Catpaw – diary of an angry cat

Well, not literally … I haven’t drawn much in the past two weeks. I’m on a migraine medication that has given me fuzzy vision when it comes to close up work.  Ah side effects, you have to love them. On the plus side, it has meant very few migraines!!!  But I haven’t been able to see a lot of detail when I am drawing… a bit frustrating because it means many of my bird heads are coming out very lopsided. The fuzziness seems to have settled down a bit so I’m going to try birding again later tomorrow after work. I have to say, I was pleased to find today, when I was examining a few sketches, that my vision seemed a lot better.

I found an amazing magazine a couple of weeks back. If you are at all interested in backyard birds, grab a copy of the first issue of Backyard Birding. It’s published by the same folks that print Wildbird Magazine. It has over 100 pages of excellent photos of birds – a virtual bird bath of pictures to sketch. It has some great info on birds too. So many fine pictures to sketch I don’t know where to start.

I took the books on birds back to the library. I checked out some in hopes of finding some good info on how to tackle bird wings, but alas, I was let down. Lots of pretty pictures, but no real solid ideas on how to actually draw the beggars. My spread out wings are still in a sorry state, and definitely not for prime time viewing. Well, not my wings … you know what I mean.

I figured I was drawing so many birds, a squirrel was needed – what feeder is complete without one of these little bandits. This is pretty much the last picture I sketched before it became a wee bit too difficult to see what I was doing with a pencil.

From Catpaw’s Art work – animals

He’s pretty good. I abandoned him thought because I was having a difficult time seeing where the shadows should be. And, if you want a giggle look closely at his legs. Yup, a double leg going on there. Hard to see I’m sure I didn’t spot it until a day or two after doing the sketch. I simply couldn’t tell where to put the shadows and lines because of the fuzziness so the poor little squirrel ended up with both legs on one side. Let’s just call him my little mutant squirrel. If I had blurred the line on his leg more, and given his chin area more definition, the leg would have appeared on his far side. Or… I could simply erase the other leg and pretend I meant to do this. The suet was just beyond me at that point and that is when I gave up for awhile.

I did this little yellow warbler the day before:

From Catpaw’s Art work – birds

My wings in flight may still be a fright, but folded wings have started to look good. I was more interested in getting his wing feathers correct than filling in a lot of detail on his body, hence his sad little hump and slight case of premature balding going on. The feathering on his head doesn’t quite match up to his body feathers, they just needed a bit of smoothing out is all.

I took a bit of advice a kind reader sent me and used an H pencil to draw a faint outline of how the wing should look and where the pattern should be. Because the pencil is so light, I didn’t have to erase it after. I took an HB pencil after that and used it to shade in the darker parts, then I went to the 2B pencil and ran along the outline of the wing and adjusted it to suite the bird better. With a very light touch, I started to fill in the pattern and then applied more pressure to get the shadow on the layers of the wing. Not bad, I’m rather pleased with the wing. I wasn’t intending to sketch the leg in, but I began to feel a bit brave. I’m going to have to spend a day or two just drawing legs and claws so I can get a better feel for them.

I’m off to various parts of the city tomorrow to help someone pick out a new laptop. Afterwards I’ll settle down somewhere and see if I can draw again. I made a lame attempt this afternoon and wasn’t completely unhappy with my work. I was able to see what I was doing, although I kept compressing the birds heads so they looked oddly mishapen. Rather peculiar when you think about it. And kind of amusing when I looked at the sketches tonight. Nothing like a bad case of the giggles to end the day with.

I’m sitting at my desk, trying to get some work done. I’m also working on a king sized migraine. I’m very annoyed with 2 things -

- the damned migraine bottle is child proofed. That translates into an unopenable bottle. It’s hard enough opening the bottle without a migraine. It’s impossible to figure out when you’re head is pounding. I took to smashing it with a cleaver in desperation. Got my pills.

Head still aches.

- second problem? The city is pretending to work on the huge trenches they made across the street just about a year ago. Under the pretense of repairing the subway, the city made two huge trenches and left them open, collecting water. The only activity we see going on over there is the pumping out of water periodically. The work was supposed to take about 2 months, and true to form, Toronto is still pissing around with it. I swear, this city spends more time on not working than finishing any assigned jobs.

This is the 3rd day the pumper truck has been over there. I hate to say it, but it looks like they are pumping water into the trenches. They weren’t filled with water on Sunday, but now … yup … filled to the brim. So now for 3 days, all I can hear from 7am till dark is the high pitched noise coming from the truck. It isn’t just loud – it’s deafening.  I  have my windows closed (thank goodness it is freezing out or I’d have to leave the windows open), but the noise is still unbearable.

To complete the picture, the city is still working on the main street. They are replacing pipes in the road – the same road they completely redid 1 year ago. All the pipes, porta pottie etc are stored on the road in front of my building, the same place the pumper truck has been parked for 3 days! The clanking and banging of the road workers adds a lovely accompaniment to the whining truck.

Double glazing and sound proofing would be nice for Christmas – maybe I could have a quiet new year.

I’ve been quite negligent in my writing the past few days. Blame it on the bizarre weather here in Toronto. We seem to ricochet from one extreme to another. It was a glorious weekend – sunshine and unseasonably warm. Where was I? In bed with a migraine that wouldn’t stop. Finally lifted yesterday. Today? Wet, chilly and miserable out there. You guessed it! No migraine. There is no justice in this world! I lost what might be the last good weekend before winter takes hold. I’m going to mutter about that all day.

To make matters worse, there is all this construction going on in the neigbourhood. Endless jackhammers and trucks. They start, in theory, at 8am. In practice they sometimes start as early as 7am. Even on Saturday I can hear them banging away.

First it was road repairs, then one new condo just down the street. They did beautiful job on the building and it adds a nice element to the area. I like it a lot.

Then just as that condo development settled down, a new one started up – and these are the cheapest, ugliest townhouse/condo’s I’ve ever seen. I watched as they were built and can’t believe how crappy the job has been. Each condo has been sold for over 1/2 a million dollars. I read their brochure and figured anyone buying these condos were being taken for a ride by the developer. The back of each condo faces right smack into an apartment building on the same lot. Each morning you can throw back your curtains and look straight into someone’s apartment. Nice. Know what rates as a technology feature? “white toggle switches and matching  plugs”. Sorry folks, the basic light switches and wall plugs, in plain white, are not technology features. They are required. Seriously, when was the last time you moved into a place and had to ask for the light switches and plugs to be installed because they were a “feature”. No, not a feature, a standard required item here in Canada.  As the summer progressed, I watched in utter horror, as the construction crew put up boards that were crooked – the outside walls showed gaps of up to 3 – 4 inches between the boards and the outer frames. It looked like some of the boards were nailed to the insulation. And when we had rain, the warping on the same walls was shocking. If I can see this from the sidewalk, how bad is it really? Latter the workers came along, threw up some pieces of wood to fill the cracks and then put some bricking over wall. Can’t you just see the problems in a few years?

That entertainment is nearly over, they are just about ready for occupation.

While this was going on, subway repairs were carried out. The huge trench is still out there. The repairs that were supposed to take a few months have now dragged into over a year. Every once in awhile someone comes along to pump water out of the trench. Usually a some ungodly hour, with a very noisy truck.

Oh and the city is ripping up the newly repaired road again. Nearly 2 weeks of jackhammering, pounding and grating. Keep in mind this is a major road here in the city. As a result, drivers are impatient and all we hear from 8am to 10am and 4pm to 6:30pm are horns and screeching brakes.

I forgot, the city has been tearing up the sidewalks in the area as well. Oh.. and the street car rails have been torn out and put in twice in less than a year – the noise from that was unbearable.

I guess I’m being cranky today.  It was a bad weekend. Now I have to go out into the rain and cold. Could be worse. I could have to do this with a migraine. Guess I should consider myself lucky. I’d rather be crabby.

I can’t explain how much I hate migraines. I’ve suffered through them since I was a child and know pretty much how bad a migraine is going to be early on. Some just feel different. Yesterday was one of them. I made it through the workday – not sure how, but I did. When I made it home I thought I was going to die. Of course I wasn’t going to. It turned into one of those excruciating episodes where you wish you could go to emergency and tell them make me better – but again, its a migraine, the meds I have eventually work. I’ve been to emerg for migraines before and I knew this wasn’t going to be that bad.

And ranking right up there, with the extreme pain, sensitivity to light, sound, smells, nausea, mind bending pressure on the temples and rather bizarre light show is people who say

“Oh I took two aspirin/whatever and my migraine went away.”

If you can say that, then you have never, ever suffered a migraine.

My next favourite saying,

“if you just got up and ate something you’d be better”

Pardon me while I lean over and wretch onto your pretty little shoes when you wave that disgusting mcanything under my nose. Food will not help.

“Try this wonderful herbal remedy. My [insert hair dresser, sales clerk, lobotomist] recommended it to me. I’m sure it will work.”

Stop recommending this stuff to me. I have no doubt a number of homeopathic remedies do work. But I am not going to take something on the recommendation of a hairdresser or anyone else who does not understand how this stuff interacts with other medications. Do you know what medications I’m currently on? No? Then don’t pretend to be my *@*&$# doctor or pharmacist. For that matter, do you know how they interact with one another? I thought not. Do me a favour… go away… far away. Did you know feverfew, one of the most recommended herbal remedies can cause a tendency to bleed – if you are on blood thinners this could be a disaster. Did you know there are also some side effects that include indigestion, abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea and nervousness? Now most people this might be quite mild, but I’m being treated for a stomach disorder so this particular remedy might again prove disastrous for me. If you aren’t aware of the potential harm you can do, go away…. far, far away………

“have you seen that head on migraine commercial?”

Oh yes… and the ass who designed the annoying, migraine inducing commercial should be taken out back and beaten severely with a capsule of his own product. Oh Sh*t… there’s that commercial again.

“I really think you should try aroma therapy. It helps me relax”

What part of ‘sensitivity to smells’ did you not understand? Relaxing is nice, but smells/scents trigger migraines for me. And no I’m not being difficult. It’s not a matter of being hard to get along with. That perfume you bathed in this morning does act as a trigger if I’m swamped by it. Sorry … nothing I can do about that. Its not just perfume that does it, almost all overwhelming odours.

“If you didn’t drink coffee or eat chocolate than you wouldn’t have this problem”

I just want to smack these people. Chocolate and coffee trigger migraines in SOME PEOPLE – read my lips – they do not affect all migraine sufferers. Stop reading this as though it were the gospel of the only trigger. Each migraine sufferer has their own set of triggers that need to be explored. I am lucky. Coffee has never been a trigger for me – I started getting migraines when I was a child, long before I had my first cup of coffee. And face it, life just wouldn’t be bearable without chocolate – again NOT A FRIGGIN TRIGGER. After 40 years of suffering, I think I’d have figured this one out. My big triggers are bright lights, flickering lights, strong odours, sudden weather shifts.  I have a set of smaller triggers but those are the primary ones. You’ve been warned – don’t mention coffee or chocolate again.

Migraines are not headaches. They are much more than that. Check out The Mayo Clinic’s site on what a migraine is:
migraines at the mayo clinic.

It has a decent write up about the signs and symptoms. Just remember my little checklist of things not to say and it may help in your survival.

Migraine, no talk, no type … not happy … crabby … complaining … whining …. pain ….

Sorry, no posts today. Bad migraine. Weather has gone from hot ‘n muggy to sunny and warm to cold ‘n rainy with 48 hours. Head feels like it is going to pop off. Bad pain. Not happy. Crawling back into bed. Tell you about the film I saw yesterday, tomorrow.