Category: crazy

The Long Weekend is Finally Over

Finally, the big, fat Greek festival is over and my job is done. Now I can breathe. Can you just pinch these little kids’ cheeks? These are my Greek dance students. They were so amazing, cute and worked really hard to pull off their year end performance of traditional Greek dancing. Look how proud they are. It is really hard to remember which foot is left and which is right!

The flea market was a success and all the people who worked with me and my co-chair really knocked themselves out trying to hawk our wares. Customers would ask us for a price and if they didn’t like it some would just walk away, others would look at me in disbelief (at .50!) and others didn’t mind a fun haggle.

If I had the idea they really wanted a thing, but would jump at a haggle I would say “Make me an offer and if I like your number I could say OK.” Then we would play a back and forth with numbers and when I’d say Yes! we’d all laugh and smile. Then I’d say “Wasn’t that a lot of fun?” Smiles all around!

Believe it or not, we have yearly customers. Some have purchased from us and we had fun in the sale, they return year after year like old friends. Then we have the crazy customers that return year after year. Those people want to take home bags of items for .10. Give me a break already. And they tell us their tales of woe. Hey, we all have a story, just pay the $1.00 and get going!

Late on Sunday we hold a bag sale. Whatever anyone can fit in the paper supermarket bag is $5.00. You’d be amazed at what people put in that bag and are thrilled to pay at the checkout. All manner of item is in that bag and it’s fun to watch the customers swarming with their bags.

I had my fun and now the weekend is over, thank goodness. Now I can get back to painting.

Day at the Beach with Traffic

Living on Long Island, in lower New York State, affords those of us who enjoy the seashore, the wonderful opportunity to visit on a whim.  We live a fifteen minutes drive from the Atlantic Ocean and try to be on the water once a week in the summer.
Don’t ask me how many miles the ocean is from my house, I have no idea.  Here we measure distance by time of travel.  In fact, signs have recently been posted on our parkways that give a digital readout for drivers how many minutes it will take to get to a destination. 
I’ve visited upstate New York many times and no one there ever says how long it takes to get anywhere.  They tell you the miles and when I’d ask the minutes they’d look at me as if I had two heads.  Well, there’s no traffic upstate, unless you’re stuck behind a tractor or cows are crossing the road. 
On Long Island there’s traffic.  Serious traffic.  Parking lot traffic.  You can be stuck in traffic that, if you wanted you could get out of your car and talk to the driver behind you.  They could be passing out drinks and hors d’oeuvrs and having a party kind of traffic.  So many people descend on Long Island in the summer heading to the beaches that the fifteen minutes it usually takes me could turn into an hour of travel time.
Sometimes it gets crazy.  Sometimes the drivers get crazier than they usually are.  People start flipping out.  No one wants to be in any kind of traffic here.  Drivers can barely wait for the lousy red stop light to turn to green, how can they handle traffic?  Thing is, they can’t!
The alternative to taking the parkway to the beach is to use the local streets.  It’s nice, but that takes time too, but you sort of think it’s quicker.  It’s really not.  There’s lights, local people doing their every day thing, more cars than usual because they’re going to the beach too, but they live close enough to go locally.  And on the days that traffic is crazy on the parkway, all those same crazy people start getting off the parkway to use the streets.  Same craziness, same hour travel time.
We had a little bit of traffic this week on our way to Pt. Lookout beach.  Backed up for miles, I was trying to decide: Stay on the parkway or use the streets?  I felt that the cars were moving a bit, enough to decide to just stay on and take my chances.
Why was the traffic backed up?  Was the drawbridge up for a tall ship to go under? No.  Was there police activity (that could be horrendous)?  Nope.  Could be a huge pile-up, which did happen this week with tragic results which closed the Meadowbrook Parkway to the beach for hours.  Not this day.  No.  Two cars of drivers had pulled over the side of the road to consult their map.  Every car on the road slowed to stop and look at them.  What are they looking at?  Did everyone think they knew these people?  Did they think they were celebrities, which happens now and then?  What?  What’s with that?  What, or who, did they think they were going to see rubbernecking like that?
That’s Long Islanders, and New Yorkers, for you.  Gotta see what’s going on!

Just a Wild and Crazy Me

Figure, cropped, charcoal on newsprint (c)1976 DST

Who doesn’t worry?  Who doesn’t feel fear?  Is there anyone who doesn’t feel panic once in a while?  Or is it just me?
I’m chugging away reading Walking in This World from the Artist’s Way series of courses on creative blocks.  Week 9- Discovering a Sense of Resiliency, talks about creative people being prone to apprehension and skittishness.  Panic is described as an escalating sense of terror that floods and immobilizes by the ‘glare of change’ as, “How am I going to get there?”  Worry is unfocused anxiety that distracts us from a real fear.  Fear, they go on to say, is not obsessive like worry or escalating like panic, but is reality based and is our ally.
As far as we creative people are concerned, the more active and negative our imagination is, the more creative energy we have.  Well I’ll be darned!  If I knew that I guess I would’ve felt better about being a panicky, worry wart, fearful, superstitious neurotic!  
“Fearful and neurotic people are those with the best imaginations. Worry is the imagination’s negative stepsister.”

Oh gee, I’m so happy to know that!   So when my mind is racing and talking to me from every where blabbing it’s big mouth, my creative juices are actually working?  What a relief!  I thought I was just crazy!

The writing of Morning Pages should work to rid us of negative energy and talk because it siphons off the worry at the start of the day.  In the pages I can name, claim, and dump most of my negative talk, anger, fear about all sorts of things and people.  Dump the stuff in the page, close the book and walk away.    Nausea, asthma attacks, stomach upset are all from worry and we need to recognize it as misplaced creative energy.  Is it possible this book right?  Wow, who knew?

Fear is scary, we think, but what we fail to see is that fear is positive.  “Fear is a blip on the radar screen.”  The author suggest we give Fear a pet name.  Ok, now what kind of name can I give my little side-kick?  I’ll have to think about that. 

Fears are base on inaccurate info.  When fear kicks in we are supposed to reach for action.  Fear is sending a signal, but what’s the signal mean?  Do I need Morse Code to figure it out?  How about when you’re in the middle of a full blown panic?  Tell me I can think of what the signal is while I’m waiting for my racing heart to slow down. 

I don’t know, but I’m writing it all down in the Pages every morning like clock work.  Well, now I feel really good knowing that all my craziness was just me being such a wildly creative artist! (Hand over mouth, laughing out loud!)