the wide, wide world

I was released into the wild yesterday!

I packed up my bag with essentials like Energy Vitamin Water, real water, laptop, one moleskin sketchbook, one moleskin journal...and the small pocket full of pens, erasers, pencils, pencil sharpeners...and aspirin.  I always keep aspirin with me...but literally...in case I should feel the onset of a heart attack...I'm serious.  Moving on!

Anyway! I packed all this up in order to leave M and give her some needed time to herself (it was a Christmas present, she loves it!).  I hiked on up to the Anthropology Museum (which is free) and just breezed on in.

Since becoming a housey-wife, I realize my social skills with strangers has gone pretty much nonexistent.  But that's ok...until I am running around in public with strangers, I guess.  So I breeze on in to this museum and I am all intent on my task I have presented myself of trying to look at and read about EVERY little thing in the place.  The two college girls manning the gift shop desk are all, "Hi there! How are you?" and I had to actually back up and go back into the gift shop to reply (in what I am sure sounded a very Aspbergerish way), "I am well thank you, how are you?" All shifty-eyed and sweating from my two-mile hike and looking supremely uncomfortable in the presence of two well-groomed youngsters.  "Good, good," They answered me.  I nod curtly, adjust my cadet hat and turn swiftly into the room with the exhibition to get to my task.  I am a weirdo.  I know it.  I try to avoid the conversation and looking at other people when I am by myself in public.  Maybe it is some sort of lizard-like response, some self-preservation thing.  Maybe it is me trying to let people know that I am invisible, please allow me to do whatever I want without noticing me.   Actually, I think this generally works out, as I almost always get away with saying and doing whatever I want in public...or maybe people just look over at this large girl doing weird-ass things and just smile to themselves and post blogs about it...ha.

Right.  So, I settle in, and make a viewing bench my office area, neatly draping my jacket vest over it, laying my hat on top and placing my backpack beneath.  I take out my little sketching moleskin and get to work at the sketching!  Hurray! I don't remember the last time I have done that for reals.  Very exciting.  I love sketching art and such at museums, the subjects never move and they are always exactly the same when you come back months later, so you can finish up a drawing or get a new angle.  Yes, thrilling, I know.  I felt all accomplished about actually just doing that.

Really though, I feel like the creative side of my brain has melted away in the last few years (maybe more, I like to try and think the best of my brain) and I sit down to doodle or something and the same boring things pop up in my drawings.  My brain is so lazy!  Like, come up with something new, and dazzling! hm, oh well.

I got a couple good drawings in, my neck started cramping (lordy lord, I am getting old, yo), and I decided that I had spent an appropiate amount of time being all artsy and getting back in touch with that right side of my brain again.  I packed up my stuff and sort of meandered around, trying to read everything about everything and learning some weird stuff of phalli attachments for ancient Greek busts and crocodile cults in Egypt and how confusing it is that Sekhmet is a lion-headed goddess in ancient Egypt who deals in war and destruction, but also in healing...and Bastet is a cat-headed goddess (or sometimes just a cat) who is basically the goddess of pleasure.  Two feline-headed goddesses!  Does this constitute a "glaring" of goddesses? please please please.

Cattle aside (my own term for multiple cats...yes, I am that cool), I got my stuff together and quickly examined the contents of the gift shop, deftly avoiding the bored and questioning eyes of the gift shop girls (they should start a band with that name!).  I went out with them calling after me "Bye bye, now!"  I think they were actually trying to be friendly, but I gotta say, probably not.  I was listening to their conversation while I was sketching an African mask for a women's cult of womanhood (I mean, what else would a "women's cult" be about?) and I was not encouraged to become besties here.  "OMG, did he invite you to that party?!" "No, he totally didn't and ___ told me about it and I was all, 'OMG, you didn't invite me to your party' and he was all texting me and stuff and I was like, 'WTF?' you know?" "Oh, I totally know.  What an asshole," "totally" "So, what are you doing later?" "Going to this party that ____ told me about" "Oh! that party? yeah, I might stop by.  I have to finish this paper (audible eye roll).   Oh! did you hear about ____?" (giggling and whispering ensue).  Yup.  wow. good times.  I suppose they are just volunteers, so who cares?


So, I head back out into the PUBLIC (oh, didn't I mention the obligatory Jews for Jesus hawker on the corner?  Ahhhhh, universities) and keep my head down and walk on back to hang out in the tea shop to check my email, and get some more written in my DAMN travel journal.  I had three goals for the day: 1). go to Anthropology Museum, 2). sketch random art in museum and 3). write more in my DAMN travel journal about our trip to Israel and London.


I get myself a pot of tea and a cinnamon bun (cinnamon buns are necessary to a happy tea shop experience, I think) and set myself up to do what I came there for.  I delayed for a while though, playing computer games, answering emails, reading the news...the usual...all the while listening the group of women in the corner have a very loud and boisterous conversation about having sex with (what I assume were) their husbands and male significant others.  They interspersed this conversation (there must have been at least 4 of them) with cute little anecdotes of their kids.  Maybe it was some mommy group or something.  I was really tempted, a few times, to turn around and tell them that if they wanted their husbands to start doing that to them, like they had seen in some movie, that they should probably entice him by taking a bacon bath or maybe shaving football field patterns into their "personal area."  Whatever, their conversation was amusing at least, and made me happy I don't have to deal with husbands or male significant others and that I hadn't just seen something like that in some movie either.  Yay! girls!


Finally, I cracked open the DAMN travel journal and hunkered down to get some more unnecessarily detailed description of our travels logged away in those pages.  As I was doing this, a petite, stressed-out, yoga-taking looking woman blew into the tea shop and set up her space right behind me.  She needed some power for her laptop and there was a power strip right under my feet, so I told her she could just use that instead of resituating herself.  So, hm...usually I am the socially retarded one who says things that are just slightly off and strange (but endearing, right?).  This lady though, beat me to the punch.  She gets all flustered about the power cord being under my table and starts going on about how she is just going to nip in there and plug in her stuff and oops! She's definitely not making a pass at me, don't worry!  She's not trying to feel me up or anything, don't worry! (I was not worried).  And she mumbled something about how she would, of course, make a pass at me but for the sorry fact that she was unfortunately heterosexual (she actually said, "I am, unfortunately, heterosexual.")  And I tried not to let my extreme amusement at her social weirdness show too much on my face, managing to mumble back something like, "s'ok, s'ok"  Like, I am forgiving her, her heterosexuality.  I wanted to think of a witty retort, and I can usually come up with something, but everything that flashed through my mind was particularly uncouth or mocking, so I decided to just shut up and enjoy the awkwardness of my interaction with 'other human being'....I managed to get up to stepping into the water of the Dead Sea...day 3 of our Israel trip, and already about 20 pages into the journal....too much detail! But now that I have started, I must continue the slog...must...continue...slog.


Later, when yoga-lady realized frantically, that power wasn't getting to her laptop at all and oh dear! what's wrong, oh dear!  She checks every cord and frets and starts getting physically frantic and I decide to jump in here and solve the problem for her before she starts burrowing under my feet and apologizing for enjoying the company of men again.  I replug her computer into the actual power strip instead of the aux outlet.  She lauds me and calls my praise, loudly claiming I am magic or a genius (I am neither) and I sort of shush her letting her know that she just plugged it in wrong.  I look at the clock and pack up my things, heading out the door and I hear her sort of mumbling and saying she hoped she didn't scare me away, titter titter.  And I pretty much mumble back,  "pat, pat no you didn't, of course, I must be somewhere, bye now! good luck with that power cord!" and then shake my head at my parting remark as I make my way back home to M.  "Good luck with that power cord!" right, cause that's what a genius would say...yup.


Sekhmet has a male lion's mane...this is confusing....Sekhmet is female.  Maybe it was just a headdressing....or a wig, I mean, she IS ancient Egyptian.  Ok, I can deal with that.  It is not a male lion mane, it is a lion mane wig.  Sort of like the statues of Hatshepsut (no depictions of her at the museum, alas) and she is depicted sporting the little King Tut beard, like the rest of the pharaohs...but it was a wig beard.  I wonder what a wig beard for the face is called (not a merkin, obviously)?


Bastet was probably the goddess of pleasure cause kitties like to purr...and make biscuits...and chirp at birds...right?  right?! Biscuits!