Bead Therapy

I have a favorite necklace that kind of looks like this one except it's very, very long and the glass beads are smaller. I bought it for a dollar in Manikaran, India, a small town in the Parvati Valley (far north), well known for it's geothermal activity and a sacred spot for the Sikh population. We were there in 2001 and my clearest memory is going to the public bathhouse where I stood out like, well, a naked white girl in an Indian bathhouse. So when I left the bathhouse I went to the marketplace and found a few things to help me fit in better - about thirty glass bangles and the necklace. It might have worked if I could have stacked the glass bangles all the way up my arms, around my neck and up both legs, so that no one could see my casper white skin. Alas, I still received many stares. And I sounded like a wind chime.

In Santa Fe, at my favorite store, they had a bin with glass beads for $3 a scoop. I got three scoops with the idea that I would maybe make a similar necklace or several (three scoops is a lot), even though I'd never done any bead or wire work in my life. Except for once when I was 16.  I feel a tangent coming on...

Friendship pins (safety pins with beads on them) were big back in 1989 and my friend Andrea and I made a lot of them. So many that we started stringing them through elastic and making them into bracelets. And then we started selling them at the children's bookstore where I worked part time. And one day a lady came in and wanted to buy thirty of them for her daughter's birthday party! So we made thirty and it took forever and our fingers bled and she only paid us $120 which, at the time, we thought was a TON of money even though it was essentially about $2 an hour but then we didn't talk to each other for like two months and it was kind of a disaster. Soon after, Macy's started selling similar items for about $40 each. Let this be a lesson to you readers. ALWAYS PATENT YOUR IDEAS. Our company was called Cheesy Beads. I promise this will tie together in a second...

Lately I have been in a creative rut, feeling a little strangled by my watercolors.  So today, I went to the bead store two blocks from my house with my India necklace and my pile of Santa Fe glass beads and high hopes that a little wire and bead work might kickstart my creativity. The guy at the store sold me a round nose pliers, a bunch of eye wires and a clasp and sent me home to look at You Tube for instructions. Which is what I did. And here is my necklace which, on me, is more of a choker, ironically, but in the bigger picture, might just be what I needed to open up the flood gates.

Goodbye to summer

A few pictures from our trip to Santa Fe. It was another great trip, with some interesting twists. Namely that my sister-in-law was put on bed rest at 32 weeks with her third child. In Albuquerque. Which is 60 miles away from her home Santa Fe. Not ideal. But we all rallied. My other sister-in-law and brother-in-law cooked delicious vegetarian cuisine all week. The kids spent a lot of time exploring the arroyos, finding treasures, and rigging ways to haul their treasures home. We went to a dia del nino festival one morning and dressed up like senoritas and conquistadores and built adobe houses. We celebrated my niece's fourth birthday with unicorn cake. The kids gave themselves many many tattoos and painted several hundred coats of nail polish on their hands and feet and legs and everywhere else. There were also many water fights between siblings of all ages. And a few family visits to the hospital. It was a great end to a great summer.

But now I'm ready to hunker down for a little quiet and reflection. Hopefully autumn weather and spirit are around the corner.

Having my cake and sharing it too

 

I woke up this morning to a beautiful and tasty breakfast of fried eggs on toast, chopped salad and chocolate. Because today is no ordinary day friends. Today is MY BIRTHDAY. And, since I lowered my expectations for my birthday by several orders of magnitude based on last year's fiasco, SO FAR SO GOOD. 

And coincidentally this year my birthday is also the birthday of the WORLD. It's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, starting this evening. Some of you may know that I have a thing about sharing my birthday. I don't like to share. Thank god I'm not a twin. But then I had to go and marry someone whose birthday is five days after mine and he has a brother with a birthday a week after that and now suddenly all of my birthdays are shared occasions. Which I hate have come to accept. But this year is especially communal because this year I have to share my birthday with the WORLD. And that's also why I shared my birthday with son's kindergarten class. 

I went in after recess to do a little Rosh Hashanah presentation for the kids and it was a AWESOME. I am now Miss Susie, loved and revered by 26 five-year-olds. Most importantly, I even managed to blow the ceremonial shofar which is like blowing a trumpet except it's the horn of a ram. Seriously. And we all had apples dipped in honey to signify a sweet new year but only after I made the kids sing happy birthday to me. And then I asked if any one had any questions and several kids raised their hands to tell me when their birthdays would be and one kid told me his grandma was 87. Love kindergartners.

On tap for the rest of this wonderful day:

1. Make dinner for mine and my brother's family.

2. Drink latte.

3. Revel in my facebook birthday wishes. 

4. Go to post office.

5. Buy heavy cream so my husband can make me a cake tonight.

ALSO, in the spirit of sharing my birthday, I'm offering BUY ONE GET ONE FREE (of equal or lesser value) through the end of the day tomorrow midnight (pacific time) on all items in my ETSY shop (except ketubahs - why would you need more than one ketubah?) Write BIRTHDAY in the message to seller and I'll reimburse you via paypal for the second item.

Happy Day everyone!

Merry Go Round

Regards from Santa Fe. We're here again for a family rendez-vous. Since my brother-in-law and his family moved here about two years ago we've managed to come out several times to visit, both in the late summer and the winter. There was a time when I would scoff at the idea of going to the same place again and again for vacation, though plenty of people do just that. I just always want to go somewhere new. And I still do. I go straight to the travel section of the Times on Sunday. But these days somewhere new also means more planning, more money, and more whining. If our trips to Israel are any indication, my kids mostly want to go to parks and pools. And while a tour of "pools around the globe" does sounds fascinating, I think we'll wait until they're a little older so they can roll their eyes instead of whine. So we come here and we enjoy being with family and we let the kids explore the arroyos around the house and the rest of the world will wait.

The day after we arrived I took my daughter to my favorite store on earth which I wrote about here. That's where I snapped this picture of the creepy, rusty, old carousel with the ringmaster/genie on the top. I don't know what it is about paint-chipped clowns and creaky carnival relics that is so intriguing. My daughter and niece set up shop on the mermaid with her boobs chipped off and the sad giraffe and had themselves a tea party while I had a talk with the genie about a few wishes I need granting...

Blood is thicker than juicebox

I don't know how it is with your kids or your people or you, but my kids know INTRINSICALLY that their cousins somehow rank higher than the other kids they know in the world. They just get that these kids are more important to them. And maybe it's because we happen to like our siblings and the kids pick up on the good vibrations. Even when my son could not imagine going over to anyone's house to play, he was always happy to be with his cousins. Well except for this one time, which we won't count. And this goes for his cousins who don't live near us too. He only sees them twice a year at the most, and still it's a love fest. It's true for my own cousins too. We hardly see each other at all anymore, but when we do, all the same funny stories and nicknames and dinner table games come out. I can't tell you how many times we sat around playing "this is a spoon. a what? a spoon. a what? a spoon. Oh, a fork." when I was growing up. Can't you just hear my mom and her sister cackling?

This weekend we went to another epic Jackie Green concert, spent the night with magical Aunt Jenny and then spent the rest of the next day with my brother and his family. At one point all four cousins were dressed up as princesses including the family dog. And personality-wise they're all as different as can be. So I'm not sure that it's the genetic cocktail that's making them feel the love or if familial gravitation is learned. Who knows what's at work when it comes to cousins. But it's working.

Crossing the bridge

Yesterday you rode your two-wheeler
across the Golden Gate Bridge and back.
Today you started kindergarten.
I'll tell you one thing's for sure.
She's not the only one who admires your courage.

My clear conscience is your loss

I totally blew it guys because I am paranoid and lazy and here's how it all went down.

Someone from a company that aggregates discounted designer stuff for kids emailed that she wanted to do a giveaway on my site. Ordinarily I would say no because these solicitations all seem like scams (one guy actually reached out to me a few times, from different companies, but with the same name and form email. Who do you really work for Sam Goroff? CIA? Mossad?). But I went to her site and saw a few things that I like and I said I might be amenable to the idea.

She was offering to give away a little Crocodile Creek backpack with the solar system on it and since I had just been searching for backpacks for my son who is starting kindergarten on Monday, I thought, well, I'm someone who has an opinion about backpacks, plus I just finished this little print with space icons on it (above), so I could probably tie all of these otherwise unrelated things together for a co-promotional blog post and one of you lucky readers would get a free backpack! Win win! And then she offered to send me one too! Even better!

But then I forgot to email her back. And then a lot of time passed. But I finally did email and she agreed to do the promotion but I would have to endorse two of the designer brands they were featuring. And of the twenty or so brands, the only one I would even consider buying is Tea Collection and only at a serious discount. Because I just can't get behind spending $40 on a mass-produced blouse for a three-year-old? And the other brands were altogether ridiculous. Baby Lacoste? Baby Burburry? For now I'm sticking with Baby Target.And Baby Hand-me-down.

So, in good conscience, I declined her offer. Sorry Tracey Lin*. You seemed really nice. My readers and I would have been psyched to have matching free backpacks. I guess it wasn't in the stars. I'll do better next time and get us some really kickass lunch boxes or something.

* this is a pseudonym in case Tracey also works for the CIA.