Kvetches

Post on April 15th From Google+

Ayin EsLeave a comment

susielookerw susie  momandsusieolderw  momandsusiew

My Aunt Susie died today. She was my mom’s only sibling – her little sister. She would have been 71 this year. It’s crazy how there was a little bit of longevity for the women in my family (at least early eighties), and they both died before they were 72. What’s in store for me, I wonder?

Susan was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer about a year ago. She went through five rounds of chemo and miraculously won. She was in remission for a few months.

Just a few months

Then it mastisized all over her brain, and progressed rapidly, yet, at the same time, slowly. I don’t know which it was. All I know is that the last month has been a blur. She’s been confused. She’s been totally lucid. She’s been in denial. And she’s been lovely, as usual.

Not four months ago, her only daughter, Lisa, passed away at 40. She literally JUST given birth to a sweet baby boy named Sammy. So Susie took on Sammy, as well as Lisa’s other child, (who just turned 10), Damon. Damon also has autism by the way.

I suppose I should also mention that Damon and Sammy’s father could not live without Lisa – took her death pretty hard – and a week before my aunt collapsed and entered hospice, he also died.

And so today, Damon and Sammy, over the past four months, have lost Mom, Dad, and Nana – who was really their entire world. They are currently in the Alabama (Tuscaloosa) foster care system.

Susie has been taking care of Damon since he was born. She actually adopted him from the get-go, and Sammy too was/is (I don’t know – WAS) in her legal guardianship as well. My cousin and her husband, though the nicest people you’ve probably have ever met, struggled with addiction for many years. Luckily, Lisa stayed clean throughout her pregnancy with Sammy. He is a strong, healthy boy – and honestly, he’s not going to remember much of what has happened over the last few months. Anyway – they were never going to get legal custody of either kid because of their antics.

Now Damon… He’s the cutest kid. Everybody says that about their own family, but I swear, spend five minutes with him and you’ll be laughing and crying at the same time because  he’s so fucking, hysterically cute!

That poor kid, Jesus Christ!

Well, can you believe this? My brother is going to adopt these boys.

It’s going to take a little bit of time because the laws are whack, and bureaucracy is like a bag of shit on fire under your nose, but everything is going as fast as humanly possible, and we should have these kids here within three months, maybe sooner.

With all the death we (my brother and I) have experienced over the past few years, finally something beautiful comes with it.

#cancersucks   #adoption   #death   #autism

Sad, Frustrated, Angry, Horrified, Worried, and Freaked Out

Ayin EsLeave a comment

My Aunt Susie is still hanging on! The doctor decided to try five radiation treatments since there were some other medications that seemed to be working somewhat when she was still in the hospital, in hopes it would make her more lucid, specifically about the children. There’s been a whole dilemma about the boys. Now, doctors at hospices do not usually “treat” their patients, but we have some extenuating circumstances here.

I wasn’t going to blog about this, but here I go. It’s one of those stories that no one would ever believe if it weren’t true, so I’m just going to start at the beginning.

My mother only had/has one sibling, my Aunt Susan. My dad was an orphan and the youngest – by far – in his family, and he was born before the Great Depression, so everyone is dead. My point? Susie was really “it.”

She had two kids, my two cousins, Allan and Lisa. I only have one sibling too, my brother Mike. Allan was a little older than Mike; Lisa was a little younger than I.

Allan became estranged from the family. No one knows why, but it’s been well over 20 years.

My aunt adopted one of Lisa’s children who is autistic. He is nine. Lisa and her husband could not take care of him.

They recently had another son a few months ago, but if you have been reading my blog posts, Lisa just died at the end of December, and her husband died a couple of weeks ago.

Susie has been taking care of the baby and the nine year old, even though she had been diagnosed with breast cancer last year and has recently gone through multiple rounds of chemotherapy, and she’s 70!

My brother and I were just out there (Tuscaloosa, Alabama) in November, before Lisa had the baby, and Susie was in remission, but the Wednesday before last, she collapsed. The cancer came back and mastisized all over her brain. The doctors gave her about a week to live.

On that same day, the Department of Human Resources took the boys and called me about where to place them. I gave them my brother’s contact info, but they never contacted him. They told me they were going to have an “emergency hearing” in less than 48 hours, and we were told that a family friend would go to this hearing and take the kids until we could figure out what to do.

But this family friend did not go to the hearing and the boys were placed in a long-term foster family. Now my brother is fighting to get custody. All of this because we could not act fast enough, and because we had no idea that this family friend didn’t go to the hearing.

The state of Alabama won’t do much because they say that we are five steps of kinship away from these kids and they only allow for four (how they figure it that way, I’m not sure. I thought I was a pretty good genealogist too.), otherwise they would work on an interstate guardianship right away. Instead, they are making my brother’s family go through an intensive home study, adoption process that could take up to eight months. Meanwhile, the kids are staying with strangers in a foster home. Our highly autistic nine year old cousin has to go to a completely different school, he is off his routine, and he has no family around. He just lost both his parents and is about to lose his Nana!

The little family I have left is a little bit sad, frustrated, angry, horrified, worried and freaked out.

From a Distance

Ayin EsLeave a comment

So the past few days I’ve been on the fence – do I go to Tuscaloosa? Do I not?. I’m confused.

As it stands now, there’s quite a few people coming in to see my Aunt Susie at the hospice facility. It sounds like a wonderful place.

I don’t know, if you’re wondering why I haven’t been writing in my blog – especially since I have this great Kickstarter Campaign happening, it’s because I really don’t know what to say at the moment. It doesn’t mean I’m not excited about my project. I totally am! I’m just also dealing with this thing with my aunt too, and I don’t feel much like writing to anybody, if that makes sense.

You know when you just want to be alone with your thoughts? I’m usually so up for sharing mine, but just not right now. Not about what I’m feeling right now. Not tonight, in this moment.

Lately, I have been just diving, no, burying myself in tasks so I don’t have to think about it. I built this rock garden over the last week in my backyard:

rockgardenside

It looks better from above:

rockgarden

Don’t be too impressed. I had help:

gemmaoutback

But between you and me – and don’t tell her this – she really wasn’t much help at all. In fact, there were times she even managed to slow down the entire operation! The job took about a week. Good thing I wasn’t on it every day. It was just something I was doing to calm my nerves, and it super worked. I just don’t have the room in my yard to keep building rock gardens.

Whatever the case, when I was finished with this one, I felt very accomplished, even though I kept chipping away at this thing in my pajamas, so please excuse how frumpily floppy I appear here.

accomplished

I’ve also been building the ExodusJoshuaTree.com website, but I can’t show that to you yet. It’s pretty simple and straight forward, and really not much to it (now that I’m finally coding it), but it just took a long time to design it. I got picky, then not so picky, got some opinions, got a little sad, tried again, liked it better, started hating it, started over again, changed it a lot, then changed it a little, started seeing monkeys… You know. The usual.

So, I’m still tweaking it a little …I think.

My Kickstarter is 36% funded with about 25 days to go! Pretty good, eh? Although, I was getting pledges like mad the first couple days, and now, none the last couple days. NONE! Not even a pledge for a postcard. What’s up? What do I need to do?

First of all, I probably need to post MUCH better pictures of myself. Okay, okay, I will! I promise! I will look around for some and I will find some fashion shots that will blow your socks off. Will that do it? I’ll try it.

 

 

Blah Blah Blah

Ayin Es1 Comment

I’ve been setting up the picklebird site again. Just a simple Word Press blog. Very bare bones.

The bottom line is that I need to start selling off my art collection, or at least some of it. Now, when I say that, that doesn’t mean art by me. It means art by other artists. I just wanted to make that clear.

We not only don’t have the room for it, but it’s time to raise funds, simplify our lives, and start preparing for the End of Days. …not really on that last part. Or actually, if you thought I was serious, keep thinking that. You’re quite the character.

I’ll most likely be auctioning things off on Ebay under the picklebird name, but rest assured, I’ll be telling you all about it on my blog here too.

So I finished the layout for my book in Adobe InDesign! I know how to work it, and I know how to work Illustrator. What a feat that was. I’m no pro ar anything, but I basically know both programs now, InDesign more than Illustrator of course, but hey, I’m damn proud of myself for picking up two new skill sets. Do you think someone would hire me? A 45 year-old artist with great writing skills but needs to go to the bathroom every five minutes, needs several naps a day, requires two hands to lift a coffee mug to her mouth, and cries after every one of her 15 panic attacks per day? I only get overwhelmed if you give me two tasks at a time. It’s not so bad. My social anxiety only kicks in when I have to talk to an actual person and the pain in my legs, hips and back only persists for the hours I am actually awake. I think I can easily get a job.

My favorite thing is when people think I don’t have a job.

“Oh you’re an artist? I would love to have free time all day.”

“Since you’re not doing anything, can you run to the store for me?”

“You’re so lucky you get to dabble in paint all day.”

I also love it when people say, “There’s no such thing as a ‘self-taught’ artist.”

People say that! I hear it all the time. It comes from other artists, mostly artists that went to school. They are very adamant about it too.

“You learned from somewhere. A book, a video, from looking at a painting. Society.” They think it’s so far-fetched!

What if I bought or stole some art supplies and just tried it out? What if I kept doing that until I seemed to make it work out? Good Golly! I must be some kind of magic genius!

“The paint taught you!, not yourself! How dare you take credit for what the art supplies obviously taught you! You are anti-teacher.”

Anyway, it goes on and on. Sometimes it’s almost that ridiculous.

I finished this little painting finally. I named it, Runaway Slinkies:

runawayslinkies

There was more I was going to say, but now I forgot.

Happy February.

Just Words

Ayin EsLeave a comment

Just words today. Again. No pretty pictures. Just cerebral ramblings from a mixed up little woman child.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on a giant learning curve, all because of this book, but it’s totally worth it. These are all things I have to learn anyway. I’m learning both Adobe Illustrator, and InDesign at the same time. And these are both major programs with some difficulty involved. You can’t just learn these things overnight, but I am doing the fastest tutorials available in order to get the hang of it. That way I can at least be able to accomplish what I need to for this damn book. I have 30-day trials on both programs, so that is part of the urgency, not that it’s all that urgent really. I can always pay for a subscription for a month or two, until I get the book squared.

This damn book. This damn book alright. I know what you’re thinking. Why do I do these things if they cause me so much grief? I must like to put myself through it. I must be some sort of masochist, right?

Yes, that’s right. I do like it. I like the challenge. I revel in the fight I suppose. When I have a mind to do something, to get something done, I want to do it. I will do it. Sometimes it is easy. Paintings are easy. Sometimes books can be easy. Usually, my books are ambitious. This one is really not as ambitious as some others I have done. Not really. Although, perhaps I could have made a few original books of 60 drawings by now. Heh. But not 30 books. That I know from experience.

The truth is, I am excited about it more than I am stressed. I just love to complain. It’s in my blood.

Speaking of which, I have had the flu for over two weeks now. It acts as a smoldering fire, the embers burning inside my pajamas. It doesn’t seem to stop. I meant to go to the reception of the book show I am in, down at Otis on Saturday night, but I just didn’t feel good. The show is incredible actually. I’m showing with Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Kim Abeles, Chris Burden, Laura Owens, Niki de Saint Phalle, Paul McCarthy, Annie Sprinkle, Bruce Nauman, and Kara Walker! Plus so many more incredible and major book artists. Too many to name (I was just doing a little name dropping there, please forgive me).

I should also mention that my book, Today’s Quandary. got picked up by Printed Matter. Woop.

So, there is nothing more comforting than mediating in the sun. It gives me the warm fuzzies. I’m not even allowed in the sun (I’m allergic because of some medication I take), but it is so nice to feel it just a little bit in the morning. To tell the truth, it’s the closest I have ever felt to feeling like a little baby being cradled and safe in someone’s mothering arms. Whose, I’m not sure, but it sure feels nice.

After I get my fix on from that, I sit in my studio, just barely shadowed from the sun. There’s about a three foot band of chocolate brown on the pavement past the large threshold of my rubber studio floor, that is the garage. Gemma, my little dog lays on the cement just past that shadow to get a suntan. She’s always watching what I’m doing like it’s the most interesting thing on Earth.

I was going to write a whole thing about what I’m going to do when I get out into the desert, but I guess I will save that for later. I can’t wait until I get there, but I’m going to have to raise the funds to do it. I’ll have to get on the horn with that as a next project sooner than later.