The Diary of Queen Mothy |
Happy New Year! written @ 7:43 PM on January 01, 2005 While most mothers and daughters would be content to bake cookies together on Christmas Eve, my mother and I opted to make jello shots. Indeed, it has been the friggin' Twilight Zone ever since I got on my winter break, and I apologize for the lack of updates here, but you'll understand soon enough methinks. Anyway, let me tell you about the end of my fall semester: it sucked. Oh okay, here's the extended version: The art department at school instated a mandatory review for graphic design majors completing their intro courses to see if you're "worthy" of graduating in your chosen major or if you should be "encouraged to explore other options," i.e. you suck and so does your work. I freaked out about this because my graphic design professors can be scary. To make matters worse they wanted to see work from my freshman year of college. Keep in mind I am a junior with over 90 credit hours worth of classes so I was like, "Say whaa?" My work has significantly grown since my freshman year. At the review they made me lay out my work from my freshman year, though, and then attacked me with a slew of *gulp* questions such as: "Why do you want to be a graphic designer?" Answer: "Because it's the only major in the art department that won't give me Alzheimers." They didn't understand the joke, so I explained, "Design keeps my brain active and functional and forces me to pull from everything I know as an artist to come up with a design concept that both communicates well and satisfies my particular needs as an artist." I got an A+ for bull shit in high school, by the way. "What do you think you can offer the graphic design department?" Answer: "I'm your damned poster child." To clarify, I really did answer the questions like this. I have this terrible habit as of late to say everything that comes to my head without careful thought or-- worse-- remorse. I added, "I think I raise the bar among my peers. Having already done some commission work, I understand the competitive nature of the field and the need to stay informed of all that is going on in both art and the world at large. What frustrates me about my peers is that many of them don't read or keep up with outside events. I think that in order to keep creating successful design, it's almost necessary to become a sort of renaissance man or woman, and that means submersing myself in life." To be honest, I couldn't believe that I came up with hashed answers like these with a snap of my fingers because I always sucked at improvisation in theatre, and what sparked that inspired answer was nothing shorter than an act of divine intervention. Suffice it to say, I passed the review and have permission to graduate in my major, thank you very much you assholes in the art office, now can I get on with my life? As for the rest of my semester, I had only two art history exams, both of them mostly essay. For my Western Art exam I wrote this inspired answer about how Artemisia Gentileschi's work was influenced by her rape and how the portrait of Holofernes in her painting Judith Slaying Holofernes was rumored to be a portrait of her rapist and a whole bunch of other stuff I pulled out of my ass which we didn't even cover in the lecture. Got an A on that baby. Hell, I got all As for the semester! *does a victory dance* By the end of this year, my GPA will be up to a comfortable 3.9. *grin* Sweet. *** My neurotic drawing professor, meanwhile, hijacked my independent study project. My project, which is for my Honors senior thesis, is to do 365 sunset paintings over the course of 2005. He is now my mentor, instead of my painting professor, because he was offended that I asked my painting professor instead of him first. Like I said, he hijacked my project. He convinced me that he would be a good mentor because he was going to put together a fabulous marketing plan and yadda-yadda-yadda for when my show opens in the spring of 2006, and how excited he was that I was attempting to do 365 paintings in less than a year and a half at 20 years old. I, on the other hand, am scared shitless about my project because that means I'm taking 22 hours worth of classes this spring semester and am personally convinced that this monumental project is going to be the death of me. To do 365 paintings is to do about one-fifth of the work that van Gogh did in his lifetime, people. Only in a year. I may be an expert at time management, but let's face it, there's no way I can make the days twenty-five hours long with classes everyday, four shows to design in theatre, not to mention study and homework time, and-- for the love of God-- my regular histrionic life. Oh yeah, I forgot... what regular life? But my neurotic drawing professor then gave me a speech as to how he took twenty-four hours when he was an undergrad and graduated with over 240 credit hours worth of classes and yadda-yadda-some more. Yes, I thought, and this is why you are, after all, my neurotic drawing professor. But after doing some research on landscape painting over break-- and a helluva lot of self-reflection and said jello shots in between-- I started my project today at 6:00pm. My goal is to do sketches and take pictures at 6:00 every evening, and hence my first painting is going to be an almost-black canvas because you really can't see a damned thing at 6:00 when it's raining. *** As for my winter break, it's been splendid thus far! I haven't gotten up earlier than 10:30am once, and, boy-oh-boy, I haven't felt better. And then my family happened, beginning with my 17-year-old brother. One night after returning from the movies with my mother, I really had to pee and I have this phobia about using restrooms at movie theaters, so as soon as my mom parked the car, I ran inside the house... Only to discover two strangers sitting on my couch, a boy and a girl. I stopped in my tracks as the boy said, "Hey, Sam." "Hey, who the hell are you?" I said. It occurred to me that they were my brother's friends. "And where's Jonathan?" "Upstairs." "Upstairs?" I echoed. And then it hit me: there was a second female in the house! I bolted up the stairs, and as I was rounding the corner, I caught him and his girlfriend in his bed trying to achieve a "position of normalcy" before I entered the room. This is one of the few moments in my life when words failed me. "Jonathan," I declared like a robot, "you have two friends sitting on the couch twiddling their thumbs downstairs and I think you need to do something about that." AKA move your ass before Mom catches you. But my brother never was very bright, and my mother did, indeed, catch him in bed with his girlfriend. She tried to be perfectly calm but it came out like a lion's growl when she said, "Take. Your. Friends. Home. Now." Of course, since my brother is not bright, he pitched a fit about it and how my mother was "unfair" and how the fact that his girlfriend was in his bed was "no big deal." Then he thought it would be funny if he mooned her. I'm sorry, you don't moon your mother in front of your friends-- or for any reason, for that matter. Jonathan was grounded for two days. Light punishment, I said, just like what Martha Stewart got. Since he was grounded, he was not allowed to go anywhere except to work. But my brother, oh wow, did I mention he's not the brightest crayon in the box? He took a detour to his girlfriend's house after work the next day, claiming she had "car trouble." His car ended up sliding on her icy driveway, and he slammed the brakes and hit a tree, potentially totalling his car. Busted. If that isn't karma for you, I don't know what is. Now Mom had a fresh reason to be pissed off at him: not only did he disobey her but our insurance bills are going to be through the roof-- if our insurance company covers the damages at all. What's funny is that for Christmas my brother got new speakers, amps, and subs for his car... which he no longer has. LOL! Oh God, I can't help it but laugh every time. And in case you think I'm completely heartless, I am pleased to tell you he came away from the crash without a bump. And he has the nerve to criticize my driving. Who took him to work at eight in the morning in the middle of the blizzard without managing to wreck Esmeralda? Yours truly. Naturally, all the to-do with my brother has my mother slightly on edge and has made her increase her dose of hormones for menopause. For many a day I listened to her and my brother fight and argue about his girlfriend, his car, his questionable friends, and his attitude, but I think she's losing her mind. For instance, she sprayed WD40 on her shovel during the blizzard because she thought it would push the snow better. It was a good thought but doesn't work in reality. She makes me check her e-mail for her while she's at work since the hospital has restricted employee-access to private e-mail, which is annoying as hell for me, and then whines when she doesn't get any messages, not even junk mail. She has more in common with our cats than with her ex-husband, which, I suppose, is understandble and yet strange for me. As for my dad, the coach of my brother's hockey team, he's had his own odyssey. The boys got into a fight in the locker room before a game in Dayton one day. One of them sent the other to the hospital, and another put his fist through a wall, which infuriated the ice rink manager. Dad, who had a habit of throwing hamburgers at the people at McDonald's because they forgot his explicit "pickles only" order, was a little more than livid. He fired off a nasty e-mail to the entire team and their parents in which is cussed and TALKED IN CAPITAL LETTERS WHICH MEANT HE WAS SCREAMING THROUGH THE COMPUTER, RIGHT? And then the parents turned around a pitched their own fit. In the end, no one got suspended or dropped from the team and everyone threw in ten bucks apiece to pay for the damaged wall. Meanwhile, it was the first holiday I spent with two different parents since their divorce, and against my will I went to spend half of my Christmas at my dad's apartment. To clarify, I made a silent vow to never go to his apartment because it was too symbolic of a lot of things that hurt me during the whole divorce ordeal, but I also knew I had to be realistic and there was no way I could keep up with that without hurting him. It was a pleasant afternoon, as it turns out. It was a little surreal seeing half the furniture that used to be in my house now at this little cramped apartment, but otherwise it was clean and, I have to admit, Dad did very well for himself. I think he's very lonely there without his kids, but I have a hard time feeling too sorry since that was the path he chose. He had pictures of Jonathan and me all over his apartment, which was a little unnerving. It made me remember the time Mom went to Glamour Shots at the mall to get her picture taken, and she gave it to my Dad, framed, on his birthday to try and make him remember how beautiful she is. And that moment was very painful. All in all, Christmas was nice. To quote Calvin & Hobbes, I got "the loot!" And thank God for relatives who don't know what else to give you except money. I can now pay for my books next semester. My friend Lindsay commissioned me to do a portrait painting of her family to give them for Christmas, and that helped too. As for the rest of my break, I've been idle. I've gone shopping, have spent hours at bookstores catching up on my magazines, books, and CDs, and have taken it easy trying to recuperate from the fall semester. I thought about getting a job just for the break but then decided that since I'm about to undergo trauma with 22 hours, 4 set designs, and 365 sunset paintings, I might need to just simply rest. I'm going to make a good luck charm tonight. Something tells me that it wouldn't hurt. *** My New Years resolution for 2005: Complain less.
A Bit of History ~ And Onward! L'Amour Toujours! - August 08, 2005 |
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