Paper mache face mask - reconstructive surgery

When I last showed you my paper mache mask, it was still pretty crooked here and there - larger cheek on one side, more sunken eye, no upper lip.... basically, his facial symmetry was a mess, so this weekend I did a little reconstructive surgery.  Last night in the kitchen, I applied scrunched up table napkins to the hollows of the face and then added my friend, Bounty paper towels, to smooth it all out.  While I was doing this, my huband passed through the kitchen on his way our of the garage.

"What are you doing?"  What was he getting at, exactly?  He's seen me up to my elbows in flour and water from before we even went on our first date.

"Making a mask."

"For what?"

"For the hell of it," I said.

"Ah, cause you've got to much free time to kill?"

"Yes, exactly, I have too much free time on my hands." 

When I was done, I put a load of laundry in the dryer, and put Mr. Mask on top.  In the winter, when it's dry enough in the house to crack your skin, this works really well, but in the fall, when it's raining like Noah is planning to take his ark out for another spin, it's not such an effective method. Mr. Mask was pretty much dry today, except for his rather large nose.  If you paint before your item is completely dry, you risk a cave in or worse, MOLD, so today I put him in the oven for a while on WARM with the door open.  I put the heat on for about 3 minutes, and then turned it off for about 10 to 15 minutes.  After about an hour there was much improvement.  I gave Mr. Mask a white base coat tonight, you know, with all the free time I have, and maybe tomorrow, after trick-or treating, I may begin his paint job. But you know, I don't like to fill up all my free time with too many activities, so it may have to wait till Tuesday night. 

Paper Mache Face Mask

In celebration of Halloween, I'm showing you a picture of a paper mache face mask I've been working on.  It looks a little flat from this angle, but it's not as flat as it looks. Looks a bit like a Stonehenge face, doesn't it? (It was not my intention.) It's been so damp outside I'm having a devil of a time getting it to dry. In this picture, it's still damp.  I last worked on this two days ago, and as of this morning, the cheeks were STILL not dry, so I put it on top of the dryer in the basement and dried a load of socks (I also have a dehumidifier down there, so I'm sure that helped.  Magically, this morning, it was dry.  I'm going to work some more on this over the weekend, and for the next one, I'm going to use a technique I saw on youtube - the guy covered a bunch of balloons of varying sizes and then after they were dry he cut them apart and had some very nicely rounded sections - even dupicates for opposing body parts, such as shoulders, or in this case, cheekbones. 

I'll keep you posted.   

Worry, Stress and a Crisis of Confidence

I don’t know for sure, but I’m betting I was a worrier from the day I was born… ‘When is my next meal coming? My diaper is wet!  Where’s mom?  Am I crying enough?  Am I crying too much?’  My worry and stress are circular things – each both causes and results in the other, and after the two of them do the dog-chasing-tail routine long enough, it almost invariable leads to a crisis of confidence.

Everyone has their moments of worry and stress but mine seem to be the creation clay of my personal nemesis, who aims her arrows with unfailing accuracy at my unique Achilles heels (yes, I have more than one) – no matter how miniscule.  I am, in short, my own harshest critic.  As a kid, I had looked forward to being because I thought I would finally have it all figured out.  Well, I am an adult, but I do NOT have it all figured out.  Still, I’m working on my nemesis.  We do battle at least a couple of times a week and I guess you could say I’m making slow, steady progress.   It’s just a fact, however, that there are those of us who punish ourselves for our failings more than society does, and then there are those of us you couldn’t beat the confidence out of with a big, wooden stick (…and there are those out there on whom I’d love to try out this theory).  I am convinced that strength of confidence is more nature than nurture. 

Why, if it’s not a huge chunk genetic, do I see my kids struggling through the same battles? Shouldn’t they at least have the advantage of starting with the confidence level that I’ve struggled so hard to achieve throughout my life?  I’ve been told by many people that I’m a calm, laid back sort of mom so I don’t think their struggles are a reaction to my demands.  They are so sensitive – their feelings are so easily hurt.  “Why didn’t I make the chorus, Mom?”  “Mom, I can’t spell in English, how am I going to spell in Italian?” I try to calm them down, and bolster them up.  I try to get them to see things as they really are, instead of how they look through in the harsh-critic mirror.  I'd prefer to don some armor and slash through armies for them like Joan of Arc, but all I can do is support their efforts and wait for their skins to toughen. 

It sure would make me feel better to beat one of those confident guys with a stick, though. 

Good Chores (vs. bad chores)

There are certain chores that are more fun than the others.  This weekend, my son discovered that driving the tractor is one of them.  We had a HUGE pile of logs in the backyard that needed to be split for use in the wood stove this winter, and this was the weekend we picked to split them.  Now, at first thought, you might be tempted to say that sitting on the couch watching reruns of The Real Houswives of New Jersey might be more fun than stacking a monstrous pile of wood, but if you did, you'd be wrong.  There is something pleasantly satisfying about seeing the woodshed go from empty to full in the space of an afternoon...  something pleasantly monotonous about splitting the wood...

loading it into the wagon on the back of the tractor...

...and driving the tractor around to the front of the house where you or someone else then unloads it and stacks it in the woodshed.  It is what I believe, and I know it is what my son believes as well.  How do I know this?

Because I heard him singing several rounds of "Home, Home on the Range" at the top of his lungs as he drove around back for another load.

Hope you weekend was a good one, too.

The return of the Halloween Idiot

So now that it's October, of course, I'm wondering, what should I be for Halloween?  Nevermind the kids - they like to dress up for Halloween, but they prefer to look through a catalogue and know exactly what their costumes are going to look like.  Me, I like to dream big, and dangerously.

Actually, I start obsessing about a costume some time during the summer.  I never actually start making one then cause I am a procrastinator at heart, but I do start scanning the horizons, looking for ideas that appeal to me.  Last year, I thought I might want to be Poison Ivy from the Batman franchise (Played by Uma Thurman in the movie...  I really wanted to make those crazy leaf eyebrows...) but now, the thought of wearing all green from top to bottom and possibly looking like the jolly green giant... I wore a green suit to school one day when I was teaching and one of my ninth graders said I looked like the jolly green giant...  Did I?  and more to the point, do I want to again? Anyway, that was one idea, and then I thought of Mother Nature. Somewhat timely with the hurricane, I thought, but then I run the very real risk of no one knowing what the heck I am.  Nah, I'll pass on that.

The other day I saw a commercial with a Chinese New Year Dragon costume in it, and I thought, hey, GREAT idea.  I could make a giant paper mache head, decorate it like crazy, and attach a long sheet with semi-circular wire forms on sticks to form the body, and it would look AWESOME.  The problems with that are: 1.  I need some extra people to hold up the body for it to function like a Chinese New Year Dragon, 2. paper mache = time consuming, 3. takes up lots of space.  I'm not ruling it out, though.  Wouldn't it be so cool?

Oh, then there's this other problem.  My husband wants us to be Sonny and Cher.  I don't want to be Sonny and Cher.  Of course, the first time he suggested this, I thought he wanted to be Cher, and he wanted me to be Sonny. I guess was thinking of a former boss of mine and his wife, that boss whom I credit for encouraging my Halloween idiocy, and if anyone reading this used to work with me, you know exactly who I'm referring to.  Anyway, no, my husband was thinking of a more conventional Sonny and Cher, but I still told him that I am not dressing up in those ghastly 70's outfits - no way.

So today I went to the fabric store for some inspiration.  I thought I'd check out the fabrics and see if anything spoke to me.  I saw some great stuff.  I always go for the textured fabrics like crushed velvet, brocade, and other 10.00 a yard plus fabrics.  Check them out:

At first when I saw these I was thinking of the dragon costume.  There was some nice gold panne there that I could have made scales out of, but that material is a real pain to work with - I've used it before.

I just love this fabric.  It almost makes me want to make some kind of Asian costume just so I can use it. 

Then I saw this little group, the colors of which are not done justice by my crappy photo...  too much red in the photo - maybe if I had the black swatch in the photo it would have turned out better...?

Just for the heck of it, I went over and started leafing through the pattern books (14.00 a pattern -YIKES!).  This one looked fun, although, I'm not sure exactly what she's supposed to be.  I noticed that none of them have titles...  I guess it's supposed to be left to your imagination what you are?  It goes with all the opulent fabric, though, doesn't it?  Looks like she's a covered up belly dancer. 

And then I saw a costume for Red Riding Hood and I thought, oh, that would be fun...  I could use the red crushed velvet for the cape, and when I got home later and googled pictures from the most recent movie, they showed her wearing an off-white and/or light blue dress - perfect - I can use that stuff I loved in the picture above (that should be about 60.00 worth of fabric !)  or I can use that black and red stuff...   I tried to pitch being a wolf to my husband. 

decisions, decisions...

Oh yeah, and I have to find a party to wear it to.

Remembering and Forgetting

Today I am remembering that ten years ago this morning, I was sitting at the front desk of the preschool where I worked.  It was a beautiful, sunny September morning.  It was my father’s 63rd birthday. Teachers had just lead in preschoolers by the hand from the busses.  Belongings had just been stowed, and hello songs were being sung.  I was six months pregnant with my second child, a girl, and I was wearing a while maternity shirt and jeans.  My two year old son was home with my husband, later to go to my parents’ house when my husband went off to work.  Sometime in the mid morning, the school psychologist walked in and said that a plane had hit one of the twin towers.  At first, I thought, ‘he’s kind of an asshole - is that even right?’ But then one or two other people came in and said that it was.  ‘Weird accident,’ I thought.

News dribbled in and within a short time, we heard about the second plane.  How could there be two accidents like this?  I had a radio, so I turned it on to see if I could hear the news.  It quickly became very clear.  We were under attack.  We are at war, I thought.  I am pregnant, and I have a toddler, and we are at war.  And they hit the city.  My city.  I don’t live in the city, but I had visited often enough in my teens and my twenties… even taken a class there one summer.  When returning home from a vacation in Spain some years before that, I remembered seeing that beloved skyline as we flew into Kennedy airport and I felt like I was at home already.  I’ve been there, I thought, I know people.  In those moments and hours, the dichotomy of the world struck me hard… the preschoolers worried about starting school, learning to use crayons and hang up their backpacks, my own son, talking and walking but with so many questions about so many things, and then this – strangers from the other side of the globe attacking us with our own planes because…? 

People I knew were safe, thank God, but so many others were not.  People who were just as loved as the people I cared about.  I wanted to go home, and hug my child – hide under the covers and wake up and hear that this was all just a dream.  Everything, I thought, everything is going to change.

It has changed.  And yet, it has not.  In those days and weeks after that day, the collective unconscious was a tangible thing – caring, thoughtful, united.  We formed a circle of wagons, protective of each other.  We listened.  We were respectful.  We could see across the divide of semantic differences to the common ground that united us.  I believe that is the part we should never forget.  We should never forget the heroism that day of the people whose stories became known, as well as the ones whose stories are known only to God.  We should never, ever forget them.  I remember before 9/11, a teacher asking the class to define what hero was.  They could not.  Of course, this was before September 11, 2001.  Of course there were heroes before that day – from other times and places, but kids could not remember them, or could not relate.  And so we say, ‘Always Remember.’

For me, I am not concerned with the remembering; I know we’ll remember.  There are certain hurts that need to be remembered for the lessons we’ve learned from them.  What worries me is the forgetting, and mostly, with regard to our individual lives.    Can we let go of the small things that don’t need remembering?  Forgetting, i.e., ‘time heals all wounds.’  Can we unpack and leave behind a small piece of emotional luggage here and there?  Can we forget the pain and remember the joy? Can we forget what divides us, and remember what brings us together?

Back to School

Last week I noticed everyone on Facebook posting how sad they were that the summer was over.  Warm weather state residents didn’t miss a chance to brag that it was still quite warm in their home towns, but I for one am appreciating the cooler nights. The only down side to that is how COLD the water has become at the beaches.  I don’t know about all of you, but I can’t stand swimming in cold water.  Warm water is the only thing I’d really love about living in the south.  Then, wisely, someone posted that it was not really the weather that was bumming us all out about the passing of summer – it was the back to school aspect.  Back to school represents back to seriousness, back to reality.  Even if much of your reality continues through the summer, I think we all harbor a remembrance of summers off as children.  You always had big dreams for the summer – even if they didn’t become reality, the months of dreaming alone made summer worth it.  The best day of summer was always the first day of summer vacation – the best week was that last week in June…  it was almost like bonus time – summer didn’t really start until July 1^st – that’s when you started the ticking of you mental summer clock. 

I have to admit, though, when I was a kid, fall was my favorite season.  Don’t misunderstand, I loved summer vacation and I was always sad when it came to an end, but there was something about fall that really appealed to me.  It represented the chance to do things differently – better.  The chance for new and good things… the chance to start again.  Late every August, I would trudge off to the store with my mother and sisters to buy school supplies.  I’d look at the clean, new notebooks, and although I got butterflies in my stomach, and I hated the thought of homework and meeting the other students in my class, I’d also think  “this year, I’m going to keep everything neat..  this year, I’m going to get straight As in every subject…  this year I’ll actually USE my agenda book.”  I’ve spent my whole life attending or working in a school, which continued that feeling on into my adulthood.  I worked in a preschool for bosses with yellow school bus ties that they wore every September.  Some years, I’ve done both, and my mind will forever function on the Summer Ends When School Starts mentality (Just ask my husband – we once had a very serious debate about when “the end of the summer” actually was.  I think I won.)

In my house, as a parent, I’m seeing this back to school thing with different eyes.  I see the war between “happily anticipating new things” and “anxiety about new things that are out of my control.” For example, there are the worries, “I don’t know anyone in my class?”  “What if I don’t like my teacher?”  “What if the work is too hard?”  (…and this year’s new ones…) “What if I can’t open my locker?”  “What if I’m late to class?”  Lots of times the anxiety jumps to the forefront, but  I talk them down, and the excitement – it’s there.  It’s my job to find it, and pull it out.  Make them embrace it.  Who does not need a new beginning?  If you’re seriously well-adjusted, you could make a case for every day being a new beginning, but how many of us are THAT well adjusted?  I’ll take once a year.  And New Year’s Day as a new beginning?  For one, it’s the middle of the winter – winter before the holiday, same old winter after the holiday.  After the holiday is over we go back to exactly the same routine as before.  We don’t even pull different bins of clothes from the closet.  Face it, New Year’s just doesn’t work the way back to school does.  I’ll take my anxiety and my new beginning in Early September, thank you. 

And a nice stack of blank loose leaf paper, too.