The Do-Over

The mystery of my daughter's favorite song is now over. We can all sleep again. You may remember (THOUGH I DOUBT IT) that on my birthday my daughter had a near seizure in the car on our way home from San Francisco because I changed the radio station and she wanted her favorite song which was not on any station at all and anyway it was before she had tubes and could hear in the first place so I was at a loss. But she wailed her head off about it for a good fifteen minutes which feels a lot like seventeen hours when you're stuck in a car with someone doing that. But then today, as I was driving them to preschool, we heard the interlude song that follows the California Report by Rachael Myrow on NPR and this, ladies and gentlemen, appears to be my daughter's favorite song.

Her (with glee): Mommy this song is my favorite!
Me: This one?
Her: Ya! My song my favorite!
Him (passionately): Mommy, this song is my favorite song too that I never heard before. I never heard it a lot of times and now it's my favorite. It used to be on a lot on the radio but then we never heard it for a long time ago. I LOVE this song.

Really, that's verbatim. I don't know what the hell my son was trying to say. Sometimes he sounds like Yoda.

Which brings me back to my birthday. With your encouragement I decided that today I would reenact my birthday, at least for a little while, and enjoy the crap out of it. So I dropped off the kids at 9:00 and then drove to where the Anthropologie is in Palo Alto. They don't open until 10:00 but knowing this I brought along my laptop and went to Coupa Cafe, the very cafe where on my 35th birthday I sat sobbing about how nothing was as it should be and I made the famous list of things to do to achieve happiness. These included finding a loving, nurturing preschool with a low teacher/child ratio, a Jewish family learning component and an Israeli style play-based environment AND starting my business 15 hours a week while my kids are in this magical school. Check and check. Turns out there were no available outlets so I could not write this blog there which was my original intention and instead enjoyed my croissant and latte without bothering to multitask. This felt odd at first, doing just one thing, but then I let myself sink into it and for the next half hour enjoyed watching people in the crowded cafe while I reflected on my transformational year.

Soon it was 10:00 and I was off to Anthropologie where I used my birthday discount to buy two blouses and a tablecloth that were already half off so the bill came to under $100.



And so concludes this year's birthday saga. Thirty-six is looking up.

Pattern

I just discovered a really cool website that posts an illustration challenge every Friday and is applicably called Illustration Friday. This week's topic was PATTERN and this is my first submission. The night before I had just started working on this piece - the Seven Species Hamsa - highlighting the seven species of the bible and native to Israel: wheat, barley, olives, grapes, dates, pomegranates and figs. And though the tiling/mosaic areas don't follow a specific pattern in that neither the colors nor the shapes repeat in a predicatble manner (though wouldn't it be cool if I told you that the design did follow some crazy mathematical algorithm that I made up?), for me the piece as a whole brings into focus the harvest cycle that is repeated every year. And it's during this time of year, the fall harvest, that we eat these amazing fruits and reflect on the past year and put out to the universe our hopes for the year to come. I'm still formulating those. But that's part of my own pattern - procrastination...

Success?

The art of being home

I am getting used to this new schedule. First it was getting used to working three days a week and having the kids two days a week during the summer. But that was all about going somewhere - a museum, the aquarium, the pool, a lake. And I didn't worry about naps because they happened in the car on the way home usually. And I was getting much of my work done in the three full days that I did have.

But now I only work mornings. And I'm realizing that it's only really enough time to send some emails, straighten the house, fill some orders, read some blogs, eat breakfast and maybe go to the post office if that's necessary. It's just not a lot of time. So I'm not painting. I'm not even sketching! I have some ideas rumbling around in my head but getting them out between 9am and 1pm on a weekday is not happening. So we're reinstating weeknight art mania - that is, I sequester myself in the studio to paint for the whole evening uninterrupted. Could be a challenge. Last time I did this it only worked because I told the kids I was leaving and then drove my car around the corner and sneaked back in the side door incognito.

Anyway the point is that I am feeling better about the schedule. The first week or so after school started I was not happy. I was fighting with my son constantly because I think I was probably resenting him for keeping me from my work. That is FUCKED UP. He's my work, really. He's my focus. And his sister. Although, shit, she's raising herself better than I ever could. And that's with being close to deaf. Imagine what she'll be like tomorrow when she can finally hear?! She'll be running for public office by age three. On a strawberry yogurt for all platform...

So at 12:45 I shut the door to the studio and I don't go in there again until my husband comes home. Except for when I cheat which with time will be less and less frequently I hope. And we're starting to develop a rhythm. I get the baby to nap and then my son and I get some dinner going. Or if I've saved a print or a framing job that we can do together I give him the ATG gun to have at it. I don't count that as cheating. And then we have a snack and then play a round of memory game with a deck of cards (boy do I suck at that game). Then a puzzle. Sometimes an art project if I am especially organized. Did I mention that my son won't watch videos or television? I'm not joking. Because I would so love if he did.

But before we know it the two hour nap has passed and we can all go to the park together. I've even started enlisting friends and neighbors to help engage my son for this stretch of time. In fact yesterday he went over to our neighbor's house, who we only just met, and played with her five year old for a half hour without me even being there. This was a first.

And when things go like this, we don't fight. We enjoy our time together. Which was the whole point of this new schedule in the first place. Enjoyable time together and more of it. We're getting there.

Pillow Talk

Well yesterday was day two of my sewing class. I decided I will use the blog to chronicle my progress. This time I brought in Grammy's old sewing machine and of course my teacher started every sentence with usually sewing machines do this but yours is different...but we figured out how to thread the thing and it does have a few attachments and a booklet that's sixty years old so there's hope. Incidentally, I posted a picture of last week's project here. Notice the precision stitching...

This week I came in with some fabric I bought at IKEA, a little stuffed tomato to hold my pins and a pair of scissors. And I lugged in my eighty pound sewing machine on a dolly. It should really come with wheels if it's going to be that heavy. I started out thinking I would make another knapsack since the pattern is very cute and easy and I could work on my stitching (I tend to forget that the thingy is up after I place the fabric and then I press the pedal and the stitches get loopy. Working on that.) But I wanted it lined. You know, like a nice bag. Because I am a master tailor after all. Of course I should be lining all of my pieces. I mean I have had ONE class already.

I cut two rectangular pieces and sew three sides, flip it inside out and then surge the fourth side (the surger is probably man's greatest invention next to Nutella). And then I was like, OK, what in the world should I do with this thing? I tried to think of how it would work as the knapsack and in fact it would not be lined at all or reversible (reversible? I mean, can someone remind this girl that she doesn't actually know how to sew?). It would just be like the one from last week but thicker because it's made of two pieces of fabric now. I started getting annoyed because actually this isn't even a class. It's just me and twenty retired people using the outlets at a community center and asking our teacher Sharon for some tips. TIPS! I need step by step tutoring not tips!

Anyway, I decide to cut the thing in half and make two pillow cases instead. I learned how to sew a zipper last week so I felt like sewing three sides and a zipper was within the realm of my limited abilities. I even thought I could do it twice and complete my pillow set. But the zipper tripped me up and ended up taking the whole class so by the end I had only one pillow. And it was totally lopsided. Note to self: bring measuring tape for next class. I left feeling like a total loser. I couldn't even sew a damn four sided pillow.

But then I got home and shoved one of our throw pillows inside and it actually fit and now you can't actually tell that it's lopsided. It kind of looks great! Which of course has very little to do with me and everything to do with the rad fabrics that IKEA carries. Next week I aim to finish the other pillow and master the zipper. Then, maybe, PAJAMA PANTS.

Birds on the Wires

I came across this extraordinary little video on Superhero Journal, an inspiring blog that I frequent. It's been published all over the place at this point but I wanted it chronicled here too. The story behind it, from creator Jarbas Agnelli, goes like this:

"Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn't the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating."

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Sometimes people absolutely astound me and I can believe even more deeply in our connection to nature, each other and the universe.

Down the tubes

Well four weeks after the start of my daughter's ear infection it appears she needs tubes. After we returned from Santa Fe and it was clear that her ear drum had burst and she was leaking brains onto her pillow at night, we brought her back to see her doctor who peeked in her ears and said, hmmm, pretty soupy. So she prescribed a different antibiotic and some ear drops too which we dutifully administered.

Meanwhile my husband, who is a medical device engineer and builds hearing aids for a living, suddenly remembered that he knows several otologists. So he asked his buddy Dr. Murray, who I met at the holiday party once and found to be very amusing while intoxicated, about it. He was suspicious since this had been going on for already a very long time. So he said I should bring her to see him. Which I did. And he looked in there with his big microscope this time and mopped up a lot of gunky, smelly brains with teeny tiny cotton balls. It appears the perforation in her ear drum was neither big enough to let out all the gunk nor let in the antibiotics. Inner ear infection. And we're pretending the big chair she's in ts a rocket ship and she's having the time of her life and my son is a little jealous but in no way wants to switch places because you even come close to his ears and he has a total come apart not unlike the retarded bother in There's Something About Mary. Dr. Murray says to come back Monday (today) to see if the antibiotics have done anything. They have not. She is underwater. She's drowning in her own ear fluids. She's basically hearing as though she had her two fingers in her ears. And this is likely why she talked so late and why her pronunciation is so funny. She can't hear.

So she's getting tubes. On Thursday. At 7am. I don't know why on earth anyone would want to schedule surgery this early in the morning but she has to be there at 6am for pre-op and that is why my husband is taking her so that he can hang out with Dr. Murray and potentially watch the surgery. And maybe think of a new medical device that he will prototype and sell and we'll be rich. Or not. This is the man who passed out at his nephew's bris.

And the funny thing is that one of my earliest memories of all time is getting tubes in my ears. I was three and back then you went to the hospital. And I remember wearing a hospital gown that was open in the back and being worried that the doctor who transferred me to the gurney would touch my tushy. So I held the gown together in the back. Why I needed to be naked for ear surgery is cause for pause.

(pause)

And while this is wonderful that our daughter will finally be able to hear and at least some of her cranial plumbing issues will be solved (Dr. Murray thinks her tonsils will need out soon too), we will miss some of the words she says. Like cwakwain which is a cracker. And what she calls her brother. Trust me, it's not even close. But hopefully now she'll be able to hear when I tell her to stop hitting her brother. Maybe he needs tubes too. Wouldn't that be the best thing ever if getting tubes made you listen to your parents? My mom will confirm it did not work in my case.


and what a lovely ear it is...