Whew. Now that it's over, I can say November was a hard month.
HouseMate was not only infected with spores, but the side-effects of the antibiotics needed to kill them included depression and delusional thinking.
Bad timing that this came up when we'd been living together only two months! HM lives with serious & persistent mental health issues anyway, which I knew. She has a support system in place for her usual life––but the meds knocked her sideways.
She's centered again, thankgod.
We went out for happy hour last night and had a good talk about what happened and how to go on.
Being in the house every day during this crisis, I was on the front lines, which I wasn't best prepared for. We talked about things like having helpful scripts to use––and names and numbers at the ready.
I also talked about needing boundaries for myself, including time alone in the mornings to write. HM is a big ol' extrovert who I think would happily engage with people 90 percent of the time.
I'm more 50/50.
Anyway, life is more or less back to normal and I finally started preparing the girlettes for our next project:
a Christmas card.
Minnie is going to pose as The Skating Minister:
Here, Penny Cooper spots her as she practices skating in the position the Scottish Reverend Robert Walker used in the 1795 painting by Henry Raeburn:
"The pose, as he glides across the ice, looks effortless, but would have been recognised by fellow skaters as a difficult and sophisticated manoeuvre."
It's so difficult, for the first time I'm using an artificial support--a plastic stand to help Minnie hold the pose--you can just see it, but I can put snow over the base when we're photographing, and maybe photoshop the stand out. I almost never touch-up the photos, and I've only ever used props that were lying around, like sticks and rocks. But I'm not a purist-- I'm more interested in creating a scene than in manipulating photos electronically, but whatever it takes to get the desired effect is OK.
I'm also dyeing the girlette's red coat with black ink. I hesitated because it was such a pretty bright red, but they voted for the somber mood of the original.
As it turns out, the synthetic red turned a wonderful dark-velvet color, not pure black--you can see the hat drying on the far left of the plastic pan--and the white tights dyed black too. I'm very happy with the color.
Now we just need the temps to drop! We've had snow but the lake is still entirely unfrozen... I may need to resort to artificial means there too, because I am eager to get these printed and sent out!
HouseMate was not only infected with spores, but the side-effects of the antibiotics needed to kill them included depression and delusional thinking.
Bad timing that this came up when we'd been living together only two months! HM lives with serious & persistent mental health issues anyway, which I knew. She has a support system in place for her usual life––but the meds knocked her sideways.
She's centered again, thankgod.
We went out for happy hour last night and had a good talk about what happened and how to go on.
Being in the house every day during this crisis, I was on the front lines, which I wasn't best prepared for. We talked about things like having helpful scripts to use––and names and numbers at the ready.
I also talked about needing boundaries for myself, including time alone in the mornings to write. HM is a big ol' extrovert who I think would happily engage with people 90 percent of the time.
I'm more 50/50.
Anyway, life is more or less back to normal and I finally started preparing the girlettes for our next project:
a Christmas card.
Minnie is going to pose as The Skating Minister:
"The pose, as he glides across the ice, looks effortless, but would have been recognised by fellow skaters as a difficult and sophisticated manoeuvre."
It's so difficult, for the first time I'm using an artificial support--a plastic stand to help Minnie hold the pose--you can just see it, but I can put snow over the base when we're photographing, and maybe photoshop the stand out. I almost never touch-up the photos, and I've only ever used props that were lying around, like sticks and rocks. But I'm not a purist-- I'm more interested in creating a scene than in manipulating photos electronically, but whatever it takes to get the desired effect is OK.
I'm also dyeing the girlette's red coat with black ink. I hesitated because it was such a pretty bright red, but they voted for the somber mood of the original.
As it turns out, the synthetic red turned a wonderful dark-velvet color, not pure black--you can see the hat drying on the far left of the plastic pan--and the white tights dyed black too. I'm very happy with the color.
Now we just need the temps to drop! We've had snow but the lake is still entirely unfrozen... I may need to resort to artificial means there too, because I am eager to get these printed and sent out!
Living with another person always comes with its ups and downs, particularly in the beginning when you're still getting used to each other. Hopefully the rough patches are past. A former boyfriend of mine had a poster of the skating minister hanging in his bathroom!
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