down with chaos...

with all of the work i have coming in, i am finding myself needing to organize the tiny corner of our house i share with our rat terrier. big time.

this little 6x3 space, packed with bookshelves and drawers of art supplies and my beloved mac and scanner and my epson printer, is the hub of all of my different roles. it is my command center. and i am definitely not known for being organized. i tend to live in and thrive in chaos if left to my own devices.

but over the past four or five months there has seriously been a drastic shift in me. i have begun to appreciate sparsity and having a place for everything. back in september j hired someone to help me clean the house. it was such a blow to my ego at first! then i learned to make having her come every other week work for me...and now, (with our new tightened budget we can't afford her) i can and do keep the house clean all by myself. it is surprising even to me, but i have had family that knows my chaotic nature stop by unexpectedly and exclaim at their surprise at how tidy our world is these days. i kind of love it. i think i've become obsessed. <3

so...i have begun to organize this little nook. it has been clean, just not entirely organized. i created an area designated to files which hold all of our financial stuff and records...an area designated to kids' school stuff...an area designated to the cookbook design job...an area designated to jewelry and art supplies...a space for photographic equipment...sigh...the list goes on and on. i'm not finished, but i feel like i can successfully begin the book now and not feel like i am drowning in disorder.

i really think that being organized, and purposeful is helping me and my family get to a better place...to achieve our individual and collective goals.

<3 cheers to cleanliness & orderliness.

while i'm on a roll...

things have started to move and shift in my life towards the changes i've been wanting to make. it's pretty wild. i suppose i shouldn't be surprised by it, but alas, i am. happily, joyfully surprised.

i have been having so much fun with my little weekly art auctions on facebook. people have responded really well to them and i think they have drawn people into looking at my work. i have had several inquiries into pieces of work through facebook as a result of them. also, i have a new etsy customer that is looking to purchase a significantly large body of work from me, my work was featured in a new treasury on etsy and i have been approached to do a large commissioned piece of work.

also, the cookbook design project that i have been patiently waiting to begin is about to take off! i may even get the information i need today. that is the hugest blessing. being able to do design work, from home, being paid by the hour. *sigh* it truly is a gift.

i am looking to put a babysitting exchange together, where moms trade hours of watching each other's kids so that i can get some time in to do a cleaning job or two or what-have-you. but...

it's really exciting to think about how amazing it would be if i could make enough money doing creative work that filled me with joy!!! to think if i didn't have to leave my baby to go clean or wait tables or host in a restaurant?? not that i wouldn't love that work...i just don't love it as much as i do making art and jewelry and designing.

it's funny...well, not really "funny"...i guess it's more "telling" why i am so determined to support my own art and school debts and to have my own money to spend on art supplies. when i told J last night about how well the past couple of weeks have been for me with selling my work, he laughed at me, in front of our children and told me i may as well pay my debt by going to Bingo. bingo. he equated selling my work to playing bingo.

i should have known better than to put myself out there like that, i guess. i certainly do now. all i have to say about that is, "just you wait, buddy. just you wait."

things are coming together. <3

a touch of independence...

i opened my own checking account. and i've earned a little bit of money to stick in it. and though this is a small fete (i don't even have as much money as my children do in my account yet) i feel quite liberated. i can't explain the disempowerment i feel as the stay-at-home parent, though i love taking care of my brood more than anything...

my man and i have successfully put a budget into the works...successful in that we didn't kill each other in the process. and so far our household has held to the budget. things are tight...and we have a lot of saving hopes and very responsible goals incorporated into it. art, however has been left out of the budget. and the debt that i have accrued in the hopes of staying a "working artist" so that i can go to a good grad school for art therapy eventually (accumulating supplies and gear and equipment with which to create art and get my BA) has been pretty much scowled upon.

so i am determined...DETERMINED...to earn my own money that will pay for art supplies both past and present. i need to creatively find ways to work and earn money while still maintaining my home (we can no longer afford the help i had with the house that i had while the children were homeschooling...though i must say it helped me organize the world here enough so keeping it tidy is far more manageable) and still taking care of my family the way i like to.

the first thing i am going to do, to start, is have a weekly art auction like i have been for the past couple of weeks. this is helping me to alleviate my stockpile of work, use up my supplies and get my creative urges out. it brings in a little money, too...not what i'd get in a gallery, but also i really do love the thrill of the auction thing. so it's all good.

secondly, i have begun more work on the cookbook that i am working from home designing and trying to get publishing (or self publishing it if all else fails) for Kate Cheney Chappell. i've been in touch with an amazing publishing company and am hoping that i can inspire her to get me more stuff to work on and get a handful of hours in designing the book from home every week. that job is so exciting to me, too...i can hardly wait for it to take off more! she's in such demand though!

also, i have begun to think about green cleaning again. i know it may sound weird and even yucky to some people, but i actually like making a person's home feel clean, smell wonderful and taking stress off of people. i used to do it and had planned to start a healthy business for moms. i wanted to be able to provide green work for people during "mother's hours" and my business plan even incorporated getting them health insurance. but when i became pregnant with baby D...it just got to be too much. i really developed a fondness for several of the people i worked for though...and i was thinking that if i went back to cleaning for them that i would do it at a reduced rate if i could bring my baby. there is no way that i will put him into daycare and my family is just not really available for such a regular babysitting schedule. so i would knock 10 bucks an hour off the cost of cleaning if he could come. there are also a few people that i have yet to clean for that i can imagine this scenerio working with. it could be a way for someone who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford a good green cleaning to get one!!! it may or may not work...

and lastly, if i can't make enough to significantly reduce my debt with the above work...i am thinking of going back to Street & Co for one night of work a week. great money. great people. amazing food...i love it there and i often miss it. the reason it is last on the list howwever is because i would be impeding on J's life. he'd need to take care of the children and support my working because it is at night and i am honestly not sure he is capable of that.

so...i have a plan. i have a checking account. i have a little nest egg growing...i am hoping to pay all of my own credit and student loan debts every month...this month already i may be able to do that if i can get on the ball! and then once it is all paid off (i could do it in about 10 months if i bust a move on) i want to save up for several things not in our "budget"...yoga teacher training...a metalsmithing jewelry class at heartwood college of art...a really nice camera, like a canon Rebel...and the tattoo i have been dreaming of getting that represents my family and motherhood...

i am filled with a surprising amount of patience. and i know i can do it all by myself.

peace out.

fingerprints

my mom keeps things. pretty much everything.

so it's no wonder that when i realized my oldest son would love an ancient typwriter for his very special birthday (he turns 9 on 9/9/09) that she would have one sitting in her basement. an old smith-corona that belonged to my beloved great aunt, Shash.

shash stood for francis, pronounced by a child. shash.

the typewriter is old...sticky and covered in muck and oily dirt. i took out a cloth tonight, some alcohol and a brush to begin the process to clelaning it.

but i am a bit freaked out.

i have a deep rooted love and adoration of things with history, a love and passion that i passed down to Little J. it is odd though, that shash's fingerprints bring back such vivid memories...she lived with my family during my high school years and i helped to care for her as she aged. she was obese and had arthritis and had a hard time moving about. she needed a lot of help to put it mildly. but she was grateful and pleasant...and so generous. it wasn't like she was a burden. not to me, at least. although there were some sites, scents and unpleasantries i'm sure she'd hope i would forget...but i haven't.

especially not with seeing her fingerprints all over this typewriter. her fingers were often coated with stuff...food, most of the time. when she woke up she would begin to prepare dinner if only in her mind. she was a single woman all of her life, rumor has it a virgin. a business woman, first woman to work at Western Connecticut State University in the business office even. she was the first feminist i ever knew...and i didn't even know the term for it back then. she traveled the world on her good state worker's pay. and what were her tales from her travels? they were about food. from french gourmet to hot dog carts the woman could recall practically every meal she had in her life. and she did. fondly. often.

she had a passion for eating. and it showed in her physique, which ultimately made her life sour. she had to give up her mobility, her freedom because she could no longer lift her heavy legs from gas to brake. she needed to ring a little bell that sat next to her auto-lift recliner so i would come in and help her to the bathroom, or change her clothing, help her bathe or pick up the imagined string she thought was all over the floor. she walked with a walker that bent and buckled underneath her great weight. eventually she wound up in a wheel chair. eventually my parents wound up wanting to leave connecticut for maine and she wound up giving it all up and choosing a nursing home for herself...where the food sucked.

i remember the night she died. i was my now husband's neighbor. it was the night i went to see that stupid war movie with matt damon in it...in the theatre with that stupid, idiot boyfriend i was dating back then. i came home, thinking about world war 2 and the era my aunt was from and i sadly discovered that she was gone. i was in maine. she was in connecticut. and she was just gone. i think she was 84. i was 25.

a month later i bought my little house. J came around four or five months after that and has been here ever since...and then the babies started making their entrances into the world. J, our three children and i all live in that little house still, although it looks much differnt than it did 11 years ago when i bought it. it makes me sad that she died right before these great transitions of mine. she didn't get to experience it. she never really got to know the woman i have become.

but her typewriter is sitting in this old 1790's cape of ours...that old heavy beast covered in her fingerprints...it will see my offspring and know them. hopefully it will click and clack it's way into the heart of Little J, my writer with a passion for the ancient, the used, things with a past...

i do need to clean off the fingerprints. though they do leave a lovely patina...i have to admit, i relate them to the smears on the bathroom wall next to the roll of toilet paper that i cleaned up for her while holding my breath...and the smudges all over the house from where she leaned on the walls or the furntiture to help her move around. at 16, for me, sometimes it was hard not to gag. but i am stronger and kinder and wiser from having loved her...and lived so closely with her.

Shash. i love you. thanks for the typewriter. and the many lessons. (and thanks mom, for having it still!)

xo