Sometimes

We finally got out of the house tonight, leaving Gray Kitty in his dog crate. Saba, of course, thinks that having Gray Kitty in a dog crate is a grand idea and maybe a permanent solution to the Gray Kitty problem. Little does she know that it's only five or so more weeks until he has the run of the house again.

Gray Kitty is getting bored without his drugs. But it's keeping him from scratching at his sutures, since now it hurts him to do so. He's still not drinking water (we've taken to giving him the water drained from cans of no-salt tuna) but he is eating fairly regularly.

So, yes, we got out of the house to go to a (shitty) yoga class at the Y with Judi. Judi and I bailed halfway through the class and went upstairs to get on some treadmills. Dave stuck out the hour and said the class got easier about five minutes after we left. I wasn't in it for an easy class, but I thought the instructor sucked. C'est la vie.

After, we hit Bob's drive-through window for a chili dog fix for me and Frito pie for Dave. It's better if the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing when it comes to the gym and fast food.

I've been spending part of my day under my Happy Lamp. It's a good place to read. I Kindled a bunch of books (thanks for the gift certificate, Mom!), one of which is by Chelsea Handler. I must be getting old, because I am not really into her tales of drinking and wanton sex. I assumed it was going to be funny, but that was a wrong assumption on my part. The strange thing is she's not a bad writer (or she had a great editor, but I'm willing to give her credit). She knows how to tell a story and it's not as torturous as some of the celebrity autobiographies I've been reading recently. (Yes, I was an English major. Yes, I've read all of Shakespeare's plays. Yes, my favorite writer is Ernest Hemingway. Yes, I am addicted to celebrity autobiographies. All of those things are true.)

So in addition to Handler's book, I've also recently read Cybill Shepherd's book Cybill Disobedience which is very adeptly ghost written so as to make her seem almost likeable. (Probably wasn't an easy task, although the vast majority of celebrities are adroit enough to hide their unlikeable parts--Sean Penn being the exception that proves the rule.)

The other books I've Kindled are mainly housekeeping and cook books written around the turn of last century and stretching into the years just preceding and just beginning World War I. I love that kind of arcane knowledge. Did you know, for example, that just before WWI 60% of housewives baked their own bread? (That is a government statistic, so you can trust it.) Did you know that boiling water will get fruit stains out of clothing? Did you know that rotten stone can be used to shine copper pots?

Anyway, it's good reading to have when I'm sitting under my Happy Lamp.

Whatever

Well yes, I've been kind of consumed by caring for Gray Kitty, who is still crated but who is (thankfully) off the opiate pain medication that he was on immediately after his surgery. He's doing fairly well, considering. We did run him up to the vet yesterday because Dave was worried that he was not eating or drinking enough and might be getting dehydrated. They gave him an anti-nausea drug and one to stimulate appetite and some fluids and so he's eaten better today than in previous days. 

In other, non-kitty news:

Well, ha. There really is no non-kitty news. I haven't been to the gym since last Thursday. I haven't been to the studio since last Thursday. I did go out and sit in the sun for fifteen minutes today, which was enough time to turn parts of me bright red.

Oh, and yes, I've been using my Happy Lamp for fifteen to thirty minutes a day. It seems to help actually.  I'm feeling more energetic during the day and I'm sleeping better at night. I don't care if it's just a placebo effect either.

Whatever it takes, you know?

Home Again, Home Again.

Well, the little Gray Kitty is back home, minus his penis and testicles, with a re-routed urethra. He's in a lot of pain, of course, but is still putting on a brave face. Poor thing. His back end looks like hamburger sewn together. It's not a pretty picture, I know. Sorry.  He's facing a six week recovery time, minimum, three weeks of it in a large dog crate to keep him isolated. We're doing our best to keep him medicated, fed, watered, and loved. Ah, our poor little Gray Kitty.

I've been so incredibly stressed out over him that I've basically eaten our entire refrigerator. I've got to think of a new way to deal with stress than entire pizzas, green chile cheeseburgers, fries, and brownies. Those don't really help in the long run. Also not helping: Feeling tied to home in case something happens with this little guy. I did make it out to the gym early on Thursday, but that meant that Dave took the morning off from work to stay with him. Not a great solution.

So, hopefully this is a new beginning.

Gray Kitty Update

Dave took this picture a few hours before Gray Kitty went into surgery.  Of course there are tubes everywhere (one catheter into his bladder, one IV fluids) and that damn collar, which he's going to have to get used to because he'll be wearing it for the next three weeks or so.



It'll be awhile before he looks this good again, but he made it through just fine! We'll probably bring him home tomorrow, as long as everything looks good.

Little Gray Kitty's Lament

Well this little repeat offender is back in the animal hospital, scheduled for surgery tomorrow. Sigh.

I'm incredibly anxious about it, but it's the last straw, the only option besides continuing to take him to the emergency room whenever he has an obstructed urethra. Since today was the third time in two weeks that he's been to the emergency room, the vets suggested (yet again) that we go ahead and take the surgical option. Surgery will reroute his urethra and widen it. It's major surgery, so I'm pretty worried.

I'm sure it will be fine, though. Right?

Little Happy Light Energy Lamp

My god, am I happy January is over.

It doesn't mean our troubles are over--Dave has come down with something that's camping out in his lungs, and Dave's mother fell down and broke her knee on Monday and I'm sure there'll be fall out from that, and my own mother is still not well, and there is still some dental work to be seen to for both me and Saba in February, and I'm sure Gray Kitty is going to need some follow up work up to and including surgery perhaps, and--

I'm tired. And I'm stressed. 

This morning I sat under my happy light for the prescribed ten minutes of preliminary happy light time. (It's a precaution the manufacturer suggests before starting in with the full 30 to 60 minutes of light to make sure--what?--that you don't go insane or burn out your eyeballs or something?) I didn't feel much different after, except that the light was closer to the right side of my head, just slightly, and when I turned off the light after ten minutes, it felt like my right eyeball had dilated (I checked, it hadn't) and there was a strange feeling--like, almost like I have a headache on that side, but there is no headache (if that makes any sense).  It didn't magically make me happy or even less stressed really. But maybe I'll give it time.

It's strange: Years ago, a doctor put me on an antidepressant. I took it for a year and I never felt any different (except for the feeling that I had been wrapped up in half a dozen quilts after having any and all sexual urges removed from my psyche), but everyone around me thought I was different. After I stopped taking the antidepressant, I thought: Why did I not feel any different? Well I mean I didn't feel depressed, but I didn't feel anything else either. Was that feeling, I wondered, what happiness is supposed to feel like?

Reflecting on that time (and it's been over a decade since then) made me realize that perhaps the antidepressant had just lifted the depression but that I was still responsible for putting happiness there in its place. And I have absolutely no idea what that is supposed to be like, that thing, happiness. I don't think everyone is like that, but I am, and it's a thing I've decided to live with.


Ah, just writing that is depressing. I'm not depressed, I mean, but I may be asking for my money back from the happy light company. That damned happy light!

(The thing is, by the way, actually called "Happy Light Energy Lamp" which is a little taste of what life is going to be like when we start having to learn Chinese, all of us, to please our future Chinese overlords. In fact, I think I may name my one government sanctioned child after the Happy Light Energy Lamp. Little Happy Light Energy Lamp Garcia-Lee has a nice ring to it, don't you think?)

Here's another quick story from my post-antidepressant time (maybe I've told this one before, but it's worth telling again):

Maybe a year after I stopped taking the antidepressants, I decided I wanted to try them again. I had a different doctor by then and when I told her my previous dosage, she kind of scoffed and said that that wasn't even a "therapeutic dosage." Since it hadn't felt like much was happening with the previous dosage anyway, I told her I'd be willing to start at what she felt would be a therapeutic dosage. I filled the prescription (same antidepressant, higher dosage) and went home and took one. About an hour later, I found myself sitting naked in the bathtub, just letting the water run through my fingers as I watched. I'm high, I thought. I'm stoned out of my mind on this antidepressant.

Yes, that's what it was, that prior year. It was a year of being low-grade stoned all the time.  Kind of like high school, but with more responsibility. Anyway, I stopped taking the antidepressant then and haven't taken one since.

Just Some Monday Things

Well, little Gray Kitty is home from the emergency vet--again. He went in on Friday night/Saturday morning because he was blocked up again and we got to pick him up today. We brought him home even though the vet suggested that we let him stay another night, but I thought it would be a good idea to have him come home and have some normalcy in his life. He's on so many meds that we can't let him go outdoors which is frustrating for him, but that's just the way it's going to be for now. Part of that frustration is that he goes to the bathroom outside and when he's not allowed outside, I think he holds it in and is uncomfortable. Anyway, if I need to take him back to the vet in an hour, fine, I'll do it. But at least he got to come home for a little while and de-stress from being in the 24-hour, constantly stimulating environment at the hospital.

Of course, Saba hates that he's back. (I think she thought she was free of him once and for all this last time.) She's a bully and tries to lay claim to all the spaces in our little casita and she hisses and spits at him constantly. It's pretty pathetic, but she's a leopard whose spots are probably not going to change any time soon. It's hard to reason with a cat like that, not that I'd even try at this point.

In other good news: My vertigo is almost completely gone. I'm still doing the exercises each day just because, hoping it doesn't come back.

In more neutral news: I've had a plateau week with the diet. Partly it's because I'm a stress eater and between Gray Kitty and vertigo, there's been plenty of stress. Partly it's that with the vertigo, I haven't wanted to go to the gym and work out. (We're going tomorrow for the first time in ten days.)

Good news: I heard from one of my old Tokyo co-workers from The Kaisha. He's an Aussie originally but now lives in London with his Japanese wife. He wrote to wish me a happy new year and to suggest a book and to ask about the election news from the US, which he says leads the news in London almost every night. Isn't that awful? I like to think that Newt and Mittens are America's little dirty secrets, but no, apparently they're making us look pitiful on an international scale, Newt probably more than Mittens. That's just my opinion, of course.

Let's see what else?

I watched a documentary last night called Protagonist from a filmmaker, Jessica Yu, whose work I think is amazing. She did another documentary I love called In the Realm of the Unreal about the artist Henry Darger (whose work we subsequently went to see at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in New York City the last time we were there). She's just awesome at what she does.

I also watched Sunday's episode of Downton Abbey, which had me in tears the whole time. I have to keep reminding myself when I start to tear up at any kind of movie or television show that these are actors paid to manipulate my emotions. That helps me either reign it in or decide to go ahead and let go and embrace the (potentially) cathartic effects. With Downton Abbey, I just go ahead and sob my way though it.

I've also been reading a lot. I got on an autobiography jag and Kindled a bunch of stuff, including the autobiographies of the actresses who played Nellie Olson and Laura Ingalls on the Little House on the Prairie television show. Both are very interesting, but I especially like the Nellie actress (Alison Arngrim) bio. She's pretty funny and describes with great humor what it was like to play a well-known television villain. (She was once pushed down by some school girls who wanted to get back at her for something she had done to Laura on TV.) The other interesting tidbits I gleaned from the bios had to do with Michael Landon, who apparently was very, very short and wore super high lifts in his boots and never wore underwear and drank constantly. (What more could you ask from a father figure?)

Ah, it's late now. I'm supposed to stay up tonight to monitor Gray Kitty's urine output. A worthy job if I ever held one.                          

Saturday

Here are some mugs:



I went back to the studio yesterday for the first time in a week. I actually got a lot done despite not feeling well.

I wasn't feeling well partly because Dave and I had to take Gray Kitty back the emergency room last night because he wasn't able to use the litter box. That was about 4:00 in the morning, but I had been up since 1:30. We were at the emergency room until 5:00 (Gray Kitty got to stay and get a catheter and he won't come home until today) but when we came home I couldn't sleep. I finally fell asleep around 9:00. Dave got up to go visit Gray Kitty at 11:00 and woke me up when he got home around noon. So I got about five hours of sleep, which could seem like a lot, but it was piled on a lot of stress.

My stress level has been through the roof, as has my blood pressure. I'm going to have to find a doctor and get some medication to bring it down. I don't like medication, but I don't like feeling like crap all the time even more.

I also ordered a "happy light" to sit under. It's one of those 6000 lumen lights that's supposed to help with winter blahs. Maybe sitting under it every day will help with some of the stress. Can't hurt anyway.

So, yes, the studio. I went and was glad I did. I threw three vases, cleaned up some mugs (those in the picture above) and put them on the shelf to be bisqued. I also got in a lot of social time, which was good. I have been pretty isolated at home recently.

Good Things

After my whinge yesterday about the vertigo, I started something called the Epley procedure that is actually helping. The Epley procedure is a series of exercises that I do three times a day that is supposed to guide the wayward inner ear particles that cause dizziness out of my inner ear and into another part of my ear where they are more easily gotten rid of. That's a mouthful, but the point is that they seem to help. I'm supposed to keep them up until I go 24 hours without any vertigo. The article in the neurology journal where I found them suggests that the procedure has a 95% success rate. Those are pretty good odds.

In other good news, Dave and I had our sewing class last week. It was a one-time basic introduction class where we learned how to disassemble and clean and reassemble a sewing machine and how to sew basic stitches and things like buttonholes.



Both Dave and I have used sewing machines before, but it's been many years since either of us has sewn anything so I thought it'd be a good class to try.



We got to sew on little scraps of fabric.



At the end of the class, I signed up for another class in February and bought fabric and a pattern. This is the fabric I bought:



The darker fabric is from Japan. I love it!



And this is what I'll be sewing, something called a spice market tote:



The dark fabric will be on the outside and the lighter fabric will be on the inside. I think it'll look pretty cool when it's finished.

In other news, here is a good downward trend:



I left off the labels. The y-axis is my weight. The x-axis is time. Each dot is my weekly weigh in. Each small box is a pound. Does that make sense? Anyway, the overall trend is downward, which is good. I've dropped 29 pounds since the last week of October!

And my final good thing is a picture of Saba getting her belly scratched:



She doesn't usually brook such nonsense.

And Then There's This Thing

I was in the urgent care center yesterday to see a doctor about this thing.

This thing started last Saturday when I woke up with a headache and nausea and dizziness. I assumed it was a migraine, so I skipped going to the studio and instead lay in bed all day. The headache lasted about six or eight hours and the nausea subsided for a time but the dizziness didn't go away. I felt fine as long as I held my head perfectly still, but when I stood up or turned my head, I would feel like the world was spinning around. I assumed I was dehydrated, so I loaded up on the fluids and it didn't help. I lay off the caffeine and it didn't help. I tried stretching out my shoulders and neck (they were tight and sore from a visit to the gym the day before) and it didn't help. That was Saturday. Sunday I got up and felt dizzy again. When I turned my head or looked up, it got worse. Monday, it was the same. Tuesday, the same.

I was getting pretty anxious about it. I didn't feel safe driving so I was kind of trapped in the house. I didn't feel like going anywhere anyway because whenever I moved I would feel dizzy and sometimes nauseous. The Brain is a well-known hypochondriac (already insisting that we had everything from a stroke to a brain tumor) so I avoided looking up my symptoms on the internet. Finally, after five days of feeling drunk, I asked Dave to take me to the doctor.

The doctor did an exam and diagnosed me with something called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). It's benign in the sense that it's not going to kill me, I imagine, and it mostly goes away on its own after a week or two (although from what I've read it tends to recur and some people suffer from it for years) and there are some effective treatments for it. The doctor gave me a prescription for an antihistamine that combats motion sickness, similar to Dramamine. I filled the prescription but I haven't taken it yet because I am a wimp about taking medications.

I actually feel a bit better today. Some of it is a lessening of symptoms (I can stand up without feeling like the world's spinning) and some of it is, I'm sure, a lessening of the anxiety that comes along with feeling like the world is never going to stop spinning.

A week or two of vertigo is probably not the worst thing that will ever happen to me, but it sucks anyway.

Shaved Pussy Cat

He looks a little demented in this photo, our little million dollar stray Gray Kitty. But he actually puts himself in this position because he likes to have his belly scratched. Yes, his belly is shaved. It's shaved because he had to have an ultrasound. He had to have an ultrasound because his urethra was blocked. It's not a good thing for a cat to have a blocked urethra, so he had to have a catheter and that meant an emergency vet visit and an overnight stay at the animal hospital. So, yes, our little million dollar stray kitty is home now, getting his little shaved belly scratched. And yes, it feels weird. The shaving also revealed little tiny pink kitty nipples on his belly, which are hilarious to me for some reason.

Words with Pictures

Here are the two little poopies I was sitting this past weekend.



Lester is on the left, Olive on the right. I used a treat to get them to sit still long enough to take their picture. Lester is completely fixated on the treat but Olive has one eye on the treat, one eye on me. (She's the smarter of the two, I'm convinced, but Lester is much sweeter and more dog-like, if that's a thing.)



Here they are collapsed on the floor for a little nap. They're little yin-yang pups, always in cahoots or tumbling around together or biting on each other.

Lunch, Etc.



I need to take some more interesting photos, but until that happens here is a picture of Tuesday's lunch (mini pita, olives, red onion, tomatoes, and hummus with flax seed oil on top). I love those mini pitas.



There was an interesting sunset at the studio this evening, too, but my new camera hasn't yet revealed to me how to take good pictures of sunsets. Someday.

No Pictures, Just Some Words

Have you been watching Downton Abbey on PBS? Because if you're not, you should be. I got sucked into it and ended up watching the whole first season on Netflix. Now I'm keeping up with the second season episodes as they air on the PBS website. It's an amazing show, pure soap opera, but classed up all British-like. 

Also recently Netflix'd: The first season of the new Sherlock Holmes. It's pretty good! I also saw the first three seasons of Breaking Bad. I resisted watching it for the longest time, but then ended up in some marathon viewing session of all that Netflix has and then buying the fourth season on Amazon. (Breaking Bad is filmed in and around Albuquerque and one of the potters at the studio worked on the crew during third and fourth season and he was so enthusiastic about it that I ended up watching.)

I've also just finished Frank Bruni's autobiography Born Round (short review: meh) which I picked up on the book exchange shelf at the Y.

Oh yeah: David, Judi and I all joined the Y together last week. Dave and I went to work out on Monday. Judi and I are going to work out tomorrow. I'll go again on Friday or Saturday with Dave. My initial fitness goals are very small: Just to build the habit up again to three times per week.

On the diet front: I dropped another two pounds last week. I'm getting a little complacent and need to tighten up on things like portion control and eating out. There were too many (three to be exact) Bob's Burger meals last week while Dave was out of town. Foot-long chile cheese dogs will be my undoing, mark my words.

And, oh yes, poor Dave had to go to Minnesota last week for business. Minnesota in the winter is no joke for someone who comes from the desert and is used to very mild winters. He actually took his heavier coat (still not that heavy), gloves and a hat, none of which he uses here in New Mexico.

Along with joining the Y, Dave and I are taking a sewing class on Thursday! It's a new year and we're setting out to learn some new skills for when the zombie apocalypse happens. Zombies need aprons and throw pillows, too, you know.

(Don't know where that zombie apocalypse thing came from. Maybe I dreamed it.)

I've also started another 100 Mug Challenge (which I mentioned about a week ago). It's different this time around than the last time I did it. This time around I'm a much more proficient thrower and handles don't scare me. It was nothing to get through the 34 I've done so far. I guess that means I probably need to think of a new challenge.

And lessee, Gray Kitty's UTI is back again, poor thing. We're giving him a pain reliever which makes it less painful for him to pee but which zonks him out a bit which means that he has to stay indoors when he's taking it which means that Saba is not happy. (The vet suggested that we try some kind of plug-in diffuser that diffuses cat phermones into their environment. It's supposed to calm them down so they don't fight so much, but all it's done so far is leak some sketchy liquid onto the bookshelves.)

I spent the weekend with the puppies next door. They are rapidly becoming less puppy-like but they still love to cuddle and have their belly scratched as they're falling asleep. I do have pictures but they're on my camera and they're very cute, but I'm too lazy to download and post them...

Yesterday

Do you know where your floss is?



Yesterday after I cleaned the bathroom, The Brain suggested that we assemble a group photo of all the floss and flossing-related paraphernalia we had. (There are eleven items in the photo, but only eight different things.)

We have a lot of floss.

I Blame Bob



I had lunch with my aunt Char yesterday at Bob's Burgers. Bob is to blame for the plateau I've hit with the diet. Yesterday for lunch I had a Bob's taco burger combo meal with red chile-cheese fries and a diet Pepsi. Yesterday for dinner I had a Bob's foot-long chile dog with cheese and onions and red-chile cheese fries and a diet Pepsi.  Then I went home and lay around wondering how it was that my belly was so bloated.

Bob's is not only a huge commitment calorie-wise, it's also a huge commitment sodium-wise. I always wake up the day after a Bob's Burger Binge with elevated blood pressure and urine that resembles maple syrup, I'm so dehydrated.  But it's all worth it.

A few days ago I watched a documentary called Forks Over Knives which was all about the panacea that is veganism. I agree with much of it (eating animals and animal products and suffering from disease and obesity go hand in hand, I'm sure) and if I were a better person I'd be a vegan. But the way I see it, I actually don't eat very much meat for a meat eater. In fact, I'd guess that a fair chunk of my diet is in the vegan/vegetarian area, 80 percent or more, (that's because Dave is a vegetarian and I just follow along). The few times a month when I do eat meat, it's usually a burger when we eat out or a roasted chicken from the deli. I rarely as to border on never cook meat at home. I would like eventually to become a more committed plant eater, but that is Future Me talking. (The same Future Me who is in graduate school and reads more challenging novels.)

The Week

Dave has been out of town this week (he comes back tonight), so I've been spending a lot of time at the studio. I'm working on a new 100 mug challenge. The last one was over a year ago (!) if you can believe it. I've thrown and "handled" nine mugs in the last couple of days, which is pretty middling as far as mug production goes, but that's fine, you know. I'm okay with that for the moment.

I'll get some pictures up soon to show you.

Keep Looking At It

This is one of the most popular photos on my flickr account.



What is it?

It's a picture taken in Omiya station with a group of young men who were carrying the equipment for Japanese archery. (I spoke to them very briefly in my poor Japanese and they were delighted to explain what they were carrying and to have their picture taken with a group of us.)

Why is it popular? A couple of years ago, someone on a fencing (?) forum linked to it and ever since then, it gets a couple of hits a week from people searching for information on Japanese fencing.

Strange, no?

Some Potential

This is one of the dark clay pots with white slip and glazes. It has some potential, I think, this idea.



I did go by the studio yesterday and I got absolutely nothing done. I talked with one of the guys who works there and my aunt stopped by to put some of her mugs out to bisque. After a while, Dave texted to say he was getting out of work early and so I went to pick him up. We had dinner at Thai Vegan and came home.

Ugh, what a boring litany of days.

Years ago, when I was in love with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, I had a book that was his diary with a few annotations to explain who people were. I expected that it was going to be an exciting read, but it was tedious. Tedious. Tedious. It was things like, "traveled by carriage, rain, dinner at Salzberg" over at over, day in and day out. The tedium of days, even those of a genius.

I am not a genius, but I share that with genius, I guess. The tedium of most days. It hasn't felt like winter until recently. It's not the temperature, either (it was almost 60 degrees yesterday), but some sameness of days.

Becoming Human

It's early Friday morning. Early for me, I mean, just after 6:30. I've been up for about an hour. I dreamed about traveling last night, to China, to Mexico. I got up and fed the cats and made coffee.

Because we have so many mugs, there's always a decision to be made about which one to drink from. This morning I passed over a couple of mugs made by other potters and chose one of Dave's, one that he made during the 100 mug challenge that we did a year ago. Number 35, looks like, from what I can tell without tipping coffee out onto my keyboard. It's speckled buff clay with a shino glaze over it.

I haven't been in the studio since New Year's Day, five days ago. I know why I haven't been into the studio, I have to make a clean start of it since finishing glazing all but the dregs of my bisque. I don't want to. This is a first world problem.

This is another day.

The Offending

I was in the dentist's chair at 8:00 a.m., an ungodly hour if ever there was one.



I was back in the dentist's chair--a different dentist's chair--again at 2:00 p.m. That's when I snapped that photo of my tooth, the troublesome one.



(The troublesome tooth is the one on the far right hand side, the one that looks like a tooth and not like a Frankenstein-like screw screwed into my head. That's another nightmarish dental story for another time. But just as a little teaser: You see how the top of the screw seems to protrude into that cavity at the top? That cavity is my sinus. The way you get a screw to protrude into that cavity is to drill a hole into the bone then take a hammer and awl-like tool and hammer away until the floor of the sinus gives way. It's as unpleasant a process as it sounds.)

Today, both goddamned dentists did the same tests on my teeth. Both hammered away at it with little metal hammers. Both used freon-like material sprayed onto a cotton swab to test the cold sensitivity of the tooth. Both tests hurt like hell and turned my stomach. They do that to test...what? My ability to keep from strangling each of them maybe.

It might be a root canal situation, which makes me cringe. I've never had a root canal before and I was hoping to get through life without ever having had a root canal, but my tooth, it is not a happy tooth. For the moment, it's fine and we've all agreed to take a cautious approach, but...it may all go to hell sooner rather than later.

But nevermind--we have a reprieve, for the moment.

Glaze-a-thon 2012

Sunday was glaze day at the studio. I didn't glaze, of course, just having finished Glaze-a-palooza, but Dave, Lu Ann and Chris did. Here's Chris, glazing away like a little elf.



The fore pile of bowls is Dave's. (That's an awkward sentence, no? But I like its awkwardness, so I'm going to let it stand.)

The glaze-a-thon was interrupted by dinner at our new favorite restaurant, Thai Vegan, where we were given non-alcoholic champagne at the end of our meal. This was our toast:



To Melba!

(That's a Rocky Horror Picture Show joke, in case you didn't know, one of them anyway, the one that took hold when the theaters stopped letting you bring in actual toast.)

What other pics can I show you?

Here's Saba being cute:



She never rolls over onto her back, but I mean never. She held this pose while I took her picture, then attacked my hand when I tried to pet her. She's a wily one.

And I will be watching over these two little hounds soon:



That was in their puppy days, maybe three months ago. They're slightly bigger now, slightly better behaved, but still rambunctious.

Nearly Made It!

Here are a few of the year-end pots, informal pics taken with my new camera!

These pots are made from a a new kind of clay (new to me, anyway) that is very, very dark brown. I made a few pots, small ones, just to see how well the clay throws (it's really nice, actually), and to test various finishes on them.



This is the clay with white slip, carved away, and clear glaze sponged on. I like the shininess of the finished product.



This little pot is the same as above only without the sponged on clear layer. I like the matte-ness of it.



This is the same as above only instead of clear glaze, I sponged on a bit of watered down rutile (a mineral comprised mainly of titanium dioxide and iron). The orange cast works on this piece, but I wouldn't use it again.

These next two are pics of the same pot:



It's the same treatment, only I brushed various glazes over the white slip. The real test was the red liner glaze on the inside. Despite this clay's having a reputation for not getting along with glazes, and the red glaze being a bit of a problematic glaze in an of itself, the two worked very well together.



These two kind of remind me of Thing 2 and Thing 1 from The Cat in the Hat.



This is what remained when the dust settled after Glaze-a-palooza 2011. I nearly made it! There are just four pieces to carry me into 2012.



This is a group photo of about a third of what did get glazed during Glaze-a-palooza 2011.

Happy New Year!

Here is an entirely gratuitous picture of Saba, doing what I was doing when the new year pushed aside the old year:



Yes, I was sleeping. I actually woke up around 1:40 a.m., asked Dave what time it was, said happy new year, and got up and made a cup of coffee. He turned off his lamp and promptly fell asleep. And that is how new years goes when you are old, I guess.

And what about resolutions? Believe it or not I have a few:

Normally at the top of the list would be to drop some weight, but I started that off late last year, October something-th or other. (I'm terrible at remembering dates.) I've lost 25 pounds so far, only watching my diet (that is, with no exercise whatsoever). Some of those lost pounds were hard won--like the half-pound I lost the week of Christmas--but most of them were easy. (Hopefully that will remain the case now that the eating holidays--Halloween candy, Thanksgiving dinner/leftovers, Christmas cookies and tamales--are over!)

Anyway, so that weight loss thing is already covered, so I have to think of another resolution for the number one slot. And what I've come up with is to learn a new skill. Already though I'm taking the easy path: Dave gave me a gift certificate for Christmas to a place that offers sewing lessons. So I'm going to learn how to sew! Like, officially. Really though, I'm going to learn about sewing machines and how to use one properly. That is my real goal. Then I'm going to make you a special gift, a skirt with poodles on it! Won't that be fun?

The second thing I want to do in the new year is take an academic-type class. What though? I don't know. Maybe a writing class? Some literature class? That would be good, especially considering that the other one of my resolutions is to read more. I used to be a voracious reader. I used to tackle the big stuff, too. But ever since the internet came into my life in a big way, I've sort of stopped going after the heavy hitters. I read soft stuff on my kindle, yes (and I'm glad for it, too, because it allows me to read absolute garbage without anyone being able to see that I'm reading absolute garbage), but I want to get back to reading stuff that The Brain can chew on.

The fourth thing I want to do is to travel more. Dave and I talked about it tonight and we tentatively planned out a trip to San Francisco in late winter, a trip to New York in the spring, and a trip to London in early summer. That means getting passports in order as both of us are limping along on expired passports.

The fifth thing I want to do is to start to declutter with an even heavier hand. My gift to myself on my last birthday was permission to throw out any and everything. I have used it, but not enough.

The sixth thing I want to do is to focus on being better at relationships with family and friends.

I'm sure I'll add to this list as time goes on, but right now it's just before 7:00 a.m. on the first day of the first year and I think I might try to get in a post-breakfast nap.

Here is another picture of Saba though--and me, too:



Happy New Year!