because susan asked!

How did the week go?
Well, I made it the whole week and as to be expected, the last days were much harder than the first. I was climbing the walls by the end of the week, taking slow, roundabout trips to the bathroom, wandering the cube aisles, randomly standing up to peer over cube wall after cube wall to look out a window (that is about 20 feet away) at the gray, gray Portland sky.

I think the bottom line is that those random trips to creative websites make me better at my job. A little bit, in fact, like looking out the window might. Only, since I don’t have any windows I look in to other lives. And those short, brief recharges give my subconscious time to work out ideas, identify problems, get some space. And then I come back to work just a little bit refreshed. And I see things I didn’t see before.

On the flip side, I think I was a little more satisfied, overall, with my life when I wasn’t looking, every day, at these websites. I wasn’t reading tutorials for yet more sewing projects, art projects, baking projects. So my heap of “wish to do” didn’t get any bigger. (Which is good, because it’s already big. Really big.)

I also think that I got a little distance from the-admiration-that-is-so-much-like-envy. (I bet the Dutch have a word for this. Or maybe the Chinese.) I read these blogs and I admire these people (And I don't even know them and that's just plain weird). But I still admire the beauty, the creativity that seems to be in their every day. And then I look at my own life and see yesterday’s dirty dishes on the counter and a stack of mail that needs to be filed and I judge. I’m stepping out of myself and looking in and thinking….really?

But then again. These people are editing their lives. It’s a whole ‘nother monster of blogs who actually write about the ugly stuff. Like the woman who blogged about the three nights it took to let her baby “cry it out”. Her blog helped me through my own “cry it out” adventure. (Well, that and a bottle of wine.) Or, more recently, this guy who wrote about how much it sucks when your kid has a cough. That helped me through Addie’s nasty-ugly virus last week. (Okay. It’s not a blog, really, but you get the idea.)

So I can recognize that I’m buying into a picture of life. The Pottery Barn version of the stay-at-home-artist-mom. But hey, when I’m not busy feeling the difference between me and them, I’m feeling the sameness. And I’m believing that there might be a day that I escape the cube completely. Because you gotta have a picture of the life you want, before you can draw the map to get there.

(Thanks for askin' Susan!)

just to make it clear

The irony of writing about not reading blogs on my blog does not escape me. Wow. That was two nots in one sentence. I rock.

In which I ramble...

I guess the question is what will I do with myself when there is nothing to do. I’m taking a rest from other people’s blogs. A week-long rest from reading about other people, with other lives, with things that I want or don’t want, a break from the weird anonymous world of lurking. It’s only been one day, not even, and I’m already climbing the walls, so to speak, of my cube. Drawing bull after bull after bull.

Don’t get me wrong. Absorption is good. It has its time and place. But since I’ve gotten a 9 to 5, I spend quite a bit of daylight looking at blogs. Because they are a quick break. Because they are better for me than a Diet Coke, because I can surf the internet and eat chocolate at the same time.

This is a test for me, a test to see what I’ll do with time, confined time but time nonetheless. (It’s also just a way to differentiate a week. To interject some sort of different-ness to the 9 to 5 routine.) Because blogs are, in some respects, not far from TV. They are a way of feeling like you’re doing just because you are watching someone else do. The question is what will I do when there is nothing to watch.

I read a quote not too long ago; I’m sure on one of my marathon blog wanders. “Never hope more than you work.” I google it now (I’m allowed to google) and find that Rita Mae Brown said it. It’s been ringing in my head since I read it. That’s what I do when I read blogs. I read about people at home, in their art studios, in their sewing rooms, and they’re making things. And I read and I read thinking “I’ll do that…and I’ll do that.” And I don’t. And at the end of the day I’ve hoped more than I worked –albeit not the work I do for money but the work I do simply because I am in this world and taking up space.

The other day RT said we live in a world where if you don’t have a blog you don’t quite exist. He didn’t quite mean it, and I don’t quite believe it, but it is a weird world. Where everyone can have a say. Everyone can have a presence. Anyone can start a conversation.

ice cubes, old style

We've been trying to phase out the plastic in the house one slow piece at a time. So we'd gotten rid of the plastic ice cube trays which left us buying bags from the Plaid Pantry. So RT went on ebay and found this little vintage cutie.

Who knew that ice cubes could be so good? These homemade, vintage ice cubes are to convenience shop ice cubes what a good maple desk is to an Ikea build-your-own. And RT walks around clinking the cubes in his glass saying "Listen to this. You can't get ice cubes that sound like this these days." And he's right.

To me they sound like my parent's martini hour, like getting iced tea ready for my aunts on the Fourth of July, like a cold glass of water after raking the leaves. I say it's slow food. He says if it was slow food we'd be chipping slivers off a block of ice. I guess you can always go slower.

making dollies

Ever since I sold Barbies on Ebay, I've been fascinated with doll collectors. I even read a whole book about them with chapters like "Dollification" and "Innocence and Fear". I'll admit I was biased against them, or at least the obsessive collectors, who, after I listed an Ebay auction for Barbie's "Solo In The Spotlight" outfit complete with microphone, would send me detailed questions * about the state of the label (was it fully stitched on?) the shine of the dress (original sparkle?) and the condition of the microphone (mint, unused and from a smoke free home?) I'll brag here and say that I ended that Ebay write-up saying "You'll have your vintage Barbie singing Happy Birthday Mr. President in no time" which I thought (and still think) is hilarious.


What I'm trying to say is that I've always thought of dolls as a bit strange. My mother bought me a new Madame Alexander Doll every Christmas and Birthday and I was made to display them in my room. I never had a feeling for any of them. Never wanted to play with any of them. Maybe that's where my bias originated. But I don't think I'm alone in finding the whole doll thing at best curious and at worst downright creepy.


Well, now I have a little girl. And bless her heart she's turning me on to the coolness of dolls. Especially simple cloth dolls. And of course, with me, if I can make it then I can love it. So I've been having a blast making dolls for Addie and her friends. Here's the latest. Made for our neighbor for her fifth birthday. I downloaded the pattern from here and I've been having a lot of fun with it.

Next stop. Original design mouse doll. Stay tuned!


*Ebay Doll Collector questions are loosely based on my recollections. These quotes are not verbatim and are solely intended to indicate the level of obsession typical of hardcore Barbie collectors.

walk the dog

I’m thinking about commitment. Probably because I’ve made a serious commitment to my dog. She’s a sweet thing, a little on the needy side, very high energy. Oh, and she licks and licks and licks. I’ve created a rich fictional back story for her, a doggie fairy tale we tell, where she was abandoned by the side of the road and lived for months foraging pieces of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum from underneath piles of leaves along the highway. And then she was scooped up and dropped off at the Humane Society, where she came this close to death. But she was saved at the last minute and hustled off to the New Life Shelter (I know, sounds like a religious rehab joint for dogs) where Rollie and I found her. When the dog shelter employee picked her up (her shelter name was Opal), she promptly peed all over the poor woman. We played with her. We hemmed and hawed until the doggie re-hab people kicked us out. Then we sat in the car for ten minutes, trying to drive away, before we turned around, went inside and signed the papers.

So, I want her life to be better. She just seems so confused. Her feelings are so easily hurt. She’s uncertain. (Or maybe she’s just the victim of an obsessive anthropomorphizing owner?)

I rented the Dog Whisperer and studied two episodes intently. And came to this brilliant conclusion – she needs a good long walk first thing in the morning. So I’ve made a commitment. Every morning for almost two weeks now we are out the door in the dark and off to the park. I do what the Dog Whisperer says, keep her close to me, on a short, short leash, and she hustles by my side, focused and loyal.

And I practice “calm assertiveness”. Which, incidentally, is turning out to be a good lesson all around. Who knew three-year-olds respond to calm assertive as well as dogs? And maybe I can start phasing out my “monkey howler” voice.

The plan is she’ll finally find her place in life. Quit bopping from submissive to assertive, type B to A. That she’ll be able to relax in to her role as follower, that she’ll learn to trust that we’re the uber dogs and we’ll protect her. That’s the upside.

The downside is that now I’m locked in to getting up early every morning to walk the dog. Every morning. ‘Til when? The rest of her life, right? Because if I don’t get up and walk her I have to face those disappointed brown eyes. And who wants that on their conscience all day?

Of course I’m learning from all this. Getting out in the morning is nice. Fresh air. Pinecones. Misplaced seagulls circling overhead. A well exercised dog which means less irritation (and obsessive licking) for the whole family. And I get a tiny bit of exercise and alone time every day. But I can’t help feeling a little bit of the dread that, for me, inevitably comes with commitment. Because long term promises are, ultimately, so hard to keep.

good snow, goodbye

So I thought it was good, the two weeks of snow. It’s good to have weird, big events in our lives, the kind of things that create befores and afters. Of course many big events, the kind that create a before and after, are terrible. And I don’t mean to overlook that aspects of the snow were terrible – what it cost to the city, the inconvenience, the car accidents, the bitter cold.

But all that aside, there was something to it. To being completely stopped for awhile and being stuck at home. Not thinking about what you need to buy or where you need to go. Not drumming up activity just for activity’s sake. The kid loved it. She’s not a big fan of gear switching these days and so it suited her just fine. Hunkering down on the couch with a pile of books. Glue and paper and paint at the dining room table. And I loved it too. It was restful. And, miraculously, I felt like I had space. A feeling which comes, apparently, from having lots of time and nowhere to go.

Back in my twenties I lived West Virginia for a while and I became friendly with the mailman. His wife was a hard working farm woman and they’d lived in Heaters their whole lives. They worked so hard, all the time, every day, despite the fact that they both must’ve been close to 70. When they’d tell a story it was almost always introduced by the year. And the year was always marked with the big event. “Back the year the barn caught on fire…” or “The year they built the church…”

When you grow up in the suburbs you don’t learn North from South. And when you grow up in the suburbs you don’t learn to tell time by years. It’s a matter of context, orientation. I feel like modern life, city life, whatever you want to call it, lacks context. It lacks places and events that clearly orient us. It lacks a tangible timeline.

So it’s good for a city to have a big snow. Because we’ll remember this year. Our memories of this Christmas will be, I’ll bet, more vivid and specific. Because we had a big weird event that pulled us out of our patterns, pulled us out the blur of days and double yellow lines and faces at the mall. When I think of this Christmas I’ll be oriented, grounded by gingerbread men, wet mittens, a handful of gifts and plenty of space.