new necklace

i just made this a few days ago. i'm really pleased with how it came out.

focused

i took this picture of my sister and her 5 year old daughter, deborah. i love how focused they are on the task. deborah *hated* having her nails clipped until just recently. becca (my sister) has brilliantly came up with the idea of bribing her with getting her nails polished if she lets mama clip her nails. so now it's this special thing that they do together. i painted my fingers black and deborah was like, "i want that color, mama!" uh, no. she gets pretty pink, purple and blue sparkly pastel shades. i'm a bad influence. naughty, naughty antie beth.

the norse woman

doesn't she look kinda norse-ish? at any rate, she looks cold to me. shoulda done her in blue....

more sadness

this picture is supposed to be a little girl, but she ended up looking older than she actually was. so sad. but i'm still pretty happy with it.

here is the other poem i wrote while i was in hospital.

i feel

i feel

like a hollowed out tunnel,

blasted apart. maybe this

could be a time of

cleansing. or a time of

trials.

am i being forced

through the eye of a needle, to be

something else on the other

side? ordered. orderly.

straightened and true.

oooops

i just got back from the hospital.

i tried to kill myself. overdosed. 20 seroquel.

i wrote a poem about it and i'll share that. but other than that i'm not sure what to say. even though they say i've got a lot to say. hmmmm....

remembering

i remember bursts of noise,

skipping scenes of questions, "beth,

beth, what's this? what's that?"

i remember pain and

chaos.

i don't remember how bad

it was. how dangerous it got.

i don't remember them taking

my clothes. of moving from

ambulance to er, from er to

icu.

i don't want to remember why. or

how.

i remember taking the

pills. i remember that. but

i don't remember the

point. the reason escapes

me.

i don't remember why i

called the ambulance. why i

didn't just go blinking

into the dark. the in-

between.

i remember the big

reasons. the shame. the

guilt. but not the little

ones.

how did i let it go

so far?

i don't remember why

i didn't wake my family.

why didn't i call them

instead of emergency?

how close did i come?

how far did i go? how

close. how far. how timid

i am. how tired i am.

i don't remember waking.

i don't remember sleeping.

i don't remember anything.

oh, no

i find myself, just a few hours after posting such a contented post, crying for no apparent reason. i decided to do somthing useful with myself by going online. at least i can kinda keep my mind of myself. i miss my best friend, valette. she lives in anchorage (about a seven hour drive from here in fairbanks) so there's not a lot of chances to go visit her. maybe i'm feeling a little sorry for myself. not too happy with where i am, what i'm doing. not sure what else to say. so sad such a nice day turned into such a lame day without much happening to change it.

quiet sunday

i woke up this morning just before six. i lay there a little while with my dear nene pressed up against my tummy and thought about not getting up. it's so nice to lie there all warm on a day where you have no obligations or places to go or people to see.

no one else is up which makes it doubly blessed silence but for the wind chimes in the breeze. i breath deep. good day.

this is another self-portrait. it was an experiment 'cause i'd never worked with pen and ink before. so the proportions are off but i still like the suspicion in her eyes. and the lips are practically perfect. all in all, not that bad.

some art

this is the first picture in my sketchbook. it's of my sister, rebecca. the black furry thing on the other side of the book is my cat, mnemosyne. that's pronounced nee-moss-y-nee. i call her nene (pronounced nee-nee). she is my precious treasure. and tiny, as i've mentioned before. six pounds. she's scared of *everything*, especially my two nieces, ages 2 and 5. we all live together so she spends a lot of time downstairs (where i live) or behind my chair. poor little thing. she is really the sweetest cat. the only cat sweeter is our dear tiger. tiger was the first cat we had, and was becca's. she's the uber cat, perfect in every way. she loved everyone (but especially becca), was calm and kind. one time she bit my finger when we were playing and you should have seen the look of horror on her face. she had not meant to do that! she was so sorry! she let you pet her wherever you wanted to, including her belly, her feet, and her tail. really, i can not say enough about tiger. she is the paragon that i hold every other cat up to, which really isn't fair. but life's not fair, princess. nene would be perfect if she weren't so scared of everything and everyone. she spends her time running away from everyone, which is probably why she's so skinny.

i did not start this out to be an ode to my cats, but there you have it. an ode to my precious dear ones.

no photos

it's totally raining, like a bucket turned over kinda rain. and it's thundering. so no art photos today. so sad. the reason i'm all hot and bothered over it is that the camera (which is not my camera, but my sisters) has been full of other photos. becca downloaded those, though, so it's available again. hence me being all, "i want to take the photos *now*." i guess i could try taking some inside.... will experiment.

self-discipline, part two

i've been thinking about the self-discipline thing more and have an adendum to add.

i'm actually really self-disciplined with my jobs. i give like, 110% at work. i *overwork* my self, throw my spirit into it. and get crushed and pummeled in return. so far my job experiences have not been positive. but i'm proud of how hard i worked. so that's something cool to think about.

i was going to take a bunch of pictures of my artwork today, but it's all overcast and i want to take the pictures outside, since the pictures i think are really good that i've seen on the internet tend to be taken outside, without a flash. the photos of paintings i've taken inside tend to have a glare because i need the flash to illuminate the pictures. hmmmm.....

my best friends' dog was killed this week by a motorist. i'm so heartbroken. she was the dearest little thing, so loving and good. i'll miss her terribly. and i ache for my sweet friend. it's *so* hard, losing a pet. people don't get it. you're falling apart and they're like, jeez, it's just a dog. it's not like a family member died, they say. but they *are* a family member. dear, sweet lacey--i expect to see you in heaven. i love you, valette, and hope you will soon be able to remember her with joy instead of pain.

epiphany

i had a major epiphany last night. it's rather embarrassing that i didn't know this about myself.

i have no self-discipline. none. zilch. nada.

*why* has it taken me this long to figure this out? and then there's the embarrassment over the fact that i have no self-discipline. how old am i? two? i can't make myself do something i don't want to do. i just can't. there's nothing i can say to myself. nothing that i can trick myself into doing. if i don't wanna to do something, i just bloody well don't do it.

the effects of this failing are far reaching. i don't like a class i'm supposed to take to graduate? quit school. i don't like housework? let it lie. i don't want to eat that? so don't. i don't even think i'm aware of all the effects of this bad, bad, bad thing.

but i can say that i'm a bad person because of this. or a person doing bad things. or a person not doing bad things.....

horrible news

i just heard from my dear aunt that my 15 year old cousin was raped by a friend. oh, my, god. why do these things happen? how can i continue to believe in a good and loving god when things like this happen to good people? the question of pain and suffering. for a long time i thought that we *learn* from our suffering. the sifting of the wheat kind of thing. those that were meant to do good would become better people and those that will do bad things will just fall farther. now i'm not so sure. doesn't that seem cold-blooded? to make good people better and bad people worse. it's not fair! and god, do i know that life's not fair, princess. i guess we'll all just muddle through, like we always do. but i expect some answers.

bad movies

we watched cloverfield. well, i watched the first forty minutes of it and was finally driven from the room with the worst migraine i've had in a while. the herky jerky camera was enough to drive my poor sister to vomit. and the movie itself. people i didn't care about. didn't mind when they died. spoiler-- and they did all die in the end. my mom and brother-in-law made it all the way through. jake hated it, mom thought it was okay, nothing great. the monster itself; was it supposed to be the kraken? what were those things falling off it? babies? friends who came along for the carnage? hmmm....
i love sci-fi and fantasy. but this was an insult to my favored genre. don't see it. it's a waste of time and you might just lose your lunch.

commitments

i've just finished reading "Artful Blogging" by Somerset Studio. makes me want to blog more regularly. i think i need more of a focus for my blog, rather than just journaling at random. also, the bio on my blog is incredibly annoying; it's the bio for my other blog, the one my sister and i share to show of our jewelry. we *are* sisters, but having the bio on this blog makes no sense. i wonder how to get that fixed.
i think i want to focus more on my art than on plain journaling, which means i need to photograph my work. scary. so that's my new commitment. more regular updates, more art. let's see how it goes.

sad again

summers over, now. so i'm getting sad again. and my wonderful weekend with valette has come and gone and she is back in anchorage. so sad. it's been a long fall, so that's been cool. no snow yet, but i *know* it's time for the long goodnight and that's just bumming me out.

we've got about six bazaars lined up for the season. we had great success at farmers market this summer, which turned out to be loads of fun. i like the culture of the market, setting up next to the same people every week and buying vegetables from the same vendors each time. i'll miss the commrederie of it over the winter. i'm looking forward to saturdays off in january, when bazaar season is over.

my cat, nene, is getting more settled with the extra people in the house. she actually let jake pet her the other day. yay!

here's an untitled poem.

in the last days of
summer, spires of spent snapdragons
rise, holding tight to their blossoms
of burnt popcorn, high above the brown
carpet of pansies in my garden. ladybugs
nestle amidst the leaves, bedding down for winter.