One girl show

I believe my daughter has found her calling in life. Her composition is edgy and asymetrical, her subject matter chillingly domestic and her use of both vivid and pastel hues complement her techniques of movement and over-exposing, which brands her work as ethereal, innovative and inspirational. Raw and fresh - typical of children's artwork, these photos have the capability of breathing young life into old souls.

ART

I am an artist. I've had trouble with saying that sentence my whole life but I've finally decided that that's what I am and I shouldn't down play it. I have always said "I was an art major in college" and just brush it off like it's not part of my life anymore but it is. I'd like it to become even more a part of my life and I think I would be more likely to do things if I knew people would see them; I'd start being accountable for my artwork, so this blog will now be featuring my work in hopes that it will motivate me to start up again. I've taken a break for the past couple of months and have started doing more "crafty" things but it's time to get back to "real" artwork and I'm hoping by putting myself out there that it will motivate me - the more I do it, the better I will get and I'd really like to get better. So here are somethings I've done/been working on during the past year: paintings, drawings, sketches, etc.

So here is a painting I started about a month ago. Obviously, it's not done yet. I have also included the photo that I'm painting it from. It's 24"X36". I will post pictures of this painting for any of you interested in the process. If you're not interested, well then, don't look at it. Simple as that.



I get stuck on things sometimes and they don't get out of my system until I do something with it. For a long time it was oranges. Then it was circles inside of circles. Right now it's chairs.


Here is a bunch of drawings/sketches from my sketch book.

Home decor makeover

I was trying to think of something clever to say about all this but I've failed, so here's our new couch and our new pot racks - our pots were hanging from nails before due to our limited cupboard space, so we're excited. Also, note the new paint color, which looks different in this photo than in real life but you get the idea. This color can now be found throughout our house. Goodbye light green kitchen and light tourquoise entry/stairway/hallway. You were good to us for a six months but it was time for a change to a warmer color. PA might be cold, but our walls are now glowy and warm.

Our budding photographer

Here are a couple of pictures that Ruby took with her new digital camera that she got for Christmas. (Thanks Papa Tommy for standing in line for hours to get it for her.) I'm pretty sure these were all taken at a friend's little beach house we hung out in Newport while we were down in CA over Christmas.

Christmas

There are three people in this photograph. Only one is wearing pants and thank your lucky stars that it is me.

Freaks and Geeks. After this picture was taken, I left the Benihana dining/cooking area and took May to the bathroom to change her diaper. Guess who followed me out? Kobe Bryant. Did I know he was behind me at the time? No. Did I feel super cool anyway after my brother told me when I got back to the table? Yes.

Princess May-Bone.

The loveliness that is my brother, John Thomas. He's single, ladies...

May May and Daddy.

Papa Tommy.

Rubes and Uncle Joe.

Comments!

Sorry guys - for some reason the commenting feature my blog was all messed up and there were like 20 unposted comments out there just floating around. But they are there now. Not like you're going to look back through every single one of my posts to read all the missing-but-now-found comments...who has that kind of time? Certainly not "Mrs. Here I Come" right down there. She's too busy polishing the silver.
But seriously, some of those comments were dang funny, ya'll.

My constant conundrum

I collect illustrated books. My grandma is great about supplying me with the old ones. When we were moving into our house, I was putting my books onto our shelves and out fell this loose leaf page from on old Dick and Jane book. I found it so hilarious and a bit haunting that I stuck it on the fridge and there it has hung ever since. I don't know why it struck me like it did but the words "Here I come" instantly had two different meanings for me. First, (read this with a tone of hope and excitement:) "Here I come (exclamation point)" - like, "Wow - isn't she amazing? If only I could be like that!" and then second, (read this with a tone of dread:) "Here I come" like "Whoa, watch out or you'll become just like her. That would stink." Now, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with being a "house wife" or "stay-at-home-Mom" (I am one) - it includes the two most important things in my life - being a wife and being a mother. It's just those labels have stigmas and that's not all I want to be - some dolled up chick who mops her floors all day while she shoos the kids out to play and rushes to put on lipstick before her husband walks in the door. I want to also learn things and do things and create things. But I also aspire to having a spic-and-span organized home and happy, well adjusted children and I find myself being caught between all those things and trying to balance not becoming lopsided either way.
So anyway, some days I look at this on my fridge with hope and some days I look at it with dread. I just hope that some day I can find a happy medium between the two.

Wintertime in CA

This is where we have spent the last couple of days while back in CA. Oh, and for anyone who wants to know, this is what heaven looks like.

Sit Com induced Nostalgia

Many people say that watching TV is an unsocial activity. Not true. I had a flashback tonight while after a marathon baseboard vacuuming session I collapsed on the couch and turned on the tube. There was Will Smith, not in a Pursuit of Happiness trailer but in all of his bright orange tank topped glory on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and immediately, I missed my brothers. We’ve watched many hours of TV together. My favorites were the ones we’d watch before church started (we weren’t one of those No-TV-on-Sundays Mormons) like Out of This World, Clarissa Explains it All, Salute Your Shorts, David the Gnome, Pete and Pete and Freaks and Geeks. Actually, I think some of those were aired on Saturday. Anyway, it made me start thinking of all the TV shows I’ve gotten into over the years and who I watched those shows with and I’d just like to say TV Buddies, I salute you. My husband, who somehow wrangles me into watching the Ultimate Fighting Champion marathon several times a year, you always get me hooked and right there cheering along our roid-enhanced favorite. And my Mom, who watched Wings and Quantum Leap reruns with me on summer afternoons while she folded laundry and during the commercials we’d run downstairs and make our lunch. To our Med School buds in Iowa, you made Alias and Lost all the more better with endless theories that were never right but always entertaining and the hours of gabbing afterwards topped the TV show. To my sister-in-law Sarah, you made me rediscover Scrubs and thanks to you we now have hour upon hour of Scrubs reruns DV-R’d. My brother-in-law Dan, even though we bashed every single thing those dumb kids said and complained how retarded the show was, we never changed the channel even during commercials when Laguna Beach the Real O.C. was on. My Dad, who watches more teeny bopper TV shows than an actual teeny bopper, thank you for introducing me to the wonderful world of the Gilmore Girls. And back to my brothers who howled through the UK version of The Office, memorized lines of the Wayans Brothers and delved into the prepubescent drama of Bug Juice with me, even though we don’t have much in common anymore we have our childhoods and the hours we spent watching cheesy sit-coms and there’s no two people I would have rather watched them all with.

Tales from the Laundromat

Arg! Last night our dryer broke. Curses! I had slacked on doing laundry and had about 7 loads to do. So all day long today, I washed load after load, then piled wet laundry into 4 different laundry baskets to take to the laundromat to do the drying all in one pop. Totally dreading going, I rounded up some things to take for the girls to do (well, just Ruby - all May wants to do lately is walk, walk, walk and reach out to strange men to hold her), and just an idea for all you other Mamas out there, I concocted a great toy - I glued a paint stirrer/stick thing to the back of a paper plate and then bought some balloons from the dollar store next door (imagine that - a dollar store next door to a laundromat) and Ruby ran around hitting the balloon all over the place and was COMPLETELY occupied for an hour - which probably has never happened in her life, so if you ever need to make a quick toy, remember that one. Anyway, so Ruby's running all over the place like a wild woman and May, like always, is making friends with everyone and of course takes a particular liking to the x-con running the money exchange in the back. An hour passes pretty quickly and it's time to get my clothes out of my dryers. As I am unloading clothes from a huge dryer that I put two loads in together, to my horror I discover that there was an orange crayon in Ruby's pocket or something because every piece of clothing has big orange smears all over them. Ugh. So on top of a broken dryer, a tight budget, and two wild kids to take to the laundromat until we get a new dryer, my family will now be sporting orange. Be sure to look for the smears in our Christmas picture, if I ever get around to taking a picture, etc. We might just have to take it at the laundromat, seeing as that's where we're going to be spending a good amount of our time.

"Sometimes when I get nervous..."

Back in June/July when we first moved to PA, we had to live in a rental house for almost 2 months. Everything we owned was still in storage save for our mattresses, some clothes, a couple of couch cushions, a couple of pots and pans, the TV (that couldn't get any reception for the first half of our stay there) and our computer, which also for the first month there, we didn't have the internet until I found a wireless signal from one of our neighbors and piggybacked onto theirs. Anyway, during that first month, it was pretty hard - we didn't know a soul, Brandon was working 110 hour weeks, it super far away from everything (like an hour) and everytime we got in the car, we'd end up lost. Ruby had just been diagnosed and I was still trying to figure out everything and having to do it alone, it was super hot and humid and the house didn't have AC - - it was just a really frustrating month to say the least. Anywho, the day that I started pirating my neighbors wireless signal was certainly a day of rejoicing and it was that day that I discovered this video on YouTube. I couldn't stop laughing. So now, 4 months later when I am in a much better mindset, I watched it and it was still pretty funny. Not like, laugh out loud, snort Diet Root Beer out your nose funny, but it's worth watching and then watching again while you show someone else the video. This vid brought me back to my Mary Katherine Gallagher days. Who gave me my MKG magnet by the way? Was it E? Was it Merz? Was it one of my brothers? Holla if it was you, dawg!

Fun with PhotoBooth Part Deux

Something tells me that Ruby figured out how to use PhotoBooth.

Neurosis

As a child, I had many more neurosis than I have now. For instance, if I used my right hand to hold the stair railing when I climbed the stairs, upon reaching the top I would have to reach over with my left hand and touch the railing so that my hands felt even. Whatever I touched for an amount of time on one of my hands, I would then have to even it out by touching something with the other side. I know - weird. I knew this was odd at the time and when I was about 10 I remember breaking myself of this habit - letting my hands feel uneven, even if made my skin crawl, but eventually it wore off and I didn't think about it anymore. Another example was that my arm hairs always had to be going in the same direction. If someone brushed passed me and mussed them, I would immediate have to smooth them over. This eventually ended when my brothers and their friends discovered this. I was subjected to many an arm rubbing and was basically forced to not care after the 100th arm hair mess up. Some others were constantly thinking I was really just in a dream, having to have my cuticles pushed back at all times, convinced that the blue I saw was a different blue than someone else saw - perhaps a red or a green - my red or green, of course. Another one of these quirks was really, really, really wanting to know what I looked like with my eyes closed. I would stand in front of the mirror and blink my eyes hoping to catch myself and get a glimpse. It never worked, of course. It was much like trying to lick your own ear or kiss your own elbow. Go ahead, try. Anyway, our computer has this feature called "Photo Booth" - kinda like a built-in web cam. The other day I was looking through all the pictures we have taken with it and found this photo. I now know what I look like with my eyes closed. One more neurosis down, a million more to go...

Chalkboard Wall Art by Ruby

A banana

Cat Scratch Fever

After dropping Ruby off at Preschool and heading to Yoga, I passed this sign but wasn't sure that I had read it right. It just seemed too good to be true, so I quickly pulled off the road to see if my eyes were playing tricks on me. They were not. Imagine my delight in discovering our main highway in Hershey is in good hands.

The Beatles

According to Ruby, they are "John, Paul, George and Bingo. The one with the big nose."

It happened over eggs

So I got hit on today while buying eggs at a gas station (and that's a whole other blog, my friend) by a middle-aged Middle Eastern man who smelled of cumin...which smells like B.O. ...AND I WAS STOKED! This never happens to me and it's always been like this except for the occasional passing-by of a gardener's truck filled to the brim with whistling Latinos but that doesn't count. They'd whistle at the love child of Carrot Top and Janet Reno (being played by Will Ferrell.) And now that I'm married, the event is totally obsolete, which is fine - you can't miss what you never had.

I decided long ago in my pre-married life that I must put out a "don't talk to me" vibe or something because I saw girls get hit on all the time and it was never me. I mean, I'm aware that I'm not a supermodel by any stretch of the imagination but I consider myself mildly attractive with no unfortunate deformaties that would cause someone to head to the nearest trash can to dry heave into. So when girls all around me were getting flirted with by complete strangers, why was I not getting flirted with by complete strangers? I've come up with some reasons behind this never-getting-hit-on-hardly-ever theory:
1) I was getting hit on but never realized it (wishful thinking)
2) I'm a stuck up snob who thinks she's average looking but really is butt-ugly but never realized it
3) I was usually standing next to:
a) one of my boyfriends (who I fondly refer to as my "chain of fools" now)
or
b) one of my so-strikingly-gorgeous-you-just-about-fall-over friends or so-over-the-top-CUTE-you-just-can't-handle-it friends so I was always completely overshadowed
Yep. I think that's the one. Well today Plain Jane had herself a victory, my pretties. The stinky gas station cashier man made a pass at me over a carton of eggs and a package of Swedish Fish. How do you like THEM apples?

Awesome.

I am related to none of these people in the picture but I sooo want to live in this barn.

I'm still crying

Ruby: Do you nurse May-May anymore?
Me: No.
Ruby: Why not?
Me: She got too big.
Ruby: Are your boobies still full of milk?
Me: Nope.
Ruby: Yah, I can tell. Well, your bottom cheeks are still full of milk, though. Full, full, FULL!

Fun in Intercourse, Pennsylvania

Brandon's sister Sarah came to visit us for the weekend and we had a blast. She attended two of my spin classes and spun with the best of 'em, babysat the kiddies one night to let Brandon and I have a rare rare rare night out on the town, and we took her to Intercourse, Pennsylvania (yes, that's it's real name and yes, we made dirty jokes the entire time we were there) which is an Amish town. While we were in Intercourse (heehee,giggle,giggle) we took a 5 mile buggy ride through the Amish countryside where Ruby sat up from with our fake-Amish driver. I think by the end of the ride, Jebadiah or whatever his fake-name was regretted offering the seat to her - she talked his ear off the entire time and was constantly interupting his memorized yet educational commentary about Amish life. My daughter is very, very friendly. "Hi, I'm Ruby and I have Diabetes! Are you our driver? I love this buggy! What's that thing on the ground? Do you watch TV? Do you like cartoons? That's my sister May May. She's one. What's your name? What are your horses names? What's that guy doing over there? He looks like a pirate. Why do you have a beard? Do you like your beard?, etc." Anyway, we had a great time with Sarah and were sad to see her go. Good thing Christmas is right around the corner.

Toto, we're not in CA anymore

The agriculture in the background of this picture really proves a point...

Pennsylvania Graffiti

Even though I'm bitter towards Pennsylvania right now (get me out of this hill-billy state!) they do have some funny people. I enjoy this sign everytime I stop at it and on most occasions bust out some old school dance moves. Thank you Pennsylvania Graffiti person, for making my drive to preschool through the Pennsylvania farmland enjoyable.

The Hershey Crap Show

So I have busted my booty for the past 3 weeks making my bags - "Kinda Quirky. Little bags for little girls." - that was my little "business." Every spare second was spent making TONS of these things; I put my heart and soul into them, each one was different and unique from the rest and I did a good job. I'm saying all this because I failed miserabley. It started 3 weeks ago, I paid my $40 entry fee and managed to get a primo spot located in the center of the middle school gymnasium, worked my tail off and made 20 bags in all, neglected all other responsibilties pretty much for the following 3 weeks, got no sleep at all, constructed a really cute display for them to hang on, set up babysitters for my kids since Brandon was on call, loaded and unloaded (and then loaded and unloaded again when I got home) ALONE, hung up my beloved bags and waited for the masses to come but was sorely disappointed when the masses came, oohed and aahed over them, but then hung them back up and went on their merry way to buy their hodge-podge kitchy potpurri poop. Let me give you a mental picture of what the Hershey Craft Show looked like. A middle school with every hallway, classroom, cafeteria and gymnasium sectioned off into 5x15 ft. squares, designating each booth. Such booths held things such as Pittsburg Steelers fleece "no-sew" blankets, dried gourds painted like geese, croteched yarn "dish cloths", rock candy, New York Yankee stadium seat cushions, slap bracelets, dried flower wreaths, things made out of popcicle sticks and pipe cleaners...you get the idea: CRAP!!! Crap. Crap. Crap. I had several other vendors tell me that this wasn't the type of venue that I should be selling my bags at, but I should sell them at "high end boutiques" or "funky artsy farsty shows." That was nice, but what did that say about them and their products? Anyway, so that's my next step - hitting boutiques up and seeing how they do there. I'm also thinking about starting up a website, so we'll see. I'm posting pictures of a couple of my little beauties. Here they are. I THINK THEY'RE COOL. This isn't going to stop me. No siree. These country bumpkins aren't going to squash my little dreams. Hmph.