My favorite Christmas present this year was the one that I gave to J. The week before Christmas, I put everything else on hold and I madly scrapbooked for six to eight hours a day, when J was at work. Several years ago my mother-in-law had given me two boxes filled with photos from J's life, from 1987-1994. All of the photos were in order, and I just needed to put them into scrapbook form.

As I was going through the pictures, I came across a photo taken of J at the San Diego Zoo. I immediately recognized the set and pulled out my own scrapbook. I found a similar picture of me, in the exact same spot, although mine was taken a year before the one of J. The romantic in me had hopes that our pictures were taken the same year (what if we were at the zoo on the same day?!?), but I do like the fact that we are both six years old when our respective pictures were taken. I don't think that this photo op set exists anymore, but it would be fun to take a trip to San Diego and have a similar picture taken when Sam is six.

Several times I have been thinking this month about how much I love J and I'm lucky to be his wife. He is such a considerate, kind man who constantly considers what Sam and I need to be happy and comfortable. I love that he is such a thoughtful person too: he likes to reflect and tackle deep questions and ideas. Some of my favorite moments with J involve discussions that we have had about films, art, religion, philosophy, etc.

I can only hope that Sam grows up to be as good of a man as his father. Sam is a sensitive and kind person by nature, I think, which is a good start. He also likes to emulate his dad: he was thrilled the other week when he and J were wearing similar outfits to my choir performance. I hope he continues to want to be like his dad.

I love these two boys, and I think the world of them.

I pointed out to J recently that this year my mom's death marks the halfway point of our marriage. The time that we were married before my mom's death is now the same amount of time that we have been married since her passing. It seems strange that so much time has gone by since she passed away. It seems like we, as a married couple, have spent more time with her than without her.

This morning I have been going through the emails that my mom sent to me. Some of the emails that I found occasionally talked about family happenings. Usually, though, my mom would just email me a tidbit of information that she thought I should know, often without prompting. These emails often included citations of articles from medical or health journals, but not always information from the cited articles themselves. (I also usually didn't understand all of the words or the medical terminology in these articles.) The earliest email I have in my current account is from 2007. It was typical to receive these types of emails from my mom:

Dear M
It was so nice to hear how you are doing and what you are doing.
 
Here is a good basic link on the BBC explaining some of soy's problems for men: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/3513607.stm
------------------------------
I have emails about synthetic Vitamin A; why I should take Carlsen Cod Liver oil (although I don't think she would like how they have modified their product today); a quote which criticizes FDR and and offhand comments he made about the excessive birth rate of Puerto Rico; why I should avoid flu shots and take Vitamin D instead; how to avoid a flu pandemic; and Alfred the Great and Asser the Monk. Some emails are about news or topics related to the Church. Others have instructions for me to put something on her blog (a project we started together after she was diagnosed) or to have me leave a comment for her on a blog. One of the last emails she sent to me was a forward about someone who was killed because they answered their cellphone while it was charging (and still was plugged into an electrical outlet).

This eclectic collection of emails is a pretty good way to sum up my mother. I love her.

I have had two songs stuck in my head over the past few days: "Eglantine" and "Old Kent Road." Both of these songs come from movies that I watched a lot as a little girl: Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Little Princess. I watched both of these movies relatively recently, which I guess explains why I am thinking about these songs. It's been fun to rewatch these films and remember the things that I loved about them as a child. I also made some new connections that I didn't realize before. For example, I didn't realize that the opening credits for Bedknobs and Broomsticks was inspired by the imagery from the Bayeux Tapestry!

The chorus of "Eglantine" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks has been stuck in my head ever since this weekend (although I should note that the version of this song that my family knows is much shorter, I think because our copy of the film was taped off of the TV):


I have also had the "Old Kent Road" song stuck in my head from The Little Princess. This song is played twice in the movie, one when Shirley Temple ("Sara") is living at a private school, and later when she performs the number in the hospital for wounded soldiers. My mom would always point out to me that Sara decided to perform for the soldiers and cheer them up, "even though she didn't feel like it." Perhaps I often said that I "didn't feel like [doing things]" as a young girl?

First scene:


Second scene:


These are the lyrics to "Knocked 'Em in the Old Kent Road":

Last week down our alley came a toff
Nice old geezer with a nasty cough
Sees my missus, takes his topper off
In a very gentlemanly way

"Wot cher!" all the neighbors cried
"Who yer gonna meet, Bill
Have yer bought the street, Bill"?
Laugh! I thought I should've died
Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road

Every evenin' at the stroke of five
Me and the missus takes a little drive
You'd say, "Wonderful they're still alive"
If you saw that little donkey go

When we starts the blessed donkey stops
He won't move, so out I quickly lops
Pals start whackin' him, when down he drops
Someone says he wasn't made to go

"Wot cher!" all the neighbors cried
"Who yer gonna meet, Bill
Have yer bought the street, Bill"?
Laugh! I thought I should've died
Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road

When I showed The Little Princess to J a few weeks ago, I also made an interesting connection with the Sara's dream sequence. Part of that dream involves a ballet number, in which the ballerinas come together in a circle and wave their arms (like flower petals). Then, a little ballerina (Shirley Temple) is "born" out of this "flower." You can see this segment at about 5:55 in the clip:



When I watched this sequence recently, I immediately thought of these "ballet classes" that I used to hold for my little sister C and two neighborhood girls. I was probably about eleven or twelve at the time. I didn't really know much about ballet (I had a year of lessons when I was probably seven or eight), but I checked out a whole bunch of books from the library and thought that I knew enough to be an instructor. I would have C and her friends come and practice a routine that I choreographed for "The Waltz of the Flowers" (from The Nutcracker). About thirty seconds into the song, there is a little harp flourish which I envisioned as a time for the dancers to create a similar type of circular "flower" (from which one of the dancers would emerge). At the time, though, I don't think that I realized that I had pulled inspiration from my choreography directly from The Little Princess. That movie was so engrained into my life that I didn't even realize I was referencing it.

A lot of the movies that I watched as a girl were either made in the early-to-mid 20th century. And, for that matter, a lot of the books that I read were from the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries. I suppose my mom predisposed me to become an art historian without realizing it: by exposing me to older forms of language and visual culture, I grew to have an affinity for the past and nostalgia (even if it the nostalgia isn't for something I actually experienced).

Sam hasn't been feeling well today, so we have spent the day at home. He did have enough energy, though, to create a drawing for his school's upcoming art contest. The theme of the contest is "Believe, Dream, Inspire." Sam and I brainstormed some ideas for things that he could create, and this drawing is the final product. Sam gave it the title, "Welcome to Dog Land." I tried not to intervene (even though the curator in me was compelled to at least explain that marker or pen would be more visible than pencil). Sam insisted on pencil, though, which is fine.

Here is Sam's artist statement, which we are sending along with his submission. My only modification was to put "just yet" in the first sentence, so I wouldn't come across as a completely heartless mom!

I wish that I could have a dog, but my mom won't let me just yet. I like to dream about having a dog and playing with dogs. This drawing is of a pretend land where everyone can be a dog or play with dogs. Kids who don't have a dog can look at this drawing and think about playing with dogs too.

My friend Hasan sent me this picture a few years ago, as a joke. We had recently met online through our art history blogs, and this was the first photo that I ever saw of him. I remember thinking that the photo was both funny and strange, and I wondered if Hasan was actually a weird person. (He wasn't weird, at least not in a bad way!) Here Hasan is doing an impersonation of the Commodus as Hercules bust, which he sent not long after I wrote a post on the sculpture on my art history blog. The image in the background is a reproduction of Alma-Tadema's A Roman Emperor AD 41; Alma-Tadema was Hasan's favorite classicist painter and this reproduction hung in his home.

Hasan suddenly passed away about a week ago, due to an epileptic seizure. He was thirty-seven years old, the same age as his favorite artist Raphael. It breaks my heart to know that this kind person, who had friends all over the world, died alone. If someone had been with him in his apartment at the time, perhaps he wouldn't have died. The online art history community was consequently put in shock, and I spent several days this past week

Hasan and I became friends in in May 2010, after I commented on a post that he wrote about Botticelli on his Three Pipe Problem blog. We became online blogging friends since that point, which was easy since we had similar interests in Renaissance and Baroque art. I have been going through our emails and correspondences this past week. With all of the tweets, emails, and blog comments combined, we communicated hundreds of times. And I know that I am just one among dozens and dozens of people that Hasan met online, particularly in the small online art history community. He crafted and made sure to maintain good friendships with art historians and those interested in art all over the globe.

Although we didn't share a lot of personal information about ourselves, we did get to know each other rather well and could perceive a lot about each other's character. I remember offering some support and condolences when his dad passed away a few years ago, and I discussed what it was like when my mom passed away. Most of the time, though, we talked about art and art history. We also shared an interest in Renaissance and Baroque music and sometimes would talk about the soprano Emma Kirkby (see Hasan's post on Kirkby HERE). He once sent me this picture, saying that it was one of his most prized possessions:


Although I wrote a tribute to Hasan on my art history blog, I wanted to have a little bit more of a personal tribute here. I also wanted to remember a lot of the ways that we interacted with each other, especially through our blogs.

MY CONTRIBUTIONS ON HASAN'S 3PP BLOG

• An interview with me (September 10, 2010)
• "Lavinia Fontana and the Female Self-Portrait" (March 18, 2011)
• "Exploring a New Caravaggio Attribution" (August 23, 2011)
• "Why Art History? Bernini's David" (February 13, 2013)

"BLOG BACK" POSTS (TOPICS IN WHICH WE INSPIRED EACH OTHER)

• Hasan's posts "Misrepresenting Botticelli for the Modern Era" (May 28, 2010) and "An Update on Botticelli's Venus and Mars" (June 10, 2010) inspired y post "Hallucinogenic Plant or Exploding Cucumber?" (June 14, 2010)
• Back-and-forth discussion on Hasan's post "Unraveling Giorgione's Tempest" (July 28, 2010) inspired my post "Giorgione's Gypsy" (August 5, 2010). The discussion between Hasan and Frank (Dr. F) was the beginning of their friendship, as well as my own friendship with Frank.
• My post "Handel as Art Collector" (September 2, 2010) inspired Hasan's post "Introducing Emma Kirkby" (September 5, 2010)
• My post "Boy Bitten by a Lizard: Posner vs. Gilbert" (September 20, 2010) inspired Hasan's post "Revisiting Caravaggio's 'Boy Bitten by a Lizard'" (September 22, 2010).
• An interview of Alexandra Korey that was hosted on Hasan's blog (October 26, 2010) inspired my post "Art History Bloggers as Les Indépendents" (November 2, 2010).
• Hasan's post "Giorgione, Carpaccio, and the Siege of Padua" (later reposted January 9, 2011) inspired my post "Durer's 'Virgin Among a Multitude of Animals" (December 7, 2011).
• My post "Titian, Mulvey and Lacan" (February 25, 2011) inspired Hasan's post "Titian: Mirrors, Courtesans, and the Queen of Cyprus" (March 1, 2011)
• Hasan developed a relationship with a dealer at Inbooks publications, and subsequently got review copies of new books for me and other art history bloggers to review. He even set up a system where bloggers could request books to review through his site. My review of Riegl's The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome (June 28, 2011) was due to Hasan's handiwork.
• My review of Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome (September 17, 2011) was also from Inbooks, due to Hasan's connection with them.
• My post "The Sting of Love" (February 13, 2012) was inspired by conversations that Hasan and I had on Twitter. We had several twitter and email discussions about Cupid depicted with beehives and/or dolphins. Even when I was in museums, I remember taking pictures of beehives or dolphins to show to Hasan.
• My post "Christian and Islamic Art: Flesh vs. Word" (March 23, 2013) inspired Hasan's post "Piero della Francesca's Symbolic Egg" (March 29, 2013).

GIFTS FROM HASAN
Hasan was a very kind and thoughtful person. Over the course of our friendship, we mailed a few things to each other. More often than not, Hasan was the one who had something to mail to me. I do remember shipping one or two things to him in Australia, including some rare volumes on Raphael by Shearman that he had purchased online from an American dealer. I want to remember the things that he sent to me. Some of these books and movies I still haven't read or watched in entirety:

• A hardbound copy of Alexander Graham-Dixon's Caravaggio (which I won in a giveaway hosted by Hasan in the fall of 2010, based on a limerick that I wrote): 
• There was a young ten'bristic wizard
  Who painted a boy with a lizard
  These paintings sit prett'ly
  In London and Italy
  Yet always give shock to one's gizzard
• A copy of How to Mellify a Corpse by Vicky Leon (a writer with whom Hasan became friends)
• A bookmark with my moniker "M" (the imagery is inspired by medieval and Renaissance manuscript decoration) which Hasan found for me when he was in Florence
• A copy of Clovis Whitfield's Caravaggio, which Hasan mailed to thank me for shipping the Shearman volumes to him
• Burned copies of the Fame or Fortune series
• A burned copy of the Artemisia Gentileschi 1997 film
• My review copies of Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome and The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome were due to Hasan's contact with Inbooks.

 Like the photo at the top of this post, Hasan sent me a few other funny photos, including these two that he made as a joke around the time that I traveled to Texas to see the Caravaggio and His Followers exhibition:



It's really strange to realize that I won't see tweets, emails, or posts from Hasan anymore. The day that Hasan died, I told J that blogging would not be as fun without Hasan around. In many respects, Hasan held the art history community together. Our friend Frank described Hasan as "the sun that our fledgling blogging community revolved about." Tributes to Hasan have been pouring in online:


































http://storiedellarte.com/2013/11/dear-hasan-sorry-for-the-delay.html

When I met other art history bloggers in New York earlier this year (see photo of me with Ben, Frank and Sedef), we all agreed that Hasan had brought us all together. All four of us lamented that he was not able to come to the CAA conference, especially since Ben and I had written letters of recommendations for Hasan to get a travel grant. Even though Hasan is no longer with us in the online community, we still have each other. And in truth, Hasan is still living in our hearts and memory. I really appreciated that Ben wrote a tweet directed to Hasan's account last night, mentioning a conference talk on da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi" which Hasan would have liked. All of us can (and will) still think of him as we continue to discuss art history online.

Sam loves to decorate for the holidays, which is a trait that I think he inherited from J's mom. This morning we pulled out our small box of Halloween decorations, and Sam had most of them up and arranged within about five minutes. You'll notice that they are all concentrated 1) at Sam's about eye level and 2) at one of his favorite areas of the house, the entertainment center. I look forward to watching television with a smiling jack-o'-lantern bag blocking my view.

We have spent a nice day at home on in this brisk autumn weather, only to go outside to mow the lawn. It's so relieving for me to get caught up on all of the projects, grading, and household tasks that accumulate over the weeks. J cooked a lovely dinner and the boys cleaned the house while I graded papers. Right now J is giving Sam a haircut. I feel like we are on top of things and ready for the next week. I really need to remind myself to stay home on the weekends more often.

Sam and I just had this conversation about the little girl who lives across the street. She and Sam are in the same class at school. Today she made a love note for Sam, which he opened once he came home. After he pulled the card out of the envelope, we had the following conversation:

Sam (in a tone of disbelief): Mom...I know it sounds crazy, but L and I are best friends and we're in love!

Me: Oh, really? You're in love?

Sam: Yep. Isn't that crazy?

Me: What do you love about L?

Sam: I don't know.

Wedding bells aren't going to peal anytime soon, but Sam did tell me that he and L want to get a dog together when they are grown-ups. That's a commitment, to say the least! L is a very cute and bright girl. I'm tickled that the card she made for Sam has the phrase "labor of love" (which her mom said she got off of a television show). Ha ha!

I am really enjoying singing in the university choir this quarter, especially since we are preparing for our Christmas concert! Our conductor is really great. She is very organized and has great methods for keeping the choir members on task and prepared to sing. We hardly have any "note plunking" during choir at all. Choir members are required to come to rehearsals already familiar with their singing parts, so we spend our time in rehearsal working on phrasing and dynamics. Our conductor also has a background in vocal pedagogy, so she spends about 20-30 minutes doing various vocal exercises with the choir at the beginning of each rehearsal. She's quite a character, too, so it's fun to work with her.

I already feel like my voice is getting into better shape. I'm glad to learn new vocal exercises and methods from this conductor; I felt like my private vocal lessons as an undergraduate were rather unvaried for several years, since all of my graduate-student teachers were trained in the same BYU vocal method. Some of the suggestions that were given to me never worked, even though they were taught to me over and over for several years. Hopefully these new exercises and tips will help me to work out some of the trouble spots with my voice.

Here are some audio clips of the pieces that we are rehearsing right now:


"Adam Lay YBounden" by Boris Ord (.PDF of sheet music available online)


"In the Bleak Midwinter" by Harold E. Darke (.PDF of sheet music available online)


"Salvation is Created" by Pavel Tschesnokoff (.PDF of sheet music available online)

"Magnificat" by Donald Kendrick (listen and see sheet music online)

"Tyrle, Tyrlow, Tyrle, Tyrlow (So Merrily the Shepherds Began to Blow)" by Healey Willan (You can listen to a preview of this song online)

I keep thinking of my friend ixoj when I am at rehearsal almost every day. I miss singing with her in choirs, and I know that she would love to sing the music that we are singing. Plus, we are also singing the "Hodie" chant from Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols, which specifically makes me miss singing with ixoj in the Christmas Chorus with Martha Sargeant.

Once,
I sat in a theater
Waiting for the lights to dim
With my little blonde-haired brother – the one
Who always called me “Pardner.”

“Jango Fett,” he corrected,
his little eyes rolling,
when I said “Boba” by mistake.

Mom instructed me to take off his glasses
During the scary parts.
I covered his eyes­, but years later
He confessed that he peeked through.

Now,
I sit on my couch
With a little blonde-haired boy
Watching the same film.
He always calls me “Mom.”

I skip through the scary parts for him,
Without being asked.

This story is familiar and different
Each time around.
The roles of the characters change
With each episode.

My little boy
And his now-grown uncle,
Duel with their new and once-new light sabers.

This is not just my cycle to continue,
But theirs.

I disabled my Facebook account last night, and I immediately felt this overwhelming sense of relief. I feel like Christian in A Pilgrim's Progress who was able to get rid of his large burden. No more do I have to check for notifications! No more will I pull up Facebook if I feel even a hint of boredom! Instead, I'm going to try and embrace the bored moments to give my brain some time to relax.

I have struggled with maintaining my Facebook account for several months, largely because I felt like I was wasting too much time on there. Earlier this year, I went through and limited my number of friends to my closest friends from high school, closest friends from college, local friends, and my family members. In other words, I limited Facebook to the people with whom I regularly communicate. I wanted to do this so that I could limit the amount of content in my news feed, too. If I had less friends, then I would have less content to see. Although this helped me limit some time that I spent on Facebook, I still felt like it wasn't enough. I deleted the Facebook app from my phone about two months ago, but I still found myself often checking Facebook via my phone's internet browser.

So, I'm just going to be done. There are a lot of other things that I want to do with my time, and I'm increasingly disenchanted with the experiences that I have had on Facebook. Although I enjoy having brief updates from friends and seeing photos of my friends and family, I feel like those rewarding posts usually are about one in twenty or thirty of the posts and links that come into my feed. So, if I check Facebook multiple times a day and only have a few friends, then I rarely have something worthwhile to see or read. Instead, I feel like a good portion of my time has gone down the drain.

One of the things that helped me to push my decision to get off of Facebook was reading the book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. Carr discusses how our brains physically adapt to the fast paced, snippety bits of information that is provided by the web, social media, and search engines. The neurons literally change our brains, which affects our different types of memory and our brain functions. As a result of using the internet, over time our brains can lose the ability to concentrate for long periods of time and deeply think.

I have noticed that my attention span has changed in the past several years due to my internet usage, and I don't like it. If I ever am involved in something difficult or boring when on my computer, I often jump over to Facebook or another website for a quick distraction. But these distractions add up in terms of time, and I feel like I'm less productive overall. Although I realize that the internet will continue to have an important role in my life (after all, I am writing on a blog right now!), I do think that I need to take more control over the time that I spend online. I want to be more of a deep, meditative thinker, not a wired and distracted person.

Hopefully this change will help me to enjoy life a bit more. I'd rather live my life, then spend time observing the lives of others without genuinely and meaningfully interacting with them. I'd rather write more letters, write more emails, and make more phone calls to those people. Although I may get on Facebook again in the future, I think this is a welcome break.

I have been swimming in a deluge of house projects over the past few weeks. This sudden push to complete house projects largely was due to two things: 1) the kinda-sorta finding of chairs to complete our dining set (see below) and 2) more free time since Sam started kindergarten. I wanted to get all of these projects done before school started, too.

We haven't bought any furniture for our house for over a year, even though we would have liked a few things. J said that he didn't want to get anything else for the house until we solved the dining room chair issue. So, we have been saving money for other furniture projects while I hunted for chairs online, insisting that we could find readymade chairs at a reasonable price somewhere (so we wouldn't have to pay through-the-nose to get the last chairs custom made). And, after searching for a year, I miraculously found a fourth chair at a consignment store in New York state that was willing to ship the chair to me. That completed our set (with two local chairs, one received through a store in North Carolina, and the fourth from New York state). We wanted to get two more chairs for the ends of the table, and I found some similar chairs (made by Blosser) on Craiglist in North Carolina. I had the chairs shipped, only to realize that I had bought pub-style chairs instead of regular chairs. Argh! So, the saga still continues a bit, but things are finished enough for J to feel okay about working on other furniture and house projects. We may have the legs of these high chairs cut, to help accommodate someone sitting at our table. But if you look at the set of chairs at the table, the set looks pretty good:


The Blosser chairs will need to be refinished with a darker color, too. You can see the difference between the chairs when they are side by side:


The other really big project was spreading gravel on our driveway. (I wrote a little bit about the early stages of this project HERE.) We got a little too much gravel, but luckily our next door neighbor was able to use most of the extra gravel. We also were able to spread some of the gravel on our walkway, which was pretty much nonexistent before. I'm so thrilled too walk out of the house and see gravel instead of dirt and weeds.



I've also had the chance to paint, find furniture, find lamps, and work in the garden lately. Here's a smattering of images:










I feel like the house has really come together over the past few months (although there are more projects I could name - don't look too closely at that shed in the background of the last two pictures!). Now I feel like I can move on into the fall season and upcoming school year, since I have been able to make visible improvements in the house during my summer break. I really love this house and enjoy making it a beautiful space that fits J's distinct taste and my distinct taste. It's really fulfilling and rewarding for me to work toward something that I hope to enjoy for many years to come.

Sam brought home his "Friday Folder" for me this afternoon. He's thrilled that sometimes I get "homework" from his teacher to complete over the weekend. The folder contained student profile page and a list of questions about Sam. I really enjoyed thinking about each question in relation to my little boy, so I thought I'd post my short responses here:

Has previous schooling been a positive experience for your child? Why or why not?
Yes. Sam loves structure and routine. He is very particular about order and structure, so the routine of preschool has been good for him. He also loves to learn.

What are your child's special strengths?
Sam is very observant and curious. He has a very active imagination and is very creative when he pretends. He already loves to read and has great comprehension and retention of complex stories.

What, if any, limitations will he/she have to overcome?
Sam doesn't have specific limitations, but he does tend to give up on activities or projects that prove difficult. At present he tends to shy away from activities that require refined motor skills (like writing and drawing).

Share with me what makes your son/daughter special.
Sam is very loving and likes to wholeheartedly attach himself to people/objects that he cares about. Although he is a cautious person by nature, he easily can love and embrace such people and things after he has had time to be properly introduced.

What does your child enjoy doing at home?
Sam likes to read, play with figurines and pretend play. He likes to dress up in superhero costumes. He also likes looking at cities and landmarks on Google Earth with the help of his dad!

Since I read Unsinkable: A Memoir by Debbie Reynolds earlier this year, I have wanted to rewatch "Singin' in the Rain." I waited several months to get a copy from the library, but I finally had the chance to see the movie again a few night ago. It was a good movie to watch, because it has been raining a lot this week. My friend Rachael came over to watch it with me. She pulled up the trivia section about the film on IMDB, and I pulled out my copy of Unsinkable to reference during the movie. We chatted and spouted random facts during the whole show, which was fun. Here are some interesting things about this film:

• Debbie Reynolds was nineteen when she was cast for this role. Gene Kelly had just turned forty. Kelly was upset that Reynolds, a "nobody," was given this part to play against himself, a famous actor.
• Reynolds was not a formal dancer when she was given this role. She wrote that she "had three months to learn what Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor had been doing for years" (Unsinkable, p. 205). She was dancing for eight hours a day and suffered from exhaustion. Once, in a moment of frustration, Debbie crumpled under a rehearsal piano and cried. Fred Astaire saw her crying and gave her encouragement. He told her, "You're not going to die. That's what it's like to learn to dance. If you're not sweating, you're not doing it right" (Unsinkable, p. 206).
• Reynolds remarked that making this movie and childbirth are the two hardest things that she's had to do in life.
• I think it is really ironic that Debbie Reynolds' voice was dubbed over for two songs: "Would You" and "You Are My Lucky Star." Betty Noyes is the singer for these songs. This is ironic, because Reynolds character is supposed to be dubbing the voice for Lena Lamont's character. Reynolds did sing her character's other songs in the show. She wrote in Unsinkable that she "hates [her] voice in the movie," but doesn't mention anything about Noyes (p. 208).
• The famous scene with Gene Kelly was done in one take. Kelly was very ill (some report that he had a fever of 101) and the director was ready to send him home. Kelly insisted on doing the number (which had been set up with rudimentary blocking). He ad-libbed and improvised during the scene, but it was accepted and included as the famous scene in the film. This information is most impressive to me - what a clear example of Kelly's talent and acting abilities!

After painting the wrong color of paint on a cabinet this morning, I decided that it is a good idea to have a master list of the colors of paint in our house. This is the second time that I have mixed up paint samples when touching up something in the downstairs bathroom. Hopefully, with this list, I won't make this mistake again.

Interior:

• Basement: Valspar, Blanched Thyme, Signature, Interior Semigloss, Base B (Lowe's) 
• Laundry room: Valspar, Kitchen & Bath, Ultra Int, BsA-391672109-5, 111-1Y27.5, 203-2.5 (Lowe's)
• White trim throughout house: Glidden, Swan White, Interior Satin (Home Depot)
• Main level: Restoration Hardware, Silver Sage, Subtle Velvet finish (Restoration Hardware). Update: Silver Sage is discontinued, but I found a custom color match:

• Downstairs bathroom: Behr, Martha Stewart Living?, Bone, Ultra Flat, Matte (Home Depot) 
• Upstairs hallway and stairwell: Valspar, Salisbury, Interior Eggshell (Lowe's)
• Sam's Room: I seem to remember that there was a leftover Disney paint can when we moved here.
• Office: I think it is Valspar, Martinique Dawn, Interior Flat Enamel (half of a gallon left in basement by previous owners).
• Upstairs bathroom: Restoration Hardware, Silver Sage, Subtle Velvet finish (Restoration Hardware)
• Master bedroom: Restoration Hardware, Sea Green, Subtle Velvet finish (Restoration Hardware)
• Master bedroom closet: Glidden, Egg shell, Low L____ (missing), Martha Stewart Living 122, Milk Pail
• Studio (updated 2024): 6222 Riverway, Eggshell finish, (Sherwin Williams)

Outside:

• Front Door: Olympic, Apple-a-Day, Premium Exterior Latex, Semi-Gloss (Lowe's)
• Porch floor: Behr, Porch & Patio, Lus__Door (word obscured), DP-358, Coffee (Home Depot)
• Side porch railing and floor: Behr, solid color wood stain, SC-103, Coffee (Home Depot)
• Fence: Behr, Weather Proofing Wood Stain, solid color, DP-358, Coffee

Mystery/unwanted/unknown paints in basement:

• Behr, Interior flat enamel, W-F 700, Moon Rise (Home Depot) Left over from previous owners. Could this be the white paint used for the office closet?
• Valspar, Snow Cap, Signature Sample (Lowe's). I don't know why we originally got this, but J did use this color for the Rouen Cathedral print frames.
• Auditions, Willow Wind, Satin (Lowe's). Was this a sample intended for the upstairs office?
• Olympic, C36-4, Horizon Glow (Lowe's). Left over from determining good basement color.
• Unknown what pink paint was used in office closet

I just dropped off Sam at his first day of kindergarten. I didn't get emotional, although I verged on a little bit of emotion when it appeared for a second that I wouldn't be able to park and bring him into the school myself. I was able to walk him inside though, and get him settled in his classroom. He was so happy to go, and I was happy too. I think we are both ready for this change and structure. Although I will miss having a little buddy with me during the day, I think this change is for the best.

When I was probably a sophomore or junior in college, I came up with a very specific way of taking notes in class. I think that the whole system started because at one point I was running low on sheets of paper. Then, over time, it just became the way that I took notes in every college class. Really, I was kind of proud of my system. I thought it was unique and environmentally-friendly. I liked that the notes appeared very personal, too; the system was specific to me and couldn't be wholly understood by others without a bit of explanation.

First, I would try to write as much information on the slide lists or handouts that were given to me in class. I would try to write as small as possible, so I could fit a lot of information between the double-spaced slide lists. Then, if I ran out of room next to a certain work of art or concept, I would start to write more information on a lined sheet of paper. However, I would purposefully write in the margins and not leave any blank spaces on the lined paper; I would only separate ideas by drawing two vertical lines (see image). In essence, each page of my notes is filled completely with text and ink.

I would always dedicate a different color ink to each class day, so that I could easily match up the notes on the slide lists and the accompanying lined paper. (I also thought it was fun to see such colorful pages of notes in my binder.) At the time, this whole system seemed to work. After all, I kept it up for a few years. Perhaps I could follow things well since I was in the throes of the class and easily remembered where things were located. But now, as I am trying to transcribe my handwritten art history notes from years ago into digital format, I've found this whole system to be a ridiculous mess! What was I thinking?!?

While transcribing I have felt like I'm relearning some content and retaking these classes all over (which on a fundamental level is fun), but in a garbled and disorganized way. I feel like I'm listening to music that is being played backwards. If only I could go back in time and tell my college-age self that this system was silly. I would also love to have given my college-age self either a ream of paper, or better yet, a laptop for notes.

I love sleep. I love sleep way more than the average person, I think. But one of the few things that can get me out of bed - even get me out of bed when it is inordinately early - is the opportunity to finish a project. Like the time that I got out of bed at four in the morning to paint the trim in our upstairs bathroom. Or the time that I got up at five in the morning so I could stain the fence for a few hours before going to work.

And now, once again, it is five in the morning. I've been wide awake for an hour already, because my body feels compelled to spread the 20 cubic yards (enough to cover 3000+ square feet) of gravel that we had dumped in our driveway yesterday afternoon. I started to spread some of it yesterday afternoon, but I've barely made a dent in the piles. I'm anxious to continue on the project this morning, but it is still dark outside.


As Sam and I worked in the driveway yesterday afternoon, Sam wanted to chat about different topics to help keep him from being bored. His mild complaints of boredom made me think about how I reacted to work as a child. When I was a kid, especially when I was about nine and ten, I was very much interested in integrating work and play. Most of my playtime and pretending involved some type of work: starting up a restaurant with V called "Surprise Supreme," setting up a business called "[M] and Company" (in which I coerced my siblings A and C to work for me), organizing a ballet class for C and her neighbor friends, and building a ramshackle clubhouse out of wood scraps from our garage.

I would often ensure that these work situations were somehow unnecessarily intense, too. When I wanted to work, I would generate these romanticized situations in which I would need to desperately work. When I organized the ballet class for C and her friends, I rushed to the library to check out an oversized book on ballet; I needed to hurriedly research dance moves before "class" (because I really didn't know anything about ballet). When I built the ramshackle clubhouse, I worked all day long so I could finish the project in a single day. And, back when I was this age, my favorite thing to pretend at the time was that I lived in a forest and I desperately needed to gather food so I wouldn't starve. I would huddle in this little wooded area behind our garage, with my freshly-gathered stash of "edible" sticks and grass, pretending like I could carry on and survive in the forest for another day.

There was almost always some sense of urgency, desperation, or sacrifice in these play scenarios that I created as a child, and I realized yesterday that I haven't changed much. In order to save myself from boredom during this last month of summer, I've obsessively thrown myself into different house projects. Just this week I decided that we needed to clear out the weeds in the driveway. I had the idea that we could get the driveway paved, but after learning that option was too expensive after receiving a few bids, I decided to have these huge mounds of gravel delivered. But, as so often happens, I created a rather narrow window of time to finish this project. I needed to clear the driveway of weeds before the dump truck arrived, which meant that I needed to dedicate hours and hours each day to pulling weeds out of our driveway. And, as if the cosmos cheekily wanted to help me create an especially desperate and urgent situation, it has been raining quite a bit this week. So, I've been clearing out weeds in the rain, as our driveway (and the mossy carpet that has been growing in our driveway) has become muddy and sodden.


On Thursday, after an unusually heavy downpour of rain, J and I went into the driveway in a last-ditch effort to pull up weeds before the truck came the next morning. As we worked in the weeds and mud, kneeling down and practically crawling around to pick up globs of mossy mud and weeds, J said that he felt very much like the two figures in the "Constitutional Peasants" sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here!" J called to me across the driveway while speaking in a high voice with a British accent. We both laughed, especially since we were creating piles of large piles of muddy weeds, similar to how the peasants build a big pile of mud while chatting with King Arthur. J even was pulling our compost bin around the driveway, similar to Dennis pulling his cart. I keep chuckling about the similarities between us and that sketch. What a desperate, silly situation I created! If anything, my nine-year-old self would have relished the dramatic, sacrificial scenario in which I had placed myself, down to the last raindrop.

It is just beginning to get light outside. I'm going to go outside and shovel gravel for a few hours before the boys wake up.

Update: I didn't end up shoveling gravel in the early morning, after all. My neighbor's bedroom had an open window right next to our driveway, and I thought it would be cruel to be working so loudly in the morning. Luckily, I did end up falling back asleep.