There’s a new video up on my channel: 9 Easy Zentangle Patterns for Beginners – Freeform Curves. I ran a poll asking my channel subscribers what interested them most, and an overwhelming majority said they wanted to learn how to draw more Zentangle patterns. (I’m not abandoning other video styles, just prioritizing accordingly.)
This past week, in an effort to distract myself from cancer thoughts (they’re like shower thoughts, but more disturbing) I decided to get out the Prismacolor Premier pencils again. My goal was to complete Tangled Yogi’s Ladybug Love Zentangle tutorial. She uses colored pencil in almost—if not all—of her video tutorials. I posted these process pics on Instagram and Twitter already, but I like looking at them, and, you know, this is my blog.
I never thought I’d be so enamored with colored pencils, but then I got good ones. And I started learning how to use them. Look at the intensity of that color, baby! I’ve also learned that quality paper helps. This tile is one I cut from some larger sheets of the same bristol vellum I used for the Riptide class.
***
I’m not sure what, if anything, we’ll get done around the house this week. We ordered new exterior shutters, but in addition to Dan and I both managing disabling health conditions (Oh yeah, insurance denied coverage of the medicine Dan’s doctor prescribed and then also denied the appeal. Good times.) removing the old shutters and attaching new ones just seems, like, hard?
We need a handyman. I hate that word, by the way, but am too tired to think of a better one right this second. I know there are all kinds of them around, but I am also too tired to do that level of vetting. I just want to automagically know this singular person who is like, “I will fix everything that needs fixing.” For me, vetting service people is an activity that ranks right up there with talking to customer service representatives and cleaning the litter box.
However, I am occasionally capable of small projects if I have help. For example, Dan and I recently installed new porch lights on the house. Here’s the front one. That’s a new mailbox too.
There’s still a ton of stuff to do though. The ultimate goal is to get the house in shape to sell while also making it more livable until we move. The timeline for all of this is virtually non-existent though. Sick people don’t make plans. Our bodies won’t let us do things most of the time. Plus the money thing is always a problem. If you know, you know.
I feel a not insignificant amount of pressure to get the house in good shape to list, despite everything being uncertain and knowing it’s not in our immediate future, just because houses are selling like toilet paper in a pandemic right now. One two doors down from us sold in about 48 hours for a decent price, and I can’t help but be terrified that the SELL NOW bubble is going to pop before we’re ready. I still have nightmares about dumping that shithole condo in Indianapolis. It. took. forEVER.
*shudders*
One really major thing that would be awesome to do is update our main bathroom. It’s all original fixtures, in terrible shape, and far from accessible. I manage, but not with any peace of mind. (Please don’t suggest grants for the disabled unless you have actually applied for one, been awarded the grant, and you are not a veteran of the armed forces. I have a better chance of finding an actual unicorn for sale at Walmart than having anything I need actually covered and I can tell you how I know.)
I’m starting to get grouchy now, so I’ll stop here and go message another oncologist about when chemo is supposed to happen.
I did something I’m really proud of last month: I posted a new Zentangle video every day in October. It wasn’t always easy, and the drawings weren’t always good, but I persisted until I accomplished the thing: my Inktober Zentangle 2020 prompt list.
Inktober was something I really wanted to do despite the various things in the world that were working against me: cancer, Covid angst, election angst, roofing contractor woes (that’s a whole other blog post, folks. I can’t even with that right now.)
Before I even started the Inktober Zentangle series on my YouTube channel, I warned Dan of my intentions. I told him to expect me to be pretty much useless to do anything else for the entire month. Because if I know me—and I do know me pretty well—setting aside the time for drawing and editing every day meant stealing it from something else.
That’s because I already triage essential daily tasks like eating, cleaning, showering, and managing cancer as a matter of course. Whatever things I reprioritized to make space for Inktober, they were going to be big-ticket essentials. And “reprioritizing” for me doesn’t mean “I’ll get to it later than usual today,” it means, “I will not get to it at all.” Things don’t move down a to-do list this short, they move OFF the list. Permanently.
So, probably a big “DUH” here for folks in the know, but October was a challenging month for both Dan and me, what with us perpetually negotiating our respective diseases in the midst of my “vanity” project.
The most notable problems we faced: eating and cleaning. On the average, we eat OK. We do not go hungry, which I am deeply thankful to be able to say, but what some people might eat as a treat or a convenience because time’s limited makes up a large part of a disabled person’s diet OUT OF ABSOLUTE NECESSITY.
And moving past eating to the cleaning stuff: Nothing got cleaned beyond a couple of necessary loads of laundry and the evening running of the dishwasher. Every time I look at my surroundings right now and see what needs to be done, my heart breaks and my stomach drops. I will probably have to raise money and hire help eventually, but no one’s coming in our door while Covid numbers are spiking again anyway. So I whisper that line to myself about being able to accept the things I cannot change.
Some evenings during Inktober I’d be on the verge of tears from the exhaustion saying, “Don’t make me do the GrubHub order tonight. I can’t.” And “can’t” was never an exaggeration. If my energy levels are depleted that far on a recurring basis, what manifests outwardly is an overtired 7-year-old girl in a 40-year-old woman’s body. There are breakdowns and meltdowns and outburts. These are not self-indulgent, whiny fits. These are biological things humans do when their bodies and brains “just can’t” anymore.
I imagine what I experience as a woman with disabling brain cancer is akin to a neurodivergent child being forced into an abled child’s classroom every day. The exception being that I’m generally extended a lot more grace because the “C” word is harder to sweep under the rug.
Tangent. Sorry, not sorry.
Anyway, I also knew that when I finished my last Inktober video there was going to be a really hard crash for me at the end. It was worse than I had anticipated though. So far I spent the first three days post-production (I was working 2 days ahead of the calendar the whole time) in various states of distress. It started with exhaustion, progressed to a migraine (complete with aura, numbness in my right arm, heightened noise and light sensitivity, nausea, and aphasia) and then turned into a sore throat, head congestion, and low-grade fever.
My fever broke overnight, but I feel like an absolute trash pile of skin, bones, and pajamas still today.
Because when I am that rundown, my already chemo-blown immune system is powerless to even sneeze at a mote of dust. What my pre-cancer body would have fought off virtually undetected, my post-cancer body is forced to entertain for days—sometimes weeks—at a time.
Coincidentally, this is why at-risk members of the population are absolutely disgusted by the selfishness of the anti-mask wearing crowd during the pandemic. We, people whose lives are already hanging by assorted threads of questionable strength, do not have the time or the energy for the tender care and keeping of some uneducated, overinflated ego.
Fighting cancer is equal parts maneuvering around the disease and dodging other people’s selfish bullshit. And believe me when I say that I’m not living with brain cancer AND smiling while Joe Bob McTrumpster pretends his right to spread diseases to me is more important than my health and safety.
I am not your inspirational cancer porn warrior on Sunday and someone you can spit on Monday morning.
I’m putting the world on notice: don’t make me make room for your shenanigans. If I put schooling you on my to-do list instead of, like, eating, you are not going to like it.
Ahem. Guess I had some things to get off my chest, there. But let me just sum up this entry by saying that doing a Zentangle every day this past Inktober was rewarding despite my challenges and limitations, and hearing back from people who enjoyed them gave me the strength to keep going. Thank you.
