A Few Hours At The Mall

 I want to be a bit of both walnut tree and a bit oceanic hot vent fish. Why can’t I be a mix between the two?

I’ll explain in a minute what I mean by that. First this:

I am not a big user of
emojis
although sometimes my youngest child and I will make a game of communicating solely via emoji texting…just for fun and to pass time. Some of the emoji images are so obscure I’ll never use them. But it’s fun trying. And since psychosis is linked with creativity, I’ve got an edge there!

Well

I can never say my (bestest friend) Al “doesn’t give a crap.” Because he gave me this one:

At a mall kiosk over the weekend I saw little pillows for sale. The ones for sale depicted various emojis; including the

‘happy face,’ 😊

the purple ‘devil,’ 👿

the ‘smiley with heart eyes’ 😍

and the poop. 💩

That’s the one that made me LOL (not really, I just sort of chuckled, mouth closed. Is that still considered a LOL?) -so Al said to the sales guy

“I’ll take a poop.” And Al paid six bucks and handed the poop over to me. You would think it makes a shi&$y gift but on the contrary- it makes a great neck pillow.

It’s amazing I text at all, given how averse I am to change. I’ve been fairly late to catch on to texting and have only been partaking for a few years. Texting is handy (pun intended) when you stray away from the person you’re with when you’re shopping and you can’t find them. You need only text them this:

I resisted it at first. “It looks so hard,” I said to my friend Judy. “I’ll never catch on to texting!”

She assured me there was nothing to it and since she knew how easily I navigated computers (MS Word, photoshop, social media,etc.) she urged me to give texting a try. “You’ll catch on quickly,” she encouraged me.

She was right. I can’t imagine not texting…

Now I’m texting with memes like a boss! 🌟💫💥✨

So I also saw a portly “mall cop” at the (where else) mall on Sunday-riding a Segway. That made me grin. I watched him spin and perfect an expert stop, to answer a woman’s question about the whereabouts of the rest rooms…

I tried a Philly steak sandwich at the food “court” which I couldn’t finish, and afterwards had my personal space assaulted by various kiosk vultures:

the candle lady (“have you tried our clearance scents?”),

the makeup woman (“have you thought about doing the eyes?”)

the cell phone pusher, (“ma’am can I take a minute of your time?”),

the solar panel salesman (“you can start saving right away-“)

and the massage woman with her accompanying chair. (“You like massage?”)

NO. NO. Nope. No thanks. And NOPE. Why hey that’s more people than I’ve spoken with in weeks!

All in all the mall walk-through made me feel human again. It was a reason to get dressed and good to stretch my legs. And I didn’t get a nosebleed. (I feared I would.)

It’s been

‘one of those weeks.’

I had a painful flare of scalp sores/lymph swelling, etc. etc.

I’ve no time for this! Who does?

So…

If I’m down for the count anyway, housebound and listless, I figured I’d try to be productive. There are some paintings I’ve been working on and other ones I’ve been framing. Heres a sketch which will end up as a winter scene. It seems I’m in my own “blue period” regarding art. I’m doing a signature series quite unintentionally in blues.

 

  This will be striking in black, sienna, white and various blues. I love the shadow play in the foreground on the snow from the trees.

I’m going to Boston in early February with approximately 20 paintings (I’m one of three persons participating in a show), and some books in tow. I’ve been asked to do a book signing and reading! It’s at a college (Cambridge?). The promotor of the show, a scholarly kind lady, is ordering my memoir and also the one I did with Carl and comrades on selective mutism.

My youngest kids (aged 25 and 20) said,

“Go for it!”

“Good for you Mom!”

Now my oldest son is another story. He’s high functioning autism and as part of his cocktail he blurts. He’s honest. He has no filter.

I told him about the art show, the reading of my memoir and the book signing they want me to do.

Says my son:

“This has got to be a source of undue stress for you. In fact the closer it gets to that date- you will undoubtedly become more and more stressed, worried and so forth until the day arrives at which time you’ll most likely be terrified and likely to suffer a breakdown. So congratulations. And good luck on that good news.”

He knows me so well!

🙂

We have so many identities throughout life!

Straight A student.

The girl who doesn’t talk.

The tall one.

The parent.

Grandmother (or Godda, as my granddaughter calls me).

Therapist.

Artist.

Author.

Book signer?

I was born in the sixties. I remember when The Manson murders went on. I don’t remember the astronaut’s moon walk.

In the 70s I had a Dorothy Hamill haircut. I rocked it too.

In the 80s I did aerobics five or six times a week and owned (and wore) leotards, tights and leg warmers in taupe, purple, neon blue, black and pink… No pictures of me exist in those get-ups as this was pre-cell cameras.

Corny as it seems, a Billy Idol song came on over the audio system at the mall and that long ago buried part of me, albeit minute- was excavated! It’s a fond memory (my friend and I dubbed ‘the die-hards in the last row’) and the entire choreographed aerobic routine in sync to Billy Idol came into my body memory. I thought of bursting into left side ponies (that’s an aerobic move) in front of the pretzel shop. But I did not.

We are all a sum of the little and the big. Identities always shifting.

Even Plankton, being underrated and quite small in the scheme of things, plays a huge role in the ocean. Sometimes it’s the littlest of things that sustain us.

Expression.

Acceptance.

Humor.

Tailoring our personal environment to our own comfort levels. (Walnut trees can’t grow near flowers… And yet some species have adapted to live and flourish near super hot ocean vents! I want to be a bit of both. A bit walnut tree and a bit oceanic hot vent fish.)

So although I’m sick I have lost 35 lbs. albeit through nausea and lack of appetite but there you have it. It’s a positive.

 That’s what I’ve been up to!