Do you spend your days dodging cloudbursts of unbearable emotions?
I hope not because...well, because I like you.
Nancy Robinson, 2017, Self-portrait with the Bluebird of Happiness, oil on canvas, 24" x 18"
Never Trust Anyone Over 30
I had a wonderful birthday this year, filled with good food, yummy art projects, lovely men and happy sunshine.
Around 10 p.m. on the night of my birthday, I sat at my project desk making a gratitude list. I had so many things to be thankful for, I filled page after page.
Suddenly, my phone rang.
The voice on the phone sounded tired but resolute. "Hi. I'm downstairs. I have something to give you, to celebrate your birthday."
I smote my brow. "But you're in graduate school. You're too broke and busy to be doing this!"
"I'm never too broke and busy to celebrate my friends' birthdays."
I shrugged. "Well then, sure, I'll buzz you in."
A few minutes later, my friend dragged into my place and set a bottle of wine on the counter. "You like chardonnay, right?"
"Sure," I said.
He rummaged in my silverware drawer for a corkscrew. "I know it's probably too late for wine, but I wanted to toast you on your birthday."
He uncorked the bottle as I mused silently that I'd never witnessed such murky chardonnay.
"Oh no." My friend held the bottle to his nose and sniffed. "This isn't chardonnay. It's catnip ale."
"Here. Let me smell it." I took a whiff of the pea-green liquid. "Omigod, it's so strong."
He hastily recorked the bottle. "I think it's gone bad. I made it a couple of years ago and stuck it in my wine cellar. I didn't mean to bring it...I was in such a hurry this morning, I grabbed the wrong bottle."
I laughed. "Don't worry, I think I have something milder we can toast my birthday with: I just bought a new bottle of rubbing alcohol."
His lower lip curled into a pout. "It's not funny. I wanted your birthday gift to be perfect."
"It is perfect," I said, and I meant it. "It's a much better story than if you arrived with a nice bottle of wine. I can always buy my own bottle of nice wine, but a good story is priceless."
My friend looked at me gloomily. "I suppose you're going to make this into a blog post."
"Of course not," I said.
YOU HAVEN'T GOTTEN SMALLER...THE SNOWSTORM HAS GOTTEN BIGGER.
Are you depressed by today's unseasonal blizzard? Do you need an inspirational story to perk you up? If your answer is yes, read about how Nancy Robinson cheered up a friend who was caught in the grip of uncontrollable natural events:
KNOCK KNOCK
(Reprinted from October 8, 2015)
I ran into a writer friend of mine at Trader Joe's the other day. My friend is very nice but struggles with melancholia, so I like to try to cheer him up.
"How wonderful to see you!" I said. "Did you have a fun summer?"
"No,"he said. "I spent the summer defending my house from woodpeckers."
"Woodpeckers are so cute!" I said.
"They're destructive," he said. "They poke giant holes in my siding and make so much noise I can barely concentrate on my writing."
"You sound depressed," I said.
"I am," he said.
"There must be some way to make this fun," I said. "Since birds are technically dinosaurs, you should tell people you spent your summer defending your house from dinosaurs."
"You sure are full of bright ideas this morning," he said.
"Seriously," I said. "You should take a picture of yourself dressed like a caveman and then post it on your Facebook page. It will get you lots of attention and help your writing career."
"I don't do Facebook," he said.
"Why not?" I said. "Facebook is a valuable career-building tool for a writer like you."
"I don't have time for Facebook," he said."I'm too busy defending my house from woodpeckers."
"Dinosaurs," I said. "You're defending your house from dinosaurs."
"Okay, dinosaurs," he said.
"Now, didn't I just make you feel like your life is a TEENY bit more fun?" I said.
A smile played across his lips. "Maybe."
"See? I'm like a woodpecker poking holes in the siding of your depression," I said.
"I guess that would be one way of looking at it," he said.
Nancy Robinson, detail from The Human Condition, oil on canvas and mixed media
Oral Hygiene
I'm a strong believer in good oral hygiene and make regular visits to the dentist. My dentist is very nice, and one of the receptionists at the dental office gets all starry-eyed at the sight of me because she thinks I'm a famous artist... which of course I am!
Although most of my visits to the dentist are quite pleasant, in a practical sort of way, last November I had to have a routine procedure done which filled me with what turned out to be misplaced approbation. Consequently, I was in a rotten mood as I hopped off the train and headed down the street to my appointment. To make matters worse, my parka-covered head got pelted with icy rain at such intense volume, moisture dripped off my faux-wolf-fur hood and into my face, thus spoiling my age-defiant makeup. I bent forward, thrust my hands into my pockets, and kept my eyes on the pavement as I shuffled along.
The street leading to my dentist's office is busy, urban, and lined with edgy entrepreneurs. Usually I love the camaraderie, since I too have been an entrepreneur on that street (selling my paintings, obviously), but my thoughts that day were tinged with dread of mortality: I desired to talk to no one.
Suddenly a man's voice called out, "Oh Miss! Excuse me, Miss?"
I ignored him, trying my best to look like an ancient crone from a fairy tale, the sort of person who boils dragon toenails in pond slime and feeds the broth to her pet hydra.
He walked beside me."Excuse me? Miss?"
I waved him away without looking at him.
He persisted."Why are you waving me away?"
I raised my eyes heavenward and screamed at the top of my lungs, "I don't feel like talking right now!" Startled by my own behavior, I watched my words echoing around the tops of the buildings.
"Sorry to bother you." The man's apology plopped onto the pavement like a scoop of ice cream which had fallen out of a small child's cone. "It's just that..."
I sternly looked him straight in the face, accidentally noticing he was young and meltingly handsome. "It's just that what?"
"It's just that you dropped your mitten." He held up a bright pink cocoon of knitted wool.
"That's not my mitten," I said, softening my voice.
"Oh, sorry. I thought it was yours because it matches your scarf."
"That's okay." I smiled at him.
He smiled back.
"Have a nice day," I said.
As I walked away, I noticed the air was suddenly infused with a beautiful, rose-colored light...which happened to be the same exact hue as somebody's lost mitten.
Whoops.
I have a lot of friends. I speak to some of them every day. Others are like distant planets; we only collide occasionally.
The one thing I can say about all my friends is: they’re very good listeners. I feel lucky that way.
Late last autumn, one of my gardener friends appeared on my doorstep carrying a potted smidgen of foliage. “I brought you a marigold from my yard.”
I peered at the plant. “It doesn’t look like a marigold.”
“Critters ate all the flowers and most of the leaves, but it should be okay if you put it in a sunny window.”
“Why are you giving it to me? I’m not exactly a plant maven.”
“You once told me that marigolds are your favorite flowers.”
“I did?”
“Yeah.” The gardener peered at the plant. “You said they remind you of you.”
The gardener’s words shone a light through the mists of my memory. I vaguely recalled delivering an extemporaneous speech during a lawn party, something about gaudy and irreverent late-bloomers.
After the gardener departed, I placed the marigold in a sunny window next to my other two plants, a pony tail palm and a miniature evergreen tree. The palm and the evergreen are rescue plants, salvaged from my late mother’s nursing home when they’d ended their tenure as cheer-up gifts.
Although the marigold didn't die, it also didn’t grow or bloom. It just sat there for two months, looking sad and raggedy.
In the middle of January, feeling kind of sad and raggedy myself, I decided to project my feelings onto the plant and give both of us a pep talk. I strolled over to the sunny window and said to the marigold “Hey, wanta have lunch?” (Plants will talk to you if you close your ears and listen.)
"Sure," the marigold said.
I transported the plant to my kitchen island, where I’d prepared a small repast for the two of us: a solitary piece of chicken for me (I felt it would be disrespectful to eat a salad) and a pitcher of water for the marigold.
“So, what’s going on?” I said to the marigold.
While I munched on my lunch, the tragic little plant recited its tragic little tale. It turned out that the scrubby shrub felt intimidated by the lush green beauty of the other two plants.
“It's not fair to compare yourself to them,” I said. “They're hothouse plants. Hothouse plants are supposed to be beautiful: it's their job. Your job is to celebrate your wild nature."
The marigold leaned forward, listening.
"You've had the kind of life hothouse plants can only dream of. You grew up in a vibrant urban garden, while those poor things have never even been outdoors." I took a sip from the marigold's water pitcher. "You've slumbered under starry night skies and danced with woodchucks and rabbits. You’ve smooched fireflies at sunset and kissed dewdrops at dawn.” I stood up. "You're the hippest shrub in this entire loft, and everybody seems to know that except you." I smiled at the marigold. "Now... I'm going to put you back in the window, and I want to see you grow into the biggest, best marigold you can be.”
Within days, all hell broke loose. The marigold grew several inches taller and popped out so many flowers, I could almost see it blooming in front of me. I had to transplant it into a larger container, and now it’s towering over the rescue plants. If things keep up like this, I’m going to have to move to a larger apartment.
It just goes to show…everyone can use a little encouragement sometimes.
Please Don't Hate Me Because I'm Brilliant
I don’t know what you were doing on New Year’s Eve, but as for me: I was painting. Painting, painting, painting. In fact, I painted half the night…because I could.
First thing the next morning, I awoke to the sound of clothes pins ricocheting off the baseboard heating vents. I sat up in bed and said, “That does it! I’m going to hem those curtains today and start the New Year right.”
You see, when I first moved into my loft, I covered my windows with shower curtains held up by tension rods. I got immediate applause from my gentlemen callers, who are as busy and lazy as I am and always looking for clever life hacks. The only problem with the tension rods was that the damned things would suddenly plummet to the floor with a clatter at odd moments, usually in the middle of the night or when I was strolling around nude in my loft.
When I got word last year that somebody planned to build a luxury apartment building 10 feet away from my windows, I decided it was time to install proper curtains with permanent hardware. I zipped to a local thrift store and bought elegant, hygge drapes. Just looking at them made me feel calm and bored, which was exactly the mental state I was going for, since I knew I faced many months of pile driving, safety beepers, and similar organized mayhem.
It took me three hours to get the curtains installed. I measured everything carefully and managed to not fall off the ladder despite the raw, unbridled energy of my electric drill. When I finished, I climbed down the ladder and stood back to admire my work.
To my dismay, the curtain hems drooped and sagged into the aforementioned heating vents.
Since three hours is my limit for home-improvement projects, I shored up the hems with clothes pins and decided to deal with properly hemming them some other time. Which brings us full circle to New Year’s Day, when the arctic chill seeping through my window glass made the wooden clothes pins contract, lose their grip on the curtains, and succumb to the ravages of gravity.
A fretter by either nature or nurture, I’ve never figured out which, I brewed myself a cup of coffee and considered my options. As you may or may not know, I DO know how to sew, thanks to early childhood conditioning. The problem is: I hate to sew and generally avoid sewing if at all possible. Still, I was committed to hemming these curtains. I asked myself: Would it be via hem stitch? Basting stitch? Running stitch? Or possibly… an irreverent daisy stitch?
As I pondered my choices, my land phone rang. “Hello!” boomed the voice of a friend of mine. “Happy New Year! Can I come over?”
I sipped at my coffee. “No. I’m in the middle of an important project.”
My friend’s voice dropped to a sexy growl. “I’ve got Pringles…”
I wasn't sure exactly what a Pringle was, but I knew that I wanted one immediately. "How soon can you get here?”
“Twenty minutes.”
There’s nothing like a looming deadline to bring out my genius proportions. As I hung up the phone, an epiphany rocketed across my brain. I ran to my desk, seized my stapler, and stapled the curtain hems into place. It took me less than 3 minutes, and it looks kind of weird, but only if you look at the curtains up close…and who looks up close at curtains?
By the time my friend arrived, I was dressed in stylish clothing and ready to gorge on Pringles, which turned out to be a salty, tasty snack. And because one of my New Year’s resolutions is to be less of a swaggering braggart, I didn’t boast to my friend about my clever invention. I decided to keep my story to myself… and only share it with you and the rest of the internet.