Tomorrow is no work and no school. Me and the ladies will relax in the a.m., possibly eat our weight in blueberry bread and coffee (coffee for me, not them), then troll around looking for a playdate. I have a feeling our fave bagel place is closed. MLK is taken very seriously in these parts, as his teachings should be. Me and Mimi and Beenie have been chatting about him and the good he did for many people. How he was shot. Who shot him?, they ask. That is a hard question to answer. Why was he shot? is also a tough question.

Got extra silence this Sunday a.m. while ladies and gent were at church. Had time to read the Ricky Gervais article in the Times Magazine and also had time to work on one of my dying Black-eyed Susan paintings. It was glorious. Recently unearthed a box of old mixed tapes — the ones that didn’t get trashed from the last house’s basement flood. Listened to a tape from Damon twice, and one side of a tape from Chris. Amazing. I really loved mixed tapes. Why was everyone so happy to replace them with mixed CD’s and jump drives? I’m glad my shitty tape player still works. Analog foreves, yo!

I am fairly sure I beat back the migraine that was threatening my long weekend. Got up early while my head was pounding and spent a half hour twisting out my spine. Not sure what sparked it off this time. Usually it is tied with hormones and that annoying time of the month. I hate headaches. This one better not come back tomorrow. Or the head is going. I’m bagging it up and putting it out for the Monday garbage collection.

There is a book on my bedroom floor, covered in fur, with a set of eyes peeking out from underneath. It is the furriest book I’ve ever had. It is staring at me. It arrived in a mysterious package with another book, and a note from a mysterious person I’ve never met in Berkeley, CA. Isn’t that cool?

Happy mf new year, peeps! I lost half the month already. Almost. February will be the four-year anniversary of 20/20! Can you imagine? I remember exactly when I started writing this shits. T’was the winter of my discontent, a delayed post-partum depression, that showed up a year or two late. I was sick with some sort of unsavory scourge, or about to be, the 2008 presidential extravaganza was getting revved and ready. Rachel Maddow was emerging from her corduroy cocoon, kicking the flat ass of each and every one of the blustery white men who uttered bluster after bluster of hot air surrounding her. I may have had a crush on Rachel then. Maybe I still do, though am perplexed at her make-up artist’s decision to have her wear false eyelashes. Not really her style.

Yesterday was my one year anniversary at my job. No fanfare, no plaques. It is a bit of a miracle I survived an entire year at this job. The benefits of this position are becoming apparent finally. Other than regular income, I have actually learned about something I feel some passion for. Incredible. No details until there are details to share. It is not all for naught. Shocking.

Paintings are emerging again from the carpeted command center on the top floor. Shouldn’t I give my art room a name? Dying flowers, maps of unknown worlds. This is on the art menu at the moment. Not so different than always. Mimi and Beenie were actually able to hang with me this past Sunday after they got home from church. They came into the studio while I was in the middle of finishing a layer of color on a painting, and got out some pencils and paper and drew while I finished-up. It was fun to have them there! I was only using linseed oil as a medium so they weren’t inhaling bad fumes, though not everyone likes the smell of the linseed oil. I don’t think it’s bad for humans, tho. Got an extra 45 minutes out of painting-time with them there.

Don’t know why this is titled happy new beer. Just seemed silly and beery. I like beer. I drank almost a whole beer last night with no apparent side-effect this morning. I may try another one next week to test the fizzy, hoppy waters again.

Originally I had “Fill Your Heart” by David Bowie in my head, yet somehow K.C. and the Sunshine Band was what came out of my fingers. What the hell is wrong with me? End of the year enui.

An entire year has passed and seemingly nothing has happened… okay, I know, a few things happened. I got a full-time job after staying home with my daughters for three and a half years, my family moved from our cute home of twelve years, a rowhouse in Baltimore City to a house in Baltimore County. A house in which I now have a room to make art in, yet no time to do so. What I have done in the past eight months, is almost completely unpack a plethora of strange items (why, pray tell, do I have a small bag full of fake ants?) in this studio/office/headquarters. Not only are there curiosities, but years and years of letters and journals and tons of other written material seem to have piled up in this room. It is the physical manifestation of my cluttered and addled mind. Dumped out in front of me when I have a fleeting moment in which to review it all. Or, at least, the juicy bits.

TOTAL MIND FUCK.

Really, do I need to read letters from past relationships, journal entries of misery and alone-ness? Must I? Clearly, there is something compelling about reviewing ones’ past. I mean, there could be something important hidden among the piles and piles of paper. Oh and the photographs. Tons of them. Could there be thousands? At least lots of hundreds. It all ended in 2001, when I got a digital camera and stopped spending money on printed photography. Sad. Looking through old photos is more meaningful, somehow, than clicking through old-ish images on a computer. When Mimi and Beenie look at photographs, they look at them on the little LED screen of a digital camera or on a computer screen. Usually, the images are of them looking cheeky.

Beenie is hacking up a lung tonight, which is a repeat performance of last night and the night before that, when I had to go in her and Mimi’s room and sit on her bed and hold her up so she could stop coughing. Post nasal crap choking her when she lies down. Which means I don’t get any sleep. In about two minutes I’m going to have to go back into her room and do the prop-up again. This is what you do for your children. It would be easier if I didn’t have to go into work tomorrow morning really early. But I do.

Husband and girls at church — praise organized religion. Anything that affords me an hour and a half of peace on a Sunday morning can’t be bad.

Just spent an hour reading the NYtimes magazine. Wow. How does Jemaine Clement feel about Bret McKenzie performing without him?

Uh oh. Three minutes turned to five. Dammit!

Life is strange, don’t you think? I spent the last three days at a conference hosted by the content management system the agency I work for uses. A “user conference” if you will. How, in glob’s name did I end up here? Editing web pages. Sending out press releases. I vaguely remember being a creative person. No mas.

I can’t believe this month is almost over. And once November is gone, you might as well just say goodbye to the rest of the year. I guess now is as good a time as any to make my yearly holiday proclamation:

I WILL NOT PLAY YOUR REINDEER GAMES

Yeah, that’s right. I’m not gonna be the bad guy. I worked hard to get that crap out of my system five years ago, after I had children. It isn’t gonna be me. Christmas is what it is, don’t make it something it isn’t. I am not going to ruin it for my five year old daughters, but I’m also not going to raise two brats who expect that every Christmas is going to be a gift bonanza and then be disappointed when they don’t get every single thing they wanted. Nope. Not me.

I just want to be able to get through the holidays without needing cocktails (because my ability to drink is extremely limited), not going broke, not feeling guilty or just bad about things. The children have plenty of toys, clothes, books, everything. Yes, I am aware that I used to be traumatized by the end of year holidays, but now they are fun because Mimi and Beenie are all about it, and I am happy to encourage and support their tinseley desires.

Take your issues and your bad hat and don’t let the door hit you in the arse on the way out. I say this to myself first, then extend the exit-tation to whomever else threatens to make this a stressball December.

Y didn't I turn on the light in my bedroom?

Y

Have you ever been curious what would happen if you bashed your forehead on the corner of a sharpish, wooden dresser? Well, I can show you what something of that nature looks like…

This little doozey happened back in September. I survived. The current version of the Y scar has faded. I’ll share the updated one with you soon.

Section of a map project I'm working on. Crappy photo.

Today’s post is total old skool stylee. Home at 3:48 in the afternoon, fixin’ to leave in ten minutes to collect the ladies from school. Stayed home today because I’m sick, and now that I am employed, I get paid to be sick. I should get sick more often. Really tho, nobody likes a germ carrier polluting the already questionable air in the fluorescent cube-land where I work. I’m hacking in my own space today.

We moved into our house at the end of April 2011, and today, October 20, 2011 is the first day I’ve had all to myself in this house. It has taken six months for me to have total peace. And peaceful it has been, friends. Almost napped with two cats pinning me down, drank tea and coffee, coughed and sucked on cough drops. Contemplated the cause and cure for canker sores (OUCH), wrote a bit. Read a bit. Walked to the grocery store to get some healthy food to help me feel better, and make for my family. And here I am. Still have to unload the dishwasher, maybe throw in a load of laundry. But those are things I typically do once I’ve picked up the girls and come home after work. Those things can wait.

I could use a couple thousand more days like today. Not necessarily sick, tho. Just quiet and curious. And gettin’ paid for it.

My FIVE YEAR OLD daughters (they crossed from four to five September 25th) have been playing together lots lately. Not requiring too much involvement unless mealtime approaches, when they become wild animals and do mean, girlish things to one another, like bite and scratch. Steal blankets and stuffed animals, fight over princess ballerina fairy dress-ups. Astounding, actually. An hour, hour and-a-half, relatively low volume play with no input from me. This is life-changing. Makes me want to write some novels and screenplays. Create a body of artwork and do something with it. If only dinner didn’t need to get made, crumbs swept, pies baked, children bathed, read-to, then tucked in. Soon. Once I stop doing house chores, everything will be possible.

Stephen Colbert is on. I NEVER get to stay up this late!

And the puff was the man who lived next door. And he buried me into the ground, and still he didn’t win. And the puff when I was born, was the man who lived next door.

You know the kind, with the honey and the nuts on the top!

– Mimi, just now.

Good gravy! Can’t go outside without having to shield my daughters from disgusting insect sex happening right on our patio!! GROSS! No, really. S’up?! My darlings are staying at my parents place for the second night in a row. Wowza. So much quiet time and all I can think to do is write a post on 20/20. Such a luxury, really. Today has been a dream. Woke up at 8 a.m. Lay around until 9 when I had wallowed long enough. Ate a leftover chocolate chip bagel, had a cup of Earl Gray tea. Electricity went out again, but then came back on. Took a walk down the street to the bookstore (I know, a BOOKSTORE?? Who knew there were any little bookstores down the street anymore?), got some books for the ladies for their upcoming FIFTH birthday, got myself a book, then strolled to the cutie Frenchie bakery across the street. Got me a pastry, a soy latte, read the intro to my book, started walking home, realized about halfway home I’d left my purse/bag/contraption that holds my credit cards, license, registration and other important items at said Frenchie bakery, walked with purpose back, got my bag where I’d left it, walked all the way home. Lay around on the couch, read a little more of my book, drank the rest of my latte, and was in utter silence.

I again find myself in silence. A child-free life is a quiet one. A life where you start a task and have a good chance of finishing it. A life where the cicadas outside blend with the click of typing and breathing. Nobody is fighting over anything anywhere in the house. Husband watches a movie he wants to see downstairs, I relax, freshly showered, on our bed. I am tired but not from having done anything particularly strenuous today. But just tired, not completely frazzled and exhausted. There is a difference.

Perhaps it was the one beer I had with dinner. I could have done without it, actually. It’s been so long since I had a beer I’ve forgotten that it is beer OR dinner, not beer with dinner. Too filling. Scotch would have been a better bet. Oh well. It’s only 9:07 p.m. There is still time for a thimble of whiskey!

Am about to start a small series of floral paintings. Probably five total. Three on canvas, two on wood panels. I believe the Maryland state flower is the object of desire. Dying. The flowers have so much more depth of color when they are on their way out.

Silence is loud, but not as loud as screaming. Two five year-old girls screaming. No. Nothing is that loud.

I look forward to hearing of their Grandparentish adventure tomorrow. After I’ve had a chance to peruse the NY Times in silence.

(August 30, 2010)

…to force one’s family into the car, pack up a bunch of shit, and drive to the beach. When the car packer (me) and my spouse are TOTALLY flattened by a freakish flu that tornadoed through our little row house, exploding lymph nodes, incurring fevers (I NEVER get a fever!), demanding maximum pain management, hacking up lung after phlegmy lung. It’s not just crazy… it’s desperate. And that is what I was/am. Absolutely desperate. Desperate.