I want to try to set up a nice little single item still life. I had set up a wine bottle. I like to take the labels off so I have naked glass but this bottle's label was quite stubborn. When I took it out of the dishwasher, the label was ripped in a few spots. It looked so good I left it like that. I had set that one up first but then I decided I wanted something smaller and easier. I went with a white mug my Mom got me from starbucks while she was in Las Vegas. i toned the canvases for it tonight. Well they're not canvases they're canvas panels I got on sale at Michaels. I tried to improve the painting surface with some gesso. Actually I may break into one of those gessoboards now that I'm thinking of it. Maybe one of my cool mugs. There was a mug challenge on DPW (Daily paintworks).
That's my plan for tomorrow. PAINT! I'm sick of working on these long term paintings. I really want to try to just crank one out. It must be doable. I see all these other people do it.
Of course I'm up at this ungodly hour because I can't sleep. Which is why I toned the canvases tonight since I wasn't doing anything else but reading some teen novel series. Yes, I'm 33 and I occasionally read YA fiction. My friend MaryBeth introduced me to the whole Percy Jackson series. Oddly enough it's not the storylines or the great quests or adventures that I'm loving. It's how the greek gods have evolved to fit the times. Hermes carries around an electronic signature pad when he delivers packages. He has a cell phone. Apollo pulls the sun across the sky in a bright red Maserati. Ares rides a harley. And you'll find Hephaestus tinkering under the hood of a car in a mechanic's jumpsuit with his name embroidered on it. They have Hephaestus TV, all reality shows all the time! See, that's the shit that makes me giggle.
And I need a good giggle. It's been better since Chris has been back. I'm not as anxious about random bumps and noises in the house. Not that I think Chris is a good protector. An excellent provider yes. A protector? Sorry ladies, when you marry a nerd, trust me, you're going to want to be the one holding the bat and checking out the noise in the middle of the night. Oh i have no doubt in a real danger, Chris would have no second thought about putting himself between me and a mugger's gun. He wouldn't do anything so stupid as to try to save the situation and that I love him for. A knight in shining armor can still turn into a dead knight in shining armor.
Forgive any typoes. I don't have my glasses on.
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Signed Cherries!
The cherries finally dried and I was able to paint in the stems. Something is still bothering me about the damned thing and I can't figure out what it is. I admit that I'm the type of person who will continually futz with a painting but there's something more than that about this one. I mean it's usually the little things I tend to screw around with ad nauseum. There's something larger here and I think it's compositional.
Ah well, it's heading off to my parent's house after it's dry anyway. That way I won't have to look at it very often and it won't have to bother me.
I really do like still life. You can control the composition. You can control the light to some extent. I'll probably do more still life. When I was a kid, I used to paint on large canvases. In fact, the bigger the better. But I'm finding a lot of these smaller canvases are so much nicer. The less surface area is really nice. I have some gessoboard I really want to experiment with.
As usual, I can't sleep. I'm not quite sure why I'm so frazzled lately. I fell asleep for about 4 hours this (technically yesterday) morning (8AM to noon). The night before that it was from 4AM until about 10. The night before that, I got no sleep at all. I'm not really sure how to approach it anymore. I mostly spend the night trying to fall asleep about every hour with other activities in between. I got into bed around 11. Laid in bed with my eyes shut not falling asleep until about 1:30. Read for about an hour. Tried again to sleep around 2:30 until about near 4. Got up, painted my cherry stems. And here I still am.
And as usual I walked around dragging myself all day, barely able to keep my eyes open. Except for when I actually got into bed. Then my eyes snapped right open and I was wide awake. Probably could have run a damned marathon.
I can't wait until tonight. When I get to repeat this happy process.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Another sleepless night.
To this day I wonder how people who can fall asleep do it. I see watch my husband shut off his Kindle or his iPad, roll over and within 10 minutes the man is snoring. And unless I've been awake for more than 24 hours or it's some sort of mid-day exhaustion, I have never had that happen to me. I even remember as a carefree happy child wandering into my parent's bedroom at least once a week to tell them I couldn't sleep. I always found my mother's answer of, "Try harder" a little confusing. It always seems the harder I try to fall asleep, the more it eludes me.
My father, a fellow insomniac, has always been the only one to understand. Although my father does seem to be much better at falling asleep, he is not so good at staying that way. And until I was about 29/30, I had no issues with staying asleep. In fact, once I was out it was nearly impossible to get me back out of bed and awake and that's yet another thing I tend to struggle with every day since after 20 years of chronic insomnia the best regulator of my sleep is when I wake up. The rip your hair out frustrating part is when you're had only 3-4 hours of sleep a night and have been dragging yourself out of bed at 8AM for weeks and still can't fall asleep that night. I don't know if there's any proof to this, it's just observation but I think that sleep deprivation is something you can gradually become accustomed to over long periods. And I'd say 20 years is a long period. Although, not 15 anymore I can't tolerate an all-nighter the way I once could.
I'm sure I'm not doing myself any favors by reading before bed. All the "experts" tell you not to do that and practice what they call "sleep hygiene."My choice of pre-bedtime reading material could be better. I have lately been reading the series of novels that the procedural police drama Rizzoli and Isles is based on. And it wouldn't take a sleep expert to tell you that reading about women being stalked, raped, mutilated and murdered by serial killers isn't a good call for someone with my anxiety problems. I do enjoy reading and I have found it to cause me to fall asleep during the day regardless of the subject choice. I have literally no idea really why it doesn't do that at night. I got through 18 boring chapters of Anna Karenina one sleepless night. I have tried the Bible (my sincere apologies to Christians everywhere, I found it to be very dry at some points). I try not to read Baha'i scripture before bed though because I inevitably become so glued that I can't stop. Actually it's probably not the subject matter of the aforementioned triller novels, it's when some of them are quite gripping they really keep me awake. Stargate novels have that effect on me as well in a "OMG what did they do to Rodney!?" sort of way. I probably should classify everything on my reading list now as before bed reading material vs during the day reading material.
While I tend to think that most of it is a very good idea, there are some parts that are utter rubbish for me. Currently I am engaging in one of their many tips; that if you cannot fall asleep within 20 minutes you should rise out of bed and go do something and then give it another go. I can see how this could work with someone who hasn't been having the problem long so that they don't start to look at their bed and go "shit will I be able to sleep or not" the way I do. I think it's too deep in me now. It's sunk its claws. I know my bed is going to be a place where either sleep and I will regrettable lovers waking in the morning... or we'll be two parents going at it at 3AM because he's worked late again, the baby's screaming and the he's got some lacy knickers in his pocket who aren't his wife's.
I can feel the Ambien kicking in and GABA is being bound up in my brain so you'd think it would have a lovely effect on the gabapentin I'm taking which also acts on the GABA neurochemical system so if anyone is following this blog I would like to apologize for any text that comes after it as I have entered into a state of Ambnesia and gabacrosis. Anway.... oh yes fighting with your bed.
She has just forgotten is all.
My father, a fellow insomniac, has always been the only one to understand. Although my father does seem to be much better at falling asleep, he is not so good at staying that way. And until I was about 29/30, I had no issues with staying asleep. In fact, once I was out it was nearly impossible to get me back out of bed and awake and that's yet another thing I tend to struggle with every day since after 20 years of chronic insomnia the best regulator of my sleep is when I wake up. The rip your hair out frustrating part is when you're had only 3-4 hours of sleep a night and have been dragging yourself out of bed at 8AM for weeks and still can't fall asleep that night. I don't know if there's any proof to this, it's just observation but I think that sleep deprivation is something you can gradually become accustomed to over long periods. And I'd say 20 years is a long period. Although, not 15 anymore I can't tolerate an all-nighter the way I once could.
I'm sure I'm not doing myself any favors by reading before bed. All the "experts" tell you not to do that and practice what they call "sleep hygiene."My choice of pre-bedtime reading material could be better. I have lately been reading the series of novels that the procedural police drama Rizzoli and Isles is based on. And it wouldn't take a sleep expert to tell you that reading about women being stalked, raped, mutilated and murdered by serial killers isn't a good call for someone with my anxiety problems. I do enjoy reading and I have found it to cause me to fall asleep during the day regardless of the subject choice. I have literally no idea really why it doesn't do that at night. I got through 18 boring chapters of Anna Karenina one sleepless night. I have tried the Bible (my sincere apologies to Christians everywhere, I found it to be very dry at some points). I try not to read Baha'i scripture before bed though because I inevitably become so glued that I can't stop. Actually it's probably not the subject matter of the aforementioned triller novels, it's when some of them are quite gripping they really keep me awake. Stargate novels have that effect on me as well in a "OMG what did they do to Rodney!?" sort of way. I probably should classify everything on my reading list now as before bed reading material vs during the day reading material.
While I tend to think that most of it is a very good idea, there are some parts that are utter rubbish for me. Currently I am engaging in one of their many tips; that if you cannot fall asleep within 20 minutes you should rise out of bed and go do something and then give it another go. I can see how this could work with someone who hasn't been having the problem long so that they don't start to look at their bed and go "shit will I be able to sleep or not" the way I do. I think it's too deep in me now. It's sunk its claws. I know my bed is going to be a place where either sleep and I will regrettable lovers waking in the morning... or we'll be two parents going at it at 3AM because he's worked late again, the baby's screaming and the he's got some lacy knickers in his pocket who aren't his wife's.
I can feel the Ambien kicking in and GABA is being bound up in my brain so you'd think it would have a lovely effect on the gabapentin I'm taking which also acts on the GABA neurochemical system so if anyone is following this blog I would like to apologize for any text that comes after it as I have entered into a state of Ambnesia and gabacrosis. Anway.... oh yes fighting with your bed.
She has just forgotten is all.
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