We Accomplished A Lot and a Blood Sacrifice

Yesterday kicked our butts, in an almost literal way. I had asked DH on Saturday night if he couldn't take a look at the mailbox and strengthen it a bit before it got cold and we had to deal with frigid temps, snow, and most importantly, snow plows once again. Our mailbox survived year one, barely survived year two (with both of us out there dealing with a fallen box in the snow - NOT fun, and I wanted it to survive year three. It was rocky and tippy and I just couldn't envision it surviving until May 2020 intact. 

This was our mailbox last year after it was barely hanging on
through the winter. Although we managed to stabilize it
somewhat, it was still a little tipsy, and as we go into a new
winter season, I wanted it more secure so that we could avoid
fixing it in the snow. It's one of DH's least favorite jobs,
but he bucked up and stabilized it. 

Despite grumping about it, he put on colder weather gear and went out to deal with the box first thing Sunday morning. I appreciated that very much. After breakfast I went down and continued putting items away in the workshop area, then moved to the craft room. There was a lot I needed to do there, and I had gotten stalled the last time I tried to accomplish serious cleaning. DH worked alongside me, prodding me to the next bag, next box, next task. He wasn't even totally annoying about it, and I actually accomplished quite a lot before ... 

I got very fortunate, I basically cut where that arrow
for "Distal Phalanx" is, maybe slightly more towards
the finger tip. Lower, it could easily had cut my
tendon. Fortunately, it only bled heavily. I think
it will heal fine, if I keep it clean and covered. 

I almost cut the top of my finger off. Yeah. Apparently one of the items boxed up in my metal clay box was a cutting blade. It was a gift, or maybe it was something I had purchased, but it was wrapped in a small box, the type where the ends fold down to pooch out a flat container. It had a ribbon tied neatly around it and UNDERNEATH was marked "Cutter - Extremely Sharp". Of course I didn't see the writing, and as I pulled open the flap, managed to slice a deep cut into the pad of my index finger. 

I drove over to my clinic's Urgent Care facility, but it would
have been a wait of at least an hour. It wasn't bleeding through the
bandage, so my pressure bandage was working. I decided I
could just skip the stitches and let it heal on its own. 

Blood everywhere - not spraying, but dripping heavily. NOT good. I applied pressure and went upstairs to get some band-aids and antiseptic, which I managed to get onto my finger. The cut was deep, between 1/8 and 1/4 inch deep, and after getting it bandaged up in a pressure bandage, I decided it might be wise to go to Urgent Care and get a couple of stitches. So, after telling DH to "Throw the damned thing away", I headed over to the clinic. Where they said the wait would be a minimum of one hour. I left, deciding a pressure bandage would be fine and that an hour was a ridiculous amount of time to wait for two stitches. 

Today I'll wear a glove in the shower, then change my bandage for the third time before heading out to work. It's actually OK, doesn't hurt and it's not bleeding except a little bit when I change bandages. I think it will heal fine. and we got a lot accomplished in the craft room, so it was a good day. A small sacrifice to the Gods of Cleaning. 

Have a great Monday and I'll be back tomorrow. 

Clarification About the Social Security Roller Coaster

Oops! I need to clarify because, sleep-deprived as I was, I may have mislead you and I have to be cautious about that. In yesterday's post, I said...

"Just one word of advice for my US friends who might be looking at their own retirement and Medicare coming up. The window for Social Security is three months before your 65th birthday, the month of your birthday, and three months afterward."

What I should have said was that the seven month window is for Medicare signup, which is governed by the Social Security Administration. If you're a US resident, you can pick and choose when you want your draw from Social Security to start, but you MUST sign up for Medicare right around your 65th birthday. The penalties for not doing that are similar to a neverending hell, so if you're within 3 months of turning 65, get onto their website, grit your teeth, fill in the myriad of information, save the application if you need to look up more stuff and then return to it, and finally submit it. They say it normally takes 10-30 minutes to complete. It took DH approx an hour and it was mucho-frustrating, but he got it down and submitted, also choosing Plan B. 

Some would liken this experience to jumping through hoops, I, however,
equate dealing with the forms and deadlines more like a roller coaster. You
think you understand it and you have all of the information you can, but
when you're confronted with the questions from the SSA, you're totally
at loose ends once again. 

If you have time, but are approaching when Medicare will kick in for you, take advantage of the various meetings and explanations for the public, etc, that are held around your town in November. November is health insurance month - the time when plans switch over to the new plans that will kick off on January 1st. There's a LOT to know about Medicare and it's SUPER confusing. At least get your basics reviewed now in a general and generic meeting. You can meet with an agent specifically for your personal needs later on when you age into the system. 

Another roller coaster - so apt for the convoluted pathway
I've had to walk just to get to this point. 

I'm very proud of DH, though. He was extremely frustrated, even phoned me in the afternoon when the SSA website was asking questions he didn't know, but he persevered and got his application submitted yesterday. Now it's in the hands of the SSA and, hopefully, we'll have a Medicare number for DH before the end of the month. That's the goal. 

We rode the roller coaster, now we're hopefully cruising
into the start platform, a little bruised and with messy hair,
but in one piece. 

Thanks for hanging with me over these past few days. It's been quite the roller coaster. I'm hoping for a nice, quiet Friday and a weekend without too much drama. That's probably hoping a bit much, but a girl can dream. Have a wonderful day and I'll be back tomorrow. 

Even Negative Progress is Progress

So, one cookie recipe was successful (nom, nom) and the other wasn't, resulting in a tin of lovely cookies and a baggie of miscellaneous ingredients that was thrown into the trash. Such is life. I'll need to figure out what wasn't working with the roll-ups and try those again when I've determined that. But the butterscotch stars are actually quite good. Now to start changing the batter so that it's a bit lighter. That's me...never satisfied.

Whoever made these example stars from the cookbook was a bit better at
keeping the shapes regular, but even though my stars may
not be as elegant, they taste really good. 

But I tried a second recipe and threw it away. It made me think. Often we start something and realize after just a few minutes, a few hours, a few days or even longer, that what we started just isn't going to work. It can be something as fast and easy as a recipe, as complex as a relationship, or anything in between. I had no problem realizing that the refrigerator batter wasn't doing what it was supposed to and throwing it out, but it's much harder to do that when you have more invested in a project. Also, you don't want to call a halt to something when you may just be in one of those "ick" passages that we all have to go through.

Every project, short or long, goes through an :ick" factor. 

"Ick" passages are a normal part of creating and often it is where the artist or author wants to just pound their head against a wall and ask themselves once again why they ever started the project. I get to this point with each and every art project that I make and just force myself to push through. Usually I end up pleased with the result and decide that the trials and tribulations were well worth the effort.

Why do we have to go through the uglies to get to the pretties?

I get to this stage with all of my writing also. I'm at that point now with my o-fic and it's driving me crazy. After more than two years of research and more than 120,000 written words, I'm at a point where I'm thinking about shelving it and moving on. That's a decision I won't take lightly, but it's such a big project and I'm just not sure if it will ever really be able to bring the two stories back together. I'm worried about plot holes large enough to drive a truck through, too much telling instead of showing, a tertiary plot line that came in a short time ago that just rings wrong, and other things. I'm questioning my basic premise, the directions that the characters are going, etc., etc., etc. And I also know how I need it to end - but OH...the curves, the twists, the headaches! It's so tempting to put it down and yet...I can't allow myself to do this. I love this book. It may be something that will never be read by anyone other than me, but I love the characters.

My story starts with Mandy seeing the face of a young man
in the window of a derelict house. But it sure takes a long trip
to get back to that point. 

So I'm going to look at where I'm at with my novel as one more "ick" passage and try to push my way through it. I'm going to hope that the editing process, which is where more than half of what I've written will hit the editing room floor and disappear, will actually pull things together and that I will love the end result. But to do that I have to get back into the groove. I think I'll write for a while with my morning coffee today...

Words that can translate to authors and artists as well. 

Have a wonderful Friday!

Stubborn

Blogspot was being stubborn this morning, and didn't allow me entry at 5 am when I wanted to post today. Finally now, five minutes before I need to leave for work, it is allowing me in. But its' stubbornness allows me to reflect on the benefits of personal stubbornness in our own artistry.

No child is born knowing how to speak, or walk, or run.....or draw, or sculpt, or play music. These are things that are learned as coordination is gained through physical and psychological growth. Even the great masters - Mozart and Beethoven, Van Gogh and Da Vinci, your parents and/or siblings have had time when things they were doing just weren't working out well. Then it is up to each individual to make up their mind about the choice of two paths. Either the choice of giving up on the task completely and going in a totally different direction, or hunkering down, playing stubborn, and working through the problem to progress.

I think in painting the stubbornness comes through in what I have always called "the ick factor". That means that every painting has a stage where everything just looks horrible. But as you grit your teeth and continue to work on the painting, it progresses past the ick stage and becomes truly beautiful. Become stubborn in your own life and see the beauty that will come from it when you have the luxury of looking back at it.

Blah....bleh....ick

I awakened and arose at my usual 3:30am time this morning. And decided that I was NOT in an Email mood today. So I petted, poked and stroked my "pets" on Superpoke Pets, I played a little Lord of the Rings Online, I looked through my forums to see if anyone was crafting or doing anything of interest, and I searched for some stuff on-line, and even allowed myself to go back to sleep for 30 minutes. I finally decided that I had to post and handle my Email and pushed myself over the hump.

You know that hump. Every creative person has them. It's also called the "ick" factor. It's when the painting looks like a bunch of blobs of color and you can't see how they can possibly come together as something pretty. Or when every word chosen for a paragraph just seems wrong. Or when the key seems off for a piece of music you are composing, or the glazes just aren't working for your pottery. In other words, the "blah", "bleh" and/or "ick" factors. And since everything goes through this stage, the only thing to do is work your way through them. That's what I did today, and I'm one small bit stronger because I did.

Rethinking Design - Tria and the Ick Factor

I started the assembly of the Red Road series of my newest enamel pieces yesterday. After putting the centerpieces together, I didn't like it. OK - to be more precise, it isn't laying correctly. It isn't flexible and isn't draping the way I envisioned. So, it's back to the drawing board for the assembly portion of the project. I find that artistry is often a series of stop-motion effort. Trying one method, evaluating the result, and taking aspect of that method to use in method number two. The procedure of trial and re-try can go on indefinitely, but to do so is non-productive. Therefore, I started a rule several years ago that I would do a complete re-do only twice on any project. From that point I would move on. I use this technique in my painting quite often. But when does the project deserve a re-do, and when is it just the Ick factor? And what is the Ick factor?

The Ick factor is a fact in (my) painting, and often in the production and trial of other items. Basically I define the Ick factor as a stage that every project goes through where it simply looks icky. If it is painting - it looks blotchy and the highlights are too intense; the shadows are too abrupt. If it is pencil work, the shadows and definition simply aren't coming through from the pencil to the paper. For jewelry, the finish doesn't work, the solder doesn't flow, the design doesn't come together within the physical realities of this world as opposed to the world of imagination. Everything has an Ick factor point, and the successful artist pushes through that point to come to a successful conclusion. I will get through the Ick factor with the Red Road series, but I have a suspicion that the end piece will have a far different appearance from my initial mind-image. BUT when I am through - the pieces will work and I will be happy to offer them up for sale.