Dark room stuff--gone

Our garage is stacked with "stuff" that we don't seem to be able to let go of. So yesterday was a big big day, because Tom gave away all of his dark room equipment to a student, a photographer.

Our "stuff" lies heavy on me. I picture our children cursing us when we're dead and gone and they have to do the clean up.

So I did a little lightness of being dance on my tippy toes when I saw it all disappear. I twirled.

It's snowing

Tom has his new three million dollar camera. The good thing is that I can get him to take any picture anytime. Like it was after midnight when I noticed it was snowing, and I said, "You need to take a picture of that," and out he went. He took it without a flash. It is a pretty cool camera.

I was not going to stay up past midnight, but here I am again. Today was day one of organizing my pantry and listening to the Brothers Karamazov, which is fine entertainment. I figure I'll be done about when that book ends.

Everything is beautiful at the ballet

This afternoon, I saw Ballet West's production of Swan Lake. I went with high expectations and was not disappointed. I loved the prologue that shows how Odette was cursed. Her captured sister swan dancers rise out of the mist on stage, arms and hands fluttering like wings. I don't think I've ever seen the corps so precise and so bird-like.

I hate a stumbling corps of dancing swans. I needn't have worried.

There were other stumbles in the afternoon that had nothing to do with the production. I arrived at "Will Call" where they didn't have my ticket. I pulled out my internet copy that Tom had printed for me, and the woman in the booth, said, "Oh, your ticket is for this evening at 7:30."

No!

The woman huffed and puffed with her superior who gave me a new ticket in box F, seat number 4 where I was cut off from one third of the left side of the stage and could see back stage on the right, including bare light bulbs. I could also see the heads of the orchestra members.

My original seat had a full view of the stage and was well above the orchestra pit.

Grumpy, grumpy, grumpy. Really grumpy.

And yet the production was so beautiful, the two-thirds of it I could see. It took me twenty minutes to decide that two-thirds was better than not seeing it at all, and that I could ignore the action back stage and the orchestra pit.

It was a good decision.

Strangely, the one aspect of the production I didn't like was the circular projection on the back wall of the stage of Prince Siegfried and Odette united in heaven at the end. Please. They martyr themselves to save others. We cry. That's why we go to Swan Lake--to see beautiful lovers parted in death--so we can cry our eyes out at the loss.

A resurrection in Swan Lake? A happy ending? That's just wrong.

For Ann

5 Things you can do with only a left hand:

1. Play Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major (Concerto pour la main gauche en re' majeur).

2. Practice toilet hygiene the way Muslim, Hindu and South East Asian People do.

3. Eat like the Europeans with the fork in the left hand.

4. Reach out with that one hand and pray that you can reach others for Jesus.

5. Take a road trip to Left Hand, West Virginia, just up the highway from Looney Road, and have your photo taken with the left hand shaped as West Virginia. Hold your left hand in front of you side ways, palm facing you, thumb pointed up and extend middle finger.

Dreaming about art

I've been thinking of art projects. One I found on Apartment Therapy where the guy had made modern art with paint chips he had gathered from various paint stores. Very cool. And I have a hankering to buy different colors of India Ink and try some faces on squared paper.

Don't you love the name India Ink?

And I still haven't dropped the idea of running a thick black line through the middle of my novel. It's not original, but I don't think it's been done with YA. As I write, I'm finding more justification for doing it. It would be meant to be read across the top for a chapter and then across the bottom. Near the end, when all actions and people come together at a wedding, the line would stop.

It would probably irritate readers, but I'm not your momma.

Colors and lines and print and head drawings and novels are all engaging me right now. Not bad for February.

And as long as we're on the subject . . .

If there's a person with the longest fingernails, then it stands to reason that there is also a person with the longest toenails. I assume it is not the same person. Look at all those trophies in the background. What do you think they're for?

The visuals for Ann Cannon's blog:

Ann wrote about this woman who grew her nails out for the Guinness Book of World Records. The idea made my skin crawl. Tonight I googled the nail lady and here she is in all her micabre glory. Even if I did absolutely nothing, I don't think I could grow my nails like this. They look like horns protruding from her fingers. Finger horns.