The other night, on our way down the bike trail, a ladybug landed on my arm and it hitched the whole 9 miles to the brewery. I made sure it stayed safe because there’s no insect cuter and I’m all for public transit.

With it in mind, I got to work last night at my desk. It’s a great group; I love this nature journal exchange we’ve got going on at Moly_x_9.

I’m mailing Scoach’s Moleskine journal tomorrow an it’s headed for Hawaii.

He’ll call me around 6 from Streetlight Records in San Jose, telling me he’s found the vinyl he was looking for. The night is young and it’s ours, only us, but I run through the house in a delightful frenzy kissing the boys in one room, only to meet them across the house seconds later to kiss them again there. I always worry they will fall asleep without brushing their teeth. Or fall into the bathtub. Or involuntarily kill each other…those last minutes are restless. But once I’m on the road, it’s all good.

In fifteen minutes I’ve woven a peaceful thread around pedestrian traffic along the creek trail. My muscles are warm and loose and my soul is finally free. I sit at an outdoor table and order a pint of ale under palm trees and tall buildings. A crow flies directly across the peach evening sky. The smoke lingers, still without a smell; affecting no one, it exhumes the sun, a giant apricot, into its velvet folds and I sit there squinting in my chair with a foam moustache. Damon rides up alongside the table, golden with sweat and grinning. All eyes are upon him as he leans his bike next to mine against that palm tree. It’s hard not to swell with affection for this man.

We stay for another round, then bolt through traffic on into San Jose, where we stay a while eating red beans and rice, cajun shrimp and Turbodog to the beat of a blues trio. And then another round.

The trail, at night, is dark as pitch and it’s easy to spill over a catfight. So we slip out of the void and back onto the street, where we glide past rows of underlit palms and pawn shops and good folk waving us on. It’s a righteous pass through the soul of any city, un-tucked for the night but singing itself to sleep. There are no pretenses, just us laughing down the street half-drunk and whizzing off and on curbs because we can and because we should.

There are some things we do because it seems possible, and then there are things we take on because we like the challenge, and then there are things that seem dreadfully hopeless and guaranteed to fail us yet we attempt these feats because to succeed makes us better than we were before.

I’ve kept it quiet until now but I’d better put it out there now like undies on the clothesline: I’m running the Nike Women’s Marathon this fall and I’m going to running the entire 26.2 miles in honor of all the people in this world who are battling blood cancers. As a runner for Team in Training I’m standing here with my hands in my pockets, terrified, asking for you to make a tremendous difference to people who have, without discrimination, been diagnosed and are battling leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma. These are diseases that know no race, no religion, no commonality besides being HUMAN. And I’ve wept through too many cases already not to push through my insecurities and ask for your help.

And, as with all efforts, every. little. bit. helps. I’ve been told that, at the rate we’re going with research, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society predict that we will have a cure for blood diseases by 2012. You can help make this happen.

Please go visit my TNT fundraising page and read more about what every dollar will afford to a person who is undergoing treatment. It will clarify the ambiguities of your donation.

Also, leave me a comment if you know someone who is either diagnosed with, in remission from or who has died from a blood cancer. I would like to mention that person to the world and honor him or her in my efforts.

Last August we visited home and Dad hung with the boys quite a bit. It was raining most of the time and I came home one day, sopping wet, to find them watching the decathlon and practicing the high jump onto the sofa. Dad had them both in perfect form, something I couldn’t have taught, and they boys were totally into it, spring-loading themselves in playful arcs across the living room. It was awesome.

I can’t tell you how to perform the proper pole vault, but Ford had his own method and was in the zone already when I arrived on the scene yesterday. I gave him a few pointers but decided ultimately to just let him figure out what worked best for him. I sat on the floor and watched him in my amazement, deciding that, at least in spirit, we may have another hopeful athlete in the family.

You can’t relocate a basket of forgotten plastic dinosaurs in this house without a notice by the boys. I spent Sunday rearranging half the house in anticipation of Dwight’s return next week. Gone are the piles of books, the boys walking upon bookpiles, the books stacked upon every available surface. Now, we have bookshelves insulating the walls, thick with knowledge and already collecting dust. But now you can see the dinosaurs. And here they are, living the plastic dinosaur dream, moments before asteroid touchdown.

]]> http://www.stephs.com/2008/05/31/thrasher-spread-second-half/feed/ http://www.stephs.com/2008/05/15/i-finished-the-king-quilt/ http://www.stephs.com/2008/05/15/i-finished-the-king-quilt/#comments Thu, 15 May 2008 16:22:59 +0000 Steph http://www.stephs.com/2008/05/15/i-finished-the-king-quilt/

Folded on the back of a chair in the studio, this quilt has sadly watched me come and go through several creative phases, none of which included quilting. But with the rising temperatures, it’s time to throw off the down and throw on the lightweight cotton.

It’s made from thrifted fabric I found in Austin, Merrimekko prints and monoprints made last year.

After a quick, sweaty run and breakfast, we’re off to spend the day in San Francisco, where we can stay cool ride bikes. Here’s Chas, who just woke up. That means I need to hurry up and get out the door.

Happy morning! I’ll post better pictures later, when the light is coming into the room.

Here is where I post pictures of the ebullient first hours after a vaguely dismal four days.
I have lots of questions for my doctor tomorrow, a few directly about my thyroid NOT really operating at capacity. And about those dreadful emo days that just make me want to go ahead and cut myself as I recall them in the joyful days that follow.
I think I need to upgrade.

THIS, this is the quilt I made with Ford’s kindergarten class:

I kept all 20 of the students after school one afternoon and we monoprinted like mad with little bottles of fabric paint, 5 plastic plates and one very popular brayer.

It rocks!!! Surprise for the teacher tomorrow, just to let her know we’ve enjoyed those daytime hours this year, all free of sibling rivalry and backtalk. It’s been awesome!

Still, I spent this afternoon drafting a master plan for next year, and may lightening strike me, it involves homeschooling!

Tags: quilt, quilting, Ford, psychosis, hormonal crap, whatevs

Tags: ChasSicore, Seth Whitman

All the while, Chas has been enduring a restless bout of coxsackie virus, leaving him whiney, demanding and without neither appetite nor humor to pull him through.

But I’m helping him, and he is wrapped around me like Silly Putty, molded to my pores. His heightened nipple fetish is getting most annoying of all. It was also our 7th wedding anniversary.

I finally sit down to write, and the clock tells me it’s midnight. The nerve!

Above are my latest pages for the Moleskine exchange group. We each are sketching wildlife outside in our backyards: Hawaii, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Montana, California. Everyone in the group is a nature nerd and has spent a little time this past month capturing his or her native flora and fauna in the pages of an accordion-fold Moleskine notebook. I’m loving all the entries so far! It’s a great group.

My notebook’s going in tomorrow’s mail on a jet plane to Hawaii! Bon voyage, little thrasher!

Chas is mastering the lepidopteran art of mimicry and nectarology and proboscism.

Wha?

Congratulations! You are the new owner of a four year-old piece of crap jogging stroller made by the Baby Jogger company, subsequently bought by the Bag Boy Company, bought later by Dynamic Brands, in the quest for monoply over the heavily sought-after niche of value priced men’s, women’s and junior golf and its associated running products. RANDOMBRANDING!

You will notice the following improvements in your model that are unavailable in any other double jogger on the market:

• the right tire has an incipient leak which not only adds to the uniqueness of the product but increases your average 5k time by approximately five minutes as you will need to refill this tire nearly every time you set out for your jog
• the foam handlebar cover is now infused with the unmistakable tang of black mildew, which, on its own or in combination with the mildew recently added to the bottom basket, contributes significantly to seasonal allergy responses in most individuals
• for your convenience, the sunshade has been removed permanently, as it is nothing more than a windsail when open and Black Widow spider collector when retracted
• in the mesh baskets behind both seats, I have left one two-month old copy of the Saratoga Times, three miscellaneous advertisements for home improvement service providers in the area, five pieces of recyclable plastic bottles, an assortment of plastic candy wrappers and one Monterey pine cone.
• both child seats are closer together in this model, fostering plenty of sibling rivalry, which means more fist fighting between siblings than ever before possible, and these fights will climax just before you hit a wall in your workout or race
• for this reason, constant overstuffing has left ample room in the baskets behind each seat for baseball bats and clubs with which to pacify quarrels so that you may focus on your workout or race
• in the basket under the carriage, you will find one (1) furry ball that was originally thought to be an owl pellet worth picking up on the sidewalk (to later dissect with the boys, duh), but which, after one month and several sideways glances, suggested itself as a hairy dog turd. I believe this only enhances the owner experience, but you may remove it if inclined. I was too intimidated to decide for you.
• also intended to enhance user satisfaction is the puke-impregnated ballistic nylon seat fabric itself, on not one but both seats of the stroller

I would like to personally commend your ballsy nature in managing to walk into our backyard in the middle of the day and rip off this sunbleached, haggard piece of rotten baby gear. In doing so, you have liberated me from having to push two screaming boys up and down our neighborhood hills while simultaneously whining to a husband who tunes me out to the drone of indie music on his iPod.

Thank you!

When Chas was a day old, asleep in my arms, I ran my fingers through his strawberry hair and furrowed my brow, wondering where the hell his red hair came from. Neither Damon nor I have red hair. Luckily, Chas has the Sicore nose (read: funky nose that only Sicores have, both in appearance and ability, capable of detecting fabric softener within a one mile radius), so I rested knowing I wouldn’t have to prove paternity. But the red hair had me completely perplexed, and a little worried, too; Damon has always made fun of redheads and freckles, and it appeared we’d managed to spawn little orphan Annie.

But months passed, and Chas’ hair changed. Some babies lose their hair, but Chas only grew more of it. The red paled to a towhead blonde, like Damon’s childhood hair. And while the front half of his crown grew straight, the back half grew wavy and wild. With each day, whether brushed or not, it began to tease itself into little blonde dreadlocks, and to this day it would appear that Chas, even ten minutes after having his hair combed, looks like he just got out of bed, or maybe scrubbed the bathtub with his head.

Everybody seems to love this head of hair as much as he does; in fact, Chas will grin and tousle his hair after I brush it, just to prove I’m ineffective. He loves his hair like a loose tooth, eager to reward compliments with Bruce Lee-inspired side kicks and leaps off of chairs, which make the gold dreads bounce and fly. “I wish I had hair like that!” is an acceptable compliment, less creepy than “I want your HAIR!” Perhaps the one person who would never tire of seeing Chas’ proud display in light of these gestures, besides Chas himself, is Damon; Damon, in all honesty, would actually love to have Chas’ hair. Which, every time I hear him say it, kind of makes me cringe. I always wonder how Chas perceives this strange compliment, being a three year-old and not entirely versed in the full play of our language.

So it happened last night, at dinner, while the four of us were in a booth waiting for our food and talking about the day, that Chas’ hair was catching the falling beams of sunset in a glorious flaxen halo. While he could have asked Chas to pass the chopsticks, or the soy sauce, Damon was stunned by the vision before him, and instead he asked,
“Chas, can I have your hair?”

Chas bashfully tucked his chin into his chest and grinned at Damon, telling him “Nooooooo, daddy, you can’t have my hair!” and I sat there before my empty place setting, looking for my chopsticks and wondering why it always feels to me like Damon’s asking him, “Chas, can I have your spleen?”

But I smiled instead, and before I had the chance to ask Chas to pass the chopsticks, I looked up to find Chas reaching across the table to Damon, stretched beyond the limits of love, grinning and holding in his stout little hand a rather large lock of fine golden hair.
“Here you go, daddy.”

evening run, originally uploaded by young@art.

I’ve switched to running in the evenings, now that they’re longer. 4.1 miles of solitude. This is my favorite part of the year, when I can run at evening twilight. The frogs are concentrated in huge creekside communities. To approach them is like coming to a college football game at fourth quarter; they are loud, gregarious and totally in the moment, ringing a million musical cheers at the moonrise.

I love the dark silhouettes hugging the landscape, alive with busy little yellow kitchen windows and spiked with crow-topped tv antennaes and the sound of children playing on dewy grass.

sumi ink on watercolor, Moleskine sketchbook.

oh, plowman, why did you have to go and mow these over?, originally uploaded by young@art.

sous chef at chez alis, originally uploaded by young@art.

I took Chas up to Skyline so we could bother my friend Alis on a workday.

Under the hazy sun I sat in the lounge chair while Chas made lunch and Alis took a work call. He wasn’t just making lunch, he was his own Iron chef competition. More complicated than that, even, because it involved acrobatics and small Tonka trucks. After about 45 minutes, he was done, and only after he had told me so, not a minute before.

Nevermind the fact he was playing right beside an actual plot of bolting kale, cabbages and beet greens.

When I brazenly picked up the plant saucer full of broken sticks, he furiously demanded I take the saucer with the crumpled up dandelion greens that had been yanked out of the ground and plunged into the water trough with the drowned bees and rusting scrap metal. I mean, salad.

“NO!” He demanded, “That’s not yours! That’s Alis’.”

There are two particularly delicious sounds that make me happy.  One is the low-pitch quiet sound of the barn in the afternoon, when the horses are chomping on grain and hay. I love this lulling sound. The other sound I adore is the high-pitched, little-mouth delicious sound of Chas, pretending he is eating sticks and twigs. So there we had pretend lunch ad afterwards, as he played, I sketched.

to the power of 6, originally uploaded by young@art.

I’ve been facing inward somewhat, lately, so it hurts a bit at the end of the day to look at some of the photos I took of the kids this weekend. I see the boys, living loud as they usually do, resilient to being ignored from time to time and obviously overlooking my inconsistencies as a parent.

They stretch so far! Infinity is a new favorite word with Ford. On a 6×6 yellow card, I write a note to him, late at night: a just-love card, with a footnote of grief. I could always respond better, be more consistent, listen every time. That I don’t, I think he forgives. I stare at this picture, listening to the sleepy sounds of the house at night, hoping that he always understands the infinity of my love or him.

our backyard friend’s silhouettes, originally uploaded by young@art.

A warmup set, and part of my new silhouette obsession: Winsor & Newton Black Indian Ink atop delta ceramcoat atop gesso atop the pages of a Moleskine (heavy stock) sketchbook.

We have no more critters in our backyard than anyone else, but I wage that ours are the cutest, because of the quail. There’s a family, about 20 of them, that run the perimeter at dusk. The California Thrasher couple have a nest somewhere in the hedge; when we lay in the sun by the bird bath, one of them will watch us from the grapefruit tree, sometimes with a red worm in his mouth, for a half-hour or more. Hummingbirds are always fighting, and the woodpeckers have assaulted the old olive tree on their continual hunt for boring insects.

bathroom, Laurel’s Cuban restaurant, SF, originally uploaded by young@art.

My next bathroom visit of the evening wouldn’t be so pretty. Damon would have the camera and my jacket and my soul outside the warfield ladie’s room while I rejected grilled sole, habanero salsa and mojitos.

 The rest of the photos are up on Flickr, even those tights and shoes I promised

, originally uploaded by young@art.

I just posted midspring pictures to Flickr so that, later, when the hot dry blasting winds of summer parch the soil, I can look back to all this green. But you see that background there? That fuzzy, blurry background would indicate the speed of things around here. Actually, make that warp speed.

BUT. Tonight is date night. Black Keys in the city! Not so much a pause but at least some glitter in blur. I’m wearing ma GOLD heels like a Roman goddess and I’m going to spend today running around the house looking or my glittery tights. So. I guess, expect more blur.

Leslie is so beautiful! You can read her blog and gawk at her gorgeous, supersaturated photos, her glamorous lipstick smile, and decide right there that you like this woman. And you should. Leslie has a heart of gold and is one of the warmest and sincere people I’ve met.

What surprises me most is that we didn’t do this sooner. On Saturday, we met in the city. We had planned to go to Chinatown, a complete whim, until I discovered that the Cartoon Art Museum was exhibiting The Art and Flair of Mary Blair for one last day. It was a no brainer! And a total success, too; the show blew us away.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Mary Blair, think back to the evocative, graphic success of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, or the colorful geometric patterns within It’s a Small World theme show at Disney, where Blair worked as concept designer in the 40s and 50s, pushing the animation envelope as hard as Walt would let her. Blair also painted many of the vintage Golden Books we grew up loving and now treasure for their simple, evocative graphic brilliance.

Well, we strolled at a snail’s pace through the small exhibit, poring over little gouache abstractions, picking our favorites and annoying the museum clerk by not taking pictures of the exhibit. SEE?:

In the museum store afterwards, I picked up a copy of Free Style Scraps: Silhouette, and balked at the price under my breath while Leslie negotiated the another book’s price with the clerk. When finished, she told me that if I didn’t buy the book, I should follow my instincts and pursue whatever my silhouette obsession another way. Which made me smile. The world abounds with inspiration.

Toodling back down Market for coffee, and later for cream puffs (the world’s best!), we iced the cake with another hour of gib-gab over boys and blogs and puppy dog tails, nodding to the simulataneous phone calls from our loved ones, all too soon.

But we’ll be at this again! Pinkie swear.

, originally uploaded by young@art.

Silhouettes are on my brain. I have no idea why, or what will become of it, but I’m obsessing over the silhouette. I’m going to run with it, this week.

hunting the hunter, originally uploaded by young@art.

30 dayz in the treehouse, day 20, originally uploaded by young@art.

Chas, who I rarely ask to pose, still working the treehouse sit-still-and-be-quiet. We just leave the quilt laid out up there now and return every morning. It’s soooo good. Looove the treehouse. Thinking about building an addition, but I’ll have to locate some good long pieces of old lumber first. OOH, we need LACE up there, too. Don’t tell the boys. they might not like that. But I feel like it’s my treehouse too, you know? I mean, why not? Lace.

more faces, originally uploaded by young@art.

so, actually, this is part of that Moleskine sketchbook that’s going to the London Book Fair in a few weeks (thank you, Moleskine!). I’m extremely motivated to do a lot of sketching, consequently. And I could always use help with faces. I was discovering that I tend to draw the same features, more or less the same face, as I sketch along. Now that I’m studying faces, I’m hooked on discovering all those wonderful details that make people’s faces unique. It’s really addictive! So that’s why I’m up past midnight on a Friday, drawing at my desk (besides that fact that I’m a dork).

pause in play, originally uploaded by young@art.

Springtime means more low tides during the daytime.

Moleskine asked to borrow one of my sketchbooks for the London Book Fair.

I’m starting up a Moleskine exchange for nature artists. (Might you be interested???)

Squeezing fresh lime juice onto a tablespoonful of lavender honey is divine. I recommend this over chocolate, unless it’s that time of the month. After all, it’s nonfat.

The treehouse adventure is so much fun! Chas is asking to do everything up there: read, draw, play games, throw things, sleep, throw things, and throw more things. Which reminds me, I have more photos to upload.

My new camera is BACK from the shop.

Chas says his quiet time is that hour every morning during our jog, when he (you won’t believe this) sits quiet and still in the jogger. No lie. Knock on wood. Plus, if I decline my workout, he throws a screaming fit. So it’s easy to stay in shape around here.

My brother and his wife are expecting baby Logan any day now.

Sleeping with the windows open.Screech owls at midnight.Hummingbirds fighting all during the daylight hours.

It’s now warm enough to surf without a hood and gloves. AND you can see almost to the bottom of the water (No red tide).

The alluring, heady purple hyacinths keep me on the stoop, sipping coffee at sunrise.The amaryllis, narcissus and snowbells are fading, but RED tulips are on their way up in the garden.

Go to the surf shop to buy an emergency beach towel, store owner (I love you Barbara!) sends me to thrift shop two doors down: A fifty year-old scrap quilt for $12.50, during storewide clearance.

Ford is reading and writing! Although he’s more fluent in heiroglyphics (that actually translate) than in English.Favorite new dresses, which I can now wear with sneakers and maybe/maybe not a hoodie.

3 more days at the beach planned this week. The car remains packed, with detritus collecting on the floors: energy bar wrappers, lost wasabi peanuts, tiny toys, mussel shells, sand.Laying out on a weekend morning with the guys, after a run, blues music piping outside from the living room. Warm sunshine on my back. Coconut suntan lotion. Bohemia with salt and lime, scrambled egg whites, avocado chunks and a gimongous dollop of srirachi with chili seeds.

Then another coupla tablespoons of lavender honey and lime juice.

And back to the beach again.We should just live there.

What’s putting Spring in your step?

after accidently deleting an afternoon of tide pool pictures, originally uploaded by young@art.

]]> http://www.stephs.com/2008/03/07/after-accidently-deleting-an-afternoon-of-tide-pool-pictures/feed/ http://www.stephs.com/2008/03/04/click-im-on-shutter-sisters/ http://www.stephs.com/2008/03/04/click-im-on-shutter-sisters/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:49:30 +0000 Steph http://www.stephs.com/2008/03/04/click-im-on-shutter-sisters/ Thank you, Kate!

30 days in the treehouse, day 7, cheating, originally uploaded by young@art.

I’m cheating.
There was no treehouse time today.
When I took this picture, the kids were laughing at the tv, behind me, while I was watching the sunshine through bedroom window, through the rain, looking at sparkling drops hanging from the apple tree.
But now I know they both have walking pneumonia, and I’m a little more sober.
It sucks when the little ones are sick.

When I was putting them into the car, on the way to the doctor’s office, , I looked into the trees to follow the “tweeeeeee.” “Tweeeeeeeeee” sounds. The Cedar Waxwings! They’re back again! But they seem so sad now that they holly berries are all gone. The were almost crying in the high boughs of the black walnut, beside the driveway, above the car. I’d have loved to watch them cavort and chat in the holly bush again, like I did a few weeks ago. Sipping tea in the treehouse and oggling the waxwings. How decadent! Another time. Maybe next year. I promise not to use any cuttings next Christmas from that tree.
Gorgeous little bandit-birds.

30 days sit still challenge

Yesterday we went to the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco and we got tea.. It was Japanese tea, no, Jasmine tea. It tasted kinda good.

A lady with a pink dress, a kimono, with birds on it, gave it to us.

Mom look at me. Mom, look.
Mom, look at me!

…And we had treats: cookies.

Then we went for a walk where the pond was and we saw some fish. They were koi fish. They were white and orange and big.

The garden looked like a big giant map thing, like a circle, with bridges that had no rails whatsoever. And stepping stones! That was really fun for me.

We walked under a big red castle tower thing.
But we got cold.

And I had to go to the bathroom.
But we went to the gift store. I got a Japanese paintbrush kit.

I chose that ’cause it’s kinda cool to me. I like Japanese characters and it had those and some pictures on it. Now I want to paint with it. Period.

30 days in the treehouse, day 5, originally uploaded by young@art.

After looking at this for a while, it makes perfect sense why I made this image the say I did: we’ve been feeling totally WOOZY today. All of us ate something *bad* yesterday in Davenport and have been taking turns in the bathroom at all hours every since. This picture really nails how I’ve been feeling.

Plus, the February light is pretty intense, even in the treehouse.

30 Day Sit Spot Challenge

double trouble, originally uploaded by young@art.

I’m trying to materialize an illustration style that’s in my brain, trying to find a way to capture the look and feel of a little story I’ve written this year. It had been tumbling around in my skull for several months and it’s time to get it down in print. Photos with illustrations on top, or interwoven? This is a very rough sketch, but I also have a goal of ultimately staying loose. Right now I’m teaching myself about creating layers; I haven’t started experimenting with the blending.

I can’t imagine having twin Chassies. Craziness.

30 days in the treehouse, day 1, originally uploaded by young@art.

The 30 Day Sit Spot Challenge begins on Friday. Chas and I will be spending our normal quiet time every day out in the treehouse next month. It will be our time to sit quietly and watch spring unfold.

We swept off the brown olive leaves that covered the floor and sat down for peanut butter sandwiches. Within a couple of minutes we were surrounded by a group of chatty titmice and towhees, who dangled from thin, bobbing branches of the acacia tree beside the structure. Not surprisingly, the hummingbirds were fighting somewhere in the orchard, never in one place for very long.

I can’t do it. But I could.

I could say it at breakfast and he’d start helping to make it happen: we would both be on our computers, on the phone, in between meetings, ignoring less important matters. Mealtimes would come, we may or may not follow. At the end of the day, tomorrow even, we would have in our hands a game plan on recycled paper and napkins, bits of whatever we could find, printouts with cost analysis, a hotly written list of pros and cons, monkeys and butterflies romping in our stomaches.

I sit in bed typing this and look over at Chas, who is still sleeping in bed beside me with his arms outstretched, as he owns this bed now, as well as me. In fifteen years he will be in college, one can expect; in just twelve short years, so will his brother. College money. Though we are preparing, I am staggered by the costs of college, these days. Over ten thousand dollars more per year than when I was in school. That’s what I discovered when I browsed that graduate degree program in painting, tonight.

Grad school. I’m batting my eyelashes at grad school. Am I insane? I’m completely out of my head insane. I don’t need to give someone $70k just to prove it, AGAIN. Give it up already.

Doodle and paint, repeat. And don’t forget to feed the kids their meals tomorrow. Jeez.

My brand spankin new camera is in the shop. For 6 more weeks. Time to keep playing with the old one! Challenge of the day: Take a picture of Chas in the mustard in the middle of a bright sunshiney day. Can she do it? Did I. I LOVE this picture! Say what you want, but this picture makes me SO happy! It feels hot and cold at the same time, just like spring sunshine on sleepy skin. It will help me remember the mustard in a few weeks, once it’s gone. LOOK at those grubby fingernails! And I froze the moment when Chas handed me two deadheaded mustard blooms, just because. Just because!

I’ve been forgetting Self Portrait Challenge, but it’s another good excuse to keep taking pictures. Theme of the month: BLUE. I’m cheating here because I think this is more of a blue green. Which I like more anyway. So there. Damon took this picture of me through the scope on my brother-in-law’s paintball rifle. No, silly, he’s not pointing the gun at me! My kids had already disassembled the viewfinder from the gun. I was not harmed while taking this picture.

Damon looks pretty cute, but I can’t use his picture because that wouldn’t be a self portrait. Besides, I’m prettier.

But he’s bluer.And you can find more Blue People at SPC.

So via the great scribe Sharpie, Mt. Etna roars as Polyphemus’ nanny sends him to school with his own DIY spaghetti camouflaged lunchbag.

Then, as with all cold fronts, the sky started weeping. Under a rainbow we walked home and decided to hunt for mushrooms in the backyard under the oak canopy, savoring the last bit of afternoon light, regardless of the rain.

And what do you know? The rain stopped just long enough.

We gathered a handful of mushrooms, no idea what kind yet, just for something to draw or paint while I started a pot roast. I set a pan of opaque watercolors out on the table and gave a quick basidio-lesson and painting tutorial. They did all the rest.

Ford picked up a paintbrush:

And Chas got sleepy.

I turned on the lights, the griddle, the fan in the studio this morning at ten o’clock. Then I went into the house to stretch (I had just returned from a run) and then shower. If all went well, I’d be painting within a half hour. But Chas whined, something about wanting to play Bionicle games on the computer (something Ford and Dwight turned him onto) and I, in my defiance, refused to cave. I think this established his rebellion for the rest of the day. Twelve hours later, they are asleep in the bed and I am in the studio, the griddle and fan still in operation after hours of neglect, the windows open to pitch black cold outside. I spend ten minutes working manically with quick-shifting wax, which is hardening too rapidly in the frigid night air. And my fingers are numb. There is no way I can work tonight, I resign. It would be so much easier to paint if I could take it wherever I went. Instead, I leave my expectations on the table where I drafted them this morning, and walk towards the scanner holding the only handiwork I was able to accompish, which wasn’t within the course of today but within another scant ten minutes of yeserday.

With all the rain we have had in the past couple of weeks, the time is ripe for mushroom hunting. Coinciding with this annual fruiting season is the smattering of fungal swapmeets, and today was the second day of one such fair; this time in Santa Cruz. Jerry, who we have known since dotcom daze, drove down from Berkeley to escort us to the fair; were it not for him, we may have never left the house this weekend, as overcome as I am with molten wax bliss and the sound of Damon and his jazz guitar scales in the living room. Chas, for his part, would have never remembered how badly he wanted psychotropics.

From the get go we recognized his discriminating faculties, glancing around the rooms for a little something beyond cuisine grade mushrooms

Finally, he began anxiously inquiring of strangers, like a foreign traveller looking for his stolen wallet,  “Where are the poisonous mushrooms? Do you have any poisonous mushrooms?”

To distract him, we ushered Chas to the kiddie room, where we were greeted by a happy pack of breeding hippies and their rosy-cheeked hobbit spawn, merrily dancing around the craft tables and painting colorful paper fruiting bodies.

We were lured like flies back into the common area, where a group of chefs had inadvertently contaminated the breathing air with the most rank, malodorous brew of rotten mushroom stew or something of that nature (there’s no way my mind could positively translate the smell into words, my limbic system was so busy grappling with the extraordinary shock of it). On the surface, everything looked so gourmet, but inside, they were cooking Satan’s athelete’s foot.

We had to split; Damon took the boys outside to the playground while Jerry taught me some basic taxonomy. The room was buzzing with woodsy nerds, all shuffling around the exhibits, crouching down, clicking their camerafones. I learned that I could probably eat one half of a cap from a Fly Agaric and still be okay.

And how to differentiate between a tasty chanterelle and a toxic false chanterelle (the real one has ridges and folds–not gills).

Jerry told me I passed up a perfectly good Bolete, after I described to him what I jogged by on Thursday. They are, apparently, quite tasty. Have you ever tried one? Have you ever eaten wild mushrooms? Would you try? Would you eat this man’s wild mushroom lasagna if he brought it to your potluck?

24″ x  23″ encaustic on birch panel.

The paintings are getting to big to scan. I’m trying to figure out how best to photograph each piece.
Maybe if I set it on a log in the backyard, I can catch a closeup of one section, for detail.

6″ x 8″ oil and encaustic doodle in sketchbook.

6″x6″ encaustic on panel

This is craziness. All I want to do is paint.