Art Saves the Day
Tonight, we are ordering a pizza for dinner.
Since getting back from California, it’s been eat, sleep, work - repeat. And at this moment, I don’t have either the time or the energy to stop to make food. Poor Eric needs a break from my making madness, too, so we’re leaving tonight’s meal to the experts.
And it has been madness - looking around, it seems that I’ve taken over every flat surface in the whole house for some job or another. The coffee table? Well, it’s bezel making central. The dining room? Littered with my stonesetting tools. And don’t get me started on the absolute disaster zone that is the studio. I am deep into the holiday rush, with only a few more days set aside for fabrication before I MUST start writing listings (and trying to regain my sanity!!)
All this making has been a good distraction, though - because both of us got sick the minute we got home. Actually, it was me who succumbed to the cold first. Our flight got in Sunday afternoon and by Tuesday, my nose was a faucet. Watery eyes, fever chills, a horrible cough - you name it. Eric followed a few days behind which was good only in that it meant we weren’t both completely laid out at the same time.
The bright side to being sick, though, is that you can’t do much except sit around and wait for it to pass. And lucky for me, most metalsmithing can be accomplished while snuggled up in a blanket with a hot cup of tea at my elbow. At least that’s the way I do it. So it was easy to get back into a studio state of mind after our westerly adventure.
We’ve also been dealing with an awfully sick Ponderosa. I know I mentioned her sad tummy troubles back at the beginning of October, but what I didn’t share was that she was throwing up blood. And despite multiple vet visits and trying everything we could think of, she has continued to do so on and off ever since. Sometimes she seemed almost completely healed (like before we left for California) and then it would all turn and she’d be sick again (like right after we returned). It’s been a minefield of anxiety and guilt (what else can I do?? What am I missing?) and after almost losing Storm to a urinary blockage in August I’ve been feeling like I’m bad luck for my sweet furry friends.
For weeks, I’ve kept time by her meals and medications. Antacid a half hour before breakfast and dinner. Snack at 11. Snack at 3. An ulcer pill every eight hours (which means we haven’t slept through the night in what seems like forever). Eating would immediately settle her stomach, but there were times when she was so stomach-achey that she didn’t want to eat - so I’ve spent hours sitting on the floor trying to coax her into eating just a mouthful of food.
My one moment of pride in all of this actually came during a vet visit to discuss why the ulcer meds didn’t seem to be working. Apparently it’s a pretty awful tasting pill and we’ve had to administer it by dissolving it in warm water and then shooting it down our poor girl’s throat with a syringe. The vet asked if Ponderosa had even been allowing us to put it in her mouth - and I explained that I taught her to take it the same way I taught Cirrus to take a dewormer.
See, the thing with wild horses is that they don’t forget a bad experience. So if you unload a tube of foul-tasting dewormer the first time you put a syringe in their mouth…good luck. With Cirrus, I started with applesauce. Every day for a week I offered him a syringe full of deliciousness - which he accepted with zeal. And now, he actually reaches for the dewormer instead of pulling away (like every other horse I’ve ever met).
So with Ponderosa, we set up a system where she got a syringe full of chicken broth, then her meds, followed by a chicken broth chaser. The “yummy sandwich” made the gross middle bit ok. Having the vet tell me that that was brilliant made me feel like I wasn’t failing my pup. Which I greatly needed.
In the past few days, things finally, FINALLY, seem to have turned around. The trick? Pairing all her meds with a bland, prescription wet food. The ingredients list made me want to cry, but the whole point is that the food is nearly impossible NOT to digest.
She has been excited to eat all of her meals this week. She has energy and spunk and there’s no more puking. If we can just keep it together, just keep on this track, her ulcers should finally heal and we’ll all be able to get back to living. Oh, it sounds so sweet.
All of this to say, the work I’ve been making these past few weeks has been like comfort food. It’s been the best medicine, a balm for my worries, a way to do SOMETHING when I’ve felt hopeless. It’s all small stones and smooth edges and little details on the backs that tell stories and make the silver sing. In all the commotion I’ve been tuning towards something strong and safe - my intuition and my voice. And to see it all coming together now? It’s pure hope and pure light.
It doesn’t happen very often, but every now and then I stop making the work and it starts making me -
Strong. Brave. Focused.
Once again, art saves the day.
