Welcome to My Mid-Thirties

How about I trade:

• Spontaneous summer beach trips
• Spontaneous creativity
• Painting just because
• Writing children's books just because
• Seeing my family
• Fun outings and social gatherings with a group of local friends
• Having coffee with Trevor at the cafe down the street
• losing 10 pounds by cutting back on alcohol in my diet
  
• Baking for my 80 year old neighbor
• dog fostering with a non-profit rescue
• bouts of localized happiness amid a generalized anxiety about my life

For:

• Looking at the beach as I circle to find parking, wondering how did it get to be mid-July and I still don't have a swimsuit
• Organizing creative cocktail parties during which I hang out and socialize and don't make anything
• Painting only when it has to do with work or donating for an art auction (last-minute)
• Writing Children's books under high-pressure deadlines only when it has to do with work
• Being Auntie-Who? that lives in California and is "different"
• Working blindly until 830 pm on a Saturday and then realizing I was supposed to meet one of two girl friends I have within a 25 mile radius for dinner and she ate already
• Dragging Trevor at break-neck speed down the block 2x a day while texting and downing coffee
• losing ten pounds by completely eliminating sugar, fat, & alcohol from my diet, and running myself ragged on the treadmill
• Buying cupcakes at the bake sale down the street and leaving them in front of my 80 year old neighbor's door, hoping he won't recognize them
• being on the board of a non-profit rescue
• bouts of localized anxiety amid a generalized happiness about my life
  

Car Wreck Perks

* chance to justify years of monthly payments
* annoying, minor ding in bumper from 6 months ago now moot, since bumper no longer exists
* chance to get some sun and stretch legs in the middle of morning commute
* complimentary premarital counseling from Tow Truck Driver
* interesting tour of body shop
* free coffee and hourly CNN swine flu updates at insurance office
* $500 car wash!

What the Hell Is Wrong With People??

Gross!

• Barefoot Shoes
• Hand soap

Creativity

Summer/Spring Projects:

• light box
• take more photos with my new camera - learn about speed and lighting
  
• bottle garden
• more toys
• headboard?
  
• bottle chandelier
• paintings
• books
  

Hi. It's been forever.

I just got back last week from my very first adult, non-working vacation with Erik and Trevor. Till now my vacations have mostly either been work-related, work-involved, or family-related, which can be fun but never feels like rest. This time, all we did all week was lie around, wine taste, read, listen to music, cook, sight-see, eat, and shop. It was such a great time, the first relaxation I've had since last April. It was an opportunity for my brain to leave off from Pinups for Pitbulls 2009, to begin my spring, and to get back into caring for myself and my household and my own projects. Time to get to do art stuff again. I bought a whole new set of watercolors, brushes, and tablets while up in Carmel, and am hosting another creative cocktails party on May 9th. I feel emotionally healthier than I have in a very long time, and am taking steps to get my much-fatigued physical self back into great condition.

But apart from a few quick paintings here and there and decorating my bathroom walls with painted flowers, my hands-on, just-because creativity has been almost zero.

I've just been catching up on the blogs and creativity of all my Crafty Friends. One is Audrey, my friend who owns a paperie called Urbanic in Venice, CA (on Abbot Kinney). I went into her shop on Sunday for the first time since last summer, and am just blown away by what she and her husband have accomplished. I was there when they were moving into the store, and now it just blows me away to see what they've done with the place. They have this great bridal lounge where brides can custom order invitiations. It makes me want to get engaged just to have an excuse to sit there and look through all these great books. I picked up a cute journal... I can never resist buying stuff when I visit. I didn't even go in to their clothing store next door, Neighborhood, because I just spent so much on vacation, and everything in there looked super cute. Sigh. Maybe in a few months!

During my visit, their son Javin was running around with this great, fun handmade cape on. Turns out our friend Liz made it for him and dropped it by the night before. Audrey mentioned Liz had stuff up on Etsy, so I wrote her and got the address. I've just spent the past hour looking at all her stuff and am completely charmed and drawn in and inspired to sew and paint and make things this spring and summer. She makes fabrics and shirts and collage/paintings of found objects and prints of paintings... she is my hero this week. I can't wait to buy some of her stuff! I can't wait to go home and make stuff too!

My friend Jessica and I have been talking about bottle gardens this month. I'm excited to get with her soon and make them. Meanwhile, I'm on the lookout for the perfect bottle. There's a great picture of one in one of my 70s plant books. My Bottle Garden Goal is to recreate it.

Finally, my friend Xea in portland has been talking with me about recipes,photography, and how she's been sewing kid's clothes and selling them to local stores. (I'm trying to find a link here of her stuff but I can't... it's very cute and retro.) I'm the kind of person who always thinks that would be a fun idea, but who would never actually get the guts to do this. Maybe in a parallel universe where I live in Portland and don't have social anxiety. For now, I'll just live vicariously through her. She did the photo of her sheep, Napkin, up top, enoying some Sushi.

Anyway, time to sit at my desk and browse Etsy!

xoxox

The Master of Disaster

I started the Master Cleanse. My goal is ten days. Let's see if I make it to 3.

Overview: The Master Cleanse is that "lemonade diet" with the Grade B Maple syrup and the pepper that everyone has been trying on and off for the past few years, especially in LA. Also known as "The Gross Cleanse", "That Nasty Pisswater Lemon Shit" and "Oh yeah, My Friend Tried That And It Didn't Work."

It combines drinking 6-8 glasses of "Lemonade", with laxative tea at night and the "Saltwater Flush" in the morning... The "Saltwater Flush" is non-iodized salt and water. The idea is, you slam back a quart of that and then you shit your brains out about an hour later, flushing out all the toxins and stuff. You do that every morning, and drink the tea at night, and the lemonade during the day.

Supposedly I'm getting enough calories and nutrients in the lemonade where I shouldn't need food.... and the dizziness, nausea, drunkenness, and horrifying headache pain I feel is because of the toxins being released in my body, not lack of food or dehydration. Supposedly this is good for me.

Those interested in following the progress of someone who hates rules, deprivation, discipline and structure should read on.

The Night Before:

• Stock up on organic concentrated lemon juice, teas, water.
• Politely turn down sage friend's advice to do a whole body cleanse with pills, as it has lasting results and is more effective, saying "I'll try this and when it sucks and doesn't work, I'll try the one that does."
• Re-read The Master Cleanse, suspiciously. Note the typos. Note that the author also suggests putting oil in your eyes to refresh yourself.
  
• At home, wash all dishes, clean out coffee maker, throw out all items that won't be edible in a few days.
• Make a huge vat of lemon juice/maple syrup/cayenne pepper tea. Text friend 14 times about the recipe, being unable to transpose metric or double a recipe.
• Line up boxes of tea, Sea Salt canister, mugs, and measuring units, for easy access in impending zombified state.
  
• Have delicious last supper of Amy's Cheeseless Pizza. Drink apple juice, snorting half of it out nose watching The Office.
• Curl up with a disgusting mug of Chocolate Flavored "Smooth Move" tea, making a face.

Day One:

• 6 AM - Drink the saltwater. First gulp: "Mmm, salty!" Second gulp: "Wow, that's like, salty." Third through sixth gulps: "So this is what drowning in the ocean is like." Seventh through tenth gulp:" BLEEEECH! Who the fuck does this to themselves?" Eleventh gulp: "That wasn't so bad."
  
• 630 AM - Fill empty apple juice bottles with tea, so as not to be Obviously On A Cleanse
  
• 7 AM - Drink tea, walk Trevor, nervous about suddenly shitting self. Bring extra bags.
  
• 730 AM- Back in the house... nothing is happening... fret about hour long drive to work with loaded bowels.
  
• 745 AM to 9 AM- Shit fucking brains out, shower, get ready for work.
  
• 9 AM to 10 AM - Drive to work, weakly.
  
• 10 AM- Arrive at work with splitting headache. Hate everyone. Smell hashbrowns, somewhere. Resent the person eating them.
• 10 AM - 5 PM Drink tea, hate life. Hate everyone. Want to pull head off of neck because it hurts so bad. Unable to concentrate. Shit brains out.
• 6 pm - Drive home, zombified, attempting to sing along with radio to cheer self up.
• 7 pm - After lurching around the block with Trevor, fall dead asleep, completely exhausted.
  

Day 2:

See Day One, only add this:

• Become increasingly psychotic, and lash out and everyone, for everything that they ever did, or are ever about to do.
• Note horrible, terrible taste in mouth and increasingly severe flu-like symptoms
  
• Read websites on side affects. Note symptoms match the "severely toxic" examples.
• Wonder what happens to people who eat steak 3x a day.
• Attempt to blog, typing out things that are barely coherent.
• Feel helpless as motor skills deteriorate before blurry eyes.
  

Day 3:

• See Days 1 and 2 through 11 AM
• 11 AM -After several anguished emails to a friend who has successfully completed the cleanse for 16 days, give up.
  
• 11:30 AM- Order vegetable soup.
• 11:45 AM -Weep openly when it arrives.
• 11:45 AM - 1 PM Slowly and delightfully enjoy the Best Soup Ever made. Ever.
• 1 PM and On - Return to normal, with a new grasp of the word "gratitude".
• Fix blog.
  
• Research cleanses that involve pills.
  
• Browse recipes for delicious soups to make for dinner.

Let's Make A Deal

You guys (my neighbors) leave your wifi unlocked so that I have a backup internet source when my dog pees on my router.

In return, I will agree to sit here and listen to your dogs bark their freaking heads off for hours and hours and hours today.

Deal?
Great.

My new thing or 25 things.

My new thing, if you haven't guessed by now, is to totally overextend myself with jobs and never have time to do anything. This also causes chest pains and alienation.

Well, that sounds a little more tragic than my life really is. So I take it back. My new thing, if you haven't guessed by now, is to only blog once a month, never paint anything, never write anything, never make anything, never do anything, and yet have time to for some reason sign back up on Facebook and post stupid pointless shit there.

Which leads me, of course, to my 25 things. You know you want to know what mine are.

1. Today, I feel guilty for never having been published as a children's book illustrator/author. I don't always feel guilty, just when something creative in me has to shift of be born.... It's less of a goal anymore and more of a thing on my Life's To Do List that I should have gotten around to by now. I sometimes feel that, with my 17 hobbies and 3 jobs, I don't give writing and fine art the attention and dedication it deserves. I even woke up today thinking of my latest and as of yet unfinished book, and then that spiraled down into horrible flashbacks of fucked up people in my life, since the last time I worked on it was last year, on the cusp of the most horrible series of experiences of my life, and so now I have these PTSD-like flashbacks every time I think about it.... weird associations I guess. I hate when bad things ruin good things for me for awhile.

But I really think I need to get back into it. Especially cause Dave just sent me this guy: http://www.shauntan.net (don't go there yet, read my thing! just kidding, do what you want.)

2. My other hobbies and jobs are graphic design (9-5 and freelance), sewing, knitting, video editing, music, reading, dancing, modeling, writing short stories, working with dog rescue, helping run non-profit org.s for dog rescue, "blogging" (ew) about gross food (yes!!!), collecting vintage and retro furnishings and clothes, making collages and household items, photography. Add those to keeping my life in order, having days off to rest, and having meaningful relationships and it's no wonder I never get anything fully done.

3. I hate Styrofoam

4. My gross food blog is www.therecipeforfailure.co

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5. Since age 16, every couple years I start smoking again, knowing full well that it is unhealthy and disgusting. I thoroughly enjoy myself, smoking my head off for 6-8 months, then abruptly quit again, and thoroughly enjoy being a nonsmoker. Right now I'm in my quitting cycle. I had a rule that after age 33 was the cut off, but I've never been good at rules.

6. I love brie. Love it. It is my vegan kryptonite.

7. I am spiritual, and right now I'm enjoying my nondenominationalism. If God created us, fine. If Jesus was around and he said a bunch of awesome stuff about how to be nice to each other, and then we killed him but he was like, oh yeah well HA I'm not dead, and now I'm out, fine. If we all die and something cool happens, fine. If not, and it's all a pack of lies, fine. But I'm not going to know for sure now anyway, so why debate it? I'm not hurting anybody by thinking what I think, as long as I don't think it makes me better than anyone else or that I can predict what the hell will happen to me or anyone else.

I grew up being dragged to christian church, and in my teen-early adult life, said eff this. Every terrible thing that people have done to me has been related somehow to a) Organized Religion or b) Coke. But because I feel a spiritual connection with people and the universe, I tried Christianity again for awhile, later in my adult life. Really studied it, and really tried to live it (yeah i still drank and swore, and though I was celibate for 5 years as an experiment, I still made out). This time I thought it would be different because my peers and I were consenting adults. Nope. Same thing, everyone was still super-fucked-up.

So now I think everyone should respect and leave everyone else alone. Let me sit and pray or send out my vibes or have a discussion with God/Universe/She/He/My Inner Self/The Flying Spaghetti Monster and leave me alone. It makes me a better person, trust me. Don't ask what I think about Creation, Evolution, Dinosaurs, Agnosticism, Noah's Ark, Atheism, The Trinity, or The Big Bang. The answer is, I don't. I love science (even the science of math), but I also love art, emotion, nature, and spirituality just as much; I don't see why people have to constantly try to make them compete with or disprove each other. I just want to enjoy things now, and make things better, because things suck a lot of the time for a lot of people.

8. I've never done coke.

9. I hate rum.

10. I can't crap in public restrooms. I have to have a private domestic bathroom (or like a hotel room). Deirdre (Little Darling, at right) tried once to talk me through it in a rest area on a road trip. We had not only the entire rest room, but the entire floor of the rest area to ourselves. Also, something weird was going on with the water system so all the water in all the toilets in the place was brown. This janitor lady who didn't speak English showed us to this private bathroom with the only 2 toilets left that hadn't been flushed while the water was all fucked up, so they were sparkling with clear, pristine water. As we settled in and I got ready to experience my first public crap, the janitor lady came back in and stood right outside my stall door. I don't know what the hell she was doing, like fluttering trash bags around... but standing RIGHT there, in this huge bathroom. It was so creepy. I texted Deirdre: "What the fuck, I can't do this, why is she Lurking out there!" I got stage fright and failed. She totally made me miss my window. Oh well.

11. Since then, our term for people who hover outside the bathroom door is Turd Lurker.

12. I spent $80 on sheets. They were worth it.

13. I really really like and love myself, and have inner happiness, for the first time in my life. Only took 33 years! I love being 33.

14. I'm a natural blonde. I hate blonde hair on me :) I've been every color, and besides super-bright red, this is my favorite.

15. I wear contacts - without them I'm blind past 3" from my face. I want Lasik so badly, but it freaks me out. Maybe one day.

16. I'm a sucker for plants and flowers. If you want to make me do something, just give me flowers and plants. I'm that easy.

17. I love snapdragons, peonies, sweet peas, cala lilies, poppies... any flower really, except gerber daisies (kim's favorite) and roses (though they smell nice). Creeping charlie, jade, bougainvillea trees, and all ferns are my favorite plants.

18. I always paint my toenails so, in case of my sudden death, they will look nice in the morgue with the little toe tag. I'm a planner.

19. I love food, and I love drinking. I'm like a Medieval King. It's ritualistic. Sometimes I blow people off to stay home and eat. It's impossible for me to ever get obese, but I do have a 5-13-pound fluctuation going on here and there, until my clothes and skin start looking way bad. Then it's salad and gym time, muttering about it until I can eat again, but delighted when everything fits me again. I also love cooking for people and serving them. Mmmm. Food.

20. Right now I'm eating raw for 2 weeks since Christmas time was one of those eat, drink, and be merry fests. Combine that with quitting and it's HeiferTown around here. I'm actually enjoying the raw food. Grapes rule.

21. If you're one of those people, like zillions, who have been in college forever, and you're studying your masters or your PhD or you're doing your thesis, or your something else that's kind of like a thesis but more important, and you try to talk to me about it, I won't be able to understand what you're saying, because I flunked high school more or less, took my SATs when I was 21, and dropped out after only 2 years of art school. Though I admire your focus and all that money you can afford. I for one would kill myself if I were you. So good job! And sorry I can't participate in the conversation about your life. Do you have a dog?

22. Skunks will attack mountain lions. Did you know? I didn't either, till last week. They are bad-ass.

23. I love to make lists. I think that' what got me to participate in this. If you ever need me to do something for you, besides giving me flowers, submit it in list form and I will do it just so I can cross it off. Watch:

24. Shut up.

25. Tag some people and send this already.

DONE! :)
Ps: you don't have to do this, I won't be offended.
PPs: If you made it all the way down here, you deserve a prize... wait for this to fully load