the kitten drank the paint water

I am so unorganized so far this year - day six went by in a fog and now here it is late at night and miles to go before I sleep, etc. This is especially dumb because I have set up these recurring tasks for myself: blog post a day (for January) and little art project a day (for the foreseeable future). I know this when I wake up in the morning! yet today I wasted time like a professional time waster about to get a performance bonus. So here I am slightly after midnight getting ready to backdate this business.

Last night at this time I had a migraine and today I don't, so there's something to be happy about. (and I'm SO HAPPY that I don't have one tonight. The weather has been whipsawing around which is a recipe for the stealth headache - the background kind that builds all day until it has enough power to send jaggy lightning bolts of pain all around my cranium.)

For my art project today I think I'm going to do a little bird drawing/painting. I'm into birds lately. The kitten drank all the gross paint water that I left on my desk, but I can pour some out from my water bottle so no worries! (Also, no worries about Otis - it was watercolor water, and the colored part had mostly sunk to the bottom. I mean, I wouldn't want to drink it, but I've seen cats drink WAAAAAAY grosser water.)  This art project a day has not been without interruption, but I really missed it when it was gone. It's like writing or anything - time away makes it harder, time at it makes it easier. Fortunately, it doesn't take too long to get up to speed as long as I don't waste the day in a post-migraine fog, or any other kind of fog. Down with fog.

Here's a crazy question: what would happen if I did this stuff IN THE MORNING? Hmmmm. The very idea of it grates against my sense of when I'm allowed to be creative, but maybe if I just get up and pretend that there's nothing weird about it, there will be nothing weird about it. Must investigate.

blame the barometer

I've had a low-level headache all day, which totally bums me out. But I think it's passing! I usually get these kinds of headaches when the weather shifts from one way to another way in a dramatic No Longer Raining fashion. My desire is to wake up in the morning and not feel like someone is dragging a chain around inside my brain. If I'm allowed to get super specific, I'll add that it would be nice to do this without specialized pharmaceuticals. (puts imaginary coins in imaginary 12th century Italian desktop wishing machine.)

Honestly, it feels so much better already. (it being my head.) The problem with a low-grade headache is that it can go on for hours before I realize MY HEAD HURTS and by then it's really too late to take a pill to abort the headache that is already happening. (for some reason I just had a flash of my headache being a rebellious teenager who just wants to party, and my consciousness being this really uncool drag of a neighbor who keeps calling the cops.)

ooh - other news! Last night our trivia team came in first by lots of points! (lots = 5) Of course our archrivals were not there, so it's not as sweet as it could be, but it was still very fun. Hilarious moment of hubris: quiz dude comes around to our table and is all "thank god you're here tonight - someone will get these questions!" (paraphrase, obvs.) We were smiley and pleased because AREN'T WE SMART, but then later it turned out that he said that because WE WERE SO OLD. (but in this instance age led to wisdom led to singing WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS all the way home.)

And now, because I'm going to bed to read my headache into oblivion, here are a couple of youtube videos that caught my eye today - they're both about being creative but in totally different ways. They're also both promoting longer films, but I like what I saw in each of them and would like to see more.

the first is about bad writing, via Margaret Atwood:


and the second is about inspiration, collaborating, having fun with it, via I am Fuel, You are Friends: