Keeping it together

I am fighting self doubt with tiny, self-contained doodles today:

I'm also reading the blog posts of the wonderful new group of SAS Sketchers. They are making good art!

White space

Permission to rough draft

I had a whole morning to fail today. Time is a remarkable thing.

A new blog/website is in the works. Pieces of this will stay. And many pieces will go.

This is!

This is today:

This is good.

 

They came in threes

Three things happened today that make me wonder if Jonaca is right, and we should all be drinking bottled water so that we don't turn into planet Earth at the end of Stephen King's short story, "The End of the Whole Mess:"

1. I recycled some noticings from brilliant writer/chef/human JB, and spent far too much time watching Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. She told me not to look them directly in the eyes, and I think J's right, as I just could not. get. enough. June Carter and Johnny Cash were resurrected in a hippie cult, and they were just singing their unshowered guts out. 

2. LM convinced me to sign up for the Happy 40th Birthday Hello Kitty run. For the t-shirt. And for the hope that we could subversively draw mouths on all the silenced kitty-people. I don't do races anymore unless they send me somewhere unusual and if I don't have to stand in a race pack line. You have not seen frustration until you've seen a Singapore Race Pack Line. And this Hello Kitty (oh my gosh--another cult!) race fits neither criteria. Ack. She better pick up my pack, as it's obvious Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes were clouding my thinking when I said yes.

3. Gus came home speaking of "Baby Big Boy" who dominates the coveted playground ball at recess and is neither boy nor baby. He is older than Gus yet an infant. Baby Big Boy has a mean face and a baby face. And he says, "thank you" when you return the ball to him---but it's in a kind baby voice. Yet he's big. As it's the ONLY shred of information he's provided about his pre-K career, I hung on every word. I know as much as you do, and yes, I will be lurking behind the playground at 9:45 tomorrow to find myself some Baby Big Boy.

Tomorrow I return to work where I'll get a daily dose of IQ. And to be on the safe side, I'll not be looking Baby Big Boy, Hello Kitty, or those Edward Sharpe people directly in the eyes. 

It's Just Great

Returning season is happening better than we expected. Last year I walked straight off the plane and to the ER, and then we had two months of Gus tearfully asking why he didn't live with Grandma and two months of me (tearfully) asking when was I ever going to get to draw, and six months of P not being able to lift his arms, and yet all the while he was having to smile at all of us and mutter, "this too shall pass" about 47 kajillion times while he walked down the street to find sanity at a friend's house where hopefully someone else would open the beer because his arms hurt too badly to do it.

This year, there is less muttering and way fewer tears and someone might even be healed enough for tennis. Hallelujah. We came back to two new jobs for me (and one of them is at home at this desk with lots of colored pencils and books on fonts and freshly typed pages of manuscripts. Wheeeee!) and to this:

We're not convinced he's not incontinent or partially blind or prone to spaniel rage, but in the words of the slow-drawling boiled peanut hawker that MS and I encountered in the Florida Keys thirteen years ago, "I luv 'em. Oh man, with a cold beer, I jus' luv 'em."

I'm not the only one. Gus dresses him as the Boy Wonder, carries him around awkwardly by his esophagus, and is greeted every day off the school bus by some serious tail wagging and irrational joy. There were no sad transition mornings weeping for the farm or rough evenings watching Gus pack a suitcase for a one way trip out of This House That is Not Washington. No, there was a new buddy to pat. And that is just great.

And for those of you that know anything about anything with this family, you'll know that the ultimate test of a dog's mettle is this:

I know. I can't believe it either.

There's so much we can't believe right now. LM returned to Singapore after we left for Europe and she left for North Africa, and now we're both back and in the same condo and meeting to run the same roads as we did years and years ago before a Gus and two continents (not incontinence) and collective home purchases and everyone's boys suddenly getting cheek bones and jawlines. It's just great.

Another friend marvel is that our best Prague neighbors have moved here too, and BB and I wander Chinatown and eat dumplings and talk about writing and books and art and design in the same meandering ways we discussed the same topics on snowy Stromovka mornings, pushing baby Gus in a stroller with croissants and Linzer cookies.

It's just great.

The amazing part is that it really feels like the greatness hasn't fully come, as we haven't had the time we want with our old friends, and I'm still juggling my days off to plan lessons, and we're all feeling our way through new classes and schedules and routines. But the months ahead hold infinite possibility, and Singapore has not always been a harbinger of hope for us. So, we're going to not worry that the dog is ruining the carpets we hand carried from Nepal or that he may have swallowed a Lego or that I'm writing about a dog's bladder when I should be posting art I've crafted. Instead, P gets to practice his ukulele and use his own arms to open doors, while Gus and I dress the dog, and we all sit in the glow of community and healing and potential and far less husband-worrying weeping. I'm going to celebrate the returning season, take a deep breath, and remind myself (often very loudly so that P doesn't start talking to himself or drinking his beer elsewhere) that everything right now feels Just Great.

 

The Goodbye Season

It's that time of year. We say goodbye. We get excited for hellos. We count down days until we're leaving and ignore days until we return. OG's countdown is on two hands. How will we sleep?

This year, I am blessed to say goodbye to someone pretty darn special:

I'm only leaving him for two floors up and a few hallways down, but when you plan daily, teach together often, and pop in and out of each others' classrooms forty times a day, it's a loss. 16 years ago, I was blessed to team with an amazing woman. She raised llamas. She danced at the salmon festival. She taught me about Terry Tempest Williams and Mary Karr and not being so scared all the time. I loved that lady and our accordian wall we'd push to the side so we could face all fifty of those rowdies at once. Since then, I've grieved losing that relationship. And this miraculous year, I had it again. Thanks, Bri.

Brian taught me to let kids see my love of words in all its embarrassing glory. Every birthday, we give each student a poem and read it aloud with gusto. It's not his birthday, but I'm going to read him some William Stafford:

I've never been comfortable with ceremony or spotlight. I don't like to talk about myself. But, I'm learning--slowly--that there's a place for ritual, for honor, and for public moments to celebrate a season. 

And of course, since I can't take anything too seriously without getting red-faced, I'll probably have to come home and make a list of what we'll do ten days from now when we sit on the hill, in Washington State, looking at Mount Cashmere: Legos. Slow Coffee. Legos. Fat Tires. Legos. Hike. Repeat.

Two hands!