Search Results for: How to keep your husband

Jon and I both reacted, in similar, but different ways to the 2016 election.

We both decided we didn’t wanted to spend our time being angry and arguing our beliefs, so we decided to act on our beliefs instead and turn our anger to good.

Jon found good work to do supporting Refugees and older people who would be hurt by the new government policies.  He started the Army of Good, so many of you, who have given money to support people in need.

My art has become a vehicle for my actions.  I began voicing my ideas and beliefs on women’s issues even more than I had in the past.  Spreading the word of women voice,  freedom and strength though my Flying Vulva’s and other works.

Both of us went to issues that were personal to us.  And we support each others work in different ways.

Jon and I talk about our choices to act instead of argue in our latest podcast, Staying Grounded In The Trump Years.  You can listen to it here.

And you and listen to any of our Katz and Wulf On Bedlam Farm, podcasts anytime by clicking on the Podcast buttons on my blog.  It does take time and money for us to create our podcasts, so if you like them, want to and are able to,  you can donate to them by clicking on the Support my Blog  button.

Thanks for listening!

Jackie sent me a card, with a poem in it by Ursula Le Guin,  along with her payment for my How to Keep Your Husband quilt, which she bought.

I want to share the poem, with you.

It speaks to me of the fear I’ve felt in my life and my choices to go against my instincts in order to  conform and  “feel” safe. I see now that feeling of was really a trap.  A way of keeping myself from me.  Safety with a heavy price.

Looking Back   By Ursula Le Guin

Remember me before I was a heap of salt,
the laughing child who seldom did
as she was told or came when she was called,
the merry girl who became Lot’s bride,
the happy woman who loved her wicked city.
Do not remember me with pity.
I saw you plodding on ahead
into the desert of your pitiless faith.
Those springs are dry, that earth is dead.
I looked back, not forward, into death.
Forgiving rains dissolve me, and I come
still disobedient, still happy, home.

A few weeks ago I wrote about “thinking big“, not in terms of size but as a state of mind.   I wrote about not getting caught up in the things of life  that can make me a “small” person.

When I began making my “How To Keep Your Husband” quilt I was thinking big.  I didn’t think of it that way at the time, I just had an idea that I thought was a really good one and acted on it.  Unlike some of the other “big” pieces of art I’ve made, this one got its hooks in me and wouldn’t let go till it was finished.

Usually I work on a big piece a little at a time, working on smaller pieces in between.  Often these big pieces need the space and I need space in my decision-making.   And that process also works out practically, because while I’m working on the big piece, I’m also making money on the smaller pieces.

Because I dedicated two full weeks to my “How To Keep Your Husband” quilt, and haven’t sold it as quickly as I usually do, my bank account has gotten unusually low.

This is not a plea for money or for someone to buy my quilt.  That’s not why I’m writing this.

I’m writing it  because it’s the truth about a part of my life that I rarely show on my blog.  I’m writing it because it helps me to sort out the truth from my anxiety.   Because doubt, no matter where it occurs in our lives, is universal, something most humans feel from time to time and it’s too easy to lose faith.

Like so many other people, when it comes to income,  I live week to week.  I’m lucky to have a loving and supportive partner, so I don’t  have to worry about being homeless or hungry.  But my income is an important part of the our income.

This is the life I chose.

It’s not one where I get a regular paycheck or benefits.  But I do get to make the choices about how to spend my time and what I create.  That’s part of the trade-off and especially at times like this, when I get anxious about money, it’s that reality that helps keep me going.

This isn’t a lament or complaint, I don’t believe anyone owes me a living and I’m grateful for my life.  The fear is an old one, a fear I’ve always had that I can’t take care of myself.   But It’s actually  my taking responsibility for my life and decisions that gives me the determination I need to keep going.

I believe in my How To Keep Your Husband quilt.   Whether it sell in 3 days, 2 weeks or not at all, I’m  glad I made it.  My art is my voice, expressing what I’m thinking and feeling is not a luxury anymore for me, but a necessity.

And each time I get scared like this, scared about not having enough money, scared that I can’t take care of myself, it’s a chance to pull myself back.  It’s a chance to recommit myself to my art, to my life’s purpose.  I get to remember what’s really important to me and to choose not let my myself get small.

And then I get to go into my studio and make something new.

“What is your name?” I asked the quilt I made for Linda, as I tied the knots on the back of it.

But the silence was too much so I pulled up Selected Shorts on my iPhone and listened to two stories by Willa Cather.  The second story “A Wagner Matinee” was about a man whose Aunt comes to visit him after leaving Boston where she was a musician, to homestead with her husband in the midwest.

She is very old when she comes back to Boston to visit her nephew and he brings her to a Wagner concert, where she gets to hear music, other than a church chorus, for the first time since she was young.

“Soon after the tenor began the “Prize Song,” I heard a quick drawn breath and turned to my aunt. Her eyes were closed, but the tears were glistening on her cheeks, and I think, in a moment more, they were in my eyes as well. It never really died, then– the soul that can suffer so excruciatingly and so interminably; it withers to the outward eye only; like that strange moss which can lie on a dusty shelf half a century and yet, if placed in water, grows green again.”  From “A Wagner Matinee” by Willa Cather

I thought of my own life when I heard this passage about how the withering soul can be replenished by the nourishing  sustenance.  How my own soul hadn’t died, from neglect, it just became very small until I found Jon and he helped open me up to my creative self.

He was the water to my half century dusty moss.

The name for the quilt didn’t come till I hung it on the line to take a picture.  Outside in the back yard, I could get much more distance (literally) from the quilt than in my studio. And when I stood back and looked, really saw the quilt, the name popped into my head.

Secret Garden.

In the quilt I see a formal walled garden. A secret garden,like in the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett. But also the garden inside of ourselves that needs to be nourished.  The part that for some of us is so precious, we keep it hidden out of fear that if we let the world see it, it might be destroyed.

The garden in my quilt is formal and walled, but it also ripples out.  “A series of doors within doors hovering in an in-between space, beckoning to come and explore” as Lori wrote in a message to me.

It took me years to learn that my soul might survive if I kept it  hidden, but it couldn’t thrive.

I used to bake all the time.  I started when I was a teenager and didn’t stop until I got divorced.

I was in my early forties when my marriage was dissolving.  By then I could make apple, blueberry, or pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and chocolate chip cookies without looking at a recipe.

One afternoon I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies for my then-husband.  When I took them out of the oven he told me that I treat him like shit, then bake him cookies.

“Then I won’t make any more cookies,” I said to him.  And I didn’t.

But he had a point.  I had learned to use food as a way to placate and manipulate.  Our marriage was rocky and I was trying to keep the balance in the only ways I knew how. (I hadn’t learned to be direct and demand what I needed back then)  But not even a blueberry pie, with homemade crust and hand-picked berries, could have saved my marriage.

After we separated I stopped baking and did as little cooking as possible.  I even came up with a “Buy your Pie” Potholder.

I was a believer.

But when I got covid in August, I was craving something soft and sweet.   There are a couple of places nearby where I can get homemade cookies, but getting something cakey that isn’t too sweet, is harder to find.

That was back in August, but I still get those cravings.  So when I saw the recipe for muffins on the back of a bag of Bob’s Red Mill Bran that was in our kitchen cabinet, I started thinking about making them.

The recipe called for a little honey, but no sugar which meant that Jon could eat them too.  And I had all the other ingredients in the house.

I made the muffins a few weeks ago and they took care of my something soft and sweet craving.  I put most of the muffins in the freezer and took them out when I felt like one.  I shared the last one with Jon yesterday and decided to make more  Bran muffins today.

I didn’t have apple sauce this time, so I just cooked up some apples.  And I dropped the walnuts on the kitchen floor.  The dogs were good enough to help me “clean” them up.   If I find a dog hair or two in a muffin at least I know where it came from.

For some reason, we had a muffin pan hidden away in a bottom cabinet, but we don’t have a cooling rack.  So after making today’s muffins and not hating baking again, I bought a cooling rack on Amazon.

I can’t imagine making a pie, but I can see baking some muffins every so often.  It’s kind of like making soup, which I just started enjoying doing this winter.  You mix everything up together and let it cook.

As long as it doesn’t get more complicated than that, I’m okay with it.

It’s less emotionally complicated too since baking is no longer a tool for manipulating my relationships. It’s simply about being able to eat what I want.

Carol and I made a trade.   I gave her a few of my Dishes Magnet and she gave me two of her face masks.  

Because of covid and because her husband hasn’t been well, Carol and I haven’t been able to see each other lately.  The weather doesn’t help either.  Carol lives in an old farmhouse on top of a hill.  My car wouldn’t make it up her driveway for a good part of the winter.

But we keep in touch.

For years Carol was an important part of our Bedlam Farm Open Houses.  She’d show up for the whole weekend, selling her art,  meeting everyone who came and doing Batik demonstrations.

Now Carol has her work in some local galleries and sells it on her website Amity Farm Batik.  

Carol closed her Etsy Shop after Christmas, but now it’s back open.  She has her original batiks for sale, but also reproductions of her work on all kinds of clothes leggings, dresses, socks, shawls, scarves, and bags.  Also on housewares like cups, cutting boards, trivets, potholders and pillows, as well as fabric and face masks.

So if you’re shopping for something for yourself, or looking for a unique gift, visit Carol’s Website Amity Farm Batik.  Just click here. 

Or if you’d like to see Carol demonstrate how she makes her batiks, on PBS TV, just click here. 

I stitched the Corona Housewife on my Corona Kimono because I was seeing it happen to the women around me.  They were falling into the old gender roles of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids, some along with still working from home.

But it wasn’t just happening around me, it was happening all over.

And it’s happened again and again throughout history, women making strides towards independence then dealing with the backlash.  It’s a slow evolution but an evolution just the same.

I chose to draw a 1950’s housewife because I feel it’s a familiar image that speaks strongly to this phenomenon.

During WWII, American women filled the jobs that men left when they went to fight in the war.  They got to know the independence and freedom that comes with earning their own money.  But after the war, when men came back and reclaimed their jobs, women became the homemakers once again.

They were encouraged to defer to their husbands and do what it took to make them happy.  This idea was so prevalent you could find it in ads and even on women’s hankies.

I don’t believe this time it was calculated as it was in the 1950’s or that we have regressed as far. But I do see once again how women still give themselves away, subjugating themselves to others often without even being aware of it.

In times of crisis, we do what we have to in order to survive, but I did find it interesting how quickly and easily we can fall back into these old roles.

My Corona Virus Housewife Magnets are for sale in my Etsy Shop.  They are 5″x3 3/4″ (bigger than my other magnets) and are $7 + $1 shipping for one or more.  You can buy them here.