Long Time Gone

Wow! I guess it has been awhile since I last posted. What exciting things have I been up to? Just trying to keep on top of class, caretaking, and general chores. October is my busiest month of the semester, with special English Department events, student conferences, midterms, and many papers to grade. In a couple weeks I'll be able to coast a bit more. Whew!

So not much time for writing, painting, or much of anything outside work-related duties. This weekend I did, however, host my annual Halloween Party for my niece and nephews. This year my mom co-hosted so it wouldn't be as much work for me. That made it more fun and overall more reasonable in terms of time and work. Desite snow and cold, we had a great time. And I was able to make handmade gifts for the kids, which is something I love to do. Normally I write ghost stories for them, but this year I gave them ghosts-in-a-bottle!

It was pretty easy. I just got some bottles from Michaels, and to make them look older I brushed on a mixture of silver paint and an acrylic thickening agent. Stuffed some polyfill inside, along with a watercolor ghost, and then covered the cork with glitter glue. All in all I think the materials cost $4. Then I tea-dyed some old ribbon and scraps of paper, onto which I wrote a little poem to go with each ghost. Voila!

I also made some Halloween "crackers," which basically were just the cardboard roll of toilet paper stuffed with goodies and wrapped so they don't look like...you know...toilet paper rolls. But hey! It's just cardboard, and using trash for craft-making is a very green thing to do.

As for costumes, everyone looked great. I was kind of lame this year...I pretty much just wore a dress and a flower thing on my head and called myself a "wood nymph." Dave, as usual, had the best costume. He wore a suit, a long black coat, a top hat, carried a fancy walking stick and wore a pig nose ~ his costume for a Captialist Pig. Emily was a zombie rock star (she won the costume contest, by the way), Nick was some kind of a scary guy, and Matt was a storm trooper. We had lots of great food, games, and entertainment.

I think the above is my all-time favorite photo of Matt!

Clara and Hannibal

As promised, here's Clara ~ my latest watercolor in the "creepy Edwardian kids" series. I love her. She looks partly worried, partly sulky, and partly dreamy...like she's just figured out where the treasure is buried. I finished her awhile ago, but only now have gotten around to photographing. She was done far more quickly than Daniel, and I think the writing on this one is a little wonky and less restrained. I'm not sure how I feel about that. But as for Clara herself, I couldn't be happier.




Since I was photographing, I also include my very first watercolor! This was done 2-3 years ago (?). Recently I outlined it with ink for more crisp lines (I'm liking the ink + watercolor effect). Anyway, as you can see this is Hannibal my husband's beloved but deceased dog. I based it on a photo and even though it's not an exact likeness Dave was pleased with the result. To me, he looks grumpy after having been woken from a nap.




Well, not much new to report. I have not had time to progress much with writing, although I'm currently teaching Beloved and that's giving me lots of good ideas about writing on ghosts. So even when I'm not writing, I'm soaking up ideas; once I'm full of ideas I can wring them out onto the page and see if they work or not.


It's still Mercury retrograde, and I read on my sister's blog that her car battery died at a particularly inconvenient time. See! Beware.


Today is my niece Emily's 11th birthday. At 11 she's more mature, confident, kind, thoughtful, and giving than most adults I know. She's interested in everything, and is so fun to be around. She's very special to me. Happy birthday Emily!


Finally, it was a tie for your favorite "cool sounding" word. Persnickety, Quantum, Indubitably, and Snorkel each got one vote. In the meantime, I've heard that Cattywhompus is another cool-sounding word to consider, and others have offerred up Hobgoblin, Balderdash, and Discobobuated. "That persnickety hobgoblin is full of discombobulated balderdash and is indubitably cattywhompus." I'm going to try to finagle an opportunity to use that sentence today.