Unfinished Business

Ok, here's the pix of me with Max when he realized we had to go home and that the rally was over. Yes, I look as tired as hell, but aside from that, look at X's sad little face. He wouldn't even take off the eartectors.

Sometimes he has his moments where he totally takes the easy way out and tries to use the crying to his advantage. But most of the time, he really tries to be the Big Boy and will hide by turning away or going to his room when something really upsets him, but if I notice and ask him if he's OK, he does what we all do when someone notices we're hurting and he'll burst into tears, run into my arms sucking back sobs and hiding his face in my shoulder.

Sometimes when we happen to be out with the in-laws for dinner, X may get upset and start crying (it's usually about nothing that requires overt attention), I've had to bite my tongue when his grandma tells him to stop being a cry baby. I don't want X thinking that crying is for babies. It's for whenever one is feeling sad or out-of-sorts. I don't let him cry his way into cookies, toys, etc., but I know it's really never appropriate to "embarass" a child into stopping an unwanted behavior.

Secondly, based on more popular requests, this time from Cricket, a very talented closet artist herself, here's just a sample of some of my work from a long time ago. It's an etching, which is basically a metal plate that is usually completely covered with a waxy product and then a tool is used to remove what will end up being the darkest areas of the finished product because each time you remove some of the wax, you dip it into acid which etches into the exposed metal. The whitest part is created when the plate is not exposed to any etching. Ink is then applied to the metal plate and the excess is wiped off with something like a cheese cloth. Excess ink will imbed into the etched areas so when paper is applied and pressed into the plate, it transfers the image, and voila', one etched print.

Original etchings will usually be numbered 1 of 10 or 1 of 50 or some such thing because a plate can only be used so many times before the press that is used to transfer the ink to the paper, which can apply hundreds of pounds of pressure per square inch, eventually presses down on the metal plate folding in or smoothing out the etched areas so that the later images do not appear to be as sharp or crisp as the first.

There were a few minor images with the above print, titled "A Foreman's Pedestal" by the way, but which I will not point out as I am only hoping you don't notice. One of the most impressive parts of this print and for which I am proudest is how black the black is. It is hard to achieve a deep black in etching in such a large area.

Now if you haven't fallen asleep yet with my seemingly unending spouting of art prints, I just have to share a story of one of my favorite artistic finds. My mother, who is 75, bless her heart, cleans houses to supplement her income. One of her employers passed away a couple of years ago and when the children of the employer came back home to take care of the "estate", they offered my mother the opportunity to take anything left in the house for herself. The children were all considered wealthy and had long grown away from their parents and of which the youngest was already in his late 50's, so what remained in the house was not of much interest to them. I went in the house with my mom and we went through antique linens, brick-a-brack, photos, etc. as well as a room by room review. Upstairs in the hallway on the walls were 3 small black and white landscape prints and 4 larger prints of similar subject as well as 3 colored prints. Upon closer inspection in the dark hallways, they appeared to be not photocopies, but drypoint and etched prints. What we had found were 10 original Lyman Byxbe prints, all handsigned, titled and in their original frames. He's not infamous by any means, but his prints depicting different subjects of the Rocky Mountains were popular in the early 20th century. Not an Antiques Roadshow discovery by any means, but I knew that they must have meant something to the now deceased owners and I felt sorry for the children who did not recognize or realize their significance. I only wish I knew how they came to own so many for a private collection in a town of less than 1000.

Are you still out there? I know. Blah, blah, blah. It just goes to show that I have a passion for something other than having a baby, right?