Otter Luck
Nov. 1st, 2008 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The actual trick-or-treating started with Jet falling off a 6 foot slide and landing on his head.
Poor guy was really frightened by it. Terrified all the parents, too. John carried Jet home and deposited him, shaking, in my lap and I held him for a while as John went and called the nurse at our clinic, and she rattled off a list of things that were not happening to Jet. So no concussion, at all. Talking with him about it, he'd landed on his forehead, which is a pretty good place to land, compared to the side of the head or anything else.
So we got really, really lucky.
So I just held Jet until he got intrigued by the idea of lighting all the candles, and we went out and did that. We talked a little bit more about what had happened, and I just asked him how he thought about his actions. He admitted that the kid in front of him had stopped at the top of the slide, and Jet had kind of thrown himself trying to get the bigger kid to move, and that's when he'd bounced off...
"Hm... next time maybe I should wait until he gets to the bottom of the slide."
"Good idea, Jet." Yes, I'm sure that my only job is to try to do my best to keep him alive until he's past 25...
The night was warm for the first time in years and years. 70's in the day. No sleet, no howling winds, no need for four layers underneath the Tinkerbell outfit, or a down parka under the satin for John. *laughs*
The kids ate pizza, and then went out. The pizza and a cooler of beer and juices went in the wagon after, and the kids would dip into the supplies as they needed it. One of the mom's was really amused by the fact that the kids were pulling out pieces of pizza well into the journey.
They had, originally, thought of being at our house by 7, but they went until 9!! I was grateful, as the powdered hot chocolate just wouldn't do, so I made up fresh hot chocolate with half a gallon of the local milk, real Hershey's cocoa powder cooked with sugar, a bit of water, a pinch of salt and a good splash of vanilla. It made really good hot chocolate, and everyone commented on it. So that was neat.
There were carrots, chips, chicken nuggets, grapes, apples slices with caramel, more pizza, and a big platter of veggies with dip. Amusingly enough, the veggies and nuggets went fast, as the kids tried to catch up on their sugar with some real protein and other stuff. I was pretty impressed. The parents liked the food as well after the long walk.
All the kids spread out in the living room and started sorting their candy. Then the Trading Began.
*laughs* Some of the kids were talking, while they were running from house to house, "We're going to Jet's, right? That's where we can sort and trade our candy!!"
And so they did. They then ran like mad in the basement, burning off half the sugar they'd eaten.
The party went until midnight, with the 2-year-old the loudest, happiest partier of them all. A bunch of kids and parents went home at 10, and the rest just kept rolling. Jet liked being up late, in a lot of ways. And when he went to sleep he was very, very happy.
It went a bit late for me, so I was pretty draggy this morning, and cranky as heck after all the partying and socializing and stuff. Some of it was just... me being nasty and cranky from lack of sleep, too much sugar, and feeling like my painting is not getting where I want it to and making do with stuff that I really should do better with.
Jet was happy as a clam.
So I modified some of my behavior, ate something, and then tried to fix my problems.
We went out. First to do a flu shot for Jet, and then we hit three or four different stores for supplies to get my paintings backed traditionally. Traditionally, one makes a flour starch paste, works it into the back of the painting, and slaps on another piece of paper to stiffen the original painting. It's left to dry flat on some non-porous surface, and the whole thing gets peeled off in order to mount it on a traditional mounting. But... there's a few layers to the whole process and I've been frightened of doing it as it's a quick and easy way to ruin a painting.
One thing I did find, was that at Hobby Lobby there are self-adhesive backing boards, that those of you who have the wrinkly, light paintings I've sent out could use. It's just a piece of tag board with a very slow adhesive on it. You can slap it on, gently push out all the air bubbles, and keep readjusting up to a couple of hours after contact, then the glue sticks permanently.
The beauty of starch paste (if all the proteins get left out) is that it can be steamed off and loose, so if I wanted to redo the backing, I could when I learn more, it's like refitting books. But the backing board should make the painting easy to mount and frame, then, and it's in standard framing sizes.
Anyway... I also found a self-healing cutting board so I can cut the larger pieces of Shuen papers to more handleable sizes neatly (no more torn edges to GIMP away) for just fifteen dollars, and the high-end water colors (Windsor and Newton) were on sale at 30% off! So I bought indigo, az. red, and cadmium yellow, the classical colors for this kind of painting. It was only in the car, when I studied the receipt that I realized that the cashier had, mistakenly, given me 50% off instead of the 30% I was supposed to have gotten.
Wow. I've been wondering if my cheap watercolors make a difference as well. I guess I'll get to find out.
So that was nice. Also bought a big plate of heavy-duty plexiglass that should be good for the rest of my painting life, for mounting these things on a flat, non-porous surface that's a good six inches larger than my larger sheets. And John did some research and we figured out a few good substitutes against the traditional methods.
It'll be interesting to see how it goes. I still need to make the paste, and figure out which paintings are going to be sacrificed, first, and what paper I'm going to use for backing things. There's rolls of backing paper available... or I can just use the papers I've been using, as traditionally, one simply backs with the paper one painted with.
So it's been fun thinking through the future on all this, and trying to get that next step together. I'll probably do something crazy like a full-picture tutorial when we actually do it. *grins*
Poor guy was really frightened by it. Terrified all the parents, too. John carried Jet home and deposited him, shaking, in my lap and I held him for a while as John went and called the nurse at our clinic, and she rattled off a list of things that were not happening to Jet. So no concussion, at all. Talking with him about it, he'd landed on his forehead, which is a pretty good place to land, compared to the side of the head or anything else.
So we got really, really lucky.
So I just held Jet until he got intrigued by the idea of lighting all the candles, and we went out and did that. We talked a little bit more about what had happened, and I just asked him how he thought about his actions. He admitted that the kid in front of him had stopped at the top of the slide, and Jet had kind of thrown himself trying to get the bigger kid to move, and that's when he'd bounced off...
"Hm... next time maybe I should wait until he gets to the bottom of the slide."
"Good idea, Jet." Yes, I'm sure that my only job is to try to do my best to keep him alive until he's past 25...
The night was warm for the first time in years and years. 70's in the day. No sleet, no howling winds, no need for four layers underneath the Tinkerbell outfit, or a down parka under the satin for John. *laughs*
The kids ate pizza, and then went out. The pizza and a cooler of beer and juices went in the wagon after, and the kids would dip into the supplies as they needed it. One of the mom's was really amused by the fact that the kids were pulling out pieces of pizza well into the journey.
They had, originally, thought of being at our house by 7, but they went until 9!! I was grateful, as the powdered hot chocolate just wouldn't do, so I made up fresh hot chocolate with half a gallon of the local milk, real Hershey's cocoa powder cooked with sugar, a bit of water, a pinch of salt and a good splash of vanilla. It made really good hot chocolate, and everyone commented on it. So that was neat.
There were carrots, chips, chicken nuggets, grapes, apples slices with caramel, more pizza, and a big platter of veggies with dip. Amusingly enough, the veggies and nuggets went fast, as the kids tried to catch up on their sugar with some real protein and other stuff. I was pretty impressed. The parents liked the food as well after the long walk.
All the kids spread out in the living room and started sorting their candy. Then the Trading Began.
*laughs* Some of the kids were talking, while they were running from house to house, "We're going to Jet's, right? That's where we can sort and trade our candy!!"
And so they did. They then ran like mad in the basement, burning off half the sugar they'd eaten.
The party went until midnight, with the 2-year-old the loudest, happiest partier of them all. A bunch of kids and parents went home at 10, and the rest just kept rolling. Jet liked being up late, in a lot of ways. And when he went to sleep he was very, very happy.
It went a bit late for me, so I was pretty draggy this morning, and cranky as heck after all the partying and socializing and stuff. Some of it was just... me being nasty and cranky from lack of sleep, too much sugar, and feeling like my painting is not getting where I want it to and making do with stuff that I really should do better with.
Jet was happy as a clam.
So I modified some of my behavior, ate something, and then tried to fix my problems.
We went out. First to do a flu shot for Jet, and then we hit three or four different stores for supplies to get my paintings backed traditionally. Traditionally, one makes a flour starch paste, works it into the back of the painting, and slaps on another piece of paper to stiffen the original painting. It's left to dry flat on some non-porous surface, and the whole thing gets peeled off in order to mount it on a traditional mounting. But... there's a few layers to the whole process and I've been frightened of doing it as it's a quick and easy way to ruin a painting.
One thing I did find, was that at Hobby Lobby there are self-adhesive backing boards, that those of you who have the wrinkly, light paintings I've sent out could use. It's just a piece of tag board with a very slow adhesive on it. You can slap it on, gently push out all the air bubbles, and keep readjusting up to a couple of hours after contact, then the glue sticks permanently.
The beauty of starch paste (if all the proteins get left out) is that it can be steamed off and loose, so if I wanted to redo the backing, I could when I learn more, it's like refitting books. But the backing board should make the painting easy to mount and frame, then, and it's in standard framing sizes.
Anyway... I also found a self-healing cutting board so I can cut the larger pieces of Shuen papers to more handleable sizes neatly (no more torn edges to GIMP away) for just fifteen dollars, and the high-end water colors (Windsor and Newton) were on sale at 30% off! So I bought indigo, az. red, and cadmium yellow, the classical colors for this kind of painting. It was only in the car, when I studied the receipt that I realized that the cashier had, mistakenly, given me 50% off instead of the 30% I was supposed to have gotten.
Wow. I've been wondering if my cheap watercolors make a difference as well. I guess I'll get to find out.
So that was nice. Also bought a big plate of heavy-duty plexiglass that should be good for the rest of my painting life, for mounting these things on a flat, non-porous surface that's a good six inches larger than my larger sheets. And John did some research and we figured out a few good substitutes against the traditional methods.
It'll be interesting to see how it goes. I still need to make the paste, and figure out which paintings are going to be sacrificed, first, and what paper I'm going to use for backing things. There's rolls of backing paper available... or I can just use the papers I've been using, as traditionally, one simply backs with the paper one painted with.
So it's been fun thinking through the future on all this, and trying to get that next step together. I'll probably do something crazy like a full-picture tutorial when we actually do it. *grins*