Ew.

Last night we went to dinner at this little family owned pizzaria. The pizza is great but it’s even a better place to people watch. It’s owned by an Italian family who all have thick accents and are total archetypes of the "Italian immigrant." The women are spirited, wear lots of makeup and even more perfume and the men wear shirts with a completely inappropriate buttoned-to-unbuttoned ratio. Lots of gold chain jewelry. Lots of hair gel. Lots of hand gestures. We love it.

In the corner of the dive, there’s a TV that you cannot help but watch while you’re waiting for your pizza to be made. On last night was Seventh Heaven. Is this a show people really watch? Like sit down and watch it from beginning to end? I had never really seen it, I always avoided it for some reason and now I know why. Total sap fest. The dialogue was hilariously awful. The acting was so atrosous, if I had to see one more exaggerated eye roll or extreme grimace, I thought I was going to poke my eye out with a canoli.

I mean, I respect what the TV show is trying to do – provide a show for families that has clean language, no violence, and claims to have values (just because the Dad on the show is a minister I guess, and that the older sister turned down a co-worker when asked to “kick back with a cold one” in last night’s episode.) But by the time we got our pizza, I had filled my cheese quota and didn’t have much of an appetite. Since when did “wholesome” have to be this cheesy with cheese on top of extra cheese? Why does a clean TV show that families can watch together have to be this ridiculously bad? But mostly, why hasn’t anyone put a stop to this? I just don’t understand.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Tivo date with Jack Bauer.

The Boobalaboo & May Bone: A Critical Comparison

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of meeting (and smelling) Bobby, I really feel sorry for you. What a great dog.

Things Bobby and May have in common:
-They both are picky eaters. Bobby won't eat lettuce. May won't eat...anything. She'd rather be dancing.
-They both have deep, husky voices. May voices hers alot more often then Bob, though.
-They both get irritated when provoked. With Ruby as May's sister, it happens alot more often than it does to Bobby now that my brothers are pretty much gone from the house. And May is more aggressive than Bobby. She will scream and hit as defense. Bob just got irritated and would walk away with a huffy snort.
-They both like to sit on people. May will see you sitting down on the ground, make a beeline for your lap, turn herself around before she even gets to you and plops her bottom right down. Just like the Booba.
-They both are above average on the stinkyness scale. Bobby is stinkier but when this girl gets going, she can clear a room.
-They both respond to hand signals. We use the ASL sign for "more" with her but lately she has started making up her own, like using "spirit fingers." We haven't quite figured out what it means yet.
-They both prefer men over women.
-They both are heavy breathers.
-They both are good sleepers. Bobby does more of it. And is much louder when he does it.
-They both can rip a room apart in seconds flat but May is much better at cleaning up after herself. We tell her to clean her room and she goes around, picks up her books and puts them on her shelf. Then she'll pick up clothes and puts them in the hamper, etc. She's already a neat freak like her Daddy.
-They both are big sweeties.

Ruby-isms

My daughter Ruby is extremely funny. So is May, but since Ruby can talk and May just sings and grunts still, she wins. Here are some of her latest funnies:


-This is a pic I took today of her and May "having a picnic." Ok, not that funny, but dang cute.

-Brandon (if he's here) and I pray with her every night before she goes to bed. (Can you hear our angel wings flapping?) Last night the consensus was to pray kneeling by the couch rather than her bedside because I am sick (hence the flood of posts lately and no, I'm not pregant - I have flu/pink eye) and didn't feel good enough to walk upstairs. So Brandon and Ruby were already kneeling and I was dragging my feet and still just sitting there. Ruby, getting impatient, said "Let's pray, punk!" and then burst out laughing. And rightfully so.

-A couple of weeks ago, she was extremely constipated. After sitting with her for awhile and giving her warm water to drink, she finally went. From the bathroom, she yelled excitedly "Mom! I think I just pooped out a bone!"

-After getting back from my figure drawing session, Brandon told me that while I was gone, Ruby asked where I was. He said "An art class" and she said "Well, she sure is taking her sweet time."

-The other night, I told her it was time for bed and she said "I can't go to bed Mom. I'm allergic."

-Tonight we had pasta that had crumbled bacon in it. She pointed to the bacon and asked what it was and I told her it was bacon. She said "What's it's nibble name?" and started nibbling her bacon and laughing. This is particularly funny because "What's your middle name?" is a question she asks everyone she meets and she knows she does it often. Oh great. The puns are starting already.

Books on tape

Now that I've established some of my favorite things (see new blog title) I thought I'd share another one of my family's favorite things--mostly Ruby's and mine: books on tape. My first encounter with these was Snow White when I was about 4. I later taped over the Snow White cassette and used it for one of my many mixed-tape masterpieces in Junior High/High school. All you had to do was put scotch tape over the little slots on the bottom of the cassette and you could record over anything. It was a great day when I figured that out, as that was what I spent most of my time doing back then. Books on tape were then forgotten until I was 12 and we listened to one on the way to my first Girls Camp, some romance/mystery novel that our driver kept having to frantically fast forward through the racey parts, which I found delicously scandelous. Then it wasn't until a couple of years ago when I saw my mother-in-law washing dishes while she listened to a book on tape. "What a great idea," I thought. So I too now have a stereo in my kitchen so I can listen to books while I work and I actually look forward to cleaning.

This is one of the books on tape that Ruby checked out from the library this week. (The ones for kids are the read-along kind with the book included.) Meryl Streep performs it and she's, of course, fabulous. I'm a big believer in reading to your children (Ruby and I are currently halfway through "Charlotte's Web) but I love the 13 minutes that this book on tape gives me (prime blogging time) while Ruby gets read to by Meryl Streep. Not too shabby.

It's Fresh (Fresh) Exciting... It's So Exciting to Me

As you can tell, I changed the name of this blog. I had to do it. And though I am a HUGE fan of black: black backgrounds, black berries, black-bottomed cupcakes, black licorice (ok, that's Go, not me), little black dresses and the song "Black Bird" for instance, it needed some lightening up.

My little May-May is quite the music-lover. She dances at the first beat of any song she hears (with Ruby, we had to coax her into dancing and it was always short lived) and is constantly singing. She begins each day with a song, some kind of sound that she makes over and over, in all kinds of different notes and tones. Today's is "Bum-bum-bum-bum", much to her sister's delight.


(picture taken by Ruby)

More pics (and comments) by Ruby

"It’s you reading stuff, sitting on a bench."


"You have hair and a shoulder."


"That’s May walking with some old bread."


"That’s Daddy. He has big eyes."


"That’s me, silly."


"That’s Daddy again, laying on the couch. I was showing him my dancing and he liked it."


"That's Daddy being tired on the couch."

Deep lunges and unitards

Something extraordinary happened: Brandon had Saturday off so we decided to do something fun. It did snow last night--we could have stayed home and played in the snow but since I've decided I'm allergic to it, we had to go somewhere a little warmer: Baltimore. The snow had already melted there. Above are my bundled up children, who for some reason look like crazy homeless people in these pictures.

Here are some highlights from our day:

-The Baltimore National Aquarium. I particularly enjoyed the Tropical Rainforest exhibit. It was warm in there. The gigantic furry bats hanging down from the ceiling of the Australia exhibit were a bit unsettling - they were as big as beagles. I walked through the exhibit with my hands guarding my naked and vulnerable neck. When I asked Ruby what her favorite thing was there, she said "The big gooby frog. It was CRAZY!" I think May liked everything the best. She squealed sang "Mmmmmm!" the whole time.

-Apparently there was a cheerleading competition going on in Baltimore today. Everywhere you looked, there were crowds of little girls with grotesque amounts of makeup on and ponytails with huuuuuge color coordinated bows that were so high up on their heads, the ponytails/bows practically started at their forehead. It was very disturbing.

-Crossing the street I was yelling to my husband (as most of you know he is not "Brandon", but "Go" to me, family and those who knew him as a boy) and had to hollar "GO!" over the noise of the wind and traffic. The people crossing the street with us turned to me after hearing my yell, then started running to the other side of the street. Pretty funny - they totally thought I was yelling at them and perhaps had some pyschic ability to predict invisible oncoming traffic.

-The man with a Salvador Dali mustache at the Whole Foods market. I love that place. I could live there. Not in the guy's mustache, but the Whole Foods. The mustache was wicked waxy.

-I finally got to take a picture of my favorite sculpture while driving back home. I can't describe how I feel about it; I'm rendered speechless when I gaze upon its magnificance.

Figure Drawing session

My wonderful, wonderful husband babysat the kids today (when he was post call and absolutely exhausted) while I got to go to a 3 hour figure drawing session and it was so so great. Here are some of my drawings from today.

Lady Marmalade

I have decided on a composition and finally found ways to jump the hurdles this little piece was giving me. I solved my violent violin bow problem – have his elbow more outstretched and not let the bow stick out. Another problem I was having is that their positioning wasn’t conveying togetherness at all, so I just stuck them together. I usually like some negative space between figures because I like negative space but I’m hoping the chair and the lanterns provide interesting negative space shapes. And I stuck him on a chair because I really need to get rid of this chair fascination and onto something else. Who knows what it will be. It’s also the same reason why I put little paper lanterns in the scene, too. They are something else I quite haven’t rid my mind of and I’d like to--they're getting old. The bouquet she’s holding, as much as I like the flowers falling off of it and the fun patterns it could yield, I just can’t let myself do it--a bouquet makes it too kitchy. Yitchy, kitchy, yah-yah-dah-dah.

I have a tendancy to like my initial rough sketches better than the final product. I haven’t found a way to yet to get my finished piece look as fresh as they do in their beginning stages. I’m hoping to do that with this one but I feel like this composition doesn’t even have that raw edge that I’m talking about because I’ve sketched it so many times. I’d also like to try a different style on this one, too. I really really like this one artist but I cannot think of his name right now, anyway, he’s very primitive and minimalistic and I’d like my stuff to be more like that.

Anyway, I’ll have something more interesting to post next time – something cute about my kids.

Newest piece

I love my art room - it's a three-season room built onto what used to be the upstairs patio. But we're currently in the fourth season, so my old farmhouse oil painting is going to have to wait. I don't like bringing my easel into the kitchen and oh...ok fine--I've grown tired of it and need to work on something else before I go back and finish it. Yah, that's how I roll. But I WILL finish it. And I will post it when I do.

But anyway, I've been rolling this idea for an illustration around in my head for awhile now and I've sketched and sketched but cannot come up with a good composition (where to place figures, what angle and perspective the background is going, what direction the guestures are pointing and how they relate to each other - all things that dictate how someone viewing a piece of artwork moves their eye about the piece - it's all very dilebrate.) My inspiration comes from a story told by a man that I am currently doing the film editing on for his filmed autobiography. His great-great Grandfather was 19 and living in England, joined the LDS church, decided to come to America and cross the plains with the Willy Handcart Company to live in UT. His girlfriend also joined and wanted to come to America, so their parents said "Well, you might as well get married." So these kids got married, got on the boat together and started out on their adventure. The only thing he brought with him was his violin and the only thing she brought was her wedding dress, which she wore crossing the ocean. When I heard this story, an image of them dancing on a ship instantly came to mind - he: playing his violin and she: dancing in her wedding dress. Two crazy kids in love out on the open sea, gearing up to face the unknown. I related to this young woman - young, happy and naive, with tons of scary things ahead, things she didn't even know were out there waiting for her to experice, go through and learn from. So anyway, the story really touched me, as did the image but I haven't been able to come up with anything yet - the direction of his violin bow always looks like it's going to stab her and I don't want it pointing the other way or it just shoots your eye right off the page. I'll let you know when I come up with something and I'll post my initial sketches if you're interested in the process. If not, well, don't read it.

Top Ten Reasons Why I Get a Complete Kick Out of My Husband

10. He had longer hair than I did on our wedding day.
9. He uses old man phrases like "That's hogwash!"
8. He keeps his things in their original packaging.
7. He has made himself the exact same breakfast everyday for the past 5 years.
6. He will NOT watch a movie twice.
5. He has superhuman concentration and focus when he reads and when he's not reading, he's observing every single thing about everything and everyone around him. He misses nothing.
4. He washes the windshield while the gas is pumping, no matter how frigidly cold it is outside.
3. His favorite pair of gloves have no fingers.
2. As a child, he hid all of his baby teeth in a little bag behind a framed painting that hung in his room. He finally unearthed them while we were visiting there this summer.
1. I thought he was going to propose to me all over again when I brought THESE home from the grocery store for him:

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.