I just bought a wonderful book by Jill Berry titled Personal Geographies. I have always been fascinated with maps, as long as I can remember, really. The World Book Encyclopedia was my playground, and the maps were my very favorite parts. I made up different map games to amuse myself. I pick up maps everywhere I go today.
So I reappropriated this altered geography book with painted pages for my personal geography journal, and I’m going to do the exercises in her book. I spent yesterday (between headaches – Sandy and I are both sick with colds) reorganizing and cleaning out my hoard in the bedroom studio and lo and behold, there is actually a space on my worktable on which I can see the table surface, a big enough one that I can use! This time I hauled out everything, sorted it into piles, made labels to put on the drawers of my art chest, and I am going to try really hard to put things in their places now, and not toss everything in the “Misc. Craft Supply” drawer, although, you know, I am human.
This nice thing about this book structure, which I learned from both LK Ludwig and Dan Essig, is that it lies open flat. I hope that quality will make it possible for me to play in it during the week after Christmas when I’ll be home recovering from the surgery on my left hand.
The great thing about cleaning out all my studio stuff is that I found things that I was desperately looking for several weeks ago, and I found a design for a mini-tapestry that I had forgotten about that I love. I found lots of things that I had forgotten about. It was fun. Now my outside studio is a mess again, where I keep my loom and yarns. But I’m going to let that go for a while, at least when it is too cold to work out there without the heater on.
December 23 is slipping up on me so quickly, and my anxiety is rising. The nurse who called me last Thursday said that I am listed for general anesthesia, and I expected to be under conscious sedation, like when I had surgery on my right hand 24 years ago. That scares me and I’m not sure why it makes that much of a difference. It will be a big relief to me when all this hand stuff is over with. I’m not even hurting that bad right now but both my hands have been going to sleep at night again since I drove to Mama’s this week. I worry more about my right hand not being able to compensate for my left hand during that recovery than anything, and that makes me hesitate to do any art that will put stress on either hand. So I feel like I’m going a little bit crazy here.
Critter update: Of course, Theo is more spoiled than ever now that the gastrointestinal disaster seems to be over. He is still on antibiotics, but he is pretty easy to handle, thank God. Guido gets his sutures out on Tuesday afternoon. He seems to be doing well, although he did have one evening when he yowled. I wonder if he passed a kidney stone. Poor thing is all skin and bones, but the really wonderful thing is that NEITHER of them have thrown up since they have been on medication. I am hopeful that if Guido survives this physical storm he will gain enough weight to better sustain him. If I had only known the wonders of famotidine before… I am a bit worried about Lucy now. She has a lot of chest congestion again. I put her back on a regular dose of loratidine (just like Mama) and the vet suggested that I steam up the bathroom and let her sit in there, but so far this is not at all what Lucy wants to do and she gets highly stressed if I force her to stay in there. So there it is. She seems a little better this weekend.
slowly she turned 