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Jalyha

Stop Stalking My Brain! :o

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by
Jalyha
, 02-01-2014 at 12:08 PM (31150 Views)
I'd never thought much about land shapes until I came here.

Recently it's been invading my head. Let me explain...

I'm sitting at the dining room table, playing "Play-Doh Ice Cream shop" with my 4 year old. (For any who don't know, Play Doh is a soft, moldable, brightly colored clay-like substance for children)

I grab the little toy rolling pin and smash out a small amount of playdoh. Normally, the only thought in my head (if any) about the doh at this point would be what animal would be most effective at making the childperson squeal with delight.

(Clarification: "If any" did not mean I am brainless, without a thought in my head (although I sometimes am) it meant that usually, my mind is elsewhere... bills and errands or my paintings and such... and not on clay-sculpting.)

ANYWAY (I heard you chuckle) I rolled out the playdoh and glanced down, in the midst of considering my grocery list, and whether or not I could afford a half pint of rocky road, and I FROZE.

There on the table is a perfect little continent. In its' half flattened state, it has hills and ridges and valleys. The cracks where the doh has split form neat little rivers, spreading as they near the edge.... the edge which would make one of the most interesting coastlines I've ever seen.

Okay Jalyha. Getting a bit map-obsessed. Look at something else.

There... the lunch dishes which need washing. That blob of ketchup looks like an interesting lake. No!

Okay I'll just go get a glass of water.

It spills over the cup in the sink, and I see how to fix a problem with the bottom of my waterfall.... STOP IT.

The ceiling. That's safe, right? I look up, and see mountain ranges in the spackling. Oh, I give up. I surrender. You've got me, you sneaky old mapping obsession.



I'm going back to my playdoh to build a goat.
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Comments

  1. Korash's Avatar
    you know, Jalyha, I am really enjoying reading your thoughts and how they tend to trip over that dastardly mapping hook that just keeps digging deeper. I have laughed and chuckled at your stumbles and can very easily relate to the frustrations. The number of years that I have been hanging around here, and I can still count the number of finished maps on one hand... I am glad to see that you are still sticking with it all, and am enjoying watching your mapping skills grow.

    It looks like you just might have picked up another stalker.
  2. Jalyha's Avatar
    I collect stalkers like other people collect stamps ...

    They follow me in herds like an entourage of antelope!

    And yes, my thoughts are always tripping over something, and yes, maps are the current stone in my path. Not a stumbling block, no... for me it's always something that makes me fall backwards, flipping in circles in the air until I land (somehow!?!?) flat on my face.

    But I'm used to it, so I'll keep getting up to trip some more

    In other mapping-obsessed news... I almost spent my rent monies on a desk cause it had a map etched in the glass
  3. GeoPopID's Avatar
    Hey! Welcome to my world. Maps are everywhere! (And faces, animals, monsters, and other things, too, sometimes.)

    I got in trouble once when I was little because I penciled in map symbols for towns in between the bumps on the sculpted dry wall in my room. Then I labeled them with names and connected them together with roads, as I carefully weaved through the valleys and around hills, following rivers and climbing up on to high plateaus, and so on... As I remember, I was forced to scrub the walls as punishment. Which totally ruined a really nice map!!
  4. Jalyha's Avatar
    That's why I love this new "blackboard paint" that you can get for your walls (or furniture even!) at home. It comes in all different colors. My son has a sky blue *flat* wall in his room and another that is grass green painted right on the "acoustic" textured drywall. He calls it his "outside" wall because it looks like grass and feels like a sidewalk.

    Anyway he can draw on it all he likes and there's no problem with clean up when *he* decides he doesn't want it anymore.

    And you can transfer the image to paper easily just by patting it on the wall!

    Heyyyyy... maybe I could use that to make a new map...
  5. GeoPopID's Avatar
    My family and I painted my son's room midnight blue to which my artsy daughter added streaks of lighter bluish colors so it looked appropriately like the background it was intended to be. Then I painstakingly added stars, carefully plotting the location of each one until I had a planetarium. My son loves it and the constellations are all recognizable!