September song

Hello, almost autumn. You’re cool enough to be autumn, anyway. Soon enough. Soon enough, I say… no rush back to the double blizzard kill my family in a Shining sort of way from last year’s winter. Take your time, old, cold.

I was contemplating wrapping up this blog recently. It’s been almost three years (more like 2.5, 3 in February). My daughters are turning four at the end of this month. I am currently not feeling completely and totally, almost every minute overwhelmed by being a parent. I realize this may be an aberration, a hiccup, a break in the mommy matrix, and that soon again my blood pressure will rise at the realization of how seemingly impossible this job is. 24 hours/day, every day, for the rest of my life. I am not thinking about the rest of my life, tho, at the moment. I am thinking once again in the constant now. And not out of any sort of conscious choice. It is just how things are working out. Sure, sure, there are challenges… like watching Mimi, who wakes up like a proverbial angel almost every day, and degenerates into the devil’s minion at around 5 p.m. every day, punching, pushing and berating her sister, teasing her mercilessly… Sure. There’s that. And listening to her abused sister Beenie being forced, and rightfully so, to tattle on Mimi and her bad bad ways. Though, if she’s not tattling, she may take matters into her own hands, and those hands are powerful my friends. Beenie is no wilting flower, as they say. She’s mighty big and very strong and when she’s had enough she will, indeed, open that well-deserved can of whoop-ass on her sweet and rotten sister. She’s just been in such trouble from the past history of her own bad behavior, I think she thinks she’s not really allowed to beat on Mimi. Which she’s not. But then, if she can’t fight back, and she can’t tattle, what can she do? I guess I’ll take the minute-to-minute reporting of the cruelties enlisted by Mimi, when the alternative is more violence. Oh, the violence. Oh the toddler humanity. Are they even toddlers anymore? Doesn’t that seem like a title not befitting a four year old?

The thing, though, is, that when they’re NOT fighting, they will retreat to their room or downstairs when I’m upstairs and play. Together. Detailed, time consuming play. That does not need to involve me. And this may be what has given me pause to not pull out my graying hair. They have each other. They always have and always will, unless they kill each other. I take great comfort in their companionship. And wonder if it has suddenly given me the smallest amount of space in which to re-investigate my own identity. I know its in here somewhere. It may be ready to come back out again. I hope it does soon. I miss me, whoever she may be.

Maybe I’ll keep writing here. It’s cheaper than therapy, and its fun to put up pictures. I just don’t want it to lose the miserable edge it once had. Nobody wants to read about how well things are working. They want dirt. Despair. Don’t they? All three of you who read this thing? Maybe mildly plodding through will have to be enough for now.

Speaking of miserable, creating art continues to be hugely rewarding and utterly unrewarded. Except, of course, for supportive friends and the occasional patron of said art. I am remiss in mailing the Puddle Painting out west to its new home. It’s the proper packaging that delays me. Why does it take so long for me to complete even the simplest tasks? I did manage to send off a rolled-up drawing last week to Boomerang!, which looks like a cool thing to participate in. And progress on the Beet-Shell-Flower painting is slowly crawling along. I believe that piece will complete the “2010 — Year of Making Things for Other People” project. It has been a good year art-wise, considering I’ve had less time this year to work on painting and such than at any other time of my life (except for the girls’ pregnancy, but it wasn’t a lack of time that held me back then, it was feeling like shit for about 9 months, then being attached to said babies for another however many months…). And it has been good for me to have assignment-type goals to work toward. It made what little time I did have more productive. And I believe it actually gave me some fresh ideas of directions to pursue in the future. So all around it was a good year. I think next year I would like to begin to build a new body of work. I realize that I’ve sold off most of my pre-parenting work, so it is time. I’m a very different person and artist now. I look forward to making more new things.

Happy fall, y’all!