I have this headache and when I tug on my ear it feels better.
When I pinch my eyebrow it feels better. While tilting my head all the way to the right, I yawn, and it feels better. I can twist my arm back behind me as far as it goes and it feels better. If I sit on the chair in front of someone and have them stab the spot at the end on my shoulder-blade with their thumb, it feels better. I can't very well go walking around town pinching and yawning and stretching and getting stabbed with a thumb, so I took a pill and a nap. My head still hurts.
I like this day where it's warming up and the snow is sort of melty and the air as all humid and slushy.
Instant coffee all morning.
Cheese.
New (to me) coat from the boy's department at the resale shop is cozy and looks totally cute with my snow pants and slushy snow boots.
Junky tv shows like Bar Rescue and Project Runway Jr.
Misspelled notes from a Kindergartner.
Pretzels and beer.
When I am sitting at karate next to another parent and I say "Did you have The TALK, yet?" we aren't referring to sex. The hard conversation we don't know how to approach is what to tell our kids about police.
The children are pre-teens and some of them are tall. They are awkward and rowdy, able to haul garbage cans to and from the curb and maybe even take the city bus around town on their own soon, certainly big enough to take a dollar into the gas station for candy. These cute round faced children who are thinning out and tripping on their feet will drive soon. We have an egalitarian household where we don't bark orders and one can argue a point for weeks, but I fear there is one realm where irritability and defiance (two qualities pre-teens have in aces) can get you killed. Where being a petulant punk who's not so round-faced and small, can get you tackled and handcuffed or worse. In these United States we're tasering eight year old children, using pepper spray in schools, and shooting twelve year olds on the playground.
I'm not sure what to say about it to my child who sometimes still believes in the tooth-fairy and is afraid to read Harry Potter before bed, but is big enough to steal my hoodies and flip-flops. What do I say to the kid about officer friendly? I've got a rambunctious boy who's deaf in one ear and has a panache for running around pretending he's shooting bad guys. What do I tell him? Do I talk to him about it the same time all the magic of Santa Clause dissolve into the realities of the 5 o'clock news? Exactly how tall does he have to be before he's considered a "possible threat?"
Yeah, this is the discourse I don't have an after-school special for, no pamphlet on how to discuss, no first lady to tell us what to shout. This is the talk that is hardest, because friends and relatives we love wear a blue uniform, because we teeter between just cooperate and 'am I being detained? Am I free to go?' ourselves. And while each parent's 'birds and the bees' lecture is slightly different than the next, I certainly don't want to be the 'abstinence only so we aren't talking about it at all' parent.
When the alarm sounded there was rain and the sun wasn't yet up. I lost the remote and couldn't put Sponge Bob on and so there was no commercial break to tell us to leave on time. A new lunch box had to be located to replace the forgotten one and a cruddier choice of drink bottle will substitute for the one that doesn't leak all over in the backpack. The bus driver was sick and some stranger was driving an odd bus this morning and though the route number in the window was correct, I couldn't help but worry what would happen if he dropped all those little kids off at the wrong school. Perhaps a high school, where all the gang members who eat kindergartners go. Back home I shook off the early morning and set to work inserting a sliver into my left index finger while re-cutting the long side of a canvas whose gesso I am watching dry.
Next week I'm going to take myself to lunch and a movie. I've not done it in decades. Someone is always with me. But after two weeks of art shows and Christmas parties I feel like I need a whole day of not talking to anyone, not sharing anything and making zero compromises. I bet to some people, the fact that I have to designate a day to do that seems alien and ridiculous to them. What a thing.
If I had a restaurant I'd make all the breads from scratch. Pumpernickel and wheat, sour dough and honey, flax and oat, bleached white and brown sugared, then we'd slice them thick and make toasts topped with jellies, jams, and/or different nut butters, local honeys or marshmallows. We'd also serve grilled cheeses with as many kinds of tasty cheese as you can think of with fresh avocados or tomatoes or apples and other neat fruits and vegetables. We'd grill them up and odd combinations of them along side jellies and and at night we'd serve soup with the toasts or the grilled cheeses. We'd have chicken soup, french onion and a very nice tomato locally sourced and from scratch. You'd be able to order anything from just a slice of toast to a sampler plate of all the fun things. And that'd be pretty much it. That's the whole menu. Toast, Grilled Cheese, Soup.
-instant coffee
-banana bread
-roller skating so fast I can barely breath
-sunrises
-answers
-vintage fairy tales
-warm socks that only go up just past my ankles soze I can wear them with skinny jeans
saying "soze"
-websites that don't make one click for each new number on their really incredible list of amazing things that will blow my mind to see (I never make it past three clicks)
-instagram (thanks Ajax!)
-tall brooding poets
-this song (always a sucker for clapping in a song)
I have tax questions and scoured my brain for anyone I know that can come over and have a beer with me and answer hypothetical tax questions. Like "What if I gave clothes that I embroidered to Goodwill? Do I deduct the price of the jeans or the price of the jeans plus the million dollars they are clearly worth after my bleeding fingers were done putting little kitty whiskers on the knees? " and "Am I supposed to pay taxes on tooth fairy money?" But seriously folks, I have questions.
Turns out all I know is artists, beatniks, movie directors and musicians. All my tax accountant friends moved to warmer saner climates (Hi Tracy!) So this also means most of my pals have some sort of show going on just about every weekend, we are almost always selling something on social media as well as trying to oh so subtly yell "LOOK AT THIS STUFF I DO! NOW GIVE ME SOME MONEY!" Some of us have a hard time reconciling what we do, with getting paid. It's never enough, but also it's too much! On any given day my emotions about my work swing from "I'd do this stuff anyway. Here, I just want you to have it." all the way to "I am amazing and I should be getting paid a bazillion dollars for this shiz! Who wants to represent me?!" Which illustrates how bad we are with financials.
I'm making an appointment at a square office today. I'm going to pay someone to answer my questions about sparkly beatnik money. I wonder if they'll let me pay with art?
It's unusually warm this November. I'm told because of El Nino. We're under a tornado watch and there's distant thunder happening right now as the 60mph gusts and the thunder storm we know are coming blow in. It's unsettling. I'm talking about the weather because everything else seems so 'regular' that I don't have much to say. But now that I sat still and looked off into the lower left distance for a minute, I remembered that I wanted to say something about the lovely chicken salad sandwich I had at the Fatt Cat Cafe Rockton, IL yesterday. It was on a very buttery croissant roll and it had fruit in it. I ate the entire thing and the whole cup of soup they brought with it. I wanted to eat more, they have desserts and that was the whole reason I went, but there just wasn't room. They had a bread pudding. I swore I'd come back later in the week for coffee and bread pudding.
At 11:30am today, someone was shot on middle school grounds in my city. The injured kid was then pulled into the school and a lock down ensued. My kindergartner has practiced a hard lock-down more times than a tornado drill. I remember three kids from my own childhood had gun 'accidents', more than anyone hurt playing with matches, talking to strangers, or experimenting with drugs.
I stubbed my toe three times today. The same toe. And it's not even like my toe grew and I don't know how to use it all of a sudden. It's still a regular toe, it just hurts now.
***
I've been posting some art and stuff to Instagram.
***
I cleaned out the front hallway closet and the entry way to make way for winter junk. Spent a lot of time matching gloves and emptying the hall bench of hats. I don't know why I have 28 baseball hats, I've never bought a one (with the exception of the Superman one I bought for Jack at Metropolis.) Maybe they're like TV's or Stephen King books, they just appear. If you don't have one, someone will incredulously insist you take one from them, there are three of them on the curb right now a block from here you can walk down there and get one.
***
We're having guests this weekend and I suddenly feel like we don't have any guest pillows in the house. I need someone to incredulously thrust some wayward new pillows into my possession. Do people still put the guests towels out? Is it possible for people with children to even have nice towels? I'm forgoing the nice towels and spending the money on Mrs. Fischer's local potato chips and booze instead. That's more like the kind bed and breakfast I'd run. You get crappy towels but we make a good martini and then you no longer care about the scrabbly terry-cloth parts hanging down past your knees after you get out of the shower. We're all that and a bag o chips!
I'm watching this video make the rounds on Facebook today, in which a self taught sculptor is carving caves out of sandstone in New Mexico with his hand tools. The man's art is amazing. The reporter makes sure to tell viewers he only makes $12.00/hour and his custom livable art homes sell for a million dollars.
I've been skating the bike-path almost every day it doesn't rain and even once when it did. It's 4.5 miles-ish and it's taking me about a half hour. I enjoy looking at the river and seeing how the waves are. Some mornings it seems to barely move, it's all reflective and glassy. Other days there are waves and I know going into the wind is going to be difficult. It'll feel like I'm a giant kite battling the wind with my legs and I'll hear my heart beating in my ears on those days. I'm enjoying seeing the sames sorts of people each day. There's the regular runners with workout gear and headphones moving on down the road. There are the walkers in business attire and tennis shoes on lunch/break gabbing with each other in pairs and threes. There are the new mom's looking frazzled strollering and pulling and adjusting their clothes uncomfortably. There's a dog who always barks at my skates and at the other end of the leash a pet owner who looks surprised by the outburst. There are the fishermen/women sitting in folding chairs and pop-up tent shades along the banks, they smoke and have some sort of game their listening to and a five gallon bucket for the catch of the day. There is usually a biker looking seriously stoic under a helmet going by in a gust. Then there's me, wearing all of my derby pads because if I fail to jump or dodge an erratic goose and I it takes me out, it'd be a long sore embarrassing walk home covered in scrapes and goose feathers. I'm swish swishing along red faced, sweating and listening to Proud Mary, the Tina version of course.
I've been skating the bike-path almost every day it doesn't rain and even once when it did. It's 4.5 miles-ish and it's taking me about a half hour. I enjoy looking at the river and seeing how the waves are. Some mornings it seems to barely move, it's all reflective and glassy. Other days there are waves and I know going into the wind is going to be difficult. It'll feel like I'm a giant kite battling the wind with my legs and I'll hear my heart beating in my ears on those days. I'm enjoying seeing the sames sorts of people each day. There's the regular runners with workout gear and headphones moving on down the road. There are the walkers in business attire and tennis shoes on lunch/break gabbing with each other in pairs and threes. There are the new mom's looking frazzled strollering and pulling and adjusting their clothes uncomfortably. There's a dog who always barks at my skates and at the other end of the leash a pet owner who looks surprised by the outburst. There are the fishermen/women sitting in folding chairs and pop-up tent shades along the banks, they smoke and have some sort of game their listening to and a five gallon bucket for the catch of the day. There is usually a biker looking seriously stoic under a helmet going by in a gust. Then there's me, wearing all of my derby pads because if I fail to jump or dodge an erratic goose and I it takes me out, it'd be a long sore embarrassing walk home covered in scrapes and goose feathers. I'm swish swishing along red faced, sweating and listening to Proud Mary, the Tina version of course.
