august 16th, 2021

a year. it's been a year. 

 i've disliked augusts for a long time. it's sweaty. the columbia isn't even cool anymore. school starts and kills summer. and there are NO HOLIDAYS. 

but august sucked the worst last year when bob lost his battle with depression. i prefer thinking of it that way to suicide. my darling didn't want to die, he was just sick and tired of fighting a disease. but now it's august again....and i am paralyzed. 

i know this is a grief relapse; of course it is. it's not uncommon, especially when holidays or anniversaries come up. like the anniversary of his death. it's coming, and i entered august like a rabbit staring down a semi. my sleep is fucked again; it's seven am and i can't sleep. haven't slept all night. i find myself staring into the space; it's like my brain just....shuts off. it takes enormous effort to fill an ice tray or replace a toilet paper roll. i'm not crying. i'm not sad......i'm just.....numb. i've done nothing, for days.....and i am exhausted. and yet i can't sleep. and when i do finally sleep, i have terrible dreams. there are so many things i need to do. so many things i SHOULD do. and yet i don't. i smoke pot, and i watch vids i've already seen, and i play solitaire, and eat sunflower seeds one at a time. and that's it. that's all. the most complicated food i've prepared for myself in the past week is cereal. 

i don't know how to ask for help. i've tried. it is very difficult. i sent a text to my sister last week, telling her how blue i felt and asking her to come....but she didn't get the text until later. when she did, i was called, and we arranged to go have a meal together with mom. and it was nice....for a couple of hours. it was like being in a deep hole, and getting a sudden glimpse of bright sunshine before the darkness enclosed me again. it didn't fix anything. how could it?

i'd like to "shake it off", believe me. i have stuff to do. serious stuff. i need to find a job. i need to finish my staircase. i need to sell more stuff to pay my bills. but i don't know how to do any of that when dressing myself is my greatest accomplishment of the day. 

this will pass, i know. or so i've been told. but knowing that doesn't make the here-and-now any easier to endure. it's not that i want to die. it's that i don't seem to remember how to live. 

working to stay woke

 when philando castile was murdered by police in 2017, i was outraged; not just because he followed all the rules and obeyed and was STILL murdered; not just because he had an open carry permit and yet the NRA was completely silent about his murder; but because his murderer got off scot-free. the cop "feared for his life".....feared a man with a woman in the passenger seat, a toddler in the back, and a car full of groceries. feared a man who spoke politely and reasonably, answered every question, and obeyed every instruction. and the judicial system decided his fear was justified.  i was angry, so angry; i even wrote a poem about it, wanted to set it to music, wanted everyone in the world to know his name. and then as time passed, i fell back asleep. i became so wound up with my everyday concerns, i stopped paying attention to the world around me. and then george floyd was murdered. and i woke up. again.

i felt real shame, and even a sense of responsibility for george's death--maybe if our society had taken philando castile's death seriously, george might never have died this way. so i decided i would NOT fall asleep again. i am going to be in this fight to the end. 

so in june of 2020, i went to my very first BLM protest. i looked around and saw my own frustration and anger mirrored on all these other faces. the organizers asked us all to lay on the cement for eight minutes and forty-five seconds, and as i did so, i found myself crying; thinking of george lying there, begging for his life, and crying for his mama, while derek chauvin squeezed the life out of him for everyone to see. i am crying now, remembering it. and i remember thinking, we cannot let this continue. 

the next weekend i went to another protest. and the next. and then came a week when there were no protests scheduled.....but i wasn't satisfied to take a weekend off. i did not want a weekend off--this was too important. and i did not want to fall asleep again. and then i remember greta thunberg. 

greta was one of my people--on the autism spectrum. i understood her--i understood her tenacity, her will to affect change; i shared it. so i followed her example and started my own private protest. i have hip disease and two artificial hips, so standing and walking for long periods of time is difficult for me. but you don't have to stand to hold a sign; i had taken a camp chair to the other protests. i decided i would protest from a chair. i took my chair, and my BLM signs, and i went to the busiest corner on the busiest street in my hometown; it was the site of one of the other protests i had attended. i had noticed at that time that on this particular corner, a very large sign from a neighboring hotel put a pool of shade right there on the sidewalk--the shade moved, of course, but if i moved with the shade, i could be comfortable regardless of the heat. and so i began. 

from june of 2020 right up to today, i protest twice a week on the corner of columbia center boulevard and quinault avenue. i usually go fridays and sundays--if something comes up, or the weather is bad, i defer to the next day, but those are my usual days. i sit there between four-thirty and six; rush hour, when there are the greatest number of cars on the streets. and let me tell you, it has been an education. 

the whole point of doing this, besides staying woke, is because of my childhood. i grew up in a deeply conservative area, and i remember as a kid feeling completely alone in my liberal beliefs. i want all those other kids in this deeply conservative area to SEE ME, and know that they aren't alone. 

the portland BLM protests were getting a lot of attention by july, and i found myself admiring the moms who joined in and took the front lines. i could do that--i figured it would be a lot harder for some young cop to attack an old white lady who looked like his grandma than it would be for the young folx around me. right around then i found foamboards (what i use for my signs) that had a gridwork on them, and i had an idea; i decided on my persona--grandma. i would work the grandma angle. using one of the gridwork foamboards, i created a faux cross-stitch sign, complete with flowers.....reading, "GRANDMA SAYS BLACK LIVES MATTER". i even eventually found a camp chair that is a rocker!

all of my BLM signs have at least one side that is a faux cross-stitch, telling viewers what grandma says. 

as i wrote above, it has been an education; i'd like to share a few things that i have learned. 

number one--there are a lot more of US than there are of THEM. i watch the faces of the people who drive by. the majority, of course, don't notice me--they are in their own worlds. but of the ones who do, the ones who show support outnumber the haters by a factor of at least three, if not greater. the trumpians fool us into believing there are more of them because they are so much louder, in every sense of the word, with their giant trucks and their public meltdowns....but the smiles, the waves, the thumbs up, the BLM fist, the shouts of encouragement and love....they far outnumber the haters. it's what gives me hope, and why i continue. 

two--it's scary at first, being alone and feeling vulnerable. you have to get over it. you have to be brave. you have to smile in the face of ugly people, screaming obscenities and threats. you can't let their hate inform your actions. 

three--the one word trumpians fear more than any other-- LOSER. right after the election, i made a small sign, just for the haters; it's styled like the signs wyle e. coyote used to hold up, and i keep it to my right. it says, "sore loser!" and when the haters roll by, shouting ugliness, i just point that sign at them...and they wither like a wicked witch in a rain shower. seriously. it's a beautiful thing to see.

four--it's a lot more challenging to protest in the winter. you really have to prepare; by december, i was wearing my snowmobiling gear (ski-bibs, parka, snowboots) and had found myself a heated stadium seat to take with me, to keep my damnable artificial hips warm. also, when you are holding signs over your head, the best gloves in the world won't keep your hands warm; all the blood runs out of them in that position. your best bet in winter protests are heavy mittens with hand-warmers inside. 

five--RYOBI MAKES A SPEAKER! i like to listen to music while i protest; i even chair-dance to the music. i know i look silly, but that's part of the point; i want to be the face of antifa. so many right-wingers fear the boogieman antifa they've created in their minds; i am the antithesis of a boogieman. they need to know that antifa is NOT just anarchists in ninja costumes--it's fat old white women, too, chair dancing. anyway, i was listening to my music at first through earbuds, but that interfered with any interactions with others. then one day in home depot i saw they made a blue-tooth speaker! i don't have to remember to charge it--i just grab a battery and go! it even has a usb port so i can charge my phone while i use it! i am SO taking it to the beach this summer.....

i am aware that some folx might view my protests as performative...but aren't all protests performative? i have a specific target audience i am trying to reach--the young ones. and if i can help ONE kid choose a different path from their parents, then my time and effort is worth it. 

we changed the laws, but we have learned that until we change the hearts and minds of people, it doesn't matter what the laws say. so here i am, out to change hearts and minds. wish me luck!

on intelligence

living with the shame of intelligence in rural america

i remember when i was first made ashamed of being bright.

it was in the fourth grade, when i was nine years old. my family had moved from irrigon to hermiston that summer, so we kids were in a new school, and for the first time i was a "new" student. i had been happy in my former school. i had lots of friends, and i was one of the leaders in my class; on the playground during recess, we frequently played games that i invented. everyone knew me in irrigon, and from the first grade through the third, no one thought i was strange. it was only in the fourth grade, in a new school, that i was made aware how very different i was from everyone else.

my first mistake in this new school was to make friends with two boys, both of whom were outcasts. i saw them the first week in the bushes, looking for bugs, and being interested at that time in all things insect-like, i joined them. apparently, both an interest in insects and a tolerance for boys made me unfit for the society of the rest of the female fourth-graders-- i was shunned, and called a bug-eater. the only girl in the class who sought my company, colleen, was even more outcast than myself. in retrospect, i would guess she suffered from both adhd and asperger's, but at the time, she was simply another "weirdo." colleen's clumsy attempts at friendship with me cemented my social doom.

before this age, i had no understanding of concepts such as "popularity." i had always been one of the smartest kids in my class; in my old school, this meant i was respected by my peers. in this new school, being the first kid with my hand up when the teacher asked a question got me mocked by my peers. and then came the iowa tests.

you probably remember the iowa tests-- the standardized assessment tests of basic skills that most K-12 students took every year. i can still remember them; a whole day of tests, regular schedules ignored, repeated admonishments to bring TWO number two pencils, filling in all those little ovals. most of the other students complained about them, but i didn't mind them, which was of course, regarded as further evidence of my "weirdness."

around six weeks after we took the assessment tests, we received the results. they were given to us on sheets of blue paper; the body of the page held explanations of what each category represented, and the scores were printed on white sticky labels and affixed to the top of the page. the teacher called us up to her desk in alphabetical order to hand out the assessments. while she called out names, many of the students stood around, quietly comparing scores. i had just gone back to my desk and sat down to look at mine. one of the other girls, shannon, came over and asked, "how did you do?" so i handed her my page while she handed me hers. i hadn't looked at hers for more than a few moments before she suddenly snatched it out of my hands and dropped my page on my desk. she didn't say anything, she just looked at me...and i will never forget that look. she looked at me as if i was a freak. and she looked as if she hated me for it.

shannon went over to a group of girls and whispered to them, and they all looked at me and giggled. i could feel my face getting hot and flushed while they stared at me as if there was something wrong with me. my highest score on that assessment was a 99 out of 100. my lowest was a 92. i folded the sheet, and then folded it again, and again, and hid it in my pocket. after that day, i was called brainiac and know-it-all, as well as bug-eater. after that day, i never shared my assessment scores or report cards with another student, and i hid my test scores whenever i was able. it never occurred to me that my being smart could make other people feel diminished. i only recognized that my being smart made me a "weirdo" in the other kids eyes, and i was ashamed.

it's funny, though-- as ashamed as i was of my high test scores, it never occurred to me to make deliberate errors. it never occurred to me to not do my best, every time. it never occurred to me to pretend to be something other than what i was, because i was incapable of doing so. i am the perpetual popeye-- i yam what i yam what i yam what i yam. and that's all that i am. but it don't win me any popularity contests.

how life gets in the way of blogging

i was just directing someone to my blog to look at my lego portraits, and realized that it has been almost four years since i updated this blog. how time flies when you are....living your life.

let's just recap--

got a job at the lucky bridge casino as a cashier. moved up to the office manager after the new owner took over in january of 2014, and from there to accounting manager, and from there to comptroller by the time the casino closed.what started as a 25 hour a week job turned into 60+ hours a week, and what began as awesome gradually became an overworked nightmare.

we were house shopping, and in the spring of 2015, bob brought me to a little piece of property out in finley, just southeast of kennewick.....and as soon as i stepped out of the car, i knew i was home. the whole place reminded me so much of my grandmother's place, where i used to spend summers; the same grapevines and rose bushes, the same irises everywhere, the same little orchard with the same variety of trees (cherry, apricot, crab apple and black walnut). the neighbor has chickens, which remind me of my dad, and he even has peacocks-- my grandma used to keep peacocks! the peacocks belong to the neighbor, but they wander all over our property, and since they are arboreal, they sleep in our trees, which are the tallest trees in the area. i love listening to their calls; i even do a pretty good imitation of a peacock call myself!

the house was built in 1920, and it's too small, but it's a work in progress. it was just awful when we got it; hadn't been fixed up in years, and the floor was rotted through in places. we spent six months in 2015 renovating, and in december of 2015 we were finally able to move in. we plan on expanding the upstairs, and adding bathrooms......so many plans. give us time. i've named our place asylum; i like how the word means two things-- a place of safety, and a home for lunatics. both apply here.

anyway, between the job taking so much of my time, and the husband and the new home taking the rest, i had little time for blogging. and then my life came crashing down again....

in the spring of 2016, my older sister started having a lot of health problems-- she broke her leg. she was also diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and just after her leg healed, she broke BOTH legs, right below the knees. then we found out she had osteoporosis. then in september, she was diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease-- she would need a new liver. i immediately looked into the possibility of becoming her living liver donor, and i gave my boss a thirty day notice that i would be going on medical leave.

on september 17th, my husband's best friend, jim, was hospitalized-- he was diagnosed with stage four cancer of the liver, lungs, and bones....he found out by having his femur just break one night while he was walking to his kitchen; it was eaten though with cancer. he had been telling his VA doctor about his pain for a couple of months, but she apparently didn't believe him. while in the hospital, jim had a psychotic episode-- he was convinced the hospital was a prison camp in a foreign country. the cancer had metastasized and spread to his brain as well. there was nothing to do-- the docs pinned his leg together with rods (it would never heal) and sent him home to die. slowly.

jim asked bob to take his power of attorney, and to be the executor of his estate. bob spent most of the next six weeks driving back and forth between our home here in finley and elgin, oregon, where jim lived (around two hours away) arranging hospice for jim, caring for him, taking care of his business concerns. jim's psychotic episodes were increasing in length and frequency, and he often got combative, which was really bad, because by that time, his bones were so fragile that they could easily break. while this was going on, i was frantically trying to train my assistant to take my place, and find a replacement for her, while going to elgin with bob on the weekends to help with jim, and worrying about my sister's worsening condition.............and then my dad started getting breathless with the slightest exertion.

mom finally convinced dad to go to the hospital on october 10th. on october 14th, he was diagnosed with acute myloid leukemia. stage four, of course. on the fourteenth, they were saying, "he'll probably make it though the holidays." they stopped saying that when his white blood cell count doubled in the space of a day. the docs told him he could buy a little time with a five day course of chemo, but they were wrong. all it did was make him sick and miserable. NOW i was going to work, spending the morning training my replacement, leaving work in the afternoon to go see dad in the hospital for a few hours, then going BACK to work to get my actual work done....

my sister connie, who lives in shelton, washington, was getting sicker and sicker. we were calling her every day, telling her she needed to come, but she was in and out of the hospital herself, and too ill to travel (it's a 4+ hour drive.) my younger sister carol, who lives on the east coast, was able to take some time off work, thank god; she flew home and stayed with our mom. the hospital finally decided they had tortured him enough, and released dad on october 26th; mom had hospice come in and set everything up in the family room. it was all so horribly familiar to me now, since i had been visiting jim for weeks-- the same hospital bed, the same oxygen machine, sighing away in the corner, the same pink basins, the same blue vomit bags. dad was sinking fast, so fast, and he was struggling so hard to stay with us; you could see how he fought for every breath. and you could see how tired he was.

connie was finally able to travel, and she came home the evening of the 27th. dad wasn't able to talk, and was slipping in and out of consciousness a lot. i took the day off work and spent a lot of my time just sitting by dad, holding his hand, and talking about all the things i remembered from my childhood. when connie came in, i didn't recognize her at first-- she was so thin and haggard it shocked me. dad passed away not twenty minutes after connie came-- he had been waiting for her. we were all around him-- mom was holding his left hand, and i was holding his right, when he died. thirteen days between his diagnosis...and his death.

i was STILL working 12-14 hour days at the casino, so i wasn't able to help bob with jim as much as i wanted. when jim was diagnosed, he told his docs he wanted to go the physician assisted suicide route-- but this was a catholic hospital, so they wouldn't even entertain the idea of helping him. after he came home, we contacted his primary care doc, who told us he had to wait two weeks and then ask again, by state law. we waited the two weeks, and had the doc come again; this time, he okayed it, and he put in the order for the meds-- in oregon, the assisted suicide laws are pretty strict...and slow. it took close to three weeks for the meds to be available-- and even then, they wouldn't send them to him in his home. we had to send someone to pick them up in portland (four hours away.)

my husband's birthday was october 31st, halloween. so i went to elgin on the 31st, intending to take bob to dinner....but stepping inside that house was the worst deja vu i have ever experienced in my life. it was so much like what i had just gone through with dad, i could hardly bear it. i kept it together, though. jim and i had very similar tastes in music, so i spent the afternoon with him, holding his hand occasionally and playing from my computer the songs we both loved-- janis ian, jim croce, leonard cohen, crosby, stills and nash, so many beautiful songs. 

bob and i went out to dinner that night while a friend stayed with jim. another friend had driven to portland that day, and was returning with the assisted suicide meds-- jim was planning on taking them the following morning, november 1st. but around two am, we woke up to the sound of jim thrashing around in bed-- he was having another psychotic episode.....and we couldn't calm him. he refused to take any pain meds we tried to give him, convinced that we were trying to poison him....the irony here is not lost on me. catherine, who had stayed with him earlier that night, came over and was able to calm him and get him to take the pain killers. but here's the kicker-- assisted suicide meds MUST be self-administered, by law, and the person MUST be sane at the time. but by the time we finally got them, it was too late. the cancer had destroyed his sanity, and now all he had was pain.

every time jim regained consciousness after that, he was psychotic. the hospice workers advised us to just keep him medicated and unconscious; they could tell he didn't have long. jim passed away the morning of november 4th. eight days after my dad passed.

my sister was getting worse. i had been thrilled to find i was a match for connie, only to be disappointed-- the doctor said her liver was too far gone for a partial donation to be sufficient. she would need a whole liver. my medical leave started on november 16th, far too late. the casino closed on november 30.

it's funny how shit all happens at once sometimes....or maybe it's not so funny. i guess it all depends on your perspective.

bob and i have been spending the last six months managing our grief, and trying to get our shit back together. the good news-- my sister finally got on the transplant list, and in march she received a new liver. she's doing great, and we are all so grateful. dad didn't want a funeral, so in keeping with his last wishes, in june we had the ken munger memorial pig roast, our last (pig roasts were my dad's thing-- he'd been throwing them every couple of years for the past 35 years.) it was so strange-- he should have been there. he would have really enjoyed it.

how i came to write my first novel

in the spring of 2010, i was diagnosed with degenerative hip disease.

 i had been in daily pain for three years prior to this; i saw a specialist in 2007, but when he learned i was uninsured, he charged me $300 cash just to get an appointment, diagnosed me with osteo-arthritis, gave me a prescription for celebrex and booted my uninsured ass out the door. what had actually happened was the blood supply to the head of my left femur had become cut off; the bone had died and was in the process of being ground down in the socket. anyway, by 2010 i needed a hip replacement.

that was a scary year. i lost my job serving and was still uninsured, so i applied for assistance from the state to pay for my surgery. i am extremely grateful that the washington state dshs covered all the costs of my surgery, but thanks to bureaucracy the approval process took a while—six months between my diagnosis in april and my surgery in october. in that time, i was flat-broke, unemployed, and in constant and ever increasing pain. as the approval process dragged on, thoughts of suicide became more prevalent; i just wanted the hurting to stop, and was growing desperate. i needed a new project—something that would stimulate my creativity, distract me from my pain, and give me a reason to get up every morning. but being poverty-stricken, i couldn’t afford to spend what little money i had on art supplies. that’s when i decided to write a book.

sure, i had written before—i wrote my first poem when i was six. i wrote poems throughout my childhood and into my twenties, and had even tried my hand at a few short stories. and i had stories in my head, too. for as long as i can remember, i have often lulled myself to sleep by making up adventures—some set in the future, some in the past, many inspired by movies or other books i had read. they were just fantasies i used to help myself sleep...but maybe they could be more.

i had talked about writing once with a good friend of mine. dale told me that writing was all about creating the habit and sticking to it. in may, i set myself the goal of at least a thousand words a day for at least five days a week, and began my first novel. it’s a romance, of course; those bedtime fantasies had evolved over the years. the one i chose to write was inspired by the tv show lost, as i had always been fascinated by any stories set on deserted islands. my story, though, was set solidly in reality— no polar bears or frozen donkey wheels anywhere. i spent quite a bit of time on research; tropical flora and fauna, soap-making, jumbo airliner layouts, birth complications, what have you. my ancient dinosaur desk-top computer had gone to data heaven, but a good friend loaned me an old laptop and the library offered free internet, so i spent that summer writing. by the time my surgery rolled around, i had the entire basic structure of the story set, and was at over 80,000 words. i spent the two months following my surgery convalescing and polishing my story, filling in missing scenes. My book topped out at around 105,000 words; it sounds like a lot, but it’s a pretty fast read. i titled it Becoming Unbroken.

afterwards, i tried shopping my book around; i sent queries to forty different literary agents over the next seven or eight months. of those forty, i got 29 rejections, including one that was just hand-scribbled on the bottom of my own query letter and returned to me. the other eleven didn’t respond at all. oh, well. even unpublished, my book was still a success, in that it had kept me alive. besides, in the summer of 2012 i decided to self-publish on kindle. you can find Becoming Unbroken on amazon, or just follow this link--

http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Unbroken-Laura-Munger-ebook/dp/B008OKVXR2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383080629&sr=8-1&keywords=becoming+unbroken

it’s a good read, it’s got a couple of spicy sex scenes, and it’s only 99 cents, 33 of which come to me! enjoy!

UPDATE: DECEMBER 2ND, 2018

i was investigating hiring a publisher to publish my book, when one clued me in to Kindle's paperback printing service. my book is now available on Amazon in paperback!

heeeeere's legos!-- my latest lego project

april 27th, around two in the morning:

if one has decided to do a series of portraits of her favorite movie psychos and serial killers, what is the first medium that springs to mind? why, legos, of course!

i already finished heath ledger as the joker in february, but i completed that project so quickly i never really managed to give my creative itch a really good scratch, and i've been jonesing to start another project. i was considering doing a portrait of marilyn monroe; there's this awesome photo of her that i love where she's holding a cigarette, and her hand partially obscures her face. but marilyn has been portrayed by so many other artists, i decided it would be considered too derivative. meh.

so i was surfing around, looking for a suitable subject. in my search, i image-googled "movie classics"....and when my eyes fell on this oh-so-very-familiar iconic image, i instantly knew it was going to be my next project. i don't even need to post a pic, because i'm betting you already know it; it's jack nicholson in the shining. i think portraying the villains is going to be even more fun than portraying the heroes!

tomorrow (or this morning, what have you) is going to be a busy day, so i prolly won't be able to start with the preliminary sketching until sunday. but i think i'm going to try and chronicle this project the same way i did the captain jack project, so stay tuned and i will keep you posted.

april 30th, 11:54 p.m.:

it's been a busy couple of days. this weekend, i did prep work; i ordered bricks online, gave my last sheet of pressed board a couple of coats of fresh paint, and sunday, i began drawing, graphing out the figure. i started on the right eye sunday night, and by late monday night, i'd gotten both of the eyes done. this morning, i had bob take a pic of yesterday's progress, but we've been busy today, and he only just now got it uploaded and sent to me. here it is:

i made a lot of progress today which i will post pics of some time tomorrow, depending on bob.

so how's it looking so far, folks? all questions, comments and criticisms are welcome!
 
may 1st, around seven pm:

 i'm having a real struggle managing my bricks; money's kind of tight right now, so i've been trying to avoid ordering any new legos unless they are absolutely necessary. the joker project seriously depleted my selection of black bricks, so one of the reasons i picked this image was it's overall lightness of color.

when i'm working on a project, i tend to submerge myself in it, so i've been pretty preoccupied around the house, which i suspect bob finds frustrating. i don't want the new hubby to begin to hate my lego projects. today is our five month anniversary, so earlier today, i made sure to spend some special time with my sweetie!

is that an overshare?  ;)

jack as of this morning--

may 2nd, around noon:

bob just took this pic of yesterday's work--

i don't have a lot of texture going on in this one. the broken door framing the face is mostly 2x bricks, as is the face; only the background above and below the face will be 1x bricks. i'm running low on black bricks since i used most of em on the joker and haven't had a lot of money to re-up.


i really want to get this piece finished before the eleventh (edit: i wanted to submit the piece to be considered for this local juried show; unfortunately, i wasn't chosen to be a part. curses-- foiled again!)  i am considering temporarily cannibalizing the joker; i could pop it out of the frame and pull black bricks from it's lower right corner to finish jack, and replace them later in the month when i have the time and money to buy more.

so, anybody out there feeling like donating any legos for a good cause?


may 3rd, around 2 pm:

here's the progress as of last night.

wow, i'd say it's at about 75% completion, not counting the work i will need to do on the frame. the hardest parts are finished, but now i face another difficulty-- finishing the piece with what bricks i currently have. i have some white bricks ordered and on the way, which will help. i'm just afraid of running out of the little 1x2's . . . . all of those vertical lines, oy gevalt! but like the man says-- 

"make it work!"

that's my plan.

may 6th, around 5:30 pm:

well, i've had a busy past couple of days, what with it being my birthday yesterday and all, so i haven't made a lot of progress either on the mosaic or this blog. here's how it looked yesterday morning--

and here's how it looked this morning--

and yeah, bob chopped his chin off, but until i get my own camera fixed i am in no position to complain (much.) i was able to cannibalize enough black bricks from the joker to complete the face; now i just need that last order of white legos to come in so i can finish the broken door framing his face. i'm pretty pleased with how this piece has turned out overall. now i just need to consider the frame; should i make the frame white, or red? and should i make the frame simple, or should i "distress" the frame in the same manner that i did the joker's frame? i was thinking of scratching "here's Johnny!" and/or "REDRUM" into the painted surface of the frame. how about it, fam and friends? thoughts? opinions?

may 9th, around eleven am:

...and the fat lady has sung.

so i have been waiting for that last order of legos to finish this piece...and waiting, and waiting, and waiting... i was expecting the package around the fourth or the fifth. then the evening of the sixth, i receive and email letting my know that my package was shipped that day. i was pretty peeved with the seller, as he should have shipped before last weekend; would the bricks arrive in time for me to finish and get the mosaic entered in the juried show?

then salvation showed up in the personage of my good friend bryan-- bryan brought me a big box of legos as a belated birthday gift! wahoooo!!!! it was not only enough legos for me to finish here's johnny, it was enough for me to replace all the bricks i had cannibalized from the joker as well! i am a happy camper.

as of yesterday morning--

so i just need to finish work on the frame, and i am all set! i'll be sure to update this blog on whether or not i get into the juried show. thanks to my friends and family for all their kind support, and a special thank you to bryan, who is my hero for the week!

 

update: june 4th--

well, i learned on june 2nd that i did not get selected to be in the allied arts summer juried show. bummer. i felt sorry for myself for about a day or so, but that's all; i am well aware that not everyone likes my style, and there's nothing i can do about that. i'm not michelangelo, but who says i have to be? receiving praise for my work is nice, but it's not the reason i make things. i create because i must; it's as basic a need for me as eating or sleeping.

my latest lego project-- heath ledger's joker

inspiration struck again-- and the bitch leaves bruises.

(this first bit is me venting-- if you are just interested in looking at the legos, i advise you to scroll down.)

a couple of weeks ago, i realized RadCon was coming up. for those who don't know, it's the tri-cities principle science fiction/fantasy convention, held at the pasco red lion every year. i have not yet found employment since graduation, and things have been pretty tight lately, so it occurred to me that this would be a good opportunity to a) promote my card game welfare mother, and b) sell my captain jack lego mosaic.

the con was february 16-18th. i arranged to rent some space in the art show for my work, and volunteered to be a gm (gamemaster) in the gaming room and run a table, where i could demo welfare mother. then on the 9th, it occurred to me that it would be cool if i started another lego mosaic and entered it in the art show in it's unfinished state, kind of to show people my process. it took me only a minute's thought to pick my subject-- heath ledger as the joker. i felt he would make a very compelling portrait subject, plus i knew he still had many fans, perhaps one of whom might have the cash and the inclination to buy my work. i prepared my work surface and work space saturday and began my sketching, and on sunday i began working with the legos. i knew i had limited time, and i honestly never expected to finish the piece in time for the con; the shortest time i think i managed before was nine or ten days. but i drove myself, working 10-12 hours a day, and by 2:30 am thursday morning, i had finished! then i busted my ass on the frame, which is custom made; i bought materials, cut 'em, glued and screwed it all together, distressed the frame and carved a bit on it, then slapped on a deliberately sloppy coat of paint, and he was ready to go. after i hung my work in the art show friday morning, i busted my ass again until late friday night assembling the stuff i would need to advertise welfare mother, gather feedback, and maybe sell a few copies. i was exhausted, but hopeful.

the con was a complete bust. i didn't sell either of my lego mosaics, and i had a grand total of four people altogether come to my table and play my game.

ah, well. back to the job hunt.


i took a couple of pics of piece as i was working at it, then my camera finally went to data heaven, so bob took the picture of the piece completed. this is what i had managed by tuesday morning.

 i find it interesting how in photographs, the colors look slightly different than they appear in real life. the flash of the camera makes the blue bricks appear lighter and the red bricks appear darker. regardless, the results are still striking. yeah, i know; i'm not modest. but if i don't appreciate my own work, how can i expect others to? 

this next image shows my progress by wednesday morning.

 i'm particularly pleased with how the curls in the upper left came out. this piece has very little of the layering i've used in other lego mosaics, partly because i had a lot more 2x bricks than 1x bricks, but also because the image itself needed to be...i don't know...heavier. hard to explain.

this last image was taken in the wee hours thursday morning.

.

i actually fucked it up temporarily a tiny little bit. if you'll look in the lower left along the bottom, you'll see the black shadowed area below his shirt collar go from black abruptly to green. i blame it on exhaustion. i corrected it the next day before i framed it.

anyway, overall i'm pleased with the finished work...and dumbfounded that i completed it in a little over four days. they usually take much longer. then again, on every piece before, i've had to stop work at least once, usually more than once, because i ran out of a particular color or size of brick. this is the first time my stock was sufficient to meet my needs. and since i inventoried my bricks last year, i know exactly how many i used to complete this piece. yay!

now i just need to find a buyer. any joker fans out there?