Addair and I just got back from the flea market. You can see he enjoyed the ride home. Ashley is getting her encaustic workshop ready and we’re staying out of the house.

The flea market is across from bass pro and both Addair and I thought we should make a stop. He likes the fish tank and taxidermy work. He’d also pull a pontoon boat home if I let him.

We did get an extra fly line and some leaders. The other day I bartered some paint work for a spare trout rod and fly reel. I’m going to string it up left-hand retrieve for Ashley or anybody else who wants to go. Addair and I have every Friday, so hit us up.

By the way, if you haven’t signed up for the encaustic wax workshop and want to try it out, email Ashley at ashleydawnaddair@gmail.com

Happy Memorial Day weekend. Be sure and have a little fun.

Ashley has absolutely torn my manuscript up.  I knew it was going to need that, although I’m proud of much of it, run-on sentences and all.   I whine often of the difficulties with writing on the side.  It leads to redundancies, inconsistency of voice, and overall lack of direction.  Sounds like a good pitch for a book, right?  At least an accurate character summary of the protagonist.  Ashley is putting up with me and the draft, so you gotta give her that.

One very solid question that Ashley is asking me, and I am asking too, is what comes after the next draft?  She blew this one up.  I’m expecting the next one to take quite a while.  But then what?  I could query and submit it, and I will.  Or I could self publish and try to catch a big publisher with some promise.  I need a goal, these aren’t the days to lock myself away with a pet project.

In the past I’ve been very frustrated at my ability to sell myself.  It seems like color in the water when I’m trying to be as honest as possible.  That’s what half of the book is about, getting along with idealism by allowing a little pragmatism, if only a little.  There’s more to house painting than wearing a lion mustache, and that’s what I want to tell people.  Of course they will listen, to the lion mustache, but they may not pick up the book and read.  That’s what we’re worried about.

I’ve demonstrated four times already that legendary albums don’t sell themselves.  For my fifth album, I played live in the kitchen for my mother-in-law, just once, and everybody was happy.  It was all over quicker.  Then a couple days later I broke my jaw, and never would have if I’d worn a proper mustache.  You live and learn, get a metal chin.

For the record, it’s crazy over here.  Funny I should write about balance in the wake of fatherhood.  The family is growing again, the painting business an obtainable one, and the manuscript is real.  When Ashley gives it back I’m going to cry a little, cut out 200 unnecessary instances of the word “and,” convert to the present tense, then probably ask you to buy it.  Or at least a kickstart pledge, or something like that, and I’m already sorry to do it.  Ask me how to get a mustache discount and we’ll make a joke of it.

I told her it happened every summer, but she didn’t believe me.  Because she certainly knows it has not happened for the last 11 summers.  But before that, back when I was in high school, bam.  We were in the fish.

Addair gets spoiled by his grandparents, that’s some of it.  I’ve tried to go fly fishing by myself at least once every couple weeks, but that’s hard.  It’s easier when Addair has a crowd of babysitters.  Also, my parents live on lake Pee Wee.  That’s the Madisonville, KY city lake.  I caught three bass as long as my arm in the back yard–I mean about six of them, or probably seven, big ones.

I painted in Kentucky some.  The State Farm basement door for dad, the Raymond James crown molding for my brother, a carport and front door for Grandma too.  So it wasn’t all play.  A little work, but a lot of bass fishing.

My buddy Justin and I split out on Thursday.  We took the old Ranger on Lake Beshear in Dawson Springs.  It was pretty hard fishing in the afternoon.  Saturday my dad and I went to our hunting property in the reclaimed mining area around Earlington.  The strip pits and silt ponds were full of ticks, not many fish.  We spent the morning with tractor problems, but it got us out of bush-hogging.  That meant extra time for bass fishing.

My mom would see me watching TV with Addair and us eating goldfish.  She’d take him and say, why don’t you go fishing.  She’d look out the dining room window, saying they were surfacing a lot in the afternoons.  I’d rig up a worm and go.

My brother’s kayak is in the basement and I took it out a few times.  Bass were killing this little shad with a jig head, but nothing big.  And too many bluegills.  Then I was throwing a Carolina rig and being greedy.  Because I was in a kayak.  I had one monster hit it so hard I was literally leaning away during the fight to keep from tipping over.  It jumped and I saw it, at least six pounds, probably eleven, and I got it to the kayak which is exhilarating when you are sitting on the surface of the water beside your fish.  He fought under the boat and I couldn’t grab the line  before he pulled the rod around forward, jerking the line on the tip of the kayak.  He got off that way.

I thought about Ashley’s question for awhile, why the sudden bass fisherman in me.  There was time to think you know, cast and think.  Reel in and think.  It occurred to me it was sort like when a dog eats grass.  It doesn’t make any sense.  But the dog is craving something, he needs a nutrient.  Or he needs to root around and be a dog.  I live on the corner of Armstrong and W. Glenwood and in a neighborhood.  It’s been a little while since I walked home to the house in the dark, sat my rod against the garage, left it hooked and ready, and went inside to wash the fish slime off my hands and the mud off my feet.  You make a lot of noise and you wait for someone to ask the question,

“Did you catch any?”

listening to traditional country and updating my etsy shop

I’ve been feeling absolutely awful.  There’s the routine nausea and tiredness but the worst of it is soul anguish.  It’s impossible to gauge how much of this is contributed to hormones.  Likely it’s mostly that, but in the fog of it this is no consolation.  I’m not so sure my hormones have leveled out since Addair Kentucky, making normal irrelevant anyway.

when i painted this i was thinking about motherhood as instinct. trying to suss out the ways cultural information has me all confused. lately, i only think about food

This week we’ve been visiting in Kentucky.  It’s helped to be out of our house as the undone tasks serve as stress triggers making my symptoms worse.  Also, it smells in there.  One day I’ll feel like cleaning again, right? I hope so.  I get afraid that I’ll never feel like doing anything ever again.

domesticated. acrylic and paper on canvas. 24 x48

Well, I’m sick of hearing myself.

Pray for me.  I’m all out of ways to help myself.

Maybe that’s the silver lining–being at the end of myself.

friday night is coming up. maybe i’ll get gussied up and put on some mascara. that’ll make me feel better

A list of other things I’ve been thinking about:

reckoning daily schedules.  finding adventure and nowness without losing intentionality and discipline

editing Levon’s manuscript

moving before baby #2 arrives

finding a studio space for work

Addair Kentucky is darn wonderful

just posted to ashleyaddair.etsy.com today

Loretta is a 1962 Roadrunner camper we’re converting into an art studio and mobile gallery.  For a while she has rested in the driveway, and little has been done since I got stuck on electrical issues.  Then we (meaning my neighbor) had a breakthrough with a borrowed meter, and it’s always grounding issues with these old trailers (like Frankie told me back in March).  Loretta now has new wiring throughout and new lights, vintage lights I should add, from vintagetrailersupply.com.

So now we’re going to paint her.  I’ve taken every window off and siliconed behind, the same with every corner trim.  Inside is totally gutted out and most of the framing replaced after the water damage of decades.  Saturday we gave her a new rear window pane, pretty sure there had been a bullet hole through the original.

So now it’s time to paint, and any paint job is only as good as your prep work, right?  Somebody’d done the awfulest caulk job I’ve ever seen on her and she still shows signs.

before

Here’s some more before and during shots.

rear window before

before

before

progression

progression

Now you can see the inside is ready to finish the insulation.  The outside is ready to paint.  That’s where she sits today and probably tomorrow too.

some encaustic experiments

nausea again

worked on the Knoxville Museum of Art’s Art on Tap painting today

about to cut the day short so that I can pack and head to Bristol and then Tazewell for an evening of storytelling

but before we go  I wanted to post the details of the upcoming encaustic creativity workshop:

JUNE 8.  Saturday @ the SHAREhouse

10:00am until 3:00pm

• {creating space and opportunity for inventive play and art making}This workshop will focus on exploring encaustic techniques.Encaustic is a very versatile, spontaneous medium, applied molten to a prepared surface. The wax can be re-melted to create different effects, layered in opaque or translucent layers, modeled, textured, scraped, sculpted, polished, or combined with a variety of materials to create collage works. made during “play” time today The aim is to bring your interests into the medium of encaustic painting. Bring a favorite object, poem, drawing, found treasure, photograph, vintage paper, fabric, or concept and I’ll help you explore ways of translating this to an encaustic medium. (This part is optional, you can come with nothing at all, and we’ll still have fun). This workshop will be scheduled as shifts so that there will be a small number of participants for each session. Once I have a class roster I will assign you a time slot between the hours of 10am to 3pm. The workshop will be process-oriented with a focus on art-making as a method of thinking. All skill levels welcome. All supplies will be included. to register (and you must pre-register) call ⑧⑥⑤.⑦⑦③.④⑧①②, message me on facebook or email ashleydawnaddair@gmail.com soon to be on etsy workshop fee: $45 includes all materials. just bring yourself. connect. learn. express. paint. appreciate. try. share. explore. make. enjoy. and you get to take home an original piece of art. feel free to share this invitation.

I was grateful for the rain because it made for a no question writing day, and honestly it is often a great struggle to get up these days and put on the painters pants and find something that ought to be whiter.  Not when the memoir is in the home stretch of a second draft, leading closer to the day of becoming a “Mustache Dad.”

Funny that the memoir deals with exactly where I find myself again, trying to balance work and the work I want to be doing–while also expecting a baby.  It changed everything last time.  So that in these shoes again, I’ve done a little better at dividing my days.  Like this morning, I painted until the rain looked ominous.  And as our readers know, 5:00 is mustache dad time for real.  No writing, no painting, no estimates, no record keeping.  Protecting time is sacred activity, and Ashley will tell you that I’m not as good at it as I pretend to be here.

But rejoice with me that I think the draft to be 70% through the second time around.  It’s 59,002 words as I have left it open in another window.  Ashley and baby have gone, I don’t know where, and I’m out under the carport watching the storm,  thinking about a special place in Virginia called Grace Acres Farm and texting my mother-in-law about pertinent details for the sake of accuracy in the narrative.  Word count today is 2,111, and 2,000 words is minimum on days I don’t paint, even though I did.  And 300 words on days I do paint, even if it’s garbage– because this is the daily exercise of what I want to be doing.

So, what were we thinking?  I guess giving Addair a younger sibling for his birthday/Christmas combined.  It’s easier that way.  And it was nice not to travel for the holidays the other time.   No seriously, we are very very excited!!

I told Addair it’s time he learned some responsibility.  Younger siblings will require it.  My younger brother one day became a college linebacker, that says a lot about how tough I was on him.  Ashley’s younger brother is crazy Dustin.

Two years is a pretty good split.  I know it will be nuts.  When I was two, my dad had me plowing fields and pulling my own weight a little bit.  I had a little brother and he was plain angry.  That’s what we’re going to have to do with Addair.

Siblings should be close, we say.  And I need to get some work out of them.

For the I don’t know how many-eth time, I was going to finish rewiring the trailer today.  I think I have a sound strategy now, and I bought a continuity tester for the 12v trailer wiring.  All the wire is run.  But I still need somebody to hit the breaks, and somebody to stand behind and tell me when the lights actually come on.  I’m under the tailgate trying to figure out which color goes where.

So I put a kids toy in the floorboard to hold the breaks and thought about a system of mirrors to let me see the taillights from inside.  But then I thought, nah I’ll just paint her today.  Then I said nah, I’ll just write a blog instead.  They’ve been few and far between lately.

The stripe is a mistinted green from a paint job, and really more of a trial than anything.  I want to see if Sherwin Williams Superpaint will be durable enough.  I use Superpaint exclusively for houses and they tell me it will hold up fine on metal.   Also, our little corner looks pretty redneck these days, for a lot of reasons, and a grey old camper doesn’t help.  The stripe is a sign of good intentions.

Let’s see what else.  Nathan and I have been painting about a house a week and it’s good to be busy.  I’m halfway through the first rewrite of “Mustache Dad.”  Ashley’s fridays for painting have been going well and as soon as I get this camper finished there will be more of that.  We’ll have a little art gallery to take around, maybe I’ll paint fewer houses and write more, and balance should find us somewhere.

Unless, of course, there were any big news which might complicate things.  Even if ever so slightly.

Well, come to think of it, there is.  That means it’s time to perfect the mustache.