This little piggy needed some love

On Friday I decided to get a pedicure. I very rarely do this. But there is no pumice stone rough enough to get the half inch dermal layer off my heels. My husband had given me a gift certificate to a place downtown for my birthday (nine months ago) and I figured I'd better use it before my next birthday. I mean what the hell was I waiting for anyway? The messiah? My appearance on Oprah? It's just a damned pedicure. But now that I work for myself I start to have anxiety about using any of my time for anything besides my work. Not that I don't waste plenty of it sitting in front of this very computer but at least it looks like I'm working. Nothing about sitting in a massage chair reading People magazine having someone dunk your feet in paraffin wax looks like work.

So Friday was the day. I wanted something with a little punch so I picked out The Tasmanian Devil Made Me Do It red. The last time I had my toes painted was on a trip to the US when I'd been living in Israel (twelve years ago). I went with an old friend to get our nails done and I picked out bubble gum pink. The next day I flew back to Israel and then quickly drove with my boyfriend to the Egyptian border because I had an assignment to edit and rewrite the Sinai chapters of the Fodors Israel and Egypt guidebooks. If I was going to be traipsing around the Ritz Carlton at Sharm El Sheikh, I wanted some pretty toenails. You know, in case Bill Clinton showed up.

Three days into the trip I had a raging fight with my boyfriend and it turns out that he was now second guessing our relationship because I had paid $9 to have a Vietnamese woman in California paint my toenails on a whim. For him, those pink toes called into question all of my values and stood for everything he despised about the world - wealth, bourgeois society, appearances, western entitlement. Seriously. And this is not a cultural thing. Plenty of Israeli women paint their toes. It was his own thing. Eventually I helped him to understand he was acting like a jackass and twelve years later we are married and have two kids and own a house mortgage in Silicon Valley. But my nails have remained nude ever since.

So after twelve years The Tasmanian Devil Made Me Do It and these piggies got the royal treatment. And my husband didn't give a rat's ass and we enjoyed a lovely weekend in Lake Tahoe where my red toes looked especially AWESOME against the alpine blue lake.

Full circle

It's been a year since I left my day job to pursue my dream to be a working artist. A YEAR people. And to celebrate I had brunch with my friends Laura, the life coach that helped get this party started, and Chelsea, a hugely talented interior designer and friend from the coaching workshop we did with Laura. What fun to have come full circle and to be, all three, balancing our commitments to our families and doing what we love.

And apropos full circle, here's a little preview of what I've been working on lately. Lots of circles. And lots of tiny little icons. I came across an old friend via Facebook (of course) and it turns out that we have more in common than we ever knew. Last year she decided to follow her dream of working as an artist and she creates some of the most amazingly intricate paper cut designs and ketubot I have ever seen. Much of her work is circular and it just got me daydreaming of tiny little drawings spinning around themselves. Here's the first of three that I finished today. More to come.

Special Offer

Dear Jim,
Thanks for your call this morning about having a special on carpet cleaning in my area. Here's the thing. FUCK OFF Jim. Stop calling me. You and your friendly person voice letting me know that people in "my area", whatever the hell that means, qualify for an exceptionally awesome opportunity to get:

Three rooms for the price of two.
A free hallway.
Four rooms for $69.
Free couch cleaning.
Free enema.

I'm on to you Jim. I know you're not a person. I know you're a recorded guy. Because no one who makes phone calls for a living is that happy. So why don't you just stop pretending to be on a MISSION FROM GOD to clean all of the damn carpets in "my area" and be yourself for the love of ginger. Talk in your regular Domo Origato Mr. Robato voice. I'm not fooled. Yes, sometimes I do need my carpet cleaned. Like ONCE a year. So I suppose that if you call me every effing day you will likely land on a day when I would be happy to hold for one of your operators standing by. But the last time we did this, you and me, I ended up paying three times the quoted price with a couple of hooligans who made me feel like an ass for hanging my mezuzah on the wrong side of the door for the last five years.

And the same goes for you too, Frank. And Christine. And Scott. For the record:
I don't want the San Jose Mercury News.
I don't need new rain gutters.
I do not want to donate to the Police Officers Fund.
I do not need a house alarm.
I already refinanced my home.

Furthermore, if by some twist of fate we ever run into each other, you better run before I punch you in "your area".

Sincerely,
Susie

ps. are you impressed with our collection of phones? press one for yes.

Looking forward

It's our first week of summer officially. Our schedule is different. I now have three full days (10-3) for work instead of five mornings. My daughter is with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays which is a welcome change. I hardly spend any time at all with either kid by his or herself which, it turns out, is very different than spending time with both. They act differently. And I do too. We move more slowly. We can have conversations. I'm not always running interference. I'll let you in on a secret. I kind of enjoy it.  I tried to patch together a summer with plenty of camps and activities but also at least one week each with only one child. And a week with both together. And a week in southern California and a week in New York and a week in Santa Fe. I'm already exhausted. Cleansing breath...

But this is what I signed up for. And how could I not? I mean look at the little saggy tights on that tush! With all her tippy toeness and fashion forwardness. This was six months ago. Who knows who she'll be six months from now. I'll keep you posted.

Cinema Paradiso

We had a busy morning. It was effectively the first day of summer. Preschool ended yesterday and they start two weeks of summer camp on Monday. But today was a day reserved just for us to hang out as a trio. We rode bikes downtown. Went to the post office. Got coffee/chocolate milk. Watched trains. Went to the bank to deposit $26.25 that he saved in his piggy bank. It was a busy, but enjoyable morning.

We returned home for lunch and my daughter went down for her nap. My son decided to do some painting and I did a little design work on my computer. We listened to music. Then we played Zingo. Half way through the game I changed the music to the sound track from Cinema Paradiso, which if you haven't seen, you must get it in your queue immediately. The music alone is enough to make your heart burst right out of your chest. Then something changed. My son started to turn melancholic during the game. Then he inexplicably started to tear up.

I proceeded to ask him if he wanted to do something else. Play something else. Watch a movie. Paint more. His eyes were still welled with tears. Did he want to use my paper cutter? He nodded (sometimes he needs a little occupational therapy). I go to get a few prints I had made a while ago that printed with a clogged black ink cartridge so they are very colorful but not "sellable". I bring them back to the studio to cut into strips so we can make a garland or something by which time he is lying on the murphy bed sobbing. And the music is swelling in the background and it occurs to me that he is somehow moved by the music. Maybe. I snuggle with him on the bed for a few minutes and then I whisper, is it the music?

Yes.

I asked him if he wanted me to turn it off and he nodded, too overwhelmed to speak. A minute later we started cutting and about ten minutes into our project he said he was feeling better. So we talked about how music is powerful stuff. How it can make us even cry. How I cried too when I first heard it. He smiled.

Three years ago I started this blog because I needed some place outside of my head to process my son's behavior. It took some time and some counseling to understand that he was a text-book "sensitive child". Not only in the "cries when you look at him sideways" kind of way but also in the "mommy, I can hear the light buzzing" kind of way. He was the kid that panicked at Gymboree and Music Together. Participation at birthday parties usually meant watching from the side. It was hard both because I desperately wanted him to be like the other kids who seemed to so easily fit into their surroundings and because I saw so much of myself in him.

In many ways he's a very different boy now. He warms up to people more quickly. He speaks his mind. He even goes barefoot. But at his core he's still every bit as sensitive as he always was, and I'm finally proud to say, he gets that from me.