Marianne Faithfull

I had never seen a picture of Marianne Faithfull until today, so I mistakenly drew her voice:

Instead of her face:

Also, I'm sick right now. I look like Marianne Faithfull's voice. Except I'm not so delighted with the concept of flaying someone.

HALLOWEEN

HAPPY HALLOWEEEEEEEN
CANDY
SUUUUUUGAAAAAAR

I'm ok. I promise I'm SUUUUUUG- OK.

OMFG

I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me. Also I'm not actually breaking up with you or anything, I'm just saying that I've got too many responsibilities to post very regularly. And the Jack Black/Jack White question still stands.

P.S. I'm working on a post, but the pictures are taking a long time.

I wondered...

Dear Jack White,
Do you ever talk to Jack Black? Are you guys friends?
                        Sincerely,
                                   Cara

The first week of school has caused some strange things to happen.

So, you know how I haven't been here writing every day, like I was for a while?

School has started.

But it's not like that. There is no Happy to be found at a school. That's just my "I'm okay" face.

And to be clear, so that I don't just seem like a whiny teenager, I'm going to tell you that I go to a College-prep school that focuses heavily on academics, not just the paychecks of its students' parents. We are expected to take classes that demand college-level amounts of work without any of the free time and flexibility enjoyed by college students. We are not allowed Happy until Thanksgiving Break. 

The reason there is no Happy to be found at school is kind of enormous and vague and blobby. There are a lot of factors. One of them is schedule. We used to have a schedule that was very hard, but miles easier compared to the one they've instated this year. We take seven classes each day, and the break we get in the morning is only ten minutes long, just twice as much as we have to get between our classes. Our lunch has also been cut in half. We don't have a normal Cafeteria. We have what basically amounts to one mall food court restaurant that is greatly understaffed and completely disorganized. Say what you will about Chris Rock, but "If you're gonna give me just thirty minutes for lunch. just hand me a cup of applesauce and a little plastic spoon, 'cause I might as well be in Kindergarten again!" rings true every time I think of it or mention it. Our school day is also now thirty minutes longer, which doesn't make any sense to me. How can they have cut so many things short and ended up with more time?

So, if I seem bitchy (and I know I do), and I lack energy in my writing (I know that, too), and you just don't want to hear about the mundane troubles of my life in a block paragraph with no jokes thrown in (you know you don't), then blame my school. We can't boycott and we can't vandalize. We can't flash mob or organize a movement, but we can get MAD AS HELL ABOUT SHIT.

And now for something completely different:

I fooled you. This actually starts off on a similar note.

This entire week, I've been getting 4-5 hours of sleep every night as a cause of a massive amount of homework. I got even less last night, and when I woke up today, the world had that shimmering, absorbent quality that it gets when you haven't been taking good care of your brain.

 So everything seemed really overwhelming, and by the time I got to school, I was just a walking bundle of nerves.

Then it started raining and thundering, which I was fine with. I walked a shortcut over a field with an umbrella over my head, which I was fine with. Someone with a deep voice yelled "Young lady, you are not being prudent right now!" and I was not so fine with that.

It was Mr. Hude.

Let me preface everything with how much I don't care about this guy, so that you'll realize just exactly how strangely things turned out. I mean it. I don't give a flying fuck about him. I have never formally been introduced to him, I've never taken a class of his, and I never will take a class of his.

Back to the moment:

Yes. He literally said that.

"Well, fine." I thought. "He does have a point." So I walked to where he was, thanked him for warning me, and said I had not realized how close the lightning was. And then he did this:

And that's when I got mad. I thought "I complied with your goddamn request, I was civil because I didn't know you very well, and you're still fucking yelling at me? What the fuck? Even more than that, TAKE ME AWAY? What the hell? That sounds like something you'd say to describe the death of a cat. I feel utterly dehumanized!"
And then, through some tremendous effort of will, I didn't say any of that out loud. I just left, because I don't know him and I don't care.

five minutes later:
One of my friends walked up to me and asked what was wrong. The odd part is, I don't remember being angry or sad, let alone showing it on my face. And when I tried to answer, even though I expected to sound like

I sounded more like

And then I cried for the next hour.

We were having Chapel (my school is parochial), and I sat there and wept silently, like some kind of zealot. I wept because the candles were shiny. I wept because the music was beautiful. The incense smelled good.
The service reminded me of the church my grandmother goes to. We had a new chaplain this year.

At one point, the new guy made a remark in his speech that I have probably heard since the day I was born. "God is in every human being."

Eventually, I got better, but I felt exhausted for the rest of the day. And that's why you need to get plenty of sleep at night.

UPDATE: I would like to amend my earlier statements about Mr. Hude. Senior year, I took a semester of Philosophy under him, and it was delightful. He apparently has some unresolved issues with lightning, though...

MyTricycle Is Here!

It's been a big, long, exhausting, oppressive week.

This week I've been working at a daycare run by my school every summer. I worked there for two weeks last year and had loads of fun, but this year was kind of horrible (just absolutely horrible).

For starters, I was only assigned one week, instead of two, and therefor got less payment. For another, this was the last week of the program, meaning that massive amounts of cleaning and a "DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO TO GET THIS SHIT DONE" attitude were the most defining characteristics of the whole week. And, perhaps most awfully, I was assigned to work with the four-year-olds the entire week.

I don't like toddlers too much. One-on-one, I'm fine. That's why I love to babysit for my church friend. But for this entire week, I've been drowning in a sea of toddlers. That's a particularly turbulent sea. It doesn't help that they're not yet fully articulate, either. I hate to deal with a crying child when it's impossible to know why he or she is crying. And then, of course, in any given group of toddlers, there are a few set personalities that more resemble personality disorders than any person's disposition.

You've got Anger Management Kid:

and The Kid Who Doesn't Know His Own Name:

(Seriously, his name was "Charles" on the class list, and it was written on his shirt, but he still didn't get it.)
You've also got Not Potty-trained Guy:

And Inseparable Girls:

And That Sneaky Kid:

Not to mention Bratty Children and Children That Don't Take Naps Ever and all sorts of other Crazy Kids. So yeah, it was tiring.

But now, I have enough money for a tricycle!

I can get one that folds!

And one with a basket!

So things are gonna be great!

The Murder Hammer

My father has a hammer, the handle of which is wrapped in nylon cording and plastic, as if he wants to be able to clean it easily, and doesn't want the fingerprints to stick. He didn't wrap the hammer himself, but rather, in a spontaneous act of good will, took the hammer from a wrathful homeless pimp who used the hammer for unspeakable purposes. (I was told to thoroughly explain to you that my father does not socially mingle with wrathful homeless pimps.)

ANYWAY, my father has no real love for the Murder Hammer, and leaves it lying around in strange places, where it provides an interesting coloring to every event that takes place in its vicinity. Recently, he left the Murder Hammer next to the place where we scatter seeds for the cardinals in the backyard, and it looked as if the cardinals were enjoying their breakfast while standing on top of the centerpiece of a crime scene.

Of course, I was inspired.

The Murder Hammer

When the sun rose in the morning

And light crept ‘cross the land,

One of the shadows that should have left

Lay printed on the sand.

It was a murder hammer

With blood upon the hilt.

Small pools lay all around it,

Where blood and dew had spilt.

And ‘round the pools of blood and dew

Was scattered a dainty treat.

For the hammer lay where, every day,

The birds and squirrels would eat.

Today they gathered round it;

They perched on the handle wood.

They paid no mind to the suffering,

But any human should.

 

Between the pools of blood and dew,

The murder hammer lies.

Where the pinkish water reflects

A picture of bird- filled skies.

And, while that was all well and good, it felt incomplete, so then I was all like"Hey! We need some HAIKUS IN THIS BITCH!!"

The Murder Hammer

When the sun rose in the morning

And light crept ‘cross the land,

One of the shadows that should have left

Lay printed on the sand.

The shadows recede

Each morning naturally

Unless they are cursed.

It was a murder hammer

With blood upon the hilt.

Small pools lay all around it,

Where blood and dew had spilt.

The blood bled on the

Hammer that bled on the ground

That bled in water.

And ‘round the pools of blood and dew

Was scattered a dainty treat.

For the hammer lay where, every day,

The birds and squirrels would eat.

A murder hammer

Is laying by the seeds that

The birds are eating.

Today they gathered round it;

They perched on the handle wood.

They paid no mind to the suffering,

But any human should.

Animals don’t mind

The implications of blood.

Humans know better.

Between the pools of blood and dew,

The murder hammer lies.

Where the pinkish water reflects

A picture of bird- filled skies.

The birds take flight but

The hammer cannot escape

Its own foul uses.

But even then, I could not rest. The poem needed a visual representation to strengthen its image. So, I present to you "Murder Hammer with Cardinals" in watercolor.

By the by, I think Murder Hammer would be a great name for a metal band, or album, or song, or anything really associated with metal. So yeah. Somebody make that happen.

Seriously. I want to see this.

I haven't written in a while, so I'm just gonna bombard you with stuff.

Happy Wednesday, everyone!
Today, I went to my church friend's house to help with her little girl, as I have been doing nearly every day for a week and a half now, excepting Fridays and Sundays. Things have been going about like they did the first day I visited.

Sometimes, I'm cranky.

Sometimes, she's cranky.

But I love her, and I could put up with both of our melodramatic bouts all day if I had to.

In other news, I'm saving up to buy my mother and myself an adult-sized tricycle.

And, in some other other news, Saturday was the 150th birthday of Gustav Klimt, the womanizing genius who contributed some of the greatest artwork of the twentieth century between 1862 and 1918. You'll know him best from these two pictures:

"The Kiss"

"Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I"

Both of these paintings are from Klimt's Gold Period, during which, as you can see, he used a lot of gold. During this period he was most popular and widely accepted, and so these two paintings are the most well known of his works. However, he was an extremely prolific artist (though he was prolific in general. He had, like, a billion kids), so you should totally go check out some of his other stuff. I recommend that you read Gustav Klimt by Gilles Neret, which is the book that prompted me to fall so deeply in love with Klimt's work.

As an artist, I love thinking of Klimt's work and how it was made. The motifs, stylization, and color pallet absolutely fascinate me, and I have tried on occasion to recreate that effect on my own. As a tribute to Klimt, I began a sort of "copycat" painting, and I just finished yesterday evening. I would never absolutely recreate anything right down to its subject, but I have made an original painting in the style of one of Klimt's. The painting I made is far smaller than any of his (he used enormous, wall-sized canvases) and also not original to me, stylistically, but I hope that had he seen it, he would have been properly outraged that someone was stealing his thunder.

I made the painting in the style of Klimt's Gold Period, because the stylization is easier to copy and the motifs are more obvious to me. However, I'm fonder of his later works that lean toward expressionism, like this one:

"The Virgin"
I wish the picture was of better quality, because the true colors of this painting are absolutely gorgeous.

Enjoy the rest of the day (which, by now, is not much); I will be in a remote location, watching How I Met Your Mother.

It's morning and there are whizzing thoughts in my head.

In exactly thirty minutes, I will be helping my church-friend with her adopted toddler again, and I just had a crazy thought. Both me and that little girl were born into a world where internet was pretty much a constant. The "superhighway" is here and it's not going away. So, I know there are people who are pretty old (like 65+) that already blog. And I know there are some parents who blog about their kids from pretty much day one. What if, someday, there are seniors with blogs who didn't start their blogs when they were seniors. What if these people had been blogging pretty much their whole life? Or what if a blog could be a family heirloom someday?

 

So, that just struck me as an interesting possibility. Usually, it actually annoys me when people start talking about how different things are these days, or the overwhelming repercussions of growing technology. Those topics can be really boring or saturated with Pollyanna-like enthusiasm, but when you have what feels like a personal revelation, it's hard to keep it in, huh? 

I added a new page! It's up there ^

It's not exactly a "Frequently Asked Questions" page because nobody asks me questions, but it's good to look at stuff handed to you by a stranger on the internet. Go try it out!

I just realized that the last two posts I've made have had all-caps titles. It's been an exciting week, I guess.

That is all.

CHILDREN!!!!!!

I have a great friend from my church who has adopted a beautiful little toddler from China! She's three and she's hearing impaired (plus no English) so communication is very hard. I was asked to help out with her today and jumped at the chance! I was already sewing a ragdoll for her and hoping I could try out some Chinese, so I was definitely pro toddler, anyway. So, here's how it went:

 

 And then we played with play-dough.