Some Cheese With My 'Whine'...

Maybe it’s the full moon veiled by a gauze of smoggish haze. Or that my monthly ‘friend’ is creeping up on me (sorry guys). Or that I can’t up my score on Bejeweled Blitz.

Even trusty old TV failed me. The Lakers lost and the best HBO could cough up was ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’. Great book, horrible movie. Do not watch.

Bottom line; I'm grouchy tonight. Don’t know why. Lots of stuff going on and most of it is ‘meh’. Couldn’t do a pastel drawing to save my ass. It’s not even 9 p.m. yet if I start doing more paper research I’m bound to fall to sleep quickly and wake up at 1:30 a.m. with no hopes of falling back.

And writing? Writing…sigh. I feel burnt out on the book I was so damn hot for a few years back. I want it done but I’m just so UGH!

And I torture myself further staring at a lovely watercolor I did last year that I can’t replicate for the life of me.

Performance anxiety. Perfectionism. I have to remind myself of my own advice; perfectionism is nothing more than low self-esteem. I still draw. I still write (obviously). I still do my work.

That doesn’t make me feel better.

Let me just bitch for once in this blog.

People annoy me too. Right now, I don’t like people. I’d really like to dive deeper into this but I better keep my mouth shut. Nothing pays off like the restraint of tongue and pen and, er, blog.

The house is messy. The cats are sleepy. The boyfriend went to bed. The click of my computer keys and the clock are all the only conversations I am holding. All this beautiful quiet time and I am wasting it being pissy. I can’t bear to look at my novel right now. I can’t think of picking up a brush and painting either. This strange frustration began this morning waking up too late to do any writing. I like to do my writing in the morning. At the library, with a contraband cup of coffee. Where there are no phones, no cats and no neighbors with tumbling babies to distract me. But I got up too late and now, when i got oodles of time, I'm irked.

Suddenly it is very important to clean the litter box or take out the trash. Or go belly rub my new pink-toed kitty who sits atop the tower while my mammoth tabby glares from the floor. Then I gaze at some forgotten linocuts. Or a book I started reading and didn’t finish. Life has been a lot of start and go and stop in the middle and I can’t figure it out. It’s a fucked up funk. That’s all. No way to work it out unless I do work. Because in the end I only have myself to contend with.

And my lousy score on Bejeweled Blitz.

Neti Pot - A Love Story Part II

I got a lot of titles for this blog. Another possible one is: How A Box of Kleenex Became My Constant Companion.

If you are easily squeamish feel free to exit. I won’t be offended. But really, it’s not that bad. And it’s way less than 500 words. I’m still kinda oogie.

I am getting over the cold(s) that 2011 welcomed me with. Remnants of the Xmas 2010 cold crossed paths with a nasty virus my dear significant other dragged home after New Years’.

Bam.

A solitary sneeze at work which I dismissed as allergies landed me on my ass for a week. Instead of the vice-like nasal congestion I endured with the first wave, a thickness festered in my throat that Riccola could not soothe. Even water didn’t taste good.

Serendipitously enough it was also NFL play-offs so my couch potato-ness was justified.

Of course I missed a gathering with some girlfriends I haven’t seen in months. I missed work (and when I don’t work I don’t get paid). I barely wrote, draw or painted. Not that it was possible to produce anything other than varied hues of gunk. You should see my phlegmatic gymnastics.

Neti Pot to the rescue (again).

I have diligently using my Neti Pot (a.k.a. Snot Pot by my jealous boyfriend) since May of 2009 so Neti and I are serious. Neti has kept me healthy for the most part; these cold(s) are the first I have been stricken with in a loooong time.

Actually, I was kinda curious. How would the Neti work through all that buttery goodness plugging up my cranium?

Some mornings it was impossible. Nothing poured out because the cold was new and was mounting its evil grip. It wasn’t until things tapered down a few days into it when I was finally able to get a wash in. Clear pearl-sized bubbles oozed out in long strings before the long ropey yellow bands of crap flowed. The Neti wash also nudged big irritating reddish brown snot balls coagulating my nasal passages.

So nice to breathe again—I even got that old Toni Braxton jam in my now clear head.

I’m better, or rather, cautiously optimistic. I so don’t want to get sick again, at least not for a while. Neti Pot makes all things better if not more interesting.
I’d like to go into the benefits of gargling with apple cider vinegar but I wanna keep this particular blog short. Way less than 500 words.

And I’m not about to push my luck.

Cat Lessons

Funny what you can learn from a cat.

The orange kitten, Kody, has come home. Immediately my fat Malone and grouchy Max began a chorus of hisses and snarls that are the soundtrack as I compose this blog.
I didn’t expect to learn a major lesson and that not one word of it would be delivered by a human.

Kody is 3 pounds of adorable marmalade fluff. My old cats don’t think so, especially when he eats their vittles and constantly searches for play. Max has become a chew toy for Kody while Malone is hardly benevolent. She puffs up to the size of a rabid raccoon and growls in a chilling manner.

My old cats didn’t ask for a kitten for Christmas.

I became a reluctant referee. I swoop Kody up when the others come into sight. I plead with Malone. I chide Max. I even designated the second bedroom into Kody’s panic room. Harmony, after all, is the soup du jour. It’s what I’m good at.

So I think.

Epiphanies are born under strange circumstances, like this feline power struggle.
I don’t speak ‘cat’ very well but on Christmas Eve morning it clicked; this was how they communicate. How they salvage their space. How they devised their tenuous pecking orders. How the point gets across. All things I don’t do very well with humans and my vocal chords are more advanced.

The one thing I cannot accuse my cats of is hypocrisy. They stand by what their needs are. The cat tower top belongs to whoever is there at the moment. So is the foot of the bed and my grandmother’s patch quilt. And my poor old cats have never attacked Kody. Max and Malone make it quite clear when he needs to back off. It is he, in his kitten cuteness, that breaks the rules and wreaks havoc ]]]]]]]]]]]]\--sorry, that was him walking across the laptop.

Friends told me to let the cats be. Let them chisel out their pecking order. They don’t need my help. Hell, why would they want it? My whole life has been spent trying to avert confrontation. In some instances it means me sucking up something I don’t like.

It doesn’t work all the time.

I’m going to try and stop sugar- coating my problems. Speak up when something may not be right. Tell others when I need my space and remind them when they invade it. Because when I don’t, (and I often don’t) I ended up hating the person scarfing down my kibble.

Whether it be at home, at work or a ride on the metro link, I need to take the lesson my cats taught me to heart:

Say what you mean.
Mean what you say.
And chalk out those lines in the kitty litter.

Venting...

I’m blogging because I’m stressed. You are all unwilling Freuds listening to my machinations and I thank you.

This has nothing to do with much of any of the usual babble. I still hate Mondays and I’m still seeking spiritual revival on a daily basis. But I am still a creature of habit and when my habits are tossed into an upheaval then I tend to react adversely, the victim: yours truly.

This time the little up-setter is a ball of fur found wandering in the parking lot of the Ross store near my work. An orange kitten with pink toes and a ringed tail. He also managed to crap all over his haunches after a long day in a cardboard carrier.

Okay. I told myself that if a kitten fell in my lap needing a home and if it was a marmalade then I would seriously consider it. Amidst my rotten Monday (yes, this Monday stunk worse than the shit smearing the kitten’s tail) I became the prospective foster parent of a homeless feline.

I’m lucky though. My significant other is a big time cat lover so convincing him wasn’t hard at all. In fact he talked his mother into letting the little orange ball crash in her bathroom while we ‘quarantine’ him.

What’s really stressing me out aside from the vet bill I’m looking at tomorrow (hey, haven’t we seen this movie?), is the environment I will be creating if the orange puff is allowed to come into our tenuous home. My grumpy 13 year old jellicle and 20 lb. tabby heifer hold a truce shakier than North and South Korea. They already caught whispers of the new kitty’s scent on our clothes; their ears flat and their eyes narrowed…

My sleep will be compromised. I will be a proverbial cat sitter making sure no harm comes to the baby. Our bathroom will not be ours for several weeks while the household forms its pecking order and acclimates to the new occupant, if he does indeed move in with us.

How much more compromised will it be if I let this orange puff back out in the cruel cold world? Or the 1000 cats that can be born of this one boy if he is allowed to reproduce, which I imagine he will want to? I know I can’t save them all but damn; can I try to save at least one, one who kissed my fingers when I picked him up and began purring sweetly as if to offer ‘thanks’?

3 cats are my limit, just like 500 words are my limit. But one day I’ll probably be that crazy cat woman everyone shies from cuz she stinks of urine and canned food.

For now though, just 3… I swear.

I just want to get a clean bill of health from the tomorrow. That’s not asking much, I don’t think.

Besides, we’re already thinking up names: Mackey, Tang, Clockwork, George, Nucky, Marvin…

I’m still taking suggestions….

MONDAY

Last Monday was real bad. Real bad.
No need to go into detail. I want to keep it under 500 words.
Balance is not innate and has nothing to do with being a Libra. Balance is learned after many a hard lesson.
My lesson comes in the form of Monday.
I hate Mondays.
I know Monday is temporary. A bad case of ‘this too, shall pass’.
That mantra doesn’t always soothe this savage beast.

Disclaimer: My disdain for Monday is unrelated to the stereotypical reasons the rest of the human race hate Monday. It’s not because the weekend is over and the drudge of deadlines and alarm clocks begins again. It’s not the sluggish traffic to the office delaying the inevitable when all I want to do is get it over with. It’s not even the phony smile I sport to dodge the whizzing jibes.

Here is the recipe that comprises my most hated 8 hours of the week:
There is something wrong with my energy the second I step into the office on Monday. The air is curdled and frenzied. The stress is wire taunt. Every ounce of ‘happy me’ is drained by the first ringing phone.

It can be sunny, it can be cold. It can be a holiday, a boss-free day, a free lunch day. Nothing takes the sting out of Monday. I have even started disappointing my Sundays in dread of my Mondays.

Pathetic.

But hating Monday is not about where I am. It is about who I am.

I hate Monday for whisking me away from my home, my studio, my keyboard. I hate Monday for being my source of sustenance and support. There is a cracked molar in my head. There is a 20 pound tabby too fat to lick her own butt and a vet appointment that raped my frail income.

So Monday has proven (gah!) useful. Monday provides balance. Monday is the deep breath I take and hold as long as possible to enjoy the eventual release. Monday, it turns out, only intensifies my gratitude for the other days of my week, when I can basically do whatever I want. Which is make art.

If it weren’t for the muck and mire of Monday, I’d never appreciate what lies beyond it.

I’d never prize the people who don’t bully me. I’d never bother to meditate. I’d never step back from a painting and think ‘damn, life is good’.

This Monday I will enjoy the pettiness. I will revel in the traffic. I will celebrate my aggravation. I will sit in the pain and know it is the balance that I need.

Sigh…it’s still Monday….

So What's YOUR Excuse???

Ugh.

So, yes, dear reader, what is my excuse? I promised to blog at least once a week. Cuz you all want to know what’s going on in this, er, maundering mind. I also promised not to bore you. I will keep the infernal whining to a minimum of 500 words. No more, no less.

Excuse the typos and bad grammar, i.e., the use of ‘cuz’ as opposed to ‘because’. It is the result of feverish revising of my novel. Yes, to all of you who have heard previous lamenting, I’m still working on it 3 years later but again, I reiterate, it is hard work writing a book. I want it to be (cringe) as near perfect as possible before handing off to the benevolent souls willing to read it for me and offer feedback. Then I’ll be diving head first into the deep blue sea of literary agents and publishers and I don’t swim very well. Especially when undertows of ‘is it good enough? Does it suck? Should I bother’ threaten to drown me.

And art. Always art. When the pen goes dry I reach for a gouge. My ‘Music Muse’ triptych begins taking on another form, this time in linoleum cut prints. The Girlz have seen life as oil pastels and collages. Soon they will be seeped in ink and crushed in a press. But first, I have to gouge. God willing there will be a show in December and again Doubt rears its evil little head; ‘maybe no one will like them, I shouldn’t bother, who do I think I am anyway???’

I don’t like wasting time whining. I’d rather be working. I’d rather be living. My pouts took on a different light last week learning about the sudden death of a high school friend. Yes, I know I’m 40 and my comrades will be passing but my class lost 2 great guys this year way too soon. Such events would throw anyone into a dark place. Mine was a bluesy tailspin and for a few moments on Wednesday morning I wondered if the Muses had abandoned me. If the right words would continue to find my page. If pain might over-ride the creative flow that had been coursing so fervently…if those nasty inklings held any merit…

Pain, I have learned, is mandatory in this life. It’s Suffering that is optional. My lost classmates had one major attribute in common; the lives they lived were to the fullest. The loved they bestowed was the greatest of legacies.

There is a difference between whining and mourning. There is a difference between perfectionism and fear. For now it is November 14, 2010. It is a magnificent morning. The leaves are burning orange against the bluest of So Cal skies. And my hands itch to get back to work.

God bless Dal Jones. God bless Victor Spirov. Now it’s back to my bad grammar, gray shreds of linoleum and blogs that don't exceed 500 words.

501 words, to be exact.

To Blog Or Not To Blog...what a silly question

It's been too long since I've launched my thoughts into cyber space. Sloth, exhaustion, indulgence, turbulence, there are a million reasons why I haven't blogged. In the end, the blame rests with me. Again.

Art was my first love; I learned to draw long before I ever learned to read but I fell in love with words too. Somehow, my fickle nature rationalized a way so these two loves would need each other to co-exist. The writing is far better when I’m drawing; the drawing more lucid when I am writing.

I am deep into the revision of this first novel and I battle with Perfectionism, the greatest hindrance to getting anything done. It was a sad epiphany the morning I mused that my perfectionistic tendencies are only a gauzy veil of low self-worth.

So this is where I plan to cut loose. To free segments of my maundering mind like so many white doves at a holy event. And if I can't think of anything to say about yours truly then I'll talk about an artist, a writer, or someone who IS interesting but I swear to keep it under 500 words. My attention span isn't much greater than the next guy...

Check back often and leave a thought or two of your own.