The Bees Are Disappearing!

Whenever someone mentions bees, I want to shout, “The bees are disappearing!”

If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’ll understand.

But the point now is that I’m illustrating a children’s book about bees. I’ve never drawn bees before, so this is a challenge. This might sound crazy, but most of the time, I don’t actually think I can draw. I do draw. I mean, I draw trees, castles, bunnies, and flowers. But I can’t draw the way I really want to. So many of my lines lie dead on the paper. Then after many dead drawings, something works, and I’m filled with relief. Whew.

But I want to challenge myself and get better. It’s sad when people say they can’t draw, when they tell some story from grade school that killed their inner artist. Why let that person who said whatever it is they said to convince you that you had no talent, why let them get the better of you? Get some paper, sit down, draw. Sure it might be terrible, and it most definitely won’t match the beautiful image in your head, but my art never, ever, matches what’s in my head, but I keep trying. I throw away a lot. A lot. Seriously. Eventually an image turns out right.

I don’t know why people expect instant magic with art. If you’ve never run a day in your life, you wouldn’t expect to run a marathon on a whim. You’d understand that you have to train, and train for a long time. But I’ve seen people draw one stick figure and throw their pencil down. “I can’t draw.”

Give yourself a break. Then train. Practice.

But I went way off topic. All I wanted to say is that I’m trying to draw bees, so I’m trying something new.

What new thing have you tried lately?

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If you want to see the other books in the series I’ve illustrated, go here to Plum Tree Books.

Must. Be. Meaningful.

I’ve started several blog posts that I haven’t finished. Percocet took over and I couldn’t think. And everything I write seems ridiculous. Trite. Meaningless.

I don’t have anything to add to the cancer narrative. I can’t add any original observations.

I’ve started reading two breast cancer memoirs. I finished the first chapter of one of them and now I can’t decide if I want to continue reading it. Her story is compelling and she’s honest, and I’m sure it is a worthwhile read (several people highly recommended the book), but I really can’t relate to the beginning of her story.

She went to a strip club when she found out she had breast cancer.

While many women have written about their experience, certain things about the disease are very personal. And how you feel about your body is an issue with this disease. How society feels about your body is part of this disease.

All of this makes certain aspects of the disease hard to talk about. Near impossible for me. Im happy to tell you about drains and medications and tissue expanders and chemo. That’s the easy stuff.

I keep dreaming about strange rooms, houses, apartments, filled with stuff, so much stuff that I keep realizing there is more stuff in them than I thought and someone or people come in and take the stuff away. In the dream, I can’t decide what to do, but I’m surprised at all the stuff and surprised that people want to take it away from me, and half the time I’m not dressed properly so I can’t do anything because I’m trying to find my clothes.

It’s something like that.

Learning

When I first wanted to be a writer (back when I was eight, I think), I knew nothing about the publishing industry. I didn’t understand how agents worked or what it took to get a book to readers.

A few years ago a young man told me he wanted to write a book so that he could make money. I didn’t know whether to laugh or pat him on the head.

Learning about cancer treatments has been much the same way. I had no idea about the medical industry. I didn’t understand how surgeons worked or what it took to get a mastectomy. I didn’t know about post-op shirts, drains, expanders, or being estrogen positive. I didn’t know terms like her2/neu, sentinel nodes, or lymphedema.

Well, live and learn.

I’m going to have a novel published soon. I’ll get this through this too.

Bunny’s in a Hospital Gown

I draw when I’m in waiting rooms.

These days I’m drawing adventures in the medical wonderland.

I’m sure some of you know the vocabulary that I’m just now learning. Post surgery life does not sound like fun. I don’t like sentences that contain words like drains, valves, and special shirts. Not sparkly unicorn special. Good-for-incisions-and-drains special.

You just don’t know where life is going to take you.

Between a Shrug and a Radio Interview

A while I wrote about my health. Talking about my health makes me feel that much older. Does that make sense?

Anyway. The updates–for those of you aging along with me–are as follows:

The incision from surgery is still healing. 92% closed according to the computer. Fancy stuff computers tell us these days. Imagine what they’re going to know in 100 years.

I still don’t have any verdict on my heart condition, but the echo is scheduled for this week. The best thing about echocardiograms is that they don’t require any puncturing. Echocardiogram…sounds like an instagram from your heart that keeps repeating itself.

The oncologist thinks cancer is also in the other breast. So, things should get more interesting.

This morning a nurse told me how she had a bilateral mastectomy and felt just fine. Two pain pills and she was ready to go on with life. Ten minutes later I’m in my car listening to a woman on the radio talk about the debilitating pain of her mastectomy. So…somewhere between a shrug and worthy of a radio interview…

Hope your health is treating you well.

Keep writing.

Bloody Days

trying to relax

I’ve almost forgotten I blog.

Heading toward the Christmas season things took an unexpected turn. A routine mammogram ended in a biopsy and two surgeries, and I can’t say it’s all done yet. The main distraction is the incision that has continued to bleed for over a week.

There are plenty more serious health issues in the world, and I’m trying to keep this in perspective. But as far as annoyances go, seeing bandage after bandage fill with blood whether at work, hanging with the kiddo, or sleeping is maddening. Who wants to leave blood on sheets and pillows, bathrobes, towels, and bras?

Perhaps that is too much information. I might be beyond caring. Besides, I don’t know about you, but I knowledge of things like breast cancer was very limited. I had some understanding of chemo (No verdict yet on whether I’ll need radiation. Might not.) and like most of us I’ve seen all those pink ribbon campaigns, but it might have been helpful to have heard specifics. Have you ever had those moments when you look at a cut or a bruise or something not right on your body and you wonder, “Is it supposed to look like that?!”

It’s been a distraction.

With any luck, the worst of this is over and I can think. MOst of the time I don’t feel like I’m thinking. I just feel like I’m moving on to the next thing that needs to get done. Do you ever feel that way?

But I am still working on the line edits for my novel. That isn’t going to come out when I originally thought. Things have fallen behind. But my publisher and I are getting there, and that’s what matters.

Christmas Pig

Christmas Pig hanging out in his yard.

Christmas Pig appears in our neighborhood every year. My son, my husband, and I cheer when Christmas Pig’s owners set him in their yard. “Yea! It’s Christmas Pig! Let the holiday season begin!”

Christmas Pig lives on a street not far from us, but we have to go out of our way a couple blocks to see him, and in early December we start going that slightly longer way home just to for him. Then for a few weeks, we go that way almost every day to say hi.

“Yea! Christmas Pig!”

We acknowledge the season is over when Christmas Pig is no longer on the lawn. “Aww. Christmas Pig is gone. Bye-bye Christmas Pig.”

His owners are completely clueless of our love for Christmas Pig. We don’t know the people in that house. I don’t think they even have kids.

Well, now it is December 20th and Christmas Pig hasn’t shown up. No sign of him. He’s never been this late before, and as far as I know, the same people live in that house. We’ve been driving by the house every single day for two weeks. “Christmas Pig?”

My son and I have discussed the fate of Christmas Pig. Moved? Injured? Forgotten? “What if he’s still in his box waiting for his few weeks of freedom?” And to think that Christmas Pig’s family has no idea the amount of time we spend speculating.

We considered shouting out the car window. “Set out Christmas Pig!” But we’re not really the kind of people that shout out windows.

We’ve also debated leaving a note on the door. “We miss Christmas Pig. Love, The Bacons.” What would the family think about that?

My son and I have gone on to talk about how small things that we do, that we don’t think much about, can have some great significance to someone else. These people have no idea how we wait for their lawn ornament. Maybe they were like, “Meh. It’s too much trouble. Let’s not bother with decorating the yard this year.” It’s nothing to them.

No one else in the neighborhood has a Christmas Pig with wings. Someone one year had a Christmas Pig with a Santa suit. It wasn’t the same, and they moved anyway.

I looked for a Christmas Pig online. If Christmas Pig is gone, we may buy our own when we can afford it. He’s not cheap (of course) and I can’t spring for my own Christmas Pig this year. And buying one of our own is okay. That would be fun. But it won’t be the same.

Resistance isn’t always futile. Sometimes it stops progress for years.

Carl Sagan + my art!

I’ve been ignoring my blog. Maybe I mean neglecting. I’m supposed to be figuring a website for my art and all that. People ask me, “Do you have a website?” I feel most failure-esque to say, “I have a blog.” I mean, you can’t sell art on this thing. Sure, someone could leave me a comment about the art and we could go from there, but I don’t have a pretty page with all my images and stuff.

It shows a distinct lack of entrepreneurial spirit. But I did make all that art that is hanging in my show. I did make the art, frame it or come up with a way to display it, get a show date, and hang the stuff. And I’m editing my novel that my publisher is going to put out into the world in February. I’m participating in NaNoWriMo again too by the way. I’m teaching 20 hours a week. I’m going to speed skate practice. I’m illustrating a children’s book for my publisher. I’m spending time with my kid and doing most of the housework.

I’m neurotic, insecure, and obsessive. I’m not lazy.

But I cannot get myself to organize this into a proper website. I resist. I put it off. I think about and don’t understand it.

I don’t really know where this resistance comes from, but I will try to do better.

What is it in your life that you should be doing but you’re not? My list is certainly longer than just get a proper website. That’s what’s bothering me today.

Perfect Sentences and Other Lies

Some people promise to diet or to exercise every day or to be more patient. Do you do that? Swear you’re going to be different and somewhere between three minutes and three days that is all shot to hell?

Mine is that I’m going to be less neurotic.

I’ve been trying to come up with one sentence that captures the feelings/mood/idea of my novel. I felt like I’d been left alone on the edge of a mountain with the instructions to fly down or don’t come down at all and all I’ve got are some feathers and duct tape.

But really. All I have to do is write a sentence. Why I have to make it difficult is beyond me.

So, I’ve come up with a sentence. Here’s my first draft. I’m not happy with the word ‘trauma’ but can’t think of a better word right now.

Two sixteen-year-old girls, best friends, use magic and their wits to recover from trauma and to get revenge.

Thoughts?

Is that the best you can do?

In high school I spent one year on the yearbook staff. I started the class really excited, and I ended the class hoping never to speak of it again. When my mother saw the section I’d worked on–the advertising section, which I hated but did work hard on–she said, “That doesn’t look very good. That’s the best you can do?”

Or maybe she said, “That’s terrible.”

It’s hard to remember exactly because what I remember best was the pain that went through my chest. My mother wasn’t a mother of false praise.

The ads weren’t good though. I’d struggled with designing the ads. My relationship with the teacher was a disaster since I realized I wasn’t pretty enough to warrant his attention.

Maybe that wasn’t the problem. But I knew the popular boys and girls invited him to their parties and that sometimes he went.

You probably don’t need to be told I wasn’t ever invited to these parties. But I didn’t want to go to their parties. I wanted my mother to tell me I’d done a great job, that I had talent, that I should be an artist when I grew up.

She said (and this I remember), “I wouldn’t show that work to anyone if I were you.”

Twenty-five years later and I still haven’t.

So, last night I sent my “final” draft of my novel to my publisher. (Final until I get edits backs, that is.) All I have to do is wait for her to read the rewrites and tell me what she thinks.

It’s funny how something said to you years ago can stay lodged in your brain for decades. I wouldn’t show that work to anyone.

And here’s me trying to send my novel out for the world to see. (Although, the world isn’t going to see it. A tiny group of friends and some random strangers.)

We’ll see how it goes.