Upbeat. Downbeat.

I've got an upbeat half and a downbeat half of this post.  I suppose I should start with the downbeat, to finish on a happier note.

Last night we had a terrific evening display of heat lightning. John and I sat on the back patio in the close, breathless summer night and watched the lightning flash across the sky. Each flash illuminated a different layer of clouds that seemed to swirl overhead in a great spiral. We hoped for rain, but of course none came. 

I dreamed dark dreams of conflict and frustration, and woke to John gently laying his hand on my shoulder to remind me that I needed to take him to work before 7.  Honestly, I was glad to get up, to escape the dreams, which left a sort of pall over my mind, though I couldn't remember them specifically.  Before I had quite shaken off the dreams, John told me about the theater shootings in Colorado last night.

We both just sat there on the patio, shaking our heads and looking up at the sky and the trees. So peaceful there. Full of sunlight and birdsong and the busy bossiness of Kobi strutting around the yard. It's hard to come to grips with something so violent and stupid and senseless.  Among the dead, a six year old child. Among the wounded, a three-month old baby.... I've been a bit somber all day.

Add to this the news I received earlier this week that a friend of mine's brother was killed by stray gunfire from a gang shooting. He was standing inside a Best Buy store in Tulsa, with his ten-year-old daughter.  The horror of that leaves me cold still.  What that poor little girl went through, and will carry with her for the rest of her life.  She was just a year younger than Grayson. It strangles me. There are no words for that grief.

On a happier note, however...


I've been much more content at work the past couple of weeks and I realized recently what the cause of that contentment was.  I've been learning things.

The past week I've been engaged in several writing projects that required research and/or interviews into areas hitherto unknown. I've researched several paintings for an article I was writing, and did background research on an artist, Max Ferguson, whom I later did an hour-long interview with by phone. He was in Israel, which was cool, and he gave a nice, friendly interview.  I get nervous when I do artist interviews. I'm always afraid I'm going to say something really stupid, since I'm no art historian or art expert of any kind. But I'm assiduous about my background research, I write down tons of questions in advance, and then I do my best to channel NPR's Terri Gross when the time comes to pick up the phone. Once we get started it's usually okay, but I still sweat through the whole thing.

A high point of this week for me was the privilege of shadowing a pair of conservators who have been visiting the museum all week to do some first aid on a few of the paintings in our collection. I've seen natural history conservation, of course, but I knew only a very little bit about art conservation, so it was interesting to  get to hang around and ask questions.  I got to see them work on a painting that was more than 200 years old, and saw them administer a number of treatments, from simple surface cleaning to in-painting of cracks and little bits of lost paint to more in-depth things like applying adhesives to secure paint that had come loose from its canvas.  All of it was incredibly focused, close, and repetitive work.  I don't know how either of them has any eyesight at all. But they were easy-paced and patient and the tedium of the tasks didn't seem to phase them at all.  It was a pleasure to engage them in conversation as they worked. I learned all kinds of things.

And that seems to be key.  I enjoy writing, of course. That's what I'm here for. But I think I get the greatest pleasure out of gathering information prior to the writing. I'm learning things. My brain sort of lights up. It's like the old Robert Louis Stevenson poem:  "The world is so full of a number of things. I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

On the Joys and Sorrows of Summer

I got a new haircut.  I love getting new haircuts. I wish I could grow my hair out and get a new cut every week. Sometimes I hate them, but mostly I'm pretty happy with a new style. I have a terrific hairdresser now in Bentonville.  She cuts my hair with a straight razor, and really does a great job.  This is a transitional cut, as I grow it out again.  I'm always either cutting it off or growing it out. I never stay with a style for very long. It's boring. 

Still getting used to the new glasses, too.  It gets a little easier, finding the sweet spot to look through for various distances, but it still irks me. I just want to look, not look for looking, if you know what I mean. 

I saw on the news that this entire region is in one of the worst droughts in history, complete with exploding hay bales in Oklahoma.  Frankly, in Oklahoma, drought is so much a way of life that we should really call every non-drought year a "rainy," But the news is troubling. It's hot.  Hot and dry. And unlikely to change any time soon. I also read that more people are beginning to believe in Global Warming due to the crazy weather patterns we've had this year, all over the world. Well, good.  If it gets people to listen to science, I'm behind it. 

Despite the brutal heat, I'm still a fan of summer. I love the lazy drone of cicadas on a summer afternoon, when it's hot enough that you're totally justified in lying still with a book in a cool room. I love hitting the surface of a cool pool on a blazing summer afternoon, or walking the spring-fed river with a cocktail in my hand. I love hearing the tree frogs at night, and I love fresh peppers and tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden. I'm less crazy about mowing in the heat, or moving (which we did last year in 110 degrees), or sitting outside in a dead calm, feeling like the sky is pressing down on you like a hot blanket (which we did on the fourth of July this year at the park, waiting for the fireworks to start: see photo below). 

Nevertheless, summer goes by too quickly for me. Already it is mid-July and I haven't done much of the stuff I wanted to do:  wanted to float the Buffalo River, seek out some great Arkansas waterfalls, cook out (no grill, sadly), camp... but the heat really puts a damper on any outdoor activity. Likely there won't be enough water in some of the rivers to make the waterfalls worth viewing, and doing anything outside without immediate access to cold water is not happening. 

Another thing that may not be happening is the week at Galveston that I was planning on with G.  There have been unexpected expenses that make it ill advisable to spend money on travel.  And yet I can't give up the idea. Soon, maybe as soon as next summer, my boy will be too adolescent to want to travel with his mom.  He'll be twelve in September, nearly thirteen by next summer... I really want to get this special time with him while there's still some little boy left. I will do everything in my power to make that trip happen. A few days of sea and sand will make up for a lot of other stuff we haven't been able to do. 

He's been gone so much. I suppose I should get used to it in the summers, so he can spend extended time with his dad.  I suppose I should be grateful that his dad wants to spend that kind of time with him. But I miss him, and I want to do special stuff with him in the summer... and I haven't really. He's been in day camps and classes and fun stuff like that when he's with his dad, but I haven't found anything similar for him here. I fear he's bored. 

On the other hand, I remember being bored in the summer, and I took no damage from it. I stayed up late watching old movies, spent hours at the pool or the library, watched a lot of bad TV (my mom and I got sucked into some dreadful 1970s soap opera one year when I was ten or eleven), and read and read and read. I still remember those lazy days fondly, so maybe it won't leave him emotionally scarred to be at home with the dogs, the computer and the TV for parts of the summer. 

I just learned that the Perseid meteor shower is August 11, a Saturday night, conveniently.  So I will plan for us to be out in the country somewhere that evening to take advantage of the dark Arkansas sky.  When the moon eclipsed last year, I woke Grayson up at 3 a.m. to come out and see it.  He was suitably impressed.  We've tried a few times to view meteor showers, but either we don't see any because we're in town, or else I fall asleep and miss the peak, or else I blow it off.  This year I mean to see it, just to add it to my list of Things I Did With My Kid this Summer. So I can say I did something. 

Here's what we've done so far:

River walking.  

This is on Sugar Creek in Bella Vista.  It's spring-fed and COLD. 

 Fireworks igniting and watching.  (The Bentonville fireworks show was excellent, despite the brutal heat.  We went with John and his sister Rian, and were well fortified with cocktails.)

First Friday on the Bentonville Downtown Square. Grayson loves the bungee jumper.  Last First Friday, however, one of the bungees stretched several feet unexpectedly and dropped him a bit.  Fortunately, I didn't see this, it probably would have given me a heart attack.  G was undamaged, and says it won't deter him from jumping again. 

We've also gone swimming, roller skating and seen movies. I guess it's not so bad. We find ways to keep ourselves entertained. 

This two weeks, of course, I'm living with John again.  It's a quiet joy to have him home with me. We don't do much besides cook and watch television and hang out. But it's so comfortable, and comforting to wake up with him and go to bed with him. I miss him when Grayson comes home.  So I guess I'm always missing someone!  

Typical.  Chronically disappointed. 

Pigeon.

I had an appointment with the optometrist lately who told me it was time for bifocals. I can't say I was surprised, as I have been using off-the-rack readers to read with when I was wearing my contact lenses for over a year now.  However, I was surprised because up to now I've felt like I could read fine when not wearing my lenses.  Apparently that's no longer the case. So I now have progressive, lineless bifocals.

I can't say I'm crazy about them.

I don't know if it's being obliged to wear glasses again after more than ten years in contact lenses, or the bifocals themselves that bother me. For one thing, judging from the pain in my skull, it appears the temples are wearing grooves in the bone at the back of my ears. I remember suffering an adjustment period to new glasses in the past, but this seems extreme. For another thing, though there is no line on my bifocals, there is a "sweet spot" for each range of vision, and it's not always right in front of your eyes. For reading, it's easy, because I'm looking down.  For distance vision it's relatively easy, because I look straight ahead. But it's that in-between range that has me bobbing my head up and down like one of those drinking birds. When I look at you I'm likely to make several small adjustments to my head, looking for that magic place where your face is actually in focus. It gives me something of the aspect of a nervous bird.  So much so that Grayson told me he was going to start introducing me as "My Mom... the pigeon."

One of my coworkers informed me he'd never seen me being so agreeable before, as I now constantly appear to be nodding my head. Ha freakin' ha ha. Very funny.

I assure myself that I'll get used to it. I'll learn to adjust automatically, and won't be bothered by the vaguely out-of-focus peripheral areas. I just have to stick with it.  But the jury remains decidedly out.

John loves the new glasses.  He's always said he likes me in glasses, but he also said that he would choose the blackest, ugliest frames for me if he had the choice, to repell any potential rivals.  Not that he has any, the dear man. So now I"m wondering, does he like me in glasses because he thinks I look good, or because I look bad? Or perhaps because he has some weird librarian fetish that has yet to reveal itself?  Unknown.

For myself, I'm not crazy about the look.  The frames seem to square my face off too much.  The technician who fitted me for them had a lot to say about my choice.  I tried on pair after pair and she'd just say "No.  Too big for your face." She seemed to know what she was talking about, so I listened to her. I also felt sort of rushed in my choice, and ended up taking the ones she said were "geek chic," but she thought I could "pull it off."  So I'm pulling. I'm not sure if it's coming off or not.

I suppose Geek Chic is apropos for someone who sits at a computer all day writing about art. But I'm not sure if I want to look the part all the time. I wish I still had contacts I could use for a little variety, but I can't afford both, so glasses it is.