Tarot Project

So my best friend and I are co-creating a deck of oversized tarot cards.

 We’ve split the major arcana and I’m doing coins and sticks, while she’s doing cups and swords.

I’ve already made a few of them- photos do them no justice- because they are very three dimensional and layered with textured paint, glass, wood, random multimedia, etc- but I’m going to post them anyway.

On a side note, I personally think the esoteric fortune telling custom associated with tarot cards is absurd, but tarot are actually a more ancient form of playing cards- which simply became more and more romanticized as the games they were used for slipped out of fashion, then out of memory. Although I think fortune telling is rediculous, I do think they make a great art project- since mysticism and art blend so prettily.

Anyway, in no particular order- the ones I have done so far:

Heirophant

Lovers

III of Coins

King of Coins

Page of Sticks

 

 

V of Sticks

Early English Christmas

My wonderful and strange father gave me the coolest Xmas gift, which I opened early at his behest.

What could it be?

I guess he found it on Ebay- he said someone from England found it with their metal detector, probably buried somewhere, though it’s pretty clean so who knows. Anyway, it’s this old cigarette tin filled with all kinds of wierd shit. It’s got a commemerative coin celebrating the 1919 armistace, a bunch of random tokens

(My favorite says on one side: “I smile at you, bad luck cannot harm you*BILLIKEN*” with a slightly racist asian-eyed monkey pictured, and on the other side: “Always buy PEEK FREANS biscuits. highest quality cost no more” )

…There are a few sharks teeth, a fossilized clam of some kind, a couple ancient looking metal thimbles, and some other random flotsam. It’s really quite astonishing. Some people might think of it as junk, but I ADORE it, and it reminds me a lot of the wonderful box of memorabilia in the movie Amilie, only I have no way to find the original owner, and if it was set aside in 1919, there’s pretty much no chance the person who stashed it is still alive. But that’s ok, it’s just awesome to have, and wonder why these objects are in here, and where they came from, and who put them there. Totally, utterly, unspeakably awesome.

"Players Navy Cut Cigarettes"

 

....and all the weird goodies contained therein (The racist monkey coin is visible on the lower left, and the fossil clam on the lower right)

Schitzophrenic Bus Character no. 346,982,483

Eyeliner that just won't quit

I have seen a LOT of crazy bus people, and it’s been some time since I bothered to whip out the sneaky camera phone to get a photo of one.

Yesterday I saw a classic crazy cat lady- shopping cart with a mangey black cat atop it, stringy hair, cigarette drooping out of her mouth… but that was out of a speeding car window on the way home, so I didn’t have the chance to document it. This epic crazy however, I did. She was talking to HER DAD who was (clearly) not there, and seemed to be totally in her own world. She was expressive, and jovial, but only to this invisible person- until her neck snapped up, she made eye contact with this guy who’d just gotten on the bus, and for a mere moment she seemed totally un-crazy.

 “Hi!” she said, almost excitedly 

“Hello,” he replied —-

“How are you doin’ today?” she asked

“Fine, how are you?” and then her eyes sort of glazed over and the schitzophrenic babble started up again, only this time it was aimed at someone real.

Oh, this poor man. He was in his late twenties or early thirties, hipstery beard, newsboy hat, not totally uncute, but not remarkable. Anyway, for some reason she just SNAPPED out of this removed state and into a much more involved, outgoing sort of lunacy. She started telling him about how she hated dating, and she just wanted to “wake up next to somebody, you know?”, implying that she wanted all the familiarity of a comfortable relationship- not an unreasonable desire. But then she started sort of… fluxuating- between talking to him and to her invisible father, and a bit to herself as well, it became difficult to tell.

Clearly, she was trying to flirt with this much younger man, who was totally dumbfounded by the attention, and did nothing to egg her on beyond the cursory smile and nod. It became a little pathetic and akward pretty quickly when it became apparent she was trying to hint that he should meet up with her later (describing in detail where she would be throughout the day) and I felt kinda bad for the guy, but it was so hillarious my pity was totally overwhelmed by amusement.

She was saying "That's just how I am!" But I don't remember the context... It was about disliking dating but wanting a comfortable relationship, I do remember that.

I got several really great photos of her, but they were all using my phones shabby zoom lens, so you’ll have to forgive their pixelated ickiness. If I can ever afford a fancier camera-phone I promise to take better people-pics.

Check out the awesome jewelry. I think maybe she was an aging goth or punk or something. She looked (IRL) like she was in her mid-late 50s, or even early 60s- quite a bit of white hair too- but she was dressed like a disaffected 16 year old.

Anyway, the whole thing was pretty funny, and made me miss the fact that I don’t ride the bus every morning anymore. Of COURSE I much prefer getting a ride, but stuff like this doesn’t light up my morning on days I am chauffered to work, and that’s kinda too bad.

The bus can be pretty stuffy and smelly and crowded and loud and obnoxious and icky, but when this kind of thing happens it really makes it all worthwhile.

Yep, it's official, no one wants to sit next to the lady who talks loudly to her invisible dad.

Hi, my Name is Wesley… Let me tell you a little about myself…

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Happy Birthday Mom, Here’s A Weird Coincidence You Would Dig!

So my mother, Linda, would be 56 today, if she were alive.
I was on the bus this morning, and I saw her ghost. I mean, a saw a woman who looked so much like her that I did a triple take. The lady in question was not as pretty as my mom, and had darker hair, but down to the penchant for big glasses and berets everything else was the same.
I took several photos but only two were even remotely usable, since the bus was moving and moving busses make for blurry photos.

Here’s what my mom looked like:

This is my mom shortly before she began her chemotherapy, the day we cut off her hair. It was kind of a "before" photo. There are some really cute "after" ones, too.

Here's my mom (and me!) in 1996

Here's my mom (and me again) probably no later than 1981, Note that her love for big glasses remained strong throughout her life.

  __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

… and here’s the photos I took of the lady on the bus this morning:

This one's a little blurry, but you can still the very dramatic resemblance.

 

Here's the best one of the lot I took. You can see that they're not identical, but WOWEE, they were sure cut from the same bolt of universal fabric.

dreams

Last night I was just dreaming about being in a pseudo-Portland type city, and then it became known that someone had privatized the use of color, and the world and everyone in it were now violating copyright, and were required to pay a fine. Me and a few other dream-friends decided that it really wasn’t worth it, and began wiping the color off of ourselves. It was vivid in its imagry, and I remember getting to a point where there were only a few smears of color left on me.
It feels kind of grossly prophetic, and surely a dream that is a product of my civilization, and reflective of the times.
Then I woke up, and when I fell back asleep I dreamed about zombies. It seems that my recurring dinosaur dreams have been replaced by them. It’s kind of funny, When I was little I had recurring dinosaur “nightmares” (they were scary only until I realized I had the power to alter the dream if it got too stressful)- as I became an adolescent, these departed in favor of nuclear holocaust dreams, which eventually were replaced by the dinosaur/ megafauna (sometimes sabertoothed cats or other giant carnivores) dreams again. More recently though I guess in the last year or so- these have again been replaced by a different type of scary dream- lots and lots of zombies.
I blame it on World War Z. They’ll get kind of scary sometimes, but if I start ot feel like i’m really trapped, I always manage to become lucid enough to pull myself out of it, so I don’t dread them at all. In fact, they’re usually pretty fun, or at the very least exciting.

Anyway my dreams are always vivid on mon-tue night, because Hunter takes Wesley to grandpa’s house really super early in the AM, and I my body basically goes into a coma when I’m not in a the strange, light pseudo sleep that dominates my nights next to a twitching, grunting cave-troll-baby. Speaking of which, Auntie Paris took this awesome photograph of her wonderful daughter Freya playing with a seemingly passive and compliant Wesley. I can only hope they get along this well as they age.

Freya and her little doll Wesley.

What a strange start to November

Item 1) I just found out that a dear, dear friend was in a terrible car accident (back on Saturday, but I didn’t hear about it till now!) and is in the hospital with a seriously busted face… though thankfully, nothing life threatening. I called the hospital and we spoke briefly but I almost started crying on the phone just from the shock/ relief/ despair/ emotional punch in the face that they were so injured/ not dead, so I didn’t talk for long. They were on a morphine drip, and were going to be going into surgery for several broken (face) bones later this afternoon. Very, very scary.  Sent flowers. Feel helpless and kind of sick to my stomach.

item 2) Shortly after getting this news, feeling very fragile and distressed, doing switchboard service at work for a particular large company (one aspect of my job). I get a call “so-and-sos answering service how can i direct your call?” I ask….. well they want this and such extension and I say “great! Thank you for knowing exactly which extension you want, very helpful” to which they reply “shut up” and “what do you mean by that?!” I say (a bit confused/ frazzled) “I just mean sir that often when people call they don’t know who exactly they want to speak with or just want to talk to “bob” but without a last name… it’s nice when people know exactly where they want their call directed” to which he replies something along the lines of “yeah and I can hear when you talk shit” … I am pretty taken aback at this point “Excuse me sir?” I ask “But I didn’t say anything!” and he spits “Just patch me through”

Wow.

Welcome to November.  

Good thing I don’t believe in  omens. Sheesh.

Spoonflower

 

My fabrics

 follow that thar link to see all my goodies.

Below are just a FEW of the fabrics I have designed and available for either veiwing or purchasing on Spoonflower.com— They’ll all be available for sale soon but I have to check them first to see if they came out ok.

Anyway, These ones look pretty great- though I’m actually more excited about the ones I have yet to receive in the mail. Squee!!!!

two of three of my "Haeckel" fabrics

One of the Julia sets fabrics- I think it came out very nicely- it's quite detailed IRL

Another one of the Julia Sets fabric- this one was printed on their organic cotton knit, which is a lucious texture.

Savage Rabbits. The only one of the fabrics I actually drew the basic designs of. I entered it into Spoonflower's "Woodland Creatures" contest, which will be in couple weeks

So I’m a grownup now

I turned 30 yesterday. Yep, 30.

It’s a bit daunting. I’m not freaked out or anything, but I always associated 30 as being a real “grownup”.

In no way am I a young person any more. I’m just a person now. That is all well and good, it’s just a little… weird.

I don’t know that I’m ready for the weight of being an adult, I think to myself- and then Paris points out to me that I have a house with a mortgage, a decent job, a stable, loving relationship, a car, and a baby. So yeah, I guess I sort of got there without realizing it. I’ll be damned.

Over the past week I’ve gotten some amazing presents from my friends and family. My dear friend Christine got me trading cards with etchings of genetic mutations and oddities on them, Paris baked me an amazing cake, my dad gave me the antique Egyptian pharoh bookends I’ve been wheetling at him for since I was about ten plus a bunch of cool books, my uncle and his wife gave me the gold standard present (money!) plus a series of books by one of my favorite authors (Tim Powers), My grandmother gave me some money also, as well as some homemade dehydrated watermelon (!!)… Hunter gave me a wonderful drawing he did of Wesley, plus a really squishy love note  that I’m going to keep forever and ever as well as Fable 3, and I bought myself a bottle of raspberry wine, and a bottle of loganberry wine. All in all a great birthday.

Going clockwise starting at 1:00, the text reads: "Scar caused by excessive love bashing of mommy", "Constant twitching & grunting: A sign that you have a viciously healthy cave troll", "Binky: Mommy's most vital tool in taming cave troll", "fiendish drool caused by dreams of giant pulsating milk bags", "ear partially nibbled off by mommy during snuggle attack"- ..........and at the bottom righthand corner the text reads: "WARNING: Harboring of Cave Trolls may result in implosion of cuteness!"

So I’m a grownup now, but I don’t have to be a grownup. It took me a long time to realize that being an adult doesn’t have to mean giving up all the things that you love- it’s just that most people seem to do just that, and I always kind of thought that it (not having any fun) was a prequisite for being responsible. Which is bs, of course. I remember asking my mother why she gave up oil painting when I was born, and she claimed it was becasue she was concerned that the lead based white paint would be bad for me. Well, that may have been true, but it was an excessive and unnecesarry sacrifice, and I think she was just making excuses for not having any inspiration, or for being depressed, or losing interest, or whatever. I felt kind of guilty about her not painting any longer for several years, until I realized that she could have started up again at any time, but didn’t. Which was her choice.

 Anyway, I don’t feel any less inspired to do things that I find fun. I certainly don’t have as much time to do them- but I can make time for projects that I feel are really important, or I feel a really strong urge to do.

I also don’t feel the need to stop swearing and being offensive, or weird and geekey and artsy.

I don’t need to cover the world with foam pads and disinfectant. I see people doing this when they become parents quite often- and it irritates the hell out of me, becasue it’s so ingenuine. These are the type of people who have fun filled youths that give them up in favor of helicoptering over their kids with the kind of overprotective excess that leads to intense neurosis and a total inability to cope on their own for the child later in life.

It seems really important to me that one maintain one’s interests and weirdness quotient as one ages, to preserve mental health if nothing else. If one doesn’t have any outlets for frustration or rage or inspiration— well I think that’s where soccer moms come from.

Watering down the world, as it were- making everything blander and more harmless with the intention of protecting one’s child, but in the long run, destroying their development and capacity for coping with real life. Also, if you’re not doing things to keep your own brain stimulated, but rather just taking  hyperinterest in your children, you will damage them, and possibly incite their resentment.

Anyway, Being a grownup and being a parent doesn’t have to mean putting aweay childish things, which I have zero intention of doing, ever. I will be engaging in highly childish things for the rest of my life I expect.

Related to this topic and my obviously opinionated stance on parenthood, here are two awesome blogs I love:

STFU Parents and Free Range Kids

Also, Wesley’s been getting some more awesome presents, including a Ralph Lauren body-suit (!!HAHAHA!) and a handmade quilt (that has a POCKET sewn into it !!) from My aunt-in-law Donna. They were delivered by my uncle Eggy and my Grandma Rosemary when they came to visit and hang out with the little man for the first time this last Saturday. It was a delightful time, and Rosie seemd so nervous about holding the little fella, like she might break him at any moment. Eric modified The Police song “Walking on the Moon” to “Walking on My Mom” on the guitar, which Wesley seemed to fnd acceptible (I can’t tell yet if he actually LIKES anything, but you can sure as hell tell if he doesn’t, so I figure anything that doesn’t make him cry is at least ok with him, the exception to this is that he has just begun smiling back at me if I smile at him, which is AWESOME.)

So things are good, all in all.

Happy 30th birthday to me!

The Cave Troll Hungers for MILK! URGH!

Meet Ze Monsta

I can’t believe it’s been 45 long days since little Wesley got pulled out of my guts! How awesome.

Of course he is an absolute delight. He wails, coos, makes little animal grunts, poops, pees, occasionally spits up, stares vacantly into space, drags himself like an inchworm & groans mournfully when put on his belly, flails his limbs wildly on occasion for no apparent reason, and tries to latch onto your nose when you kiss him.

Pretty much he’s a the epitome of adorable fabulous baby.

I’m back at work now and trying to get into the swing of a schedule that involves getting up three times a night to tend to a little creature that can’t control it’s bodily functions or feed itself. It sounds way worse than it actually is, to be honest. Getting up in the middle of the night IS painful, but it’s also totally balanced out by the awesomeness of having such a neet little science experiment living in my house.

His dramatic entrance into the world was pretty awesome too. I did end up having him via C-section, but despite many people seeming to hate the experience of surgical birth, I thought it was pretty awesome, and I really had a great time. Plus the drugs were AMAZING. And my insurance covered SO much of it- I’m not nearly as indebted to the hospital as I was afraid of. I was treated like a queen by the staff, and the people there were knowledgeable, no-pressure, and all around awesome. I think it’s a little unusual to say, but I had FUN having him. 13 hours of labor, 6 of unmedicated- then I finally broke down and got an epidural, then after another 7 my contractions just stopped- then I opted for a c-section, whcih I got to be concious for (weird and awesome), and which Hunter got to be there for. He even got to cut the umbillical cord!

I was terrified that I would be able to feel them cutting open my abdomen, but it just felt like tugging and shifting- there was no pain at all. Thank GOD for modern painkillers. Hunter got to hold him right away, and after they sewed me up I got wheeled into a temporary post surgery room and I got to meet my little creature. All in all the surgery lasted maybe 25 minutes- and I got to hold my baby RIGHT away after they were done with me- which was awesome. He was really alert and attentive- and had Apgar scores of 9/9- which is great. As soon as I was in the recovery room I got given a nice dose of Diloted, which left me empathizing with junkies. It was pretty much the best thing ever.

After that they took me to a private recovery room that I spent the next three days in. It had its own bathroom, HGTV, decent food, an adjustable bed, I was pretty constantly high, and I got waited on hand and foot, so I was a truly happy camper.

Wes had to spend two days in the nursery because of low blood sugar, but I got to visit him whenever I wanted to- and even he had his own room there, so we had plenty of privacy when we visited him. I probably could have slept there but I took advantage of the last two full nights of sleep I’d be getting in forever.

Hunter was AMAZING throughout. He was absolutely the best support I could imagine, and treated me like a goddess. I’ve come to expect that now, and I wasn’t at all surprised, just really intensely grateful and filled with squishy love and a feeling of incredible good fortune, and knowledge that he was going to be the best dad ever.

on an interesting side note, I got my bill and…

Price of 4 days in the hospital- 13 hours in a labor room followed by major abdominal surgery, followed by 3+ days in a private recovery room, two days in 24 hour care nursery for Wesley, a battery of tests, my pertussis vaccine, lactation consultants, visits from multiple doctors, nurses, and lactation consultants, and a ton of drugs…. FIFTY EIGHT GRAND

Price after insurance: TWO grand

I cannot even imagine not having insurance. WOW. That’s fucking INSANE. I’m SO glad I have the coverage that I do.

 America’s healthcare pricing system is totally nuts.

In totally unrelated news, I FINALLY published my novel, The Golden Empress.