Paper Dolls?

We did a paper doll swap in my art group and I decided to make robots. Here's my first robot.

Squish the Ball

Notice how this tennis ball in Cocoa's mouth is not round: she is squishing it flat until she conquers it and it breaks.

Big Butt Pose

Cocoa likes to do this funny pose where her front feet are stretched out in front of her and she's almost laying down, except her butt is up in the air. Very silly.

Hot Dog

Yes, it's that time again: time for some more cute dog pictures. You really can't have too many, can you? Isn't Cocoa cute? Especially the dirt on her tongue. That's from playing fetch. Next time she gets a drink of water, she'll rinse her tongue off in her water bowl. Then she'll want some fresh water, please, cuz this stuff is all icky now...

My first day on the job at the library--wheee! I feel like I got the keys to the city, or like a kid in a toy store at night after everyone has gone home. Or like those two kids in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, when they stay overnight in MOMA. I am such a geek about it, I can't help it. I got a security badge and a lanyard, which makes me feel all official. I've never had a job with a security badge, that I can remember. I rule.

Cocoa gives J. a hug after he comes back from a bike ride--notice the week-old vacation beard! 

BWCA 2006

Sunset at our campsite. Kinda purty, ain't it?

BWCA 2006

Fog on the lake early in the morning.

BWCA 2006

Me and Earl chillin' in the hammock. You really can't get any better than a nap in a hammock in the wilderness.

BWCA 2006

Me and J. jumping for joy on vacation in the Boundary Waters last week. We swam out to this rock from our campsite. J2 is standing on the "Jesus rock" behind the jumping rock. We called it that because you could stand up on it in the deep water and look like you were walking on water.

J. and me at beginning of Tour de Cure ride for Diabetes at Harriet Lake bandshell. Notice our cute Lil' Sprout General Mills team jerseys! 

Memorial Day

For our day off together Monday we went to breakfast and trained for our bike ride at the same time: biked to IHOP for some stuffed French Toast! YUM, my favorite! It was a total of 20 miles and a little hot (we meant to get up at 6am but left at 9ish) but still really fun. I'm in better shape than I feared, so I should do fine this coming Saturday on the Tour de Cure, which will be 25 miles. J. is of course going to hardly break a sweat, as he's already biked 597 miles for the month of May.

Guthrie Theatre marquis downtown

Here's another shot of a different image on the marquis, this one of a man facing you.

Guthrie Theatre marquis downtown

This is on top of one of the new Guthrie Theatre buildings, which I think are hideous. They look like some corporate headquarters for IBM or something, not a theatre. Anyhow, this tower on top that so attractively resembles a smokestack is actually a marquis. Look at the light pattern, it's actually a profile of a man, some character from their next play that opens soon. Freaky, no?

Babies Are Always Cute

In this case, Baby Tigers!

New Mpls Central Library: ART!

This is my favorite piece of art inside the library. These are kid-sized violins from the MacPhail Center for the Arts, a music institute where kids take lessons and learn how to play music. Each violin has students' names carved in it. the sculpture hangs over a fireplace and gathering spot, and is also in the music section where you find CD's, sheet music, etc.

New Mpls Central Library: Glass Art!

You can see some art here, in the windows. Those aren't drapes, they're images in the glass. Each side of the building has a different pattern. This side the design is birch trees, my favorite. The other sides have water, snow, and grasses and grain.

New Mpls Central Library Open!

Here's the front of the library at the Grand Opening. It's basically divided into the booky side and then the other side has galleries, a theater, and the behind-the-scenes librarian stuff. That thing in the middle? Uh, I think that's where the spaceship landed.

Action! I know, not too exciting. But it's me reading in the brand new Minneapolis Central Library downtown, designed by architect Cesar Peli. It's very cool, and these chairs are very comfy. 

I just watched this amazing movie, Donnie Darko. I don't know how I missed this when it came out, it's brilliant. The previews make it like a teen slasher/horror flick, but it's really not. It's sort of science fiction/psychological horror, but it's sweet and sad and so very smart. And I'm totally in love with this song now, Mad World, a cover of an old Tears for Fears song that is much better than the original song. It seems to fit this movie so perfectly, hard to believe it wasn't written for the film.

I love the intense feeling in the movie of funny/sad at the same time. I also recently listened to a podcast of The Treatment in which Elvis Mitchell was talking to Richard E. Grant about his new uatobiographical movie, Wah-Wah, and Grant also spoke about that funny/sad combo that so much of life seems to be about. If you aren't laughing at it, you're missing half of it. Likewise, if you aren't crying, you're also missing what it's about. It being life. Kind of like that teenage pregnancy thing next door...I'll probably knit her a baby hat after I get over being sad. Or maybe it's in between being sad and laughing (or was that spitting nails?).

"There's Nothing Fair..."

I am so pissed at fate right now, I can't stand it. I'm having a very selfish moment of looking at the world as if it revolves around me. So bear with me for a moment. I've been trying to have a baby now for 8? years, had one miscarraige and oodles of fertility treatment.

My teenage brat neighbor is having a baby shower today. Oh. My. God. She's a loud obnoxious irresponsible...enough. I just can't stand it. It's bad enough I have to hear statistics on teenage pregnancy and try to laugh off the irony of it, now it's going to be living next door to me. Good Lord. It's just sick. And it's depressing as well. She'll make a terrible mother.

Ok. I'll try to stop that now, acting as if it's all about me. But just for a moment I had to kvetch. To borrow the sentiment from Kurt Russell in the preview for the movie Poseidon, where he says, "There's nothing fair about who lives and who dies," well, there's nothing fair about who gets a baby.

Migraine Support?

I just accidentally discovered a nationwide support network for migraine sufferers. Wow! Who knew? Like why didn't my neurologist tell me about this? Anyway, check it out, it's called MAGNUM, kind of a stupid acronym but oh well.

I actually came across this because of Peter Brady. Yes, that Peter Brady, of the Bunch. I saw him on TV the other day, hocking some exercise equipment, and I thought, oh how sad, Peter, that it's come to this. They even had the stupid moniker underneath him that said "TV star!" Oy. Anyhow, I looked him up on the internet and found something about Cindy Brady going around the country to talk to women's migraine support groups. And I thought, what? There are support groups for this fun condition? I should have known, I live in the world's capitol of support groups, the United States of Self-Help. Anyhow, I've read a little on this MAGNUM site and I like seeing the myths dispelled, like migraines are in your head, er, mentally, that is. Or that they are just like other headaches. I'm hoping they have a list of snappy comebacks to stupid things people who don't have migraines say, a la Mad magazine.

Playing fetch with Cocoa in the yard. Notice the blurry wagging tail. And no, that isn't a snake behind her, it's a stick for chewing. 

Mmmm, the lilacs are blooming. Smells so good! 

Neighborly Fun

Okay, that was odd. Our mostly harmless and mostly drunk neighbor just got upset at us because we aren't his friends. We were sitting in the backyard and he walked through his backyard with his usual stash of groceries - a 36-pack of cheap beer. I said Hello and he said Hello and then Goodbye and went inside. Then we heard him grumbling and swearing, which he does a lot anyway, but suddenly he came back outside and stood at the fence. "You know what?" he said, sort of slurrily. I think he'd already had a few. "If you don't want anything to do with me that's fine, but this fence is going down." I'm paraphrasing here. J. said "What are talking about?" and Neighbor responded that he tries to be friendly and say hello and we just ignore him. Um, didn't I just say hello first? But he wasn't listening to our responses, he turned around and went inside his house. And what the hell is he talking about taking down the fence for? It's our fence. So he can't. I guess we'll just ignore that little outburst...and hope it doesn't come up again. Weird.

In other neighborly news, I was out walking Cocoa the other day and as we were walking down the sidewalk of a nearby street, I saw a child up ahead grab a sapling and throttle it so hard I was sure it was going to snap in two. Then just about the time I decided to cross to the other side of the street with Cocoa, he spotted us and started towards us yelling "CAN I PET YOUR DOG?!" For once I said no, I don't think so. I usually like to let children pet Cocoa and try to teach them a couple things about petting dogs (never put your face near a dog you don't know, etc.) but this child was like Damien. Luckily he didn't pursue us.

The tulips are blooming! Hoorah! 

Making Friends as an Adult

Is it just me? Or is it way harder to make friends as an adult than it was as a kid? I only have a few really close friends who aren't family. It's not that I'm anti-social, either. I'm quite friendly. But it just seems so much more frickin' complicated when you're an adult. I've been burned several times in the last few years by people I thought were good friends. I feel like I should learn something from that, like I'm picking the wrong people, missing warning signals--maybe I have a sign on my back that says "trip me"? But then every time I meet someone I like, I can't help but get all excited and hopeful again. I'm optimistic, I dream up stuff we can do together, look forward to all the things we can talk about and share. It's not that I want to be more pessimistic about it, I rather like being an optimist...it's just hard to feel both really excited and also really vulnerable at the same time. Maybe this is the way it was when I was a kid and I'm just not remembering that.

I'm all excited about someone right now. It's a good feeling, it's really almost a physical high. I want to enjoy it, I don't want to worry about what may come. But remember when you were a kid and you made a new friend and then you basically spent 18 hours a day together? And your parents were like "Honey, you shouldn't spend all your time with W., you need to do something else," (W. being your new best friend) and you were like "What the hell is wrong with you people? Why in God's name would I want to tear myself away from this fantastic experience? No, I need to spend as much time as physically possible with W., life is short and you want me to go do something mediocre when I could be with W. and enjoy the hell out of every minute so I'm happily exhausted at the end of the day?" Okay, maybe you didn't say that when you were 11, but if you could have articulated it, you would have.

But here I am now in my thirties and I'm all adult-y, with responsibilities and demands on my time. Not that those are bad things, I like them. It's just that I'm not free (and neither is W.) to drop everything and do the all-friend-all-the-time channel. I guess that might be a good thing...I don't know though, I do miss the freedom to do that. Jeez, this is getting back to my very first blog post, about that idea from Stephen King in Stand By Me, that thing about never having friends again like the friends you had when you were twelve. Maybe this is an April thing, it was April last year I wrote about that. Spring, new beginnings, new friends, it sounds so cheesy.

Old longings. I don't know. I'm trying to figure out some of the ways people interact with each other instead of being friends as adults, because I don't get it. I mean, you have colleagues, and I guess you aren't friends with all of them, some are like the kids in your class at school you didn't talk to much but didn't necessarily dislike. Then there's the whole networking thing, which I hate. That whole concept bugs me, and I have been used by others solely for networking, as a stepping stone to get over to someone else, and I don't like it. I'm really babbling here. But it bugs me. I've had people seem to be my friend just so they can get some work out of me for free and then they disappear as soon as they got what they wanted (the Writer's Union for one), and that feels really icky. It just seems like there's all these other relationships that aren't friendship when you're an adult, and I'm not even talking about sexual relationships. For example, I saw this story on TV the other day about "cuddle parties" that totally threw me for a loop. It's for people who don't know each other to get physical affection from each other without it being sexualized. Um, yeah. Rule #7 is "no dry humping" and sexual activity is not allowed. Um, well, okay, I like the idea of physical affection, but with a bunch of strangers? And cuddling? I don't know, it just sounds so whacked that we would have to set up such an artificial construct to satisfy a desire for physical contact...of course, I'm talking from Minnesota, and I can't see that happening here, it's mostly in California and New York right now.

Holy crackers. I just Googled cuddle party and there's a cuddle facilitator training in Minneapolis in May! I am so freaked out.

I think I need some sleep now.

Baby Fix

Today I got to babysit for my best friend, and I had a heavenly time with little 3-month-old K. He was a bit fussy and was getting tired of just walking around, so I put him in his swing and started singing to him, and he was absolutely transfixed. I sang "You Are My Sunshine" and he laughed and smiled and was opening his mouth and looked like he was trying to imitate the shape of my mouth while I was singing. It was so amazingly cute. I mean, I know this is what babies do, but when the baby is looking at you with those big eyes like you are the whole world, it's quite humbling.

Dentistry is Evil

I had to go to the dentist this morning. God I hate going to the dentist. Probably something to do with trauma from that frackin' orthodontist I had as a child who was always accidentally fondling my breasts when he was working on me. He's probably dead now, which is some comfort. And I hope he's burning on a little hellspit. Anyway, I have a really nice dentist now, but it still nerves me. I feel like Alice in Dilbert...must control...fist...of...death. I want to grab the hygeinist and throw her across the room when she--well, when she does just about anything. She sticks the pointy thing in all my gums. She scrapes metal across my teeth and wipes the crap she finds on my teeth onto my bib. She turns on that whirry thing that isn't a drill but it doesn't matter because it sounds like a frackin' drill and it vibrates against my teeth. Anything that makes your teeth vibrate is, well, unsettling to say the least. And I hate the way my teeth feel after they've been detailed like an expensive car. Gawd I hate it. I can't imagine working there. I can't imagine a job more unpleasant than dental hygeinist. Even working as a receptionist in a dentist's office would make me come unglued. That sound! That evil drill sound! Oh, the humanity!

Apple blossom branch. This is my new wallpaper on my computer now. For a month I've had a beach pic from Seattle up and now I finally have something at home beautiful enough to appreciate...The trees are all budding and lime green, too, my favorite color.

Mmmmmm. Apple blossoms. 

Sprung

It's finally really Spring, not just no longer Winter. Yesterday the sweet aroma of apple blossoms wafted towards me from across the street while I was walking Cocoa, and I had to go over and suck in that smell and smoosh up some blossoms in my fingers. Yum. Which made me think about why it's no fun to walk around downtown Minneapolis. There's the criminal factor and homies living loud like there's no one else around, but the thing I hate the most is the smell. It smells like poo! I don't know if it's the sewage system or what, but p.u. They can put up all the fancy condos they want, but it still smells like poo. And yet I've never seen that as a factor in discussions of problems with bringing people back into downtown. Hmmm.

ATC: Mary Mary

This photo is of a statue of Mary in a cemetery.

ATC: Born in Roscommon

the photo is of a gravestone and I used a map of Ireland for the background: notice the orange section right next to the photo is Roscommon. The skull is a stamp I carved.

Bike Towards Me Now

Can you say shaggy? I so need a haircut. J. took this picture of me yesterday for our Tour de Cure web pages. I will be riding about 30 miles to raise money for diabetes. Want to sponsor me? You know you do. Things are getting green here, finally, and it's nice to walk outside again without gloves and steel spikes on my feet. It's such a relief that winter is over. A very nice mailman gave Cocoa a cookie on our walk today, and it was a mailman-shaped cookie! I thought that was pretty funny. She liked it.

Coffee (breath) Kills

Sometimes I can tolerate the smell of coffee, but it's almost the worst breath on Earth. Hence my layout for this coffee-themed deco with the pop-up nasty breath cloud, the dead person, and the mints. The list of "worst breath" has 1.vomit, 2.coffee, 3.sardines.

Outsiders and Others Gallery is now having a bird art exhibit. I didn't have time to look at it today when I dropped off my donations but I hope to go back while it's still up. This is a really fun gallery, they had an exhibit last year with all children's art called Child's Play that we got to see. They have an archive of it up still if you wanna see.

Pop Culture Fortune

This is a piece I just whipped up to donate to Outsiders and Others Art Gallery Art Binge, which is an auction to raise money for the gallery. I love this gallery and I thought it would be a good way to get more of my art out there. They helped me price it at $125, which is pretty exciting. I'll be going to the auction on April 22nd, should be fun. The people at the gallery who were there when I went in really liked the piece a lot.

So here's how it works: Each number is associated with some pop culture reference. The words stamped next to the numbers are associated with that reference. For instance, 42 is from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the words are "Don't Panic," which is from the guide. The bunny tag is actually removable (each one is in a plastic slip case cut from an ATC holder) and has a further "Lucky Bunny clue" on the back. For 42 it's "42 is the answer to the universe." And so on. And then I made up a fortune, like from a fortune cookie (only in this case they're coming out of bottle caps). For 42 the fortune is "You rely too much on authority. Ask someone else." Here are the others, see if you can guess the pop culture reference:

320, Hot Dog! Lucky Bunny Clue: 320 Sycamore "...drafty old house..." Fortune: Stay close to home, there is something here for you, right under your nose.

140 40, I know this! LB clue: 104 40 is NOT the longitude and latitude of Devil's Tower (and neither is 140 40) Fortune: Trust your intuition, even when it's way out there.

13, Bauds of Euphony. LB clue: 13...W. Stevens...blackbirds. Fortune: See something ordinary in a new way.

1701, To Boldly Go. LB clue: 1701...fascinating. Fortune: Try somewhere new. Be friendly.

9906753, Top Men. LB clue: 9906753 is the number on a crate.

I also used driftwood from my Seattle vacation for accents in each section, twisting wire with beads gathered in numbers matching the digits in that section. This was really fun to make.