Fire when ready

On Sunday we celebrated Lag B'Omer which is a sort of obscure Jewish holiday, at least for Americans. But it's a day off school in Israel so it's a pretty big deal. It's the thirty-third day of the Omer which is the seven weeks between Passover, the physical emancipation from slavery in Egypt, and Shavuot, the spiritual emancipation when Moses received the ten commandments. Why the thirty-third day is so special is a little unclear. Feel free to chime in if you know why. Something about the end of some terrible plague that wiped out 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva's students back in the day which came about because his students weren't nice to each other. If they'd been Catholics it might have been a wrap on the knuckles. But no.

Anyway, the Omer is a period of mourning. Wandering directionless in the desert darkness kind of stuff. But the thirty-third day is a little reprieve. People can get married on that day which is quite popular. It's when my in-laws got married. It's so popular that we once attended three weddings in a twenty-four period when we lived in Israel. That's a lot of rejoicing.

And what do we do on Lag B'Omer? We light bonfires. Kids start collecting wood about two weeks before. You never want to be building or renovating your house during the Omer because a group of teenage punks will sneak by your home and steal all of your wood. You see ten year olds lugging giant tree branches across town and two by fours. It's hysterical. And lord knows why but you also shoot bow and arrows. You can't even make this stuff up, it's too random.

So a few families got together on Sunday and we had a BBQ and the kids made pita to bake on the taboon which I can only translate as the underside of a wok. It was an epic day for archery too. My husband stayed at home to finish putting in the new floor of my studio because he's the most wonderful person in the world and also to guard the wood. Plenty of Israelis in Silicon Valley. You can't be too careful with your wood around this time of year...

Rite of Passage

Well it has been a crazy stretch these last few days. I decided at the last minute to do another little show at our JCC -  a fundraiser for the preschool -  and it went very well which is exciting but I forgot about how exhausting it is to sit at your booth in the sun and be charming for four hours and also lug your stuff all around two days in a row. And you think huh, this is pretty good money for working 8 hours and then you figure in all the time and energy you spent getting ready and set up and schlepping and recovering and filling orders and you realize, huh, I'm thirty-six years old and I work for minimum wage. But I'm happy doing it. And I'm learning too. I actually met a wonderful watercolor artist who shared some tips for shows and for framing.  So I will pick her brain more.

And on top of that we did some home improvements so my studio has been in several states of disarray since the weekend. But I am already so much happier with how it looks and soon to be happier with the way I can arrange little stations for what I do - create, communicate, print, ship etc. My own little supply chain. More on this later.

But I'm most excited to share this little piece of mail that I got today from a little company called Hallmark, who sent me an email back in October wanting to license my Tree of Life image for one of their cards (!). And here it is. A bar mitzvah card of all things which is so serendipitous since I just wrote a silly blog about bar mitzvah invitations here. Isn't the world funny like that? It's only one little card so I'm not exactly writing any press releases. But licensing has always been part of my general plan to take over the world so I'm celebrating my own mini rite of passage over here bat mitzvah style, minus the braces and Laura Ashley dress. Oy.

Pillow and Basket Case

Come. Have a seat. I saved this tiny little portion of my couch where you can rest one butt cheek.

I have put all of my throw pillows on this one little couch to dramatize my utter disdain for throw pillows. Why do I have so many? How can I get them away from me? When did Pottery Barn throw up all over my sofa? And these are pillows that are somewhat meaningful. One of them we carried home from Nepal. Two others are made from Syrian silk that we got in the Arab market in Jerusalem. Another was handmade by a Bedouin woman. But I still want them gone. You see we are in the process of selling our futon to make room for the MURPHY (yah baby) bed in our office/guest room/studio which is part of a larger project to make the studio more efficient and more inspirational. Currently it is neither of those things. It is covered in throw pillows. Ones that used to be on the floor in the living room as a kind of pull up a pillow and smoke a hooka corner. That corner now has toys in it. So the pillows are in here on the futon. Other pillows have migrated to the attic. Still more pillows are currently on the living room couch. I am done with pillows.

And you know what else I'm done with? Baskets. Sick and tired of crap in baskets. I'd just as soon throw out the crap and the baskets along with it. At first it was a nice way to hide the crap. But then you have a house full of baskets you even need a basket to hold all of your extra baskets. But I need places to keep toys and supplies and chingaderas. And I can't afford furniture that might hold all of that stuff. But it can't just be out in the world. Free. Loose. Multiplying. I shudder.

Anything in your house driving you bananas? Do tell...

Kid-colored lenses

My son loves to play in our car. When I allow it, which is to say when I have time to keep an eye on him from the kitchen or garage, he's happy to play in there for long stretches. When he's done invariably I have to put everything back to its off position - wipers, seat heaters, indicators, hazards - but it's a small price to pay so I indulge this simple pleasure. I wish I could take that much pleasure out of being in my car. Maybe if it wasn't so filthy. Or if I was five.

So recently I've been trying to see the world through kid-colored lenses. Last weekend we took the kids to fly kites. As we were setting up the string and trying to get these things up with little wind, it occurred to me that I had never flown a kite. Or at least I don't remember ever flying a kite. And I found it to be completely exhilarating. At one point I was actually running with my kite (no wind can be a problem) and I'm sure I had one of those golden retriever with his head hanging out a car window kind of grins. Just running with my arms up in the sky waving my kite.

And this weekend I took the kids up to San Francisco for the day to give my husband time to build our murphy bed (more on that later). My son bugs me constantly to take trains. He loves trains. He is enchanted by transportation. So we got on a 10:15 train to San Francisco and he talked the entire seventy-five minutes it took to get there. The color of the tracks. The naughty boy who was skateboarding at the station. The back hoe loader that was next to the tracks. The south going train. The man who collected tickets. He enjoyed every part of the trip especially getting to the final station where there were dozens of trains. But it gets better. I took them on the Muni - the light rail system in San Francisco or the "electric train" as he calls it. So now that we've taken Muni I figure all I need to do is get a trampoline and I can hang up my hat until he goes to college, basking in my "greatest mom on earth" title. Right? We took it five or six stops to the Ferry Building and got off to get some kettle corn at the farmer's market.

We sat at the wharf and ate kettle corn and strawberries and watched the seagulls and the boats and the zillion people buzzing about. I wish I'd had my camera. There was even a guy who writes poems for you on his old school typewriter while you wait. You just give him the topic (and a few bucks is my guess). I wanted to catch the 3:15 train back home (by this point I was back to wearing my mommy-colored lenses) so we didn't stop for a poem on the fly. But the next time we have transportation day I will absolutely take a moment to ask for a poem about taking a moment to enjoy life's simple pleasures.

Yes, I'm the artist

The day before the show on Tuesday I read my friend Laamie's blog post on art shows that set the tone for my preparations. Which were minimal.

I did not print a ridiculous amount of inventory.
I did not bring all kinds of crazy useless shit.
I did not lug more than a big box and two grids.
I did not MacGuyver anything.
I did not spend a ton of money on a display.

Here's what I did do.

I saved up orders for about a week and brought those prints with me to sell so that if I didn't sell them, I could just mail them the next day. And then I brought a bunch of smaller things I had on hand anyway. I also bought those little mini-easels from IKEA that are so useful for display and cost $2 each. Nice. I borrowed my friend Melissa's grids and they were easy and sturdy and perfect. You could see my display from across the room.

Mainly I didn't kill myself preparing for this thing. So when I sold a few items I was thrilled. And when I gave out all my cards (~50) I was overjoyed. I was talking to people the whole time. Never a slow period. Lots of connections. And the lady next to me, who I incidentally met at my hair stylist the week before, bought me a giant falafel. Most importantly, I felt great. Especially when asked, are you the artist?  I felt like I could do these little gigs in the community without a lot of stress and get my name and work out there. And did I mention that the whole thing was in Hebrew? Hundreds of Israelis showed up to celebrate and I charmed every one of them with my accented misuse of their mother tongue.

Tiny Dancer

My daughter went to sleep in her leotard last night. Yesterday was the first time she ever wore one. That morning she started whining that she didn't want to go to her ballet and tap class and after I shelled out the $25 for her shoes, uh, she was going. This is why I have a problem with required footwear. But she kept whining and that's when I pulled out my trump card. I remembered that my sister-in-law had given us a few old leotards that belonged to my niece so I found them and offered them to her majesty who just about peed her pants in excitement. Which is a not a figure of speech in this instance. We had to rush to the potty. But dance class was on! I picked her up after school and she was beaming in her leotard. No jacket, no tights. Fifty degrees out and raining here and she's in her pink sparkly leotard and her black Vans slip-ons with the skulls and monsters on them looking like a tot Madonna. It was only this morning that she agreed to take it off. I'm willing to wager it will be the first thing she puts on when she comes home. Who can blame her. A sparkly pink leotard is a portal to the imagination.

Suburban Monster at Midnight

Suburban Monster at Midnight

She was no detective, but she had a sneaking suspicion that there was something not quite right about this particular tree.