No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on June 16, 2016

Caroline is done with the education portion of 7th grade and is onto to the exam part. She had six exams spread over the next week and a half. Next Friday is the last day of school and she will then be on summer break.

Caroline her last day of classes for seventh grade and yes, she is getting tall.

(For the VI: this is Caroline standing in front of a tree in the yard. She had long brown hair. She is wearing pink sneakers, purple pants, a Marauder’s Map dress which is white with brown spots. She is holding her pink plaid lunch box in her right hand. On her back is her pink backpack. She has a necklace around her neck)

Peter went to see his nutritionist yesterday. He has lost more weight and his blood work keeps improving. He has stopped a couple of medications for diabetes because his blood sugar levels are normal for someone without diabetes even without those medications. The nutritionist switched up his diet a bit and we will see him next month.

I managed to put together six bodies over the past two days.

(For the VI: This is my ironing board with six puppet bodies on it. All have red mouths. The skin colors vary from left to right pink, brown, green, pink, pink, brown)

Next are faces and hair then clothing.

My hands have been challenging to say the least. I had one pretty good day and one bad day and I worked through both. The bad day included a lot of hand spasms which meant I was picking things up very carefully. I did lose my temper at one point and just tossing things all over my sewing table in frustration after a pile of stuff just fell onto the floor for no reason at all.

The cats are competing in the ‘how much stuff can we knock over’ game. I know that the thread is a natural for them but one of them tried to knock my computer off its table. Realized that she couldn’t but that didn’t mean she didn’t try. Puppet parts have been run off with too. I found their hiding places for them so that’s fine but it is a challenge none the less.

I am grateful for all that Caroline learned this year.

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Posted By Kathleen David on June 15, 2016

Just seem to be getting it from all sides right now.

So I am taking a break from most of my usual haunts on the Internet.

I will be posting here since I have managed to keep this going most of the year but I don’t know how much I will write each day.

Guess we will find out together.

I am so very tired right now. Not the lack of sleep tired, which is most days, but that in the bones so weary it physically hurts tired. There are a myriad of reasons for it most of which I don’t care to get into at this time. I am working through if this is another bout of depression but it doesn’t feel like it usually does.

Caroline’s last full day of 7th grade is today. Overall I think the year has been good to her. She learned things both academic and socially. She participated in the play and made new friends from that. She joined the tennis team, which was her first school sport. She participated in various clubs and groups. She joined a Lego Robotics team and had her first competition. She was a Girl Scout. She joined the Jr. Honor Society.

She still has a week and a half of school but it is exams and the like so her schedule is not as ridged.

This summer she has a lot of travel to various places and some exciting adventures in front of her. We have agreed on some activities that we are going to work on this summer like her using the sewing machine. Now that she can use the weight room, she is planning on going to the gym more often.

Peter is off to the Denver Comic Con on Thursday and he will be returning Monday.

Caroline and I have some things planned and she is hoping to get together with two of her best friends over the weekend if scheduling permits.

I am going to just start with A and work my way to B. I think auto-pilot might be the name of the game today and probably the rest of the week since I don’t seem to be holding onto thoughts very well.

I guess it is time to pull out the notebook and start writing everything down.

I am grateful that Caroline had a school year in which she was challenged but not to the point that she gave up.

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Posted By Kathleen David on June 14, 2016

Today is my sister’s birthday, long may she wave….opps that’s Flag Day but it is still her Birthday and has been for a while now.

Happy Birthday Sheila, hope the day brings you lots of lovely things.

My sister is a writer. She had been writing for as long as she has been able to write.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have found her writing in a notebook or on the computer.

She writes all kinds of things. She had done poetry slams all around Atlanta. She has a novel that she finished and is shopping around. She is working on another one probably as I am typing this.

As she says on her twitter profile (@wonderbink), “I’m a writer the way other people are drinkers or smokers”.

She is also an artist.

She is almost at 2,500 in her flower project giveaway according to her twitter feed she is up to flower 2372 You can find more information here and get some free art for the cost of a SASE (self addressed stamped envelope). Caroline treasures hers.

I am proud of her for dealing with some serious adversity in her life and working to rebuild it.

I love you Sheila. (and guess what I missed spelled your name as Shelia and wrote happy brithday so some things never change. Dyslexia for the win.)

I am so grateful that I have Sheila in my life.

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Posted By Kathleen David on June 13, 2016

Should be a Random Thoughts and I am not talking about my work week for a bit.

Yesterday I awoke to the news of the shooting at the Pulse in Orlando. This morning I finally heard from the last few people I was worried might have been there. Turns out one person was there but she got out safely when the shoot started as did the rest of the people who had been there with her. I will see her at DragonCon and give her a big ol’ hug.

Then I got a news alert about the police finding a man with a car full of guns and explosives that was ready to reek havoc at the LA Gay Pride parade. He was stopped before anything happened. I really hope they toss him into jail and throw away the key.

James Corden spoke about Orlando before the Tony Awards and expressed our solidarity to stand with the people who were affected by this senseless act. We then watched Hamilton clean up at the Tony Awards.

I noticed that a number of people who won awards talked about how what they did in school had led them where they were standing that day.

Arts Education is taking a big hit these days. Many schools are dropping art and music programs because of budget cuts.

This is a crying shame because one thing that is valued about America is our ingenuity and creativity. We are world renowned for thinking outside the box. But we are turning our schools into places where we are putting our kids into boxes. They are praised for the right answer but not for questioning why it is the right answer. They call it teaching for the test and it is killing our children’s creativity. They need to explore the ‘what ifs’ and ‘what might happen’.

We have raised a generation of children with No child left behind and created a group that tests well but that’s about it. Children are not the same. There is no magic formula that works with all children. Each is different and learns in different ways.

Let them be creative. Let them write stories about impossible things. Let them get their hands dirty with paint and clay. Let them learn the universal language of music that will allow them to communicate their music with anyone else who can read music. Let them try and fail and try again to see what they can discover.

Creativity is one of our greatest assets. Let’s not stifle it with tests to prove they can all do the same thing at the same time.

Now onto me and my creativity.

Over all my output was down a bit. Word wise it was mostly this web log.

Puppet wise, it was planning and panicking and then planning some more.

I figure 24 puppets need to be built between now and DragonCon. I am also losing a couple of weekends and a week in there for SDCC which will turn into two weeks when all is said and done.

I am starting with 7 puppets. Aquaman (Haven’t forgotten Martin) needs his clothes and I have six heads and bodies cut out of foam along with the mouths done. I will finish these six and move onto the next set of 6 by next week. If I can keep that up, I will have a majority of what I need done by Shoreleave.

Now that’s only if I don’t get any curveballs.

I do know that I have to finish Caroline’s Rey costume before SDCC and she wants to work on a large and impressive costume for DragonCon that I hope we can pull off.

I want to test drive my DragonCon puppet slam piece at Shoreleave if I can get it done.

So there it is. My master plan. Now let’s see how much I can get done.

I am grateful to everyone who teaches the arts to our children.

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Posted By Kathleen David on June 12, 2016

Or where are my eyeballs.

There is/was a TV show that Caroline liked when she was very young called Tiny Planets with Bing and Bong where they would go to different planets and do different things. One of the places they went to was the planet of stuff to which Ariel exclaimed at the time, “That’s Our House!”

We are the planet of stuff and it is a lot of different stuff that we have collected over the years. There are books and supplies. There is comic book art and costumes and puppets and well you get the idea.

Also I swear we have a pooka or two or one of the other wee folk that keeps moving objects around. Like the 6th Doctor Puppet that keeps appearing when I don’t need it and vanishing when I do. Which happens around here more times than I care think about.

Right now I have some fabric that I know I have that I need to find. I think I know where I put it last but if not the great fabric hunt of 2016 begin.

I do know where most of my eyeballs are but there is one package that I put in the wrong place that seems to be determined to stay in the wrong place when I could really use them right now.

I have learned that taking the extra 5 to 10 minutes to put things away correctly can save me between a half hour to an hour down the road. Sure it only took me 40 years to learn that but I finally did.

I read books on organization and drool over others studios with plenty of room for organization. My heart flutters in container stores. I do have a system but it only works for me and that doesn’t help the others in my household when I am not around.

Today is all about the puppets along with some writing. I have to put some puppets up and start on some bodies. I think I am going to complete a couple of bodies and then cloth them before starting on the next set dividing it between the sketch and the art shows.

I will say that I have kept the living room in better order this year rather than just letting it sink into piles of stuff so I know my mental health is better because the house tends to reflect my mind. So clean good and dirty not so good. And I can tell when I am slipping.

I will never be the perfect Good Housekeeping model but I can make the house work for us and we feel comfortable in it.

I am grateful for all the clever ideas for storage out there.

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