30 Day Drawing Challenge - Day 2

Via The Dawnie Project.

Day 2 - Favorite animal.

I couldn't decide. I have always loved Elephants. When I was 10, I got to ride an elephant and I pretty much wanted to take her home with me and keep her in my backyard afterward. The elephant handlers started giving me the evil eye after my ride was over and I wouldn't go away. They keep a pretty tight handle on those girls, I'll tell ya that much.

I also love horses, dogs, cats, birds (I love so many birds!), orangutans, and frogs. But as I am the proud mom to a sweet little house bunny named Oliver, I felt like it would be insulting to leave him out of the "favorite animal" sketch. You do not want to insult the bunny. His teeth are very sharp and my shoe laces don't stand a chance as it is.

I know...that is one big rabbit, or one tiny elephant! 

Happy sketching! 

I found this 30 day Drawing Challenge Meme over at The Dawnie Project. She's a super fun lady and you should go follow her right now. I'm not good at sketch. I like using the sketch app on the ipad, though. It feels more forgiving than pencil and paper. Not forgiving enough, but I'm going to publish all my sketches here anyway. 

Day One: Yourself

I just got some new reading glasses. My first reading glasses, actually. 

Happy sketching! 

One Ignorant American In Line at Customs

I would like the record to show that when you get your US passport in the mail, there is no instruction manual.  There isn’t any sort of leaflet along with the passport that tells you to please visit the YouTube Channel for the country you are visiting to see what you will need at the customs desk. There is no PDF to download that gives you information about what questions you will be asked, or what documents you should carry. You get the passport and are basically told, “good luck!”. Indeed!

I probably could have looked all of those things up ahead of time, but honestly, it did not even occur to me to think about any of it. I assumed that once I got to customs, they would tell me what I needed to know. I assumed, wrongly, that if I intended to do no wrong, there would be no issue getting into the UK on a US passport. Au contraire!

It’s not like I’ve never entered a foreign country before. I traveled in Europe when I was in high school. I’ve traveled to Mexico and the Caribbean and Canada, all requiring a passport and a trip through customs. These trips did not adequately prepare me for the disdain I encountered upon arrival at the Edinburgh Customs desk after disembarking my plane.

I would like to provide this short list of thing you can do to prevent the inquisition:

1.     Print out your flight details. Even if the airlines you’re flying with has the fancy new smart phone scanning technology, go old school! The use of phones is not allowed in the Customs area (this is not something that any wants you to know until you get there and all of your flight details are listed only on your smart phone and you have to tell the customs agent that you can only show her an email from your airlines with the flight details, which she will begrudgingly write down), and you should have a piece of paper that shows exactly when you are planning on leaving the country.

2.     When asked how much currency you’re carrying, do not give a precise amount. Just say, enough for my needs. Really, they cannot force you to say how much currency you’re carrying, unless you have more than 10,000 pound. Otherwise, you do not have to declare an amount and they can ask you, but you do not have to tell them. If they ask you how much you have, you can legally say, “less than $10,000” and they can’t really hassle you about it.

3.     The only other thing I can think of is maybe put a change of clothing in your carry on so that when you get off the plane you don’t look like you’ve been on a plane for 10 hours. I did brush my hair and teeth, but I’m sure I looked ragged. Not that I was the most raggedy person in that line, I’ll tell you.

4.      

Actually, I’m not sure what to do when they start asking questions that you are legally not required to answer. At the time, my feel was, this lady, no matter how huge the bug is that is up her ass, has control over whether or not I enter the country. So I played nice. Even when she called my “story” about having a friend come to pick me up “half cocked”. Even when she told me that she didn’t want to find me pan handling outside Marks and Spencer the next day. Even after she made me sit on the Bench of Shame, while I waited for every other person disembarking three different planes to go through customs. Even when she said she’d put some sort of stamp on my passport indicating that I was “trouble” (there is nothing on there that I could see that said “trouble” in any language, but who knows?). I just smiled and said yes ma’am and no ma’am. And finally, after calling my friend who was indeed waiting outside the International Arrival Gate with her two small children (one of whom was screaming now) to verify my “story”, she admitted me to Scotland.

To be fair, her accent put her as a Brit, not a Scot. And everyone I met after that seemed perfectly friendly. Maybe she knows something I don’t, eh? I could have been starting international scandal and not even know it! 

The Waitresses - I Know What Boys Like 1982 Video

The trick is knowing what I want.

Song for the Day : Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood

Turn it up!

all caught up

I had this thought a couple of weeks ago that the “older” men that I used to get crushes on when I was in my 20’s, are now my age. In other words, back then I never really wanted to date anyone my own age. I was always interested in people who were about 20 years older than me. But I didn’t fall into the “cute 20 year old” category so I never actually got asked out by any of them. I still get crushes on those same aged men, and what I’m hoping is that I make a cuter 40-something than I did a 20 year old and that now those guys might actually be available.

If I had written an on line dating profile back then, it would have read something like this:

Single 20-something college dropout gone barista with own car, sense of adventure and a schnauzer seeks partner in crime. You will indulge me in late night shenanigans; impromptu drives to the beach and Sushi at random hours of the day. I’ll sew on your buttons, encourage your art and tell you dirty limericks. Night time schedule is preferred, especially if you ever want to hang out while I’m awake.

I probably would have added something in there about dancing with my girlfriends every Saturday night being non negotiable and beer.

Who actually wants to be out dating? Hardly anyone. Every single person I’ve talked to in the last 11 months has said that they would never want to be dating again, or that they are dating and they hate it. It’s hard to get to know someone new and share all your secrets with them, only to have it not work out. It’s hard to just meet a person that you’re willing share with at all. I suspect that is why so many people hang on to relationships that aren’t entirely healthy – fear of being back out in the sea of singles.

My dating profile has changed a little bit in the last twenty years, since I’ve been out of the dating scene:

Single 40-some odd, divorced mother with full time job and parenting duties seeks middle aged, slightly over weight nerd with glasses and at least one twenty sided die; facial hair optional. You will find my annoying habits charming, clean up after yourself, chase me around the house like a horny teenager, and never leave the toilet seat up. I will stroke your ego daily, give higher than average quality foot rubs, watch action movies with you and laugh at your jokes. Together we will judge other people’s choice to shop at Ikea, bake chocolate chip cookies and not share them with the kids and snuggle for at least an hour a day.

Ask for exactly what you want. What is there to lose?

Table for One 

This blog needs a reboot. I have been through many changes in the last year and I haven’t posted anything in even longer than that. I’m officially reinventing Ms. Martinifontaine.

One of the things that I’m learning this year is to be alone. Un partnered. Single. Technically speaking, I’m not alone-alone, because I have a child. I doubt, though, that I would get any argument from anyone that being a single parent isn’t about the most alone you’ll ever be. Here is a quick list that I made up to illustrate my point:

Being a single parent means:

1. being the only grownup on scene who is in charge, ever. So when the decisions get made you are the one with your butt on the line, always.

2. being responsible for All The Things: getting the garbage out on time, making sure there is toilet paper and knowing when you get to the store that you forgot to buy bleach last time and need to pick it up this time; knowing when the doctors appointments are supposed to happen, when the last time anyone (you) vacuumed, making sure the pipes don’t freeze and that the car has gas in it when you have to schlep to the school in the morning. And pretty much everything else.

3. Being the only person around for the child/children to blame when things don’t go their way. Which really puts undo pressure on the adult and creates an unrealistic picture of only one individual having control over a lot of things that are largely out of control most of the time.

4.  Figuring out things to eat that you can make one plate at a time, without having to throw half of it away at the end of the week. Unless you are one of the three lucky adults on the planet with a child who eats whatever you make, (oh sure, there may be more than that…like 10?), you are only cooking grown up food for one, and there just isn’t a lot available for single servings that doesn’t come out of a freezer package. Freezer food is not even real food.

5. Always being ON. There is no break. Even when you have a “break”, you are on a schedule to get back to your responsibilities, because there’s no one to back you up.

6. There’s no one to back you up. When you lay down the law, there isn’t anyone else around to back you up. And it’s a stone cold fact that children automatically outnumber adults 2 -1, no matter how many of them there are.

7. There’s no one around to bring you a cuppa or chocolate or wine when things get rough. I’m pretty sure this is why my Grandpa Toad trained each and every one of his grandchildren to make a toddy at the ripe old age of nine; he knew that someday grandma was either going to leave him or die, if he didn’t go first, and he made damn sure there’d be someone around to help out at toddy time. The man may not have had a terrific amount of formal education, but he was one smart cookie.

8.  No hugs and kisses, the romantic kind.

9.  No one else around to get rid of spiders

10.If you happen to wake up and find yourself in an existential quandary full of loathing and self-doubt and wracked the pain and isolation of your pitiful, meaning less existence (thanks, Weird Al), that is no excuse to just suck it up and keep going. No one else is going to do it for you.

My point is that when you’ve gone through a big change that leaves you alone, it’s not the big decisions that wear you down. It’s not deciding whether or not to date, it’s not deciding where to live or how to pay an attorney; those things actually bring excitement and distraction from the daily, little, chip, chip, chipping away decisions that every day take you further away from being a person who is one half of a team. 

There are a hundred opinions out there about how to “move on”: wait a year, wait five years, go to Vegas, go on a cruise, join a dating web site, get back on the horse, have fun, concentrate on being a parent, learn to love who you are, learn to recognize who you are, get therapy, go to yoga, stay home with your child/ren – the advice is endless. There is no formula for moving on with your life, for being alone, for being a healthy single person. 

I, personally, will not be found in the frozen food section, you can be sure about that.

But maybe the deli.