"Changes" - Self Portrait

"Changes" - Self Portrait - Vanessa Victoria Kilmer 20231003
Metallic Acrylic Pouring Paint on Strathmore Mixed Media Paper 184#
9" x 12", done without cleaning the brush or letting it dry between colors

  In his art class this semester, 

my grandson was studying the portraits done by 

the contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley, 

the man who painted the official portrait of 

President Barrack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

His signature style involves the use of repetitive patterns

 in the backgrounds of his portraits.

Whenever my grandson has an art piece to do, 

we do the assignment together. 

It's rather challenging for him because he is colorblind 

and that frustrates him immensely.

So part of what I try to show him 

is adjusting for these things.

I have dyslexia and dysnomia,

only discovered when I was in my thirties.

I learned my own ways to compensate for both

from the moment I became interested in books at the age of two,

The Sky is Falling

* comments closed on journal posts *

Snow. We have a snow storm bearing down on us again. This one may even produce the amount of snow forecast. Previous storms were nothing to us. It’s 07.24. The clouds are heavy and large flakes are falling. So far the ground is just wet.

QV is sick. Has been since Saturday morning. He’s not a very good sick person. He doesn’t listen. I have to browbeat him into taking his Airborne and cold medicine to stop him coughing and help him sleep. He felt better Sunday afternoon and actually ate something. I wonder if I brought something home from the hospital. I have a sore throat but mine didn’t start until during the night last night while I was sleeping. I’m going to say he brought something home. It’s all QV’s fault.

Saturday night around 22.30, my father couldn’t pee. His bladder got distended and he was in pain. My parents did not call us. At 04.30, my father drove himself and my mother to the emergency room. They called my brother at 06.00. Oh, their heater went out during the night, too. My father got a new catheter. Doctors said there was a clot in his urethra. They all went home. My brother got them settled, had the heater man out, heater fixed. Then my father had two “accidents” so my brother feared that he had another clot. Back to the emergency room. The balloon around the catheter was only inflated one inch when it should have been inflated three inches. I’ll be calling my parents in about a half hour to see how they made out.

I drove myself crazy last week trying to think of the word “routine.” I have dysnomia, so I often have trouble thinking of the exact word I want for things. It’s why I don’t go on Jeopardy. Between that and my dyslexia, writing can be a challenge and time consuming. The dysnomia is another reason I am not a very good conversationalist. People get bored when every other word is thingamajig or doodgmahicky. Did you know that they are actual words? Spell check recognized them.

My routine got knock completely out of whack last week and I was not happy. I just got done setting it up and had plans to follow it to some successful writing last Monday. Instead, I spent the week in and out of the hospital and doctor's office. Maybe I can start over today.

At the bottom of my posts, I had the star rating system. Someone gave my post entitled “RRRrrrrrrrr!” one star which means “I hate it.” I was so obsessed over that one star all weekend. I couldn’t figure out who gave it or why they hated it. Because I couldn’t get it out of my mind, I took the star rating out. It didn’t seem very helpful and I refuse to allow myself to be tortured by someone in a hood without the balls to say they didn’t like it to my face.

I will never go to the grocery store on a Sunday again. Those people were vicious. The place was packed and they all acted like they were the only ones in the store.

I think it’s time to re-read the Harry Potter series. I do it every couple of years. It’s like visiting a friend you know so well you don’t have to speak. You look each other in the eyes and laugh at a shared joke.