While I was in the breakroom this morning, The Red Phone started ringing!
Gah!
I almost jumped out of my shoes. I stared at it in confusion and disbelief, much like how people respond to a ringing payphone. I wavered over whether or not to answer it. After about seven rings, it stopped.
Was this a matter of national importance? Or simply one of those “the warranty on your car has expired…” call ‘bots? We may never know.
I guess the phone works now.
So there I was, working through some writing exercises, trying to get the old mind working. Things were going decently well, I guess. The “Describe ten things you see right at this moment” went fine. “Describe the street you grew up on” was a pretty good lesson in adjectives.
The juices were flowing, things were happening.
And then this happened: Describe a color in one word
What. The?
I don’t know….maybe I’m just tired but this writing exercise hit me all wrong. It flipped the snarky switch.
The first color I could think of was yellow.
One word to describe yellow? Pee.
There. Done.
Red. How about one word for that? Hmm…let me dig deep.
Blood.
Green?
Snot.
Blue?
Bruise.
Orange?
Is it wrong that the only orange thing I can think of is an orange?
Purple?
Yeah, you know what? This is a stupid exercise. I’m moving on….
(I started this post yesterday and intended for it to be posted yesterday…. *sigh* The best laid plans of Mice and Karen…and things like that…..)
Here it is Monday and I’m at a standstill for blog ideas. Mondays seem to be ripe for hitting that mental gridlock, so in an effort to break loose, I went back to the Unconscious Mutterings word association well for this week.
That’s right, I’m free associatin’ again. Here’s hoping it breaks loose the cement in my creative brain.
Read on:
_________________________
Ok, good. The randomness is helping. Randomness is a good thing.
And with that…back to work!
Image found in several locations on the net, but unable to find attribution. Will remove or provide attribution details at the request of the owner.
Today I went to a workshop to teach me how to properly measure, cut, mat and frame a photo. The end result of the workshop was to be a gallery quality framed photo ready to be hung in an art show coming up in May.
I participated in this workshop last year but was so confused by the process (the volunteer showing me the instructor’s method knew what she was doing, but not how to adequately teach it) that I vowed to pay close attention this year so I could both get it right for the gallery show and be able to cut mats and frame my prints at home.
Ok, so I showed up at the workshop, took possession of my mat board, went to station #1 and got to work.
The instructions said: “measure your image, not the paper it’s printed on but the actual image, and write those numbers in the center of your mat.”
Ok. Fair enough. I measured.
My image came out to be 9 11/16 by 8
So I wrote that down.
Step two said “subtract the larger number from twenty and the smaller number from 16”
(we’re using standard 16 x 20 frames)
So ok.
16 minus 8 equals 8. Perfect. That’s the easy one.
20 minus 9 11/16.
Um.
Uhhhhh.
Did I ever mention that I suck at math?
Ok, I was bound and determined not to screw this up.
Might I also mention that I think that our standard measuring units…an inch divided into sixteen units, is really dumb? When I craft, I use centimeters for measuring. The 10 based system makes freaking sense!
Determined not to be outsmarted, I wrote on my mat:
19 16/16 minus 9 11/16 and then I worked that out equals: 10 5/16
Well I gotta tell you, I was feeling p-r-e-t-t-y darn good about myself right then.
Then the next step said: “Divide each number by 2”
*sigh*
Okay. 8 divided by 2 equals 4. Rock on!
10 5/16 divided by 2 equals…..well it equals a string of curse words that I’ll refrain from repeating.
So I paused. I hemmed. I hawed. I considered calling The Good Man who is really good at math.
I considered converting it to decimals and using my calculator. But that doesn’t help…I still needed to know how many of those stupid little 16th hashmarks on the ruler were required to cut my mat to the proper size.
This is not about expressing the math correctly, it’s about counting 16th marks on a ding dang ruler!
So…I wrote on my mat: 10 5/16 divided by 2 equals: 5 2.5/16
Yes, I know that you can’t put decimals in your fraction. I just don’t care. This works for me. I can count two and a half 16th marks on the ruler and mark ’em off and make a cut.
It was about this time my instructor came over. “Let me see what you’re doing” she said.
She looked over my shoulder and saw my mash up of decimals and fractions. Then she rolled her eyes. Then she said “oh…make it 3/16ths!”
Then she did what my dad used to do when he’d assigned me a task but was exasperated by how I completed the job. She took the tools out of my hands, re-measured my print, marked the coordinates and cut my mat.
Hey, no problem here. She is the curator of the art show and she has to approve all prints for show. I know she’s not going to have a single problem with how my mat looks….
Heh.
I still say there is nothing wrong with my 2.5/16 fraction. I know exactly what it means and my mat would have been measured fine. Cutting it correctly? That’s a whole other story.
Through the course of my life, I look back and with the clarity of hindsight and find those moments that formed my foundation. Lessons with impact that linger in my memory and shape my days.
Today, when I navigated over to my once a week Theme Thursday site, I saw that the word this week is: Face.
Well, this left me stumped. I tucked the word into one of the creases in my brain and thought about it for a while. This is when some of the best ideas hit me, when I’ve planted a seed then forget about it. Something worthwhile often blooms.
What happened is that I had a memory. Just a flash, but enough to remind me.
I was eight, maybe? Perhaps actually younger. I was wearing a black leotard and pink tights. I had ballet class to attend in an hour or two, and so I was ready to go.
While waiting, I was doing what kids do…fiddling around with stuff. I’d somehow acquired a rubber band and that had captured my interest. *sproing, sproing*
I played it like a guitar, stretching and loosening it to get better notes.
I used it like a slingshot to send balls of paper zipping through the sky.
I wrapped it around my thumb, took it off, wrapped it around again.
Then, for some reason I can’t quite explain, I wrapped the rubber band around the end of my nose. Unwrapped it. Wrapped it again, tighter this time. It didn’t hurt and felt sort of weird so I went and looked in the mirror. Laughed, then left it on my nose and walked around.
After a while, I heard my mom calling, it was time to get in the car. I took the rubber band off my nose, left it on my desk, got my stuff and headed out to the car and climbed in.
My mom, with an eagle eye for such things, asked “what happened to your nose?”
I was like, “what?” and touched my nose. All seemed well.
Mom made me look in the visor mirror. Seems that rubber band had left a bruise on the end of my nose. A dark blue bruise in a perfect circle.
Yay!
So needless to say, the gig was up. I had to explain what I’d done. (confession is good for the soul….or so the parish priest used to tell me.)
My mom gave me one of those looks a parent gives a child when they confess to something like wrapping a rubber band around their nose. Then she gave me a stern lecture. She wasn’t mad. But she had something very firm to impress upon me.
I don’t remember the exact text of what she said, but the gist was….don’t mess with your face. If you are going to monkey around like that with a rubber band, use your elbow or your toe , but not your face. Your face is the first thing people see when they meet you. That’s where people form their first impression. And do you really want the first impression to be a big dark blotch on the end of your nose?
She also warned me that the girls at dance class would likely tease me. I thought “no way, they won’t care.” Well, they cared. They cared a lot. Those snotty girls made comments. And pointed and laughed. And made fun of me mercilessly.
They made fun of me a lot anyway because they were all thin and lithe and had visions of ballet careers in their minds. I was the opposite of thin and lithe and had visions of grilled cheese sandwiches in my mind.
You picking up what I’m putting down?
So I thought about what my mom had said. I initially resisted what she said when the “talking to” came down, but later on, I knew she was right.
Damnit.
The advice stuck with me, and I’ve stuck with it.
So don’t monkey around with your face. For me, that extends to lip tucks and eye brow lifts and injections of all kinds. My face is my calling card, and as it ages, it tells my story.
