What We Did Yesterday & Today; Making Art for Fun

"Scotland/Ireland" Mixed-Media Collage, 5x7 inches

For more information about this collage, read this.

I had time last Saturday to make some ATCs but couldn’t do it. Instead I ran errands and prepared to have guests at the house.

Yesterday was a day of decompression from Halloween festivities and too-many outside classes and activities. I declared a day of not leaving the house and having only fun. Actually my older son was on day one of a head cold (poor thing) so I let him watch unlimited TV lying in my bed.

I decided to make ATCs. I had the whole morning free. I couldn’t do it. I began by cutting out bases from food containers (cereal boxes, etc.). I was still blocked. So I didn’t make any art. That actually annoyed me as I had the time but not the muse! Usually I am itching to do something creative but don’t have the time to do it.

Then a friend came over with her children for a playdate. My older son remained quarantined in bed. Later he went to play outdoors in our woods by himself to get fresh air, declaring utter boredom with just watching TV (hooray). He also said he was feeling quite better.

After the playdate was over, I had many hours free to do what I/we wanted. My husband was in the City at a conference then had a job interview. That meant I was free until 7:30pm and could make ATCs or whatever art I wanted. However I still had block. I felt exhausted to boot, probably from being too busy lately and/or from eating too much Halloween candy. I ended up laying in bed at 6pm seeing what was on TiVo.

I watched two episodes of Dr. Phil about the ‘house of hatred’. Although Dr. Phil seems to come off thinking this is an original idea of his, what it is, is a house wired up just like the Big Brother house (a CBS reality show airing annually since the year 2000) combined with putting people with prejudices and opposite racial opinions and also one or two homosexuals living in the same house and letting them fight it out (a la Real World—the first reality show ever, when did that start—in the early 1990s?). The only new thing is that Dr. Phil and his staff monitors them and then Dr. Phil intervenes in an attempt to rid them of all of their intolerances with little confrontations.

The Dr. Phil ‘house of hatred’ has these pairings: a thin young woman and a fat young man who hate all others who are not of their same body type; a straight woman and a lesbian who hate all who are not of their same sexual orientation; and a white man and an African American woman who are racist against anyone not of their same race. The two shows were pretty ho-hum and the next show in the installment will be the finale of the ‘house of hatred’. Frankly I can’t believe that in this day and age that people go around spouting off such ridiculous things, I thought all that was long gone, for the most part.

Today I have free time while my older son is in a class with other homeschoolers. My younger son played an educational computer game and I started and finished four ATCs. I also started on 6 more. Right now I am on a break from doing that so am blogging.

Hooray for the disappearance of creative block!

It feels great to do something fun and not stressful for once. I am completely burned out of doing too much and am so happy that some of our homeschooling classes are ending. I am not re-upping any of the ones that are finishing up and really need to down-shift and get back to a more slow-paced harmonious home environment. I feel no need to train my 6 and 9 year old children for the rat race that they will have to live with when they are adults. That time will come soon enough I am sure.

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