orange ninja

All the clothes are wrinkled because we keep them on our bedroom floor...like a rug - that we replenish almost daily, straight from the dryer. And there's nothing to eat that doesn't take the time commitment of a pioneer. I think I'm on it because I made a meal plan and went grocery shopping three weeks ago, but like laundry and dishes and picking up, I have to keep doing it and never stop. So I think that if I just didn't have to work, I could get it all done, but I know that's not true. Yesterday we started bread rising and I wrote the day's lesson plan (for work) and prepared lunch and dinner before we met our group at the park. Yesterday was easier because one of my two favorite shirts was clean. Today - nothing. I dug out orange courdoroys and an orange Rocket from the Crypt T shirt and looked more wrinkled than my husband...his clothes, not his skin. So I took them off and ironed them over the toilet. Of course I don't have an ironing board, but I didn't think I even had a good iron - I thought I used it on encaustic paintings. So I ironed a ridiculous orange outfit. I don't mind looking ridiculous; I just mind feeling pressured to look any way. I like being dirty and I like wild hair and coveralls and charcoal on my skin. I like to make stuff. I thought it really sucked that when I was in graduate school for art making, I had to get dressed up every day for my assistantship. Oh the pressure of an outfit. I just don't care. So after taking a long shower and just sitting on my bed trying to ignore the clothes carpet for awhile, I finally got the girls out the door and we stopped at ...walmart...for picnic food and the cashier wanted to know why the girls weren't in school and honestly believed home schooled children had to be tested quarterly to be sure they were up to snuff. What snuff? I did not ask her just when it was that we collectively decided that the state knew better what to teach our children than we as parents did. Or why people, like her, wouldn't give parents who would sacrifice their second income and the free babysitting of public school a little more credit for doing their very best. Why do they automatically fear that we won't be doing as well as the schools?
So today we went to a historical park. It was a gorgeous day. They climbed the tanks and Eleanor almost immediately ripped the butt of her shorts. I sewed it back together with a yarn and very large needle from the most lovely mother and daughter in our group, while Eleanor wriggled and whined and passed gas in my face. After some more time climbing tanks, they got bold with a shallow muddy creek. At some point, I began to perceive it as too wild and muddy for a public place that we would have to get into cars afterward to leave and then rush on to work. So I told her she had to get out but she was really on fire and I took her by the shoulder and told her to look at me and she wouldn't and I squeezed her shoulder and she threw mud on my pants. My ridiculous orange pants that were all I could find - you know they were if I bothered to iron them - that I had to wear to work. I told her we had to leave now, which was about a half hour early. She contested, but it was easier to leave than yesterday, which was our first outing day that we couldn't linger forever because I had to get to work. I felt so mad at her for intentionally slinging mud at me and when we got to the car, she started to smear it on the windows and I told her stop and she just kept on going. She said she wanted to go through the carwash. Then she hung her shoe by the hanger hook on the ceiling of the car and when I asked her to take it down, she smeared it across the ceiling on the way off. I was fuming. (I know, didn't I just say 5 minutes ago that I like to be dirty?) Then she told me she wants to go back to school. I told her she could, but she couldn't switch back and forth, so she should think about it very hard and wait till after Christmas. Sometimes I don't know if we will survive each other. I think it's because I am her. There's a time for everything, a time to be dirty, and a time to clean up. I guess Eleanor and I are both learning to come to terms with cleaning up.

In this evening's news, I finally met one of the people from the tiny theatre near where I draw outside with my students and she invited us to hang some work in the lobby and see the new show. I told her my first love was being in plays and she said come on down. I said yeah, with my three kids and my job and then I looked at her and said, but you've all got three kids and a job, don't you and she said two jobs. And I said I will come down. And as it settled into my brain over the next hour, I thought about how some things you are just meant to do, even if obstacles in your life can seem to make these old dreams impossible. They just happen in a different order and a different place than you imagined they would. Not only is everything going to be OK, it is and will be enchanted. And I will act again, and make art again and take a trip around the world. AND I get to have three daughters. A time for everything.