Diabolical Clay

Those are words you never really want to hear from your adult child. Some days my heart breaks for my girl and I just want to pick her up and hold her close and tell her that everything is going to be okay. But we all know that  would be a lie, because once you are an adult you just have to take what life throws at you, and keep on going, no matter how hard it is.

I watch my daughter struggle with her failing body and I am proud of how Veronica goes about her daily life. I listen daily to Isaac’s ear curdling screams as I talk to my daughter on the telephone. Isaac’s wailing sets my teeth on edge, at least I am able to hang up the telephone and retreat to the silence of my studio.

Growing your own vegetables and raising your own meat takes the pressure off an overstretched budget. Not for my girl it seems, as some low-life bastard stole 17 of Veronica’s ducklings this week and an unexpected  frost wiped out Veronica’s entire veggie garden.

Totally destroyed it.Completely rooned. Dead.

In the scheme of things it isn’t really a big deal, but when you think that the produce from that garden was going to help stretch their limited budget, it is a big deal. Tomatoes this year have not gone below $4 a kilo and pumpkins and bananas are fast turning into  luxury items. Petrol is up to $1.50 a litre and steadily rising, electricity charges are rising as well. The list goes on.

The final straw that prompted the words, “I am at the end off my tether Mum” was the death of Veronica’s iPhone, caused we suspect by two small children and a cup of water.

Veronica has written a post asking you, the internet for some help. I know how hard it is for my girl to ask for help, so I am asking you to help my child as well.

I have put a paypal widget thingy up on my sidebar, if you could please donate $5 to help my girl I will be very grateful.

Edited: I have been at the polytechnic all day today and then had a Tasmanian Ceramics Association meeting. I only arrived home a few minutes ago at 8.30 pm and I am totally overwhelmed at your generosity towards my girl. I dont have the words to express my gratitude at the moment but you can all be certain of one thing. I will pay this forward.

THANK YOU

There is no rhyme or reason to these photos this week. I was just clicking through the folders and randomly grabbing out photos that I liked or that I responded to emotionally.

Anyone can join in with this Photo Meme, “Sunday Selections” but I do ask that you only add your link if you are joining in with Sunday Selections, as links that are off topic or spam will be removed. Also be careful when you are adding your URL as the Mr Linky will remember your old URL and we will click onto an old post.

Here is the weekly 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 Selection” title.

Link back here to me.

Easy Peasy.

Yesterday I was minding my own business in the canteen line, with no thought in my head other than coffee, when I bumped in to Glen Dunn, the man responsible for the creation of the VIRAL LAB at the polytechnic. In less than a minute of casual conversation I found to my absolute horror, that I was agreeing to join Glen’s drawing class that afternoon.

Commence hyperventilation.

I pushed the thought of actually having to draw something and then show my scratchy lines, that in no way what so ever, resemble what I am trying to draw firmly to the back of my mind.

During morning tea I was somewhat reassured when two other classmates confessed that they couldn’t draw either and as misery likes company I decided to honour my rash promise.

Three trips to the toilet later I walked into the VIRAL LAB and prepared to meet my drawing doom.

I was so nervous that I was on the verge of tears for the whole lesson.

I have always really, really, really, wanted to learn to draw and my inabilty to do anything beyond a doodle has always frustrated me.  My previous attempts at learning haven’t been very successful and so I have always just avoided drawing anything.

I was told as a child that I shouldn’t bother drawing as I would never be any good at it and my drawings were held up in class as examples of what not to do. Looking back they were the same shit that every other kid was drawing, except that my sparkly princesses were fond of wearing rather pointy hats. The nuns were very evil in the early seventies. But that is another topic for another day.

Once we had introduced ourselves to each other, the serious business of drawing was about to begin and I really wished for a fire drill, an urgent phone call, anything at all would have done, to delay the inevitable.

The mechanics of setting up the easels was soothing and I positioned myself so I was hiding at the back of the room.I had never been shown how to position an easel before, I didn’t know about the tooth of the paper, about eyelines and perspective and I certainly didn’t know that a perfectly ordinary table would suddenly turn into an indecipherable series of confusing angles and lines.

As I was trying to draw this impossible alien thing, as my hands wouldn’t obey my eyes and my lines were all over the shop, Glen came up behind me and quietly encouraged me to keep on going. I remember a drawing class I had done previously where I was in the exact same situation as yesterday and a box on a table had morphed into a confusing tangle. My teacher had simply taken the pencil from my hands and effortlessly corrected my lines. In that moment of correction, I gave up the idea that I could ever learn to draw.

Yesterday was different. My drawing was still the worst in the room but you could see that it was a table, if you squinted a bit.

All the marks on the paper were my own and what I learned yesterday has given me the confidence that I might actually be able to draw a table soon and with any luck, you wont even have to squint at it to see that it is a table.

Stay tuned…

This week my daughter Veronica announced her engagement and within a matter of moments of that announcement, my inbox was full of congratulatory messages from my online friends. Thank you all very much.

It has been a busy week this week, I have been taming the chaos in my own studio as well as helping to organise the polytechnic ceramics space, down at the Art school in Hobart. I will be in at the Art School one day a week as a senior polytechnic student for all of this year and I have already started to make new friends.

As I was walking up to my studio yesterday there were a pair of yellow tailed black cockatoos in the yard. The Black Cockies are a frequent visitor to my place as I live in the hills, in the middle of a dry sclerophyll forest. What was very unusual about this visit was the fact that there were only two cockatoos, normally they are in a family group of between 7 and 11 birds.

We had to cut a tree down to make way for my studio, The Spouse, David and a friend milled the tree into timber that The Spouse is now using to make my work benches. What we couldn’t mill up, the boys cut into firewood. The black cockatoos are eating the grubs in the firewood.

One bird always acts as a sentry and keeps  a look out while the other birds feed.

Here are my photos, I hope you enjoy them.

Anyone can join in with this Photo Meme, “Sunday Selections” but I do ask that you only add your link if you are joining in with Sunday Selections, as links that are off topic or spam will be removed. Also be careful when you are adding your URL as the Mr Linky will remember your old URL and we will click onto an old post.

Here is the weekly 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 Selection” title.

Link back here to me.

Easy Peasy.

My daughter Veronica told me last night that her partner Nathan proposed to her yesterday.

Veronica accepted Nathan’s proposal of marriage.

I never actually gave their relationship much thought before, it didn’t bother me that Von and Nate weren’t married.

But do you know what my dear internetz?

Ever since Veronica told me the good news, I have had this excited feeling in the pit of my stomach and I keep on having a quiet little giggle.

Squee.

My little girl is getting married.

I am thrilled to bits.

I am having heaps of fun hosting this meme and would like to take this chance to thank everyone for joining in as well.

For those of you who are new to blogging, a meme like this is a great way to find bloggers with similar interests. When I first started blogging in 2007,  I had a hard time finding bloggers that I could connect with until I discovered a couple of photography memes. Wordless Wednesday and Weekly Winners were the two that I did the most regularly and I made a lot of new friends and I also learned heaps about photography.

Joining in with other photographers, I learned about depth of field and shutter speed and though I understand the basic principles of photography I am still a point and shoot photographer. I see something I like and just point the camera at it snapitty snap snap without much thought.

The most important thing I found about doing the photography memes was that they gave me the confidence to actually believe that my photos were any good.  So without further waffling on from me here are this weeks Sunday Selections.

This was the moon last night. I didn’t mess about with tripods or anything as I am far too lazy impatient for that. I just went outside and took some photos as the moon was rising. When I moved around I could capture the moon through the trees and the last photograph is my favourite.

Anyone can join in with this Photo Meme, “Sunday Selections” but I do ask that you only add your link if you are joining in with Sunday Selections.  Also be careful when you are adding your URL as the Mr Linky will remember your old URL and we will click onto an old post.

Here is the weekly 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 Selection” title.

Link back here to me.

Easy Peasy.

I think the radio interview went well, I was incredibly nervous but I didn’t swear or say “um” a lot so that has to count as a positive doesn’t it? The radio people are going to email Veronica an mp3 file of our talk and once I work out how to upload it I will, then you can judge for yourselves.

A retiring potter, Monika, has given me the contents of her studio. I filled the back of my station wagon up with boxes of oxides, glaze materials, throwing tools, scales and the assorted paraphenalia of a working potter.

Coming only two days after the theft of the ceramic eggs this was a very emotional gift for me to receive and when Monika gave me her gas kiln as well, I started to cry a bit. Monika gave me a hug and she told me that she could see I was passionate about my work and that she was so happy her tools were going to such a good home.

These wooden throwing tools are such a personal gift from one potter to another and I can feel the positive energy radiating from them. They fit my hands well and I am itching to get my wheel set up.

I am starting to tame the chaos that is my studio space and “The Spouse” has been flat stick these past few weeks building me benches and work tables.

My electric kiln was delivered on Thursday and I am busting to get it sorted and wired in so I can really get to work. It weighs about 500 kilos and is top heavy. The kiln needs to be lifted off these pallets and then put back down. A mate around the road has a tripod thingy used for removing car engines and The Spouse has some endless chain. So hopefully the kiln will be in its spot ready for the electrician sooner rather than later. It will still be a tricky job though and I wont be up there watching the boys do it in case I jinx them and the kiln falls over. Yes I am superstitious.

It has been so bittersweet finally getting the studio organised and strangely enough as my bank balance is rapidly approaching the zero funds mark I am feeling happier. Every time I accessed the studio money I was reminded that I was spending my mother’s life. Every cent that I have spent was the culmination of my mother’s working life, everything Mum had worked for was taken away by her premature death from a cancer that she should never have had and as I spend the ashes of my mothers life, I would give it all back in an instant to just be able to speak to my Mum again.

I have that line stuck in my head now but I cant remember the song it is from. Old age, people, old age.

Anyway the point of this post is to tell you that I will be talking on the radio this Friday morning. My daughter Veronica rang me yesterday to let me know that we will both be talking to ABC local radio presenter Ryk Goddard about our experiences as Mothers.

I think the point of the interview is to compare the differences with two generations of Mothers.

There aren’t the glaring differences with Veronica and my experiences of motherhood as there was between My mother and myself. Things had changed radically from the 60s style of motherhood to the 80s version of motherhood but not much has changed really from the 80s to now.

I think you could say that with a lot of aspects of womanhood as well. There was the great fight for womens rights in the 60s and 70s but by the time I was a grown woman in the mid eighties I took all my freedoms for granted and I was spoiled for choice. I had easy access to birth control, I could go to any university I wanted to, I had plenty of job offers on the table and I was about to start a horticultural apprenticeship, when I chucked it all in to become a stay at home mum.

Once I held my new baby in my arms I chose to be a stay at home mum and choosing to be that stay at home mum was a lot more difficult than I expected it to be.

Financially it was a nightmare. The Spouse was a deckhand at the time, a third generation fisherman and it was always feast or famine living with a fisherman.

He was at sea when Veronica was born and managed to get home to meet his daughter when she was three days old. He had gone back to sea again before we had even left the hospital to go home on day five.

When Veronica was twelve months old our rental house was sold and we moved away from the city to live closer to the block of land my Mum had given me. We ended up living in a converted bus in Mum’s back yard for eighteen months, luckily it was a very big backyard or Mum and I would have driven each other crazy.

I remember having an epiphany one day down at the wharf, holding my small daughter in my arms and us both waving to The Spouse as he sailed away. The feeling I got as I watched these small men in this small boat venture out onto this huge grey ocean was one of impending doom. Veronica and I waved until we couldn’t see that tiny speck anymore and then we did what countless generations of fishermens families had done before ue, we went home to wait.

I made The Spouse chuck his job in when he returned home. I argued passionately that the money wasn’t worth it for the risks he was taking and that he needed to stay on dry land or else. The Spouse wasnt prepared to risk the “or else” and he stayed home with me. Within a month of  “The Spouse stopping work we had moved the bus up to our own land, funny how living in your Mother in law’s backyard quickly loses its charm when you are actually there every day. It was a hard transition for a man with salt in his veins to make and one day I am going to make a large sculpture of Poseidon and have him here looking down the valley shaking his trident angrily at the circumstances that left the sea god marooned so far inland.

The skipper hit a rock, off South Cape on the next trip with a green crew and they were unable to save the boat.  The crew were fine but it proved my point and The Spouse has never returned to the sea.

So here I am sitting at the computer twenty odd years later reminiscing and trying to work out what on earth I am going to talk about on the radio. I did things so differently from my peers. We eschewed the mortgage and the 9-5 lifestyle in favour of an alternative lifestyle where we built our house room by room out of recycled materials. This wasn’t done to fit in with some utopian dream of ours, it was down to simple necessity. I had chosen to be a full time mum and The Spouse found it very difficult to hold down a job that wasn’t at sea.

We were also young and full of beans and had all the time in the world.

I think that on Friday morning I will do what I normally do, I will just wing it, I will work it out as I go along, I will follow my daughter’s lead and I will hope like hell that I dont babble.

It will be just like everything else in my life.

I haven’t shared any photos of the Tasmanian sky for a while now. The weather has been so ordinary that the day finishes with a long twilight lately, rather than the lovely fiery sunsets that we were getting last summer.

So here are my selections for this week, some sunsets from the summer of 2010.

Anyone can join in with this Photo Meme, “Sunday Selections” but I do ask that you only add your link if you are joining in with Sunday Selections.  Also be careful when you are adding your URL as the Mr Linky will remember your old URL and we will click onto an old post.

Here is the weekly 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 Selection” title.

Link back here to me.

Easy Peasy.