Whew -The Last Day

Desk is cleaned off.

Files are cleared out.

None of the people I was supposed to transition things to ever contacted me.

Oh well, I suppose it will be an adventure . . . . . for them.

I think I'll settle into that period that happens between sequels for a little bit.

Home from Grandma's

I'm all out of Time and I'm certainly out of Sorts. So if anyone would like to send me some extra Sorts they have lying around, I'd appreciate it.

The combination of Holidays and the Great Endings of Things plus Everyday Things has me reeling. I haven't been able to catch my breath since September. Every weekend seems to bring another Holiday.

I have not forgotten the Taunting updates but we just spent four days over the river and through the woods.

New Poppets were added to the House - and other people bought Poppets for me! - the Holiday Spirit up above was given to me by my Perfectly Normal Husband, and I received a Small Theatre Troupe from my Relatively Rockin' Brother-In-Law. Pics of them will be later when I get to play with my Theatre.

Of course I gifted Poppets as well - A Drunken Poppet for my Perfectly Normal Irish Father-In-Law. Although no one NEEDS a Drunken Poppet they certainly are fun.

And for my Poppet Mad Niece I gifted a Holiday Cookie Poppet which we have photographed by the Gingerbread Train she made herself.

And for my Mother I had to get her the only Poppet that actually has "Chic" in her Name. The Leopard Chic Poppet makes herself at home amongst my mother's accouterments of beauty.

This picture was actually taken at my mother's request. I think I'm winning her over.

And I received a new toy that allows me to take "tripod" pictures from some fairly tourtured angles - which I played with immediately.

But now I am incredibly sleepy and heavy with food, and love, travel and trimmings, and the knowledge of the three more days before my job ends.

All endings are beginnings too, but when you get to the end of a really long hike, sometimes there is more of a desire for a nap than a victory lap.

Hope everyone had a wonderful season celebrating whatever it is they like to celebrate.

One final pic taken using my Gorillapod:

Merry Everything!

The Taunting - Cheapass Edition

Do you all remember The Taunting? It is my family's personalization of our Americanized Holiday celebration.

As time goes on and I study more, I am harboring a secret suspicion that Judah and the Macabees became a macho male veneer on a holiday that had been celebrated by Jews previously that celebrated Judith. I've done a presentation on Judith in art and history- she is fascinating in the mixed up worlds of art history and political history . . . . but that is another truly wonky, geeky, potentially controversial story - for another time and perhaps a different audience.

Questions like Judith burn through my brain - but the someone to tear through the questions with me, well that doesn't work out so well. Their brain would have to be burning too. It's tied up with Western religion and history and art and the role of women and the values of monarchy. Too complicated, to much trust needed to have the conversation. No one wants to play with me. . . . .

So my fevered brain and I put all of our energy into the Taunting instead. And indeed, Channuka snuck up on us this year, and I "lost" my job 4 days before it started, (it's not lost, just ending in a few weeks, but in the Meatworld the effect is the same) and I was far too optimistic about time estimates for some artwork I was trying to do. So as a result the Taunting was planned, but the execution was not out of Phase II:Find Key Elements. Phase I is Create The Theme.

Every year at the beginning of Channuka, I put all of the presents out at the first candle. They are numbered, there are 8 for each child (who aren't so childish anymore) and each present is a clue. Every Taunting has a Major Theme, and every night has a Minor Theme. You have to open the presents in order. The "big" present is always the 8th Candle.

The wrapping is part of the Theme - and last year it was Poppets. And Chinese Takeout Containers - My sister was the one to get the wrapping theme. It's an in joke. But this year, we opted for The Taunting - Slacker Edition:

As you can see things were ordered and arriving - instead of hiding the packages as they came in I stacked them all in front of the portal mirror and set the Poppets from Last Year's Taunting to guard them.

The Slacker Taunting actually is related to a legendary event called Slacker Camp. When My Perfectly Normal Husband was simply My Accountant Who I Brought With Me to the Desert, Because You Only Bring The Things You Really Need, we set up very elaborate, generous interactive performance art and helped everyone who needed it with their own.

Then we went to a local event about 3 -4 weeks later and brought everything we needed and enough for lot of other people, and offered to share and give instructions but only performed the barest minimum needed. Those who had known us from the other events saw the art in it, and those who had just met us thought it was a brilliant conceit while they ate the steaks that we brought but they cooked.

It was interesting for us, because we are people who do, and help, and plan, and execute. It taught us things like letting go of complete control, and that if we give that out into the world, good people who are fun to hang out with will come to us and give us their enegry, work and company. However I must admit - we were only willing to do Slacker Camp once. It's not our nature.

So the same way Slacker Camp was not conducted in a vaccum, The Taunting - Cheapass Edition was also held within the context of Tauntings gone by. Good traditions grow new stories.

When the first Box arrived it was approximately 4 feet tall and 5 inches square and I had no time to unpack it so it stayed in the livingroom and I declared that the Cheapass Taunting had begun. The Boy asked if it was one gift but it actually contained several - it would take me three days to be able to get enough time to unpack it. The Taunting had begun! It Taunted me too.

On the First Candle I had a lovely stack of Amazon Boxes. ( because I'm a Prime Member and they deliver in two days with free shipping for me) and a few boxes from other places.

First Candle also happened to be Shabbat and it was such a Slacker Channuka that I hadn't bought candles for the Channukia ( menorahs) so we scavenged the leftovers from previous years.

However The Skeleton That Want's To Run A Florist Shop came up with a backup plan.

He likes to arrange things. He gathered a group of the minis and they put together Poppets Pretending to be a Menorah.

See - the mini wizard's wand is pretending to be the first candle and Wind is the Shamesh.

I reused the Chinese Food Gift Containers from last year's Taunting. See Slacker Channaka is Green!

We lit the regular candles, The Boy got a timepiece and The Girl got recycled kimono fabric made into fabulous shoelaces, which in turn ended up looking a lot like something Mini Poppets should dance with.

So they did.

Last year it was the Calender that caused Chaos because of the Great Holiday Overlap. This year the Chaos came because I was tricked into believing in The Week That Was Not There. But just you wait Calendar . . . . I'll get you my pretty, and your little ticking minutes too.

The Taunting can be messed with, but it cannot be stopped.

We emerged from the eight days victorious - The next entry or two will tell the story.

The Devil I know

Part of the reason for the Dreamtime is because I stopped being good about telling people whom I loved what was happening. Mostly because I was tired of hearing myself. And perhaps I was tired of having to admit that things kept happening.

This entry is to meet that need, although this time I have informed immediate family members, other loved ones might still check here:

There are many aspects of my job that I can't talk about, and indeed very few people who read me here even know what I do to support my Poppet Habit.

Even if I had the type of job where I could talk about it, I'm not sure I would here. Because the internet is a web, but it is also like amber - it traps everything forever. The Dreamtime has some journal like qualities but there are limits, journals generally don't have an audience. They work well for processing and exploring ideas that you are still working on and maybe for venting, but the internet and (as I discovered earlier this week), emails are not necessarily the best "working documents" for processing thought.

However, there is one thing I'm relatively sure of, which is that no one from work reads this blog. Even the one friend from work who thinks about reading the blog frequently admits to not getting past the thought.

At work however, the one thing I should not talk about, is that I am about to be out of work.

I guess it's like what I heard about fight club, which I suppose I shouldn't have heard about.

So although I am about to join the statistical measure of the recession at the end of the month, ( For once I am on Trend! My advertising professor would be so proud . . . .) I find that one of the things that is happening is that everyone who has to tell me something about it, is deeply upset at having to talk to me about it at all.

Later I figured out that's because right now, for this minute, I am the only one they have to tell.

And universally they have said "I can't believe this is happening, who could have predicted this?"

Um . . . . me.

You know, the one you hired to analyze and manage things? The one who told you not only that this was going to happen, but should it happen, I'm the one that you should throw overboard first.

"I can't believe they're doing this to you during the Holidays"

You mean the month the contract ended? But honestly, I do understand that it is upsetting to my three bosses, my HR representative, and the people I can't mention because then I would be talking about work.

But I'm not sure why they were surprised at my acceptance. I wonder what they were expecting? Do people generally behave badly in this circumstance? I can't even imagine. It's just the end of funding. I did a great job, they made money, they'd hire me again, I'd work for them again. It's all good except for the I-have-no-income part.

I was upset sometime in October when I saw that the math would not work. And while my value is tangible, and perhaps even critical, the description of my work is devalued, no one would work to save me on a sinking ship, even if I'm the only one with an oar to move the flotsam. But when the promised miracles still stayed exactly as far away I predicted, it started being more about making sure that the ship could still float even if it was becalmed. Because that's a whole lot better than having the whole thing sink. So I've been working for that, knowing that there was very little chance of being invited on to the repaired vessel unless there was a me-shaped hole when everyone was ready to set sail again.

And if they kept me, I promise the sailors would have thought I was bad luck and thrown me overboard in a different direction.

So now I need to just be careful - I am elegible to work for that ship again or a similar ship. I don't see myself changing the nature of my web presence which is "present but discreet."

I will be looking for a job and I am old school. I work really hard and I take not working as a kind of personal failure. I have ended up in employment situations that were horrible and afraid to leave them for fear of unemployment, but I've been where I am five years, I have family and friends to back me up. I have a spark of life back that had hibernated for several years thanks to Lisa and the Poppets.

So with any luck I'll be able to make a living doing what I'm good at without working for the devil. Instead of what happened once before. Primary job criteria - don't be evil.

I think I'll be OK.

But I do admit I miss at least the idea of corporate cultures with a career path instead of a continually improvised trajectory. Of course those might be as mythological as the hydra.

If nothing else the Embassy will resume construction . . . .

Because that's how we roll . . . .

OK enough with the introspective stuff. It's time to get working.

There are embassies to build, gingerbread houses to let loose in the world!

Poppets that have been patiently waiting for their photoshoots.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night, nor dark of soul shall prevent me from my appointed task of spreading the Poppets throughout the Land.

Ha!

Ha ha HA!

Bwahahahahahahahah. . . . . .!

Did you like that? I've been working with a vocal coach . . . .

Today I Failed at the Internet - an apology

I've offended someone I like a lot by interpreting things completely incorrectly.

We were having two completely different conversations.

I can't even really apologize properly because I have to apologize in print, without tone and that's what got me into this hellhole in the first place.

Too safe, too loose, I thought she knew me well enough to know where I was coming from and I was horribly horribly wrong.

Now she thinks I think terrible things, about her, (Not true) and I know she thinks terrible things about me. (Which I deserve to some extent for being so dumb)

S., I don't know if you'll ever click on another post of mine, but I'm so sorry.

(Yeah, I originally typed out the name and then I realized that might be a completely different kind of stupid)

Trapped in a hell of my own making - the worst part is that it was exactly the kind of mistake I've been afraid of making and I've been writing about here.

Did I mention I was sorry . . . .

Not Ready Yet . . . . with Updatey Goodness

Tomorrow I have to do something because it's:

1. Prudent
2. Something I promised a friend
3. Something that should be easy for me
4. Something I may have to do soon anyway
5. Better if I do it now

But I'm not ready for it.

As a matter of fact I'm getting a really good example of why anxiety attacks are medicated and why that's a good thing.

For some reason all I can think of is Pooh saying "Oh Bother" and feeling like Rabbit trying to keep leaves from swirling in the wind.

Nope. Not Ready At All.

Bother.

*****

Update

I have done the not-ready thing.

And I did it without having had coffee.

It went pretty well, questions were asked, I had answers and then I remembered,

"Oh yeah, I'm pretty damn competent."

Funny how I forget that sort of thing.

At least I impressed myself. I'm a pretty rough audience.

Confessions - Zen and the Art of Friends on the Internet

*A note - I started writing this before I left for World Fantasy Con. And then I thought I would just leave it be. But every time I was trying to write something else here, this would come back in all its unfinished glory. I think I might have been trying to tuck it back in, but it just won't stay tucked. So here it is in all is rambling . . . .

I've been making stuff - Lisa will be writing about the stuff shortly and then I will be writing about the stuff here.

I was going to write about Yom Kippur and Kol Nidre, but I think that I'm going to take a break from all that and be about the Halloween of it all for a while.

However I will write about the interesting things that have happened while making stuff.

I remembered I'm shy.

I knew I was shy really, but like many introverts who end up in the arts ( and control freaks who like to bring things in on time and on budget) I developed an outward face that looks confident and comfortable. Since most of one's experience is on the outside that outward being becomes a part of you. For the most part, it's true that I am outgoing, confident and comfortable. However, the truth is I'm reacting to signals that I get from other people in live interactions. What I learned is that when you take all the human "tells" away, apparently I revert back to my inner nature which is shy.

I sometimes feel rude when posting on a stranger's blog. I wrapped myself in knots for days after pointing out how someone's religious post was religiously intolerant and targeting a minor. I was polite about it, the writer wasn't nearly as viscous as her commenters, and I backed myself up with examples from her text as well as mine as to why you shouldn't do that and her interpretation ran counter to what she claimed was her purpose.

But I didn't know her and I was worried that she might figure out how I got to her blog and be mad at someone who did know her. I knew I was right to do it, but I was still embarrassed that I did.

That's one example. Here's the opposite. I posted a "thank you" to the Librarian's blog from the other day, He was well into the higher 200's on responses. I almost didn't post because "Well, he didn't really need to hear from me." No one else had said exactly what I was posting, but the next thought was sort of "Well, he'll never read my post anyway, the link is almost two months old." I did post, but it did feel weird.

Then there are the other internet weirds. My communication with Lisa has been over the internet. We will meet in real life over Halloween. This is a hundred percent different than other internet or long distance things because first there was the art. Poppets are wonderful, but Lisa did a fine art series of hanging scultptures called "Relics"and because of the Relics all of the shy came back in force.

I know artists and writers of note in real life, I am not easily starstruck, or really startstruck at all. They are human, some are wonderful, some not so much, some are just normal with a great deal of talent, some are very good at self promotion and some are very lucky that they have someone in their lives who are good at promoting them. So meeting an artist or writer that whose work I like can be very surprising. I like that, and I expect them to be different than their work.

I am constantly bewildered for example by people who claim that Heinlein is sexist. Half of his female characters do more in a day than Buckaroo Banzai, but he writes about men who are surprised by that and some readers assume he identified with those male characters. Obviously they paid no attention to his message or his body of work. It usually tells me more about those people than it would say anything about him. My general rule is that the work should be interpreted first by itself and it's effect on you, and then you can layer in additional information and context.

Note the "layer". Your reaction to the work is important, but it's not the end of the process. I'm not a huge fan of abstract modernisim, but after studying it I can now at least walk through a museum and see that it's not "something my kid can do". I understand the structure of it now. It's a language responding to art that went before it and theories about what should and should not be and how to invert them. That's why it's called "art appreciation." Not- "Did it make you cry".

I still don't like most of it though. That's OK. It's Ok not to like something without minimizing or destroying it.

Right - back to the point. So Lisa's Relics.

When I was at the convention where I first saw her work and poppets, I had no access to internet. I was speaking with my son who was home and he went online when I gave him the www.poppetplanet.com address. At that time she had her gallery work online as well. The Boy of the House started telling me about it. It was an accident really. He was supposed to pass the information on but he told me about her larger art and he fell for it in a big way, The Girl likes the Poppets best. But the hint I got was the picture in Strange Roads, when I read "Uncle Chaim, Aunt Rifke and the Angel." which you can get here. Peter S. Beagle wrote it. I can't tell you anything more about it except that it's correct, and if you've read it I will be happy to discuss it with you.

Peter and I also met at that convention. He was human and real, and I met him because I was speaking with his manager first, but he is a generous soul and it wouldn't have mattered if I met him on a line. We spent a lot of time talking about New York. In all the times I had read his work, I never thought for a minute that we shared any cultural background. I just loved his work. Interestingly, re-reading his work knowing we share it, changes nothing about his work. The work stands alone. Sometimes context changes nothing.

I loved the angel that graced his story, because she represented angels the way I think of them, because of the expression, because of the things behind her that she was protecting or holding back or both. Because of physicality. Because she was neither 'spirit" or "dead". I discovered later that Lisa refers to at least some of her angels as "indifferent angels" - Exactly.

But that is context, which is still later. Poppets and Relics and Soup Topography

How much does this say about culture? about being? about the fundamental and complex act of interacting with the world? About survival?

I loved the fact that she used patterns as negative space, I do something similar although nowhere near her ability or level.

The big art, where the poppets are a component makes me think. It's the electroshock in the bell jar. It's not just "wake up" it's the caterpillar's "Who. Are. You.?"

And then the poppets by themselves follow up and go "Well, are you going to answer?"

But the relics, more than the poppets - I know them. I recognize them from stories so secret I never tell them, sometimes not even to myself.

I know them so deeply that seeing them is like joy and pain and a primal scream and flying all at the same time. And I was a little shaken, that it was not just the crack-like poppets that were made by this person, but the relics, full of the things I never say and full of things that no one could know. Not spiritual things - I need to make that clear. Real things, actions, dreams, pasts.

That was what the art did when I didn't know anything about her. And it didn't go away. The art wound around in my head. It got the Boy too and let the words loose. The Boy rarely shares his words.

It was so much, it was too deep. So I thought that maybe since she had a blog, if I read about it maybe I could sort out why there was a connection. Why the art made me feel? Why I couldn't shut the feeling off?

So I started reading about the relics, and the fire, and the painting. I was afraid really, that what went into the art would be too different than what came out and I would be lost in all the things that were happening inside me.

But that's not what happened. It was something different, and I started reading in order from the beginning and it felt uneven. I knew about her, she was affecting me, but she had nothing of mine at all so when she wrote to me I would share some things because the karmic register was short.

I had made myself so small in a way that no one could see. I had packed myself up so that I could be the strong steadiness that was needed. And there were the Poppets with their "Wake Up" and the indifferent angels looking straight into me with the "You can't hide, we know you know."

But I've gotten good at hiding.

And now they have all gathered together as a chorus in my head, running around all independent of their choirmaster.

Whom I will be meeting shortly.

So, I guess that "shy" is no longer a real option - "awkward and gangly" is trying to step up to the plate instead.

Niether the internet, nor age make some things any easier.

It's still a variation of the same question you ask when you're the new kid on the block. "Hi, I'm new here. Will you be my friend?"

And all of the worlds of creation and destruction that hang in the minute until the other kid answers wait suspended. Have you noticed how we don't just come out and ask that question as grown-ups?

I think we're afraid of the answer, or maybe we're afraid of the answer mattering. Grownups never do anything that straightforward if it matters.

Sometimes I don't have the whole adult thing nailed much at all.

Maybe that's why I'm making stuff now. To nail it all down.

Poppets Play Noah's Ark

The Poppets are playing Noah's Ark.

_

They are all lined up.

_

How sweet. Are they being the animals Professor Crow?

_

No.

_

They are being the Flood.

_

Oh.

Am I Blue?

I seem to be full of complicated lately.

I think trying to keep informed is a destructive addiction. Trying to move past your own bias and running smack into someone else's is demoralizing.

Knowing I can make small differences, but feeling overwhelmed and defeated because I cannot affect the large ones.

I do believe in continuing to fight the good fights, but worry the scale is just to large. Not just the big things, but the little ones too. Family, people, me.

But all the big things keep trickling down to the little things, they're all interconnected. I can't not see it.

Sometimes I am very, very jealous of the people who live perfectly contained lives with their families and their neighborhoods and really don't want to know much more about the world as long as their world stays safe.

I don't begrudge them that.

In reality I would like to protect that choice for them.

But I am torn, because I can't stop looking at all the "wrong" like a kid at a horror movie or a teen finding fetish porn. I keep peeking through my fingers knowing what I see will just make things worse. My view will become ever more jaded.

Things known can be revised with new information but they can't be unexperienced.

And the fact that it is all purveyed by hackneyed, jaded, lazy, substandard writing and reporting is part of the pull. Just like the "b movie" production values in horror and porn. You can dismiss it, you can accept it and just say "Oh well you know that's how they make these things. What were you expecting?"

Maybe that's why I don't watch horror movies now. And I've never liked porn. It's too much like trying to read the news.

But I know I'm going to click open the various "Posts" and "Times" again.

Like a poor woman's Diogenes . . . .

I am an inadequate Cynic. Diogenes was proving a point. I actually keep hoping.

World Fantasy Con - Collaboration Happens

Here is what is now officially titled " The House Where Halloween Things Live When It Isn't Halloween"

This is a picture when it was still in front of Poppetropolis Proper.

(Poppetropolis is the area in NYC where the Embarrassed Embassy is based, it's like Chinatown, or Little Italy but where all the expats from Poppet Planet live).

The Embarrassed Embassy is not yet a year old - but it's 1st anniversary will be soon. Like many construction projects in many cities, it has undergone some changed scope and is behind schedule. It is part and parcel of my reaction to Lisa's art. Lisa and others have told me that my reaction to her work is art. I'm still struggling a little with that.

But it is what it is.

In September, when she asked if I would do something with her for Halloween, I said yes. I had an idea that didn't belong to Poppetropolis and it would be more fun to do it with her. Then later we decided to bring it to the World Fantasy Convention and debut it there. Which is really grand but a little scary because we hadn't met in the Meatworld.

And so we got to explore a little of the surreality of our relationship and reaction to each other. There is no question that we had a relationship, but it was in the new ether of the internet, which is not the same as in person. We were now collaborating cross country, but the first voice contact we had was a phone call to let her know I was at the hotel.

We had emailed and shipped and consulted, and had pictures of each other and, I think a place in each other's lives, ( unbalanced, but equally real) and yet we were still introducing ourselves to each other, but we do know things.

One of the things we knew, is that we were both people who had been involved with conventions before. This ended up being a very useful thing over the weekend. I helped with the set up, I was very happy to be useful. I am always happier when I'm useful.

We set up the art show together and talked while we did. Here are the pictures of most of it without the bid sheets - for posterity . .

The sculpture in the center of this shot is called Blackbirds, and I believe Lisa will be making an 8ft version of it in the next year.

I was not the only person who travelled from distant coasts however, Lisa met with a Poppet Collector from Australia, who asked for a picture of the Poppet that Has Travelled to Australia and Back and the Creator of Poppets.

She is a wonderful lady and an excellent dinner companion. She was actually Queen of Australia and New Zealand, so I was honored by her Poppet's acceptance of an invitation to visit The House Where Halloween Things Live. This marks the first Visiting Poppet to that House.

He is an Outside Steampunk Poppet.

Here he is being greeted by Elul, who made the trip out to show off the House along with two of the Jackos and about 10 other East Coast Expats.

The Australian Outside Steampunk Poppet converses with the Raven and peruses the House Where Halloween Things Live Library.

Of course there was Poe. The book on the table is The Purloined Letter.

Many things happened at World Fantasy Con, I'm still sorting a bunch of it out. I'll write about it while I'm processing it. I have funny anecdotes, and weird ones, and serious ones. I will probably not tell them all. I have anecdotes that involve food:

Anecdotes of Lisa and the Poppet who lives on her desk.

Our mutual love of coffee.

and what it means when people ask you questions like "What do you do?" or "Don't I know you" or "What do you want out of this."

And of course the big one "Why are you doing this"

I think I have begun to have an answer for that last one -

I used to process all the things I couldn't say through words, but I put the words aside. It stopped being safe.

I used to use all the things I felt to communicate, when I was wearing the skin of someone else, so the personal could become universal. It was like breathing, but I learned how to hold my breath and now I cannot exhale.

I used to build things to create small worlds or hold other worlds at bay. I'm still doing that.

The words are too complex, the feelings are too deep to show in someone else's skin, I may have spent to much time trapped in my own. I can't use the older tools I have to process what happens to me when I react to Lisa's art. So I'm building things to help me understand my own reactions. I'm building things to share and show what's going on on the inside.

I'm having trouble telling the story, so I'm building it instead.

It's a stealth story, I've hidden it inside things you might use to tell your own.

And if you see or play with something I've built, then you're wearing my skin, sharing my world which is all ajumble and full of art. So it shouldn't surprise me at all that there are Poppets there.

I am just a little (very!) surprised that other people like it too.

The thing is, I would make it anyway. I don't think I could not make it.

Maybe that makes it art after all.

For Halloween

Here are the rules:

Don't go into the Basement

Don't split up the party

Don't go into the attic.

I told you not to go into the attic!

You'll wake Him up . . . .

Now Cthulu is going to want another bedtime story .. . . .

Scary Random Thoughts

When I say to someone "I am scared" or "This is scary", I am not looking to be reassured that "no it's not really that scary."

Maybe it's not for someone else, but the scary is waiting there for me. It's mine.

I am not saying it to attract attention in a dramatic way (Quick! We must come to her rescue for she is scared!) I would simply ask for help.

I am not proud that way.

I am saying it to give it voice. The scariness. Because if I bother to say it out loud, you know that I am going to do the scary thing, or be in the scary place anyway.

If you know me, you know that I would never say anything if I weren't going to do it.

So when I say "I'm scared."

I mean "Please cover my back, I'm going in anyway"

And if what I'm scared of doesn't seem that scary to you, well that's OK, but I want you to know that it's not effortless, this going in, even if you think it looks easy for me. Even if you think it would be easy for you.

That's the danger of the scariness really, it's mostly invisible.

So when I say "I'm scared." I'm really just trying to make sure that the invisibility doesn't swallow me whole and have me disappear too.

And if I do disappear, I will at least have announced that it was not my intention to do so.

I'm going in.

Witching Hour is coming . . . Fear My Attic

When I started the House collaboration with Lisa I wasn't sure that I would be able to pull off one specific thing I wanted to do. I REALLY wanted and arcane workroom in the attic. All of the best stuff happens in attics. I wasn't sure that I could get the right vibe between my childhood attic workshop fantasies and poppets but I'm pretty happy with this. It's 85% done - Lisa is making a wallpaper for it.

There are two attic spaces in the house and they both represent things about Time.

But I did it! And I'm pretty happy with it.

I only have 5 days left to my original 40 day project plan. I'm going to make it on the stuff that is house oriented by I'm probably not going to finish the box by the 19th.

I'll be making a box that goes under the house that can hold all of the loose pieces so the house can be displayed closed and empty ( it's easier to lift that way) with landscaping. It would be like one of those Thomas the tank engine sets where all the train pieces are in the inside.

I'm really torn though - I'd love to use an real wooden box for the base but that would add about another 70% of the original cost to the materials budget, and possibly about an additional 3 days of work.

The other solution stays well within the "Play" sensibility of the piece and would be handled with a lot of decoupage but it would be a cardboard base.

Torn, torn, torn, torn, torn . . . . . . .