Thursday, March 8, 2007

A Day in The Life

The Road to Town, 2007, Oil on Panel, 12x16


5:55am The alarm goes off, I get up out of bed, shower, feed the pets, work on my post, and answer a few quick emails.

7am Get the kids up.

7:12am Publish my post to the blog.

7:30am Herd the kids out to the bus stop and do my morning hike over the 10 foot snowdrift in order to gather eggs, throw some scratch down and give the chickens fresh water.

9:01am Chris Rywalt posts a comment, theorizing why a link in my post doesn't work. We spend the morning going back and forth, with Chris valiantly trying to explain HTML, line breaks and other such nonsense to me. I am left feeling like an ancient relic of the not so distant past when the word computer meant nothing to me but a machine that screws up my bank account.

8:30-Noon I struggle with painting, despite being really excited about the pieces that I have ready to work on. I drop a loaded paintbrush onto the floor and finally have to spend 20 minutes cleaning out my jars of turpenoid because all three are so bad that when I rinse my brushes I am rinsing them in red sludge. I don't really make any progress on the paintings and what little I do make is less than exciting.

10:10am I receive a rejection from a gallery, by email, in response to the submission (also by email) of the link to my website. I knew it was a long shot that they would be interested but it still stings just a little bit. It reads as follows:

Thank you for your submission of images of your work for my consideration. We have a small stable of artists in the gallery and I am not interested in adding your work to that group. I very much appreciate your sending me your work and wish you all the best with your career.

Great.

12:20pm The kids get home and my studio time is essentially over. Probably a good thing anyway.

12:55pm I take our youngest daughter and go to the grocery store where I spend $275. Cripes. And my daughter spends $3 getting tiny plastic dogs from those machines that sell stupid junk that I always end up stepping on in the middle of the night on the way to the bathroom.

3:22pm I get an email from a blogger friend (who shall remain nameless, but you know who you are) who was concerned that he had overstepped his bounds. He had suggested me and my work to the gallery director of a gallery I have been eying for awhile. And who loved my work, by the way and so a new opportunity falls into my lap, which totally makes up for the earlier rejection.

3:42pm I email my blogger friend and assure him that I am not upset and that in fact, I could possibly be in love with him.

3:43pm until 7:30pm A flurry of kid related activities and small dramas plus laundry, baking (chocolate chip cookies, which were excellent) and a homemade pizza that the dog wouldn't even look at. I supervise while my son makes Eggplant Parmigiana for a school project, which smells really good in comparison to the cereal we all end up eating for dinner.

7:30pm I clean up the kitchen. And my dear son washes up the pans that he used while cooking, while I congratulate myself for training him so well.

8pm My favorite TV show Jericho starts. This episode is kind of stupid and I think that even I could have moved the truck off of Jake's leg so he could get out and not have to nearly die from hypothermia because of the approaching winter storm, after the marauders ran them off the road and then stole all of their supplies while Stanley, Mimi and Jake were on their way to go hunting to find food for the town. However, this plot device did allow for Jake to tell his father about the young girl he killed while he was in Iraq, and his father understood about war and so everything turned out peachy keen, except well, the USA is still nuked, and winter is coming and there is no food or oil. But I digress.

9pm Criminal Minds is a repeat so I watch the news, knit and do a bit of reading for the rest of the evening.

11:15ish Lights out and sleep until the whole thing starts all over.

13 comments:

Deb Lacativa said...

Can I have the address of the store where you get your Internet Friends?

dl

Tracy Helgeson said...

Ha! Like I am just going to hand over that kind of info! :)

Making A Mark said...

Great post!

One day yo're going to have to take the camera with you on the way to the 10 foot snow drift.

have I mentioned we have daffodils and blossom over here?

Anonymous said...

...and our irises are coming up and the temp is a beautiful sunny 72!!!!

Tracy Helgeson said...

Thanks, Katherine. If I take a picture you'll see that I have exaggerated a bit. The snowbank is about 5 feet but in my defense there is no path (the anal retentive snowplows keep piling up more snow) and I have to break a fresh one each day. So it seems like 10 feet:) Five up and five down the other side!

Mom, when it's July, I will make sure to let you know about our 70-80 degree days when you start telling me about how hot it is there. What is it - 150 by 10 am?:)

meno said...

Your description of Jericho is a hoot. I've never seen it, and now i don't have to.

I want to take the colors in that picture and dab them behind my ears. Lovely.

Tracy Helgeson said...

But then you'd miss out on all of the illicit love affairs going on, which I didn't even get into. Lotta sex during the end of the world!

The blue/green in the sky is my favorite color right now and I have been obsessively using it in almost every painting lately.

Susan Constanse said...

Me, I'm enamoured of that wonderful patch of cobalt blue. Beautiful painting.

Every time I step out into the slushy-mucky streets here in the 'burgh, I grit my teeth and think "You could have ten foot snow drifts"

It keeps it in perspective--

Tracy Helgeson said...

Thanks Susan.

I remember that city muck and I am not so sure that it isn't as bad as what we have here. It's still kind of white and fluffy here at least:)

tlwest said...

Ok so am I the only one that noticed that it only took 1/2 hour to get kids up feed them get them dressed and out the door to a bustop????????? I think you might be a God!

Tracy Helgeson said...

Ha! The key is, besides many years of training by ME, is that they mostly do everything themselves and I just keep them on track. I used to give them 45 minutes, but then they'd be standing around by about 7:20 and then invariably a fight or something would break out.

It's usually a pretty hectic 1/2 hour but they have never missed the bus so it works.

Steven LaRose said...

If I was a better illustrator, I would try and buy the rights from you for that script.

Tracy Helgeson said...

Really? Well, I guess it IS one of the more exciting days for me, all things considered.

Woo-hoo.