Nail Polish

I stare at the deep red laquer on my thumbnail wondering.

I find myself at a crossroads. On the one hand I can use this blog as an exercise; I can post my rambling thoughts and feelings online in a safe place that keeps my partners and me sane. On the other hand I have the opportunity to use my blog to review products and services that I'm being offered which could in turn make my blog into to a money making job - not to mention the free goods and services!

I'm already a very critical person and besides making art, my work in college focused on analyzing and critiquing EVERYTHING. And I was good at it. But what I wanted to do was make art. What I WANT to do is make art. THINGS - tangible beautiful things.

But....this nail polish is beautiful. This color is amazing. It almost has a purple undertone. I have never liked red on me. I'm a pink sort of person, soft. This red is that hard red of my mother, the winter. But it looks great. It makes me want to do all my nails, put on a big brimmed hat and deep red lipstick and go give sultry looks to people in coffee shops. Black and white polka dot dress, of course.

The laquer dried as I wrote this and it's already hard. The color is perfectly opaque with only one coating on an unpreped nail. I'm considering sending this bottle to my mother. On the other hand, I want to keep it for myself.

- Formula X Nail Color in Ignite

Why Write?

   My focus has never been writing. I have been a singer, an actor, a model, an artist, a speaker, a housewife, a teacher, an executive, and a philosopher. Writing just always went hand-in-hand with whatever hat I'm wearing at the time.

   My first published work was a poem in 1989. It was terrible. I cringe every time I read it. But the editor liked it, he printed it and he compensated me. I was 8. Since then I've been writing poems, essays, and articles with the occasional publish here and there. I've been asked to write my life story for publish but until now I have never been able to bring myself to write directly about myself. Sure all my writings have been genuinely my words or my thoughts but not usually about me or for a non-academic audience. So why now?

  Now, I am at a point in my life where my time is mostly my own. I have left academia, supposedly for good, and am working on developing myself. I'm building an art studio in my backyard to be able to focus on my sculpting. I'm getting ready to try my hand at being a mother. I'm also on the neurological decline.

  When I was a teenager I was in a pretty bad accident and suffered traumatic brain injury. The cognitive effects weren't really noticeable through the pain and anger of those earlier years. However, now that I am approaching my middle age the accelerated decline that many TBI sufferers experience has started to show itself. I am more forgetful and confused than I should be and my brain is getting slower at resolving the sensory input my eyes and ears give it, while those organs are functioning properly.

   While science gives people like me, and not so coincidentally my father, hope that dementia can be slowed or stopped it is important that I record and explore myself before I lose that ability. Besides with all the social media platforms full of people posting about what they ate today, there has got to be a little room for me too.

Menses Pot?

    I happened to be watching an episode of Seth MacFarlane's American Dad where Hayley is seen throwing what she calls a "menses pot".  As an experienced Potter, Anthropology student and menstruating female, I had never heard of such a thing. Curiosity piqued!

    I looked around online and found a lot of people suggesting that it was made up for the show. Not true. It's a real thing. Before the disposables of today, menses pots were used to hold and clean sea sponges and cloths used to catch menstrual bleeding. The lidded ceramic pot would be filled with hot water and the materials allowed to soak overnight, to be wrung out and laundered as normal the next day. Pretty interesting....
    And that lead to this...Why you should switch to reusable menstrual products!

     Shouldn't I? I'm not much of a treehugger but these hippies are giving some pretty compelling reasons.

   Actually, a few years ago I started using the menstrual cup. There are a lot of great reasons to use a menstrual cup: no smell (from the cup or you), you can have sex while wearing it, reusable or disposable available, less waste, more comfortable than anything else, designed by a woman (go girls!), and cheaper. However, they are not perfect. They do leak sometimes if you don't get them in just right. So I also wear pads or liners to catch leaks. Between the 2, I use way less disposable products and have been pretty comfortable with it. But with a menses pot and reusable cotton pads, aka moonpads, I could be that much more environmentally/cost conscious. Apparently I can even support artisans by purchasing handmade pads on etsy! (These look really comfy.) On top of it, many articles claim the waste water from soaking is good fertilizer for my plants...we will have to see about this.

   At a time when waste plastics are peaking as an environmental issue now is a good time to consider the switch to a sustainable product for managing your menses. Support art, the environment, save money, and improve your health: Win, win, win, win!

First Post!

First post WOOT!

After all this time and all this encouragement - I'm finally going to blog. I've been asked to write about my opinions, criticisms, and life experience for years for other authors and their projects and it's about time I started writing for myself. For the new leg of my life as a work-from-home partner, I'm building my home studio, writing, and doing the occasional modeling. For the writing part of my work I plan to maintain this personal blog, which will hopefully turn out interesting, while also writing Diorama - a fictionalized version of my own life, my stories that other people often ask me to tell or tell about me.

Hopefully this will turn out well...