I like to make rocks. I get a great deal of personal satisfaction from making ceramic rocks. As I am making rocks I go elsewhere in my mind and I find a place of beautiful stillness and in this space I am working at my most intuitive.

I enjoy making all the work that I make, otherwise I wouldn’t make it BUT it is these rocks that give me the most pleasure.

So without further ado here is the Ceramic edition of this weeks Sunday Selections. There are some rules to this meme but I am fluid, follow them or not, it is up to you. I do ask that you link back to me though.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

These little lidded vessels are about the size of a squished tennis ball. I call them puzzle boxes because it takes a few twists and turns of the lid to make it sit correctly. I had heaps of fun making these.

This is a candlestick and incense holder. We had a power failure recently and I didn’t have anything to stick any candles into.

This is the side view of the same candlestick and incense holder.

This is part of the first platter that I made in response to my recent trip up to Burnie. I can still feel the psychic impact of driving over the hill into Devonport and being smacked in the soul by the ocean.

This platter is available in the Off Centre Gallery in Salamanca Arts Centre

And then we leave my rocks and travel to the other side of my artistic brain and have this work, which I also adore making. These three pieces are part of the Rose Exhibition, which is showing now at the Lady Franklin Gallery in Lenah Valley. I have donated all of the sale price of this work to the Cancer Council.

But you do have to come back and have another Colonoscopy next year.

Inside my mind, the imaginary fist pumping and the “Fuck Yeah” thoughts are quickly replaced by the sinking feeling of, “Oh No not another colonoscopy.” *Gulps*

But it could always be much, much worse and so today I am pleased to announce that I don’t have cancer. YAY!

To celebrate my own cancer free status, I will be eating cake tomorrow at a fundraising afternoon tea at the lady Franklin Gallery in Lenah Valley.You can all come along as well and help to raise a little bit of money for the Cancer Council of Tasmania by buying some cool art and eating some cake as well.

The Rose exhibition is the brainchild of my friend, acclaimed Ceramist, Dawn Oakford.

The premise of the Rose exhibition was for invited artists to make some work in response to Picasso’s Rose period, with paintings by members of the Art Society of Tasmania and ceramics by members of the Tasmanian Ceramics Association.

This is the work that I have made and I have donated the sale price of this set to the Cancer council. So please tell your friends to go along and buy it.

I would be delighted if you could all come along to the Lady Franklin Gallery tomorrow as my guests and we can all eat cake together.

Three cheers for cake.

But it is my refrain.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

Months ago I was listening to Pamela Stephenson in conversation with Richard Fidler, or someone similar. Stephenson was talking about her latest book Sex Life: How Our Sexual Experiences Define Who We Are  By asking the audience how many times a day they thought about sex, and confiding that she thought about sex at least ten times before she even got out of bed, Stephenson encouraged her audience to really concentrate of those fleeting sexual thoughts and to be honest with their response to her question. Not surprisingly we think about sex an awful lot through out the course of the day.

Of course by then, I was thinking about sex as well, as that was where the conversation had led me. As I was trying to work out just how many times a day I thought about throwing “The Spouse” to the ground and having my evil way with him, my internal dialogue drifted down a different path and I started to think about how many times a day I thought about my Mother.

Thoughts of my mother and the constant ache that is her loss, play in the back of my psyche like a quiet soundtrack of grief, with occasional loud cymbal clashes of hurt,  punctuating the song with sharp flashes of pain.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

My daughter rang me last night to talk about Amy. Veronica told me that she had written a post sharing her frustrations at just how difficult Amy is to parent at the moment. Mum is the person Veronica needs to talk to about Amy, not me. Veronica needs the practical advice that only her grandmother can give her, as Mum successfully parented a stubbornly defiant, girl child of her own.

This excerpt from Veronica’s latest blog post describes the challenges she is facing now with her wonderfully feisty daughter.

TIME OUT is my other weapon in my ever decreasing arsenal, as she shouts at me that she WILL NOT GO and YOU CAN’T MAKE ME and YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.

It’s frustrating and admirable how defiant she is in the face of two parents staring her down. Even as I march her to time out, with, if I’m being honest, the help of her ear because there was no other option short of bodily lifting her, I am proud of her spirit and of her anger, and her ability to decide what she wants and aim for it no matter what.

I can not give my daughter what she needs. I am next to useless to her in situations like these because all I can do is glory in the fact that my grand daughter so like me. As I make sympathetic sounds and offer useless advice, inside I am secretly thrilled to bits with this evidence of my grand daughters spirit. Veronica knows this and it breaks my heart a little bit more.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

We are not allowed to grieve in Australia. We are certainly not allowed to grieve for the inappropriately long time that I have been grieving for my mother. It is coming up to three years, surely you must be over it by now, this grief of yours Kim is a tired refrain.

It might well be a tired refrain, but it is my refrain.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

The writing of this post was triggered by reading  this article, The Love of my Life by Cheryl Strayed

I am okay at the same time as I am not okay. I am supported by my close friends, as well as good online friends, but that support doesn’t stop me from wanting my Mother and being broken by the fact that my Mother is dead. Again and again and again.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

If ever I was going to write a book, “The Cobweb Collector” would be the title, as my house is full of cobwebs and I guard them fiercely.

An orb spider spun a beautiful web from one side of the verandah to the other and so naturally everyone was banned from using the verandah for over a week, simply because I didn’t want to see the spiders hard work destroyed before she had at least eaten a fly or two. A combination of being in the silvereye’s flight path and high winds shredded the web anyway but I was pleased I had at least given her a chance.

If a spider builds an elaborate web and it is destroyed, I wonder if they have the energy reserves to build another?

My head feels cloudy and full of cobwebs, I spent most of Easter Saturday crying for my Mother and crying for myself. I have recently lost a friend as well and some of the tears were for her as well. I burst into rooms and wave my arms around and speak loudly and honestly. People don’t like honesty and noise and I can never be bothered trying to explain.

I read through the posts I had written last April and my feelings of loss are still as raw as they were then. Three years, it has nearly been three years and still all I want is to be able to crawl into my Mothers lap and have her stroke my forehead and tell me that everything will be okay.

Life is messy and chaotic and I still feel mired and uninspired.

But I will work through this.

One.

Two.

Three.

You can thank me for the ear worm later.

I use this blog to sort out the words that are in my head. If I am lucky and the planets align I capture some of these words and they drip down from my fingers and fall onto the page, rather than spinning madly within the whirlpool of my brain.

Sometimes the words flow, sometimes they do not.

The simple act of writing makes me feel better.

The fact that you are reading my words is both comforting and frightening.

Comforting because I know that you are a friend, frightening because I know that you are not.

Today in my bathroom there was a grasshopper/cricket/insect thingy walking along the window. I captured it and let it go in the garden it was the prettiest green and it took each step very slowly, always tasting the air with its feelers before it moved forward.

As long as I can remember to take pleasure in the small things in my life I know that I will always be okay.

So here are some more of my reasons to be cheerful. I love how the branches in this tree seem to be dancing.

This week I am also linking up with Dorothy’s, “Things I Know,” to remind myself of the things that I already know.

That is how I feel. I feel like I am stuck and unable to gain any momentum.

I haven’t made any new work in over two weeks.

There is an exhibition coming up that I am quite looking forward to but as for making the work for it, I have been reading instead.

I haven’t made any bread and butter stuff for the Off Centre either and the studio is just too far away. My book is closer.

The industrial strength laxative I took last week as preparation for the colonoscopy made me ill for days. Great waves of nausea that saw me take a bucket to bed, also gave me a small insight into how my daughter feels on a daily basis. I take a small measure of comfort from the fact that my GP told me that if it was cancer I would surely be dead by now.

So there is that at least.

The blogosphere is giving me the shits, with a cowardly anonymous commenter on my daughters blog turning out to be someone we know. A sycophant of the first order, too weak to own her own words. An asshat who thinks that whispers are the way and taints her friends so that I cant be bothered with any of them, or their high school antics.

I am mired and I am also angry.

It wasn’t until I started to cry in a meeting yesterday, that I realised what was wrong with me.

It is grief.

Grief.

That raging weight of missing, of a hole that is too huge to be filled, the pain of the overwhelming emptiness and the endless if onlys.

I am trying to board up my grief with planks of anger and as the fury rises the creativity recedes.

And I am left with nothing but ashes.

My mothers ashes in a box on my shelf.

I take them down occasionally and shake them and whisper hello.

April was Mum’s month.

Easter and her birthday on the 11th all tied up with Mum’s zest for life, with her love of food and family.

April just exposes the giant hole in our lives where mum used to be and the anger bubbles away quietly under the surface.

April is coming and I am trying not to cry.

But sometimes internet, life is hard.

It is really really hard.

Hi everyone, last night I went along to my very first roller derby match and along with some other brave souls I had all my hair chopped off to raise money for the Leukaemia Foundation.

So instead of hunting through my zillions of folders of forgotten photos I will share with you photos of The Worlds Greatest Shave.

My daughter Veronica took all these photos for me and I have not edited them at all.

For any newcomers here that would like to join in with my Sunday Selections meme you are more than welcome and here are the rules .

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

I dyed my hair one last time especially for the shave.

The Minister for Tourism Scott Bacon starts to chop off my hair and I am hamming it up for the crowd.

I am now holding my hair in my hands. I will use my hair for paintbrushes.

The serious clipping begins.

The public part of the shave has finished.and here I am with short hair, Tadaa!

After the public shaving had finished, the lovely Bridget from the Leukaemia foundation took one of the other shavees, Garland and myself off to the staff room and she finished shaving our hair. So my hair is even shorter now than this last photo but you get the general idea.

There is still plenty of time to donate to this very worthy cause if you feel so inclined. All you have to do is Click this link to my page on the Leukaemia Foundation’s website.

oh ps. Thanks for all the hats I didn’t realise just how cold my head would be.

Today is the day my lovelies.

I am not nervous today at all which is a blessed relief. On Tuesday I was extremely nervous and  every time I thought about The Shave my chest would tighten and I would have to concentrate on my breathing until the moment of minor panic had passed.

With the ever useless gift of hindsight I can now see that it was the scheduled trip to hospital on Wednesday that was making me the most nervous, not the impending shave. Though I am having a little hyperventilate now *gulp*

Tonight at approximately 7.30 (ish) I will be shaving all my hair off.

I wont be shaving my hair off in a quiet corner of a locked bathroom somewhere, oh no that would be far too easy.

I will be shaving my hair off in the middle of a roller derby match.

How did I get here? How did I go from thinking, “Jeez I am sick to death of my fucking hair”, to “Let’s shave it all off in an arena  chocka blok full of strangers?”

I blame you.

I lay the blame squarely at your feet, internet.

It is all your fault.

You make me feel like I am ten feet tall and bullet proof.

You make me believe that I can do anything, that my harebrained schemes aren’t that harebrained after all.

Every single one of you that reads this blog, or leaves a comment, or sends me an encouraging email.

This is all your fault.

And I thank you from the very bottom of my heart.

Together we have raised over THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS and my total meter thermometer thingy, on my fundraising page is flashing and blinking and saying GOAL ACHIEVED with a shininess that hurts my eyes.

So any Hobartians out there reading this blog, you should come along to the DEC tonight, it promises to be a fun night and all proceeds go to the Leukaemia foundation. The doors open at 5pm (cash sales only though) and the first bout starts at 6.10 pm.

Scott Bacon MP will be wielding the clippers and I will lose my locks at about 7.40 pm.

Scott Bacon is the Minister for Tourism,Hospitality and Veterans Affairs and I will be sitting with him before the shave. It amuses me no end that I will have my very own hostage, I mean politician in the box with me tonight. So any questions you want asking of the local member for Denison you have about 5 hours notice to email them to me and I will engage the minister in polite conversation.

Veronica is coming along with me as my personal photographer and I hope to have some photos up on the blog tomorrow.

Thank you all so very, very much and hopefully I will see some of you at the DEC tonight.

In four days time someone from the Leukaemia foundation is chopping off all my hair.

I will no longer be able to dramatically fling my plait over my shoulder for emphasis when I am being flippant.

Numerous people have told me How brave I am being, I don’t consider myself brave at all.

It is a good cause and I am losing my hair by choice, not necessity.

My hair will grow back, and in the meantime, if I am too horrified by how my lack of hair makes me look, well I just won’t look. I will look instead at the lovely long list of generous sponsors.

I will avoid mirrors and when I do see myself, I will  refuse to think  about my appearance. Scarlett O ‘ Hara was right on the money when she said, “I will think about that tomorrow.” As I find that philosophy works wonderfully well, especially when combined with rigorous avoidance of  reflective surfaces.

So today, I am determinedly not thinking about the Worlds Greatest Shave, instead I am thinking about food.

I didn’t realise how much food I had scattered about  my house. A banana in the fruit bowl, muesli on the shelf, dark chocolate in the cupboard.

Everywhere I look there is some sort of foodstuff.

And I cant eat any of it.

Today I am fasting and purging.

Tonight I will be horrendously grumpy.

Tomorrow I am scheduled for a colonoscopy.

I have been on the waiting list for this procedure since October 2009. My GP joked that if my symptoms were indicative of bowel cancer I would be dead by now.

So there is that, at least.

This week is shaping up to be a big week, all I need for the trifecta is a pedicure and I will have had something done to the top, middle and bottom of my body.

And there is a time to faff about but if you faff about for too long you lose your writing time

Or I do at least.

I write my blog posts in the early morning. Each morning I get up and make a pot of coffee and I sit down at the computer. I check my emails and then I think about writing a blog post.

The critical piece of timing here internet, is the point between thinking about writing a blog post and opening facebook.

If I open facebook, I lose time, anything from 20 minutes to an hour can vanish in the click of a mouse.

I check my son’s status, then my daughters, then I check on you. I smile at the humorous pictures I see and I share stuff that interests me or that I think my friends will enjoy. click faff click faff. tick tock tick tock tick tick TICK TOCK.

Then twitter beckons and I have another choice, click over to my twitter account or log onto the blog.

I use twitter as a news service and If I click through to my account all chances of writing a blog post have flown out the window. I  become distracted and then overloaded mentally by all the goings on in the world. The occupy protests, Syria, feminist issues, causes, humour and stupidity all combine to steal at least another hour.

And look it is 8.20 am and I haven’t written a thing.

The clock is still ticking away, half the day has vanished already, I should be in the studio, eeek.

But I am procrastinating and maybe I should just make a music cd to work to. Something loud and rocky, good cleaning music.

Because the studio is chaotically messy from this months frantic making and I need to give it a good clean before I can glaze the work.

The Fired Up exhibition opens on the 4th of March. The work is half done.

The bisque firing was successful and the work just need to be glazed.

Glazing involves making five or ten litre buckets of glaze, mixing and straining and sieving and pouring.

All very physical work but I can’t concentrate today.

I am procrastinating.

I am procrastinating by writing this post.

I have managed to avoid twitter and facebook this morning apart from a quick check on the kids.

My son goes back to school today. He dropped out of school last year and spent the year sleeping.

His facebook status worries me  All-nighter then rosny tomorrow. Yiew. Pumped to get back into guitaring.

I need to remind myself  that I cant live his life,that I cant make him, that I cant make him be happy.

I cant fix him. My son is broken and I can’t fix him. I can just pass him the glue and hope.

I rang him at 7.08 am this morning and he answered the phone with, “Yes I am awake Mother”.

I wasn’t going to ring but I am too keyed up to let today slip by without making contact. David is an independent student, who does not live at home and he needs to find his own way without me nagging him out of bed and forcing him to go to school.

I am a bundle of nerves, of angsty, worrying nerves. I hope against all hope that David has a good first day at school, I hope his day today will be brilliant and that he will go to school again tomorrow, happily.

I hope, I hope, I hope.

I have had this feeling every first day of every school year of his life. Hoping like mad that he has a great day, knowing that his first day’s experience  will define the year. It seems that I have spent every first day worrying. The difference now is that we know about the Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. We know why David can’t sleep. Why he hurts, why the nausea lasts all day and why the anxiety gnaws at him.

And here I am again pointlessly exercising my mad skills with my 20/20 hindsight. If only I hadn’t sent him to Blah de Blah  high. If only I hadn’t made him stay at the primary school he hated, If only we didn’t live so far away. If only things were easier.

If only mum hadn’t died.

It is hard, internet.

And all I can do, is the best I can do.

I just muddle along, taking each day as it comes and making decisions based on the information I have at hand at the time.

And if wishes were horses I would own a circus.