Day 17

The Year 2011

January was dreary for me, the start of it at least. I had no resolutions, no goals, no ambitions, and the weather had smacked me full upside the head. I was (and have continued through the year) working part time at Harborview and miserable there. I was going to an energy-worker to try to sort myself out, and was a mess. Then January 6th happened, and everything turned around. I had found my storefront, and it was for lease.

February 15th was our grand opening. Krysteen and I worked hard to get the two shops ready for clients. I didn't have time to worry about myself, and I didn't have the energy to mope. I had a shop, and it was coming together, and my dream of having a location where people could come to me and get hennaed, and I could work on my art was coming true. This took up a lot of my time for the next few months, organizing, advertising, and hoping for the best.

March I got to go to Hawaii for the first time! It was beautiful, and a memory that will be held close to my heart forever. I went snorkeled beside a turtle, walked along the top of a volcano, saw the spirits of the dead rise to the heavens, and cheered to a baby whale only a few days old. I helped Rosemary prepare the most amazing food, and thoroughly enjoyed the company of my husband and my in-laws. It was a precious 10 days.

April I spent as much time as I could in Olympia on my parents farm. They had planted the trees while I was gone, but there was still much to do, not only on the field, but also around the house and garden and shed. When I wasn't there with my parents and Dan (who learned how to drive the tractor) I was gearing up for my festival season, approaching very rapidly.

In May Dan graduated from the University of Washington with a Masters in Statistics! He's a smart smart man. Over the rest of the year he started using his new degree not only in his existing positions, but the department of radiology created a position for him as a resident statistician! He's been learning how to build himself a clientele, and has been unbelievably happy!

May - September was Festival Season, kicked off by the University Street Fair, ending with the Northgate Family Festival. This year I promised not to do any festival where I couldn't do henna, and it payed off very nicely. The takes were good (I had a record breaking day at Mountlake Terrace) and the season went very smoothly. Of course, Laurie was invaluable at all of the festivals, and I was very grateful for her help. In between festivals I still had to work at the shop, (and at Harborview) and help on the farm. I also was doing a lot of parties and projects in my Magic Magpie cloak, like painting the floor of a new Mexican restaurant on Queen Anne. Needless to say, I was busy.

In October I started really getting ready for my annual show at Makeda Coffee, which is when I try something new for my art and my soul. This time around it was using real henna to stain wood and skin (tambourines). I also got to spend a little quality time with my mother in law, where we spent most of a weekend sewing (and talking.) Then, at the end of the month, I started helping my parents with a very big and momentous event.

On November 10th my father had his second bone marrow transplant. In the weeks leading up to that, and in the first week after the "day 0" my parents lived with Dan and I in our small house. It was actually fun, although it was hard on account of there being 4 people and 2 cats in 900 square feet of space. They moved to a couple different apartments over the next couple months, but I still regularly helped take care of my dad, to relieve my mother so she could have some time to work, or go down to the farm and take care of things down there. This whole experience was stressful for me (I mean, it was stressful for everyone of course), and by the end of the year I feel I'm back to where I was last year, emotionally.

Looking back over the whole year, though, I see a big curve. Really a circle, but because the new year cuts the circle cleanly, I see it more as a curve. I'm glad I spent the time here to write it all down, although I remember it all, it's nice to see it lined up like this. It gives me a "things are going to get better" kind of feeling, remembering how miserable I was last January, and feeling the same way now, but remembering also how busy and happy I was in the summer.

So "Happy New Year" to me. Happy and Joyful and Peaceful and Kind. I need more of that now, coming FROM me, because I have lots of it coming TO me all the time. I have really supportive friends and family, and lots of good things about me in my life. I just have to sit and remember that, every once in a while, and the eve of the new year is a good time to do it. Peace.

Day 16

Today was Randy's last day of work. She's been in Pathology for 43 years - Bouncing around from the UW to various other places (but always in pathology) until 23 years ago when she settled in Neuropath. She had a lovely send-off party at work today, and my mom and I attended. My mother's known her the longest of anyone there (she was there when Randy came into the training program 43 years ago).

Day 15

My new years henna. Palm henna, to me, is very private while still being very accessible. This is a very simple design, but with lots of meaning to me. I need my new year henna to be understated this year, I guess. I'm very happy with it.

Day 14

Again, an emotional and exhausting day. I didn't have to go in to work (thanks, payroll, for screwing up my Personal Holiday record) so I scheduled an appointment and then had a long talk with my mother. After Dance Central in the afternoon, Dan and I had dinner and I'm wiped out. Bedtime. No sketch, no photo.


Sometimes life can be
harder then the directions
wash rinse repeat sigh

Day 13

No photo, so...sketch! No idea comes to mind? What's my naaaame!! ;)

Day 12

The day after Christmas, a very emotional day indeed. Here we are my mother, Dan and Mark down in the field...




...in which are more mole-holes then I think I've ever seen in my life...




...but they don't seem to cause any harm to the trees.

Mark and Andrew are moving to New Zealand on the 1st day of the new year. Wesley will be leaving on the 30th (he's got a longer move process, including 10 days of quarantine.) I know I only see them every few months anyway since my mother moved to Olympia, and I interact with them more on Facebook then anywhere else, but just the fact that they'll be damn-near half way around the world makes me sad. I hugged them goodbye today at my parents house, gave Wesley a rub on the head, and watched them drive away. Now it's time to set up a Skype account so I can see their New Zealander Faces (Mark was granted permanent residency!)

Day 11

Merry Christmas. A lovely day, punctuated with a life altering decision in the middle of it. I made Dan a wonderful painting which he loves.



Mark and Andrew came down for the best turkey dinner my mother's ever made. It was a really nice and very difficult day. But that's how "American" christmas's are...right?

Day 10

Merry Christmas Eve! Today was filled with errands, wrapping, cooking (and cheeseballmaking) driving, and finally enjoying a meal with my parents on the farm for the first time since October. No photo today, nor a sketch, but at least I remembered to post tonight!


The peace silently
brings me back inside my soul
one mile closer home

Day 9

A friend of a friend who got a henna at a party e-mailed me a photo of a painting of two wood-spirits. I told her I'd try sketching it out to see whether I thought I'd be able to reproduce the painting on her back in henna. This is sketch #1.

I think I'll be able to do it.

Day 8

First sketch (aside from the "title") in the new book. Aprox. 4x4in.

Day 7

This evening, as I was hennaing two seahorses on my client's shoulder, she told me the story of the two seahorses she raised as a child in Hawaii. It was a male and a female, both very dark brown in color, almost black. She explained how they were very affectionate, to each other and to her, darting between her fingers when she'd put her hand in the water. Eventually, the male got sick, and when he died, he lost all his pigment and turned white. The female wrapped her tail tightly around his, and swam around the tank with the male's ghostly body trailing behind her. Eventually, she released his tail, and in the process of mourning she'd become a pale tan with brown spots...and she never changed back.

The client told me this and I totally started tearing up. The henna's a trial for a permanent tattoo, symbolizing everything learned and gained from that experience from her youth. Pretty deep, huh?

Day 6

The photo I planned on taking yesterday:



Why did I take this? It's become my annual ritual. Every year instead of buying pointless little crap gifts that no one wants or keeps, I go to PAWS, and donate between $70-$80 worth of cat food & hotdogs. Then I make up a little note for everyone saying I gone done and did it. Ho ho ho.

Day 5

A day without a photo! The one I planned on taking today will have to be taken tomorrow - the place was closed.

So, instead of running errands around the greater Seattle area today, I did a bunch of admin work for my business, and then played over an hour total of Dance Central on my new X-box Kinect. I'm gonna be sore tomorrow. But it's LOADS of fun!

Haiku:

My husband and folks
are very good gift givers
dancing is my game

Day 4

AWESOME HENNA OF THE DAY (because there was more then one henna done today):



Why is this henna so awesome? Because the guy who had it done wanted me to henna the track list for his limited press "Punk Jazz" (whatever that means) album on his hands so he could use the image of his hennaed hands as the back of his album cover. Awesome, am I right?

And the other hennas of the day was a beautiful pregnant belly and the hands of her two best friends that matched the belly design. Fabulous people (and I'm not just biased because one of them was the nurse that administered my dad his stem cells a bit over a month ago.)

Today was an excellent henna day. :)

Day 3

Here's the inside of my new sketchbook. I did it in pencil, originally because I wanted to be able to erase mistakes (seeing as how this is on the inside cover), but then I realized I didn't have an eraser. Also, while I was working on this, I was reminded how much I really really like the sound of pencil on paper on a hard surface (so often we write or draw in pencil on a pad of paper - the sound is muffled.)

Day 2

The day after my birthday, my birthday henna has peaked in fabulous color!

Day 1

And we're off again, another year, another blog! Last year's didn't work well, and I figured out what the problem was: I have a horrible lack of self-discipline, unless of course it really *matters*. I succeeded with Project 31 simply because it was EVERY DAY, and I got myself into a rhythm/habit fairly quickly. After Project 31, I didn't have a goal, and the lack of structure turned into a lack of discipline, and with the opening of my shop, I found a great excuse to let the blog piddle off into non-existence.

I LOVED doing Project 31. A photo a day. I got some amazing shots. I'm still using some of those photos, regularly. I have them as backgrounds on my computer, on other peoples computers too. I used one of them as a mix cd cover. I've used them for publication (fliers, adverts). It was a very productive year, and I'm very proud of not only the individual photos, but also the fact that I was able to stick with it and accomplish a project of that magnitude.

So, this year, I'm starting it again. However, I'm not going to limit myself to photos. I'm not going to limit myself to *this blog* either. I've bought myself a lovely square 8x8in sketch book. I might have to buy myself a second one as the year progresses. I plan on having this Project 33 be 3 different things: Writing, Drawing, and Photographs. Some days I'll write a poem. Some days I'll sketch a henna design. Some days I'll post a photo. If I do a sketch, I'll try to either scan it in the day of, take a photo of it and post it, or do a "bulk scan" once a week...I'm still debating on how that's going to be managed. But even if I don't get the sketch uploaded, I'll still post a little thing saying I did it. So every day there will be a posting (granted that I have internet access.) :)

So there you have it! Welcome to Antoinette's PROJECT 33!