martinimade

And so it begins.

I was going to add a bonus picture of one of the pets but can't seem to find any of them right now. Yeah. I'm nervous, too.

Once upon a time, Lisa and Adrienne worked for the same alternative newsweekly. Now, both spend their respective days mining their creative souls and leading hermit-like lives. And so an idea was hatched. Every week, one would send the other a sketch - either in illustration or word form - and the other would make a companion sketch. The result would be posted on both their blogs every week, just for grins. Even if the result isn't award-worthy, the exercise might make both minds more nimble. Hopefully.

A short list of things that you could do rather than hovering behind my shoulder asking, “Can I have your computer yet?”

• Walk the dog. I don’t care how far. Keep going until you hit a non-crossable body of water. Then turn around.
• Clean your room, even the nasty crevice between your bed and the wall.
• Paint a picture. Write a poem. Sculpt an objet d’art. You may even use the theme “How the Man is keeping me down.”
• Vacuum something. And, yes, the dog counts as something and is a little dusty. Have fun catching her.
• Count (quietly, to yourself, in your very own head) to the highest number you can think of. Then add one. Then two. Continue until it’s bedtime.
• Close your eyes and imagine a color you’ve never seen before.
• Invent a new language. Make sure it has clear grammar rules and at least one word for “amusing yourself because you are old enough to know how and because it is a skill that will serve you well later in life even if it currently feels like torture.”

* 38 maps you never knew you needed. Man, I love maps.

* Having lived near Oak Ridge (and having a very good friend live in Oak Ridge (and marveling at how I could never, ever manage to get to her house the same way twice)), I must read this book.

* Hello, ladies.

* I want to go there.

* The title doesn't lie.

* This isn't at all safe for work but is really, really funny.

* Should you write for free?

Every year, we head up to the Farmer's Museum for Sugaring Off.* Every year, we go with the Pie Goddess, Grill Master and their two kids,** because it is what we do. 

As is traditional, Jack's Wax was consumed.

I took the same two pictures I take every year.

New this year, however, were the calves:

who will spend the next four years being trained as a drafting team. 

Also new were the sunflowers. Or, rather, the remains of sunflowers, which I found poetic.

And just so that we can keep track for later, three of the kids among the sunflowers:

No, I don't know what they were looking at, other than "not me."***

Before we left, the kids took a few turns on the best carousel in New York State.

A Boy and his swan.

What makes it the best carousel in New York State?

It features a hand-carved bas relief plaque of Fiorello Laguardia. Game, set, and match.

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* The Grill Master has a way of saying this that must be heard to be believed. It takes something so wholesome and, well, makes it something so not.

** The eldest, who is about to turn 16, opted out this year, which is to be expected. We're pretty boring. 

*** Yes, the Boy's pants are waaaaay too short. We knew how muddy it was and figured this was the best choice. They have since been retired.

"We don't have a handheld GPS, but I remember what Jeremy Irish told me when I visited his office at Groundspeak: 'Geocaching is a trick to get kids to go outside. That was our original mantra.' I'd love to see Dylan out exploring the woods behind our house, following ants an dbuilding forts and damming streams on a sunny afternoon, but despite our best efforts, he's a true child of the 21st century: send him outside, and he'll just stand there for 20 minutes with his nose pressed against the sliding glass door, like the world's saddest garden gnome."

-- Ken Jennings, Maphead, which you ought to read if you were a kid like me who loooooooved maps. Still do, in fact.

Much has been made of Amanda Fucking Palmer's TED talk. I can't really speak to all of that, mostly because internet-based discussions tend to evolve more quickly than I can follow. But what I can speak to is how it made me feel, because I wound up doing my best not to cry by the end, both from a sense of feeling connected to her words and utterly divorced from them.

Asking for help is so hard. I find it so very hard to be that vulnerable and to admit that I might not be all anyone could ask. I'm quick to give help, once given the opportunity, but I am highly resistant to taking it. 

And, also, one of my biggest fears is asking for help, for flinging my body onto the crowd in order to surf it, and crashing onto the floor because no one is there. I do not have Palmer's confidence. Or faith. Or eyebrows.

Which is not new information, really. Just a reminder. 

What really got me, though, was how open Palmer is about the intersection of art and money. It hit a little too close to home, during a time when I know I have more stories to tell but can't figure out how get them out there, without going deeply into debt because the jobs that pay for niceties like food eat up the bulk of my time. And brain. It appears that I can't do it all - but also can't ask for the help I need, because I don't think what I can offer in exchange has enough value.

I'm still processing, mind, and reminded again that Spring and I aren't boon companions. I get a little broody during mud season. Eventually, there will be sun.

Once upon a time, Lisa and Adrienne worked for the same alternative newsweekly. Now, both spend their respective days mining their creative souls and leading hermit-like lives. And so an idea was hatched. Every week, one would send the other a sketch - either in illustration or word form - and the other would make a companion sketch. The result would be posted on both their blogs every week, just for grins. Even if the result isn't award-worthy, the exercise might make both minds more nimble. Hopefully.

That dog, they said, won’t hunt. They were totally right. He won’t hunt. He also won’t save people from a burning building or stop licking his crotch. Because he’s a dog, darn it, no matter how much we try to convince him otherwise. He is not a very useful canine. But he can sniff and pull and wag and bark like a champ. He’s a goofball who smells like a sewer. He fits right in.

* 46 Reasons My Three Year Old is Freaking Out. I do not miss those days. (HT Trish)

* I want to go there.

* Gloom: the Card Game.

* A long read but well worth it.

* The Willard cases in Delhi.

* I am unsurprised by this. 

* I am also unsurprised by this. But saddened, too.

* "New Yorkers are kindest, most good-hearted people I've ever met." They really are.

"The only way to make any sense of the United States Congress, our father told me once, is to view it as a two-hundred-year-long primate study. He didn't live to see the ongoing revolution in our thinking regarding nonhuman animal cognition.

But he wasn't wrong about Congress."

-- Karen Joy Fowler, We are all completely beside ourselves, which doesn't come out until later this year but that you ought to pre-order right now because it is so very, very good.