What the kid is up to.

Rock N Roll Institute from Vixen Productions on Vimeo.

Vocab

"My socks are struggling to stay up." -Jack age 5

Make America Great Again

Bridges to rebuild

Lead pipes to replace
Potholes to fill

Condemned houses to tear down
Schools to repair

Kids to mentor

People to help

Energy solutions to invent

Solar panels to install

Wind farms to plant

Litter to pick up

Garbage to recycle

Organic food to be grown

Let's put some people back to work and re-invest in our United States. 

***

I really get riled up during these big election cycles.

Idealogues a List

Equality for all despite, gender, race, ability, and wealth.
Livable minimum wage. 

Tax the rich.
Feed the poor. 

Health care for everyone. 

Pay teachers. 

Gun control.

Reinvest in these United States by rebuilding infrastructure.

Stop trashing our planet. 

Don't hit. 

Make peace.

Include. 

I think my ear is screwed on too tight

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.

Wishes

Dear Humanity,

Can we just do better at keeping the children safe? I'm tired of reading the news.

Sincerely,
Me

Dummies

"... We’re creating a world of dummies. Angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice is heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition and confrontation..."

January List

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.

What Do We Tell the Children?

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?"

Yes, yes, of course our perfect children will never get into trouble, never encounter an officer yelling at them, never have a reason to get face down on the cement, never get pulled over and look guilty. They same way they'll never have reason to walk calmly out of a burning building, or huddle into a bathroom and be silent for a lockdown, or duck under their desks and put a book over their heads, or swim to the edge of a pool, or not chase a ball into the street, or refuse to give directions to a skeezy candy wielding guy driving a van, or be smart enough to just say "no."  Not our kids.

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.

***

   

The Darkest Days

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.

Chinese Factory Workers & the Toys They Make

http://imgur.com/a/wrIds#bmwLB

Mine all mine

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.

This is Stupid

Gun deaths are poised to surpass automobile deaths in the United States this year.

We Could Take 'Em

This is a fun little tool that will help you understand geography   overlapmaps.com

Whim's Bakery and Grille

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.

Thankfully

Here's a list of things I like:

-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)

Cool it Tax Man.

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?

November Thunder & Fatt Cats

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.

Frosty Grass

Toast is what gets me out of bed in the mornings and trying to quit toast was a total mistake.  I'm sorry toast.

***

Being in love makes every song about you.

***

If RuPaul can make this person look like that, then none of us should worry about how pretty we are on the outside again - work on the insides.

***

Here's a thing I made recently that I like...



Here's some more things I made on Instagram www.instagram.com/jenny1396

Madness

In America there are 112.6 guns per 100 people.

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.