and as for you

Right.  My face.  It just got so bad.  I took pictures, but they're too horrible, and I decided I can't post them, so you'll have to believe me.  With my face all blown up like a baked potato, and stinging so bad there was no relief from the burn, I decided to head to the ER and just see what a professional person of the medical arts might say.  They said a bunch of stuff, shot me up with an IV of lord-knows-what and saline, and sent me on my way with a couple of prescriptions.  Boy am I glad I embarked upon this quest for health and wellness!

Thankfully, the prednisone took the swelling down pretty well, but my skin still appeared red and hella-chapped.  Yes - so bad I said hella.  I decided to head to VT on a whim last Saturday
night, too, and thinking it would be an in & out job, brought naught more than the clothes on my back...but I got stuck.  The blanket I slept under irritated my skin badly, and I woke up with fresh bruises from scratching.  Then I got a flat tire, and in my attempt to change it, I dropped the car off the jack.  When I finally managed to get it back up off the pavement and put the donut on, I spent the rest of the morning driving around looking for an open tire place to no avail, so I took the boy to P-Pie and resolved to stay an extra day.  Alas.  It would have been perfectly alright to spend another day visiting in VT, eat another Coffee Corner breakfast, say hey to folks we met along the way, but I didn't bring the little blue bills that apparantly kept my 'sunburn' in check (our waitress did in fact ask if I had a sunburn), and the burning Itch was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.  After another mostly sleepless night, we struck out first thing Monday morning, got a new tire, and headed South - into the flurries, which were just flurries as we headed out of Montpelier.  By the time we were done winding our way along 107 towards Killington, the pavement was white, and I was crawling along at a white-knuckle 20 mph, praying the semi that was stopped at the crest of the hill would move before I had to hit my brakes and lose any momentum I could have counted on to get myself over that hump - with another semi coming in fast in my rear view.  I didn't make it.  The semi behind me kissed my back bumper and came to a stop, while I fishtailed my way up the last few hundred yards of snowy slalom to pull in at the gas station and break down in tears, while gulping in huge breaths of air, my first since the long moments when I saw that truck coming up behind me.

We got some snacks, took a potty break, and sat in the car until the snow appeared to taper off a bit, and I'd seen a few plow trucks go by before I attempted to slide down the other side of the mountain to our certain doom.  I started off slow, mindful of my traction and the cars I passed on the shoulder with their hazards on.  I managed not to have a heart attack or hurtle us into oblivion over the edge of a cliff, and I found that as I pulled into Rutland and turned onto 7, that we were going to live, and even get back to Woodstock this very afternoon, that I could count on a shower in T minus 2 1/2 hours.  Once we hit the Thruway, it was smooth sailing, and I was under the boiling hot water by 5pm, dosed on a blue pill, and breathing my relief into the steam.  Now, 4 days of liberal slathering of moisterizer later, I feel that I've really had just about enough of this facial catastrophy I've been dealing with, fully acknowledging that I did it to myself, but who knew and all that, and it's moot at this point.  It's looking much improved right now, even though it was threatening to come back in force, which makes me think I'm on the 'better' side of the whole experience, yay team (blue pills and moisterizer).

residency

Wow.  Well.   Home again.  I was only gone 10 days, but it seems like a different world.  Sitting in discussion all day with like-minded individuals, reaching to form connections between the work we do, the ways in which we understand it, and how it relates to the world at large outside of our picturesque New England bubble.  Fantastic..!  Now I'm here, in my apartment, wishing I was living there, holding on to the excitement and inspiration of a Goddard residency, thinking about how I can relate all that great information to my daily life, experience and practice.  I can already feel the ennui sinking in - we got home last night at midnight, I went to bed at 2 - as I sit in front of the computer doing nothing productive, and the boy plays alone in the other room, neither of us having had a proper anything to eat, or stuck our heads out the door to sniff at the sunshine yet today.  To be fair, we're pretty road-tired, and there's nothing wrong with taking a day to sit around in your underwear doing nothing but what you're moved to from one minute to the next, but I don't want to lose the momentum of being intensely engaged with my work all day, every day.  I had such a desire to get home so I could start hammering out some pages, saw the whole project laid out in my mind all tied up with a little bow and more work still to come - so I feel a need to overcome the comfort of 'things', and the enticement of easy distraction my apartment offers before I can even begin to fall into the abyss.  Just turn my back on it, and walk away.  Step one:  take it out of the bedroom...

It was also wonderful just to be in Vermont and go visiting, hang out with folks, eat at P-Pie (the Plainfield location, which is much more hippie hideaway than the website makes it out to be) and Coffee Corner, look at For Rent signs, check out the creative projects my friends are working on, get in the water at Paradise.  I saw that dude I slammed in an earlier post walking around town, and he crossed the street to avoid saying hello to me, which is weird, because he still attempts to flirt with me via IM on occasion, but I'm glad he did because I didn't feel like talking to him, either!  The boy had a great time shopping at Woodbury Mountain Toys, getting a dragon painted on his arm at the Montpelier farmer's market, and four-wheelin' up on the mountain with his dad!   We also stopped in to one of the glassblowing studios I used to work at, and watched the apprentice blow a few pieces.  Big fun all around!  Vermont rocks, and I sure would love to find my way back there soon enough.  We'll see what life has in store, just flow with the program, let the river run.  There's a whole pile of people I didn't get to see, which leads me to believe I may have a more active social life if I moved back there, but the pull of family is kind of strong - though ideally elastic and malleable, so one can attempt to stretch it, as I have, with varying results. We'll see, we'll see...no need to figure it all out today, there's a lot of work that needs to be done between now and then.  Step two:  break the work down into sections and set a schedule.

Ugh.  I want to crawl right back in bed and go to sleep.  I need to get up and carpe diem (at 6pm)...and I'm hungry.  Step three:  enjoy my success!

Sunlight in Vermont

Here is the boy enjoying one of my favorite spots in the world - a swimming hole in Vermont known as Paradise...

A few minutes later, he was naked and up to his knees in freezing cold water for the Ceremonial Throwing of Rocks Into the River. I won't post those...well, maybe just one, but not today!

This is the classic 'what should I post for Robin's summer stock thing? What is Summer to me? Lying on my back in the grass, staring at the sky, that's what it is...' Turn head to right, frame and shoot.

I liked this, it almost made me feel like a real photographer again, so I decided to take it a step further...

And I really like this one! There's a couple more of them, but I think this is my favorite. Now, on to the words...

We left at the beginning of a torrential downpour...the Volvo did it's ususal worst, sliding all over the road in a manner very unlike a Subaru. And get this! There is a light on the dashboard that lights up to tell me that I'm hydroplaning! Yeah! It distracts me from the very thing that it's warning me to pay attention to! Who's genius engineering idea was this? Whatever. I had a Seattle moment an hour or so into the ride - there's this bridge, an open, arched design that the highway takes you under, and it looks like those bridges outside Olympia, where we got on the highway out there, except those were larger, and had Mt. Rainier towering above them to the right...and what occured to me was how aware I was that I was NOT in Seattle (even with all the rain!). I often forget where in the world I am if I space out while driving, and here was a prime moment to panic - but for the lack of that giant white looming Buddha mountain off to the right, that imposing presence, watching. Maybe waiting. Nope. I was nowhere near Seattle...

Eventually, we made it through to clearer skies, small boy asleep in the back most of the way, my spirits lifting with every sunny mile. Aah... My cell phone cut out. Yaay... Spent the week blissing out on Positive Pie pizza, Coffee Corner breakfasts, creemees, and Paradise. Laying in the grass. I even got to go to a show! My friend's husband wanted to go see the New York Dolls, and asked her if she could get tickets to the show at Higher Ground - she's the music director at the community radio staton WGDR ( http://www.wgdr.org/ ), so she got two tickets, backstage passes, and the possibility of an interview and/or a station ID from some of the band members. Too bad she sent her husband and me! He knew how to work the incredibly technically advanced recording device, but got very drunk very quickly, and I was not prepared to interview the New York Dolls solo, while making an ass of myself fiddling with a device beyond my range of knowledge.

So, oh well. I was disappointed - but the show was GREAT! I LOVED IT! What showmanship! What style! What a cute bass player! Great new venue, too, Higher Ground. I mean, it's been there for years, but they got a new building which is cool - I think there were two shows happening that night, the old place had only the one stage. Good for them.

So yeah. It was a good 'vacation', though I don't feel particularly rested or anything. It was wonderful to be in Vermont, and dig the vibe in Montpelier, and bring the boy to see his dad, and get to the swimming hole and say hey to friends, and eat great food, and do some fun shopping. But I think, that maybe next year, what I REALLY need, is to take myself away. To go be alone for a few days. Maybe go to a spa...or something.

I'm home, now, and back to all the stuff I just threw my hands up at and left a week ago - dishes, yucky stuff in the fridge, the staining of the furniture! Sigh. And BF is home again, but he's hangin' out with that woman, so I don't really want to be around that. Could always use the help, though...Men. What crap.

Well, guess it's time to tell my boss I'm home, and get my be-hind back to work! Sure could use a paycheck...