Monday, December 27, 2010

blizzard life

i don't need a blizzard to put my thoughts to paper or to tap some into my computer. it sure helps though. There seems to be something sacrosanct about being the first to inscribe their mark on freshly fallen snow
(or a fresh open blog page).
I just dared to do this by taking my dog to pee at 4 a.m. today. Yes, i am a night owl. Or am i just totally an insomniac? it is neither here nor there. There is a blizzard outside making its presence known. it is more interesting than today's subconscious getting to take a rest.
the howling wind, the rattle of the storm windows (the one right behind where i sit, was installed today... thank you graham!) and the still accumulating snow are making my house feel so cozy and appreciated.
Yet my mind is wandering all over the place.
Some stories are nudging at me trying to be told aloud. None of my family is interested in most of what i have to say. yet, they are fearful that something good might happen if they miss one of my tales. i insist upon being their modern day Sheherazade or someone like that.

several things have happened to me of late. i would say almost all of them were computer derived and profoundly touching. if only to me, then that would be a nice thing. i am finding somehow that they are interconnected and worth sharing outside of my silly familial range.
i am sincerely sarcastic and sentimental. for years, the inmates of this asylum have been asking me forever if i was being sarcastic . Even when they were well under 10 years old. my sentimentality usually scares them. of course when they hit over 10, i broadened my need to teach them more life as i see it.
i teased the issues of irony, sardonic and sarcasm into more discrete piles for them to investigate.
after all, how would they know if i did not express them, the secrets of my ever changing riffs?
in this, i shared a rather long and full figured story with my son, my two daughters and husband (as of today, for the 3rd time. this is yet another topic though. the ability to listen and do it carefully) . the dog doesn't care to ignore me, i feed and walk him, so anything i say is usually just what he wants to hear.
i can feel how much he adores me without pulling ear buds from his ears unlike the kids.

now when i told my son this round about story or set of circumstances, he asked if there was going to be a "hallmark" movie made from it. it was a snotty little response... which made me think he was too touched by the stuff i told him and he didn't want me to think he was sensitive or something. so his sardonic response gave him away. it proved to me that he was not only a little verklempt,
but also wily with his ability to take a lesson on sarcasm to heart and delineate appropriate sentiment as it applied to his feelings about the subject matter at hand.
i taught him well. now i am a little verklempt.

so it is time to try to tell the mass of small stories. and they come together somehow. at least in my own mind.
there is my re-telling them and of course altering them as i do... which is unintentional... but natural as they roll around in my head.
the first is one of life style change as told by one of the "brave girls" found at: http://bravegirlsclub.com/blog/?p=1411
the long and short of this is that Melody, one of the brave girls,
has told a story of her family and an ordeal that they survived.
her husband had a traumatic brain injury that plagued her, her kids, her business and her husband. he is well now, but it was very disconcerting.
i recommend you read the link to the story, rather than my retelling it badly.
the moral of her story was : be gentle with others, you never know what has happened to them.

a second component is that i fell in love with a graphic artist.
i found her stuff on my facebook page under "handmade spark", a blog posting.
when i say i fell in love with her, i mean that in spite of very different ideas about life
(she being gifted with a religious part to her life and
me being a heathen with skittish interest in personal spirituality... ).
she is one of the nicest and most fabulous graphic artists.
I love her studio,
her generously created free images for graphic wannabees,
her sense of wryness and more.
She has posted some truly mind blowingly clever projects for folks to try out.
not every project speaks to me, but a lot do.
i missed the period that all the cool kids enjoyed a few years ago.
the one where folks put vintage decals anywhere they could.
i fell in step late behind everyone else. Now i am enjoying a personal renaissance.
there was lesson on how to make decal penny pendants and it put quite a twist into my knickers.
i had to try to make some.
i collected all the ingredients to try these out.
i know, it is really compulsive on my part, but i really wanted to try to be cool like cathe.
cathe holden that is.
this is her website. i found the nifty penny decal in her section "JSIM" aka just something i made.
i wrote to cathe, as she asks if anyone tries her ideas out, to let her know how they came out.
i felt a little shy at first, and then a little bolder by the second.
eventually, i practiced the art of "fan-girling" as my college aged daughter mocked me with.
rotten child.
but also is educated by my teaching and is known for her own biting wit.
anyways, i wrote to cathe and added some pics in the email.
she encouraged me to add them to her flickr pages set up for us sycophants to show off.
her clever tutorials allowed me to be in this club.
gladly i did this.
as we were emailing back and forth, i offered her a necklace that i made using my penny pendants with.
she was tickled i thought.. and i was still overdoing it in fan-girl mode.
i offered to send another necklace to another of her blog readers if she wanted to host a giveaway.
now you already know most of this if you have read my repetitive postings. ( i swear that i will get off this topic sometime soon (1) and i also promise to become interesting at some time(2) and ultimately, i promise to finish this long ass posting(3). NO, i am not being sarcastic here at all either).

the woman who won the necklace, Karin, also had a blog. so i read some of it. for a quite a few pages as well.
and this particular posting made me nearly cry.
(the monday dec. 6th 2010 posting)
suddenly, the second mention of the brave girls club made an appearance on my screen in the same day.
i was shocked... since i am a bit of a know-it-all and thought i was aware of stuff that would interest me.
well sometimes i forget how big the world is and how little i am entitled to take ownership of.
the net result was that i sent this woman, karin, her necklace.
i felt it was going to just the right person.
it made me feel really good to do it too.
so i got to send 2 of my creations into the wild of the universe,
rather than to a private school kindergarten silent auction fundraiser. it was personal and vastly more meaningful. not that my kids' schools don't need to buy and use multicolored skin tone crayons to embrace greater understanding and such... but this was for me.
and it felt good in a personal way.

now this all felt pretty well pulled together in a wendy styled package for a few days.
then my friend sheri asked me to make one of my necklaces for her sister. a bread and butter piece that i have made for years. not as many are done these days, but i would do anything for sheri.
apparently, her sister has been dealing with breast cancer.
i think that it is truly an evil disease.
no one likes it and there remains no sure cure at this date that i know of.
(my knowledge again on yet another important topic is tested with very poor results... sigh).
when sheri asked me to make a necklace for her sis, she asked that it be pink.
her sister used to love pink and it was once her favorite color.
with the onset of breast cancer and all the pink that accompanies the entire issue,
she became disenfranchised with it.
sheri's wish was that her sister rejoin her love of pink as she returned to good health.
i surely could agree with that.
so i made a pink necklace for one sister to give to another.
an intimate and hopeful gift between two dear women.
not only did sheri give this to her sibling, but she asked prior to the giving if i had a name for this necklace. those of you who follow my jewelry and stories about those pieces know i name all of them.
i have no reason to be so fluffy about this, but it is not uncommon.
and i went with it.
i was at sheri and her husband don's holiday party when i was asked what to call this necklace.
so i told sheri my stories that are above.
we were standing next to my husband at the time, who of course didn't hear any of it..
{since not one of the words included were ice or hockey.
hence my comment about careful hearing earlier}.
i suggested that we call this
"GENTLE PINK"
in keeping with my sense of how
unsympathetic,selfish and rushed seeming we humans are seeming these days.
.
along with the gift of several other things and the necklace, sheri included my story,
the amalgamation of all the chapters of how i came to the name.

two years ago this coming spring, my husband suffered a small heart attack. we are both self employed and he was unwilling to let anyone know of his infirmity. macho .. right? well at this time i could have used a little love and support. i was not permitted to ask for it, as it would defy his wishes. i understood it and was willing to participate, but it was freaking hard to do more of what i had to do and what felt like his share as well.
i can only say, i understand the issue of being gentler with people.
you never really know when someone needs kid glove handling.

and back to sheri and her sister. when it came time for the present unwrapping and reading of the note, the sister had the epiphanic christmas moment. she felt all of what she had been experiencing in a fresher and rejuvenated place. she was ready to try to love pink all over again, and in a more fun way.

i really loved hearing this from my friend. my mental meanderings have been all over the place. still they did what they usually do... they came home to roost with me.
they are not really related, but the entire idea of gentility should be more of an every day idea.
if i forget about it for one day, i hope now to try to get myself back on track with it.
i want to try to return to gentler living.
if i didn't know myself better,
it might seem a little like some weird new year's resolution is in the making.
the new year starts tomorrow.
every day... or at least a little more regularly.

ok, i have rambled... thanks for joining me.

xoxo. wendy.




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