It’s been a while since I’ve cobbled together a lumpy pillow that roughly looks like a stuffed animal. I used to do it all the time. In fact, when I was little, many of my daydreams centered around the day that I would finally own my own sewing machine and then I could make anything I wanted. I envisioned a whole world out of stuffed material. There would be trees made of green calico and brown felt bears with black pleather noses… I would make a whole forrest of animals!

Then I grew up and realized that sewing is hard and it takes entirely too much time. However, I did buy a sewing machine when I got old enough and I’ve made the odd lumpy pillow over the years.

So when Bug came to me dressed in a brown flowered skirt and the only brown t-shirt she could find (that happened to have pieces of cake on it) and explained that she was a forrest girl and all she needed to complete her pretend world was a pet owl that she couldn’t find one anywhere in her vast (and I mean vast) collection of stuffed animals, I hesitated. It was true. She has every animal under the sun I think but she does not have an owl. Octopus, check. Ferret, check. Owl: no dice.

At first I rolled my eyes at her and told her to just imagine one or to find some other forrest animal to play with. I’m sure the Forrest Girl would be friends with all the animals. As she ran off, slightly distressed, to look one more time inside her hedgehog for some sad sorry owl substitute, I gazed over at my new clean work table and my stack of folders representing all the jobs I’ve got going on right now and sighed heavily. Then I decided that I would much rather make a stuffed owl than attend to my many deadlines. Blast it. Life is short. I should make an owl, I thought.

I hauled out my banker’s box full of odd bits of fabric and called Bug over to help me pick something owlish. She was beside herself excited of course. The prospect of making an owl, from fabric with mommy’s sewing machine! She hadn’t even thought of that. This was probably a bit foolish on my part because now she’s going to be thinking I can make anything she sets her heart on at the drop of a hat.

I’m sure I’ll soon cure her of that.

Anyway, she picked some red velvet for the body, some orange raw silk for feet and a beak and we found some buttons for eyes. I was going to use that brown corduroy for wings but like all my sewing projects, it got simplified in the end. I’m not that amazing at sewing.

I did, however, have a fantastic idea for the feet. What if I sewed the raw silk around some pipe cleaners so they could bend like real talons?!! I didn’t sew tiny claw tubes and then turn them inside out or anything. That would be madness. No, I just sewed seams around the pipe cleaners, cut off the excess and let the raw edges fray. The owl would have floppy-feathered* feet like real owls do.

It actually worked really well.

With Bug hovering at my side, I sewed up the owl body, snipped the edges, turned him inside out and let Bug stuff him. I stuck the bendy feet inside the body where the stuffing hole was and sewed him closed with a kiss and prayer.

And that is how Owly (or Velvie, as Bug calls him) became the floppy-feathered owl that hangs upside down from branches. So his bendy feet aren’t strong enough to hold up his own stuffed-with-fluff weight. That’s okay. He’s still cute. (Maybe I should try that trick with a bat next time.)

And she loves him.

I’m not really sharing this story so you can say, Oh, wow you’re such a great seamstress! (snort.) or Oh, Brenda, you’re such a great mom. Because I’m not. I like to put pictures up that make me look like I’m doing a half-way decent job but really, I’m just like every other mom on the planet nagging and yelling and failing everyday at motherhood. I should share the humiliating jacket story that happened the other day. Ugh. It was terrible.

Okay I’ll just share a little bit: I thought I’d teach Bug a lesson about not getting ready fast enough in the morning by making her wear an ugly jacket to school. It wasn’t even an ugly jacket but she hates it with a white hot passion which drives me crazy because I think it’s a perfectly nice jacket and it’s cozy and warm. I can’t stand seeing her shivering in the cold on the playground when she has a perfectly good jacket to wear but she’s too vain to put it on. It’s big, I’ll give her that and I guess the kids don’t like wearing things baggy these days or something but sheesh! The battles we have over that stupid jacket some mornings make me want to wave a white flag and tear up my mom card.

So she made me mad one morning like she often does by not getting dressed and not getting her shoes on and just generally goofing off and being a normal six-year-old. I lost my temper and said, That’s IT! You’re wearing the ugly jacket and you are going to learn a lesson. You’re going to learn to get ready quickly because you never know what punishments might await you around the corner if you don’t take Mommy’s nagging seriously, rant, rant, rant.

As you probably predicted by knowing Bug from past posts I’ve written about her, she didn’t get over it. There were tears all the way to school. How could I make her look so hideous, she cried. All the kids weren’t going to like her. It was a tragedy. Weeping and gnashing of teeth…So sad, so terrible…

I was tough about this lesson all the way to school. I would not let her win. But when we got to school and I looked down at this little two-foot person standing next to me in the giant purple coat that she hates so much with tears streaming down her cheeks silently; I was a mess. How could I do this to her? She was going to be humiliated all day and what would she learn from it? That her mom is mean and has no taste in coats? At the same time how could I let her niggle out of this punishment without teaching her that crying and throwing fits works like magic? It’s the eternal parental predicament I find myself in. You just want to make them happy but you don’t want them to grow up like spoiled brats either.

So we sat on the wall outside of her school like we often do when we are a little bit early and soaked up the sun. She’d stopped crying and had finally accepted her fate. I was just tired and wanted to hold her close to me because I feel that way when I drop her off at school. I feel like I’m missing something when she’s gone from me and it makes me sad all day until I get to pick her up. I like to hug her and squeeze her and blow kisses and do all the mushy embarrassing things that mom’s do when they’re dropping off kindergarteners. I know she won’t let me do it much longer so I treasure it.

And as we sat there in the bright winter sun, I felt a little warm. It wasn’t that cold actually. It was warm enough to take our jackets off really. So I took her jacket off and stuffed it in her backpack just in time for her to run to the gate as the bell rang. Did she learn the lesson that I wanted to teach her? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever know. All I know is that this parenthood gig kicks me in the butt on a regular basis.

That and pipe cleaners make pretty good beak bones.

*floppy-feathered is what Bug says when she can’t pull her tights all the way up and the loose feet where her feet should be flop around when she walks.

I have to admit I’m solar-powered. You always wondered why I’m full of enthusiasm and great ideas. Well, that’s my secret. It’s the sun. When the sun goes down so do I. So I get plenty of sleep which is awesome. I’m like Wall-E when I wake up. I have to situate my face so that the sun can fill up my battery reserves and then BVrrroooong! I make that sound a mac makes when it starts up and you forget to turn off the volume before shut down last time (Don’t you hate it when that happens at the library?).

This also goes for my moods. Sunny = Happy. Cloudy = Sad.

It’s great that I live in Southern California where it is sunny 90 percent of the time but when it’s cloudy I suddenly become like the rest of you sad people on anti-depressants and I don’t know what to do with all this gloom! It’s so murky and, and…awful!!! How do you cope?!! How do you get anything done? Ugh. I feel like I’m wearing cement shoes and my arms are stuck to the ground with strings of chewing gum. I just want to go crawl into a hole and die.

This is all not very fantastic when you’re planning a birthday party for a little girl who is turning six and birthday parties are what you are good at. There is no failing at birthday-party-planning in this house. No sadness allowed! We eat obstacles for lunch. Bring on the challenges!!! Fifty people in a small mobile home with muddy feet?! I can do it!!!!

As you can see, my winter-wonderland of backyard fun with stumps for chairs and bedspreads for tents might not be happening. My visions of tulle strung from the trees and girls sipping lemonade is vanishing before my very eyes. All I can see are freezing cold fairies with muddy feet running in and out of my house and tracking mud all over my peach-colored carpet. Which I hate anyway so I guess it’s not that big of a deal but I’m still getting hives over it. Ugh! Mud! Kids! Hyperactivity! The bounce house people won’t deliver the bounce house if it’s going to rain!! What am I going to do?!!!!

There is a thirty-percent chance of rain predicted for Saturday. I know in Portland that would be a perfect day for an outdoor party. You might even throw a pool party on a day like that and wear a bikini but here? We are weeenies! We are freezing our butts off!!! We are seriously shivering and moaning. It’s sad and pathetic and majorly cramping my party-planning style.

Well, until the sun comes out. When the sun shines I can think of all kinds of crazy ideas. I can do this. We can have an indoor party. I am excellent at crafts! But when the sun goes back behind a cloud again I shrivel up. The obstacles! It’s too hard! I just want to cancel the whole thing.

Such crazy talk.

So here’s my plan: The bounce house people said I can decide on the day of the party whether or not to have a bounce house. If it’s raining we’ll just move on. If it’s not really raining we will move the bounce house to the front yard and put it on the driveway where there is no mud. I don’t know where people are going to park but that’s their problem.

Inside: I’m going to move all my furniture to the side and create a big open space in my living room/office. Maybe I’ll talk Toby into letting me borrow the giant heirloom Persian rug that he has rolled up in Bug’s room at his house that is not getting used. He won’t mind too terribly if it gets chocolate cake ground into it, right? Hmmm…that probably won’t fly.

Then I’ll use all that tulle that I was going to put in the trees outside, inside. It will be like prom night! I’ll just hang it from the ceiling from an old hula hoop or something.

I bet you wondered why I have a whole bolt of tulle. That’s a good question. I’m weird. I used to do flowers for weddings back in the 90′s and I had a much bigger budget back then. I guess I just bought a whole bolt of tulle and I still have it to this day. I have a whole shed full of floral supplies leftover from those days. It’s coming in very handy.

So with the tulle and these stars it could be magical, right? Bug and I made silver stars the other day with card stock and glitter. I was going to hang them from the trees outside with my fairy orbs but now I think I’ll just hang them inside. Maybe I’ll get crazy with some sheets and make fairy tents inside too. That will be super fun when the kids pull them down along with the sheetrock from my ceiling. Oh boy.

I wish I had a man around the house who liked to build things. That would be so awesome. I could probably install a giant branch in the middle of my living room and bolt it to the ceiling. The cats would go crazy. (Note to self: If ever dating again make sure to date someone handy.) But I have no man around the house and my dad is working until Saturday so I’ll probably have to scale back my visions. That’s okay. It’s gonna happen. We’ll make it work. It always does.

Ugh. How am I going to make this work? You see this kitchen? Charming you think? Shudder. The wallpaper offends me so badly that I think I’ve blocked it out. It’s like a weird vibration in my head that makes me only see white where the little flowers are. But then I got this idea that I would rip off a part of the wallpaper near the sink. It had some water-staining and was really driving me crazy. I thought I would do what I did in my bedroom and go with the whole I-live-in-a-run-down-Parisian-apartment look where the ripped wallpaper reminds me of an Anthropolgie ad.

It did not work. Now I have a big blank spot over the sink that is still water-stained and your eye is drawn to it because it is NOT wall-papered!!! I might as well install neon signs pointing at all the ugliness. This would not be a big deal if the weather was great. I would just route everybody straight to the backyard and they would avoid the kitchen but now all my guests are going to be filing through my kitchen and silently judging me. I just know it.

If I had a man around the house I would ask him to paint all the wallpaper red for me or maybe pistachio green to match the cupboards. (Boy, don’t I seem like a catch?) I would do it myself except all those shelves would have to be removed (and the screw holes are puddied) and there is this light fixture contraption near the sink that my Grandpa installed that is bent on electrocuting me. I already tried to de-install it once and it zapped and ker-powed at me like a comic book villain. I’ve decided to leave it alone. So I don’t think this kitchen eyesore is going to be magically beautiful before the party. Back to blocking it out.

Did I mention that we went to one of Bug’s friend’s party this last weekend and they had a huge perfect house where they regularly host weddings in their living room? Yeah. No pressure. None at all. How does one go about canceling a party at the last minute again? Can I just board up my house and pretend I don’t live here?

Let’s talk about what is working. The craft ideas for the party are going along swimmingly. I know it’s hard to tell when I’m being sarcastic and when I’m not but here I’m actually happy about something. I decided to use Momfluential’s idea for fairy house kits. All those floral supplies I have on hand totally saved me. I didn’t even have to buy one thing to make all these bags up. It’s kinda scary that I have that much crap on hand but hey, it works out. I get to get rid of a lot of stuff and the kids get make fun fairy house with odd bits and bobs. I hope they are into it. I know I will be. I am all over this kind of craft like a fly on…nevermind. You get the picture. It’s going to be fun.

I think I’ll give each kid a stump disc and maybe some putty to stick things into. I was going to be on glue-gun duty but I decided with thirty-some kids they’d probably all want me to glue something and one of them was bound to get burnt. Since I don’t know every kid as well as I usually do I think I’ll pass on all the possible lawsuits. I think they can manage with sticks and putty and chennile stems and string. It’ll be fun.

The next thing that is working are the fairy drinks. I bought a whole bunch of canning jars and covered the printing on the lid with some silk flowers.

Then I punched a hole through the metal lid with my trusty metal hole-puncher and my super human man-hand strength. Actually, I only did one. It was pretty tough but it can be done. I’m leaving the rest of the lids for Saturday and I’ll let my Dad do it. Or any other random strong person who comes around.

Then I filled the jar with ice, a lemon slice and some delicious homemade lemonade from my backyard. I screwed the lid back on, stuck a pretty striped straw through the hole and presto! A perfect fairy drink!

So I’m making it work. When the sun comes out I’m pretty positive.

I have to admit this book tour has been kicking my butt. It doesn’t seem like I’m doing much. Just throwing up a graphic every weekday and then resting on my accolades but I don’t know…I’m not really doing so great at it. I got my schedule all mixed up. I missed emailing some key players, I’ve been getting people the secret sentences at the very last minute and sometimes even hours after that. I’ve been dropping the ball, regularly. Work, books, life…everywhere. I was even late to pick up Bug from kindergarten today and I had promised myself I would NEVER do that.

You should see my desk right now. It’s a complete mess. Maybe I’ll take a picture tomorrow when it’s daylight because I probably won’t have it cleaned up by then. That’s the way the days have been going. But in a way, I’m thankful. I prayed for work and I got it. I’m not rolling in paychecks but I’m making ends meet and I’m busy. It’s a lot to be thankful for.

Winter has been hard on my sense of optimism as I’m sure it has on yours too. The days are so short! It feels like it’s eight when it’s FOUR! How are we ever supposed to get anything done? Well. At 3am of course. That’s why I drink coffee.

But coffee is killing me.

I tried to take some Christmas photos for a card that I was going to print up this week and mail out next but I couldn’t get a single shot of Bug and me where I didn’t look like a hot mess. Of course she is darling in every single shot but I look like I’m old and drunk with bloodshot eyes that even photoshop can’t fix. I know I could just put a photo of her on the card and call it a day but I vowed to embrace getting older. I don’t want to hide from my wrinkles and gray hairs. Women can be beautiful at any age, I’ve always thought.

I just didn’t know I would look so scary at 39!!

(I like this one the best.)

So I gave up after a while and vowed to drink a lot of water, drink less coffee and get more sleep. You can see how well that’s working for me. I’m typing this at 2:58 am.

Anyway! The book tour is chugging along. I am so grateful for all my friends and co-bloggers who are saying such nice things about my books. I really don’t deserve it or them. And before you correct me and say that all my hard work is paying off let me correct you and say that my work is nothing in comparison to how kind my friends (and family!) have been to me lately.

They’ve picked me up when I’ve been crying. They’ve given me attitude adjustments when I felt like a failure. They’ve pushed me when I just wanted to give up. They’ve watched Bug for me when I had deadlines. They’ve let me stay at their houses when I had nowhere to go…They’ve nodded when I didn’t have the words. They’ve fed me and Bug when we were hungry. They’ve told me that it’s been a hard year and it’s okay to feel like this. Sometimes I guess I need to hear that because I keep wondering why I’m not doing better than I am.

The autographing party went off smashingly! I didn’t actually autograph any books though. Funny how that happens. You set a date, you get everything ready and then you get in a room with your good friend, good food, a glass of wine and next thing you know you are spending the night talking instead of working.

This is Calee, my publisher, friend, book-maker extraordinaire.

She made soup. That’s kind of awesome, isn’t it? I thought I would order a pizza but she said she had some vegetables that had needed “souping”. How funny is she? Vegetables that needed souping. I wasn’t going to say no to that. If vegetables gotta be souped, they gotta be souped! She saved me $20 and got me to be healthy at the same time. It was quite tasty. I wish I had the urge to soup vegetables now and then. I might have to work on that.

Bug was a little disappointed at the soup instead of pizza (and potato soup at that, the crime of it!!) but it was nothing a few thousand olives couldn’t fix.

Besides all the soup-eating, olive-eating and merry-making, we did get a lot of things organized and the kids had a blast painting.

A little too close to the books for my liking but thankfully no books were marred! A few paypal invoices might have taken one for the team but what can I say? It kept the kids busy and happy and out of our hair!

Today I actually did autograph all the books and I sent them off as promised (yay!). Bug worked very hard at hers. I love that a few readers requested her signature.

She takes it very seriously, adding flowers and hearts and clouds. She is an eternal bright spot. Talk about God knowing what you need when you need it….

Did you know she makes me coffee? She might be a bit of an enabler but who could say no to that face and a cup of hot steaming coffee with just the right amount of cream and sugar? Not me!!

You should see her holding the cup with a towel so it doesn’t burn her and walking so slowly to my desk so that she doesn’t spill. My heart explodes every time.

The kitten thing got out of hand really quick. I love kittens but one unfortunate thing happened: Aqui, their mother who used to be an outside cat, did not do a very good job of teaching them how to use the litter box. I’m kind of surprised because she learned how to use it herself and they watched her. Maybe it’s my fault somehow. I don’t know…I put a small litter box in the shower where the kittens were living but they didn’t get it. Even if I put them in the box so they could smell all those gross cat smells they still didn’t use it. They used the shower floor instead and then the carpet next to the shower, and then under my bed.

At first it was cute.

Awww… look at that little tiny kitten poop on the carpet. It’s mini poop!

Then it was NOT so cute.

3am: What is that smell? Ugh! Did a little fuzzy kitten butt just take a turn under my bed right where I lay my head to sleep?!!! Please say it’s just a bad smell wafting over from the cat box in the bathroom. Please, please, please…Ninja Bunnies!

So I cleaned up the carpet with Febreeze and vinegar and put the little fuzzy kitten butts in the cat box with some smelly poop to “teach” them but it didn’t really work. They climbed right out of the box and went next to it. Rinse, repeat.

After several days of this, I finally had enough. And my mom, aka my landlady, had scheduled our carpet to be cleaned. That was purely a coincidence but it did put my kitten issue front and center. Did I want them to ruin the freshly cleaned carpet? NO.

The kittens needed to go. They’ve been eating solid food for weeks now and they run all over the place wreaking havoc in the middle of the night. I think they are old enough to find loving homes elsewhere.

I put the kittens in a box and took them to Bug’s kindergarten. Surely, I’ll find a home for them there, I thought. Who can resist a kindergartener begging for kitten? Right?

That was hilarious. All the kids wanted to hold them and the kittens did not want to stay in the box. It was a regular three-ring kitten-circus escape act. Thankfully, kindergarten pick-up is not as crazy as regular school letting out so the kittens were not mauled by mobs of kids or anything. But there was a line of fourth graders sticking their hands through the fence begging me to let them pet one. I gave out about 500 business cards and they all promised me that their moms would call me so they could have one.

So far it’s been a day and nobody has called me. No one at her school could take one either. Apparently kindergarten parents are smarter than they look. They all had big dogs who eat kittens or too many cats already or someone in their house who was allergic. A lot of people wanted them though.

One lady did come by later and she took “Right Cheek,” one of the twins. There were two kittens who had identical markings except in mirror. We called them Right Cheek and Left Cheek because that’s how you could tell them apart. I really liked the twins. They seemed to be the most mellow.

My mom has the kittens (and their mom) for the weekend (since we go out of town to visit Toby) but this coming Monday I’ll be back on Mission: Find the Kittens a Home. Anybody want one? They’re super cute. Maybe you’ll have better luck with the cat box training than I did. Anybody have any special tips?

We are going to keep one. Fiesta, the all gray short-haired one. We were going to keep Shylie (the one with the white markings on its nose) but Fiesta won our hearts over. She seemed to attach herself to Bug and they are smitten with each other. Or at least Bug is smitten with Fiesta.

I just hope Fiesta learns how to use the cat box. I don’t know what I’m going to do if she doesn’t.

I figured I’d write a post about work today. I don’t do that a lot and maybe I should. I don’t know. Do you guys wonder how I spend my days working away with my clicky-mouse? I just have been thinking on something lately and thought I’d share it.

Above is a logo I’m working on for a client. I don’t think she’ll mind me sharing. I thought it was pretty good. I spent a lot of time on it and thought I had it in the bag. The client liked it too but then a day passed and she sent me an email asking me if I could tweak it into more of a 50′s-60′s style. She even sent me some pictures for reference. Which is really nice by the way.

My first reaction was rebellion. I do this a lot. I call it my Monday Morning disease. Because way back in the day when I worked in an office, I would always feel overwhelmed by work on Monday. It seemed like every sales person in the whole office had some project for me to do RIGHT AWAY! RIGHT NOW! STRESS STRESS! STRESS! But then magically, Tuesday would roll around and everything that seemed so overwhelming and impossible on Monday seemed just plain normal and doable. I could count on it. So after a while I started to ignore my Monday morning freak-outs, knowing that they would dissipate by Tuesday.

I don’t know why I am this way but I’m always on the defense right away and it’s stupid. But I always do it. When my client asked me to “tweak” the illustrations towards a more 50′s-60′s theme, my first knee-jerk reaction was to freak out. Do you think I have a button I can push to make it 50′s-60′s, I thought angrily to myself? Is that some kind of photoshop filter I don’t have? Of course I would never say this to a client in real life because it would just be rude and over time I’ve found that I always regret pushing back.

So I sat on it for a day. I wrote a polite email to the client saying that I could probably do what she was asking but that it would mean going back to the drawing board and starting over. I thought she’d dismiss that idea and stick with the original logo that was obviously just fine, right? Nope. She didn’t. And I’m so glad.

That night I took my laptop to bed and while the kids slept on the floor around me (they like having “sleepovers”) I clicked away into the wee hours of the morning.

I came up with this.

And this.

And this.

And this!

I’m not done yet. She’s asked to see a few more designs but I love the new art so much better than the old. I’m so glad I kept my Monday Morning disease to myself.

Do you guys have this problem? Is your knee-jerk reaction to think that you can’t?

A while back I landed a big job with Turbo Tax and got the opportunity to create twenty-some icons for their website. The turn-around time was crazy. I got the job on Friday night and it was due before Monday morning. That’s probably the reason I got the job in the first place. Who else can turn around something that fast? A freelancer who is desperate enough to work all day and all night of course.

At first I thought there was no way possible that I could do it. I don’t even illustrate in that clip art style. But after much discussion with my friend Heather, who I was staying with at the time, I decided to take a crack at it. I downloaded their existing icons and started to take them apart with my mind. Sure enough, the shadows and highlights were just shapes filled with gradients and not that hard to put together. I just had to dissect it piece by piece and not get overwhelmed by the whole.

The job went swimmingly and I ended up getting them all done with plenty of time. But I wouldn’t have if I’d let my Monday Morning disease get the best of me.

Not that I’m all peaches and cream all the time now that I’ve learned this lesson. I’m still learning it with every single job. But I definitely have raised the bar for what I think I can do. Anything is possible.

I watched this video a while back and found it really helpful. Maybe there is some other freelance artist out there wondering what direction their path will take and fearing failure. I think this will encourage you:

Milton Glaser – on the fear of failure. from Berghs' Exhibition '11 on Vimeo.

I never told you guys about how I joined a gym. I was going to but then my Grandpa died and the nieces came to visit and it got shelved. It’s probably a good thing I waited though because my opinion of the whole place has changed. On a daily basis. You could say I have a love/hate relationship with the gym.

When I first joined they set me up with a free complimentary session with a personal trainer. I said, Bring it on! I love personal trainers! I used to have one back in the day when I worked at the junk mail factory (an awesome company perk) and I loved it. Working out always goes better when you have someone else nagging you to do lunges correctly.

It turns out the free complimentary session at the new gym was more of a hard sell in disguise for their bazungo crazy expensive personal trainer program. What a crock. First the guy broke me down and pretty much made me eat dirt and admit that I was in much worse shape than I realized. He had me lifting all kinds of crazy weight in super slow sets that had my knees shivering like a little girl.

I know this method of working out is usually effective so of course I let him abuse me. I embraced the pain. But then the machines were so complicated. I was doing leg lifts backwards on something you usually use for your abs and something swung around and smashed my index finger in a way it should not have. It hurt. Bad. I still have a blue nail to prove it.

Blargin’ Trainer Guy. I hate him.

After about forty-five minutes of brutal humbling, we headed over to his desk to “talk about my options.” I admit it. I was sold. Not because I loved the work-out but he pretty much had me convinced that there was no other way to get in shape other than to hire him to whip me. My future looked pretty bleak. Even with his program it would probably take me six months to a year to lose the twenty pounds I need to lose. And let me tell you, those pounds were the ugliest pounds I’ve ever looked at. I’m sure he had me working out in front of a mirror for that exact desired effect.

We talked and talked. He complimented me on my knowledge. I learned about his struggle with MS and how he holds some kind of trophy belt for being the best trainer in all of California. It was a happy little talk and then right as the short hand reached the hour mark, he slid his laminated rates page across the desk.

Sixty dollars a session.

SIXTY DOLLARS A SESSION!!!! Plus a hundred-and-something-or-other for initiation.

Say what?!!

I’m not made of money. I can’t afford sixty dollars a week. Is this guy crazy? I live in a depressed town where everyone is on welfare. How do people afford this?!! Do their insurance companies cover it? Does the government offer programs for this? I saw plenty of people working out with trainers. They must be coming up with the money somehow. How do they do it? I pretty much emptied my checking account to join the gym in the first place.

Then the worst thing happened. The ugly cry came over my face. I didn’t mean it to. I never cry in public, well hardly ever. I hid under my bangs but once it started I couldn’t stop it. I guess I was a little more stressed out than I realized. Work had been tricky, money has been tight, my house seemed like it would never stay clean (thanks to my brother who was making it his personal mission to mess it up), everybody thinks I’m uptight because I’m a control freak about my house, Bug didn’t like their dumb kid’s club daycare and well, the whole navigating a dissolving marriage thing…you know, maybe it was just too much.

I put my hands over my eyes, got up from his desk and walked backwards. I hid behind a column that was near his desk and then just split. I didn’t even try to explain myself. What could I say? This guy doesn’t know half of what is going on in my life. Who knows, maybe he makes people cry on a regular basis. I’m sure his services are well worth $60 an hour. I charge more than that for what I do. But you just can’t spend money you don’t have.

So that was that. I haven’t talked to him since. I see him from time to time and I’ve been meaning to stop and apologize but I just haven’t gotten the guts up. He has my phone number, he could have called me but I think he’d rather wash his hands of a weepy over-weight middle-aged frump monster. I don’t know. I’m moving on.

I went home and thought a lot about the whole experience. In the end I decided that this guy doesn’t know me. He has no idea how I work out and how much willpower I have. I can get in shape without him. It might take me longer but I’m not a failure before I even start.

So far I’ve gone to the gym at least two times every week for about a month, often more. It’s too early to be patting myself on the back but I feel pretty good about it. I might not ever lose those twenty pounds. I’m okay with that. I just want to be healthy and not hate myself when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

Figuring out a good routine has been a little more challenging. I hate to go to the gym in the morning because that’s my peak creative time and I really like to devote my overly-caffeinated brain cells to my work BUT it seems like if I don’t go work out in the morning it doesn’t happen at all. I’ve tested this over and over for years. So I work out in the morning and it evens out because on those days I seem to have more overall energy anyway and I can work longer at night.

Finding a class that works for me in the morning is a whole other issue. I tried their yoga class but Barbie the Yoga Instructor drove me nuts. She was bendy alright but when she started swinging herself by her wrists and flirting with the very interested jock in the front row I got tired of it real quick. Which is too bad too because I love yoga.

I tried water-aerobics and loved it. It’s fun splashing around in a salt water pool with a bunch of grandmas. I felt like a super star when I could run under water and kick all their butts. Not that I was showing off or anything but sometimes it’s nice to not be the slow poke in the back of the class for a change. I even took my dad to a class. He loved it too. But the time slot was a bit late in the day so I’ve not really been going regularly.

Then I tried step aerobics. It’s perfect for me. It’s just complicated enough that I’m constantly confused and stepping backwards when I should be stepping frontwards. One day I forgot to drink my coffee before class and that day did not go well at all. I couldn’t get the hang of anything. It’s funny because while I have pretty good rhythm and love to dance, I’m terrible at taking instruction.

When the teachers says exit left, I exit right. Crossovers and step-behind grapevine-thingys have me tripping over my own feet. I’m a clutz like no other. But at the end of the work-out, I am exhausted and I haven’t thought one thought about how uncomfortable I’ve been. My brain is so tired from trying to keep up with the complicated routine that it has no idea that my body is sweating bullets. I love it. The teacher is excellent too. We stretch and use weights and everyday I am sore in the good way.

So I guess I could say I love the gym now. We’ll see how it goes.

My ninety-two-year-old grandpa fell and broke his hip last week. He was just out walking/hobbling in the garden area with one of the nurses from the assisted-living home that he resides in and he took a fall. Nobody knows why exactly but unfortunately there was a good bit of time between his fall in the afternoon and when he was actually taken to the hospital via an ambulance.

My mom stayed with him all night in the ER waiting for him to be admitted. He was finally admitted and put on pain-killers sometime in the wee hours of the morning. I’m sure it was horrible for him. My mom called me several times and I could hear crazy people wailing in the background. Somebody was drunk, somebody else over-dosed on drugs. It was a crazy night in the ER like usual. My poor old grandpa.

When I went to see my grandpa the next day in the hospital, he was pretty high on morphine. But he’s been slipping in and out of dementia for a while now. Last week I went to visit him and he was in tears trying to tell me a story that was so important it could change the world, he said. It took him forever to get the story out and when he did it wasn’t really a story at all. But I’m going to share it here because I promised him I would.

He has this painting (or photograph, I’m not sure. It’s a reprint) on the wall of an old man praying over bread. It’s a very popular picture and has been around for ages. (Google tells me it was taken by a photographer in Minnesota in 1912). My grandpa has talked about this picture many times before but lately it’s taken a new twist.

When he was in the service back during World War II, he was in London and had dinner with a man named Old Brother Ball who looked exactly like the man in the picture. Same hair, same clothes, same bread, the book was a bible and in the bowl was something he called mutton which was like lard. My grandpa remembers having dinner with Brother Ball and he took a knife and spread the mutton on his bread. Grandpa says the mutton was horrible tasting and turned his stomach. He smacks his lips in disgust and tells me that he can still taste it to this day. “Disgusting stuff.”

Anyway, my grandpa is now convinced that this picture is actually of Old Brother Ball and nobody in the world knows this. He desperately wants to tell the world that the picture isn’t a mystery anymore. The man’s name is Brother Ball and he lives in London in a town called Rickenberry (I didn’t write it down so I have to double check this because I have no idea what town he was talking about.)

Before he always told the story as if the man in the picture looked a lot like his old friend but now he’s convinced it is Old Brother Ball and it’s my job to tell as many people as I can. Maybe we could even make some money off the story, he says, which is just like him always trying to find a way to get rich quick (it runs in the family). Over and over he frets, Do you think we can do this? It’s such a big story. We have so little time. Can you print it? How many copies can you make?

In the hospital he must have seen on television that there was a ballgame this weekend and he was adament that I get the story printed in the newspaper and hand deliver it to the ball game attendees. I kept telling him over and over that I could put it on my website and thousands of people would read his story. (I exaggerated slightly for his comfort.) He’d pat my hand and thank me and then one minute later he’d start over again.

It was crazy-making. I started putting my story-telling skills to work and told him big fat yarns about how I would print the story two-up at Kinkos and then stay up all night long rolling the half-sheet flyers inside newspapers. Maybe I’d even set up a table and hand out free cups of coffee with the newspapers. His story would get out I assured him. I’m sure his hospital roommate was thoroughly amused/confused about what was going on.

It was so hard. I wanted to comfort him but the distress just wouldn’t go away. I’d convince him that his story would get out and he’d calm for a few minutes and then start up all over again. Do you really think you can do it? It’s so important. We have so little time. Maybe you better go and get started right now.

So finally I did leave. I told him I’d come back in the morning and show him the printed story. I figured I’d just print out this blog post and hope he didn’t have his glasses on, which have been lost for a few days anyway. I don’t know if he really knows how much time is passing. It seems like he is in a perpetual state of the last five minutes.

The good news is he had hip surgery last night and he came out of it like a champ. My dad said he was more lucid than ever. He knew who was president. He wasn’t talking about his story or the ballgame at all. He was happy to see my dad and just wanted to get some rest and see everybody later. So who knows, maybe he’s got a few more years left in him.

I just hope they’re good years. I’m so happy to have him still with us. I love him so much but I don’t know how long I can go on making up stories about making copies at Kinkos and handing them out at ballgames. But I’ll do it because someday somebody is probably going to do it for me. Or at least I hope so.

I haven’t really had a chance to write about the dogs. Probably because the dogs take up a lot of my doggone time!!! I love the dogs though. I just wish they weren’t so much trouble.

Chiefly this dog: Spreckles. Spreckles is pure trouble. It’s really not her fault at all that she’s so much trouble. She’s a six-month-old Australian Shepherd-Queensland Blue Heeler mix that my mom keeps in her house—her studio apartment that is only one room big. That translates to pure torture for a 30-pound bag of springs that has been bred for centuries to run ten miles a day chasing cattle.

I’m sure you can guess where I’m going with this. My mom’s dog needs to run, preferably not into my neighbor’s yard who happens to be deathly afraid of dogs.

And so, I’m having neighbor issues.

I’ve been really really friendly to my neighbor but because of the dogs getting out constantly, he’s afraid to leave his house. I totally understand where he’s coming from. Our dogs, though super-cute and lovable to us, can be pretty scary to others. In fact, they can be downright snarly. I’ve been thankful for their over-protective tendencies since this is the first time I’ve ever lived alone with single-pane windows and on the ground floor where my laptop shines like a beacon blinking “steal me! steal me!” all night long because I refuse to buy dark drapes…but you know, not so good for neighborly relations.

So while I’m afraid of people breaking into my house, my neighbor is afraid of our scary snarly dogs. I’m afraid of guns and he has several. We have both been living in fear of each other. I don’t think he’s going to break into my house but I have to admit when it’s late late late at night I do sometimes get paranoid. He meanwhile has gotten so fed up with the dogs that slingshot onto his property regularly that he has threatened to shoot them. If he shoots them, I’m sure the bullets would go right through the dogs and the tin can I live in that is called a mobile home. It’s not really a very good living situation.

Add to this tension the fact that my mom has trouble keeping her crazy crack-head dog on her leash because her hands are arthritic and she can’t keep a good grasp on the leash when she’s walking Spreckles over to my yard in the early morning hours. Often it’s very cold and her fingers just don’t bend. But she has to let the dog out. She’s a bag of springs!

Our first problem was the wall. My nice big huge backyard is walled in on both sides by a cinder blocks. They’re so old they are pink. Did you know you can’t buy pink cinder blocks anymore? I didn’t. But now I’m an expert in cinder blocks and all kinds of fencing since I’ve had everything from bricks to wood to that fake plastic white fencing to finally chain link priced backwards and forwards.

Anyway, the problem with my wall is that it’s graduated. It starts at about five feet in the very back and then graduates down in steps until it’s about three feet in the front and then about one foot in the very front yard by the curb. I guess that was the style back in the late sixties when this mobile home tract was designed.

It’s all fine and dandy except when Spreckles jumps over it and charges our neighbor and his two-year-old son. I didn’t really have the budget to put in a new fence but I didn’t really have the budget for a lawsuit either. So we kept the dogs in the house as much as possible, walked them as much as possible and saved our pennies like nobody’s business for a grand fence project.

In the end a family friend agreed to put in a chain link fence for FREE for us. My parents and I only had to split the cost of the supplies. This family friend is one of those kind of friends. I am eternally grateful. He probably saved me 800 bucks. Because putting in a chain link fence in a really big backyard is not easy or cheap.

We thought we’d hit the jackpot when one of my aunts offered us the old fencing from her chicken yard. That did help us out a lot but in the end most of it was not usable. So we probably spent about $400 on supplies. It’s a lot but it’s so much less than I would have had to pay if I hired a company to do it.

This is John Jenson, our family friend who’s a handyman. He’s wasn’t a fencing expert before this job. In fact, I don’t think he ever put in a fence before. But he is a fencing expert now. It took him about a month with my dad helping when he was in town and me helping in between freelance graphic-design jobs and a cousin helping on an odd weekend.

It was a Project with a capital P. He worked through the weather, through the prickliest of prickly cacti and he’s afraid of dogs too. I really cannot even say how thankful I am for his hard labor. I did bring him endless glasses of lemonade but that was not nearly enough to pay him for all the sweat and tears he put into this job. Not that he cried of course, but I may have.

Even CC helped. She’s in town, by the way! It’s so good to have her around. She’s only here for two weeks to pack up their old house and move up to Northern California. I don’t know if I updated you guys on their plans. My brother got a job up in Yreka and the whole family has moved up there. They are living in an old ranch house alongside the Klamath river. It’s very pretty up there and cold. My nieces are in new schools and adjusting. We miss them terribly.

Yesterday was CC’s first day in town and she helped John Jenson drill in the last few clamps to the fence. As you can probably see, we bought one length of chain link fencing and then cut it so that it could go farther. It’s bolted to the existing brick wall. It’s not the prettiest fence you’ve ever seen but it’s very effective. Nobody, dog or kid is getting over or under that fence. I’m so relieved.

It’s really nice to have a safe and secure backyard again.

The dogs are happy. I’m happy. And with enough prayer, maybe even my neighbor will be happy someday.

The end of my visit here in D.C. is looming and I’m starting to get that gut ache of anxiety, knowing I have to go home and face some big scary changes in my life. I know good things happen to people who make them happen so I am determined not to let this low-lying fear get the best of me but it’s there. Of course it’s there. I keep telling myself that if anyone is capable of this big change, I am. But still, the doubts are vicious.

My friend Heather gave me a silver bracelet that says, “And lo, I am with you always” to remind me that I am never alone. God is with me. The bracelet slides up and down my arm all day long. I constantly find myself fiddling with it, sticking it inside my sweater, pushing it on top, twisting it around and around… I don’t really wear much jewelry normally and all this clinking and scraping on my laptop would usually drive me crazy but now I welcome it’s peskiness. The more I am reminded of this bracelet, the more I am reminded of why I am wearing it. Clink away, silver bracelet!

So while my anxiety is unrelenting, I am trying to ignore it and enjoy my last few days here. The baby has not come yet and we are all resigning ourselves to the fact that she probably is going to take her own sweet time. The baby’s room is painted (Thanks to Troy! I didn’t help at all. Boo hiss!) and a new dresser (which I helped pick out) has been assembled. It feels so good to walk down the hall and catch a glimpse of a sunny yellow baby’s room just waiting for someone to be born and claim it.

(Little Chucks!)

This weekend the Beach Mama family came to visit which was really really nice. I might think of this part of my life as a low point but really it should be a high point because now more than ever am I reminded how good it is to have a support network of really good friends who make me laugh and smile and enjoy the day-to-day.

I just wish they could have stayed a little longer!

I almost forgot to blog about our Thanksgiving dinner! We actually didn’t cook a turkey, we had ham. And we had Thanksgiving dinner the day after Thanksgiving because everyone was in various stages of being sick, not to mention we’ve been on baby watch and we didn’t want to be caught up in anything elaborate or complicated if we might have to rush off to the hospital at any minute. But Bethany pulled off some of her usual magic in the kitchen and we had a fabulous feast.

Spiral-cut ham, smashed potatoes, garlic-rosemary roasted potatoes and green beans with bacon-balsamic vinaigrette and the piéce de resistance was the dessert: mini pumpkin cheesecake.

Oh my goodness these are so good. If you like butter, cream cheese, sugar cookies and pumpkin pie, you should definitely click over to Bethany’s site and get the recipe. They are wreaking havoc on my secret plan of getting down to a size six, I mean eight…ugh, never mind.

I left Texas with tears in my eyes. I still tear up just thinking about it. Texas was just what I needed when I was going through a terrible time. I feel like I’ve left a part of my heart behind but I’m stronger now than I was when I went so I think Texas did what it was supposed to do for me. Thank you Texas. I’ll always be thinking of you.

I don’t want to share too much here on this blog but I went to Texas because I needed some time to figure out what was going on with my life. Toby and I have been going through some rough times (years, really) and I’ve finally come to the conclusion that Bug and I need to move out for a bit. It was not an easy decision to come to. I feel like I’m ripping up my family and that rips up my heart. I love Toby dearly and I loved our little life by the beach but until we work out some big issues, I need space. I’m taking Bug to the beach weekly to spend time with her dad but mostly we’ll be away.

I’m temporarily moving out to the sticks next door to my mom, into my grandpa’s old place. Rent is cheap and family is nearby so it seems like the right thing to do. Sometimes I wonder though. My grandpa’s place needs a lot of work and I’m buried up to my eyeballs trying to make it a home. You all know my struggles I’ve had with my family and the sticks so I’m sure you can imagine what I’m going through. There is so much I love out here and there is so much that I hate. It’s bittersweet.

Sometimes I just want to give up and cry but then the sun rises, lighting up the bright desert sky with streaks of white and gold over the big mountains and I have hope. I meant to take a picture this morning but by the time I had grabbed my camera (I got distracted as usual), the beauty had faded. I’ll be out here for a while though so maybe one of these mornings I’ll catch it. The desert is a beautiful place. It can be desolate but it’s also beautiful. I just hope I can scratch out a living here. If you’re the praying kind maybe you could pray for us.

Next week Bug and I will be flying out to Washington DC for a month to help Bethany in case she has her baby early. I’m in charge of setting up the baby’s room and possibly painting a room or two—which will be great for keeping my spirits up. And of course Bug will be playing with her best friend Annalie so I think that will be good for her too. It will be like we’re putting our stressful life on pause for a month, which is nice but of course life will still be here waiting for us when we get back. So pray for us. Toby too.

I’m reluctantly closing the comments on this post because I don’t want to open up a public forum for people to pick apart my marriage and all the mistakes Toby and I have made but if you want to email me that is fine. I hope you understand.