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December 2004
Next month:
February 2005

App0172I received a box in the mail today that was artwork that I submitted to a magazine at least two years ago. It was never accepted for publication and I've spent about 18 months trying to get it returned. About nine months ago, I heard from a new editor who said they did have a record of it being logged in and she assured me they would mail it back. Well lo and behold, here it is nine months later - guess they had some gestational issues.

It's weird to get back a piece of artwork that you haven't seen in over two years. I enjoyed pieces of it, but wrinkled my nose at the rest. It was a small assemblage that I'd done to illustrate a story. The story is one of my all-time favorites and I won't write about it because someday I hope it will be published. The artwork looks embryonic to me, and I recognize in the assemblage style a heavy influence from certain well-known and highly accomplished assemblage artists. So all in all, I think the magazine was right not to publish it. I'm going to keep it on my desk and look at it for a awhile, and then I'm sure I'm going to be taking it to the next level and I hope I can express what I feel about the story now.

It's always good to get distance from any creative output before you send it anywhere. The only exception I can think of is blogging. My writing and artwork here is pretty throw-away; I do not mean that I don't put effort into it, but blogging is an informal, casual style of writing. There on certain entries on which I do spend a lot of time, often writing it and revising it several times before it is published here. But in general, my first draft after a spell check is what goes out to you all on a daily basis.
That's the point of blogging for me. I am definitely an instant gratification kind of gal. What could be more fun than scanning in some artwork, writing up a short essay, hitting a couple of buttons and seeing your art and writing published in seconds for all the world to see.

Of course, like any self-published vanity press, the world considers art and writing that you are being paid for to be more valuable and proof of greater talent. The sad thing is that when I publish something here, I hear from so many people with their point of view. Often, when I am published in real time, I hear from no one. To receive a check for one's literary and artistic efforts is always an enormous peg up for the artist's self-esteem because our society considers the monetary unit of measurement is the gold standard of worth. There are, however, more important considerations, like knowing the audience you are reaching, feedback from those who appreciate your work, and control over the theme and direction of your creative endeavors. All in all, in terms of bang for your buck, a blog beats an unread essay in some dusty anthology any day. And best of all, I am my own editor and published and I rarely reject anything I do.

Which can be good or bad. But I'll let you all decide.


Feedback requested

App0176_1I've been considering doing a subscription notification list for pomegranatesandpaper, and I wanted feedback from readers who subscribe to other blogs. I don't subscribe to any, so I'm not certain how useful this utility is.

Would you be interested in seeing a subscribe feature on this blog? Do you subscribe to other blogs? Do you tend to read certain blogs everyday and would you read this blog with more frequency if a subscribe feature was offered?

For those of you that have blogs and use a notification subscription feature, how complicated is it to download and maintain? Was it worth the effort and do you find that it has increased your reader base?

Inquiring minds want to know!

And Thank God It's Friday!!!!!!!!!!!


50 is shifty

App0170My mother and her sister would often square off with one another on such weighty issues as the color of my grandfather's eyes. Mom would insist they had been green, and my aunt would insist they were blue and she should know since she lived with him her entire life, while my mother had the nerve to get married, move out, and have five girls.

We'll never have a definitive answer as to the color of Grandpa's eyes,  but since my mother outlived her sister, she won the heavyweight belt for keeper of the family history and lore, a title one cannot take too lightly.

My mother, sometimes rightly so, but usually just with indignation, will often accuse me of trying to usurp her heavyweight title. For example, when discussing barbecued ribs one day, (you know we are obsessed with food and its history in our lives, which is a topic for its own blog), I innocently remarked that my mother made fantastic ribs, but very rarely made ribs at all. My mother, prone to indignation over lesser digs than at her cooking, reared up and said I was sorely mistaken and that she made ribs all the time.

If you've met my mother, you learn quickly to let these contretemps die a natural death, but in a well meaning and stupid way, I tried to explain that I remembered ribs as a special treat; that she couldn't have made them more than two or three times while I was growing up, but when she did, we sucked the meat off the bones and licked the juices off our fingers.

She was not pleased, at either my insistence or at the imagery, which she considered  disgusting and nothing that she wanted associated with her cooking.. I was accused then, as I have been before, of remembering things that no one else does and remembering them as no one else does.

She may be right.

Isn't it the peculiar fate of all writers to be the one in the crowd who is the most observant and has the longest memory? Aren't the writers the ones who can remember the scent of their grandmother's hair spray some 30 years after her death and recall the way her charm bracelets jingled on her wrist when she laughed at a risque joke? And aren't the writers the ones who tally up the scores of who got the most attention in the family of five girls; or at least remember enough concrete details to spin a story out of whole cloth and convince the other siblings that she must be right because she remembers it so well?

Well, the latter rarely happens in my family. We all seem to remember, or invent enough details to satisfy our own inner fact checker and no matter how long and hard we argue, we all remain convinced that our version is the right version and none other.

Facing a milestone birthday in an aging family, I have had too many opportunities over the past year to dwell on my own history. I am guilty of obsessing over what I could have done, what I should have done, what I would have done. I have revised my opportunities, glamorized my choices, and puffed up my sacrifices until they could be floats in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Re: That apartment in Manhattan that I could have rented instead of getting married and buying a house: I was freaked out enough by the roaches crawling out of the cracks in my friend E's studio apartment with the bathtub and no kitchen sink to know that I  needed a parking space, queen-sized bed with matching sheets, and a tasteful dinner service for 12 more than I needed my Sex and the City apartment (actually, in the 80's, it would have been my 9 to 5 with Melanie Griffith apartment.)

Re: Instead-of-becoming-a-lawyer-like-everyone-wanted-me-to-be: the jobs that I could have gotten - in my mind-  writing for magazines, freelancing, editing, were gotten by  my two friends from college, including the editor of the school newspaper, both of whom landed jobs in the bowels of Manhattan, working the graveyard shift transcribing stories for reporters at The New York Post. One left when she got a better job - writing a newsletter for Emergency Medical Services, where she was expected to address everyone by their rank, such as "Captain Elmo" and "Sargent Bilko" and just report the facts. It was hardly the career I had in mind, had I given myself the chance to consider what I had in mind.

The truth was, I never gave myself a chance to do nothing. I went right from college to law school. I had no burning desire to be a lawyer, but I did want a career. I had watched my older sister fighting tooth and nail to get a decent teaching job and saw her living at home subbing for two years, being depressed and chauffeuring my mother to and from her job. ;Friends were bumming around Europe and I was obsessing over my student loans and moving back home to afford law school.

I'm not whining about any of this, though it sounds like I am. I am trying to make the point that I lacked the courage to turn my back on sense and sensibility and put myself out there to be nothing until I figured out what it was I wanted to be.

It's hardly an original story. Not too many third generation Italian American Catholic girls make it past the wedding lockstep and babies. I considered myself pretty out there for getting a law degree, and then getting married, for working as a prosecutor, and then having babies. Those pages and pages of stories I wrote remained in a box in my parents' attic until a fire destroyed it all.

The truth was, I was in love and I was thrilled to get married; thrilled to buy a house; thrilled to have children. I just couldn't figure out how to do it all, and the writing became the thing that got away. But I never entirely left it, and too many afternoons at my law desk, I'd find myself writing some long, contorted journal entry, then deleting it all in case my secretary ran across it while i went to the ladies room.

So when I start bemoaning my current life, you know, the one that pays the bills and provides financial and emotional security to five people, most of all myself, I do remember thing at times differently from everyone else. My mother's assessment remains true: I remember things that no one else does in a way that no one else does.

I'm working on this character trait. I'm training it away from remembering job offers at publishing houses that were mine but for the asking in my fantasy revisionist history of employment opportunities in the '80's,  and regrets about not living in Italy but for the money and guts to do it, and refocusing it on the excitement of buying our first house in the country and the joy over our first pregnancy, and the kvelling over the blond, blue-eyed baby we brought home.

I'm letting go of this "milestone" birthday shit too. I'm turning 50. There I've said it and now all you young bloggers can take me off your blog roll. My stats will plummet! But the truth is that my forties are over, the sixties are the next leg up. I hope to God I live through my fifties. I plan to travel, spend money, drag my husband to outrageous places so I can sketch, and force my kids to leave the nest even if it means pushing their sweet tushies backwards through a sieve to get them out of here and on their own two feet.

I made the mistake of mentioning my birthday, a big one, this year to one of my paralegals. A sweet, very bright, aggressive 28 year old woman, who immediately picked up that it was a big one. I could see her do the mental calculations in her head and her swift glance to my diplomas. "Fifty?" she whispered. I nodded. "Oh, Loretta, wow." Hardly the reaction I wanted, but hey, she's 28; when I was 28, I though 40 was ancient.

But yes, it's 50, 50, 50. Remember Gloria Steinem's line:"This is what 50 looks like today"? Well, I hope to see what 50 looks like, and 60, and 70, and 80, and 90. No more pussyfooting around in shame, no more regrets, reassessments, and counting of the years remaining.

And Mom, I swear you never made those ribs more than once a year. Honestly, I remember. But they were finger-licking good - we just knew enough not to let you see us licking our fingers.


App0174Not much time to write. Have to be at work extra early. We cleaned up from the snow and are hunkering down for single digit and below zero temperatures, plus more snow tomorrow night.

On the plus side, we are almost finished with January, which is turning out to be my least-liked month.

Thisis a sketch down with watercolor pencils. It's my sister, Maria's, big antique silver serving tray arranged for Christmas with candy canes and Clementines. Hmm, candycanesandclementines....could be a good name for a blog.....

Check back later for some better writing!


App0169I'm watching morning television and a tribute to Johnny Carson, who died over the weekend. Johnny Carson was a big television fixture in my childhood. I remember being woken up many nights by the sound of my father's laughter booming up the stairs while he was watching the Carson show.

By the time I was old enough to stay up that late, Carson had worked out a gig where he only appeared three nights a week. (I'm trying to work on that gig  myself, but somehow I haven't gained the clout of a superstar).

One of my sisters was a very big Carson fan. She and my father would watch the show every night, my mother having gone to bed. She did a lot of his lines and sprinkled her conversations with his mannerisms. When I went away to college, I missed watching the show with my sister and father.  I probably learned most of the news of the day, and all my political humor, from his monologues during the time of Watergate and Nixon's resignation, Carter's election, Reagan's trouncing of Carter's second run, and so many other events of the 70's and 80's, that I can't remember on this bitterly cold January morning.

Another of my sister's has videotapes of his show. I've thought of borrowing them, but never did. I really don't have the desire to watch it again; it's not the same without my father's booming laughter as he laid on the floor watching it every night. When the show was over, he'd get up, knock the ashes out of his pipe, and tell us not to stay up late. Since it was already 1:00, it was too late for that request to have any meaning, so my sister and I would watch Letterman, and then drag ourselves out of bed the next morning for school. Letterman was edgier and soon Carson seemed like a Hollywood hack and his guests were old comics who weren't part of my feminist, literary world.

But I sure would like to be asleep one more night and hear my father exploding into laughter and pounding the floor with his hand, waking me up in my twin bed, momentarily disoriented, then smiling into my pillow, safe and secure in my twin bed in my tiny room at the top of the stairs.


I forgot to mention, that those of you who wrote to me to say that they could not reach ClothPaperScissor at the email address listed on their site, I passed it onto the editor, and she asked me to see if any of you still have the error message that you received. If you do, please forward it to me off blog. Thanks!


App0168_2The blizzard is over, and while we've had storms with far more accumulation, I'm glad I didn't have to be out in this. Our investment in an expensive snow blower since Mystery Man is at college has turned out to be a wise decision, and after we spent a half hour unwinding the electrical cord that Mystery  Man ran over last time he used it, we were able to use it, too. My, my husband was so inventive with his swear words when he was using the wire cutters to cut off little pieces of the electrical cord so we could pry it out form the rotor bar. I had no idea he was so, well, imaginative in his language skills. I'm sure MM's ears were ringing, or not since he told me he slept until 5:00 p.m. on Saturday (First X-Box All Night Marathon of the new semester.)

I'm tweaking the design of this blog and have come to the following conclusions:
1. I do not do code
2. I do not understand "style sheets"
3. I cannot learn either
4. I am a Luddite when it comes to any of the above
5. I'll gladly pay someone to design this site

So if you are site savvy and can hook me up with a new design, drop me a line off blog and we'll talk.


Mea Culpa

It is blizzarding here. Yes, I have coined a new word, not unlike "gifting" which I hate. Why can't  people just say I was "given" it, or I am "giving" that, instead of I am being "gifted" with, or so and so is "gifting" me with....

Anyway, it's snowing like there's no tomorrow and all the news channels are screaming "Blizzard!" "Don't go out!" "It's the end of the world!" "Keep warm!" Thank you, newscasters, for stating the obvious.

And as for stating other things, The Princess has requested that I not write about her anymore because she was offended by my description of what our house was like over Christmas week, in particular her contribution. She says that I only write about her being lazy and not doing anything. Now I don't think that is true, but that is her impression. So this is a retraction: The Princess did quite a lot around the house when she was home. She did laundry, for which she was paid; she cleaned up most days, picked her sister up from school occasionally; too care of her sister one day when she was sick with the flu; started dinner when requested; picked up the house after her brother and sister; and did some errands for me.

She is a very dependable child, and the most organized member of the family. If she is in the mood, she will clean out your dresser junk drawer and her sister's bureau. She is learning to cook, and already makes a great roast chicken and very good brownies. She studies hard and never causes us any problems with crazy teen behavior.

And she must be very bored on this snowy weekend because she is writing comments on posts as far back as Christmas. Winter's a bitch when you are reduced to reading your mother's blog for entertainment. I told her to go to U of Hawaii, but no she had to go to an upstate school......


Vaca2_1Judging by the comments sections, more than a few of us are suffering with mid-winter blues, so I'm reposting a photo I took of an art gallery in Wellfleet, MA, last summer. The day was very hot and dry and the smell of the lavender was heady.

I had planned on a long post tomorrow, but Typepad is fiddling behind the scenes and may be unavailable tomorrow. So instead I'll spend it scanning in a bunch of sketches and stuff that I've been doing over the past few weeks.

I've always wanted to be a painter but I've never put the time in to develop the skills. Over the past few years, my drawing skills have gotten better and I started doing pen and ink sketches with watercolor washes. Over the weekend I met a new friend who is a talented watercolor artist. Her paintings are vibrant and luscious and I wanted to eat them! (yes, most things revolve around food for me). She showed me a new technique, which involves drawing with a bamboo dip pen and Quink Ink by Parker, which is water soluble. After drawing your line, apply watercolor and the line bleeds into the watercolor and softens your drawing. I haven't been out to get the Quink Ink, but I had a Higgins washable ink that seems to work just as well.  It's a soft, dreamy look that gives me the illusion that I am not drawing, but painting. I'll post some samples tomorrow.

Right now we are shivering, as it is 12 degrees and we woke up to no heat. Stan is running up and down three flights of stairs trying to jump start our furnace, the one the furnace guy told us was "great" when we were buying the house, and "not great" the first time we had a service call. Don'cha love that? The Little One is objecting loudly to the cold in her room and we are very unsympathetic as we are freezing too. Looks like Stan will be home waiting for the repairman since I have a trial. Trial trumps meeting in our work milieu, so he pulls the short straw.

At least the sun is shining and now has risen far enough in the morning sky to come through the French doors in my bedroom and although I can't feel any warmth from it, I can pretend it is Spring. Last night, the sun was just beginning to set when I left the office and a magnificent purple and magenta sunset accompanied my drive home. I made it through Thursday without feeling like I needed to come home and lie on the floor in front of the fireplace the minute I got home (that was Wednesday  night).  This weekend we may have  a big snow storm and I'm looking forward to being snowed in, if of course we have heat!

My editor at Cloth Paper Scissor is waiting until all 4 issues are out to evaluate the features that will stay in the magazine, so if you're enjoying my column, please write or email so she has some feedback because I haven't seen any!


A_9Beware: I am a very grumpy person these days. To probe that I am not always a grumpy person, here is a photo of me, Stan, and The Princess in Little Italy, having a happy, non-grumpy time. I blurred out The Princess's face since she is not here to give me permission to use it and, frankly, with the world being how it is these days, who needs your kid's face plastered all over the Internet.

Whatever is having its way with me, is not letting up. That's how I know that real change is afoot because if this was just midwinter blues, the usual combination of chocolate and cups of tea would have chased it away by now.

Stan has retreated to the living room after I bit his head off over something. The Little One is also hiding out after a run in with her mother the screaming witch who wants the dishes done NOW.

I think I am getting sick again, too.

Oh Lord, why would anyone keep reading this blog???

I promise to get happy real soon. Really. And no comments from kids who happen to be reading this.

Remember that Partridge Family song: "Come On Get Happy!"

I always hated that song, though I will admit that I preferred The Partridge Family to The Brady Bunch anyday.

I am pinching myself to try to stay awake to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Girl. I fell asleep last week and missed it.

Really, it's the high point of my freaking week.


Here's a little piece of my soul:

It's time for a change. I can feel it growing under my feet and the ground is shifting slightly, throwing me off balance. Sometimes I physically lose my balance and wonder if it is my bifocals or if I am actually swinging with the rotation of the earth.

I am facing a milestone birthday and it is shaking me up.  I wonder why I am so different from everybody else, and then I wonder if I really am. I decide I'm not different from others, just have different interests. I think that everyone has a dream; that everyone has a secret in their life that sustains them on cold winter mornings.

I don't think that anymore. I think I am different from most; not better, not greater, not worse, not less, just different.

I know I am different from those that I rub elbows with each day. They think it's strange if I prefer to read The New York Times than rehash every piece of gossip over lunch. They say, "how cute" if they see me writing in my journal, making me feel like a ten year old with her diary. They find it extraordinary that I would replace a watchband with a piece of grosgrain ribbon that I thread the watch face and wind around my wrist.

And then I meet two women who are more like me than not and I know that I am not so different from everyone else, just from most.

One of them says to me: "You have this major job, a family, the blog, and do this artwork. How do you do it?"

I didn't have the answer. I still don't know. I just do it. I don't do it all at once. I don't do it all perfectly. Lord knows lately it's the job that I haven't been doing perfectly. But I realize that my life is not one that everyone can do. That I do manage a lot. That there is something there. That I don't think I manage that much, but I seem to do so.  I have the ability to let other things go. Or I'm at the time in my life when things I thought were so important have turned out be not so at all.

I am taking myself seriously for once. I've always had a huge amount of personal energy for the things that I love. I'm curious, I'm enthusiastic, and I'm willing to expose my work, which is a big challenge for amateur artists. I have deep, passionate interests that run underneath everything that I do. It is an enormous well on which I draw, an ever-fresh stream that waters the driest patches of my life. It's gotten me through terrible personal times, the worst of my husband's chronic pain, the loss of loved ones, wrenching moves a continent away from family and friends.

I've always put this side of me as my "play side", stuffing it away when it was time to get serious and make money. I've been able to keep it alive by saying it is my passionate side and I work to pay the bills and buy art supplies.

But now I am finding it harder and harder to get out of bed with a head full of dreams and stuff all the dreams down  into a pillowcase I sew shut each morning and only open when night falls. My attention at work, my dedication, is beginning to crack as I shake my head and watch the corporate world shake us and watch us tumble like figures in a snow globe.

If our lives had followed a traditional route, I'd be nearing 25 years in the work force, have a tidy sum in the bank, and be able to say I was leaving "to find myself". Thing is, our life hasn't gone like that and never will. But the other thing is, I don't have to find myself. I'm already there. I know what I want to do, and know how to do it, I just have to explore how to get it out there.

So it's time for change.  Rightsy tightsy, leftsy, loosey. That was the little rhyme we learned on This Old House to remember which way to turn a faucet, a screw, a light bulb to get it on or off.

I've been rightsy tightsy for so long. And so has my husband. It's time for us to go leftsy, loosey.

Now I know there are some who will read this and roll their eyes and say, yeah right.

I can only live one life and it has to be mine.


Me a Meme

You know you won't find many memes here, but I thought this was a fun one, brought to me by  Think Pink courtesy of Vanity Fair:

My Stuff

"My Stuff" (based on a recurring Vanity Fair feature):

Grooming Products

Shampoo -- Strait Line
Conditioner - Botanica
Moisturizer -- Bobby Brown
Cologne -- Beautiful by estee lauder. 
Razor -- whatever disposables the hubby buys
Toothpaste --whatever's on sale

Electronics

Cell phone -- Verizon - totally sucks
Computer -- you mean "the baby" ?- Toshiba Satellite laptop
Television -- who cares??
Stereo -- uh, it's silver......

Home

Sheets --stripes or checks by Eddie Bauer Home. Tried Ralph Lauren once. The sheets rotted, I kid you not.
Coffee-maker -- Starbucks (yeah, I have one but all it makes it mud)
Car -- Toyota Forerunner 2000 silver
Stationery -- e-mail (and I am not improving)

Beverages

Bottled water -- the tap marked "cold"
Coffee -- Starbucks decaf house blend
Vodka -- Stolly
Beer --Corona Lite (yes, embarassingly so)

Clothes

Jeans -- hate 'em
T-shirt -- Gap
Briefcase or tote -- Ralph Lauren
Sneakers -- hate 'em.

Watch -- Seiko; Movado that doesn't work for some reason; my favorite at the moment: $15 teen fashion face watch with a grosgrain ribbon.

Favorite Places

Metropolitan Museum of Art; Nauset Beach in Orleans, Mass.; Wave Hill, Bronx;  anywhere by the water

Necessary Extravagance

being able to order used books with "one click" on amazon.com;  my blog; watercolor journals; drawing pens; Daniel Smith quinacridone acrylics and watercolors; Sennelier pastels; knitting shops; handbags and shoes; silver jewelry.

I totally want to see *YOUR* list of stuff too!


All in the Family

My sister, Maria, youngest of the five,  has jumped on the blog bandwagon. The title of her blog is, Take a Picture of The Table, which as she explains, relates to our family's strange tradition of always wanting a photo of the table with the holiday meal or birthday cake on it before everyone sits down and the cake gets cut.

It's a great story and great title and why didn't I remember it first??

Dear sister casually mentions that when she looks through this archive of 40 + years of holiday table settings and birthday cakes, she recognizes most of the dishes and tsotchkes because she now owns them. 

I'll be going over later to take inventory of her dish closet. No wonder she had  her husband build her a dish closet in the basement - that locks. Said it was to keep the kids out, right, more like keep the sistahs out.

Tomorrow we are all attending a big party for our sister, Alicia's mother in law who turns 80 this month. (Alicia is between Maria and I in age order - I'll draw you a flow chart later.)

Will we both be  making mental notes of amusing anecdotes, husbandly faux pas, and annoying sister comments about our outfits? Hell, no, I'll be making written notes! As since I have a wireless, high speed laptop and she has a four year old E Machine clinker, I know  I'll get the story on line first!

Being the middle child is just exhausting.


vitals

So the cold was drying up in the head and I was just having that horribly annoying dry cough, the kind that sends you running to the bathroom to vomit as you gag yourself.

Too much information, right?

So I decided I was recuperated enough to go to Faith's  in Brooklyn so we could have an art date tomorrow with Funperson22 from Everyday Matters.

Within minutes of hanging up the phone with her, I developed a burning sensation at the base of my throat and if I try to talk, I have another gagging coughing fit. So now I can't talk.

Can you hear my family jumping up and down in glee?

Really, we had dinner together, roast chicken, roasted carrots, fennel, peas, potatoes, and biscuits. We had challenges over the geographic locale of various obscure countries (okay Belize isn't that obscure to anyone but us).

And then the yelling began. Something to do with someone using all of The Princess's gas. It was all downhill from there. Kids yelling, mother almost swearing, father walking away in disgust.

No, I do NOT think that is why my throat hurts.

It hurt before.

So there.


Cough. Cough. Ahemm (throat clearing). I'm here, hack, hack, hack.  Julia, move over, you're hogging the covers. Will you kids upstairs lower the music! G'night, Stan - see you tomorrow.

So goes this household. Everyone is in some stage of being sick, dragging themselves to work, then coming home and collapsing in different beds. Actually that would be only Stan and I. Julia's been in my bed since Monday night and shows no signs of moving. The big kids are perfectly fine, completely oblivious to helping out, and still doing their vampire act.

As Arnold says, I'll be back.


Homesick

Welcome to sick bay. I have a heavy cold, the one that The Little One, Stan, and my Mom had. Stan has bronchitis, a complication from his cold. And The Little One has the flu.

Last night we played shuffle the beds. The Little One is enconsed in my bed, with the remote controls, juice, kleenex, and Motrin next to her.  Normally when she's that sick, I'll sleep with her, but I would prefer NOT to get the flu,  so I stayed with her until it was bedtime, asked her not to breathe in my direction and I obsessively am washing my hands every time I hand her something. I fell asleep in the bed, on Stan's side (which you all know is just like not even being in your own bed if you are on the wrong side!), because she wanted to watch the final to The Biggest Loser. When I woke up, the show was over and she had slept through it. I went to find my husband, who was sleeping in Julia's bed (probably not a great idea either from a germ point of view.)

I was dithering on about having nowhere to sleep when chivalry came to my rescue and Mystery Man offered his bed. Hmm. Germs or just plain crud? He agreed to pick up the dirty laundry land mines, and I grabbed a sleeping bag and threw it on top of the bare mattress (kid hasn't been able to keep sheets from falling off his bed since he was 5). I actually like sleeping in his room because he has a window right next to his bed and fresh air streams across your face all night if you leave it open a crack.

Things were fine until 5:00 a.m. when bumps in the night over my head woke me up. Mystery  Man was sleeping on the third floor - or not sleeping, obviously. Two hours later when Stan and I got up for work at 7:00, Mystery Man popped his head into the bedroom and greeted us all heartily. Why are you up so early and what've you been doing since 5?? Oh, no, I'm not up early, I never went to bed. I slept so late yesterday that I just stayed up all night. The banging noises? I was looking for the Yankee hat in the attic because I haven't found it since I left for school.

Right. I always look for articles of clothing at 5:00 above MY SLEEPING SICK MOTHER'S HEAD.

Four more days, folks, four more days and he's back in the world of college and kids who never sleep because they are addicted to X-Box and Halo. i swear I"m going to send his tuition bill right to the makers of X-Box.

And now I'm going to court to sneeze on everybody because no matter how sick you are at our office, you get up and cover court. Most people then go to work where they make certain they blow their nose in front of you and sneeze loudly and look as crappy as possible so they can win The Attorney Martyr of the Year Award.  I, however, have long given up on pretending to be more than I am and I'm coming home to take care of my daughter and share the kleenex. If you see me coming, give me wide berth and I promise to cover my mouth when I sneeze.


More on the Intentional Life

A few days ago, I wrote about trying to live an "intentional life" in this new year. I received an interesting comment from "joa" regarding what it means to live each day with intention.  I am quoting the comment here because I think it is an interesting thread that brings up significant issues for those of us that live a creative life:

We are drawn to organize our days through lists, through calendars, through goals and progress bars and tasks bars as an attempt to bring meaning into our day, to give our days purpose and to believe that each day was lived intentionally. These mechanisms will not bring you closer to your life, to your purpose, to the miracle of a single day. Do not confuse yourself through these trappings.

When I use the term "intentional life" I am not writing about trying to inject "purpose" into my life.  On the contrary, I find that my life is too weighted down with  purposes, the most significant and time-consuming being the need to earn income sufficient to support a family.  I have an overabundance of "purpose" in my life - something that I would never sneer at nor take for granted because I know too well what it is like to be jobless and to feel that my life is a shapeless, aimless expanse of time . I remember the panic and despair of looking in vain for months for a job and being utterly grateful when I was finally hired.  I only have the luxury of poking holes in the fabric of my life because I am able to weave patches to repair the fabric.

 

However, I do think it is possible to lose sight of meaning and purpose in the minutiae of life. I am grounded down by the long days, the many phone calls, cases, reports, and scheduling that must be met to successfully reach the other end of the work day. The daily tedium of purpose is just that, tedious at times. We can either approach the dailies, as I call it, with a shrug of the shoulders and a grasp of the flywheel as we try to hang on until we make it till Friday, or we can see our life as a continuum and realize that each day must be intentionally kept as if it were our last.

 

"Joa" wrote of this more eloquently than I:

To live each day intentionally wake and be thankful for the day you are about to receive. Know what the intrinsic purpose of the day shall be; what place in your life will this day fulfill.How will this single day make a difference to Life if it were the last day of your life?

As an artist, I am frustrated by my inability to squeeze more hours out of my day to allow for artistic expression and play. I always feel this need to compress what has to be done so that I can get to the reward. For example, if I order in, I'll have more energy to work on a collage after dinner than if I cook.  On the other hand, if I'm bone tired and just want to veg out and watch TV, I feel guilty that I am not keeping to my sketch a day.

Is there one single act then that you could take which would leave an indelible mark on the lives of those around you? Is there some indelible mark that you could leave behind for the universe?

As I wrote in reply to this comment, the only indelible act that I feel confident of is my relationship with my family. Despite whatever I achieve or don't achieve in my life in terms of writing, art, money, career, I leave behind for the universe the loving relationship I have with my husband and children, with my parents and siblings, and with my friends. I value that more than anything else I've done in my life, and it keeps my heart quiet when I feel the thunder hooves of careers passing me by, when I open a novel written by someone else, when I gaze at a painting that I wish I had painted.

 

Despite all that - no in direct response to that, and because of the support I receive from that, , I know that I have an untapped creative energy that is simmering below the surface. I know that I am capable of a greater mark on the Universe and that this is the decade in which I need to dig down and begin giving voice to the ideas that flit through my brain.

 

So living the intentional life for me is all these things: being grateful for another day alive on this earth; recognizing the importance of slowing down and savoring the things I do for my family and friends instead of trying to rush through them; valuing the abilities I have that enable me to help support my family financially; and allowing myself to give life to the characters that live in my head.

 

Will I have the next decade to express myself? I take that for granted and it is by no means a given. So I work day by day to remain whole, to integrate my creativity through the hours of my day like shuffling bright bits of paper through the dull cards of my daily deck. Certainly this blog brings me great satisfaction and is a source of self-expression that I never dreamed of.

 

Who knows what other bright, shiny bits I can shuffle into my deck. I'm anxious to search for them and I hope I can tack a few into the blogosphere for you to share.





Fettucine Alla Friendship

A yin and yang weekend. Saturday was heavy rain and cold and I was laid low with a sinus headache. I puttered in my bedroom and art room until I gave in to the pain and talk a deep, long, afternoon nap and woke up near dark, with the headache breaking up after a meal of the leftover risotto from the night before. I never even got dressed, but I did find the energy after dinner to finish the dismantling and packing of the Christmas decorations, though Stan did the  bulk of it. Chris got the tree to the curb sometime last night and all that remains is to vacuum up the needles sometimes today, which I hope The Princess will get to.

Sunday was lovely as we drove to Chinatown and met our friends from Memphis who live in the Boston area now. The J's were one of the first families that befriended us when we moved to the South; the friendship grew quickly through our children, who were all close in age, and we soon met a network of families and friends that sustained us as family through the many years that we lived in the South. 

So it was with great joy that we were reunited on the corner of Mulberry and Canal. Hugs and kisses and shrieks as we saw children who had popped up to 6 feet tall in just two years, and got reacquainted over fresh mozzarella and roasted peppers, linguine with clams, and penne alla vodka. It was a good time to linger over red wine as the restaurant was bare in early afternoon. The kids took off for Canal Street and browsing through the rows of electronic stores that spill their suitcases, bamboo cuttings, jade jewelry, laser pointers, and fake bags onto the sidewalks.

We walked the streets, taking photos of the corny Christmas decorations and posing with the plaster chefs that guard the doors of many of the trattorias. They'd never been to this area of the city and were amazed at the confluence of nationalities and ethnicities in the stores and people. Mott Street was jam packed, not with tourists, but with shoppers buying fresh fish and dried shrimp, bags of fresh pea pods and huge gnarly knobs of ginger.  We peeked in the windows of the Italian pasticcerrias, and then one street over, peeked in the windows of the Asian bakeries. We watched a mother loving feed her toddler a pork bun on the corner, feeding him each piece because he was so swaddled in a snowsuit that he couldn't bend his arms to reach his mouth.

We ended our walks with cappuccino and gelato and more photos in the cafe. All too soon we had to leave, with promises not to wait two years to do it again. We drove home tired but happy , remembering a time when our lives were full of friends and get togethers and drinks around the pool, and game nights, and little kids sleeping in their friends' beds. We were so blessed by friendship in Memphis, as now we are blessed with family. The convergence of the two, even for just an afternoon, was great.


Wet & Wild

Ladies1The weather, that is, not my life. No, this is the quiet, predictable time of the year when weekends are more roomy and hold time for naps and drawing and browsing through bookstores.It's pouring rain but mild so we are stuck inside and have half of the Christmas decorations down and will finish up today. 

Last night the sisters and my Mom took our  sister, Marietta, out to dinner for her birthday.  We went to a seafood restaurant and enjoyed a very rare night together sans husbands and kids.  I had  a "tower" of roasted beets and goat cheese for an appetizer, following by a seafood risotto with shrimp, crab, and scallops, topped by a Grand Marnier souffle and a cappuccino.

Can you spell Z-A-N-T-A-C?

It's really not fair that I can't eat like I used to. There was a never a combination of food that would upset my stomach provided I ate after noon, and it wasn't hot out and contained no dairy. Right. I've always had stomach issues as we delicately put it, but in the last four years, timing coincidentally with my return to full time employment, my stomach issues have gotten way out of control. Now I'm no Dooce so you won't hear  more than that, but suffice to say that I'm glad I ate everything that I ordered, even if I had to resort to a heating pad when I got home.

Images_1Souffles. I haven't eaten too many in my lifetime and I've never made even a one, but I love them.  I've always been a person who favors custard-based desserts. Ice cream is ubiquitous, but a flan, or a creme brulee, or custard-stuffed anything, sets my heart aflutter and my blood sugar rising. A souffle is the Empress of all egg-based desserts, except perhaps Floating Islands Images which I've  never had but often dreamt of when on a diet.  Never having had it, you  might surmise that I am just in love with its French appelation, Ouefs a la Neige, but I'm fairly certain that the combination of puffy meringue floating on creme anglaise with strands of caramelized sugar on top  is really the ticket. 

The birthday sister had a Pistachio White Chocolate souffle, which I considered but decided I wasn't sure if I'd like nuts in it but there weren't any  and she loved it. Alicia had the apple tatin and my mother went classic for the creme brulee. My sister Alicia weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet and attends a lot of business dinners with her husband. She always orders dessert and people are always shocked that she does.

What is this thing about not ordering dessert??

At our "holiday party" a/k/a dismal lunch in restaurant that was really a bar and served us cafeteria quality salmon and pasta, we were not given coffee or dessert. This was not a fluke, because we never have it and my boss went on record as saying that she'd rather have the glass of champagne beforehand than budget for dessert. She was talking cash not calories as our Fortune 500 company can't afford to have their Litigation Service personnel enjoy a cafeteria quality plate of salmon and pasta, a glass of domestic champagne, AND a cup of coffee and a slice of pie. Nope! Too rich for the expense account.

But we all know what it really is~ no one wants to be caught dead admitting that they really couldn't care less about the pasta and salmon, they are holding on for dessert. As my sister said, if she has to attend all these rubber chicken events, she's waiting around for the sweet at the end! But in our age of diet, fitness, and obesity, admitting that you order dessert is like admitting to a crack habit.  And you know that all these Puritans, the ones with the gym membership, streaked hair, and manicured nails, all have their goody stash at home and will probably eat a pint of ice cream with the freezer door open, but they'd rather lie naked on the table than by the person who breaks rank and orders SUGAR.

Now don't write to me and tell me how you really are not a dessert person, that you are a meat and potatoes person and when you eat, you want a meal, not sugar. Don't bother telling me how much weight you've lost and how if you just have a BITE of dessert that satisfies you. And especially don't tell me how you haven't had white flour or sugar in a year and you've never felt better.

Liars! All of you!

The youngest sister, Maria, declared that she had begun her post-holiday carb curb and didn't order dessert. She Didn't Order Dessert.  I know she'll be kick herself in about two weeks when the carb curb loses its steam and she wishes she had ordered it because we're not going out again any time soon.

I just called her house and her daughter says that her parents walked down to the store to get the newspaper. Walked. In the rain. 

When will this madness stop?

Aha! I just remembered that the store they've walked to sells Krispy Kreme donuts. Bet she's scarfing one down right now. If I see her later, I'll check the corners of her lips for grains of granulated sugar and look for tell tale signs of jelly stains on her sweater.

And I've just remembered that I have a container of rice pudding in the fridge. A nice, custardy rice pudding. Best thing for a rainy, dreary Saturday morning. And I'll leave the heating pad on to warm up the bed for my return.

Ta-ta!


Change, Change, Change

Ladies3will do you good...P&P is in transition, design-wise. I am putting up a simple template while I configure things. I have to admit that I don't know how to use MT or all those other cool skins, but I also don't have the time to learn. So I am <blush> doing it the old fashioned way and that means painting and drawing and scanning it in. Hope to have a new look together by the end of the weekend.

In the meanwhile, I am going "pink" in honor of my friend, Paula, who just started a gorgeous new blog, The Apprentice of Wonder.Paula is a masterful storyteller and incredible photographer - but she has admitted that she has an unfounded fetish against "pink".

I'm boring tonight, mid week and all. Check back later for scintillating conversation. Now I have to go figure out why Photoshop won't open!

DelightfulIn the meantime,Papernapkin has declared that this is National Delurking Day! Please post your comments and tell me who you are, what you are up to, what you'd like to see here, or anything you care. Like Sheryl, I have a ton of hits each day, but not a lot of comments. So this is your day to pop your head in and say howdy!


Shh - don't tell anyone but I'm home from work. The Little One is sick and running a fever, so I went to court and covered my assignments, then came home to take care of her. We are lying on my bed while she eats a bowl of vegetable soup and I drink coffee. We are also watching "Saved By the Bell" - truly an obnoxious program.

Being at home with my daughter reminds me of the wonders of being a child and having a sick day. As an adult, there's very few days that rival that, except perhaps a snow day, because when I'm home sick, I'm usually really sick, too sick to enjoy my pens and journals and the books stacked on the  night table.

I remember the major illnesses of my childhood, which blessedly were minor and far between. I had chicken pox on my 13th birthday, which happened to coincide with a huge February snowstorm. My birthday party was scheduled for that day and my mother had made the cake and we’d hung the crepe paper and made the little goodie bags. We didn’t even bother to call people to tell them not to come because it was impossible to drive anywhere until the plows cleared out the 18 inches that had fallen in to the night.

Although I wascrushed that my party had been canceled, it still was snow day and school was closed, and  my young aunt and uncle walked over from their house and spent the day playing with us in the snow. We mounded up the snow and made a ramp that we watered with a hose to ice it up and flew down it on those round, metal discs that we called “Flying Saucers”.

Later that night I found some red bumps on my chest and my mother declared that I had chicken pox. Everyone was concerned that my pregnant aunt had been exposed to me, but her baby, my cousin Alison, the wonder woman of marathons and obsessive knitting, was born healthy and fine.

Sick days were a combination of of getting away with something and incredible boredom. I didn't have to go to school, but I had to stay in bed. We had one TV and it remained in the living room.  With five kids in the house, the sick one would be quarantined. My mother would had a bed tray that she used when she brought us our meals in bed. For in between, she gave us a bell to ring when we needed something. It was a real bell, one of those that you have to swing to move the clapper.  She usually sent up one of us, and we'd stand in the doorway for fear of getting germs and barely listen to what the sick kid had to say before running downstairs again. This made getting snacks and glasses of soda dependent on the whims of a sister who made have other motives in mind, like paying you back for telling on her for writing on wall of the stairs.

Today my kids rarely stay in bed. If anything, they stay in my bed, watching our TV, using our phone, and leaving their tissues and germs all over our sheets which inevitably leads to me getting sick. They want soup and toast and generally anything that leaves crumbs in the sheet. They don't need a bell - they either shout or use their cell phones.

Today I hesitated in coming home after court. My son was home, albeit asleep until he gets up for work in mid afternoon. My husband could have taken the day off, being a "consultant" now, but then he wouldn't get paid. My desire to go home had more to do with the plaintive sound of my daughter's stuffed up voice, which sounded more like 5 years old than 13 years old on the phone. She is a little obsessive about her health, and I could hear the worry in her voice when she told me she was running a fever.

So we are home, so soon after our vacation. Thankfully work is on the light side right after the holidays and I don't have that stress. They'll give me a whopper of an assignment for tomorrow to make up for it and I'll probably have her grandmother stay with her tomorrow.
But for today we'll hang out, watch old sitcoms and enjoy the fact that I was able to be a "real mom" one more time before she's up and out the door on her scooter, or IM'ing her cousins. 


What is Normal?

Blog2I'd like to say that everything is back to normal after the holidays, but what the hell is normal? Right now I feel like I have been home too much, which you know by Wednesday will revert to me crying like a baby because I'm so frazzled from court.

Don't you think I should get a job where I can just sketch all day? Don't I deserve it? Isn't this a cute sketch? Wouldn't you like one hanging in your home? Wouldn't you pay several hundred dollars for it? And what exactly would that job be? And if you know of that job, please don't apply for it, but send me the address so I can.....

Aw hell - I keep forgetting that only The Little One goes back tomorrow and the 2 college slugs will be around for a few  more weeks. There was a rare sighting of both teens out of bed by 3:00 p.m. today and I understand that that means there will be 12 more weeks of winter, a lunar eclipse, sun flares, and 20 more trips of Stop and Shop for soda, chips, and laundry detergent.

The Little One did herself proud and built a gorgeous volcano out of a coke bottle, foam core board, duct tape, newspaper, modeling clay, and spray paint. Unfortunately, by royal decree of  The Empress, me, there will be no "dry run" of the famed vinegar and baking soda reaction. I KNOW it works because Mystery Man frequently concocted it all over the kitchen floor during his formative years. Nothing smells like science project more than vinegar and baking soda. Let her teacher clean it up!

The Princess has not been as industrious as her younger sister. She has devoted her vacation to running up the tab at Blockbusters, doing the laundry for pay (hey, no one had any underwear!), and perfecting the use of the  new ceramic hair straightening gizmo she bought. My couch has a permanent depression on the side nearest the fireplace from her tiny, well-toned derriere.

Mystery Man has been working hard at the gourmet shop, except he called in sick on New Year's Eve, the second busiest day of the year, because he was "tired", which probably isn't a good thing when you plan to ask for a raise. After that he disappeared for the weekend for an X-Box marathon at a friend's house, to whom I was eternally grateful because god forbid the marathon should be at my house. I ain't that nice a mother.

The Little One is sharing her father's cold. Have you ever been with a man for three days straight in the house when he was a cold, or as my husband calls it, "a chest cold" and "a cold in his eyes". (Don't inquire about the latter - yuck) At least today he will respond when spoke to (can you spell d-r-a-m-a-t-i-c?)

I'm leaving on that note, to peel off the attractive combination of gesso and dried gel medium on my hands. They resemble cadaver hands with the white, peeling skin look. Hmm, maybe this could get me out of going to court~I'll say I have a skin infection.....

Have a great Monday Back At Work After The Holidaze!











Living the Intentional Life

Ideas swirl around in my little brain; half-formed smoke curls of thoughts that lead into a labyrinth of their own. Some time away from work and the ceasing of holiday merriment grants me a little quiet in which to observe my life and poke at what's not working.

Major changes are not in the air, for me anyway. My new job prospect seems to have dried up like the Halloween pumpkin left on the side porch. For the immediate future, I'll keep my head down and plow ahead, trying to keep the dailies under control and worry about the future the next day.

A New Year's Day that brings sun and spring temperatures is a respite from the holiday intensity and lowered skies. December's over and a few warm days interspersed with the ice and snow leads us to believe that we can make it through this winter unscathed. We pack our books and sketch pads and head to the beach. We get as far as the parking lot and position the car so we sketch the old rowing club. 42 seagulls (I counted them) are lined up on the beach railing, all with their backs to the water and faces to the sun.

The water is the deep blue of winter and the empty moorings whistle in the wind. A lone sailboat, a 30 footer, comes in under full sail until it reaches the end of the stone pier and pulls down its sails and comes in under power. A man in a brown leather jacket stands on the hull of the cabin and in the stern, a dog with a yellow life jacket sits next to the guy at the tiller. I know we are both thinking of how wonderful it must be to have the wherewithal and energy to go sailing on New Year's Day, maybe a given in southern states, but certainly an anomaly in the northeast. We both exchange silent thoughts of how we'd like our lives to be, then go back to our books and sketches.

We've come home to the aroma of pot roast and rosemary permeating the house. The Princess awakes from her New Year's slumber, but Mystery Man is in the second day of his X Box marathon at Mike's, so we'll have to save him some pot roast. The Little One is under the weather and doesn't get the energy to go out until just before dark. She rides her scooter up and down the street, a lonely little figure, until our neighbor's icicle lights come on and she knows to come in.

Soon we'll dish out the pot roast and then I've promised a girls only Scrabble game on my bed while we watch goofy science fiction movies from the 1950S.

So far 2005 has been a year to savor: sun and water, some knitting on the never-ending green and black scarf, zen moments of drawing,  good food, and quiet time for family. May you all experience such an intentional life.