That’s What She Shed

My house is plenty big enough for 4 people and a cat under normal circumstances. But decidedly not during a pandemic.

My husband has been working from home since March, and he set up his workspace in our master bedroom. It’s really the only space in the house that makes sense for him to work and get anything done.

My son does his distance learning at the dining table in our open-plan ground floor. This also makes the most sense, as I need to be within earshot if he needs help.

My kids pretty much rule the entire ground floor during waking hours. They’re either doing school or pulling toys out of the playroom or running around screaming like banshees or using the TV so they’ll stay still and quiet for more than 10 seconds at a time.

Which means…I’ve lost any personal space in this house that I may have had at one time. Since we’ve been home for this pandemic, I’ve taken to using my son’s room for zoom yoga or privacy in the afternoons if I need to nap or read or sneak snacks or ugly cry in relative peace. I guess it beats hiding in the bathroom…but now that I think about it, at least I can lock the bathroom door. Sigh.

I’ve started fantasizing both in my head and to my husband about wanting a room all to myself in our next house, whenever that may happen.

Me: …you know, kinda like a She Shed, only it’d be a room in the house where I can paint. You could build it for me like Noah did in The Notebook!

H: I might grow a beard, but I’m not taking off my shirt. What’s a She Shed?

Me: You know! Like a man cave, only for the lady of the house. I need a room where I can paint or read or watch a movie that’s just mine.

H: Sounds doable.

Me: Yeah! I’d need a TV and storage for my crafts, and a couch and shelves for all my books. And a table to paint. It would be great to have like a little sink so I don’t have to leave to wash brushes and OOH A MINI FRIDGE FOR MY SNACKS. Maybe a microwave?

H: This doesn’t sound like a room anymore.

Me: Perhaps a tiny water closet with a toilet so then I wouldn’t have to leave the room AT ALL and INTERRUPT MY FLOW.

H: Let’s not talk about your flow.

Me: Doesn’t that sound NICE?!

H: …are you asking to move out?

Me: No!

H: …

Me: Well…maybe we should just look for a place with a detached guest suite, you know, just in case.

H: Just in case.

Me: And I’m gonna need a door that locks. Thanks!

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Day 18

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Wordless Wednesday: Walking on leaf paintings

Came across such gorgeousness on a walk in my neighborhood. I couldn’t have done better with charcoal or watercolors and all the skill in the world.

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Day 11

Consider checking out other amazing work by bloggers also tackling NaBloPoMo!

Happy Trees off My Bucket List

Today was a great day!

Today I got to cross an item off my bucket list!!!! Exclamation point!

Today, I took an oil painting class in the style of Bob Ross and I FREAKING ROCKED IT.

I’ve had training in the art of drawing, pen/ink, watercolors, and acrylics, and I’ve always wanted to try oils. I love the impressionist style of painting and I’ve admired how thick and gloopy and tactile oils are when layered and beautifully globbed onto the canvas. I’ve gawked at real Van Goghs and seen just how three dimensional his paintings are. They literally jump out from the canvas!

I wanted to do it, too.

I even bought my own set years ago, but never opened it because I wasn’t sure I’d know what to do with them. New things are hard to start.

So, this Fall I finally signed up for a one day class through Parks and Rec and it was SO. FUN!

I figured I’d be the youngest in this class by at least a decade, but I was pleasantly surprised. With six in the class, two were older, two were about my age, and one was a high school student. And one other student, like me, had never worked with oils.

The pre-chosen Bob Ross painting was this one:

 

We started with a black canvas (yes, BLACK, not just blank), which I thought was cool. I’d never done that before. Not having any idea how these paints behave was nerve-wracking!

 

My favorite part was mastering the art of the Happy Tree!!

I’d say the biggest downside was all them toxic fumes, which made me lightheaded after a while. Other than that, sign me up! I’m hooked!

Behold!

 

 

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A Walk in the Cold

On Fridays I usually take a walk from my office to the local grocery store a few blocks away to buy a sandwich for lunch, or a coffee, or both.  Today I was feeling particularly antsy and restless, so the walk felt really good.  Invigorating.

It’s been particularly cold here the last week or so (meaning that I’ve had to scrape ice off my car at 8:45am more mornings than not…which is cold for not-the-mountains-in-NorCal) and I packed one of my mom’s hand-knitted slouchy hats into my bag and it came in handy for the walk today.

I walk fairly fast compared to most people I know.  My family was raised with German common sense and efficiency – you just gotta get there fast.  Dilly-dallying is for the weak.  I am The Short One at 5’6″ in a family of basketball players and giraffe lasso-ers, so I learned to pump my legs at twice the speed or be left behind to eat their dust.

Needless to say, I found myself at the grocery store in a very short amount of time.  As I walked back with my delicious white chocolate mocha, I had the realization that I’ll be 30 soon.  Thirty.  This is the first time in my life where my age is starting to sound old, and that’s kinda scary.

This, of course, brings up a lot of existential issues, one of them being regret.  I worry a lot about wasting time.  Too often I find myself waiting for things, and that takes me out of the present.  I wait for the weekend.  I wait to get married, buy a house, have kids.  Hell, some days I’m looking forward to coming home from work and I haven’t even left my apartment yet.  I don’t want to live like this, and I worry about looking back on periods of my life and regretting that I didn’t do more, whatever that means.

But I suppose I really do need to figure out what that means.  I’ve asked myself what it is I really want to spend my time on, and right now, I think the answer is wrapped up in three themes: I want to spend time creating, I want to spend time (and money) seeing the world, and I want to spend time cultivating relationships with people I love.

1. Creating

I want to invest more time and energy into writing.  Could this really go somewhere?  I feel like I need to give it a fair chance.

I want to set aside a place and more time to paint.  I think I’ve only done two major paintings in the past 4 years or so, and that makes me sad.  I have oil paints that I haven’t even learned how to use yet.

2. Travel

There are few places on this earth that I don’t want to see and experience.  I’m pretty thrifty with my money, but I have no problem spending it on plane tickets, museum tickets, and amazing food half a world away.

3. Relationships

The time I spend at work with clients who come to me at their lowest and in the most need has really highlighted how important friends and family are to me.  There is nothing like spending time with healthy, supportive people to recharge my batteries and remind me that not everyone in the world is either a victim or a perpetrator.  I’m also reminded that life doesn’t feel worth it if it’s not shared.

I also can’t wait to create a family of my own and have a relationship with little people who are half me and don’t even exist yet.  This part overlaps with the first theme of creation, although I hope my future kids aren’t offended by being lumped in with blogs and watercolors.  I’m sure they’ll be too screwed up to notice, at any rate.

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So.  Are there ways to begin working on these things now and stop waiting for them to magically happen?  Absolutely.

Are there ways to stay in the present and stop waiting?  Yes…This is the part where I should actually practice what I preach to my clients.

I didn’t really start out to write a new years resolutions-ish post, but I suppose I just did.

Sometimes just taking a walk in the cold can do a person a whole lot of good.