As a friend said, remember you'e an alcoholic, given to precipitous decisions … and regrets. Technically, I'm an adult child of an alcoholic, but what the hell, it's all the same. I leap, then look, there's no ground, I've almost sold my little two family, almost bought a condo, but…
I want to go backwards.
I'm not ready to leave the little two family and all the light and all the problems, yet…maybe in another couple of years. By the skin of my teeth and much gnashing, I extracted myself from the sale (that's to a very, very kind buyer…) and got out of the purchase (thanks to a very nice relator) and am still here in a big mess that definitely needed a shop vac which Bogie and I bought today.
He wasn't entirely happy riding in the cart, shivering with dismay, and he definitely must have considered the advice by three young girls that it would be better to have him in a stroller, close to the ground, to be a good thought…
I had considered myself very clever to have gone on-line to find a filter for my 30 year old stop vac, but it had no umph… the new one does, except that I had it hooked up to blow, not suck, so you can imagine the dust of the ages blown around in that attic.
Ann-Marie came to help for a week, when I still thought I'd sell it, a great deal of sorting, carting, looking through…it's an endless amount of work, was, is, will be…don't worry, of course I'm making a video about the process, my grim face as I survey the wreckage….. whatever is gone is gone and whatever is going will get out there, including the old shop vac…
The inspector from MASS Saves comes in the middle of the month and I'll find out about windows and insulation, etc….and whether they sponsor a loan… so, that's good… interesting. Why, as S. asked, have I never done any of this before? Good question. Excellent question. I wasn't ready? I didn't know how? I didn't think about it? This winter was so awful I had to move or face it? I'm have the duck-and-cover tendencies of an alcoholic?
Who knows…………..
In the beginning of all of this, I paid to enter a show…and was sort of chosen to be part of it, relieved to finally exhibit this landscape work…………took endless effort, carting it downstairs, all those boxes, setting it up, wrapping it again, taking it………….
and the show is terrible, horrible, ghastly, worthless…
a mass of work from an endless amount of people, everyone it looked like, who sent in checks.
I'm so sorry I did it and now this is in the never-again-category that another friend often reminds me of….
but it was nice to see it set up downstairs…the insane installations I made at Feet of Clay in Brookline without ever thinking about what I'd do with them, how I'd show them…
The good thing is that I decided that the blobs, otherwise known as "For No Earthly Reason" which were on my regular website…could be given away for donations at the community garden during the Art Walk… and they went like hotcakes, 8 or nine boxes of them…money tucked into a jar…
I still have ten or twelve tucked into my own garden…and they are sort of friends, and the rest have tiny cacti growing in them or serve as decorations…can you imagine…
Now I have to figure out what to do with the porcelain boxes and the 1,000 little figures of nude ladies...
670 something little formations from different types of clay, different uses of slip and glazes..
crazy…what do I do with them now?
wait until next year and the Art Walk??
Anyway, I'm grateful still to be in the wreck of a house and to have had such success with the physical therapy………… I will do the exercises, faithfully…
please do look at
www.run-to-the-roundhouse-nellie.com
Susan Landry's on-line journal about memoir.
I like Alan Helms reply to my questions and think his book is extremely important….for many reasons….
thanks….
