3:35 p.m.||||2003-01-02
I spent last night at my mom's with Josh, and we watched Minority Report....not bad, a little frantic hectic for me with the layering-heavy images crap. But ok. Same year as Vanilla Sky for ole Tom? Normally, I despise him. But I sort of like the themes he's taking on - sort of the short hero of the future role. So short. And the precog he takes off with later on - shorter than him even, so she's around 5"1? Eh.
Wow, I had no intention of writing that.
I'm taking an egg with broccoli, tomatoes, chees and salsa break from reading the Lovely Bones. Purty good book so far, that. It's filling me with hunger for more books, better bigger challenging books - you have no idea what a bibliophile I once was. What a black footprint parenting has put in those habits.
The heat mysteriously broke and so I am sitting here in overalls, a fleece thing, a SCARF (black and white stipes, thanks for asking), thick wooly socks, and a glass of merlot. Am feeling warmer than this room should allow (it's like 65 degrees?) (AND Dave's mom knew about it yesterday and bitched at him "what the hell happened to the heater?" like he should either know or feel responsible. Sorry) Oh, and Josh's and my cold has morphed once again into new raspy, creepy deep in the lungs crunching cough attacks and so we can safely assume we have been sick for 14 days now. I asked Dave to please call her at work to remind her that we have no heat and a sick baby, and he snidely said, I'm sure she has more pressing things going on at work and won't want to hear it. TRUE.
My mom rules. My mom is giving and not a grudge holder. She has always gone way out of her way for me, her only daughter, without me really wanting her to or asking her. If she gets perturbed with me, as she has often had a very real right to, she gets mad, we talk, we are comfortable arguing, we argue, it's over, it's resolved. I try harder, and she notices. We don't play stupid fucking mind games, or take other issues in our lives and project them unfairly into new issues that have nothing to do with prior arguments.
My mother has forked over nearly two thousand dollars, unsolicited by us, because we desperately needed help...without complaining or making us feel guilty or incompetent. Dave's mother offered to let us live here rent free until we could pull our finances back together, knowing full well that his job fluctuates, and that his way of doing things differs from hers. I understand why she was upset a couple of weeks ago, but that was RESOLVED, and still she finds every little thing to nitpick about and silently fume and storm around, and act twofaced and frankly, I am so sick of it that I fantasize moving to my mom's, even though her place is WAY WAY WAY too small. Also, she was not nitpicking about anything until recently, when it was obvious the stresses of her entire life were beginning to boil up and over. Fine. We're all human. But no-one should have to feel like they're walking on egg-shells because no-one here who is qualified to have this freaking discussion in the first place can come to the plate. All the stuff she bitches about to Dave only lately has been stuff we had no idea was bugging her.
WhatEVER man. I'm done. Distance. Freedom. My beatiful baby boy who is the greatest kid - you would love him, and he would reward you with divine warmth.
Oh yeah - there's a blizzard outside. Fer real. I went out on the porch earlier with my big ole fleece and funky shoes, my washed hair up in a bright yellow towel, and my silly stip-ed scarf. The weird foliage she pasted on the interior of the porch - you know, leafy, evergreen things intertwinedwith Xmaslights - are all askue, partially blocking the door, and obscurring the stairs. Snow wafting dizzily across the planks, grazing my naked ankles. I thought of getting a camera cause it was so s s so Midwestern and eccentric but I got bored easily and said no. But hey, I should put some new photos together because I am feeling so rejuvenated and sort of mod with my new hair: I need to begin my photo expo of this silly town.
And now, I am off to read your updates.
12:01 p.m.||||2002-12-31
I'm too old, too liberal, and too much a slob to be living in this house. I'm not too excited to be thrown in to the midst of a child/parent argument, in which I am neither participant. I don't know what's eating Dave's ma and frankly, I'm beginning to not care...Not nice, I know.
It was that Dave wasn't working enough, and now that he is, it is every other fucking thing under the sun.
Left laundry in the machine. Call the cops/ this is a three story, and no one of us can get up or downstairs for long without Josh in tow.
A pillow got nailed with lasagne sauce. Well...you've seen exactly how it's done...(Josh hordes food sometimes and finds a private place ot spit it out) so when it happens to you, feel worse.
The dishes didn't get loaded. Blame me. Ok? Just blame me, because all of that very important stuff was my fault and yet, she nailed Dave. Why?
Because he's not living up to an ideal she had of the stay at home mom, straight out of the idealistic and economically different 60's....and he isn't supporting his family. Doing the job that she and the rest of his family insist is the one he should be doing, even though it fluctuates seasonally like crazy. Even though he's one guy, trying to faux finish all of fucking Toledo.
They're not going to like it when I start working again, guaranteed.
Well, would that I could be so perfect as to make all the family approved decisions. It's absurd and it's stifling.
2:45 p.m.||||2002-12-30
Saw on a banner: "lead me not into temptation, I can find it on my own."
I am sooooooooooo sick, with a cold that apparently ate Toledo. Josh smeared it on me, after getting it from a little girl in line to see Santa, I shared with Dave, Dave's sister, her husband, but luckily not their newborn. Two weeks passed. The sore throat and blocked-with-concrete sinuses have evolved into, stuffed ears and coughing from the the feet up. I gpt up yesterday to eat dinner, the went back to bed for another sixteen hours. In better news, my digestive tract has been feeling great!
I want to go dye my roots - again!! all I do - but I feel like someone poured warm syrup into my blood, slooowwwww and tiiirrreeeed. I could sleep another week, I know.
Dreamt I was eating blt's and lasagne at one point, what the heck. I'm a weird dreamer....as Pablo can attest, although that was one of the coolest dreams I've had all year. (I was stuck in a castle and recieved a long rolled-ike-a -tube-of-carpet bag thing which was stuffed with all manner of intricate presents, most of them paper, and drunkenly decorated....) Next time he'll hopefully be in it.
Anyway.
Mwuh.
8:48 p.m.||||2002-12-28
Which Sesame Street Muppet's Dark Secret Are You?
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8:16 p.m.||||2002-12-28
I'll work from the purely shallow backward. By the end of the week, you'll have the real meat, but for now, know the following.
I got about five inches cut off my hair, leaving it in short bob, tuckable behind ear, shaved in back. I'm feeling Elastica once again.
I got clothes on a binge that luckily didn't leave me wallowing in post-consumer-depression afterward. I have jeans that put JLo to shame except my ass crack isn't visible. I got tops. For Xmas, sweaters....cool, spy-girl ones. Socks, unmentionables. Shoes. Mens, size 6 1/2, black, no buckles belts or ties....thick rubber soles, stiff upper leather.
A book on Dali....surrealism being my favorite division in art, although Dave's ma couldn't possibly have known. The best selling (and so, potentially suspicious) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (?). So far, so good. And a book on raising boys in which Dobson makes clear in chapter one that he despises homosexuals and feminists, being such the fucking fantastic Christian - read Republi-fucking-can. Oh well, two outta three ain't bad. P>
Mmmm, about a billion toys and books and videos and clothes for my son, thank you Jesus.
I felt so rejuvenated by finally updating my damn self that today I bleached my teeth.
I'm waiting for Dave to get back from...well, never you mind....so I can go to a place called the Mill, where Christian bands are playing tonight, so I can find Harry to see if he wants to go to a party where all of our old group are hanging out...the one that expelled us when they realized we were more than just the garden variety alcoholics.....much more. Oh, youth. Oh, our sad and sorry past regrets. I have a few. Hahahahahh! "Regrets, I have a few...lalala, blalala, blablabla highway...." Shades of Syd and Nancy. Hey whatever happened to Chloe Webb? She shows up in the funniest places but I can't remember where I saw her last.
I killed almost an entrie bottle of Kahlua in three days, which is no big feat and unimportant, except it wasn't mine to drink. Let's hope they don't discover the missing champagne case issue at the same time.
Eek.
I have a theory that Joe and Mary are up in heaven hanging out. Wouldn't they be? I think so.
2:16 p.m.||||2002-12-28
Josh is beside me sucking on leg of stuffed rabbit, and I was just thinking that going too long between updates is a little like waiting too long for the next time one has sex. It gets easier and easier too avoid and the longer one goes, the more chaste she feels.
I'd be a great faster....oh, but wait, that's right, I was also good at my eating disorder. (Which by the way, has not been active for over ten years, so don't worry.)
Anyway. I needed to put this down so I would feel warmer later.
I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday, and I'll be back to illuminate mine later.
Hey, that new movie with Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf looks sort of promising. Hmmmm.
2:11 a.m.||||2002-12-18
Dave came back unscathed.
Vatta day. I am thrilled because I was able to get trial version of both Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash...different versions than the ones I stupidly installed back when I had no idea what to use them for.
$799 for the entire suite of my new favorite thing.
Oh, that job. Well, if I had any experience at all, it would have been cool, because it's a record distribution company. But I fall short, I do. I need to get these certs out of the way, learn PHP like overnight, and really really pull a design site together just to prove I know more than html. I will most likely intern first...which is fiiinnnee, as long as I am employable before Josh hits kindergarden.
I am keeping the email of the job description in the hopes of cold-calling in a couple months...stay on me about that site, will ya?
The nifty thing was how close I actually am to being able to handle all parts of that job description. Very. I need to spend the next monh studying and designing like nobodies business.
ok. It is so late and i'm just wired to mask being tired. Cat in the hat and all that.
Dig?
Oh - one day I'll start to list the mad google hits I've been getting. Every day, like twenty, from all over the place. Nuts.
2:44 p.m.||||2002-12-17
HI.
It's taken Dave about forty-five minutes to come back from the grocery with my t.v. dinner and diaper wipes. Seeing as how yesterday we got the car's tie rods replaced at noon and by one were hearing something that sounded like a spatula stuck in a metal fan, this is worrisome.
Oh the East Si-Ede. Even if he met one train for every pair of tracks on his way back, it wouldn't take this long.
If he's walking across town right now, in his holy sneakers and soaking socks, I bet he arrives pissed off. I hope he's safe. I hope the car did not shatter into fragments as I keep expecting it to.
I am very very very very very tired of being poor.
I am tired of the fact that the only stuff Dave's mom eats is eggs, WONDER BREAD, peanut butter, tomato soup, salsa (although that with the eggs is the only thing I like about either of them), and fucking chocolate milk.
I am HUNGRY. Let's see, what doesn't agree with Miss IBS 2002 here? Eggs, white bread, peanut butter, tomato soup or anything with tomatoes, and dairy.
And she has a freezer full of freezer burned frozen corn.
Corn.
Freezer burned Mashes potatoes in bags.
Dave would be making money on this mural if he could get to it, because of the car.
thecar/thecar/thecar/ thefuckingassholeIwishIweredeadcar.
There is a chance that by tomorrow evening there will be five adults, one 18 month-old and one two week old living here in this two story, one bathroom, three bedroomed house. Two of which are no bigger than shoe-boxes which is why Josh sleeps in the LIVING ROOM.
Reordered: three devout and one fallen off Christian plus one inbetweening malcontent. Uh, that'd be me.
I have such anxiety around the encroaching house full of people whom I can't escape that I'm ... But, dude, they're the ones sweating this holiday right now, and running around like lunatics worrying about crap.
I'm the one baking and hanging out with my mom who is so great, and thinking about crafts, and getting increasingly happy that about to come my way are clothes, for my family, because we can't afford to clothe ourselves, and maybe some computery type goodies which is great, 'cause I haven't been able to buy myself a fucking thing in two years.....and food, which is awesome, because this Atkins diet, of all fucking protein which was forced upon me by no choice of my own, is killing me.
3:17 p.m.||||2002-12-13
I just had a call that there might be a web design job open for a local record label....my pal is going to email the gal running it and explain that although I am by no means an expert, I have talent and will work for peanuts to get experience. Well, she won't say that, obviously...mainly she's going to scope it out for me.
Now, Dave just got home from working on a mural of the history of Pemberville, Ohio, out in, you guessed it, itty bitty Pemberville; and while Josh was in a most excellent mood all morning, for some reason he's downstairs blowing out.
I am sad because my life of waking up at 12:00 each day is over, as Josh has reverted to waking at the crack of dawn, whereas for a couple of months he was waking at 11:00. So, when Dave leaves I am now up at 8:30. Day two. I'm managing well, although it's six extra hours in the day for me to feel like crap.
I have to do a couple of things very soon. One, change the living daylights out of my diet. Two, go the gym for which I pay every month. I've been paying for two and a half years (around there), but I quit going as soon as I learned I was pregnant. I have not been since. That's partially because I lost of all my pregnancy weight within about eight months of Josh being born, with no effort, and the only thing that really inspires me to exercise is wanting to lose weight...which I have no need of losing. In fact, if I lose anymore, there'll be trouble. (130 pounds: I weighed myself for the first time in months this morning - hmmm.)
Anyway. My diet, which by anyone else's standards is light but not that threatening, is killing me. Nothing agrees with me except oatmeal and this truly sucks.
Coffee. No more. If I succumb I spend the entire day massaging my side, and trying to crack my back. I'm awake, but tortured.
I think I need to quit eating meat and cut out the dairy, but this is boring, huh, so back to Josh.
We watched a couple of baby videos, which, because it was eight o'clock in the am, and this used to be the very hour at which we would watch them when he was around eight months old....gave me a tremendous feeling of nostalgia. So that made me feel happy about being up, and tolerant of watching them again, for maybe the five hundredth time.
Around 11, I decided to cut his hair, on a whim. This will be the fourth such haircut by yours truly to the king of hating haircuts. Last time was such an awful production that I swore never again. But, as he was beginning to look too much like little lord fauntleroy again I decided, patience is a virtue and if I don't remove an ear, I think I can talk him through it.
Well, he hated it. But what worked was wiring one pair of scissors shut for him to examine while I tried to fend off the straying paws, and do something equal on all sides. It was hard, but I was heavy on commending him when he was calm and his hands weren't competing with the scissors doing the cutting and somehow we both survived unscathed. I cannot imagine how hair stylists do it - perhaps they don't see kids like mine very often. I wouldn't bother except that his hair grows really fast and is quite straight in front, so he gets this little ghetto puppy thing going that makes him look less loved than he should deserve to look.
Then it was a glorious pre-lunch bath which was divine. Then a rubbing down with lotion because he has inherited my scaly-in-winter-lily-white skin, and he was extremely skeptical of this, although I kept reassuring him with how delicious he smells...tralala. (Personally, I find most scents disgusting when they are of the lotion and perfume variety...I almost never go heavy on product because I find this stuff so offensive. But once the strength subsides on baby lotion, it's cool)
Then it was a clipping of every nail he owns because twice this week he has almost removed a lip, and I'm not having it.
Then it was sippy cup of "dzeus", and all was well in the world.
I'm going with my mother and Josh tomorrow to a Christmas party at her office, a party for children, complete with Santa and all the fixin's. Josh gets to race around with all the other maniacal fans of Santa, and receive some kind of present.
Following that we're baking some issue of X-mas cookies, and taking digital photos to K-mart for a cd consolidation and printing extravaganza.
11:23 p.m.||||2002-12-09
Gawd. I am going to resist editing, it's a close cousin to the other inner critic who stops listening to the music that's really playing. And the one who forgot that the greatest art can come from mistakes.
When I uses to paint and draw, I'd start with a quick, random, gesture drawing, trying to avoid any idea of what it would eventually be. Then I'd hunker down, a lot of times with pen and ink, even ballpoints, and pencils, and carve into the shapes that were already there...all the time heading toward the skeletal and sort of intestinal, curling, twisted, forms. (I know that sounds disgusting, but I'm referring to shape and texture, not and actual GI tract, although that would have been prophetic, huh?) I always wound up with flowers, and vines, too, the veins and scratchy areas...I'm a fan of digging in lines and creating shapes and shadows that aren't real.
A lot of times if I came to something ugly and exasperating, I would think, it can be uglier and then it can recover. I remember something in marker, the last four markers I owed, and they were half dried out, and wrong to go with one another. But I did it, I saved it...although I must not have thought so, because after I took some india ink in several equally hideous colors, I stooped short. And I left it alone. For years. And when I saw it again, it is not only finished, it'll do.
I used to make all my silly tactile art according to how much of which supplies I had left. One painting is sprayed on, with a watered down tempura from a hobby bottle left over from a holiday craft's day gone horribly wrong. That one really sucks, but it's like, oh, I was out of acrylic, no pen and ink, not even colored pencil. The hobby paint challenge.
I also recall one time when I had managed to use the same set of acrylics for more than a year, even two, and one day, I ran out and had to replace the whole set. Same brand, same staples, and not one hue or mix or even density I was happy with. Everything changed with new paint.
I used to be able to draw for hours. And that was so long ago. And now the critic is ever-present. Even trying sometimes to just randomly doodle fills me with dread and anxiety. I know I don't look at blank canvas the same way.
I guess I could say the same about music, although, once you get back the callouses, and remember what the song was supposed to do, and you have free time that's predictable for a couple of weeks, and privacy to live in the dream of all that, it does become fun. There's not such a delay of gratification singing a song, as there is with trying to paint at the top of that game.
Everything involves such work. Dedication. This is tough when you lack the self confidence to continue in spite of all rest of the crap. I don't even mean me, really, because I do find myself coming round again to certain needs I have to create, but that's always the question? How many of us stop too soon out of death of ambition.
I have to keep reminding myself that it does get easier the less dependent the baby becomes. And it's not that I regret that at all, but I sometimes think becoming a parent must of necessity end the debate about the place of art in my life.
And no-one else around here is really worried about it at all, probably because they have the freedom to take it for granted.
But one day....
this will be the stuff I can share.