No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on October 8, 2013

So Caroline has decided that she will not be Amalthea for Halloween. Instead she designed her own vampire princess dress with special effects. I think part of it came from stuff she has seen on Face/off and Heroes of Cosplay.

The original drawing

(for the VI This is a drawing of a long black dress that Caroline drew. She put a beating heart in the middle and red for the veins running through the dress.)

She described it to me as the special effect is that the heart beats and the veins through the dress glow red. We talked about it a bit more and she refined her design.

(For the VI: The is Caroline’s white board. To the left, slightly obscurd, are the words “Mommy, could you please look at this?” with a pumpkin smiling and winking under it. To the right of that is her concept for the veins that are going to go over the dress done in red. There is an orange heart in the middle. To the right of that is the design for the black dress. There is a piece of the drawing missing where Fig the cat had put her paws. To the right of that is a side view of the dress with a bustle in the back to give it some shape. )

She did this on her white board so she could refine what was in her head and get it onto the board. This was the final of several versions of the design she has created. The skirt will go longer than that. This was her concept for the top of the dress.

So she has gotten it to where she wants it and has handed it over to me to bring it to reality. I have to check and see if I can get the EL wire and battery pack(s) needed to do the veins. I have already gotten her to compromise on how many veins we can do. I know where I am getting her fangs so I don’t need to make those. I have the make-up and the skills for that part.

Next step is to pattern the dress and then put it all together. Should be a challenge but she believes I can do it so I will give it a go.

I am grateful for my child’s artistic eye.

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Posted By Kathleen David on October 4, 2013

Everything in Moderation, I have been told since I was a small child. You can have too much of a good thing which can become a bad thing.

Recently from different corners of my life I have been hearing about addiction and a lack of moderation and control. The most vivid is that a good friend’s ex-husband is currently in the ICU and things aren’t doing to well. They drank themselves into that state. They have been given a million chances to turn things around but made the choice that the bottle is more important to them than the rest of the world.

I have another friend who is separated from his wife because she can’t stop playing games of chance on the Internet. It was affecting their life in so many ways. He tried all kinds of ways to get her to stop and take a step back but she would be right back at it when he turned his back. He cares for her greatly but he can’t take the lies and cheating with the computer. She is now accusing him of all kinds of things that he can prove he didn’t do.

We hear stories of people who can’t stop watching pørņ or drinking or doing drugs or even watching a TV show which has become their world and they don’t see that they have a problem or it is problem they can control or it is the other person’s problem.

We talk about people having to hit bottom so they can see what they have done. Some people manage to pull themselves back from the brink and others just jump over. There is a ton of research on addiction but no one can say why one person can over come it so easily and why another person can’t. They talk about addictive personalities and the like.

It is hard to know what to do for someone who is screwing up their life through their actions. The only person that you are truly responsible is yourself. You are responsible for your children until they are of adult age according to the law. One can feel responsible for other people and that is a legitimate feeling but in the end there is you and only you.

I can only make choices for me. I can choose to drink or not drink alcohol. I can choose what I put in my body and in front of my eyeballs. Some times these choices are very hard but I have to make them one way or the other. And I don’t always choice correctly and I pay for that one way or another.

I feel sorry for my friends who are dealing with people with addictions of all kinds and I feel sorrow for those who are addicted. I hope that they can get their lives straighten out and I will be happy for them if they do.

Addiction to anything is when a possible good thing becomes a bad thing and that’s not good for the addict and those around them.

One thing I have learned is that what works for one person might not work for another. We are individuals and respond to stimuli differently. This one size fits all treatment for addiction doesn’t work no matter what the commercials say. I know people who have sorted out their lives because of AA. I know people who just stopped and haven’t even gone back to their addiction. If asked how they did it, they say that they just did. I know some people who straighten themselves for others and stayed that way because they found that their life was more important than their addiction. I figure whatever works and gets the person beyond their addiction is a good thing as long as they aren’t swapping one addiction for another.

I am grateful for those people I know how have faced their addictions and made the choice to not let it win.

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Posted By Kathleen David on October 3, 2013

Two of my favorite poets are T. S. Elliot and Seamus Heaney.

I was talking the other day with a couple of friends one of whom has lupus (yes it can be lupus) and the other has fibromyalgia and the season change plays havoc with her and her ability to do anything.

We were talking about personal energy to do a task. I learned about spoons at that point and how they counted out what they could do in a day based on how many spoons they had to use and how many they could spare. They were using their spare spoons to spend sometime with me for which I was grateful.

I have read over and over again that to manage a big task you should break it into smaller manageable pieces and work through the pieces or steps or spoons since each takes some energy to complete.

There are days that I have more spoons at my disposal and others days there are less. Part of it depends on the day and night before. And if the night before sucks then the day is a little harder to get through. My nights have been a mixed bag recently. Some of them are fine and I have enough spoons to get through what I need to and some. Some aren’t and I have limited spoons that I have to spread around to the tasks that need doing.

I have found myself being less hard on myself after I started breaking things down to spoons. I don’t beat myself up when I find myself out of spoons and not getting everything done that I need to get done. When I get up in the morning I mentally make a list of “THINGS THAT MUST HAPPEN TODAY” and then do a mental check of things I would like to do today and work out my spoons for the day. I can pretty much tell when I get up how the day is going to go. On bad days I push through as far as I can and get the essentials done. On the good days I have the time/energy for the other things I enjoy doing.

Right now this is what I need to do to keep myself on track and sane.

So on today’s docket are food shopping, hardware store, and pet store. Then put everything away and move onto the laundry and the living room the next corner (it is sort of a horror show with a nice ending).

I hope to get some creative stuff going this afternoon but I will have to see how many spoons I have left for the day.

I am grateful for ways to look at things that make sense to me.

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Posted By Kathleen David on September 29, 2013

Today I try to figure out which cat took my car keys and put them somewhere. This will include looking at some unorganized parts of the living room, which will be more organized once I am done looking through them.

I have a list of things I want to organize better. Scary thing is that the list keeps getting longer.

It is not that I am disorganized since I know where things are after I place them, it is that my filing system only really works for me. And when you living in a household with other people, it is not a great idea to be the only person who knows where things are.

I read magazines and books and peruse pictures of studios that are so neat that you could find anything you want within about 30 seconds. I don’t have the space for that sort of thing. And I will admit to the “get to it later” syndrome. I put it somewhere promising that I will get to it later. When later comes, I can be overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have managed to put somewhere. Some day I would like a large space where I can set myself up to work and not have to tear it back down immediately.

We have a lot of stuff and we know we do. I have puppet making supplies and doll making stuff and costumes from previous competitions and the like. I have my eye ball boxes and my puppet parts graveyard (a large plastic container). And books, we have lots of paper of all kinds of forms in our house. All the toys are not the girls since Peter and I own toys too. You see the issue.

So I work my way through one list/room at a time and get things organized to where just about anyone can find their stuff in the house. Until I stop and the chaos starts to take over the order. Usually either pre or post travel it when it gets bad.

Today I am going to work on one corner of the living room which has become a pile of craft things in boxes and bags that need to be put away. That and the keys are my top priorities today.

Caroline will be home at noon from camping and I am sure will have adventures to tell us along with some items that will need cleaned and others that need to be put away.

So crafty people, tricks or tips on how to keep chaos at bay?

I am grateful for that which stays organized.

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Posted By Kathleen David on September 28, 2013

Or at least to me it is a milestone.

She is going camping overnight with her Girl Scout troop. She is taking the very sleeping bag that my parents bought me for my first camping trip so I know it will keep her warm. I gathered the other things that she needed for the trip and the memories of my camping trips came back to me. It will probably be even stronger when I get her tomorrow and she smells of camp smoke. She is looking forward to cooking her dinner and s’mores. She is looking forward to spending time with her troop for more than just a meeting.

She is growing up so fast. I swear she was just a babe in arms the other day. I know that is not true. She has been growing and developing into a young lady. She is at that funny point between being a child and being a teenager even though she is only 10 (almost 11). There are things that are no longer cool because they are for younger children but, given the right day, she still enjoys them. She is shaping her taste and her personality. I am still the arbiter of what she sees on TV and in the movies. There are a couple of shows that the other kids see that I have put my foot down on and informed her that she can miss that. Most of those are run the gambit from mean spirited to just too stupid for words.

I want her to be able to spread her wings but I also want to protect her from things and people that might hurt her. I am at a funny point in this. I know I have to teach her responsibility for her actions and inactions. However sometimes it is easier for me to just go ahead and deal with the mess. I have to remind myself that she needs to learn how to deal with this and other things in life now so that it will be easier for her later.

She knows that her childhood is pretty much not like anyone else’s in her school. She has traveled places all over the world. She knows people that others would love to just meet. Her teachers know by this point that if she says she met someone then she is telling the truth. I remember when a teacher emailed me after Caroline told her about spending time with Harlan Ellison at his house. I affirmed that what Caroline had said and told the teacher that even though Harlan is not a blood relative, Caroline has always known him as Uncle Harlan since that is what her sisters call him and how he refers to himself to the David family girls.

She has great ambitions of what she wants to do with her life. I am sure whatever she finally picks she will be great at it.

I am grateful that I get to watch Caroline grow up.

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