Dear Home,

I don't know how to bring this up without sounding overly sensitive or confrontational. So I'll just put it out there. Are you mad at me? Did I offend you in some way? Are you not happy with the rain gutters or the color we painted the kitchen door? I'm only asking because I can't figure out why you keep taking my stuff and hiding it. Like my keys this morning. I took the keys to open my trunk and get the kids' lunchboxes still sitting there from yesterday so the Mr. could make their lunches and I could leave for work. I brought the lunches in, grabbed my purse and then couldn't find the keys. So I spent the next ten minutes looking all around the house and they were no where. What gives? And this isn't the first time you've taken our keys. What about when our daughter was born and you lifted both my set and my husband's set within a one week span? Do you know how much those goddamn electronic keys cost? Like $150 smacks. So for the next year we measured everything in VW keys. The plane ticket was two VW keys...And then what about my badge for work? I've been there less than two weeks and I already need to ask for a replacement? So I need that back. And also my favorite scarf. The one I've slept with every night since I bought it in on the street in Chile in 1996. The one my kids call softie because it has reached a level of softness unparalleled in the garment manufacturing industry. We can talk about why a 36 year old sleeps with a scarf later. After I get the scarf back. And as long as I have you on the horn, I'm not thrilled with the ants. Or that nail that keeps coming up in the dining room floor, that I have snagged my big toe on seven hundred and twenty-one times, even though I bang it back in every four months. And the way you've started piling up little stacks of papers and legos and cars and small socks and magnets in every corner of you. Every friggin' corner! It's enough already! Put your crap back where it belongs! Including the etch-a-sketch that's on my bedside table. And then give me back the keys.

Sincerely,
Susie

Corner View - Contrast

The first ketubah I ever made was for my brother. I was 20. I'm not really sure how it came to pass that I would do this for them. They probably saw prices for ketubahs in the Judaica shops (this was before ketubah.com) and decided baby sister needed to pitch in. I never even discussed it with them. I just drew what I wanted. A giant colorful tree and the Jerusalem buildings I'd been drawing for a while. And I think they gave me a photo copy of some text they'd found. And it came out beautifully considering I put very little thought into it. That's probably what made it so nice. It wasn't wrought with ketubah-making anxiety. These are the only pictures of it that remain. It's my brother putting a nine iron through it when he got divorced four years later. Not his best moment.


I've since done four others: my other brother's (I'm happy to report they are going on 17 years I think), my own, my friend Heidi's and most recently for my friend Adam. Here's where we encounter the contrast. With Aaron's ketubah, I just painted what I felt like painting. No consultation. Total freedom. No stress. It was for my brother who I knew would be happy with anything I came up with. And he was. Adam's ketubah was a different story. I was doing this as a "professional" or at least semi-professional. It required hours of consultation to figure out the exact imagery that best united two very different people and two very different aesthetics. And by contrast to Aaron, whose idea of Judaism is listening to Matisyahu while drinking a beer on his balcony, Adam is a professor of Jewish History at a seminary in Los Angeles. And by contrast to the rabbi for hire at Aaron's wedding who didn't even read the ketubah aloud during the ceremony, Adam's would be read under the chuppah by a world renowned Aramaic language scholar (a buddy of Adam's). One thing I'll say, even though I was cursing through the process of creating Adam's ketubah (sorry Adam) I learned a lot about what it takes to do this as a business. In fact Adam himself once said he doesn't feel bad for being my most annoying client. It's good to get that one out of the way early. And he was right. I am the master of customer service now. And more importantly, I trust my creative instincts. I loved my brother's ketubah and, despite the challenges, maybe because of the challenges, I loved how Adam's ketubah came out. And I loved how much they loved it. Now I'm just trying to reconcile that 20-year-old artist who doesn't care what the world thinks and paints from her heart with the 36-year-old artist who worries too much about screwing up.

Recently someone ordered Adam's ketubah as a print for his own wedding so I finally had the impetus to stitch together the six scans of the original (which was much larger than my bitty scanner) and digitize the whole thing. Hopefully it will live long in many people's homes. And never come in contact with a nine iron.


For more interpretations of contrast, visit Dana and the rest of the corner views.

Pause

So it turns out that taking on this little part time temporary contract at my old job is kind of kicking my ass. Not because it's taxing or difficult or unenjoyable. In fact, it's pleasant work in a nice office with lovely people. So far I haven't had to be at a single meeting. It's kind of the best possible scenario. Except that I run out of there at 12:30 to get my kids at 1:00 and then spend the next six hours trying to clean the house, get my daughter down for her nap, play cards with my son, worry about the mounting orders I've yet to fill (or the lack of orders depending on the day), make some prints (this is next to impossible), make dinner, do some half inspired craft with my son and fold some laundry. And then at night I'm filling the orders I can't fill during the day, returning emails, doing some framing, figuring out what the hell my kids will be for Halloween, paying some bills and recovering from the tantrum I had in response to my son's tantrum du jour.

Things that don't get done: No time for the gym. No time for the super market. No time to finish the drawing I started two weeks ago. And no time to blog. Sorry peeps. Nada tiempo.

And somehow I used to do this. Although working full time gives you a little flexibility. When someone else picks up the kids you can, get this, GO TO THE SUPERMARKET. You can also go to the bank. You can even get your eyebrows waxed, in case your daughter got her Frida looks from you. And you can do it all in half an hour. And don't think I haven't done all of these things with kids in tow. Even the eyebrows. They sit on the end of the bed and wonder why the little Vietnamese lady is torturing mommy. But it takes four times as long and by the end someone is crying and it's usually me.

So today, since my son had his five year well-child check up and by the time I got him to school it would have been silly for me to drive to work only to leave an hour later, I went to the post office instead to ship a consignment order I've been sitting on for three weeks. Then I went to two supermarkets. Then I deleted 200 emails. And put away some laundry. BANNER MORNING. And the afternoon went equally well. Baby was down in ten minutes. Son and I played several hands of Go Fish which I won. Then we made a collage. The house was clean and the laundry away so my son received my undivided attention. Then I taught him that if he could figure out how to hold his cards facing him instead of facing up on the carpet he might not lose every time which he did and then we tied. Baby woke up. Met a friend at the park. Came home and made dinner. And by the time darling husband arrived I was able to greet him looking like this minus the flowing hair (my hair is short):

Namaste. Incidentally, this beautiful card arrived a few days ago with two other cards from a wonderful artist named Lori Portka. She just exudes joy and hope, which shines through in her work, right? (and her blog - check that out too).

We'll see what tomorrow holds when I head back for my second week of work. The fridge is full so I have that in my favor. My daughter has a runny nose and we appear to have ants. Two strikes against. It's anybody's game.

Halloween 2009

I have never been a fan of Halloween. I think I've probably mentioned this before. I don't like being in costume unless I'm in a play and it's a really kick ass costume that some professional made for me. I don't like being scared. I don't like horror movies. I don't even like commercials for horror movies. I once had nightmares for about a month when I heard about the Blair Witch Project. I never even saw it. I just heard about it. And in Judaism there's another holiday where you dress up, Purim, and I hate that one too. And I'm convinced there are two kinds of people in this world - the kind who love Halloween/Purim and the ind who hate it. My theory stops there pretty much since I do have friends who are in the love category. We've just come to accept each other.

The holiday has become a little less annoying now that I have kids and get to dress them up. But the lead up to Halloween is stressful. My son went back and forth ten times between wanting to be a broiler and wanting to be a shark. He went as a shark in the end and was quite happy with his costume which my husband sewed for him yesterday. And my daughter. Well even though no one knew who she was except our neighbor Claudia, she looked positively AMAZING as the incomparable Frida Kahlo. The likeness is uncanny. With a little help from an eyebrow pencil...

And where it used to be that the only redeeming quality about Halloween was the candy, it is now that the thing that bugs me the most. True, I could give out pencils or glow bracelets or fruit. But I don't. I give out candy. And I give it to the pre-diabetic 150 pound third graders too. And then I have to deal with my own kids who want to eat a bag full of it until they throw up. So I gave them each a few pieces and put their bags away. This morning they wanted their bags and, based on some good advice from Courtney and Whitney over at Rookie Moms, I made them each pick five pieces to keep and the rest gets traded in for a toy. I have a stock pile of small toys in the attic for precisely this kind of bartering.

And now the Halloween 2009 round up.

Corner View - Water

There's nothing more exciting than a Fireman's Pancake Breakfast for a couple of little kids who love pancakes and fire trucks. They even got to get a taste of the action spraying pylons off a ledge with 400 pounds of water pressure. That's a lot when you yourself only weight 32 pounds!




It's a tough job, but someone has to be that cute in a mini fire fighter jacket.

For more Corner Views, visit Dana while Jane is still incomunicado. Meanwhile I'll be over at the water cooler on my THIRD day contracting. Loving the free Special K with strawberries...