Dandelyon's Worlds

But other than that, I'm finally feeling a lot better.

I haven't gotten anything done today, no gardening or music or anything but sleep. I even slept through #SciFiChat.

I'm really bored with this. But at least while I'm sleeping, I don't notice how bored I am.

So, let's see. I never had a reduction of taste or smell (though it occurs to me that with the Paxlovid that might have seemed a temporary blessing). I did have trouble breathing, and took my rescue inhaler a lot and thanked all the powers that I have a CPAP machine. I certainly had brain fog (leading to a chat with a friend where I talked about being incompetent, and he very kindly said he could imagine me incapacitated, but not incompetent). I did have reduction of appetite, but that started before the Paxlovid and ended after, so I'm hoping it was just the horrible taste and not some more serious side effect of either the virus or the medication.

Right now, the allergies seem less severe than they normally are, and allergies are immune-system-overreactions (to over-simplify). On the one hand, it is letting me not take my usual allergy meds as much as usual, which I think is a good thing, since my body seems to be trying to flush out the virus particles and paxlovid as fast as possible. On the other hand, it's worrisome, since a strong immune system matters, unless I want to be living even more in a bubble than I have been since this stupid pandemic started.

On the better side of things, apparently I didn't forget the new bass parts I was working on. I didn't get better at them either, but no practice is no practice regardless of the reason, so that's not unexpected. But I had days where I was not even hearing them in my head, and had no energy to play them on the guitar, and that was upsetting while it lasted.

I did manage one thing today. I made it official that I'm not going in to Chicago to hang out with my sister and daughter this weekend; the plan had been recording tomorrow and relaxing with family Sunday. But right now the normally pleasant drive to Chicago sounds totally exhausting, and I really don't need to expose myself to their animals and dust and everything either. So it will be a quiet Mother's Day, with lots of sleep and maybe some music, and no running around taking photographs or chatting and arting. (And no Himshikar take-out either.)

I guess I'll sign off here and see if I have enough energy to do a little music, or if I just end up falling back in bed. At least it's still a wonderful, comfortable new bed. I guess a gal's gotta count her blessings where she can.

When I was a kid I loved fall. Lovely, beautiful leaves, harvesting whatever I managed to grow over the summer, a chance to dress up, to dream past the narrow paths thought safe for a schoolgirl.

Now, I'm not so fond of fall. It means the season of asthma-exacerbation and ice-underfoot is coming. But now that Facebook is showing me my posts from years past, I see how much of it is really about my personal experience of the season--fall is cold/flu/bronchitis/sinus infection season, rather than just anticipation of winter. I don't post about being sick much, because it's boring and really, when I feel crappy, I want to come online to be distracted from it. But still, there've been an awful lot of posts lately from however many years ago that mention me being sick.

It would tempt me to just be a hermit until the new year, except this is also the season of OVFF, Windycon, Chambanacon, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and inevitably additional chances to spend time with my blood and chosen family. And there's never enough of those.

My brother, who is in Florida but will ship, has some really cool drums for sale. Go peek!

He also makes necklaces, if you want to friend him on FB (Martin Greywolf Murphy), and check out all his stuff, just tell him I sent you.  But this link is for the drums and bells:  http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/album.php?aid=81203&id=1019375349

This drum, for instance, is for sale! 

It was a nice little set of readings. For the curious, the theme that seemed to run through most of the readings was connections -- the connections between people, the connections between the querent and the world, the connections between our dreams and our realities, even the connections between different parts of ourselves.

And, for me, that emphasized the importance of the ephemeral connections between me and you out there, in all the various corners of the world where you live and dream and write. You enrich my life. I'm glad you're here!

Even you lurkers, I'm glad you're sticking around.

So, what are you doing this weekend?

We didn’t escape the mundane world as quickly as I’d planned. My Angel hasn’t been doing well lately, with physical pain wearing down her already fragile emotional status, to the point where she agreed to go see a pain specialist for her back, despite having seen too many people (including her mother) who had poor results from back surgery.

But once again, I’m getting ahead of myself. The important stuff isn’t properly linear.

So we wound our way through the modern wilderness of concrete and orange barrels, evading man-made and natural hazards alike, and eventually arrived at the hotel too late to see s00j and Betsy Tinney’s concert. Am I always destined to be late to see s00j? The last time we braved the wilderness to see her, the turnoff from the highway had been torn down, and either there were no detour signs, or they were hidden from view, so we were long past where we should have turned before we realized we had to turn around.

When we arrived at the hotel my brain was addled by too much driving through headlight glare (to say nothing of too much peering at underlit street signs). But I got keys, My Angel got a luggage cart, and I got stuff packed into the room while My Angel got lost on the way up and got her registration.

In the room, I again wanted to wear my dance of leaves, and tried it on with the expected results. So I got my helpers to tell me how far I had to go, and changed into a skirt and top, adding fairy foo-fraw and lots of jewelry before setting off to obtain my badge and catch a bit of Tomboat, mostly from outside the room. I love all those people, but the volume they project when playing as Toyboat hurts my eardrums. Probably one of the legacies of the allergies being so bad when I was a teenager that sneezes used to make my ears whistle.

There were fairy wings and fairy dust everywhere, and friends, and cheese and grapes in the con suite, which (along with some carrots and celery) did a lot to remove the aftereffects of the trip, leaving me much more focused and able to enjoy things.  And somehow the necklaces, rows and rows of gleaming stone, laid light on my shoulders and the back of my neck, almost as if it were gleaming illusions.

At the open Filk, once My Angel brought my guitar, I found it was still in tune. Sadly, I was still tireder than I thought—I ended up using the computer not for nano, but as a cheat sheet for songs I’ve had memorized for years. But still, there was live music, and a bed to fall into once everyone gave up and I headed back to the room.

Saturday, rise to dress for more music. I put on my spring sky with butterflies, since it’s layered and I was cold. And, of course, the hand-me-up shoes. I then went to go grab milk and more grapes in the con suite. The display got my hopes up, with one box mentioning rice chex, but sadly, they were mixed in with wheat and corn chex, and so were not Deirdre food.

Then to see Alexander James, whose voice I like quite as much as I did his predecessor’s. I got to briefly say hi before the concert, while they were doing a sound check for the concert after his.

Music and appliqué – relatively simple appliqué, to be sure, since the siren call of wearing the dress was still sounding. But the music, the music was magical. I watched Alec’s concert and then Heather Dale’s (If you haven’t heard of her, go thou to heatherdale.com)

Then I met My Angel to look at the art show a bit, before running back to return to appliqué and music, to watch the guests of honor—Tricky Pixie.

As they were still working on getting the sound levels right, and attempting to chase away the loud gremlins of feedback, my sister Dragon (yes, she who gave me the hand-me-up shoes, and indeed who painted them in green lightning knotwork) slid into the chair next to me, and asked if I had a sketching pencil and paper.

The gremlins being well entrenched and the feedback squeals hurting my ears helped convince me to run (yes, run, as in actual running in the halls, as if the hands of time were running backward) to my room to grab the sketchbook and colored pencils I’d packed. And then they turned the lights down, and we shifted so the spotlight aimed at the stage bled onto our creative projects, and we settled in to enjoy the magic, both the magic from the stage and the magic flowing from our own fingers.

It’s not as if they were totally separate. Dragon noted that she was drawing in time to the music, and as for me? My fingers were dancing on the fabric, letting me resist the call to stand up and dance, if only barely.

See what my sister drew with my pencils, sitting there in the twilight where the audience sat spellbound? 

I'm not sure what they made the walls with at Dragon's house, but they're harder than the plaster in my old Victorian.  Lots harder.  The first attempt to drill holes that would hold the plastic thingies that came with the cubes failed miserably, and I ended up patching the holes with fresh-mixed plaster and we started again an inch higher.

Here's Dragon hanging the first cube!

Next I worked on one of the 3-D branches.

Yeah, that's some plaster there, to help the curve of the stick.  There's some on the second (and last) stick we got mounted.  Apparently Dragon's husband likes to burn hardwood in his fireplace.  The drill bits didn't so much drill as burn their way through the wood, slowly.    It took long enough that the plaster I'd mixed was almost too set to use at all by the time I got to the second stick.

Dragon has promised to paint over the plaster once it dries.

Some things you only learn once you try them--the cages will clearly need chains, so they hang free!  And apparently Spooky gets a key to the city too.

Yes, that's two different things hanging from the same stick.  It's still a work in progress.  Witness the blue painter's tape that's protecting the wood of the doorways and floor edging.

In other news, I'm working on a science fiction short story involving polar bears, an amphibious robot, and the North Pacific Gyre. 

I want to finish it--and the snippet I started today that arose from a picture of gorgeous multi-colored yarn--before the Muse Fusion on Sunday.

And I'll finish this post with two more pictures of the mural, adjusted to different light levels so you can see different parts of the details.  The human eye is still more sensitive than the camera (or at least than the cell phone).  Go figure!

Spooky's birthday party is drawing nigh, and my sister Dragon's house isn't all decorated yet. To say nothing of the fact that making half of a bedroom a painting zone for a month does nothing positive for a person's ability to make a bedroom presentable.  Spooky's second attempt at doing windows is much better than the first one (which I somehow neglected to photograph).

Spooky is quite talented, really.  But she's only worked in pencils, pen, and/or photoshop, not with paintbrushes.  And the techniques are definitely different.  One of these days, if she wants, I'll refer you to her Deviant Art page.

So, while she did that and I worked on a different house, my sister Dragon added more branches to the big tree--the low branches; she was tired enough to not want to paint standing on a ladder or chair.  And I admit, I am in favor of not having my sister fall down and break her neck!

The next morning, I finally got to doing the proper detail work on the pine tree, and (while Spooky went to an interview that I can hopefully brag about later) then on a whim, added some moss to the big tree. 

I do like how the tree looks in this photo, like it's tip-toeing through the sky.  But leaving it that way wasn't in the plan. 


So, while I worked on finishing the hill behind the houses, Dragon added grass under the tree, and we talked.  One of her lawyer-friends, on seeing my picture, said, "That's you!"  There's definitely a family resemblance, though her hair is shorter.  Another friend was dismayed that she didn't go to him and get canvasses to put on the walls, rather than painting on the plaster, so the mural could be preserved forever.

It's getting late as I type this, and I do have to go to work early in the morning, so I think I'll leave you with the detail of the hill behind the houses, and leave the rest for tomorrow's post.

_______________________


In other news, I was going to remind everyone that the next Muse Fusion is tomorrow, but Ellen's computer got sick recently (dang viruses), and the resulting work to get rid of the infection and get her tiny computer empire running smoothly again has left her pretty wiped out. Since one of her rewards for all the work she does is to be able to interact with readers and write stuff people asked to read, I was all for delaying the Muse Fusion until Sunday when she suggested doing so. Besides, I'm back working full time (it was a girl), so Sunday works much better for me!

So, Muse Fusion on Sunday! I hope to see you there!

And another update is here.

This is last night's update--I was too tired when we got brushes cleaned to do any of the things I'd planned. Comes of being wakened early by the insurance guy who I expected to call on Friday (his voice mails were not working right), and then driving to Chicago in a car with no air conditioning at midday in mid-summer heat.

The window detail is brightened enough for you to see who's in the house; it's a little darker in person.

And the texture that works so nicely for the tree and clouds is a real pain for houses and windows!

The "moon" in the tree limbs is an illusion caused by where the ceiling light was shining on the wall--but I really like the illusion!

We had another friend who dropped by to talk, who actually tried painting.  that was fun.

 But I think what's best is having a teenager who keeps smiling and saying "I like it", "this is great" and "thank you!"

Oh, yeah, the (as yet incomplete) tree:

  

Another update, and a surprise dragon, follows.

A little belated. My allergies usually make me miserable, because life just doesn't let a person sleep all night, get up, and fall asleep again. Sunday I went to sleep, planning to get up and paint all day on the mural. Monday, I had breakfast, sat down to read a bit because with the allergies I am sensitive to chemicals, and I figured a little digesting time away from paint fumes would be good for me, and despite it being a good book by an author I really like, I couldn't keep my eyes open. Next thing I knew, my niece and nephews were coming home from school. I did a bit more painting, stopped at a store that has a much larger selection of gluten-free stuff than anything I've found in Milwaukee, and headed home. And slept in on Tuesday too, though not to the point where it was a problem to be on time for the little bit of work I currently have.

But I promised to share a few more pictures:

My sister started a tree.  And my niece started working on windows, providing us with the comment that drawing with brushes isn't at all like drawing with pens, pencils, or on the computer. 

And we filled in the top of the room better, including the wall that's currently just incomplete clouds.

Eventually, of course, we told the niece that Monday was a school day and she had to go to bed, and played Magic cards for a bit.

One of the things I did on Monday was to start adding darker colors to the upper part of the cloud wall; the first layer of paint was chosen by the not-so-random method of using the paint that was in the painter's tray when we were ready to stop for dinner on Sunday night.



And the final update for this week is the detail work on the buildings, which is woefully incomplete.  I really wanted to get that pine tree dark green, so all that shows through of the current color is enough for highlights.  Maybe next weekend. 

And there needs to be a cat in one of those windows.  And windows behind the tree.  And....

Oh, and I snuck some blue in "behind" my sister's tree, too.










And here's hoping they find an appropriate wall plate for the switches by the door in the cloud wall, so the Hello Kitty plate can be retired to the Hello Kitty shrine in the closet!


Another update follows here.

The Niece decided how big she wanted the moon to be, and we marked the center with a bit of painter's tape with a dot in the middle. And we're adding more detail. And then we ran off to Michaels to get some more colors, so we can add details. So, I'm off to do some more painting, but first here's the initial update:


So, if this mural were on your bedroom wall, what details would you want added?

The next update is here.