Here we are, half way through February. It’s so strange, after all these years to have no kids in the house. I like it. I loved raising my kids and it was all fun but at my age, I’m totally ready to not be a slave to the clock, the day of the week or other people’s schedules. I’m ready to concentrate on my own stuff, after all these years. I’ve been getting a lot of work done but not as much as I feel like I should.
I feel like I should be reading two books, cranking out a painting, a chapter and several posts and trained for a half marathon in addition to ramping up the number of orders I complete every week. I should be studying physics and theology and the Constitution; with lectures available on CD, I could be learning tons while I work in my office.
I’m not doing any of that stuff. I’m like the main character in Nick Hornby’s About a Boy, who thinks he should get points for signing up to serve meals at the soup kitchen even though he never actually shows up. Okay, I’m not as bad as he is; I don’t think I should get points. I just feel like I should be producing more.
I’ve been here before. When Tyler and Katie started school, I suddenly found myself with several hours a week to myself. Did I use that time productively? Yes; I made Zack.
When Zack went to preschool, I again found myself with several hours a week to myself. Did I use them to create? No, I spent the first six months of that year taking advantage of the opportunity to leave the house by myself. Then, just as I got used to the new me-time and began to use it productively, I made Josie and started all over again with the kiddie-go-round.
Many, many years ago I had a major freak out when Josie started kindergarten at the same time that Ty started his senior year of high school. My version of freaking out is to work like a fiend. That’s when I discovered that I could actually produce twice as much needlepoint as I had been.
That was over a dozen years ago. Now Josie is away at her second year at an out of state university and Ty is a father. Becoming a grandma never freaked me out. It’s awesome.
It’s been many years since I spent the hours between 3:30 and 7:00 every night chauffeuring kids back and forth to practice and games. So what have I done with that extra 17 hours a week?
Mostly played spider solitaire.
Okay, not really. No matter what my kids claim.
I play a lot more mahjong than spider these days.
I have been getting a lot done; I crank out as many canvases in a week as I did in a month when the kids were really little. Part of that is because I have more time and less distractions but most of it is because I now have 40 years of experience and I know how to paint really fast.
But it wears me out. Einstein was right; speed takes energy. And I’m far more massive than I used to be, which can’t help. So it’s frustrating that I can’t produce as much as I feel like I should be. Instead of using all this time to create, create, create, I have to use it resting, refueling and sharpening my blade.
I hope that this is just the ‘getting used to it’ phase, like running all over town while the kids were in school, just because I could was. I hope that I’ll be able to settle down, find my groove and be able to produce all that I think I should.
I have a lot of ideas that I’m excited about and I can only tackle them one at a time but little by little, things are getting done.
Meanwhile…
I’ve been on a BBC jag. After watching all three available seasons of Sherlock too many times to count, I then borrowed Foyle’s War from my folks. Loved it! I got the first 5 seasons of Midsomer Murders recently and I’m thoroughly enjoying that. Then, a friend recommended The Duchess of Duke Street. I loved it! Now, I’m halfway through The House of Eliott which is great, too.
The House of Eliott is set in London in the 1920s; it’s the story of two upper crusty sisters whose father left them penniless so they take their talent for haute couture and set up a fashion house. It’s a soap opera; nothing ever runs smoothly but the wardrobe of the show is to die for. Every character, including the seamstresses who work in the back room, sport wardrobes that make the characters on Downton Abbey look like they shop at Target.
In the show’s first season, there was a fascinating character named Penelope Maddox. She befriends the sisters and is instrumental in setting them up in their career and introducing them to her brother, Jack Maddox, who is a photographer and a very important character.
Penny Maddox is a missionary. She works in the East End of London, housing, clothing and feeding the poor. She has a heart of gold.
What makes her so interesting is that her golden heart is completely encrusted in a thick, slimy layer of self-righteous, holier than thou rage with which she assaults everyone around her, including her fellow missionaries. No one else cares enough, feels deeply enough or does anywhere near enough to please Penny.
Her best friends are trying to establish themselves in the London fashion scene but Penny never passes up an opportunity to blast all their clients as hypocrites concerned only with fripperies. It never crosses Penny’s mind that describing her best friend’s life work as ‘fripperies’ just might be a tad insulting.
Penny is very pretty but she doesn’t do her hair and she only wears old jodhpurs and boots. Because she cares so deeply about the poor, you see.
Her brother Jack is a photographer who makes his living taking portraits of the upper crust. He’s very popular because he’s good at retouching to make old biddies look ten years younger. Penny loves to tell him that his life work is a huge waste of time, that all he does is feed his client’s vanity, adding to the overall hypocrisy of society. She seems to think he’s no better than a pimp.
Jack is able to give the young Miss Eliott a job, so as to keep her and her sister out of Penny’s mission.
Later, once they’ve found their feet and established their fashion house, Penny lumps them into the same category as her brother; feeding the vanity, hypocrisy and overall horribleness of society.
The House of Eliott is able to employ a dozen or so women as they make a name for themselves. This makes no impression on Penny at all.
While Jack and the Eliott sisters are busy creating jobs, Penny is routinely attacked and assaulted by the hungry, homeless folks she’s so determined to help. What do you suppose we can infer from that*?
Eventually, Jack’s style of portraiture falls out of fashion and his business dries up. At this point, Penny shows up in his studio demanding (really; Penny doesn’t ask, she demands. It’s your duty to prove to her that you aren’t a pimple on the butt of society by doing whatever she demands of you) that he give her the funds to build a public restroom.
He tells her he’s broke.
She goes ballistic; screaming that he can’t be broke: he’s got a studio full of photographic equipment, doesn’t he??
She thinks he should sell off the tools of his trade to build a toilet for the homeless. It never occurs to her that by doing so, he’ll be one of her precious homeless in another month or two.
That’s when I realized that Penny would be unmoved by such an argument. She would consider it a better thing for her brother to be among the homeless than to support himself. Penny loves the poor so much, she wants to create lots more of them. She honestly believes that industry and by that I mean the production of anything at all is vanity and hypocrisy. Even the production of clothes is an evil waste of time unless the clothes are the barest, meanest available with no consideration for comfort, style or beauty. It’s easy to assume Penny would denigrate farmers for producing anything but wheat and rice. Who needs strawberries? Apples?? VANITY.
The relationship that work and poverty have to each other is of no interest to Penny. Anyone who has managed to forge a life of comfort, plenty or (God forbid!!) beauty, has sold their soul for vanity. She’s the perfect Socialist; she’d much prefer everyone suffer in equal squalor than that some should rise from the mud leaving others behind.
There’s a wonderful scene at a fund raiser that Jack and the Eliott sisters help Penny stage. When Penny is called upon to say a few words to the donors who have made it possible to keep her mission going for another year, she can’t help herself; she lambasts them for not doing MORE and calls them all hypocrites.
In case you haven’t figured it out, Penny thinks anyone who gives to the poor but doesn’t want to become one of them is a hypocrite.
Best of all, by the end of the season, we learn that for Penny its really not about helping the poor at all; it’s about being able to feel superior to everyone. When the mission is up and running smoothly, thanks to all the vain hypocrites who donated money, Penny whines and bitches that it’s not her project anymore.
All in all, Penny Maddox is the best depiction of a bleeding heart liberal I’ve ever seen on a TV show.
Apparently the writers had said all they could about her in the first season. In the second season, she’s gone off to be a missionary in Africa, a continent with which she would be quite pleased.
I miss her.
*Perhaps its better for people if you give them a job so they can take care of themselves than to just try to take care of them yourself? VANITY!!