Rocky!

 I've noticed a odd thing.
I am a maker.  Which means I make stuff.  I always have been; there's usually an ongoing project or two, sometimes being set aside and being revived later.

The odd thing is that, important as it is to me, it seems to be the one thing I rarely write about.  Sometimes I post a finished item, but that's about it.  Of course, in theory one should keep notes, or journal, or somehow document a project.  I've tried - I've got a few handwritten journals started, and abandoned.  I tried writing a separate project blog -haven't posted there in almost a year.  I tried an app called Milanote, which is pretty cool because you can import pictures and color pallets and make notes.  I haven't touched that either.

I was pondering about that, and I realize that I write *a lot* - this blog, my scribbled legal pads with Wordle games, random thoughts, to-do lists.  But when I'm making something - head working with hands, thinking, testing - that's when I go non-verbal. It's a different part of my brain.  And one that doesn't want to be corralled into words.

So just a few words about the latest puppet.  Like a few hundred thousand other people, I've fallen in love with Rocky, the alien from Project Hail Mary.  Which happens to be a puppet.  So I'm making a puppet of a puppet.  My challenge - I'm doing it out of Amazon boxes and packing paper.

It's been different from my other puppets.  Usually they just come out of my imagination.  They come to life and develop a personality about the time you put in the eyes.  But in this case I'm making a known character, already with a personality, who doesn't have eyes or even a face.

Step one:  Basic structure of cardboard, with some pool noodle details -body and one arm pictured here.

Step two:  cover with packing paper, which helps a lot.

All five arms are made, and he's been put together.  Next step: painting.  Then string him up.  But it's slow going.  I don't work on it at all on my museum days.  In theory, I get home by 1:00 or 2:00, which should give me the afternoon free.  In practice - after being on my feet 4-5 hours, most of which is outside (heat index 100), I'm knackered.  I come home, shower, eat, and crash.

Side note - I have developed a bit of an obsession with James Ortiz, the head puppeteer and Rocky's voice.  To be more specific, I have a bit of an obsession with his hair.

Random other stuff.  The new little owlet is settling in.  I love that he still has his fuzzy baby feathers on his head - so I got him to look down a little for a good picture.

I've been feeling oddly OK for June.  I'm waiting for the familiar sense of despair that I get every year to set in.  I think of June as being the last Innocent Month.  The last month that we didn't know anything was wrong.  My only June 2019 blog post was me holding a fuzzy baby vulture, with no idea of what was shortly to come.  It was in June that Bob went in for his ordinary annual exam, and things were anything but ordinary.

So I tend to stress out in June (last year I had to go on the antidepressants, but I had also lost Stumbles).  My usual coping mechanism is to get outside - but June is when the heat first hits, and I feel trapped.   I'm waiting for that now-familiar wave of feeling helpless in the face of what is coming -but it hasn't happened.  The early summer heat is here (temps in the 90s, heat indices 100+) and I'm tolerating it oddly well.  The other day I was on the way to the cottage to work on the puppet, but I looked over and realized that I couldn't see my lemon tree.  It was surrounded by the feral bamboo, and covered in the equally ambitious Virginia creeper.   So instead of the puppet I ended up grabbing various clippers and an hour later my tree was free.  I was a sweaty mess, of course, but I felt fine.  

Which, in June, is a bit weird.