This Week Will Have Art!

Ginkgo Leaves at Dusk
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Overall it was a pretty good weekend. Very hot though, I hope people in the rest of the country didn't have the heat wave that hit us hard last week. Yesterday was a bit better, but that was the day that our little angel decided to show her horns. She wasn't that bad, but compared to her normal behavior she was a demon baby that just couldn't be pleased.





We had company over multiple times and of course she was perfectly behaved for them. Even when they stayed for hours she was good the whole time. Visits are great but quite exhausting. I'm pretty happy because my friend and his mother who was visiting from Maine gave blee some of her first books. We've gotten so many great gifts but since so many are handmade not too many books. She had assumed that we would have gotten so many that she steered away from the obvious choices like Goodnight Moon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Now some art talk! I did not get to do anything other than some very light studio cleaning. While my studio is far from being super messy it could use a little work if I am going to carve and even more if I am going to print. I should probably carve since it is easy for me to stop and get up from that activity if baby calls. And while Jon is home today and basically for the rest of the month he has some work to do today. I put a sketchbook and some pens on my nightstand and have promised myself that if I don't do any art in the studio during the day then I will at the very least fill a page of my sketchbook. It seems like a good way to wind down as well as keep my creativity going.

But I have been listing pieces like this one from July fairly regularly in my Etsy Shop. I also have quite a few ACEOs that I need to scan and list.

Now that the little bug is down for what could be a long nap I think I will try to do the same. I did not get enough sleep last night.

Quiet Days

Earthy Ginkgos
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Hello everybody. This entry could be long and ramble a bit or it could be short for all I know. I guess I would say that while I have a lot on my mind these last few days I have been feeling extra quiet and more to the point not feeling like doing much of anything. I haven't even been nagging Jon much to do baby prep stuff! As much as I want this baby to come I am not doing enough to prepare for it and I know it. It is good thing blee won't be in the nursery for months because it is a total mess with all the clothing and other gifts piled in the crib. We have two empty drawers, why aren't we using them? But for the first months she will be sleeping either with us or in the Pack n Play bassinet that is next door to the bedroom in my studio.

The mom's group that I was invited to and joined midway through my pregnancy went on a summer hiatus during July and August. And I missed most of the meetings in June because I was feeling so bad that month. I kind of had a feeling that it was over and I was correct to a degree. Last week I got an email from the leader saying that it will no longer be in her home but is being absorbed by a bigger group on the far side of Cambridge. Not a very T friendly location, and even if it was a very long T ride especially with a newborn. While I am trying to work up the courage to take small local errand running drives there is no way that I can drive across the river, especially with a baby. The thought fills me with horrible imagery and brings out my anxiety. Basically, no group for me I figure when I would need it the most.

The leader in her forever upbeat and bouncy tone wants me to sign up anyway and is trying to find ways for me and another JP mom to get there. It actually might work out. Yet I hesitate writing her and signing up. September seems so far away. A mom's group with a baby seems so foreign to me. I hesitate. She also wants us to meet up and chat and I find myself avoiding that as well. Granted getting around isn't the easiest for me right now, but as long as it isn't a crazy hot day I could manage. I've been so anti-social this pregnancy. At times moreso than others, and this is one of those times. It is one thing pulling back in the dead of a winter ice storm when I am puking and coughing. But this is different. Even when I am around people I often feel alone. Am I depressed? Post-partum depression before the baby even arrives? I know I am feeling stressed and pressured to have this baby as soon as possible. I analyze every pain wondering how much closer it brings me to the big day.

Art, I'd like to do art. I've thought about carving or even printing but I don't ever do it. I don't even list the work I do have on Etsy. I signed up for the Trunkt website and I am a little confused by it. First off I have to put my work in mixed media even though that is not what I do, because it is the closest to printmaking they have. Second I never got an acceptance email from them despite being accepted the day after I applied. I waited around for over a week, confused and kept looking through my junk mail for nothing. So I thought maybe I had made a mistake in my application and submitted a new one. Got a message that my account name already existed in the system. Go to log on and sure enough I have an account. But I can't find my account in any searches. Do you need a paid one for that or is it because I edited a few things? Does my account get deactivated for approval every time I make an edit? Do a search on the site for mlee and you won't find me. It seems like a lot of fairly successful Etsy people have paid accounts and it is tempting. But these issues along with now not being the time to invest in promotion cause me to hesitate. I think I will wait until after the baby comes and things hopefully settle down to invest in more promotion. Promotion right now and in September would probably just be a huge waste if my store is essentially going to be shut down or in slow motion mode at the very least!

So I guess this turned out to be a long post with plenty of rambling after all. Guess I made up for my lack of words yesterday. Sorry to those of you I made cry or almost cry with my last post about my mother. The thoughts just had to come out and it was cathartic to say the least. Some real good came of it as I now know to focus on how lucky I was to have her rather than the selfish desire to have her right now. I can't even imagine how awful my childhood would have been if she had died six months after the surgery like everybody expected her to.

My Day Off

Ginkgo Leaves at Dusk
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

I didn't plan on taking a day off yesterday. But that is what ended up happening because I didn't accomplish a single thing yesterday. I didn't even upload any of my images from Tuesday onto Flickr that is how lazy I was.

It all started last Friday when my blood pressure came back a little on the high side. Not horribly high but she sent me in for bloodwork just in case because high blood pressure during pregnancy is serious business. Everything came back just fine. But she still wanted me to come in this week before my regular Friday appointment to get my blood pressure checked again. I was annoyed. I talked to the nurse about it on the phone on Tuesday and tried to get out of it and she said she would talk to the midwife about seeing if since everything came back normal I could skip the blood pressure check. I really thought I would be able to. But first thing Wednesday morning I get the call telling me to come in right away to get checked.

Well, what I thought was going to be a simple in and out blood pressure check took well over an hour. I "failed" the first check so I ended up being hooked to a machine for fetal monitoring and lying on my side for thirty minutes. Then they took my pressure again and this time I passed. This means that I avoid going to the hospital and avoid being induced. But it means that I must take it easy and take thirty minute breaks where I lie on my left side three times a day and watch out for any symptoms.

Please, nobody worry. I'm not worried really just annoyed yet thankful that I have doctors that really do care and are keeping watch of me. There are three major symptoms of pregnancy induced hypertension or preclampsia and I only have one of those three. They are just being cautious to make sure I don't get any of the other two. Then we would have a problem and blee would be getting induced. My mother had preclampsia with me and everything was fine in the end with that. And I am at a much better hospital. I am in very good hands.

So yesterday was filled with a whole lot of napping and bed rest.

Nights are the hardest. She kicks and kicks and pushes up on my lungs so I can't breathe and I end up crying that I want her out right then and there. It is funny how I see the twenty days I technically have left as way too much time and Jon would love to double it. As much as he wants to meet her it is when she arrives that his life really changes so I don't blame him. I'm nervous about caring for her too, but when she pushes into my diaphragm so I can't catch my breath that worry goes out the window and I want her out!

Not sure what I am going to do with myself today between my thirty minute breaks. I certainly will not be printing! But I am going to see if I am able to carve a bit. This piece is from Monday and I have some pieces from Tuesday that I would like to start getting up into my shop. Yesterday there was some bug on the site where pictures weren't showing up in listings so taking the day off from listing too made sense. But I hope it is fixed today because I don't want to go two days without listing anything!

Happy Thursday to all!

Summer Heat!

Dark Ginkgos
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

I am certainly feeling it big time. And I am sure that plenty of you guys are right along there with me. A friend of mine in Arizona told me that it has been over 110 degrees there but they don't have the humidity that we do. How much does that really matter?

Been in the mid to high 90's with high humidity here in Boston and it is miserable. Way back in February when I would tell people when I was due women would get this sympathetic look in their eyes and tell me how in for it this summer I was. They were right. The heat really has been kicking my butt so far this week. I managed to do a fair bit of studio cleaning and I finished another block but no printing yesterday. I'm trying not to beat myself up over it too much. The heat is frying my already fried by pregnancy brain. I lose track of what I am doing a lot. Yesterday morning I only had four orders to pack up and it seemed to take forever. Sweat pouring down my forehead the entire time even with the air on. I've heard the weekend is supposed to be better. That would be wonderful.

I have an important question for those of you that know Blogspot pretty well and use Flickr for blogging on it. Because I am really puzzled by it right now. I do all my blogging through Flickr and I always put in a title yet for some reason it almost always gets deleted in my Blog, but not yesterday. Once it is entered there seems to be no way for me to edit a title into the entry. If it consistently deleted titles that would be one thing but randomly letting them through when nothing about my entry is any different makes no sense.

Can any of you more Blogger savvy people help a girl out? edit I just noticed what causes it to happen. The blog is posted with a title but when I go back into it to add tags the title gets deleted! Why and is there any way to fix this? I would like to have both a title and tags.

This piece is interesting to me because when I made it a couple of months ago I really wasn't sure what to think about it. The colors are quite shocking and a lot cooler than what I tend to gravitate towards so I was tempted to upcycle it into one of my goodies. But something kept me from doing that and boy am I glad that I did. While I am sure that it would have made a lovely set of coasters or pocket mirrors I believe this is the best form for it. I go with my gut and even when I feel the temptation to destroy certain pieces I know when to hold back the decision for awhile. Now I am really loving it!

My doctor gave me a medicine to help me sleep that is baby safe and won't produce the hangover effect that the Tylenol PM does. This is key because mornings are very important to me now since I am less sore and it isn't as hot. But I wake up so groggy that it takes me a couple of hours just to shake that feeling and by then it is already starting to get hot. It will also help with the panic attacks that have been growing. I used to take this medicine before I got pregnant but went off because while it is safe now it was not safe during the first trimester. This is my first morning after taking it and so far I feel much more alert than I ever took after waking up after taking even one Tylenol PM. And hurrah it isn't very hot out at all!