Tag Archives: ATOZBLOGGINGCHALLENGE2023

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Daily Evil: G is for Grumpy

Gruff, grouchy, grumpy and garden! The watercolor is a small one by Helen Burling Ottaway, my mother. She did not date any of the watercolor sketches in it. I think it is from the 1970s. I very much remember the pot that the tree is in. That is an avocado that she grew from a pit.

Is being grumpy evil? I don’t think so. I don’t think we should inflict our grumpiness on others, but we may have very good reasons to be grumpy. When I was having difficult things at home, I would give a heads up to my nurse that I was grumpy but not at her or the patients. That helped a lot, because I did not have a perfect wall about my emotions. I also hate when people are pretending to be nice when they are angry or hurting or frustrated or grumpy.

Sometimes people say, “I don’t like to be around people who aren’t positive.” Well, now, wait. Do they have to be positive if a family member dies? If they lose their job? If they are very worried about making ends meet when a car has broken down? That would be a fair weather friend, who is only present in the good times, and abandons me when I am stressed. That person is not really a friend at all. The true friends are the ones who notice I am grumpy but stay present anyway. And they ask if it is about them. They do not try to fix it or ignore it: it’s my mood, not theirs. Hooray for real friends who are present through thick and thin!

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Daily Evil: F is for Frustration

F is also for Final. Death is frustratingly final. I can keep talking to the person, but they don’t talk back, except maybe in dreams. Even then, it’s my version of them.

F is also for fine art and father. This is a drawing of my father in college by my mother. My mother did art all the time and carried a sketchbook around nearly all the time. Every so often she mislaid it, searched, and started a new one until the old one surfaced. I was two when she did these drawings. My impression of fine art was that it involved continuous practice. My mother thought about art most of the time, as her diaries confirm. I love the sketch books.

These two drawings are on notebook paper. My mother sent them to her mother with letters when I was two. My grandmother was in Europe.

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Daily Evil: E for Ephalump

Oooooo surely it’s evil to make up new words. Or to verb words.

I think that my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, was thinking about Winnie-ther-Pooh’s Heffalumps when she made this. This etching is another small one, 3 by 2.5 inches. She did many tiny fantasy etchings. This is a proof, for me. An artist’s proof is an experimental run, before the final edition. She might change the ink color, or put the tar mixture back on the plate and change it.

I have had this album since I was very little. Winnie-ther-Pooh with a Brooklyn accent, but really really wonderful!

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Daily Evil: D is for Dragging

It’s a draggingfly. No, a dragonfly.

This is a tiny etching, 1.5 by 2 inches. The title is “For Temp”. This is number 27 out of an edition of 35. The plate needs to be reinked for each one and run through the press. Diddly, as my mother would say.

Temp is Fred Temple Burling, my mother’s father. He made a dragonfly sign for his name, since you can see a T, an F and a B in the shape of the dragonfly. My grandparents had a potter’s wheel in the basement and made some beautiful pottery. I have a few pieces. My mother did pottery as well later in her career.

Let’s see, is dragging evil? Sometimes people complain that others are dragging them down. But I remember a counselor saying to me, why are you responsible or affected by your husband’s moods? They are his. You do not have to fix them or leave the room. I thought, oh, that is true though at first it was quite difficult.

And what about dragging in drag racing? Some people may be very much for dragging.

I am still a little stiff today, since stiff muscles normally last about 48 hours after we’ve overused them. It feels like normal muscle stiffness, not like my post pneumonia chronic fatigue weirdness. That muscle fatigue starts when you use the muscles and it feels very painful and like they just don’t work. Then they feel dead for a while. It is very peculiar and hard to describe.

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Daily Evil: Cranky

I am a Creaky Cranky Crone with Crepitus this morning. I volunteered at the Swinging on the Sound dance weekend. I was not going to dance, because of my right shoulder. But, well, my feet were fine, so I did the basic. Then in the last class, there were more “follows” than “leads”. I thought, well, my left arm works. I jumped in, explaining that I couldn’t use the right arm. Switching from “follow” to “lead”, I have to reverse the foot work. The instructor did not know about my arm and scolded the class for some people not dancing in the closed position. That was me. Oh, well.

So I am not VERY cranky. I am really delighted that I got to dance and practiced the basic step for collegiate shag.

The woman in the picture is not a Creaky Cranky Crone. It is my grandmother Katherine White Burling, drawn from a photograph by my mother Helen Burling Ottaway. This is an 18 by 24 drawn with I think conte crayon. Apologies for the reflection, I am photographing through glass.

And here is a photograph from one of the collegiate shag classes, on Saturday. People of all genders danced both lead and follow. One person did the contest as an amateur follower and an advanced lead. Good for them!