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"You Don’t Look Adopted” by Anne Heffron

If you listen to Adoptees On, the podcast (if you’re an adoptee or a foster you SHOULD, it’s great, it’s by us and for us) you will sometimes have heard guests mention how much they loved this book.  I read it based on that and it’s a great memoir, just painfully honest about what it’s like to go through life like this.  

“Most of my life I have felt both real and not real.” ― Anne Heffron, You Don't Look Adopted

Anne has an interesting website and blog as well, and I’m featured on it as a guest artist this week.  Go look!

https://www.anneheffron.com/blog/2023/5/27/guest-blog-post-art-and-adoption-by-terri-nelson

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Pickle’s Phone Number

My adoptive mother, as I have detailed in other little essays, is slowly flaking apart with senile dementia. Every day I talk to her and another few pieces of her memory and cognitive abilities gently disappear, honing her down to a person who remembers everything up to age 10 vividly and very little after that. What she’s losing in long-term memories is being replaced with weird little confabulations that stick, once they appear.

For instance, she just had gallbladder surgery. We went through months of her walking around with a drain sticking out of her side and a bag collecting bile that had to be pinned to her shirt. We met with surgeons, I researched alternative therapies for treatment, it was a whole production. We set the surgery date in advance a couple months ago, and I took her in last week to get it. She packed four bags for her overnight stay (I winnowed it down to a change of clothes). And yet if you ask her today about the surgery, she will say “They took my gallbladder out and didn’t even tell me they were going to do it!” I said, “Why do you think you were in the hospital, Mom?” “For my gallbladder.” “And do you remember meeting with the surgeon the morning they took it out?” “Yes but she didn’t even SAY she was going to do that! They could at least TELL you before they do something like that.” (The surgeon did tell her, multiple times. I was there.)

Anyway last night her old friend Carol called me to say that my mom seemed to have written her phone number down wrong and was calling all her other mutual friends to get it, over and over. I have programmed Carol’s number into my mom’s iPad and her phone, but she still pulls out a tattered address book and types in Carol’s number, incorrectly, every single time. I dutifully wrote down the number and called my mom to have her cross out every wrong number in the address book and put the new one in instead.

“I HAVE that number,” my mom said. I asked her to read it to me, and she did have it. “Well, please call that number instead, then,” I said. “I do but that’s the dog’s phone,” my mom said.

“..What” I said.

“It’s PICKLE’s phone number. It’s Carol’s DOG’s phone number,” she said. “He’s a POMERANIAN. Named PICKLES,” she added, helpfully filling in all the gaps in my knowledge.

“Mom, why do you think the dog has a phone,” I said. “Well I sure don’t know, it’s CAROL’S dog, ask her,” she said. “No, I mean, do you really think that the dog has a cell phone,” I said. “Yes, that’s PICKLE’S phone number and Carol never calls me back from it,” she said. “No but. But. Mom, why would a dog need a phone,” I said.

“Well, she takes him EVERYWHERE so he has a phone,” she said, with exasperation. “I…do you…has Pickles ever called you,” I said. “No he’s a DOG.” “But he has a phone, you said.” “Yes, IT’S. PICKLE’S. PHONE,” she said, fed up.

“Well. Please call Pickles and ask to speak to Carol,” I said, feeling faint. “FINE. I don’t know why I always have to call the DOG but I’ll do it,” she said. ‘Ok. Say… I don’t know. Say hi to Pickles, I guess,” I said, and hung up.

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hello my hand is gonna fall off

tap for better quality!

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My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."

He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."

He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"

I did.

"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."

It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.

So my dad and I agreed, what doesn't kill you doesn't actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn't made you stronger than you were before, you're probably not done healing. You've got to give these things time to set.

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Follow me on Instagram

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um … compilation

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me today honestly

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I have only now figured out that back in MY day, we bidibidibidi’d and we did not eebydeeby, no sir.

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Circa 1920s Japan

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Lea Ignatius (1913-1990)

Tähtikävely, 1984

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ursula k le guin was right

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What Christmas song makes you want to kill?

For me it goes:

The Christmas Shoes

(Simply Having) A Wonderful Christmastime

Anything that Mariah Carey sings

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...that your audience won't hate.

This is a method I started using when NFTs were on the rise - thieves would have to put actual work into getting rid of the mark - and one that I am now grateful for with the arrival of AI. Why? Because anyone who tries to train an AI on my work will end up with random, disruptive color blobs.

I can't say for sure it'll stop theft entirely, but it WILL make your images annoying for databases to incorporate, and add an extra layer of inconvenience for thieves. So as far as I'm concerned, that's a win/win.

I'll be showing the steps in CSP, but it should all be pretty easy to replicate in Photoshop.

Now: let's use the above image as our new signature file. I set mine to be 2500 x 1000 pixels when I'm just starting out.

Note that your text should not have a lot of anti-aliasing, so using a paint brush to start isn't going to work well with this method. Just use the standard G-Pen if you're doing this by hand, or, just use the text tool and whichever font you prefer.

Once that's done, take your magic wand tool, and select all the black. Here are the magic wand settings I'm using to make the selections:

All selected?

Good.

Now, find a brush with a scattering/tone scraping effect. I use one like this.

You can theoretically use any colors you want for this next part, but I'd recommend pastels as they tend to blend better.

Either way, let's add some color to the text.

Once that's finished,

You're going to want to go to Layer Property, and Border Effect

You'll be given an option of choosing color and thickness. Choose black, and go for at least a 5 in thickness. Adjust per your own preferences.

Now create a layer beneath your sig layer, and merge the sig down onto the blank layer.

This effectively 'locks in' the border effect, which is exactly what we want.

Hooray, you've finished your watermark!

Now let's place that bad boy into your finished piece.

You'll get the best mileage out of a mark if you can place it over a spot that isn't black of white, since you'll get better blending options that way. My preference is for Overlay.

From here, I'll adjust the opacity to around 20-25, depending on the image.

If you don't have a spot to use overlay, however, there's a couple other options. For white, there's Linear Burn, which imho doesn't look as good, but it still works in a pinch.

And for lots of black, you have Linear Light

Either way, you're in business!

EDIT since this has escaped my usual circles, and folks aren't as familiar with my personal usage:

An example of one of my own finished pieces, with watermark, so you can see what I mean about 'relatively unobtrusive'-- I try to at least use them as framing devices, or let them work with the image somehow (or, at the very least, not actively against it).

I know it's a bummer for some people to "ruin" their work with watermarks, which is part of the reason I developed this mark in particular. Its disruption is about as minimal as I can make it while still letting it serve its intended purpose.

There's other methods, too, of course! But this is the one I use, and the one I can speak on. Hope it helps some of you!

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The woods are full of Mossmice

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Eugène Séguy (French, 1890 - 1985)

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Yevgeny Charushin