This one is going to be packed with photos documenting the past few weeks--easily the most beautiful spring I've witnessed since I began living here. Jeff and I have been trying to improve our driveway garden over the past couple of years. Last fall I planted a few dozen tulip bulbs and was so excited to watch them bloom. The frilly ones in front are parrot tulips, and I painted the pink one recently. Backing them up are two rows of regular tulips that were supposed to be purple. I think my bag of bulbs was incorrectly marked.
But that's okay--I like these better. They're so cheerful!
We have lots of roses on the other side of this garden and are unsure about how to tame/contain them. The two large rose bushes throw out tentacles that climb up to the sky and then arch down, like dozens of this thing overlapping again and again.
The recent flood washed up a lot of logs in our neighbor's yard, and he set them out by the side of the road to be removed by the city. Jeff saw one of them and thought it might make a nice display element in the roses, so the two of us rolled that heavy thing down the street (Jeff did 90% of the work while I gave it a few kicks here and there) and installed it. We like how it looks semi-human, and I can't wait for those roses to bloom.
This is the east side of our weirdo house. The redbud trees are in bloom!
I love the redbud-blooming week the most.
It's followed by redbud-confetti week.
We have other flowering trees on the south side of the house.
This one is almost embarrassingly gorgeous.
Crab apples and dogwoods decorate the west side next to the garage.
Needless to say, Bun is a very happy little girl.
She mostly stays on the path during her supervised walkabouts.
And when it's sunny, sometimes she'll just lounge.
On rare occasions she becomes SUPER FIERCE MIGHTY HUNTING JUNGLE CAT;;;;
Ohh, the colors. I still can't believe I get to live here...
...with this amazing creature...
...and my sweet girl.
Too. Much.
PS Mom cut three inches from my hair a few weeks ago, diminishing that grizzly-bear-living-on-my-head feeling. Now it's more like I have a grizzly cub up there.
Oh, it was tornado watch weather for sure. Wednesday afternoon Bun and I went outside to take in the hazy, finally legitimately warm weather. I took some photos, including this one of our sort of flooded backyard stream. Normally this stream is easily jumped or even stepped across, but thanks to a wetter-than-usual early spring, the stream has been wide and boggy for about a month. I've enjoyed watching Canadian geese, blue herons, wood ducks, and even beavers swimming and nosing around in it. Near the top of this photo and running from right to left is the Salt Fork river, and beyond that is our town's wetlands area. It's about the size of six football fields (totally guessing).
Bun lounged in the mulch near our daffodils.
I took photos of pretty blooming things. This bush was humming with honeybees.
These little guys were finally coming up. I'm so happy that spring is here!
Later on Jeff and I took a walk uptown. I wore a dress that showcased my unapologetically pasty white calves to motorists on Main Street and route 150.
While we were on
our relatively short walk, Jeff and I experienced the
following: a sauna-like humidityfest (seen above in red), a few steamy romantic sprinkles but no
clouds overhead (blue), a cheeseburger break while monitoring alarming new clouds
in the northwest (end of blue), some uneasy double-time walking towards home (purple), followed by flat-out
running from a very dark squall line and a sudden 20 degree temperature
drop (green). It was awesome.
It rained all night and Thursday--nonstop thunderstorms with torrential rain. I didn't take any radar screen caps while this was happening. Basically a massive, seemingly endless, chicken strip-shaped blob of yellow, orange, and red doppler radar was working its way up Illinois from soutwest to northeast. Here, let me illustrate that for you.
(The red dot there is our house. The chicken strip radar shape was even bigger than this, too.)
So northern Illinois was getting hammered, and we eventually got hammered as well. All of that water had to go somewhere, and flood watches and warnings were popping up left and right. Jeff and I usually shrug off flood alerts, but this seemed major, like one of those 100-year floods that we've started experiencing every five years or so. We live in the lowest part of the lowest part of Champaign County. Back in January 2008--Jeff and I had been dating for almost a month!--a combination of major snowfall and epic thunderstorms caused flooding so severe that Jeff and his daughter Melissa had to evacuate the house that Jeff and I live in now. There was a rescue with boats and everything. <--I'm making that more dramatic than it was, but still. Boats were involved.
Thanks to the U.S. Geological Survey, we were able to monitor the situation online. They have some charts that show how high the river is near our house--so glad that this site exists. Jeff knew from experience that anything over 19 feet meant that our sunken living room would flood. Anything over 20 feet meant that the rest of our house would flood. We went to bed on Thursday night looking at this chart.
And we were feeling like bad, bad things were going to happen in the morning. Jeff set his alarm clock for 2:00 a.m., saying we'd probably have to get up and start moving furniture and books out of the living room. At 1:30 we were awakened by a bumping sound--I'm not sure what that was, but Jeff sprang out of bed to look outside. I got up, too. The water level had risen considerably over the past few hours. Throbbing with adrenaline, we abandoned the idea of going back to sleep.
Thinking it might be a while before he could do it again, Jeff took a shower while I rather insanely put on some makeup (I'd taken my shower before bed). I guess I didn't want to be one of those bagged-out storm survivors you see on local news reports. I wanted to look like I at least had my act together once the cameras inevitably descended upon Jeff and me, area homeless flood victims.
During the pre-dawn hours we moved as much of our living room furniture and books as we could upstairs to my studio. Oh man, we have too many books. The cats were bewildered. As I went up and down the stairs 400 times, Jeff did what he could to rig up a sump pump outdoors in the dark. He monitored the rate at which the water was rising with a tape measure and did a lot of heavy lifting. At around 3:00 it seemed like we had done all we could do, and we were able to sit down and watch everything that was happening in Boston. What a surreal morning.
As the sky started to brighten in the east, this was what we saw.
The water was about ten feet from the most vulnerable corner of our house. "We're fucked," Jeff concluded, and we called both sets of parents. My folks wanted to come help us in some way or another, but they live on the west side of the state, where a number of roads were closed due to flooding. So they couldn't reach us. Jeff's parents live 45 minutes away, and they drove over in their truck. Jeff moved my car to higher ground (the school parking lot). Meanwhile, I promised myself that I would cry about this later and started packing a couple of go-bags. I couldn't get this silly but great song out of my head:
Jeff's dad drove to Champaign and purchased another sump pump--Jeff had the idea to set it up near the corner of the house along with our other smaller one. They eventually got it going, and then all we could do was monitor the situation. It was an awfully helpless feeling.
But happily the curve on the graph made it seem like things might be slowing down. At around 9:00, Jeff's parents didn't feel like they could stay much longer, as the one road out of our neighborhood was flooding. All we could do was watch and wait, and I called my parents about every half hour to let them know what was going on.
And I took some photos.
I fed the squirrels who are bottomless pits of seed-want no matter what's going on.
Yeah, there's no hopping across this thing.
Bun: WHERE ARE ALL THE STUFFS;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Freaky!
Sometime during the late morning hours, and after coming within a couple of feet of the house, it seemed like the flood had stopped rising. Bun wanted to see what was happening, and she sat on our deck in the cold watching the water for five minutes as if hypnotized and bewitched.
Slowly over the next couple of days, the water receded. We both felt so relieved.
Meanwhile, one of my paintings was in the Skip Watts Memorial Exhibition in Springfield. I even won an honorable mention along with some money! The reception was Saturday afternoon, but Jeff and I were too wiped out to drive all the way over there to attend. And anyway on Friday I had informed one of the people in charge that we were dealing with flooding, and it probably wouldn't be a good idea to leave the house. So I was sad to have missed the show, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Instead we watched a lot of teals and coots glide around our backyard, and that was pretty wonderful. The light was always lousy while this was happening, so I didn't get any photos.
And here's what our backyard looked like this morning. After the flood all the colors came out, as somebody once said. I didn't have my promised cry, as it turned out, but Saturday morning I enjoyed a celebratory post-traumatic-stress migraine. It's a fun little custom of mine. We also went out and had pizza.
Jeff and I finally broke down and put up our Christmas tree. I've been busy with some U2 lunacy and a difficult portrait commission over the past couple of weeks. Those tasks completed, I engaged in a bit of therapeutic ornament-making, this time with salt dough. In the past I've made gingerbread ornaments, but this year I thought the tree needed something more colorful, and salt dough is so much easier and less expensive. I used to make salt dough ornaments with Mom to give to my teachers as Christmas presents, so the smell and texture of this dough transported me back to my pre-teen years.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup salt
2 cups flour
1 cup water
DIRECTIONS
In a large bowl mix salt and flour. Gradually stir in water. Mix well until it forms a doughy consistency.
With your hands form a ball with your dough and kneed
it for at least 5 minutes.
Store your salt dough in a air tight container and you will be able to use it for days.
You can paint our creations with acrylic paints and seal with varnish or polyurethane spray.
You can let your salt dough creations air dry; however, salt dough can also be dried in the oven. Bake at 200 degrees F until your creation is dry. The amount of time needed to bake
your creations depends on size and thickness; thin flat ornaments may
only take 45-60 minutes, thicker creations can take 2-3 hours or more.
You can increase your oven temperature to 350 F, your dough will dry
faster but it may also brown, which won't matter if you are painting
your entire creation.
-----
My ornaments, which were between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick, took around an hour and a half to bake at 200 degrees. I used the entire cup of water in making the dough, so it may have been a little on the damp side. I let them continue to air-dry overnight before I painted them the next day. I used cookie cutters shaped like Christmas ornaments--an early present from Jeff--and, when I dipped them in a little flour, they cut through the dough beautifully, and those complicated, delicate shapes were no problem.
This recipe produced over 40 ornaments, each about 3 inches tall. I took them up to my work table and busted out some sequins and extra-cheap acrylic paint. I had no real plan, but I found myself painting each ornament with tints of a single color accented with coordinating sequins. Then I varnished them with a clear acrylic glitter paint. A couple of hours later, I had these:
I found a half-box of ornament hooks (or whatever you call them) leftover from last year, and I was ready to hang them!
Earlier this year, Jeff and I rearranged our living room furniture. We love the new setup, but it messed up our usual tree-area, so we moved the tree to our library, which you might remember from this painting:
The tree is small, so to give it some height, we set it on the table between the two wicker chairs. We also had to move the middle bookshelf away from the wall to access the outlet behind it. But soon enough we were decorating the tree, and Jeff used some gargoyle bookends to hang stockings behind it.
And here are some of the ornaments, which we paired with our usual birds.
They're prettier at night.
Two weeks ago, I transformed my studio into a GLOW CHAMBER.
As I sat on the floor, trying to arrange the lights in a way that made a tiny bit sense, I'm pretty sure a spider bit my foot through my sock. I felt an instant, mild itch and watched a small light yellow spider crawl beneath my bookshelves on the left. The bite swelled up immediately and turned pink. Fearing a week of pain, I popped an antihistamine, applied some antibiotic cream and anti-itch gel, elevated my foot, and put the sucker on ice. Over the following week I watched the formerly-swollen-but-now-just-bruisey area, which was about the size of a Chips Ahoy! cookie, turn a rainbow of colors: dusty plum, cadet blue, zombie green. But it never really hurt or itched, and then it went away. I suppose I'm writing about this so that if one day my skin splits and billions of small light yellow spiders come streaming out, well, here's how that happened.
And what holiday season would be complete without Christmas Marvin Gaye? I've always thought his What's Going On album seemed Christmasy, and for years I have made a point of displaying it next to something festive. First known example:
So that was great, but this year I really topped myself by placing him in the GLOW CHAMBER. I urge you to make Christmas Marvin Gaye a tradition in your house.
One last time: I have to plug my online merchandise store. Thanks to all who have ordered items with my paintings on them--I just put together some new compacts featuring details from Ruby Liberty Dragonfly. I appreciate each and every sale I make. Please go there and get a little something for yourself!
And it's not too late to pick up a print of mine from Imagekind. Prints are 25% off this weekend, and how about that free shipping? Framed and canvas prints tend to take about a week to ten days for them to produce, but unframed prints usually get shipped out a couple of days after you order. Thanks again, everyone!
See, here's the problem: my original paintings are expensive. They've got to be--some of them take over a month to create. I can't afford them, either! But this year I've had reasonably good luck selling them on Imagekind as prints in a variety of formats and sizes. However, even those can be a little pricey when you factor in a mat and a frame, and maybe you want something more functional...? That's the vibe I'm getting from you, anyway.
So last week I put together a store on CafePress. They reproduce my watercolors on fun and useful items hand-picked by me from their massive selection of over 250 products. There's something for everyone, with a variety items for sale for under $20, including gorgeous mirror compacts that are already my best sellers.
T-shirts are available for people of all ages, shapes, and sizes, and they come in a range of colors. Making this happen took a whole day. It was hard, you guys!
And come on: you need at least one calendar. We all do. I agonize over that decision every year. I'm so happy to finally present my first-ever calendars featuring my own paintings: normal-sized, oversized, vertical, and single image.
Get in on this and help support your friendly neighborhood artist/blogger/butter-consumption-enabler! And I know, CafePress is kind of a behemoth that's probably only marginally less evil than Walmart, and I'm certainly not going to make a fortune here, but maybe it will help me buy Bun's medicine every month...?
I sifted through my heaving U2 digital folders today and put together a selection of images that includes personal favorites such as the always-game Pop Edge, Adam and Bono painted on blue construction paper, and a citrus-y Screaming Green Bono. Because most of my originals were only 5-10 inches tall, lot of these prints are small, but you'll see a handful that can be majorly enlarged.
You'll see all of those along with more straightforward and normal-seeming pictures of this promising little rock 'n' roll outfit from across the sea here. URL is:
I was going to blog about the peach preserves I made a couple of weeks ago. But these little babies are so much more exciting, and I've got a few things to celebrate!
First off, Jeff and I saw my family over the weekend at my cousin Jamie's wedding, and that was wonderful. I miss them so much. More photos are at the end of the post. Also last week, two good art things happened.
1. My Mushrooms painting was accepted for Small Waters, a national juried exhibition featuring watercolors no larger than 144 square inches. The Illinois Watercolor Society puts on this show every couple of years. It will be at the Oak Park Art League during September. I put so much work into this painting, particularly the dark sticks and decaying leaves. I'm glad it's receiving some recognition!
2. Ye Olde Glasse Gemmes is going to be a mural! Back in June I entered it in Urbana's public art competition called Murals on Glass. Artists were asked to submit images that, if selected, would be printed hugely on adhesive vinyl and adhered to some of the giant windows in downtown Urbana. Mine was one of three winning entries! The murals will be installed in early August and will stay in place for a year. Mine is going to be at street level on the windows of the Urbana Business Association (across the street from the Cinema Gallery, if you're going to be in town). I really wanted to win this one and am beyond thrilled. I was interviewed about the project here if you'd like to know more about it, and the other winners can be seen here.
So not to boast, but I've been having a good couple of weeks and wanted to treat myself to some chocolate! Let's see that thing again.
This recipe is from The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper, a cookbook I've had for a while. It has yielded some winners, a few losers, and a handful of who-caresers. So I wasn't sure if its Little French Fudge Cakes would be quite as good as their recipe's pre-ingredient hype paragraph promised ("Gooey chocolate pockets stud the cakes, while the cake itself is nearly as dense as fudge"). But I had been curious about the recipe for a long time, and it looked easy.
It was easy! And the cakes were ridiculously fudgy. I've been inhaling lots of fruits and vegetables this summer, so maybe I'm not used to eating rich food these days, but I'm telling you, last night I could barely finish mine, and it wasn't even that big! Its effect on my system was akin to this (I apologize for the language--no, I don't--Pulp Fiction is part of who I am, and if you can't take it, I feel sorry for you):
I took the above photo of the L.F.F.C. an hour ago, drooling over it the entire time, before putting it back in its container to save for later tonight. Not eating it nearly killed me, even though I had a backup chocolate snack to get me through the afternoon. Don't let the precious, fey name fool you: Little French Fudge Cakes are dangerous and should be considered a controlled substance.
Let's make 'em!
You're going to need one of those cupcake tins that have 6 cups instead of 12. I used a similar mini-bundt pan, and each of the bundts has a 1/2 cup capacity. The Splendid Table asks that the pan be dark, not black. If you have a silvery one, add a few minutes to the baking time. OR you could turn this into a big cake by baking it in a greased, 9-inch springform pan lined with parchment and bake it for 35 minutes.
Please know that you will have to grease the bejesus out of whatever tin you're dealing with. I thought I did so with mine, using butter as instructed, but 5/6 of the cakes were stuck in the pan. I had to run a knife around the perimeter, which was hard to do because the mini-bundts had ridges, and even then getting them out was a struggle. I found myself banging the pan against a cutting board to remove the last stragglers. So I'm not sure what to do next time: maybe butter and flour the pan? use baking spray, perhaps the kind with flour? butter and cocoa? were the ridges an unsurmountable problem here? If anyone has ideas, please comment. The majority of my cakes came out unscathed, but a couple were kind of sloppy.
Rest assured that all were more than edible. WAY TOO EDIBLE.
INGREDIENTS
One 3.5- or 4-ounce bittersweet chocolate bar (Lindt Excellence 70%, Valrhona 71%, Scharffen Berger 70%, or Ghirardelli 70% Extra bittersweet, in order of our preference), broken up <--none of these were available; I used Ghirardelli 60%
1-1/2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, broken up
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon <--didn't use; I generally dislike cinnamon and chocolate together
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs plus 1 yolk (for a double recipe, use 5 eggs)
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Half of a 3.5- to 4-ounce bittersweet chocolate bar, broken into bite-sized pieces <--I used 2 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips
DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter a dark metal 6-cup cupcake tin. Majorly butter it.
Combine the broken-up bittersweet and unsweetened chocolates with the butter in a medium-sized microwave-safe bowl. Melt them for 2 to 3 minutes at medium-low power. Mine was melted in three 30-second bursts on high power (stirring in between). Check by stirring, as chocolate holds its shape when microwaved. Or melt it in a heatproof bowl over simmering water.
In a medium to large bowl, whisk together the cinnamon, vanilla, eggs and yolk, sugar, and salt until creamy. Stir in the flour to blend thoroughly. Then stir in the chocolate/butter mixture until smooth. Finally, blend in the bite-sized pieces of chocolate. Pour the batter into the cupcake pan, filling each three-quarters full. I'm going to say that mine were more like 2/3 full. This does not make a lot of batter.
Bake the cupcakes for 18 minutes. Timing is right on. Insert a knife into the center of a cupcake. It should come out with some streaks of thick batter. If you have any doubt about doneness, press the top of a cupcake to see if it is nearly firm. Remove them from the oven. Cool the cupcakes in the pan on a rack for 5 to 10 minutes to serve warm, or for 20 minutes to serve at room temperature.
Poof and Tyler. Poof was so fabulous that night that I started referring to her as Beyonce.
Mom and Dad. How cute are they?
Jeff and me. I bought that necklace at a record store years ago. The bottom of this dress is so much cuter than the top part--photos like this make it seem like I'm just wearing a P.E. uniform or something. And fox Jeff! I love that he smiled in this one!
Poof and my brother Ryan, a.k.a. Feep, who was hilarious all night.
Wednesday was Louvreday! We were excited to return to the museum Jeff had seen twice and I had seen once before, but after walking in the rain all day Tuesday, Jeff had developed a sore throat, not a good sign. He was determined to enjoy the day, and we took the Metro to the museum.
Jeff's sore throat made me think about the thousands of disease-spreading opportunities in the Metro system. I have germophobic friends who would shudder at the thought of us holding onto Metro poles, pushing buttons, opening doors, using escalators and walking up stairs while grabbing handrails, and so on, and then tearing baguettes apart with our bare hands and eating them on the street without even bothering to wash our hands first. What can I say? I probably have hepatitis now.
The Louvre, finally open after three days, was an instant mob scene, and we had made a point to get an early start. We had also read about some secret side entrances, found one, and avoided the line inside the pyramid.
If you've never been to the Louvre, its three multi-floor buildings/palaces are arranged in a U shape around the pyramid entrance. Each building could keep an art lover occupied for an entire day, and it's not like there's much "filler" going on. But here are the things that make the Louvre daunting.
15,000 visitors per day = crowd fatigue
652,300 square feet = foot fatigue
35,000 works of art = eye fatigue
With a starting-to-be-sick Jeff in tow, I made sure we hit the biggies, and this was enough to keep us busy for two or three hours (lost track). Highlights of the highlights:
The Nike of Samothrace(gorgeous photo by Jeff), my favorite Greek sculpture. It's at the top of a huge staircase. When I encountered it for the first time years ago, I approached it through a side door, and while I still cried when I saw it, talk about anticlimactic. I wanted the Nike from Funny Face!
So that's what we got this time. Bonus points to me for wearing red in the Louvre.
I was also reaquainted with Dying Slave by Michelangelo, which is the sexiest thing in the Louvre if you ask me, and Jeff and I don't think he's dying.
The Mona Lisa was in a different room than I had remembered, and she was busy being Bono.
Meanwhile other Leonardos went virtually unnoticed, such as La Belle Ferroniere.
She is soooo jealous of the Bono.
It is always a thrill to see this beautifully-painted, extra vertebrae-having Ingres:
One massive room contained two mural-sized art history favorites...
Eugene Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus. His kingdom is under attack and he is about to drink poison while his possessions are destroyed (Jeff: "that white horse is like, I want no part of this"), and...
...The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault. Boating disaster, dead bodies, life raft, tiny rescue ship on the horizon incredible composition. And because we were in France and this post needs more nudity...
My main man Akhenaten (compulsory visit must be made to any Egyptian exhibit containing him) and his hot wife Nefertiti:
One ancient Egyptian scultpure I had missed the first time around was Seated Scribe, and I was so happy to see him (surprisingly small; I thought he was life-sized).
We got turned around and passed a row of identical Egyptian baboons a few times...
...all of whom seemed to be saying...
I am obviously leaving out so, so many others, and I feel bad about it, but how can you possibly hope to cover the Louvre in a blog post? How? These were the ones that amused us that day. We had covered two of the three buildings, Jeff was thirsty, and the hoardes of people were getting to us. Feeling like we'd had a good-enough dose of the Louvre, we decided to skip the third building. Again, we'd already seen it, and while I missed the Vermeers and Rembrandts, something about taking off gave me a playing-hooky kind of feeling.
Our vacation! We make the rules!
Plus we were hungry. Jeff led us to La Regalade Saint Honore, a small, slightly more upscale place than the previous day's restaurant. He found it on Paris By Mouth. While we waited for our table, we looked inside Gosselin, the patisserie next door, and I took many photos of their gorgeous cakes (I'm obsessed with these four)...
...and many other treats. Such as:
...and...
I was so blinded by the beauty of the green figs that I'm only just now noticing the little sign that says "DIVORCE." What kind of sweet thing calls itself Divorce?
At La Regalade, we were seated at the table by the left window, great for people-watching. Two waitresses who could switch from French to English *like that* took good care of us, smiling when they changed our spotless plates. The lunch menu was in French:
Excuse me, you printed your menu in Comic Sans?! Suddenly this place was slightly less intimidating.
We were offered a giant amuse bouche in the form of some pickles and chicken terrine, which we spread on baguette slices. It reminded me of something Mom used to make when I was a teenager, and I ate it for breakfast many mornings before school. Tasty and oddly familiar.
We threw caution to the wind and ordered things containing words we thought we recognized. Me: tartlette, supreme, chocolate/caramel/praline/Toblerone. Jeff: coquilles, supreme, souffle chaud a Grand-Marnier. We didn't realize we had ordered identical plats, as I had vascillated before deciding, but all in all it was fun to order this way. Trust the chef!
Jeff received on-the-shell scallops with herbs and Parmesan (he loved them).
My "tartlette" consisted of a flaky rectangular crust topped with an olive/tomato tapenade. On top of that was beautifully sliced, rare salmon, lightly dressed greens, and a parmesan crisp. It couldn't have been more delicious. Trust!
Oh my. This was our main course. Chicken breast wrapped around foie gras with gnocchi, mushrooms, and asparagus in a cream sauce. The gnocchi were extraordinarily delicate little pillows, the sauce was positively voluptuous, and the vegetables perfectly cooked. The portions were exactly the right size, too.
I don't think I'll ever get over this photo. That chocolate thing? That chocolate thing was mine: caramel pudding topped with a milk chocolate layer (ganache?). Inside: some kind of praline cookie and triangles of Toblerone. And look at Jeff's darling, perfect souffle, the first he'd ever eaten. I want to go back to there!
And do you know what we did next? We hit the patisserie next door and got more sweets (a chocolate tartlette for me, and a Paris brest for Jeff), which we ate while sitting beside a sunny Tuileries fountain. I was merely doing research--what were their tart crusts like? And Jeff wanted to eat a brest.
Jeff also wanted me to see the Orangerie, a small jewel box of a museum that is home to eight of Monet's large-format water lily paintings. I had seen these (or at least some like these) in Chicago years ago, so I knew what it was like to stand in front of them, but the Orangerie has two oval-shaped rooms built especially for them. One showed the lilies at sunrise, and the other showed them at dusk.
Up close, the paintings approached pure abstraction, with their complex, luminous surfaces composed of many colors scumbled on top of each other. If you go to Paris, you simply must see them.
I'm so crazy about that turquoise section.
Jeff and I have an ugly gray wall on the west side of our house, and the water lilies inspired us to possibly paint a similar mural on it. I think I might--might!--be able to pull that off.
The Orangerie houses many other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist second-stringers, but talk about having a hard act to follow! We toured the other galleries, but I was so blown away by the Monets that I can't remember much about them.
After another leisurely walk through the gardens, we went home. The apartment was becoming home to us! We hit a pharmacy near our building, where Jeff got some French cold medicine.
Later that night, in a snacky mood, we walked up Rue Moufettard in search of crepes. I have never been all that impressed with crepes, especially when you fold them into cones and wrap them in sweaty pieces of paper. They're useful as Nutella delivery devices, and I like watching people make them, but for the most part I found that night's crepes to be tasteless and rubbery.
Ohh, Paris spoiled us so thoroughly. Just looking at that photo makes me want to eat about 25 of them now.
Thanks for reading--only one or two more! You can find the rest of our trip to Paris using these links. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
For those of you who have been on pins and needles over the past two weeks, wondering how my Jacksonville show went, it was terrific. My best show so far! I wanted to post about it right after it happened, but I had a cartoon to make followed by a week in Paris, and I didn't have time to add blogging into the mix. But it will happen after this Paris series is over.
So! Paris! How about that?
Jeff and I (mostly Jeff) planned this trip for almost a year. He used his internet-fu to find a modern, inexpensive apartment and credit card frequent flyer mileage-fu to ensure that our flights were free. A former project manager, Jeff figured out a daily plan of action designed to pair places we wanted to visit with nearby, incredible food. I was happy to let him take over because (a) he does it so well, and (b) preparing for two one-person shows in nine months was kind of overwhelming for me. Jeff has helpful travel advice that he will either dispense throughout my posts or write as a stand-alone guest blog. He was sick during the last third of our trip, and he still is, and right now he wants to curl up on the couch and watch Lonesome Dove, and who can blame him?
Both of us had visited Paris before with other people. Jeff was in the process of breaking up with his person, and I had broken up with my person many months before the trip, but tickets had already been purchased, and how often does one get the opportunity to see Paris, anyway? Jeff spent a cold, drizzly week in November walking around by himself during a Metro strike, and I endured blasts of record June heat sandwiched between dutiful visits to every art museum in the city, plus the most important churches and a side-trip to Chartres. All that slogging around meant nonstop McDonald's haute cuisine eaten on the run for me, so I left with no real idea of what French food could truly be, and Jeff's person...let's just say she was a lot more disciplined than some bloggers you might know.
This time Jeff and I employed a two-pronged plan of attack for Paris. Prong one: romance. Prong two: pleasure. Notice how neither prong involves crying, sweating, angst, boredom, fast food, forced marches, shivering, ennui, disgust, or resentment--I'm telling you, it's hard to have a good vacation with any of those in the mix.
So this time if it was mind-crushingly educational and we had already seen it, we usually skipped it. If someplace fun was a drag years ago, we aimed to right that wrong. Our rose-colored glasses were still firmly on, thank you very much, and we were set to have some damned fun in Paris for a change.
My parents, Melissa, and Jeff's folks kindly offered to watch Bun, Pache, and Q while we were away. Mom and Dad did most of the heavy lifting in that regard as they fed, watered, and medicated the cats (as per my ridiculous three page document's instructions) for five days. I'm so thankful for everyone's help--I don't think I could have boarded Bun at the vet's with a clear conscience. The cats were happy to see us when we returned home last night, and as I type this, Bun is sleeping at my side. We missed them every day we were gone.
Here we are, all smiles and energy at the very beginning of our trip. We flew out of the Champaign airport to O'Hare at around noon last Friday, and from there we traveled to Paris, arriving on Saturday morning.
We packed lightly: Jeff had a backpack and I had a smallish wheeled carry-on and a medium-ish purse. In fact, we packed so lightly that airport officials gave us looks of disbelief on two separate occasions. A Frenchman called us James Bond and Mata Hari--that's right, we pack like spies. I managed to cram four black dresses, extra shoes, and a second coat in my carry on, and I pruned my toiletries down to the bare essentials (tampons had to be included because of course they did).
The eight-hour flight to Paris was tough for me. Jeff fell asleep almost immediately after our kinda-supper. He chose the chicken, and I chose the pasta, but I should have chosen the chicken. A couple of hours later I started to get some low-level "what if it's food poisoning?" feelings. You know the ones. They're sweaty and you feel trapped in your window seat because your darling husband is sound asleep beside you and you can't concentrate on your book and your Kindle's little video game (Bubble Buster, five stars) is making you seasick and you start to think about the best way to throw up in an airplane bathroom and how horrifying that would be and the plane is dark now except for the movie and ugh if it's food poisoning that means you'll be violently ill four or five times before it's all over...what's your only option?
Mind control. Meditation. Go to your happy place and breathe and count. Failing that, watch what's playing on the entertainment screen way over there to your left and try to understand the plot without the aid of your headphones. The movie is a Pixar-wannabe animated feature called Rio and it seems to be about a blue parrot, and there's all kinds of rapid-cut flying sequences involving thousands of birds spiraling down into jungle vortexes and singing a lot...
...and best not to watch that anymore so let's meditate. Or maybe watch the moon move across the sky. Spend a couple of hours doing that before you feel like maybe you are out of the food poisoning woods.
We arrived without incident in Paris not too long after sunrise. Charles de Gaulle Airport was alive with a writhing mass of people hell-bent on spending Easter somewhere other than Paris. The intimidatingly long lines gave us no hope for an easy departure a week later, and is it just me or has CDG changed from the futuristic, roomy playground made famous by U2's Beautiful Day video (total dick move at 1:14)...
...to a baggage-ridden, concrete hellscape from which there is no escape?
Luckily, we found the right train that would speed us toward our apartment in the 5th arrondissement, a.k.a. the Latin Quarter. I was wearing the coat I wore in Spain--based on weather forecasts (highs in the 50s, lows in the 40s), light wool seemed like my best bet. Except it was red, and every "what to wear in Paris" website suggested that dark neutrals were the way to go. A couple seemed to think that red was borderline acceptable, but one should be prepared to stand out (indeed, this was the case). A few days before we left, I floated the idea of going rogue/rouge on Facebook and received 48 "likes," but by then my mind was already made up. I was wearing red.
Exact shade: effyou red.
We emerged from the appropriate Metro station and boom, we were in Paris, Luxembourg Gardens area. We grabbed an Eric Kayser baguette, rolled our spy luggage down long streets and through a medium-sized open market where some Italian guys applauded my coat, going, "Bella, red!" Ahh, affirmation.
Our apartment was at the top of a building that housed a library on its ground floor. After huffing and puffing our way up 100 spiral steps--Jeff counted--we arrived on time to meet Isabelle, our landlady. Hip, friendly, and speaking impeccable English, she showed us around the tiny but modern and cleverly designed studio apartment (approximately 16 square meters). It included a living area with a pull-out bed, a wee kitchenette, and a bathroom. New appliances. The apartment was spotless and just what we were looking for. A link to it is here. If any of you are interested in renting this space, let me know, and I will pass your info on to Isabelle. You can rent it directly from her if you like.
Everything had a function, and there was no wasted space. Free wi-fi! The ceiling slanted sharply down near the windows, which were flung open to reveal this view to the left...
...and this view to the right.
We were happy, exhausted, and ready to explore Paris.
Today I've decided to give the people what they want: search results. Listed below are items that people have tried to find on this blog recently but failed. Some of them make me feel guilty: I should have a carbonara recipe on here by now, damn it! Some of them are nobody's business. And some are just strange and random. Hopefully this post will answer some of your nagging questions about me.
1. Tampax. Somebody keeps searching--many, many times!--for information about Tampax on this blog. I have no idea why. To the best of my knowledge, I have never mentioned tampons at all on Alizarine...wait. One time Jeff and I did blogs about packing for a trip to Italy, and I complained about sacrificing valuable carry-on real estate for a week's-worth of tampons. What a pain in the ass, am I right, ladies? But I'm not some kind of spokeswoman for Tampax. If you want to know about Tampax, please go here.
EDIT: One of my friends has suggested that the post this Tampax person is looking for is I Was Girl X, where I discussed sex education and periods. I don't think I mentioned Tampax, though. It was now-extinct Modess pads.
2. Panda Cupcakes. People come here 30 times a week to read about panda cupcakes, which we made a year and a half ago. I assume they find my recipe and go away happy and/or disturbed, so this is not a failed-search item. I included it here because it's my #1 traffic source from search engines, and it blows my mind that people care so much about making panda cupcakes.
3. Expectation. I don't know what this search means. Expectation about what? If you are the one who keeps typing "expectation" in my search box over there -->, please leave a comment and tell me what you want! In the meantime, please enjoy this Gustave Klimt painting called The Tree of Life. The very cool triangle woman on the left is called Expectation, so hopefully this will help you in your search.
4. Carbonara. I made it for lunch a couple of months ago following this recipe from Giada di Laurentiis, except I substituted chorizo for the usual bacon/pancetta (was desperate). It was pretty good but not blog-worthy. I do want to make a proper spaghetti carbonara for Jeff in the future, though, in order to re-create the classic scene from the movie Heartburn where Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep eat spaghetti carbonara in bed (at around :44 below).
5. Wife. Um, yeah, I'm a wife now.
6. What color are Bono's eyes? Blue. With tiny light blue flavor crystals.
And now, here's the one you've all been waiting for, if my search box is to be believed...
7. Infertile. Months ago, one of you searched for this. When you type something in my search box, the searched-for word becomes a semi-permanent part of the list of other words people typed in. The more a word is searched for, the larger it appears in relation to the other words. For example, "cake" is my most popular search right now, so it's a lot bigger than the rest of the words. Here's what I think happened with "infertile." It's a juicy, juicy word, isn't it, even juicier than "cake." Other readers saw "infertile" with the rest of the searched-for words, clicked on it, and made it bigger each time. That caused more people to notice it, and they clicked on it some more. It got to the point where over on the right side of my blog you'd see my face, a few links to recent posts, and followed by a huge, screaming
INFERTILE.
Which is depressing! I'm a lot of things, but is "infertile" really chief among them, you guys? I hope not! I was so annoyed by looking at this giant word every day that I blocked "infertile" from appearing in my list of popular searches. You could still search for it, but it wouldn't appear on the list anymore. But every week without fail since then, at least one of you searches for "infertile" and its good buddy "infertility." And the reason you couldn't find any stories about it was because I didn't want to write about it.
But your whining has been heard. HERE'S THE STORY.
[deep breath]
Almost 20 years ago, Jeff had a vasectomy. Amy, his first wife, had health complications following the birth of their daughter Melissa, and in order to protect Amy from a potentially dangerous second pregnancy, Jeff had a vasectomy. They divorced when Melissa was in her early teens, Jeff married Nicole (who had three children of her own), she sadly died from cancer, and eventually Jeff married me.
I was almost 39 when I met Jeff, and I wanted to have a baby. Tick tock tick tock, went my uterus. After our wonderful first date, I was floating on air and beginning to imagine our bookish, brown-eyed, lushy-eyebrowed future child. Twenty-four hours later, Jeff called me and told me the vasectomy news, which he said was difficult for him to deliver, but he was serious about me and wanted me to know before things went any further. I thanked him for telling me something that would've been a dealbreaker to so many women my age.
After I hung up the phone, I cried on the couch for about an hour. I called two ex-boyfriends, and they calmed me down, especially Jeff's predecessor (and unlikely Jeff enthusiast) James. He said this about a woman he knew in a similar situation: "She just went ahead and had a genius baby." That is, she browsed through anonymous genius sperm donors, picked one, and nine months later: genius baby. That became a sort of Plan B mantra for me over the following months: "I can always have a genius baby." It would be just that easy.
IF Jeff and I were even going to work out, that is! I had about a week (the days surrounding Christmas) to think about how I felt before our second date. I kept coming back to the fact that we seemed to click in a way that felt absolutely right to me. I had spent years searching for this man. Even then, I knew he was The One.
We quickly fell in love. We quickly got engaged. We quickly got married. Marrying Jeff was the best decision I have ever made. It wasn't even much of a decision. It was utterly obvious, even with the vasectomy problem. Every once in a while during the first year that I knew Jeff, I would mourn the fact that I couldn't have his child. As our love grew, I decided that I didn't want to have a random genius child. I wanted Jeff's child, no exceptions. I dug deep and also realized that I didn't want to adopt, either. Right or wrong (and I know several adoptive mothers who disapprove of my decision, so join the club), I wanted Jeff's baby or no baby. I chose my husband over a child, basically after one date, and I have no regrets.
Sometimes I find myself reminising about The Woman I Could Have Been (watch this later; it's awesome).
That woman would not have been able to quit her job and devote all of her time to painting. That woman would not paint at all--at least not the kinds of pictures I feel the need to produce. That woman would spend her newlywed years stressing out over hormone injections, sitting in hospital waiting rooms, and obsessing over a theoretical being who is not Jeff. That woman's body would never be the same and her life would be turned upside down for good, and so would the life of the man she loves.
I didn't want to be that woman.
Also, what about the very real possibility that our dream baby might turn out to be an asshole? Or even worse, two assholes?
I love our life. Honestly, when we walk hand-in-hand beside the baseball diamond a block away, all I can think is, "I am so glad I don't have to sit with these parents watching those kids play ball." I love how quiet our house is. I love being able to read anytime I please. I love cooking whatever Jeff and I want and not having to cater to somebody's oddball allergy or childish preference. I love going to the movies and traveling with Jeff. I love painting all day and not having to teach everybody else's children how to do it anymore. If loving these things makes me a bad, selfish person, I guess I'm a bad, selfish person. But I am also a blissfully happy, bad, selfish person. And it's my choice.
So there's your information about infertility.
8. "my cookies crust is burnt but not baked entirely." [sic] Maybe you should turn your oven down to something more like 350 when you bake them next time.
Q: Where are U2 today? (U2 = plural noun in my opinion.)
A: If you have no idea that U2 are in Mexico City today, you probably do not visit @U2, the award-winning website that employs me as a cartoonist (for free; don't get too excited).
@U2 is pretty much the last word in U2 news and information, and I created its monthly...I guess you could call them cartoons. This feature is called "Achtoon Baby," a name I kind of hate, but I really had no say in the matter as I was taking over for its creator when I got the job.
Nearly every A.B. image was a hand-painted, realistic watercolor like the ones you see above. So they're not little doodles I can slap together in five minutes and get on with my day. My U2 cartoons are clearly the work of a crazy woman, and being crazy, I even got my cat involved. I painted the cartoons for seven years until life got too complicated, i.e. I actually did things with other people during my free time. Overwhelmed, I had to stop in 2009, and that was the right decision for me at the time. Now that my schedule's a lot looser than before, I recently decided to start painting and mocking these lovable geezer rock stars again...only this time I'm doing it four times a year instead of twelve. Because, come on, twelve is insanity.
Before I get going with this, I want to thank my friend Matt McGee, @U2 head honcho with whom I am laughing my ass off in the blurry photo above. Matt was kind enough to link my art website with his U2 fan juggernaut, so hopefully I'll be seeing an increase in traffic and my Google page ranking (and sales? please? I hope?).
You can view the newest cartoon in its entirety, with normal-sized illustrations, here.
As you can see, the watercolor portrait illustrations dominate each panel. I cropped them so they seem to burst from the frame. Each little painting is 5"x7" (or so), based on my constantly evolving library of U2 images. Two of these were painted from concert shots where I removed the colored lighting and dark backgrounds (including Larry Mullen, above), one is a from a grainy, postage stamp-sized paparazzi photo, and one is from Q magazine. Can you tell which is which?
When given the choice between painting an older face and a younger one, I'll pick the older one every time. I love wrinkles, and the wrinklier someone is, the easier he or she is to paint. It's hard to explain why if you haven't painted with watercolors before, but wrinkles give my brush something to grab onto and a place to pause while I'm painting. Children's faces offer no such luxury. So as U2 have aged, like good ol' Adam Clayton (above), I've had an easier time painting them. This might also have something to do with the fact that I know their features on a near-molecular basis.
Especially this guy.
Fact: Bono has more freckles on the left side of his face than his right side.
Fact: Bono's sunglasses make painting his eyes at least five times harder than they ought to be.
Fact: Bono's mouth has become thinner over the years, and if you make his lips too fat, he stops looking like present-day Bono, and this is hard to get right.
Fact: I can paint two Edges in the time it takes me to paint one Bono.
Fact: I could throw about 75 more similar facts at you.
Yes, Edge is easy like Sunday morning. Dependable hat means no hair shenanigans. Big face means lots of room to play with. He looks like no other human being. There is something deer-like about him. Today somebody asked me how I manage to paint his eyes exactly right. My secret is that they're kind of triangular. The only hardship when it comes to painting Edge is the fact that guitars will often be involved. Watercolors and guitars don't exactly mix, but I can tolerate painting them because he has some really cool guitars.
Sometimes a cartoon idea will demand that I draw U2 in a more cartoony way, and I call those guys Li'l U2 (the original here is about 2 inches tall, hence some sloppiness):
Random example (they were making handturkeys in May to celebrate an upcoming album's November release date):
Sometimes I'll have Bun draw them (she put them on my couch):
Sometimes I will sculpt them out of clay:
And sometimes, when I'm desperate, I will sculpt them out of food:
So...yeah. Four times a year, I'll be doing this stuff again.
It's going to be awesome.
Oh yeah, Jeff, who for years has pouted that I have never drawn him for Achtoon Baby, made a cameo in today's cartoon.
PS: If you'd like to flip through some of my old U2 paintings, you can find them here. And if you have a lot of time on your hands, my Achtoon Baby archive is here. Please note that my imaging programs have improved vastly since then. And my updated staff bio is here.
"Today I'm starting a portrait of my late uncle Dale (Dad's older brother)," I announced on Facebook a few weeks ago. I posted the reference photo below of Dale and asked if my friends or family knew any details about the guitar he's holding. I wanted to find a clearer image online to help me figure out the dark areas.
Within a few hours several of my musician friends had chimed in with plenty of information.
From Jay: It is a classic C/W/Gospel axe! These deep, archtop electrics of a certain age are highly prized! I think Uncle Dale went the extra mile for this guitar: it has a fancy diagonal bar motif (matching the fret markers) on the tuning head... and the ivory inlay around the head are fancy additions. The trim around the guitar itself may be a higher quality than in the link picture but I really can't see it even when the photo is blown up. There is a 'bell shaped' adjustment rod cover between the tuners that even has the diagonal motif. The scatchplate down by the pickups seems to have an ornate pattern or a fancy tortoise shell design too. I also noticed that the diagonal bar inlay on the head and the Gibson name appear to be made of mother of pearl with more natural looking changes in color and contrast to the standard 'keyhole' and Gibson inlays in the link photo. I sure hope your family still has it!
From Jimmy: It is a Gibson Super 400CES with a Florentine cutaway and in flamed maple. Please have it appraised and insured. A very rare guitar.
From Nicole: According to a local guitar shop here it is a Gibson Super 400. He said it's a very rare version with the way the Florentine cutaway is done. Manufactured between 1960-1970.
Later on I heard from my cousin Deanna (Dale's daughter). She was thrilled that I was painting her dad and had this to say:
This Gibson guitar was probably his most prized possession...he called it a "Super 400". It was beautiful and I really can't remember him not having it --so I'm thinking he bought it in the early 60's...sadly, he felt that he had to sell it when he started getting ill. Dad loved music of all kinds but especially gospel (Dale was a pastor at the community church in the tiny Illinois town of Webster--K), and any guitar musician--from Chet Atkins to Eric Clapton.
People complain about Facebook all the time, but I just love when the Hive Mind helps me out like this. Unable to resist the urge to Google this guitar, Jeff and I discovered that similar Gibsons sell for at least $14,000 these days. So Dale is holding a gently used Ford Focus, basically.
No stranger to painting guitars...
(above: it's a long story) ...I devoted an entire day to the preliminary drawing and was especially careful with Dale's beloved Gibson. Guitars have so many tricky components, and most of them make a watercolorist's life difficult, particularly the strings and fretboard, but I decided to put painting them off until after I had finished Dale's face. Because if my Dale didn't look like the real Dale, what was the point of painting his guitar exactly right? Here's Dale after a day of painting.
This section is about six inches tall. I always begin with a lot of wet-into-wet work in order to create convincing, smooth skin tones. Once those are dry, I add darker details and textures. Dale's face was so easy to paint that it almost seemed like he wanted to help me paint him. The glasses, for example, divided his face into two medium-sized sections that were a breeze to manage. Here's the second day's work (it's a bit dark):
As I painted, I was struck by my uncle's Eddington-ness. His eyes, mouth, eyebrows, and the section between his nose and mouth are just like my father's. And I've seen my dad geek out over golf clubs, computers, and even axes in a way that brings to mind Dale's apparent obsession with his special, custom-made guitar. The Eddington clan is populated with many gentle, talented, good people like Dale and Dad. After Grandma Eddington died in 1977, extended family get-togethers pretty much came to an end and some relatives moved away, so I don't know the Eddington side of my family as well as my mother's (the Sharpes). But in my heart I think I've always felt more like an Eddington than a Sharpe, and this portrait gave me plenty of time to appreciate and meditate on my heritage.
Once I was satisfied with Dale's face, I slowly began to work on his guitar, which was so painstaking that I could only tolerate painting chunks of it in the morning, switching to his tie (a hoot) or the floral-patterned couch (double hoot) in the afternoon. I was amused to discover the upside-down cat pillow in the lower-right corner.
I dreaded painting the afghan as much as I loved its down-home unpretentiousness--the hallmark of my Dad's family's style. It took me nearly three days to complete. I had already finished everything below it, and as I began adding those screaming oranges, yellows, and seafoam greens I thought, "What am I doing? This looks horrible!" Once I laid out those flat colors, I created multi-directional yarn textures to mimic the afghan's complex tic-tac-toe pattern. I wasn't satisfied with it until it was completely finished. I secretly hoped that Dale's wife Marilyn was responsible for the afghan. Aunt Marilyn (who is still with us) was always more colorful and exuberant than low-key Dale, and I was thrilled to learn that she had in fact made the afghan and is indirectly part of my painting.
I was able to date the photo to the mid-80s thanks to the small VHS rack on the right side of the picture. The titles of Dale's videos were impossible to make out in the photo except for something called "Rodeo Bloopers," which I couldn't bring myself to paint. Instead I took my cousin Deanna's tip and made up videos by Chet Atkins, Eric Clapton, and Johnny Cash. Dale had reportedly seen one of Johnny's drug-fueled live performances in the Sixties, and one of my Facebook friends had remarked about Dale's resemblance to Johnny.
Dale died of Parkinson's disease over ten years ago. I have always been haunted by the memory of his trembling hands as he held a plate of food at a rare family get-together during the last decade of his life. Those tremors caused him to sell his beautiful guitar, since he couldn't play it anymore. I feel like this portrait, which I painted with a hand so steady it scares me sometimes, returns Dale's Super 400 to its rightful owner.
