Art Day: Animal Mobile Finishes

Despite the tragic events of the weekend, we forged on, and by Monday, I felt loads better and Bastian was running normal amounts of amok. I spent all of Monday furiously conquering my mountain of paperwork, which felt oh so satisfying. My paperwork included calling insurance adjusters, paying bills, preparing taxes, emailing people about volunteer work, taking inventory, reading the IRS website on closing a business very closely, calling wholesalers whose products suck, calling glass companies, calling mechanics, calling body shops, calling the Secretary of State, calling the Business Tax Gateway people thingy, and sitting on hold listening to upbeat jazz tunes in Muzak phone synth. It was a very productive Monday, all things considered. Which, considering all things, was excellent preparation on my part for the serendipitous events that followed on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning, I received a phone call from the insurance adjuster about coming to look at the car for the inspection. She was able to come today! This was especially good news as she needed to see the car before the glassman showed up early in the afternoon. It was, as I said, serendipitous. I had hoped the adjuster would call and it would all work out and it did. It was almost bizarre. She arrived, did the inspection and pulled out just as the glassman pulled in.

While the glassman repaired the window, I retired to my internet and coffee routine, whereupon opening my email I discovered many encouraging, practically miraculous things. Firstly, it turns out I do not have to pay a CPA $300 (which is especially good considering I have to pay a $500 deductible on the car). All I have to do is write to the IRS. Which secondly shot our tax return into possibly enough money to get us through the summer since my husband has no job. Finally, the gentleman I emailed would very much like to talk to me about volunteer opportunities. I could hardly believe my good luck.

With such loveliness chirping like birds all about me, I told Donna that she and the girls should definitely come over for Art Day, if they did not fear our past illness. So they did and we journeyed onward with our animal mobiles, which were a spectacular success.

These are the instructions I'd written for the project a few weeks ago. Click to enlarge. If you can't read my handwriting, from top to bottom it says "egg cup, collage, glue, paint, poofs, tail (paper, other object), fancy yarn/ribbon, beads, Finished animal egg cup mobile."
Bastian loved stringing the beads on yarn to hold between each egg cup (our "animals"). He did it so well, he ran out of string and we had to remove several beads just to tie the whole thing off.Ivy had definite plans about her lions. They were to have progressively larger and fuller manes, which were made with yellow feathers.
Donna brought the beads. Everything else was laying about our house.
Aleks had no interest in mobile making and instead elected to practice his avant garde photography. First he tried the sneak attack.
Then he just photographed interesting shapes and textures.
He tried skin, clothing, and hair.
As well as printed materials and random objects.
It snowed. I knew it would again. It did Sunday. It did Monday. It did Tuesday. Baseball season just started. It's a travesty. The kids ran outside to catch snowflakes on their tongues.
Bastian was the only one bundled to my liking, despite being still in his pajamas. I am a freeze baby and just looking at the kids without mittens makes me shiver.
Finally, our mobiles were complete. In the background, you can see our traditional Indian one, composed of turtles. In front are Ivy's lions.
Miranda used chenille craftsticks (whatever they're called) for tails and drew faces on with marker.
Bastian mainly liked the beading and has great distances between each of his egg cups, which he left unadorned.
I took mine very seriously. My heads were poofs. The eyes were metallic sequins and the tails, like Miranda's, were chenille-craft-bendy-stick-things-that-used-to-simply-be-called-pipe-cleaners.
I had nine egg cups on mine, so I took lots of photos out of crazy pride.
They really did end up looking like turtles.

This is my mean drag queen turtle. He's my favorite.