By Stephie, on Monday 3rd May, 2010 at 23:28 pm
I was out for a walk with a friend recently and came across 4 dead rooks. Poisoned I suspect. I mean, how often would you find that many in one place without a mark on them? They nest high up in a group of pine trees along the edge of a recreation ground; I love the sound of their chattering. Why anyone would want to poison them I can’t imagine, although another walker suggested maybe strychnine had been put down for moles, which she assuredly told us were destroying lawns all over the village (yawn). Strychnine poisoning is a hideous way to die, but she didn’t seem at all bothered and said that there were “too many crows anyway”. I was speechless. Still, one rook’s demise is another woman’s opportunity, and obviously I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pick one up on my way back from our walk. I left the poor thing in a carrier bag in the garden and forgot about it for almost a week. I came across it again today hidden away outside the kitchen door.
It’s still looking pretty good even if it is a bit rank now. The sun was shining so I sat outside and did a couple of sketches; I wasn’t that pleased with my efforts, but I did keep this one. He’s now safely back in the bag until next time. I’m going to keep him for a while and hope that he’ll decay enough that I can keep the skeleton. Sorry, am I putting you off your dinner?! Next time I do some drawings I’ll just show you them without all the rabbiting on!
 Rook
By Stephie, on Saturday 1st May, 2010 at 09:25 am
I took my robins out of the freezer last night and made a few sketches, so thought I’d show you. Simple studies, nothing more.
 Pencil and watercolour, approximately A5  Pencil and watercolour, approximately A5 I’ve added these to the #draw365 Flickr group this morning too. There are so many great drawings in the group now, thousands!
By Stephie, on Friday 30th April, 2010 at 22:39 pm
I think it’s official: I’m anxious. It’s not the diagnosis of IBS that makes it official though. No, it’s the sewing of Christmas presents. Yes that’s right, Christmas presents. The urge to finish some things I began in December is overwhelming. And just in case you were thinking that maybe I finally have the urge to finish the star quilt for Kim (that I intended to finish in December 09), I should clarify that it’s the Christmas presents I intend to give this year that I feel compelled to complete. When I start to do things like this I realise I’m going into panic mode. Everything seems out of control and I need to get a handle on it somehow. Bizarrely, it seems to me that making things way ahead of time will help me gain control. I have this feeling that if I don’t do it now it’ll be too late. My CPN has called it a coping mechanism. Whatever.
I feel powerless in many areas of life at the moment. Finances is one. A big one that I won’t bore you with. Weight is another. Yep, I’ve heard it all before: you look great; you don’t look any different; you can’t weight that much… But the fact is, that over the last few months that I’ve been on a new medication I’ve gained weight. And for me this is not good. I can barely ever put anything in my mouth without doing a quick add up of how many calories I’ve eaten that day. It just wears you down. It’s like having contradictory voices in your head all the time: being on this medication has improved your mood swings, a bit of extra weight is an ok price to pay for that/you’re totally crap, you can’t even control your own weight and if you hadn’t lost the plot in the first place you wouldn’t need to be on the stupid medication (this voice wins hands down). And so it goes on.
I also have this major anxiety that I’m wasting time and wasting my life doing unimportant things, like making Christmas presents in April for a start. Yet I can’t focus. Recently I seem to keep thinking about The Future. How the hell am I going to make a living and support Kim and me? What can I do – work in an office all day? No way, that helped send me over the edge last time. Make ‘stuff’, make art to sell? Well who the hell can afford to buy it, and who the hell would want to anyway. My only option is self-employment, and it will have to be arts and crafts (I can’t do anything else!): I have irregular sleep patterns; my moods change like the wind (cowboy!); it’s the only way I can see to be creative – being self-employed would accommodate these things. But I have no money to invest in materials, let alone machinery, marketing and everything else that goes with it. And honestly, do I sound clear headed enough to start anything anyway?
Oh and then there’s Kim. We’re having meal time and bed time battles. When he’s not wearing me down, he’s winning.
…
Since I began writing this post, at about 2am this morning, my anxiety levels have gone up and off the scale. My car has failed its MOT  and it will cost more to repair than I have and more than I can access. I know that running a car is the reason I’m in debt in the first place, should I make that worse by trying to keep it going, or should I beg, steal and borrow to get it sorted, sell it and pay off what I owe? If I do that we’ll be fairly isolated. The nearest ‘mini supermarket’ is three miles away; the nearest Tesco is 6 miles away. Most of our friends live in villages 7+ miles away off the regular bus routes. I have to travel to health appointments that are 12 miles away and 7 miles away. It seems virtually impossible to live without a car and impossible to live with one. How do people get by in these situations? I really don’t know, I feel at a complete loss. All I know is that I feel trapped in near poverty with no prospects, all due to stupid mental ill health.
If I thought things were bad yesterday because I was making Christmas presents, today must be really rough: I’ve got the dead robins out of the freezer and have been drawing and painting.
By Stephie, on Monday 26th April, 2010 at 11:30 am
Dunno about you, but I’m still here rocking my own little world ;D
As you know if you read this blog on a regular basis, I do sometimes talk about my breasts. I call them that, ‘cos somehow I don’t think they’re big enough to qualify as boobs; maybe it’s the double ‘o’ in the word itself that makes me feel that. Maybe I’ve got bobs! Still, it amuses me no end that small and cute as they are (trust me on that one!) they can still create controversy. Shall I tell ‘e why? Be prepared to be shocked. Sit ye down and I shall reveal all…
I DO NOT WEAR A BRA
 Bobs! It’s ok, you can pick yourself up now. I cannot believe how many people are shocked by this (mostly women). In fact I was asked only yesterday “but don’t your nipples show?”. I lifted up my jumper and said “you tell me”. “Well actually, that’s quite a see-through t-shirt you’ve got on there”. Do I care? No I don’t, ‘cos funnily enough I think most of the human race have nipples. And I like mine almost as much as I like my legs (from the knees down you understand).
I remember at the tender age of about 15 my mother called me disgusting because I hadn’t put a bra in the laundry for weeks. I retorted “that’s ‘cos I don’t wear them”. I can still recall the look on her face today; it was so much more satisfying than rebelling by dying my hair pink. And at the age of forty-something my age I’m extremely pleased to report that my gorgeous bobs are still perky and not in need of any uncomfortable and rather pointless (excuse the pun) scaffolding. So if you’re ever lucky enough to see me flash my t-shirt (summer’s on it’s way), be prepared and bring your smelling salts.
How did you survive Boobquake day?
By Stephie, on Thursday 22nd April, 2010 at 23:36 pm
Want to see some drawings? After all the cushion pushing (ooh er missis!), I thought you might like a bit of a change before the winners are announced tomorrow. (Oh yes, we have 2 winners, but I’m not telling just yet!) I’ve done a few more ink sketches I thought I could show you. I even like some of them 
 Here's a cow. It's a dairy cow.  I live on a dairy farm, so here's another cow!  And for a change, here's another self-portrait!  Self portrait number 2, well for the day  and here's the 3rd one for the day. I like this one. Don't know why, just do. I’m planning to put these and a few others into the #draw365 Flickr group over the next day or two. There are some great images there, it’s like a big drawing gallery, have a look and tell me what you think.
I’m also going to plug the group I administer Women’s Self Portraits. We’ve got 11 members now and new work is being added regularly. There’s quite a wide range of media from drawing and painting to photography and installation works. I was interested to see how we define self-portraits today; it’s not all drawings of the face, which make them much more interesting to me. This was kind of the area I was planning to research for a PhD thesis, but so much for that. Bloody stupid system made it impossible. But I won’t bore you with that. Maybe I should rephrase that: I won’t rant at you about that! Trust me, I can rant on that one for hours.
As an aside, actually completely unrelated, I’m sure my lovely child has given me NITS. I’m sitting here scratching the back of my head. It’s intense. And I’ve noticed Kim’s been scratching too. He hasn’t had nits since he was about 7. Why the bloody hell has he got them now?! And which lovely person passed them on to him? Come on, stand up and admit it, dammit it was you wasn’t it, you horrid little boy! Lets face it, it has to be a boy, he doesn’t fraternise with the girls. Well, apart from Georgina on the school bus… I wonder if they were transferred by whoever sat in the bus seat before Kim. How inconsiderate. Don’t they know that Kim and I have hugs and that the little monster was bound to pass them on to me? I can cope with Kim scratching, but I can’t cope with me scratching at all. It’s damn irritating. Especially when you’re trying to write something as riveting as this blog post surely is
Until tomorrow then, adieu.
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Saturday 17th April, 2010 at 09:51 am
Bugger. I’ve missed my own bloody birthday! Kind of sums it up around here doesn’t it, ha, ha I was too busy out having fun in the glorious sunshine in Truro today to write the ’4 years of this blog’ post I’d planned. That’s a lie: I was hanging around Truro like a queen about to be beheaded, while I waited for my car to be fixed. Five hours I had to wait. Five boring hours. At the end of which I had to part with £150.00 for a couple of new exhaust bits. My car is the bane of my life.
I spent a few hours mooching around shops, which I didn’t enjoy at all. It’s no fun looking at things you can’t afford. I couldn’t even aspire to a skirt in the Whitestuff sale that had gone down to a paltry £13.00. No, my car will take up every penny I have. I absolutely hate living like this, but feel powerless to make any significant changes. Then after a 15 minute visit to the dentist I decided to go to a cafe and have a coffee, which I managed to make last an hour and 40 minutes. I occupied myself by making a few sketches of the buildings I could see out of the large window, where the sunlight flooded in and made me insufferably hot. I couldn’t be bothered to take off my jumper though, so I deserved it. Some celebration eh?!
 City Hall and Coinage Hall, Truro. Pen in A6 sketchbook.  Another scribble of Coinage Hall
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Narrative Self in pictures
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I'm running a 28 mile marathon in memory of Josie this February. Come and find out why.
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