course of the interview, we remembered Dave's involvement with the Puget Sound newspaper and the infamous condom issue. Which brought up the story of how Dave's invitation to the then president of the university to attend a talk by a person with AIDS (in 1987) led the president to re-think his beliefs about AIDS and to get involved in AIDS-related causes to the extent that he was given some kind of recognition/award for his work. And how he thanked David for the wake-up call that started it.

I am so proud of my husband. And he thought he didn't have any stories to tell.

Anyway, everybody has to sign waivers both to allow their recordings into the Library of Congress (where the collection will be housed) and to allow clips to possibly be aired on NPR's Morning Edition. So be listening for us.

Posted by sally at 04:54 PM

August 24, 2005

Oatmeal Morning

MMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmm... oatmeal... Organic maple nut oatmeal with rice milk. mmmmmmMMMMMMmmmmmmm...

It feels like fall out. And looks like it too. There's a quality to the light on fall mornings that you don't see at other times. I wish I could describe it. A gentleness and a clarity, and that's the best I can do.

I think one of the reasons I feel so stuck, so anchorless, is because my life has drastically shifted down in terms of tension and demands on my time. I was thinking about this yesterday.

For the last two years, I have been go-go-go-ing like my ass was on fire. I have had deadlines and projects and assignments pretty much 24-7. Even when on "vacation" I always had something to work on, whether it was line memorization or projects that I was doing prep work on to lighten my load in the upcoming semester, and now I have...nothing...

Yes, I do have stuff to do. I have the yard to work on and I have monologues to memorize and prep and a knee to rehab (ran 2 + miles on it yesterday without any sense of it tiring, so that's good). And I have things to write and a couple of other projects to put together. And work to find. But it's all much, much slower than life has been for a while. So everything feels like it's come to a stop, when actually, it's still moving. It's just that I've been going at the pace of a fruit fly and now I need to adjust to more the pace of a giant sequoia.

I should probably start up the daily turtle meditations again.

Posted by sally at 08:26 AM

August 22, 2005

However...

I forgot to mention my new Chuck T's. I've always wanted a pair of Converse hi-tops, and now I have them. And not just any hi-tops either. These are the limited edition "All-Star graffiti" Charles Taylors.

I'd been dreaming about getting a pair of Converse and when we went to Tri-State tonight for socks, I noticed that they had a whole aisle. At first, I pooh-poohed the idea; I don't exactly need more shoes. But this design had caught my eye and I noticed they were on sale. So I retraced my steps and found a pair in my size. At that point, I realized it was kismet and grabbed the box.

It turns out these weren't actually on sale, but at that point it didn't matter. It would be like finding a pair of sparkly green Docs in my size. Clearly we were meant for each other.

Posted by sally at 07:18 PM

Oh I Get So Lonely Baby

I feel so alone. Dave started school, and he's meeting people who are friends of mine but who I will never see because they're at school and I'm not. My next door neighbor is chatting to a good friend from somewhere else and I'm listening to her plans for the future.

I feel isolated, anchorless, and stuck.

There are things I should be doing, but they're not the things I want to do. Even though they could possibly lead to my doing things I want to do.

This town is so small if you're not attached to the university in some way.

I'm bored. I'm frustrated. I'm lonely. I'm not doing the things I want to do because I feel I should address the should be's first, but I'm not doing those either, so here I sit, doing nothing.

Time to get off my butt and do something interesting.

Posted by sally at 06:28 PM

August 21, 2005

Getting Stuff Done

Fairly productive day today, especially considering I woke up with a completely immobile sacrum. So far I've managed to realign and loosen quite a bit of it (especially since Dave worked out some of the knots), but it's still pretty painful. I'm suspect it's because I spent a good chunk of yesterday sitting wrong, so all of my muscles let me know about it today.

Anyway, I'm trying to be a more productive human being, considering I currently have no outside the home claims on my time. So rather than putting things off because I didn't want to do them, I went ahead and did stuff. For instance, I reorganized one of the kitchen cupboards to fit our new drinking glasses. They're etched like the glasses we already have, but they're colored and they're much bigger, which was vital, since I need to get enough water, and I tend to not drink as much if I have to keep interrupting myself to refil my glass.

I also did some experimental things with the printer and sundry papers with various ink and watercolor treatments on them to see whether I liked the effect. I've got an idea for some new trading cards, but it's still pretty nebulous, so I tried a bunch of stuff to see whether anything made the misty images in my brain snap into focus. No such luck, but I've got a better idea about what I don't want. And I tried some things with weaving paper, but my ideas didn't work very well.

It's quite freeing to know that I don't have to feel bad about recycling a project if it doesn't work. The cards aren't particularly valuable, and I don't use enough of any particular resource that I feel I must peel it off and save it for later.

I spent the morning designing a bookcase/window seat for my office. I'm tired of having all my craft and gardening books on the floor, so I figured out how to get them all to fit in a bookcase in a way that may actually create some new storage space. And once I'd designed it, I pestered poor Dave until he bought the plywood and cut out the various pieces. It's s really simple, but also very unusual and useful in design.

And I put together a little back-to-school package for Dave, since he starts tomorrow. It's got folders for paperwork and an upright storage unit so he can keep school stuff separate from all his other work stuff, plus a teeny little notebook, some highlighters and page markers, and a book of short stories because that's all the outside reading he'll have time for.

I also spread manure around the cherry tree, the pagoda dogwood and the two crabapples that are in the lawn and I did a little weeding. I promised myself I didn't have to do everything in the yard, just a little bit of stuff, so it was easy to get that stuff done plus a little extra. Tackling the front beds is going to suck, but I need to continue to permit myself to just do a little bit at a time.

That's my new mantra: I don't have to do it all right now.

The one other thing I did today was begin reading No Plot? No Problem, by one of the guys who started NaNoWriMo. Because I'm really intrigued by the idea. So I say it here and now, and I'm going to need help with this, I fully plan to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. Yes. I will be participating in NaNoWriMo 2005. Please don't try to stop me. I'm more than capable of doing that on my own.

It didn't seem like a particularly busy day until I catalogued my activities, but I actually did quite a lot. I can rest easy now, sleep the sleep of the just. I've earned it for once.

Posted by sally at 07:33 PM

August 19, 2005

Artist Trading Cards

I've talked about these before, but I've finished the series I was working on, finally photographed them, and now they're ready to share.

These are editions 1-9 of the series. It's actually a series of ten cards, but the sheets only hold nine. Closeups of all ten follow in the extension of this entry

I was inspired by the date of the next Moscow-area exchange being in September. Autumn is the time when this part of the world starts to go to sleep. When life dies out, providing the foundations for spring's new birth. And we refer to later parts of the human lifetime as being the "autumn years," so I wanted to capture that too. Basically, my main goal was to try to express the melancholy that I always experience in the fall.

Being the artist/geek that I am, I knew I could find help in Shakespeare, and boy did I. All of the works are based on/use portions of Sonnet XXX, included here in its entirety:

Sonnet XXX

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste;
Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

Sonnet XXX Series

About the cards.

It's hard to tell from the photographs, but the background is actually gold acrylic on watercolor paper. (The shimmers don't show up well.) Cards 1-5 have more variation in the background because I painted straight onto the paper. I diluted the paint I used on cards 6-10, so the background on those is much lighter and more uniform.

The leaves and flowers are from my extensive collection of pressed stuff (all collected and pressed by me). And may I say that I really, really like the effects of the translucence of some of the flower petals, especially over text. To keep the plant material from breaking/flaking/rubbing off/peeling, I completely covered each piece with a dusty gold tulle, which also has sparkly bits that don't show up well in the pictures. But boy does it shimmer in the sunlight.

The sonnet bits are printed on ivory parchment paper, and my one semi-regret is that I didn't fix the print before I glued things on. The glue is what caused the fading and smearing and color change (the words were black rather than red). So areas that got more glue are smearier. I say semi-regret because I can't decide whether or not I like the effect.

One/Ten

Two/Ten

Three/Ten

Four/Ten

Five/Ten

Six/Ten

Seven/Ten

Eight/Ten

Nine/Ten

Ten/Ten

Posted by sally at 08:45 AM

August 18, 2005

Rainy Day-After Blues

I don't wanna work today. So I don't think I will. But I'm going to go weed later because the rain's loosened up the soil something beautiful and the front beds are once again out of control.

In honor of the unexpected and much-needed precipitation, three pictures I took from my bedroom window. Three images I found simply because I took the time to look in the first place and then to figure out how to take macro, flash-free photographs through a double-paned window on a rainy day. There's something to be said for taking the time...

Sheltering Bee

Hollyhock Umbrella

Hollyhock Trumpet

Posted by sally at 11:27 AM

August 17, 2005

Oh, and By the Way...

Welcome to Sallyacious.com, which is the result of my darling husband's generosity, enthusiasm, support, and geeky desire to own as many domain names as possible.

I must admit, it's kinda cool to have my own domain.

Feel free to genuflect.

Posted by sally at 08:35 PM

It's Raining!!!! Plus, Natterings about My Life as an Artist

Yesssss... We need this badly badly badly. And it's raining hard. So perhaps, by the end of the day, the fire map of the US won't have 15 fires clustered around central Idaho, with tiny extensions into Washington, Oregon and Montana.

It's cool enough today that I'm wearing pants and a chamois shirt. Still barefoot, but mostly covered up otherwise. I'm not quite ready for it to be fall yet, but that is apparently about to occur without my sayso, so I guess I should just give in. Reminds me... I need to order a whole big bunch of planty-type things.

Because of the rain, I am currently brewing a pot of tea (Tea at the Empress blend from the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC) and working on a new monologue.

Okay that's clearly a lie. Were I actually working on my monologue, I would not be typing a blog entry. To be honest, what I am doing is avoiding working on a new monologue because it scares the shit out of me.

I feel so inadequate as an actor sometimes. I can have wonderful, honest reactions in rehearsal, and I can also have wonderful, honest reactions onstage. But I cannot have the same wonderful, honest reactions every performance. And I suppose that's actually a testament to the honesty of my reactions. Because they are new and different every time. But when I feel the emotion that seems "right," I always want to make it happen again, and I tend to try to force that choice, rather than being natural and honest.

So I'm trying to find ways to expand my emotional access without losing the power and intensity of my work, while also allowing the emotions to just come. And that's hard. And also scary because I don't always want to access those emotions.

The ones I need to get to for this monologue are not pretty. But to be honest with them, to allow them to come out the way I need them to, I have to be willing to go to those places. Which means a mid-morning of crying and screaming and being ugly and feeling like shit both emotionally and physically. And once I'm there, it's a hard place to get out of.

(Though in real life, I'm not remotely interested in getting my lover to kill my husband. Um... Not that I have a lover... I mean, aside from my husband...)

I couldn't explore these things while I was in school. I never felt safe enough, except for my first semester, and for parts of the animal work semester. So now I have to do them on my own, with help from a wonderful book I discovered last spring. But doing this on my own doesn't make it any less terrifying. Because now I have two options. I can do this work and experience these emotions and deal with the pain and ugliness I'm going to feel while I'm doing it and discover that it doesn't matter, that I still suck, OR, I can refuse to do the work at all, or do it half-heartedly and suck for sure.

Mind you, there's the teenytiny possibility that I might be decent at this stuff, but who are we kidding?

At least I have finally figured out that I have enough time before my OSF audition that I can take this work one step at a time and don't have to do it all today, which is my other failing as an artist. I always think that I have to do it all NOW instead of step-by-step. But this monologue doesn't have to be audition-ready today. Or even this week. It has to be audition-ready by the end of September.

Baby steps, Sal. Baby steps.

Posted by sally at 10:10 AM

August 16, 2005

It's Official

I turned in the final piece of paperwork today and paid an overdue parking ticket yesterday. I'm done graduated.

I should get my diploma in six weeks or so.

Posted by sally at 08:52 PM | Comments (1)

August 15, 2005

Borah High School 20-Year Reunion

I just got back, had a blast. It was so good to re-connect with so many people: Karma, Cindy, Nancy Jo, Chrissy, Jim, Jeffrey, Lisa, Lisa, Al, Michelle, John, Brian, Harris, Bill, Denice, Karen, Joan, Valerie, Judene... I wanted to post about it, but I'm still digesting and cogitating.

I am still astonished that Lisa (Pilcher) Castle now has an absolutely gorgeous daughter who is older than she and I were when we met. Lisa and I were best friends in sixth and seventh grade. How can she have a child that age? She doesn't look old enough to have a fourteen year-old. (And I know I'm not old enough to have a fourteen year-old.)

I have one other story from the reunion because it shows how little things have changed in twenty years. When I was in high school, Judene Smith and I were frequently mistaken for each other. We were roughly the same height, wore glasses, and had similar hairstyles for our light brown hair. At the party Friday night, Judene walked in and Valerie saw her and yelled, "Sally!" While I walked up to Michelle who said, "Judene!"

Can I just say that Judene is now a blonde, and I am now a redhead, and though we both now wear contacts and keep our hair long, we don't really look that much alike. It was so funny, because we'd both forgotten that people ever confused us. At the picnic yesterday, we took a picture of several people, including, as Michelle said, "Judene and the other Judene." Unfortunately, It wasn't taken with my camera, so for a side-by-side comparison, we have to rely on separate photographs.

I am on the far left in the picture above. (The rest of the subjects are Nancy, Cindy, Karma, Troy and Jim. May I add that NONE of us look much like we did in high school. Especially Jim.)

This is Judene with her brand new husband Harris (congratulations!), who also went to school with us:

I don't think we look that much alike, but you can be the judge.

And in the interest of sharing photographs from the weekend, a few from the drive back.

The smoke over the highway and a scary sign (reminds me why I don't want to live in central Idaho).

Yep, the pinky-brown clouds above the patch of blue (dimly seen through the bug-spattered windshield--which would be a great name for a folk/country band) are from some fire or other. Interestingly, the drive down was smoky from Moscow to New Meadows, while the drive back was really only bad around Riggins. It's smoky here again today, though it wasn't too bad last night when we got home.

About the sign. I have enlarged it in this photo and bumped the contrast (changing it to black and white seems to help as well) so you can hopefully read what it says.

Yes. That's right. The sign reads, "Yahweh's 666 Warning Assembly." This group is maintaining two sections of Highway 95 south of Riggins. I just googled them and they're not so organized that they have a website. Probably think the internet is the tool of the devil...

And speaking of the devil, my lovely husband, who clearly wanted desperately to be photographed while driving. (He's not actually jaundiced. The yellow tinge is because I couldn't get the white balance to work properly.)

And one final pic, a self-portrait taken while waiting for a pilot car yesterday evening just south of Winchester. This is why I love the Palouse.

Posted by sally at 10:03 AM | Comments (4)

August 11, 2005

If You're Looking for a Birthday Present...

My birthday is a little over a month away at this point, and if you're wondering what to get the girl who seems to have everything, here's a thought. The First Amendment Project is having a fundraising auction in September (my birth month) in which you can bid to have a person's name included in some way or other in novels by authors such as John Grisham, Amy Tan, Stephen King, etc.

If you're wondering, I would prefer to be either a name on a tombstone in Neil Gaiman's next kids's novel or badly mispronounced by Sunny Baudelaire in the 13th Lemony Snicket book.

Then again, I suspect those would be most people's first choices as well.

Posted by sally at 10:01 AM

August 10, 2005

School Fire Smoke Pictures

I promised I'd try to get some photographs of the smoke from the School Fire near Pomeroy, WA. I took these yesterday. Understand, yesterday, the sky was pretty cloudless. Unless the stuff in the pictures is really, really white, what you're looking at is smoke.

This is the view from our back yard, late afternoon. You can tell when the wind shifts in the evenings because the light starts getting really red. The glow on the right side of the picture is the sun through our neighbor's maple tree.

About 45 minutes after I took the above photograph, I drove to the UI arboretum on my way to the gym. I figured I'd get one of the best views from there. I was right.

While looking for a good link to information on the School Fire, I just learned that there are two new fires in Idaho, both outside of Grangeville, which is between us and Boise. Wheee. Looking forward to a smoke-filled drive. (And hoping we can actually get to Boise from here.)

Posted by sally at 12:05 PM | Comments (2)

Grrrrrrrrumble

I realize as I type this that I am going to sound like Ms. Spoiled Rich Bitch, but it turns out I don't care.

I got a mani/pedi this morning. (For those of you who don't know, that's a manicure and pedicure in one appointment.) I got this because I wanted nice-looking fingers and toes for my reunion this weekend and because I'm not very good with the fingernail painting. Toes I do all the time, just not my fingernails.

I told the nail tech (who was recommended to me) that I don't get manicures often because 1) I use my hands for lots of dirty, gluey, painty type things and it would just be a waste of my money to paint nails that won't stay nice-looking for more than about six hours and 2) nail polish tends to bubble on my fingernails, though not on my toenails, oddly enough.

Now. When I pay $50 plus tip for this kind of treatment, I expect to be listened to, and I expect the nail tech to know how to solve the problem, not to argue with me about why my fingernail polish bubbles. The one time the bubbling has not been a problem for me was at a salon where the technician listened to my concerns and then said, "I think your nails are too dry. That problem is a common one when the fingernails are too dry and your lifestyle would lead to that. So I got a paraffin dip and she put oil on the nails for a while (to let it soak in) and lo and behold, for the first time ever in a professional manicure setting, my polish didn't bubble.

I would go back to that woman again, only she works in Canada, and I'm not driving for seven hours each direction and taking a ferry just to get a decent manicure.

I explained all this to this morning's tech who then informed me that actually, the problem is that my nails are too oily. So she dried them extra with acetone. And then she got all perplexed when my polish started to bubble and didn't dry well. But she didn't offer to redo it. So I won't be going back. I'll instead be going to NW Beauty Supply for something sparkly that will cover/camoflage the bubbles, to take care of the immediate problem, and then I will wait for another 3-4 years and an important occasion to get a professional manicure.

Posted by sally at 10:29 AM | Comments (2)

August 09, 2005

And Have I Mentioned Where We Are in Relation to This?

In the previous entry, I described Moscow as smoky. Here's a map to explain why. It's 63.5 miles by car, but look at how much closer we are as the smoke flies. As near as I can tell, it's about 45 miles away from us.

I'll try to get some pictures of the smoke clouds from the edge of town.

Posted by sally at 11:45 AM

The Gift of Time

As frustrating as having no specific future plans is for me, I am discovering something wonderful about just having time to putter. I am enjoying being able to begin a project, set it aside to think about, and then come back to it with a solution without having to worry about 1) whether anyone else will like it and 2) needing to get it done NOW.

I often worry about how much I need to get done in a given day/week/month, and I find that this worry tends to pretty consistently trigger the response of me sitting on the couch reading something escapist. I had hoped that graduate school would help me to solve that problem, and in a way it has, because I have discovered new things I enjoy and want to work on/with/explore. It also showed me how useful deadlines were and how very necessary escapism can be. Sometimes we do just need to sit down on the couch with a good book and forget about the world for a little while.

Of course, I worried that once school was done, if I didn't have anything "to do" with my time I would sit on the couch and read novels forever. Fortunately, I have found that if I just choose to do one small thing, I can generally get such a huge feeling of achievement out of it that I can move on to doing something else. I am also learning, thanks to this gift of time, that it is okay to take time to work on a project. I can complete a step, and that is just as valuable as actually finishing the whole thing. Because at the end of the day, I am one step closer to finished.

But at the same time, I am beginning to realize how very necessary slowing my life down is for my sanity and my work as an artist. The above photograph is of an Eeyore snowglobe on my desk. I used it to hold up the Henry Irving quotation until I could find a place for it on my wall. Only I've never had the time to do that. As I was sitting at my computer last week, I noticed the quotation. And then I noticed that I could see some words through the globe. And because I had nothing pressing to work on/avoid, I took the time to take a couple of pictures of it.

I had the time to be still and begin to notice things again. Who knows whether I would ever have seen the words in that bubble of glass and water, whether I would ever have seen the light as it bounced off the page and bent through the snowglobe if I was still frantically and constantly busy with "work" and school. But now I have the time to notice these things and time to think about them.

In the end, I don't think rushing about, always doing something, suits me as an artist. If my work is about observing the world around me, thinking about how it all fits together and then voicing those thoughts and observations in ways that make other people think and observe, I need to have time for both the noticing and the considering. And now, in this teeny, backwards, smokey university town, thanks to my David's desire to pursue his own artistic goals, I have that gift of time.

Posted by sally at 11:18 AM

August 08, 2005

Thank You, Polyphemos

A year ago this week a very sweet boy came to live with us. Who would have thought that a one-eyed kitten would be so much trouble. Or bring so much joy. Or, for that matter, grow up so quickly. We are truly blessed to have him in our family, and as a special treat for all of us, a photo retrospective follows in the extension of this entry.

August 13, 2004

August 8, 2005

A Polyphemos 1-year Retrospective

Take a close look at Poly's head.
He didn't just climb the post to get to the top.

You can see three feet in this picture if you look closely.

Dave took these last week: They're a diptych called Polyup and Polydown. See if you can figure out which one is which.

(Be sure to check out his feet in this one.)

Thank you, Polyphemos, for coming into our lives. We love you.

Posted by sally at 09:17 AM | Comments (1)

August 05, 2005

WoooHooo! Yay Art!

So I'm trying to find a niche for myself here in town. Trying to create one, really. And I asked my neighbor this morning as she was admiring Dave's new workbench whether she knew any artists who might need a part-time assistant. She actually does, and she said, sort of as an afterthought, "Do you know about Artist Trading Cards?"

I didn't, though I do now. And may I simply say that they are a FANTASTIC idea. The first Friday of every month, a group of local artists get together at the One World Cafe (12:30-1:30 for those of you who might be interested) to trade 2.5"x3.5" works of orginal art (or copies if they can't bear to part with the originals). You have to actually swap them, you can't just walk in with one and leave with 30. Anyway, Ruby (my neighbor) said she'd be happy to take me.

That gave me roughly 45 minutes to create three miniature collages. Ruby snaffled one on the way to the meeting. She liked it so much she wanted dibs (I got a woven paper work called Fruit Fairy in return.) Only one other artist showed up today, but she really liked one of my pieces, so she took it and I took a great little bit of hers done with dye sublimation and collage work.

There are all sorts of approaches to this: photography, collage, small paintings, pen and ink, vegetable prints, whatever you can fit on a 3.5 x 2.5 piece of card. And the three pieces I have now (one of them is my own) are all very different, very distinct. It's like having a small art gallery in a book.

It's a great idea. For me, it's an incredible creative jumpstarter. I actually have a deadline to work under, and it's an opportunity to play. (Since my child archetype was reminding me just yesterday that I need to do more of that, it's a happy coincidence.) One of the other artists uses it as an opportunity to experiment with new techniques. And I now have three little pieces of art I didn't have before. Ruby keeps hers in plastic baseball card cataloguing sheets in a special binder, and I think that's what I'll do too.

It also gives artists a chance to get together, meet each other, and get local support and encouragement. We spent much of our time discussing the various techniques used and fears and worries about creating art. I'm beginning to feel like I'm part of a community. And I have already figured out the kinds of things I want to do for the next few months. The great thing is, as I said to one of the women there, I can really experiment and play. If it doesn't work, it's small enough and unimportant enough that I can just toss it. So I can really stretch myself and try new things and new approaches to techniques I already have.

In other news, my transcripts have been forwarded to the appropriate dean and I am now just waiting to hear whether my qualifications qualify me enough to teach speech. (I know they already do, I've been teaching for two years, but it would be nice to have them figure it out.)

Posted by sally at 03:11 PM

August 04, 2005

Good-Byes Are Hard

One of my best friends of the last two years and the first friend I had in the department is leaving town today. I know because I helped her move out of her apartment. She's leaving for a good reason, she's got a degree, she's got a job as an artistic director, but I'm going to miss her something awful.

I've been in denial about it, but when I hugged her good-bye this afternoon, I realized just how final this is. It sucks. She's one of the first to go, but others are leaving soon and I'll miss them all so much. We had an amazing class, very much a unit from day one, and I'm just sorry that the department didn't realize how much good we could do them. I don't think our abilities were ever tapped to the fullest.

Anyway, we packed her stuff up and got pizza and pop and ate lunch. We laughed a lot and told creepy stories about spiders and sharks and trashy relatives. And then she said, "Guys, I have to go," and it was one of the saddest things I've ever heard. One of the best moments happened at the end, though, when one of the other people helping her move said, as we were all walking out the door, "I'm still in denial. See you tomorrow Yolanda."

Good-by Yo. Godspeed. Have a swift and safe journey, and may your new gig bring you all kinds of fulfillment and joy.

Posted by sally at 01:32 PM

August 03, 2005

He Called He Called He Called!

And he does sound desperate. So I'm trying to get my Puget Sound and UI transcripts to him ASAP. Everybody's at lunch, though, so I'm sort of stuck for an hour. But I may be teaching very, very shortly. Though because they're on the quarter system, it looks like I might not have to start until mid-September. Which would be just fine with me. More time to figure out what I'm doing.

Posted by sally at 11:04 AM

Slogging Along

Many of you know that I am at a loose end right now. I'm preparing for the OSF Rex Raybold auditions which will be sometime in late September-early October. And I've been called back for the Interplayers production of Romeo & Juliet, but the show isn't until next spring, and the callbacks are also sometime in September. I've also told my friend Yo, who leaves tomorrow for her new job as the Artistic Director for Longview Stageworks (I'm still in denial that she's leaving Moscow for good) that I'm happy to audition for her as well.

Also, the woman I assisted in the Intermediate Acting class I worked with last spring has suggested that I fill in for her occasionally in the acting classes she will be teaching at LCSC this fall. And I've informed my friends who will still be teaching speech at UI that I'm happy to cover for them if they have crises or conflicts that require them to miss class (family emergencies, illness, etc.) just to keep my hand in.

Anyhow. On Monday I ran into my former supervisor in the Communications Department. She is the person who put together the whole UI Comm 101 website and curriculum. She is also the person who recommended me for the GSA Teaching Excellence Award that I received last spring. And she asked if I'd heard from someone at SCC-Pullman. No. Because she had recommended me when he called to ask if she knew any people who were qualified to teach speech.

Unfortunately, the department there wants people who have Masters degrees in Communications. I don't. I have an MFA in Theatre Arts, a BA in Theatre Arts, and a BA in Comm with a minor in Sociology (from a very good school, I might add). But no Masters in Comm. However, she sent me his number anyway, and I left a message in the hopes that they will not find anyone with the Comm MA and that I can convince them that a Comm BA coupled with my experience and MFA will be the ideal combination.

I am terrified that they will say yes. Not because I don't think I can do it, I'm quite confident that I can do it, but because I think it may mean that I have to read a new (to me) text and develop a syllabus in 2-3 weeks. Yeep.

But I really want to teach, and this would be a way for me to keep teaching while I am stuck here.

In related news, I'm brushing up my resume so I can submit it to a former instructor who also happens to be the Director of the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Collections. I'm hoping he might have some paid projects he can toss my way. There's just not a lot of stuff here for people who are already qualified to do more than entry-level work. At least not that I've seen.

Really, what I would like to do while I am here (and I am just tossing this out to the Universe) is teach, and maybe be a part-time assistant to some artist or writer who needs one. I am a fantastic administrative assistant, and I am not just blowing my own horn. Before I came to the UI, I was the assistant to the CEO of a small interactive marketing agency in Portland, and she misses me so much that she actually called to see if she could fly me back to Portland for a couple of days to train her latest admin because even a full-time person can't manage to do what I did in 20 hours a week.

Surely there's an artist or two out there who needs my organizational skills to make life easier. Maybe I should talk to my next-door neighbor about it... She's a very involved member of the local arts community.

But still, keep your fingers crossed for me about the whole teaching thing.

Posted by sally at 09:49 AM | Comments (1)

August 01, 2005

I'm Actually Accomplishing Something

I have felt for so long like I never get anything done, and I often wonder why. Yes, I got lines memorized and the cat litter changed and the reading and lesson planning done, and the papers written, and occasionally the plants planted and the laundry done, but I often felt as though I had so much to do and no motivation/energy to do it.

Though this may be a temporary aberration, I have managed in the last two days to actually do something. I cleaned my desk, I organized my files, I removed all of the ugly towel rods and rings from the bathroom, and the toilet paper holder, which was the same kind of ugly, and purchased much nicer fixtures to replace them (some of them are now replaced, though for others we need to drill new holes, and I'm going to let Dave do that part). And I selected paint chips so that I can make the bathroom a much nicer color than it is right now.

I decided upon and actually installed the bottom to a cigar box I began six months ago.

I finished a letter (that I began in mid-June) to a friend. (Hi, Paul.) I printed out and framed pictures I have wanted in my office (and in the process found occupants for frames that had been sitting empty for ages).

I returned a bunch of used inkjet cartridges to Office Depot, which will send them back to HP for me.

I sprayed my volunteer tomato plants (the only ones that have thrived--I will never buy that brand of potting soil again) with blossom set and poured vinegar on the morning glory and unkillable vine off the porch.

I got a wastebasket for my office. Well, technically it's a flowerpot with a plastic bag in it, but it is the perfect wastebasket for my eclectic little space.

I finally unwrapped my root irrigator and am using it right now to water a plant that I'm afraid may be dead. (I hadn't noticed that it wasn't getting water because something's gone wrong with a section of our sprinkler system).

And, wonder of wonders, I have lost two pounds since last week.

All of this in addition to striking POW! and A Thousand Cranes and doing one final POW! curtain raiser and watching Hush last night and doing (so far) two loads of laundry and going to they gym as usual.

I just hope I can keep this up. It would be really nice to get the house into the shape I want it to be before it gets too cold to keep the windows open.

Posted by sally at 01:09 PM

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