Saturday, November 12
Nov. 13th, 2022 12:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Very nice weather today, a hair above zero C and sunny.
I was able to let the goats and ponies out for a while to paw for grass again.
I am glad I have taken care of myself all these years, both mentally and physically. I'm not perfect, but by at least trying to take care of myself, I feel like I am doing well for my age.
This is once again sparked by concerns for my Trainwreck sister, who has a chest infection at least once a winter, as she does right now. She can barely breathe and is literally measuring whether or not she can make it to other parts of the house.
I also spoke with Sister S, and she is saying that Sister E has been talking to her husband about moving to town and selling their acreage. It would be sad, but reasonable given how bad Sister E's husband's health has been. Sister S is still recovering from her kidney removal surgery, and feeling okay but really tired.
I went to do the paint night thingy, and I think it went pretty well. It was at the riding barn where River is boarded. The owner, R, has a big open finished room above the barn that she uses for gatherings and used to use it for dog obedience training in the winter. It's perfect for something like paint night, and you don't have to rent the space.
We ended up having 11 people total doing painting, and I was kind of nervous because this is a first for me, to do an event like this. I did a lot of planning, and did several paintings at home to work through the process of doing a simple mandala, but it is always hard to know how to make the event go smoothly.
It ended up doing really well for time, and for people being able to use the tools I had, and have access to the paint, and understood the instruction.
Most of the participants ended up doing their own very different take on the idea, which I anticipated to some degree, but was a little surprised at a few of them almost ignoring the entire pattern I was demonstrating and just doing something they didn't even really need to be there to do. Well, that's fine too, but I guess we could have...what, just made paint and canvas available and let everyone do their own thing without me bothering to do all the research?
Well, that was fine too. A little disconcerting, but as long as it raised money for the horse rescue, what does it matter what they do. I was really surprised by some of the color combinations and designs some people came up with. Really amazing to have such different results in such a small group. There were literally no two alike, or even similar. You probably wouldn't have even guessed they were in the same paint class, they were that different.
I ended up winning the gift basket (we bought tickets for it), which felt strange, given that I was kind of
co-leading the event, but legit.
As always, things like this make me feel a lot of energy coming off of people. It was pretty positive, but it was a lot to feel all at once.
It felt really vulnerable, to put myself out there like that. You hope you do a good enough job of leading everyone through it, that you were organized enough, that you had enough tools, and that it was something people enjoyed and got a good result. You hope you get enough people to show up, and that you gave them enough fun that they might come again.
I hope that by "going first" a few other people will step forward with their talents and do other events like this at the barn to raise money. I might do something like this again at some time, we'll see.
A lot of the work now is done, in terms of future events. This evening gave us a very good idea of how to set things up, and how to pace it.
I learned that the seemingly out of place lyric in Paul Simon's 'Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes' about 'she makes the sign of the teaspoon, he makes the sign of the wave' is actually a reference to South African taxi hand signals, indicating going to a rich district and a poor district, respectively.
https://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/404/ZP_Files/Innovate%2009/Articles/a-look-at-paratransit-in-south-africa_woolf-and-joubert-web.zp40153.pdf
This is from a comment on the same topic: I'm from durban south africa. Much of the album was recorded in south africa, there are some specifically south african cultural references:
The sign of the teaspoon is index finger extended pointing down making a circular motion. The sign of the wave is a wave like motion with your arm. These are signs used to summon a minibus taxi. The teaspoon one means citycenter and the wave one means durban (its a coastal city). As the taxi drives past the driver sees the signs and stops if he's going in that direction.
In context this probably means that he is saying that they are going in different directions in life.
From this song.
https://youtu.be/-I_T3XvzPaM
Very nice weather today, a hair above zero C and sunny.
I was able to let the goats and ponies out for a while to paw for grass again.
I am glad I have taken care of myself all these years, both mentally and physically. I'm not perfect, but by at least trying to take care of myself, I feel like I am doing well for my age.
This is once again sparked by concerns for my Trainwreck sister, who has a chest infection at least once a winter, as she does right now. She can barely breathe and is literally measuring whether or not she can make it to other parts of the house.
I also spoke with Sister S, and she is saying that Sister E has been talking to her husband about moving to town and selling their acreage. It would be sad, but reasonable given how bad Sister E's husband's health has been. Sister S is still recovering from her kidney removal surgery, and feeling okay but really tired.
I went to do the paint night thingy, and I think it went pretty well. It was at the riding barn where River is boarded. The owner, R, has a big open finished room above the barn that she uses for gatherings and used to use it for dog obedience training in the winter. It's perfect for something like paint night, and you don't have to rent the space.
We ended up having 11 people total doing painting, and I was kind of nervous because this is a first for me, to do an event like this. I did a lot of planning, and did several paintings at home to work through the process of doing a simple mandala, but it is always hard to know how to make the event go smoothly.
It ended up doing really well for time, and for people being able to use the tools I had, and have access to the paint, and understood the instruction.
Most of the participants ended up doing their own very different take on the idea, which I anticipated to some degree, but was a little surprised at a few of them almost ignoring the entire pattern I was demonstrating and just doing something they didn't even really need to be there to do. Well, that's fine too, but I guess we could have...what, just made paint and canvas available and let everyone do their own thing without me bothering to do all the research?
Well, that was fine too. A little disconcerting, but as long as it raised money for the horse rescue, what does it matter what they do. I was really surprised by some of the color combinations and designs some people came up with. Really amazing to have such different results in such a small group. There were literally no two alike, or even similar. You probably wouldn't have even guessed they were in the same paint class, they were that different.
I ended up winning the gift basket (we bought tickets for it), which felt strange, given that I was kind of
co-leading the event, but legit.
As always, things like this make me feel a lot of energy coming off of people. It was pretty positive, but it was a lot to feel all at once.
It felt really vulnerable, to put myself out there like that. You hope you do a good enough job of leading everyone through it, that you were organized enough, that you had enough tools, and that it was something people enjoyed and got a good result. You hope you get enough people to show up, and that you gave them enough fun that they might come again.
I hope that by "going first" a few other people will step forward with their talents and do other events like this at the barn to raise money. I might do something like this again at some time, we'll see.
A lot of the work now is done, in terms of future events. This evening gave us a very good idea of how to set things up, and how to pace it.
I learned that the seemingly out of place lyric in Paul Simon's 'Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes' about 'she makes the sign of the teaspoon, he makes the sign of the wave' is actually a reference to South African taxi hand signals, indicating going to a rich district and a poor district, respectively.
https://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/404/ZP_Files/Innovate%2009/Articles/a-look-at-paratransit-in-south-africa_woolf-and-joubert-web.zp40153.pdf
This is from a comment on the same topic: I'm from durban south africa. Much of the album was recorded in south africa, there are some specifically south african cultural references:
The sign of the teaspoon is index finger extended pointing down making a circular motion. The sign of the wave is a wave like motion with your arm. These are signs used to summon a minibus taxi. The teaspoon one means citycenter and the wave one means durban (its a coastal city). As the taxi drives past the driver sees the signs and stops if he's going in that direction.
In context this probably means that he is saying that they are going in different directions in life.
From this song.
https://youtu.be/-I_T3XvzPaM
