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Natsunekko's Journal   Well.... the Utah trip didn't turn out quite as expected. Four days of driving for three days of visiting, of which two were monopolized by the convention setup/takedown. On our one day to visit with family, we took the kids to a place called "Toadies" where they rode race cars and played lazer tag, and then they went shooting with Eric's brother while I helped my mom shear alpacas. Much to my frustration, I didn't get to see Laurel, or my brother & his wife & kids, or my sister Tina's place. We're going to try this all again in July, but this time we'll leave the husband at home (he can't get time off) and stay for two weeks. I did get to stop by Theresa Mather's studio on the way home, and that was really neat. It was great to meet her, and I hope that next time I won't be in such a hurry to get back on the road. The convention was... well... not disapointing, but not great either. The market is bad. I brought five original paintings, priced to sell, and still only sold one. I was pretty shocked, I expected to at least unload the 9x12s that I asked only $35 for, if not the 16x20 for $199! Oh well. The show looked nice, and it was good to see what my "competetors" were doing. Big wall 'o art: (the originals are the ones in frames. Matted things are prints)  My personal life continues to be slightly crazy. :) Poor sis is back in the hospital. I'm watching her kids for the summer, plus the 7-year old son of a family in our church. The kid has some special needs, and there's only one day care on base and it's not great for kids with any sort of social disorder. My boys, even Mr. Aspergers, have joined a base bowling league and a swimming club. I'm trying very hard not to be a mother hen (or mother bear?), and let Oldest Son go out by himself to the activities. I'm terribly nervous today, because he went with the Youth Center teens to a water park. Intelectually, I know he'll be totally ok. The adult leaders will watch out for him, and he's really grown up a lot lately anyway. Still, I can't help but worry. In the past, I've always gone along on trips like this. I'm taking most of the summer off work at the restaurant (though I'm still on call for when my co-workers need time off). As I think I've mentioned before (I hope?) I'm going back to school. In three years, I hope to have my masters in special ed. With luck, I can be teaching in a year, and can quit the restaurant. Class starts for me on July 1. It's mostly home-based work, so I am expecting that I'll be able to do it while watching all these kids. :) It'll be a crazy summer, but fun in it's own way. We have The Flu. Anna and Kyle had a temperature of 101 yesterday, and were sleepy and cross. Today Tad is added to the list, and I'm not feeling so hot either. Susan and her kids got it on Sunday. Luckily, our workaholic husbands seem to have been spared. (Probably because they're never home!) BUT IT'S JUST A FLU! Sheesh people. All this media panic over swine flu, and it doesn't even make you puke. I've had COLDS worse than this flu. The kids are sleeping and fighting more, but their appetites are good and they feel well enough to play. Susan took her kids to the hospital (fevers hit 105), where it was verified that, yes, they have The Flu. No, there is nothing to do about it. Take Tylonol and go watch some TV. I'm going to be skipping the expensive hospital bill, and going strait for Tylonol and TV. Current mood:  annoyed.Current music: Pokemon.  I'm heading up to Utah in May for Conduit (and to visit my family there). I'm hoping to have this painting, "1001 Celtic Nights," done by then. It's big--16 x 20--and is acrylic on Masonite. Her face is really bugging me. I've re-painted it three times now. I think I'm going to stop messing with it and move on, and then revisit her stupid face once the rest of the painting is done. Anyone else going to Conduit? I hope to see Theresa Mather there--finally meet in person!! I will try very hard not to get all dorky-fan-girl on you. I've enrolled in Western Governers' University, to get a BA (a Masters, eventually) in special education. I'm hoping it'll only take me two years, since I did most of the general education classes eons ago when I was getting an art degree. I passed the entrance exam, so the last thing I need to do to make this happen is secure a grant to pay for it. Ugh. Paperwork hell! Lastly, in the General Update, I have been reading the Temeraire books by Naomi Novik. Wonderful, wonderful books! Imagine the Patrick O'Brian Master & Commander books, but with dragons added. The books are set in the middle of Napoleon -vs- Nelson, and center on a ship's captain who becomes campanion to a dragon. Finally. I seem to be coming out of the DOWN and into the UP mood. After having spent the better part of a month moping in bed (or wishing I was in bed), I now find that I cannot sleep, and my head is buzzing with ideas. I woke up at 2am and started cleaning, fantasizing about how I could better arrange the living room furnature. I will sit down and PAINT for the first time in three weeks, as soon as I'm done making lunch. Times like this make it so very clear that my moods are a medical problem. Things are not going very well, bad news after bad news, it seems, but I am feeling really quite cheerful today. I had planned to quit the nasty cooking job in May and start doing the teacher's aide thing again, but the state decided to recind all emergency teaching certificates. Now you cannot teach in AZ unless you have an actual teaching degree. So, I'm going to have to spend the next two years working at the stupid bowling alley and going to school to turn an art degree into a teaching degree. We also invested nearly a thousand dollars in sending Eric to job interviews out of state, none of which panned out. Oh well. At least my sister lives here in AZ, so I'm not entirely cut off from the real world. And the kids are happy here. It's a little over 90 degrees, and only eleven in the morning. The base swimming pool openned this weekend, and there was much rejoicing. We live on-base, in what is military housing for another month, at which time, the military has turned over the base housing to a private firm. We're not pleased as punch about this, but right at this very moment, my biggest 'beef' with the housing privatization is the big inspection tomorrow. I am a terrible housewife. Terrible. So I've had to spend the last two days doing deep cleaning (we got notice on Friday about the inspection Monday). Up till today, it's been the exhausting-but-satisfying sort of cleaning. Yeah, I hate to clean, but it sure does give you a nice feeling when you're done and look back on a shiney clean kitchen, bathroom, etc. Today, however, has mostly been about purging possessions. We hit the part of cleaning where the things that don't have a place in the house have to be thrown out. The most painful purge was my anime/manga stuff. I put two bookcases worth of manga into storage (to sell on ebay, when I have time), and threw out several large trashbags full of translations and small-press magazines and APAs. Sigh. That all used to be a huge part of my life. It isn't any more. My youngest kid was astounded to find out that I could read Japanese. Current mood:  depressed.
I've wanted an Asian ball joint doll since... um... some time in the 90's? They cost too much for me to spend on a foolish hobby, particularly now.
I log into LJ nearly every day to read my friends' pages, but I have little to say, so I don't post much. Or, at least, I'm stuck in that "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all" mode. Not that things are all bad here, but I'm generally feeling run down and exausted and worried about the future. So let's see... some "say something good" news... I have two lovely "Asian Ball Joint Doll" fairies living with me now. I will eventually post pictures, but can't find the cable to connect the computer to my camera right now. I have spent entirely too much time sewing clothes for them. I've finished several paintings, and have switched almost entirely away from paper to wood boards, and away from watercolors to acrylics. One major down side to working on wood, however, is that I can't really scan it the way I could with paper. There are low-resolution pictures of several new paintings over at wenchworks.deviantart.com Our oldest son has decided that he wants to attend high school in a building next year. I'm scared to death about it, I feel rather like I'm feeding him to the wolves, what a terrible attitude! My husband keeps reminding me that "Kyle is NOT you. Kyle's experience in school will NOT be like your's." A very selfish voice in my head is really looking forward to getting a "real job" (I've applied to be a spec ed aide again)and not homeschooling any more. I didn't participate in the Ren Faire this year. I couldn't really afford the vendor booth fee, and then my poor sister had to go back to the hospital for a while, and so I had all five kids again, and there was no way I could run a faire booth with a bunch of little kids! So I skipped the faire this year and had lots and lots of fun with the kids. Kyle was in Video Game Heaven because my brother in law has a Wii (Kyle, Tad & I just stayed at their house this time, instead of trying to drive kids to school and all that from my house). Current music: the dogs barking at coyotes.
It's acrylic on masonite, which, I have to say, is the most wonderful surface to paint on. I bought the board pre-gesso'd and sanded from a bunch of art students on ebay (I need to find them again, they did a great job). I didn't expect painting on board to be so different from painting on illustration paper, but... wow. It was amazing the way that it took the paint. I had a great time at Nan Desu Kon. One of my sisters came and revealed that she's doing art again (yay! Both my sisters are artisticly gifted, but both have ignored their talents!). I didn't cross paths with Jenn & Chris, which was the only disappointing thing about the weekend. Another disappointment came when I got home to a dead computer, and the internet was down. Stupid Time Warner has only one hub to serve the base, and when it gets flaky (like every time the wind blows or it gets hot...), the internet goes down. Not only does it go down for us, but since MWR uses Time Warner too, the library and wi-fi all go down too. The internet is back up again as of yesterday, having been out for a little over two weeks (it would come on sporatically, but rarely stayed up for more than ten minutes). Better yet, my new motherboard has arrived, so I should have a working computer again later today. Well. If it turns out that the motherboard was the only problem! One good thing about the internet and computer being down is that I've had no electronics to entice me away from painting. I finished two paintings and am nearly done with a third. Today my neighboor has agreed to come over and pose for the next painting. I really hope it turns out well, so she'll model for me again; she has a beautiful, exotic sort of look. Her husband is really into Frazetta and Boris and that sort of classic fantasy art, so I suspect he's going to be disappointed--my pose for her is a re-working of "The Consort," which involves lots of gracefully draped fabric and no watermellon boobies. I don't want to do the math on how much I've spent getting ready for Dragon*Con this year. Ink alone was $140. The mats and bags were another $150. And then there's the $200 panel rental. I haven't gotten to the postage yet, or the frames for the four paintings. And let's not even think about the time this has taken. I really, really hate the business side of the art business!
On the personal side, we are blessed to have our neice Anna with us again this week. She's four now, and talks up a storm. It's very cute to watch her and Kyle doing puzzles. Tad starts "building school" tomorrow--it's hard to believe how old the kids are getting! I really don't feel old enough to have teenagers!! Current mood:  working.
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