Today I am grateful for my hero. . .Himself! Did he rescue puppies from a storm grate? Nope. Did he run into a burning building to save me? No, thank God, cuz I’d probably argue with him about schmootzing my hair first. No, he didn’t do any of the usual heroic things. He found my backpack full of artwork that we’ve been looking for since the carpeting went in!
We have searched everywhere. Under the bed. In the closets. All of the closets. In the basement. In the garage. In the Laundry room. In every hutch or cabinet. In my car (which is its own black hole). And we’ve done it not only once, but a dozen times.
I have a black draggy box that usually holds my crayons, colored pencils, markers, painting pens, gel pens and my favorite coloring books. That’s in the basement since the carpeting. But I wasn’t really searching for them specifically anyway. I was searching for a plastic package with a watercolor pad and paints because for some unknown reason I’ve decided I’d like to try doing watercolors, though why, I’m not sure.
Watercolors are difficult. I like thick paint. Watercolors barely show up when you start. . .if you’re doing it right. . .and you can’t add white later, you have to know where you want it and leave it out in the first place. Yikes! I’ve never, ever tried to do anything subtle in my life. When I’m doing an acrylic painting, I look like Pig Pen, slopping paint on the canvass with a three-inch brush I’ve used to paint walls and even getting in there with my hands and fingers. I’m very tactile! I’m not subtle. Watercolors are subtle. Oh boy!
But I knew I had that little set and for a while it whispered at me from the bowels of my house. . .then it got creepily louder and said, “Hey, remember me.”. . .and eventually it started screaming, “Find ME! NOW!” So I became obsessed. I know, shocking.
Himself, totally exhausted from listening to me and watching me tear apart various parts of the house during my search, declared Tuesday, “Look for the Art Stuff Day”. It will be a national holiday soon. I’m seeing to it.
“We have to go back and think,” he said. Oh great. What he meant was “you” have to think. My worst thing. Thinking. “Where did you have them last?”
“I’ve been thinking for weeks and I think I took all of those gel pens out of the cumbersome packaging and put them in a little case,” I said.
“That’s a start,” he wasn’t having as much fun as me. “Where did you put it?”
“No clue,” I said.
“Did we have to move them when we had to clear the house for the painting and carpet?” Himself is an engineer and tackles things systematically. I’m an artist who gets distracted when I see pretty lighting, or an interesting color and forget entirely what I am supposed to be looking for or even thinking about.
“I don’t know!” If I knew I would have found them. Does he think I’m stupid? Don’t answer that! Geeze. “I seem to remember all of that stuff being in one bag that we took to Wisconsin last year.”
“Maybe there is something near the suitcases,” he said, running to the basement and shuffling through enough bags for us to take the entire population of Lansdale around the world for three months.
“Nothing!” he shouted up the steps, then got distracted by dragons and painting little things for awhile so I could “think”. That’s his story.
When he appeared from the depths I said, “I still feel like they are in a bag we took to Wisconsin, but where is it?”
“I’m going to look upstairs,” he said, and I knew that the computer with his favorite baseball game would present another distraction so I was safe for a while.
Then I heard him moving stuff and tearing apart the upstairs storage room. I don’t even want to look in there to see the strewn debris. Soon he came downstairs carrying the blue backpack that had all of my art-play-things inside!
“Where did you find it?” I asked, way more excited than I should have been over something so silly. This was not a big problem. No one was hurt. The world order was not in jeopardy from this.
“It was shoved under the table in the storage room,” he said. “We couldn’t see it because there was a cloth thingy hanging down. Because it was dark under there it disappeared.”
That same day I did a couple of little watercolor paintings and learned just exactly how unskilled I am. I will post them in the next few days. Was that the lesson? Did I need some comeuppance?
I hope not, because I prefer to think this whole event was to make me realize I’m married to my hero. . .Himself! BING! Heartprint!