(my “stylized” kitchen for sketch up - hank and i are in there for scale!)

the best way i can describe the last three months is humbling… because i’d had such a slow spring work-wise, due to the pandemic, i decided to enroll in a few classes (three!) to bump up and fill in holes in my design knowledge. two of the courses were technical and between them i learned the adobe suite (illustrator, in design, photoshop), sketch up and autocad. i cannot emphasize enough how far out of my wheelhouse these programs are… i am probably the last person on the planet who still uses a paper agenda to keep track of my schedule and when we have daylight savings my car clock is an hour off for six months because i have no idea how to change it. a few times i have given my first husband a ride when the clock was wrong and he has modified it, which causes me to show up either an hour early or an hour late to places because i have taught myself to adjust for it. 

autocad is the program used for drawing architectural plans and there are two “modes” in it: model space, which looks like outer space - all black- and goes on for infinity. model space freaks me out because drawings can literally get lost in space - which DID happen to me once and it even took my teacher a long time to zoom out past our solar system and find a tiny little speck that turned out to be my construction drawing. i have no idea how it got out there but i am pretty sure we whizzed by the millennium falcon on our way to find it…chewbacca gave me a wave. the other mode is paper space, which looks like an actual piece of paper. i am more comfortable in this mode because it feels more tangible and i love paper. for both of these modes there are “layers” that you use to organize your drawings… your plumbing goes on one layer, your walls go on another layer, etc. theoretically, i like the concept of the layers because i like when things are organized, but it is very easy to lose part of a drawing because you accidentally put it on the wrong layer. (my girlfriend, anne marie, who had to give me lots of extra tutoring - she is a very talented architect - taught me this command called “match properties” where you can easily match a line or object to its other friends and get it on the right layer - this is definitely my favorite command.) i DID lose an important part of my drawing once and it also took my teacher a long time to find it on a random layer. (i am pretty sure i was an extra challenge for her!) 

(my construction drawings in “model space” - ALL of the layers are on)

(not only was my drawing out in space, it went back in time too!)

(my lighting plan in “paper space”)

and then there are the “viewports” which are the ways you can see your drawings. your viewport can either be in model space or in paper space and to make things extra confusing (and TERRIFYING) your computer screen can LOOK like you are in paper space but you are really in model space, which you only know because there is a little message up in the corner. when this happens you can inadvertently make changes to your drawing that you don’t intend or move it somewhere you don’t want it to be. of course i did this about a bazillion times. your viewports are supposed to be on the “def points” layer (i am not sure what this stands for) and my teacher said this in EVERY lecture and wrote it in feedback on ALL of my drawings but for some reason this did not register with me until about week eleven. i was even making special layers for my viewports which she probably found a little maddening. 

for my auto cad class we had to create a series of construction drawings: the “as-builts,” which are just that - the building as it is, the “demo plan” - what you intend to knock down, the “construction plan” - how it is going to be redesigned and built, the “RCP” - where all the lights and electrical elements will go, the “finish plan” which indicates the paint, flooring, tile, etc. choices, the “furniture plan” which shows where all the furniture will be placed and then a multitude of “elevations” that show various walls as you face them, rather than an overhead view, drawings that detail how certain things should be built and tons of legends and schedules articulating specific appliances, plumbing fixtures, lights, finishes, etc. it was an ENORMOUS amount of work and my learning curve was STEEP. the week we were doing our demo and construction plans i had put in about five hours of work on mine when my laptop just froze and i got that horrible, spinning, rainbow circle that signals you are fucked. after spending a lot of time on the phone with apple care it became clear that i not only lost my work (i am now an obsessive saver) but it would probably happen again as my laptop just did not have the power to handle all of these new programs. thankfully, my autocad teacher gave me an extension that week and i was able to buy a new computer with more “ram” and “tetra bites” or something. (truth be told, even five hours into my assignment i was only about 25% done which shows you how slowly and inefficiently i was working.) anne marie once again came to my rescue. we sat in her garden for several hours (and it was FREEZING) as she generously helped me finish my drawings. by the end of our working session our fingers were purple and we were using flashlights because it had gotten dark. AM had to take a hot bath to try and stave off the hypothermia and i went directly home and got under a mountain of blankets. anyway - THAT’S how good a friend she is. (a few days later she left on a LONG road trip - i’m pretty sure it was already planned so probably just a bonus for her that i wouldn’t be able freeze her to death with any more panic autocad tutoring… we DID have a couple more over zoom though!) 

thanksgiving week we didn’t have class and i spent four solid days on autocad cleaning up my drawings and getting all the viewports on the def points. i finally felt like i had a reasonable grasp of the program and was pretty proud of myself. but somehow during our last class it came out that you can have more than one viewport on a single drawing… i had to unmute myself so i could holler into the zoom: “WHATTT????” once again my mind was blown and my confidence shattered. both my teacher and her assistant tried to explain it to me in the time we had remaining but i could only shake my head, “this is just TOO MUCH for me to process right now…” i am waiting for anne marie to get back from her road trip.

in addition to autocad, i was also taking sketch up. in sketch up you make 3 D drawings that end up looking like a dollhouse. this program is a lot of fun, but also super challenging for me. i learned that if you don’t draw your walls perfectly straight from the beginning everything going forward will be wonky. i got a “C” on my drawing one week because i just couldn’t make the holes for my doors and windows. my grade was totally fair given the fact that i only made the walls AND they were crooked, but still upsetting to me. (i am not particularly competitive about most stuff, but i remembered that i am a competitive student, at least with myself.) after you create the basic structure in sketch up you go to a big “warehouse” where you look for all the fixtures, furniture and accessories you need for your house. these are called “components” and people who are VERY good at sketch up create them and leave them for you in the warehouse. the components ALSO take up a lot of space and energy so i was getting the spinning rainbow circle a lot, which was really unnerving and reinforced my need for a new laptop. 

one evening i was trying to put the windows in my house - there were only six, but i’d already spent nearly two hours doing it and only two were in. theo sat down next to me to work on his essay (he had to read “the plague” by camus for his english class. i understand the relevance but HAY SEUS we are living through a plague right now - how about something a little lighter? i frequently read what he has to read so we can discuss it, but i couldn’t stomach this book and ordered the cliff notes on amazon instead… the descriptions of the boils and and bloody stuff were just too much for me - i could NEVER be a doctor. * i didn’t show theo the cliff notes until he’d properly read the book himself.) at some point he casually looked over at my screen and said, “mom - i think you need to pull the windows by that green dot in the corner.” “WHATTT????” he was right and i placed the rest of my windows in about ten minutes. humbling.

later that week i was sitting with lucy because she wanted to show me the house she designed in this game she plays incessantly called “roblox.” as she was taking me through the interior i realized that she has been playing sketch up. and she is MUCH faster and better at it than me. there WERE some disconcerting surprises in the house… for example, she has a BABY! she never told me anything about this - i’m wondering if Mtv is planning on doing a  PRE teen mom show i can get her on… i asked her if she had a husband or boyfriend who is helping with the baby, but she said, “NO!” she is single mom. that was a lot to take in. also, she can drive. she has a little car and we got in it to go visit her girlfriend. she is NOT a very good driver… she was all up on the curbs and even on some lawns. and at one point her baby just jumped out of the car and ran away. “lucy - didn’t you put her in a car seat?? that’s dangerous!” she just shrugged - clearly she is not really ready for the responsibility of parenting and i am thinking i should move into that house to help out.

(my living room in sketch up)

(lu’s living room in roblox … i would NOT have put a white sofa in there with that wild baby)

(my kitchen in sketch up)

(lucy’s kitchen in roblox)

(she designed a bedroom for herself with BUNK BEDS and she has a BABY… her room IS pretty chic though)

(the baby isn’t in here because she ran away…)

(LOOK what i learned in photo shop - i’ve already done the marketing for lucy’s new show!)

(reckless lucy just driving up on someone’s lawn)

lu and i did compare notes on making houses in sketch up vs. roblox. there are some similarities… both of us inadvertently lost our floors. it took me a while to realize mine was gone because i had light wood flooring and underneath the sketch up house is just tan infinity. it was difficult to reinstall and i was worried that my furniture would all fall out, but thankfully it didn’t. many things are trickier in sketch up … more than once i thought i had put something on the counter or a shelf and later realized that it was just floating. and sometimes i would lose something all together. i tried to put some onions in a basket in the kitchen and couldn’t find them anywhere. finally i looked out the window and they were HUGE and in the back yard. it took a long time to scale them back to the right size. i also found an extra teakettle poking out of an exterior wall and a painting inside the living room wall. but the most frustrating (and HEARTSTOPPING!) part of sketch up is when all of sudden it looks like there’s been an earthquake and your walls are all sideways. i must be using some command incorrectly (and frequently) for this to happen. i asked my teacher if there is a way to “freeze” your walls once they are up so this can’t occur but apparently there isn’t. i think this is a huge flaw in the program. but maybe it doesn’t matter because i think i am just going to hire lucy to make renderings for my clients in roblox. in exchange, i will take care of that adventurous baby.

(my onions - they look like something out of james and the giant peach)

obviously, these classes were extremely challenging for me and took A LOT of time so something had to give… pretty much everything had to give. i stopped meeting with my writing group, i backed out of my weekly mahjong games, i didn’t log on for my high school zoom cocktails, i totally stopped cooking - i am not exaggerating when i say the sole dinner i made for my children over the past three months was thanksgiving… i DID soldier on with breakfast but many mornings i couldn’t even get the eggs scrambled and they had eggos or honey nut cheerios instead - door dash provided the rest of our meals. (boulders - hand’s down our favorite delivery was from daikon - a local bahn mi shop. the food is so fresh and yummy!) i mostly stopped wearing real clothes (lucy saw me putting on jeans one morning - i had a meeting - and she started CLAPPING! her enthusiasm quickly turned to concern when she saw me struggling to pull them up. “mama - can you get them on?” she worried. “i think so… they DO have stretch!” i said. “but are they comfortable?” she asked. “well… tomorrow they will be when they are a little stretched out.” this was a ridiculous statement of course, because i would definitely be stripping them off as soon as my meeting was over - i would wear them for two hours max! i am amazed now at my pre pandemic strength and fortitude when i used to wear jeans ALL DAY!) my bathing also became a little too infrequent. one morning lucy came downstairs, looked me up and down still wearing yesterday’s sweatpants and said, “mama! you have GOT to take a shower.” this coming from a girl who usually refers to hygeine as “busywork.” i even stopped cleaning my house so compulsively (except vacuuming because i LOVE doing that and it calms me down) and i just piled all the garbage up in the back hall. by the time i would remember it i just couldn’t face traipsing through the snowy yard in the dark so i was a regular 

“sarah cynthia sylvia stout would not take the garbage out…”

shel silverstein, where the sidewalk ends

finally theo couldn’t take it anymore and enlisted my first husband to help - they had to make SEVERAL trips. i’m not going to lie - it was GROSS! we had to spray down the back hall with clorox to overpower the smell that i was somehow ignoring. 

(this is my favorite daikon order!)

and of course, i was not exercising. unlike most boulders, i am not overly interested in this activity and i do best when someone is telling me what to do. it’s been hard for me since my bar studio closed. my girlfriend steph was trying to teach me how to hike. we went up the mountain behind her house and then we saw a giant WOLF! (steph thinks it was a coyote, but i have read “little red riding hood” a million times so i know what i’m talking about. plus i got a picture of it so you can decide for yourselves.) 

(here is my photo of the wolf… one hiker got dangerously close to him!)

(this is steph’s photo… she was MUCH further away so you can’t see the vicious detail as well)

but i let this wane too… it started when theo had to have oral surgery and we weren’t supposed to leave him alone in case his recovery went awry. i stayed vigilant and bought him a lot of pudding (which i had to buy twice because i ate the first batch before the surgery even happened.) i have never thought of myself as a “stress eater” but maybe i’ve developed that. i polished off 80% of lucy’s halloween candy by 10 am on election day. she was NOT best pleased about that… thank goodness i don’t like swedish fish - those are her favorite. anyway, it’s fair to say i’m a bit “softer” all around. one benefit is that i finally have some dolly partons… well they are really more like minnie mouses but i am practically bursting out of my cat and jack sport tops and may have to move up to the pre teen training section. or maybe i can stop eating so much pudding. regardless, i am so relieved my classes are over (i DID learn so much but obviously my life was totally out of balance) and i can’t wait to get things back in order. i really got behind on all things christmas. by the time i got around to making cookies, the markets were all cleaned out of powdered sugar, regular flour and food coloring. boulders - i see you… pre pandemic you loved to share how you only use hand ground flax flour and just a dabble of agave and herbs you collect yourself while on a hike, but EVERY time we get bad news about the corona numbers you buy out MY bleached flour and crack-like refined sugar and poisonous food dye. i went to THREE safeways before realizing i would have to settle for this weird, organic food color (that is meant for YOU) and is made from berries and sunflowers and doesn’t even come in green. the “red” is actually fuschia and no matter how much i tried to create a soft pink for my angels, their faces looked like they’d just come from an intense peel. 

(one of my poor recovering angels)

normally on my birthday i splurge on a pretty dress for myself, which IS a little silly because i have far more dresses than events to wear them to, even pre pandemic, as boulder is a very casual town. this year i was very practical and gave myself new sweatpants… actually, sweatSUITS …i would fit right in at a florida retirement home. i wore my gray birthday set to my appointment with my colorist liz. she is super kind, but very direct -  she’s a jersey girl after all, and she helped me see that they should only be worn at home. the knees stick out way farther than where my knees actually are and i can’t even explain what’s happening in the bum area. so i will NOT try to pass my sweatsuits off as real clothes and start using them to exercise (or at least walk) in the new year. that is my primary resolution. i just KNOW 2021 is going to be so much better… HAPPY, HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! x0x0x