Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: amused
  • Music: LMG, "The Flu Pandemic."

Watercolor landscape, with Maine Coon.

Having been asked to provide personal notes to go with my personal list of places I knew needed to receive ARCs of Rosemary and Rue, and being the balanced, reasonable, under-achieving person that I am, I decided to slack off, and just fill in some pre-printed mad libs...and if you actually think that's true, you should really go take a look at my website. "Balanced, reasonable, and under-achieving" is about as accurate a description as "made of enchanted pumpkin pie, stapled together by magical weasels from the moon." (Actually, the latter description may be more accurate. I like pumpkin pie...) Viewing this as an excuse to acquire new art supplies (always an aspiration of mine), I promptly went to the art supply store, where I acquired...

* Two packs of watercolor greeting card blanks
* A new set of gorgeous watercolors in a cunning stack
* Two new watercolor brushes

...yes, I probably ought to seek help, but I really don't care. I am a content and comfortable addict, whose habits mostly just inconvenience my capacity to put anything away. I've spent a comfortable week composing, sketching, and painting watercolor "thank you for reading" notes to be sent off to my publisher. Since I really wanted to get them into the mail today, I spent about two hours last night doing a watercolor marathon as I finished off the detailing on the various cards.

Enter Alice.

Alice loves water. Watercolors are, surprisingly enough, largely based on what? On water. So Alice thinks that me doing watercolors is awesome. So awesome, in fact, that she really wants to help. Guess what doesn't actually help me do fine detail watercolors? Wow. Good guess.

Step one, set up watercolor station. Take brushes away from Alice.
Step two, start working. Discover that Alice is drinking the water I use to clean my brushes. Take water away from Alice.
Step three, clean brushes. Discover that Alice is now drinking the purple paint. Take paint away from Alice.
Step four, reassure self that yes, this is non-toxic paint.
Step five, discover that Alice is now licking the paint off one of the envelopes. Take envelope away from Alice.
Step six, put Alice off the couch.
Step seven, put Alice off the couch.
Step eight, give up and let her drink the damn paint water if she really wants to. At least she's not drinking the actual paint.
Step nine, discover that Alice is now a blue classic tabby and purple and orange and green.
Step ten, put everything away on a very high shelf, resolve never to work in oil paints.

My cards are done, and you can barely tell how much "help" I got. And since the paint is non-toxic and Lilly loves bathing Alice (whether she needs it or not), everything is basically back to normal. Except, perhaps, my nerves.
Tags: alice, art, being productive, busy busy busy
  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    switch
    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    Help
  • 61 comments
...go 3 levels up... Expand

mariadkins

April 30 2009, 17:30:02 UTC 8 years ago

She's got that whole "solid to a liquid" thing down pat, too. She was thoroughly entrenched on that paper until I opened a packet of her favorite tuna...

scholarinexile

April 30 2009, 18:48:35 UTC 8 years ago Edited:  April 30 2009, 18:49:09 UTC

Mine can do that even when they're unconscious. If I open a can of Friskies when they're napping, they'll reflexively charge into the kitchen still mostly asleep, and then stand there blinking for a moment, wondering how the hell they got there, until the smell of the cat food catches up with their brains.

mariadkins

April 30 2009, 22:32:28 UTC 8 years ago

Yeah, it's a cat thing.