Art Show Baby!!!

I’m famous. Well, at least I was in my own mind.

But now I have outside verification. My name appeared in our local paper!!!

As an ARTIST! #score

Now look, I’ve been in a mosaic art studio for, I don’t know, a couple of years. It’s become a religion, like sacramental blood in my veins. (Especially the part where we close studio and have wine on Friday nights. This ritual is actually called Vespers.) #awesome

At this point, everyone is getting ready for an Art Show at Mexican Restaurant.

And I’m having a breakdown. Cuz this is the time of year when the Mommy duties go way up and studio drops to Number 782 on my To Do list.

Oh, I want to be part of. And I eat at this fricking restaurant EVERY Monday night. How will I swallow the yummy food with all the bitter bile, as I dine amongst my colleagues truly awesome art pieces?

So I suck it up.

I have no ideas. And every else has taken the cool stuff. You know, like Margaritas and Tacos!

So I announce I’m going to do a Heart. (Our heart really does reside in this little place.) Oops. “Does not meet the theme of the show.” #dammit

Thank God, one of the artists abandoned her chili pepper piece. Hallelujah! A concept I can run with.

So I do Chili Peppers on a Heart. (Cuz I’m stubborn like that, when I’m not wallowing in bitterness.)

But I make it small. Like 9 inches. Cuz I have one week.

So I lock my kids in another room, allow them extraordinary access to Disney Channel and the Wii and I crank.

And I talk to myself. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just get it done. Or you will be LEFT OUT.”

The words LEFT OUT always invoke some kind of awful fear in me. But it is enough to keep me moving.

And you know, I am nothing without a village. @Pottery45Girl, Jennifer my teacher helped me saw the heart background; @JerryLStudio suggested I lay the chili peppers overlapping to create a heart within a heart, @SocialMosaics grouted it for me.

Then everybody from the studio took a whole night to hang all the pieces. (And don’t forget the doctor who prescribes my xanax. A very important member of my village.)

And clearly you have achieved the Big Time when the local paper not only writes about the show, but runs a picture of your piece! Check it out.

This makes me famous, right? #pleasepleaseplease


http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20106170352

I'm Committed

This morning I woke up with a singular purpose. I commit to getting my To Do List done for the day.

First, however, I check Twitter. Then I check some more. Then I hope someone will respond to what I thought was a brilliant tweet, so I keep checking.

Then I think, wow, I really need to write a blog post. I’ll start that after I check Twitter again, cuz dammit, that Tweet was funny.

And now I need to tackle the To Do list. But I can’t actually find the list. I dig under three Cheetos bags, a dog leash, a Camp Trip Release form (shit, that was supposed to go out yesterday) and finally, triumphantly find the list. It has orange fingerprints on it and is much longer that I remember.

I really need to redo this. I should have columns sorting these tasks between high priority and low priority (and the column for the shit, that let’s be real, I am never going to fucking do), emails, calls, proposals etc.

Then I check Twitter again. And then I check to see if anyone posted a comment on my Blog. But I’m not posting a lot to my blog, cuz, uh, duh – I have a lot of things on my To Do List.

You know what. I feel tired. I’ll hit this hard -- tomorrow. I’ll just crank through it all then. That’s the ticket. I’ll write a blog, redo the list, work on the tasks. Tomorrow is the day. The Golden Day. I’ll get up early.

Cuz now I need to check Twitter. Cuz dammit, that Tweet was Golden!

Driving In The Fog

So we decided to head up to the mountains over the three-day weekend. We left Palm Springs on a Thursday night. No big deal, right?

Sunny skies, kinda warm out, beautiful glow of the early evening, on the horizon we can see some clouds, kinda pretty. No big deal, right?

As we get up onto the curvy mountain road we see the dense clouds above us. We’ve made this drive through a bit of fog before (in the bright morning hours, but hey?). No big deal, right?

Then we hit the fog. Solid, intense, about 8 inches of visibility. And it is pitch-fucking- black. Sheer mountain cliff on one side, oncoming traffic on the other. Turns out it may be a big fucking deal.

However, Glowie is gaily chatting in the back seat. We tell her to Be Quiet, Daddy needs to concentrate on the road. And Lord knows I am holding us on this mountain road with no visibility, with the sheer strength of my toes, curled hard into my shoes which are pressing onto the floor boards.

My husband tries to turn on the windshield wiper, cuz in his mind, THAT is the problem here. If he can just clear the windshield, he’ll be able to see.

Through clenched jaw I tell him to KEEP HIS HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL AND FORGET THE FUCKING WINDSHIELD WIPER.

Then I alternate by saying optimistic things like: I’m sure this will lift when we get to the summit. This can’t stay like this once we make the turn off. Right?

Unfortunately, when my husband heroically (or blindly) makes the turn off into a sheer, black wall of fog we think: Thank God, this is it. It has got to lighten up here.

And I can finally unclench my digits.

But no. We still can’t see shit. We don’t even know if we are on the right road. We don’t know if there is a sheer cliff on the left or oncoming traffic on the right.

We are buried in fog. And now fucking lost.

But we do hear something.

Sniffling.

In the back seat.

Constant, repeated sniffling.

We are tense, my husband and I. Him with the white knuckles on the steering wheel, me of course, with the clenched toes in floorboard and fingernails in dashboard.

I haven’t blinked in 10 minutes. Cuz I am keeping us alive with my will.

With every muscle in my body I have to turn my head, peeling my eyes off the invisible road, to see what the HELL is going on in the backseat.

I find Glowie softly sobbing.

Fear turns to sorrow.

“Why are you crying baby?”

Glowie: “Cuz I think we are going to die. And Mommy, I DON’T WANT TO DIE.”

And now the tension is broken. Hey, we still can’t see shit, but the kid has called out the elephant in the car.

I tell the girls to Hold Hands. I tell them everything is going to be fine. We are together. We may be in the fog, we may be lost and there may be a fucking cliff. But we are together.

And you know what? It turns out that being together as a family, is the biggest fucking deal of all.