9:41 a.m.

I'm weak. Bu & Boue were so snuggly... I dragged myself very reluctantly out of bed at 7:05. I pulled on pajama bottoms and a flannel shirt. I looked at my baby and husband, the pillows and the soft sheets, then I set the alarm for 8:40 and crawled back into bed. I thought, my blog will understand.

So weak. But look:It was totally worth having to blog that I broke my solemn vow:) The good news? 4 1/2 hours of crib time. Hell yeh. I'm so late for work. Blessed place that it is, I can do that once in a while.

This picture is so beautiful. My Bu rocks. I want to learn to work our cameras. You just can't get perfect golden light and shallow soft depth of field with the crappy automatic mode. I ruined what would have been some gorgeous shots of crawling, clapping, and hanging out with my Grandma. OK: tea, bagel, work. Off I go, drowsy and happy and thrilled to have spent an hour in bed lazily snuggling.

little miss binary oppositional thinking

In more weird blogosphere synchronicity, just as I was going to post about my inability to make changes because of way overthinking the changes, or something like that, Crissy writes about her art sales plans essentially creating artist's block. Also, my imaginary post tied in to The Secret, and then I read this at Blogging Baby.

So my problem is my mind/body do this trick that's like that thing in dreams or cartoons where you run so fast your feet lift up off the ground and you don't go anywhere. I have huge ideas. So huge I want to use a gigantic font to illustrate so here: they are

this big.

They are so big in fact, that they don't go anywhere or do anything. I'm stuck in a crazy extremes-mindset. Instead of say, realizing dairy products are bad for my skin/weight/asthma and cutting back, I think "Dairy products are the devil's own tool to exploit sweet-eyed cows and keep my mucked up with fatty bad chi, so I need to become a hardcore vegan overnight and never ever ever eat cheese again." Of course, it's much easier to fail at that goal, isn't it? I'm the same way in every area of life: big, bold idea for drastic change. No follow through. All or nothing, and surprise: it's always nothing. And as much as the Law of Attraction and visualization works (wow are they working. We have so much web design business it's intimidating me as far as doing it in between momstuff and dayjob,) to create real change I have to get some concrete problems fixed.

So, my new plan is to actually make a few small, implementable changes, one at a time. Quiet, easy changes. So, in this vein, tomorrow morning my new wake-up time is 7 am. If the baby wants to get up with me, so much the better. Your midnight bedtime, Mollymylove, is really, really annoying. In order to try to reinforce this plan, I'm committing to you (yes you, ya sweet pea of a blog reader) that i'm gonna post at 7:15 a.m. at the latest, while I have my tea. My post may be unintelligible, or not. We'll see. Maybe I'll have a cool dream, or Molly will surprise us all and spend 8 hours in the crib.

kitchen alchemy

The ongoing kitchen experiments continue... I am thrilled to tell you I have made bread.

OK, sorta. It was tortillas. But still. The making of bread is the holy grail, the archaic and arcane mystery that awaits me at the end of my kitchen learning curve. Baking actual bread intimidates the hell out of me. I compensate my making all the easy things that are bread-ish. I do banana bread, cake, "batter bread," corn bread, beer bread, and now I have made tortillas.

The cooking thing is an obsession lately, a manifestation of my attempt to become a Real Person. I am not a Real Person, according to my Bu's definition, because of many random things... Real People get up at a reasonable hour, they cook at home more than they eat out, they do not go commando because all their underwear is dirty.

A kitchen covered in flour is one more tiny little step toward the amazing transmutation into the imaginary productive, creative, me.

in which i abuse Capitalization

So, I freaked out on Bu last night because he wouldn't let me go visit Molly at midnight at the grandies' to see the new tooth. Mamaw called in the middle of the party to tell us about the discovery. Yes, the tooth would still be there as Bu and a friend eventually convinced me, and sure we deserved an adults only evening followed by actual solid sleep. This didn't compare in my brain with the fact that her very first tooth ever was found by not-me, so me needed to see it as soon as humanly possible. Nevermind she probably cut the tooth on my nipple and I just didn't check her gums yesterday.

randomosity

A thing I learned this weekend: A charley horse cramp is not nearly as awful after experiencing labor contractions as it is before labor. Even Bu was impressed with my zen-like approach to waiting for the pain to end. Not that charley horses don't still suck.

As a matter of fact, the tooth was resplendent at seven a.m. following six and a half hours of uninterrupted sleep. The night of bliss proved that even the moodiest hormonally charged bad day of cranky badness can be made all better by a double strong Tension Tamer Tea, a cuddly husband, and streaming video of heroes on a laptop in bed.

The badness of my day was all in my head. I'm owning my bitchiness. I was the one who decided that, even though I am usually passionately opposed to removing my body hair, I would wax my legs and be Glamorous. Also, I would borrow my best friend's classic black dress-up outfit, including heels, and I would be Sophisticated. I would Do My Eyes and also be Sexy. I would then wow my coworkers, board members, and clinic supporters with my ability to Cinderella myself from funky-messy assistant girl to Put Together Foxy Mama at our Oscars Party. (Bu & I take red carpet photos of guests each year.)

Not so much. I forgot my wallet when I scrambled to the store for brunch items, and had to put away all the stuff WIC vouchers don't cover. Then it was too late to make it back & cook & get the Birdie to the grandies'. Later, the leg waxing began, in a messy and annoying way, and I spilled warm wax all over the bathroom. Cleaned that up, and met souster at the door to retrieve my outfit. Quick shower & make-up. Right. OK, mascara in eye- wash off, reapply. Stings, watering, ouch. On to wardrobe. Only the outfit doesn't fit, and the heels are lethal. They are several inches too high for any human being to walk in and they are so pointy-toes I have a toe cramp just imagining them. So I throw on the dressiest black dress I have- short sleeved very simple. My only dress shoes are ballet flats with bows. They are cute bows, and are adorable- with jeans. As a whole, my ensemble looks like a 12 year old girl at a funeral. My panty hose have no runs- at least there's that. So we go.

The printer won't work with our laptop so Bu has to run home to get drivers for the hardware. Meanwhile I have discovered that my hose are too big and they literally roll down under my butt whenever I walk four steps. So I'm tugging at my ass every few seconds trying to hike 'em back up. I'm an anxious mess by this time, and think I'd love a glass of wine. Only it's a cash bar and if we spend any money we'll overdraw our account. (Ha! Silly me- we did that anyway buying frivolous gasoline.)

The event was wonderful, however. We made roughly twice as much as last year for the clinic. The turn out was amazing. I learned that it's possible to pump in a large bathroom stall in bra and panty hose and not let any of the bottles touch anything:) The whole night I was seeing a scene from The Secret where a woman has a Bad Day which is the result of her telling herself, "It is a Bad Day," and I'd tell myself to shake it off, but I couldn't muster up the conviction to radiate positivity with my hose rolled up under my booty and bunching around my adolescent shoes.

tool + jung = babble

The thing about the Law of Attraction, i.e. my new obsession, a.k.a. The Secret, a.k.a. a law of Wicca via Ceremonial magick is this: it works to a crazy degree. It's insane when you pay attention to your attitude how much of what surrounds you is brought to you because of the energy you emit.

I think it really ties into the idea of sychronicity. Whatever I'm focused on keeps popping up everywhere. So I'm seeing references all over the place about creativity and rediscovering it. The cool thing is that this reinforces my quest for changing from artslacker to artist. I heard my favorite Tool
song on the radio today, a song I don't have on CD or mp3 any longer. My love for Tool approaches a religious fervor:) The lyrics are so influenced by alchemy and the occult, and the music and lyrics are beautifully dark but transormative. This song is one of those pieces of art that just opens up my soul and reminds it of all the stuff it keeps forgetting- what with me letting my brain & body stay so cluttered.

a bit of the lyrics:

I am too connected to you to
Slip away, to fade away.
Days away I still feel you
Touching me, changing me,
And considerately killing me...
And as the walls come down and
As I look in your eyes
My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of the times
I have died
and will die.
It's all right.

It was awesome to be hanging out with the Birdie in her high chair, cleaning my kitchen like crazy, and this song came on, so I stopped, picked her up and danced and sang with her. It's the first time I heard it since she was born and I was struck with how new and the same I am. (?) How to describe? To be filled with love and light, and be so content in a simple task- cleaning my home with my little daughter eating her "scooby snacks" and yet remember that I'm still the same girl who has been through dark, dark times and dived headfirst into rage and mourning and sadness. Awareness that that girl went deep into her shadow and came out the other side with a better wholeness than before. (This itself is a paraphrasing of another Tool favorite.)

So, this is me: tag-team parent on the long-weekend shift, overstressed and worried, taking inspiration from random radio programming and the beauty of scrubbing a refrigerator with baking soda.

positivity & artistic limbo

Warmer day, start of my weekend. Feeling groovy today: perky, possibly to an annoying degree. Hence, a digi doodle for you:

This is a welcome change from yesterday, in which Bu and then I plummeted into a Funk. Apparently, for me, it was a short lived Funk, which rocks, as I have been known to wallow for months in a dark place. Thank gods I seem to be moving further away from that as I grow more wrinkles and silver hairs. My impression of my life is that I was sleepwalking from age 15-25. A decade lost to just nothing.

I'm doing a lot of daydreaming about reinvinting my life, "Evolution of a moon-eyed etc..." being the presumptive raison d'etre for this blog. Molly has changed me so drastically and beautifully that it's wild. I was thinking about that nursing a wiggle baby fighting sleep while I watched a Sex and the City rerun. It was an episode before Miranda had Brady and there was a pregnant chick breakdown. Their minds were blown pondering how much it changes you, being a mother. My reaction is that it change as much as you want it to. I wanted, needed my daughter to allow me to focus on something huge outside myself. I see her as a cuddly little fire lit under my ass to get my life in order.

When I got pregnant, I wondered what the impact of motherhood would be on my artistic life. Certain professors of the non-namesake variety (Molly's named after my ceramics prof) seem to think it's pretty much a death sentence for my hypothetical career. So, what I thought was that I want her to see me being the best version of myself I can be- that includes producing art regularly. I think it would be so harmful to her to see her mother wasting her talent.

How much art have I made in the time span since I was barely pregnant?

Zero art.

The thing is, it isn't the diapers and the nursing and working two jobs. It's my slacker self doing the same thing I've always done-nothing of consequence. For hours at a time.

So I'm trying to organize this life and family. We are living so loosely, with no routine and no direction. The baby's sleeping in with us then is up too late. The business plan's sitting there in a notebook with weeks?months? of dust on. My studio is a catch all storage room piled to ceiling with miscellania. My clay is in dried bricks, my kiln has never been turned on.

I'm implementing some ideas from The {cheesy} Secret, and I'll go into more detail later about that. My biggest thing need is to just create some structure in my/our life. I've got to start managing time better. I mean I will, I will, I will. I've become the thought police, trying to frame things positively. Constant battle.

Oh, and look: blog pretty again:) It's evolving too. Yay for BlogU.