Thursday, Jul. 29, 2021 - 11:04 p.m.

We’re leaving tomorrow. Have not begun packing. How long could it take? Haha.

Went back to the treetop adventure course with the kids this morning. Q went in front this time so she wouldn’t be stuck behind E. She went down the zip line this time like a champ. No hesitation. So did E. U still couldn’t do it. I think it had turned into a demand for him, he didn’t seem afraid. Just… stuck.

Then Q and E tried the next round of the course, which was a level up in difficulty, and they both sort of freaked out at the very beginning. M ended up having a little meltdown.

J said his mom was like, “She’s just wailing!” And he was like, yeah, that’s what an autistic meltdown looks like. And she’s like, “I thought we were past that!”

So yeah, anyway. She actually calmed down pretty quickly. I was able to talk to her a little when she was winding down. I told her I was proud of her for how she had just gone down the zip line when last time she hadn’t been able to. I think she liked that I said that.

Anyway also since we’ve been here, U went from not knowing how to float in the pool to jumping off the diving board and swimming across. I’ll call that an unschooling success story, an achievement all his own.

So that was good.

I am almost done with this shirt I’ve been embroidering. I am compiling other bits of text that I would consider embroidering onto shirts as well. I fantasize about adding some little touch that makes them perfect and stupendous (it does not involve sequins), I fantasize about doing calligraphy in embroidery which is freer than that of samplers, more like real calligraphy rather than embroidered typeface. And then I would sell the shirts and people would buy them. It would be a thing.

I talk myself out of it in these ways: pretty much everyone else in the world is better at embroidery than me. These are very humble works, and I’m not even using my own words. I am using other people’s words. People will not like that. (Pretty much all samplers are other people’s words but let’s set that aside for now). Basically no one would like this.

What a crock. And man I see stuff every day that I’m like, “this is a thing, they have made it a thing by sheer persistence and it isn’t even that great” but everyone’s like “WOW” and so if I just post stuff like “HEY LOOK AT THIS AMAZING THING I MADE” persistently enough, people will be like WOW eventually. No, I’m convinced that’s how it works. Shhhhh.

Gotta finish my transcription. It’s an overview of the phd application process for their school of art and design and they almost have me convinced that I should get a Masters in art, maybe for those dick pics I print out like a Pictorialist (recall my essay on “vernacular photography, pictorialism, and the elevation of the obscene”, an artistic research into the philosophical question of whether pornography can be art), but then I remember that I would rather set my hair on fire than ever be in an academic program again, for anything.

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