Finding my "social" voice again

Let's start over shall we?

The last time I was here was mid April! I’ve missed how art and words on social=connection. Too many things have happened since my last post, bad (my favorite aunt crossed over to heaven in early May) and good (we moved back into our home in early June after 5 months being out while they fixed it from the January house fire.) I developed DeQuervain’s tenosynovitis in my right hand (dominant) in late December and it wasn’t until I completely stopped sketching that it calmed a bit. Such a bummer.

Yesterday I went and got a steroid injection. If that doesn’t fix it, I’ll have a wee bit of surgery in 6 weeks. I went through this with my left wrist in 1998 so I pretty much know what to expect. It’s not bad really. Both the tendon and the tendon sheath are inflamed and they go in and cut the tendon sheath open which completely fixes it. About 4-6 weeks in a brace. It will be worth it if I have to do it. Praying I don’t!

In the meantime, while I wait for the cortisone to work its magic, I thought it would be fun to post some older art and the stories that go with it. Moving back in and unpacking and putting it all away, had my hands on some stuff in sketch books that I haven’t seen in ages.

Here is a little memory from million years ago when I was a whitewater kayaker. Actually I wasn’t even a whitewater kayaker back then, I was a flatwater kayaker with a flatwater boat and a very short term whitewater kayaker mentor who thought it would be a good idea to take me to a local river at flood in my flatwater boat. Haaaa! I had no idea what I was getting into since I was brand new! I swam a lot that day. Starting with this event where he slid me off the high embankment on the edge of the river and into the water:

The whole trip was like that, me in the water, him being so surprised and frustrated lol.

Thank God I was wearing a drysuit! February in NC can be chilly, especially if you’re wet. A drysuit is made of fabric that water can’t penetrate, there are flexible rubber gaskets at the ankles, wrists, and neck and a long waterproof zipper across the chest. When you were a new paddler you were often “gifted” a drysuit by someone who was upgrading to breathable Gortex. Back in the 90s old gifted drysuits like mine were not breathable. You were fear sweating in a sealed environment. Mmmmmm…yummy.

They were funny contraptions that were claustrophobic, sweaty and stinky, tight around the neck and once on, full of air. The way you got the air out was to pull open your neck gasket, squat down and whoosh:

I think the fact that I was fooling around, drawing these faces, many of which looked shocked, horrified, exhausted, and scared, tells a lot of the story of my early days:

Luckily, I quickly decided not to go the original mentor’s way of the Introverted Lone Paddler and instead found out about the Carolina Canoe Club and the weekly Friday night roll sessions at an indoor pool—Mexican food after. Thank goodness for those people, they had me in a real whitewater boat, rolling in no time, and out on my first river as a baby whitewater paddler in a few weeks. One of the best times of my life. Eventually Mom joined me, then Dad, and then I met my (eventual) husband about a year later when he was a baby paddler! 💜