Keeping My Young Self Off the Streets and Out of the Gutter

SUMMARY: Or: What creative things did I do?

Backfill: from a FB discussion July 11, 2021

A friend posted: 

"What time-consuming but creative thing did you do as a child/teen?" She gave the example of her daughter and friends creating a mystery movie, complete with dramatic cuts, etc.  And of her own childhood where she harmonized with herself using two tape players, and also created fake interviews where the answers were all lines from songs (sourcing from a phonograph with records!)

So, other than practicing my flute, taking flute lessons, practicing some more, being in the band, and sometimes playing just for the fun of it -- oh, and choir, too-- here's a quick [maybe] summary.  

(I've posted some of these photos before.)

• Drew.

  

  part of a colored-pencil picture

  
  
• Crafted things. Anything. Clay, paper, glue, beads, jewelry...)
  

• Painted or colored by numbers (mostly of dogs but also The Monkees).
• Painted and assembled models of World War I aircraft.
• Role-playing with friends; you know: cowboys and Indians  (or bad guys), superheroes, pirates, army...
  

• Art Club in junior high. (High school was too full of band, choir, speech and debate, drama club and involvement in performances (as long as that was available) and creative writing club.)
  
• Sewed.
• Wrote tiny bits of short stories. Mostly never finished any until I started making a serious effort late in high school, I think.

(In 4th  grade, got a bad grade on one paper where the assignment was to write about “if I were president“ because I went all nonsense, letting my imagination run wild as a fourth grader who wasn’t very happy with that particular class. (I never said anything about the teacher. I did say that I would do away with all schools. A long long time before I heard “hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!“) She said, "that's a bit silly, isn't it?"  I thought, well, duh... (although "duh" wasn't invented yet). Funny: after that, she became the school librarian instead of a teacher, and she was a wonderful wonderful elementary school librarian! My other teachers usually loved my writing.)

I still love doing all those things. But then, you know, photography, dog agility, blogging, facebook, ...

What time-consuming but creative thing did you do as a child/teen?

Years after, remnants of a shirt I sewed as a HS sophomore.

Ceramic trivets, jr. high

Late elementary school years -- I painted this computer, complete with little lights (or pushbuttons) and maybe blinking displays for Bad and Good?  I had actually seen a tape drive.
(The box, which Dad built for us, is not distorted; that's a trick of the angle and the lighting.)

High school I think.

'90s era

What I've mostly concentrated on in the 2000s: My photography.

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Ellen - note to self -- there's an HTML comment embedded from here XX to here xx.

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About to Be Swamped By Dog Agility, Plus Drawings

SUMMARY: My leisurely spring is coming to an end.

No more quiet, relaxing weekends at home doing calming, casual activities like frantically trying to clean up a yard that hasn't actually been guestified in a couple of years to be ready for a blackberry sorbet party (Prince sings in the background: "Blaaaackberry sorbet..."). [FYI, yes, thanks for asking, my 25-yr-old electric ice cream maker worked great!]

Summer used to be agility down time, but not no more.

• This Sunday: My club's agility fun day--agility plus potluck plus hanging out and enjoying each other's company.
• July 4 weekend: 3 days of USDAA agility
• July 10/11: Open
• July 17/18: 2 days of USDAA agility (it actually starts Friday night but my common sense finally absolved me from having to go friday night for one run).
• July 24/25: 2 days of USDAA agility.

Whew, I will be having had enough of agility for a while after that, and WOW LOOK no agility for 4 more weekends after that! How'd that happen?!

I can answer that: Because all the clubs scheduled all their USDAA-like events IN IMMEDIATE SUCCESSION starting at the end of August:

• Aug 28,29 SMART USDAA
• Sep 3,4,5,6 Bayteam USDAA
• Sep 11,12 VAST USDAA Turlock
• Sep 18,19 TRACS USDAA
• Sep 24,26 USDAA course-building clinic (if I can afford it by then)
• Oct 2,3 NAF UKI** (** UKI being USDAA-like, if I may be so bold)
• Oct 8,9,10 Haute Dawgs USDAA
• Oct 16,17 VAST CPE

and those are ONLY the trials I'd consider going to; not even mentioning the many ones that I'd not attend.

I think that I will not do all of those, but it is hard to decide which to skip! I mean, all my friends will be there!

Meanwhile, Tika and Boost are bored bored bored while I do exciting things like try to catch up on sorting all my photos, cleaning the house once a year whether it needs it or not, trying to see all the good movies while they're still in the theaters--oh yeah, and working--

So, because I always like stealing good ideas and using them to avoid doing the things that are nominally at the top of my priority list, I was reading Team Small Dog's blog, and once again TSD's talented producer who is an actual artist produced some actual drawings of her dogs in yesterday's post, and I thought, hey, I'm a writer, which makes me capable of drawing, too! (Oh, yes, I get this all the time: "I'm an engineer, but I know how to type, so that means I CAN WRITE!" and "I'm a marketing person and have my MBA and I wrote term papers in college so that means I CAN WRITE!" and "My mom loves my stories so that means I CAN WRITE!" and so obviously having any kind of skill, call it SkillA, means that you automatically also have SkillB, call it DrawingSkill in this case.) (Plus someone gave me a book "How to draw dogs" when I was a kid, likely because they saw one of my earlier drawings of dogs, and I faithfully followed all the exercises, mostly by tracing the pictures in the book.)

So I labored over drawings of the Taj MuttHall dogs for at least 3 minutes, and now in the future instead of photos I can use my extremely accurate, talented, dog-drawing skills to illustrate my tales of agility woe and exhilaration. As you can see for yourself.

I hope that no one will mistake my drawings of Tika for a mangy dwarf coyote. Poor Tika. I wonder whether she'll hold still long enough for me to trace her on a large sheet of paper?