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~ Because demented people need love, too.

The Perks of Being an Artist

Tag Archives: humor

To The Guy In Line At Security In Front Of Me

10 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by emilypageart in humor, sip and paint studio, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

awkward conversation, cloaca, humor, i need my coffee, medication, security line conversations, sip and paint studio, things not to say, things to not say out loud

I just got back from a trip to NJ to help a new paint and sip studio open (near Newark in Totowa for anyone who lives in that area http://www.aspirepaintstudio.com/), and am exhausted, but had to tell you about a really weird conversation I had with the guy in line at security in front of me. Keep in mind, I was bleary-eyed and just barely functional, and he decided I looked like the perfect person to chat with, and I really wasn’t feeling it. I couldn’t tell if he was just bored and trying to pass the time, or if he was hitting on me, or what, but I’m not a morning person and I hadn’t had time to stop for coffee and couldn’t have taken it through security anyway and please just leave me alooooooone! Note that I’m avoiding eye contact and giving one word answers whenever possible:

Him: Where you traveling to?

Me: North Carolina.

Him: Why?

Me: It’s home.

Him: Why were you here?

Me: Business.

Him: What do you do?

Me: Artist.

Him: Wow! That’s so cool! Do you make a living at it?

Me: Yup.

Him: Do you live in a house or an apartment?

Me: House.

Him: A big house?

Me: No.

Him: Wow, so you’re really living a charmed life, huh?

Me: I guess.

Him: Hmmm, so do you have any troubles, or if everything perfect?

Me: Everyone has troubles.

Him: How do you deal with them?

Me: Medication.

Him: What medication are you on?

Me: <finally making eye contact> Dude. Am I going to tell you what medication I take?

Him: <nervous laugh> I’m not, like, asking for some of it. Just curious.

Me: No.

Him: But –

Me: No.

WTF? On what planet is it acceptable behavior to ask a stranger what medications they’re on? And how do you not pick up on the fact that I am SO not into this conversation?

To be fair though, there was a bird flying through the airport, and a few minutes later I said, out loud, “That bird has a hole in it’s butt.” No idea why I said it out loud, but the guy said, “Um, all birds have holes in their butts. They have butt holes.” To which I said, “Technically, they have cloacas. But that’s not what I meant. It was missing some tail feathers so I could see daylight through it. I don’t know why I’m saying this out loud…must be my medication.” And then he was off and running and talking to me again, and it was totally my fault because I had spoken out loud to no one in particular. Sigh.

Paris - Tuilleries 8 cropped

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KITTEHS!!!!!

30 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by emilypageart in cats, gratitude, humor, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

angry cats, black cat, cat rescue, cats, Dizzy Gillespie, happy cats, hissing and growling, humor, Keely Smith, kitteh, kittens, Madeleine Peyroux, new cat, orange cat, pitten, silly cats

So, I’ve been a little…gone, lately. I’ve had everything block – writer’s block, painter’s block, cleaner’s block, balancing-your-checkbook block, eating-healthy-foods block, etc. I have been very good at committing to snuggling with the cats and watching too much TV, though. So there’s that. Things with work have been very up-in-the-air and it’s kind of paralyzing me. I’ll explain soon, but for now, I thought I’d at least pop in and give the internet something it doesn’t have nearly enough *cough* of: CATS.

I suffer from a snuggle deficiency. It’s a serious medical condition and they have not managed to make snuggles in pill form yet, and we all know that fresh is best, so I decided I needed to get another cat. Let’s just all agree that, were my husband to die, I would not date ever again. I’d just get eleventy-twelve more cats. This seems totally reasonable. Luckily, S wasn’t against getting another kitty, so he agreed to go out and look since it’s kitten season and all. He’s such an enabler. Meanwhile, my mom was busy screamtexting me that I was insane. I chose to pretend she was wrong and instead texted pics of adorable kittens like these guys that I found at our local rescues:

20170611_141240

Please ignore the cat ass in the background.

20170611_154755

I mean, really.

But I decided to go home and think about it a little more since my favorite shelter wasn’t open the day we went out to look. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t want to get a kitten. Kittens are evil. They lure you in with their cuteness, but you don’t know what their true personality will be until they’re at least a year or so old. So they might be all adorable and shit those first few months, but then they turn into the antichrist, or worse – they turn into my little pitten, Dizzy, who is incapable of snuggling without licking your hand incessantly while insisting that you must not in any way do anything that could be vaguely construed as holding him.

We got Keely when she was about a year old, which was perfect because we knew what her real personality was. The downside to her being about 2 years old now, though, is that her most ardent desire is still to play in between snuggles. Dizzy, being about 4 years old, has outgrown that urge. So there were a lot of battles between the 2 that ended with Dizzy yeowling and trying desperately to get out of Keely’s grasp.

So, while we wanted a cat that wasn’t quite a kitten any longer, we also wanted a cat who was close in age to Keely. Enter Madeleine, or Maddie, if you’re tight with her like we are. Like all of our cats, she is named after a jazz singer/musician (in this case, Madeleine Peyroux). We went to the shelter that had been closed the first day that we looked and she immediately claimed us. She is, without a doubt, the happiest little munchkitten you’ll ever meet.

20170612_150929

Within minutes, she’d snuggled up against me, purring furiously.

20170612_151256

Her tail matches her paws. She’s THAT color coordinated. Watch out, Pinterest.

20170612_151355.jpg

She’s got penny-colored eyes. I’m taking it as tacit approval from my dad. #penniesfornick

At a whopping 6 pounds, she’s teeny tiny. Based on her teeth, the vet says she’s over a year old. Based on her size, energy, mouthiness, and farts, I’d wager she’s a little younger. Those farts are no joke. I’m hoping the vet is right, though, because if she is that old, she won’t grow anymore and we’ll have a perma-kitten. Yessssss. So now we have small, medium, and large kittehs in Halloween colors (and since S’s favorite holiday is Halloween, he’s thrilled).

20170620_162321

She’s actually much smaller than Keely, but it’s hard to tell in this pic, in part, I think, because she has a reeeeaaaaaaally long tail.

When I first brought her home, Maddie and Dizzy bumped noses and were basically like, “You cool? I’m cool. We cool.” Keely, on the other hand, WAS NOT HAVING IT. She was basically like, “Oh, hell no.” She immediately started growling and hissing and carrying on like someone had finished off the last of the bourbon that she’d been dreaming about all day at work (wait, is it just me that dreams about bourbon all day?). After freaking out for a couple hours and wandering around the house hissing at everything that moved or didn’t move or existed or didn’t exist, she ended up hiding behind the curtains.

20170613_164240-e1498856155951.jpg

She doesn’t seem to understand the concept of hiding, as she chose to hide behind the SHEER curtains.

When S came home, she raced over to the front door and started meowing at him, and we were pretty sure she was saying, ” Dad, you will not believe what Mom brought home today. There’s this thing prancing around my house and thinking she’s hot shit with her color coordinated tail and paws. She is not hot shit. I am hot shit. You need to do something about this, STAT. Oh, and the little brat drank all the bourbon, too.” But then she saw him pet Maddie and lost her damn mind all over again. She spent the bulk of the next week with both resting bitchface and active bitchface permanently affixed to her head, growling and hissing at all of us (and the ghosts that apparently live in the house?).

After figuring out that Maddie had no desire to become the new queen, Keely finally conceded that maybe the world hadn’t ended, and maybe it might be fun to play with the cat that wouldn’t scream bloody murder at her every time she chased her up the stairs, and maybe it wasn’t the end of the world to snuggle up to her mom even though the little cat was also snuggled up to her. Oh, and maybe she would enjoy the fact that her parents were giving her more tuna juice than usual in their efforts to make everyone settle in.

So now my phone is full of pictures like this that I text to my mom to prove that this was, in fact, the best decision ever:

20170619_214718
20170626_184737
20170626_202640
20170629_021429

And now Dizzy can enjoy getting an occasional break from Keely’s playfulness:

20170630_134940

Yaaaaaasssss, bitchez.

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Ultimate Woman

10 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by emilypageart in health, humor, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

health, humor, mental illness, silliness, silly, ultimate woman, vitamins

Sometimes I wonder about my own mental health. Why do I do these things?

ultimate woman

***********************************************************************

Thanks so much for reading my ridiculous thoughts! If you’d like to see my ridiculous thoughts translated into art, visit my website, or follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Know a caregiver, or someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone who knows someone else who’s a caregiver? Or heck, do you know a person? Well, you should tell them about my book, Fractured Memories: Because Demented People Need Love, Too. Part memoir and part coffee table art book, I recount my family’s heartbreaking and hilarious journey through my father’s dementia. Available to purchase here (this is my favorite way if you live in the U.S.), here or here if you’d rather get the eBook than a print copy, and here (especially if you want a hard cover copy).

book-cover-1

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Fractured Memories: Because Demented People Need Love, Too

02 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by emilypageart in book, family, Fractured Memories, gratitude, humor, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Alzheimer's, art, book, book about caregiving, book about dementia, caregiver, caregiving, caretaker, dementia, family, FLD, Fractured Memories, frontal lobe dementia, frontotemporal dementia, FTD, humor, marketing, publish my book, self publish, self-publishing

Bear with me (or bare with me, if you’re feeling frisky) for a moment. I realized I should really do a post that doesn’t include me bragging about all the mistakes I’ve made thus far in the self-publishing process and just do a post about the book itself. So here’s the skinny:

I wrote a book.

Now here’s the fatty:

It’s called Fractured Memories: Because Demented People Need Love, Too. Basically, in 2009, my dad was diagnosed at the age of 65 with frontotemporal dementia, a form of dementia that strikes early and progresses more quickly than Alzheimer’s, and for which there is no treatment to slow the progression of the disease. Via art and on this blog, I began documenting my family’s heartbreaking and hilarious experiences.

As a professional artist, I’ve often turned to art as a self-prescribed therapy to help deal with life’s trials. This battle was no different. I utilized the elephant as a symbol for dementia (because an elephant never forgets), and incorporated sheet music into the paintings because my dad had been a musician. Eventually, I created 40 paintings that are included in the book. I began blogging about the range of issues that arose daily as the disease progressed, documenting everything from my own fear of getting dementia, to my dad’s transition to diapers (and the various places he opted to drop his drawers and just “go”), to combatting his compulsions like the need to “clean” the cars with steel wool, to an exploration of how he might have gotten the disease, to finding the right dementia care facility, to the best ways to make him giggle. I approached the disease from the fresh viewpoint of a younger caregiver.

As my readership here grew, so did the suggestions from you awesome people that I turn the blog into a book. After hearing too many horror stories about traditional publishing contracts, I decided to self-publish. I ran a fundraising campaign for my book and presold over 500 copies in less than a month.

My dad was my best friend. He embraced the ridiculous, looked for the good in people, and mentored and helped people whenever he could. Following his diagnosis, when people asked how he was doing, he’d answer, ‘Not bad for a demented guy.’ He looked for the light hiding amidst the pain. He chose to be very open about what he was going through in the hopes that it would help other people cope with their own diagnosis or a loved one’s diagnosis. Writing this book seemed a fitting way to honor that legacy.

I tried not to shy away from the ugly, raw emotion of life with dementia, but I also looked for the laughter where it could be found. Rest assured, you will love my father as much as I do when the book is done, and perhaps gain some insight about how to cope with your own loved one’s dementia or how to support a caregiver.

So now that you’re all frothing at the mouth in sweet, sweet, demented anticipation, here’s where you can get it:

  1. Buy a paperback copy directly from me at http://shop.emilypageart.com/. When you buy it from me, you save a couple bucks and I make more on each book. Win win. And if you tell me you’ve ordered and tell me a terrible joke on any of my posts on the blog after you’ve placed your order, I’ll sign your copy with a terrible joke in return. Win win terrible win.
  2. Buy a hardcover or paperback copy off of Amazon here.
  3. Buy an eBook here or here.

And when you’ve had a chance to read it, and if you like it, please consider leaving a good review on GoodReads or Amazon or the stall door at Starbucks (only on a piece of paper taped to the door, please don’t vandalize). And then make sure your local caregiver and/or dementia support groups know about it. If you read it and don’t like it, please lie.

Hearts and snugglehugs,

Emily

book-cover-1

Floating Elephant says, “Buymebuymebuymebuyme!”

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Tooth Fairy: A Spoiler Alert

01 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by emilypageart in family, humor, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

family, father, humor, lies our parents tell us, santa isn't real, silliness, silly, tooth fairy, tooth fairy isn't real

Spoiler Alert: The Tooth Fairy isn’t real. If you’re a small child or someone who somehow didn’t already know this, please stop reading. Also, go back to the first sentence and unread it.

With that out of the way, I would like to tell you how I know this. When I was a kid and lost my bazillionth tooth (I have a lot of teeth. I’m part shark, apparently), I put my tooth in the little pocket of the pillowcase my parents had given me for the nights the Tooth Fairy was supposed to visit. I rested my rosy little cheek upon my pillow and closed my eyes and drifted softly off to dreamland, imaging the piles and piles of candy I would be able to purchase with the quarter that would be left for me.

Not long after, I was awakened by the sound of a thundering herd of rhinoceri (didn’t you know that that was the plural of rhinoceros?!) charging down the hallway. Timidly, I crept to the door and peeked around the corner, only to discover that it was actually my dad, arms flapping daintily, flitting about merrily on tippy toe in front of the bathroom door to make my mom laugh while she was brushing her teeth. Didn’t he know that was a choking hazzard?! Way to go, Dad.

When confronted, he tried to claim that he was actually the Tooth Fairy’s representative for the southeastern United States. But I did a thorough check and he did not have a pair of wings, and that’s not even remotely practical. What, was he going to drive to every state within his district to hand out money?! As if.

Thus, he dashed all of my dreams, which also alerted me to the whole thing about Santa. I won’t spoiler alert you on that one – wouldn’t want to ruin it for anyone not in the know. All for a cheap laugh from his wife – doin’ marriage right. Parenting, though? Meh.

***********************************************************************

Thanks so much for reading my ridiculous thoughts! If you’d like to see my ridiculous thoughts translated into art, visit my website, or follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Know a caregiver, or someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone who knows someone else who’s a caregiver? Or heck, do you know a person? Well, you should tell them about my book, Fractured Memories: Because Demented People Need Love, Too. Part memoir and part coffee table art book, I recount my family’s heartbreaking and hilarious journey through my father’s dementia. Available to purchase here (this is my favorite way if you live in the U.S.), here if you’d rather get the eBook than a print copy, and here (especially if you want a hard cover copy).

book-cover-1

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Mmmm, Pie

04 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by emilypageart in humor, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

christmas tree, fraser fir, humor, labels, pie, spanish for foot, tree

7-8 ft pies.JPG

Why yes, yes I would like some 6-7 ft pies with my Christmas tree!

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Emily Page

Emily Page

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